Every once in a while, I find out someone in my life listens to this show and I'm like, okay, okay. Like I have a, I have a coworker who just got, he's listened to like half the, half of the episodes now. And I was like, amazing. All right. There's a lot of episodes to go back on as well. You're almost up to 300.
Yeah, Jeff, you got to step it up, man. Like you're at like 140. This is. I keep fucking up and having to reset the number. I keep having to like leave podcasts and start over. It's really a problem. Is that the one thing you wish you could have taken was the number of podcasts you were on? No. I was trying to look up the number of no-clip podcasts. They're not numbered.
What are we, 100 and something? I don't know. I've reset the fucking format on that thing so many times. Yeah, it's bad. It's not. I can't believe I get to flex on both of you. Yeah, you're prolific. That's why we're here. Yeah. And I was, I was looking at, that was like obsessing over like just number of episodes of anything. And I was like, yeah, like my wife is watching bones and bones only has under 180 episodes. Yeah. But then like, I was looking at like, okay, good morning, America.
It's got like 10,000 or something. Got a ways to go. A lot of mornings in America. I mean, we'll see, you know, season series finale ending on good mornings in America. Exactly. It's coming up. I'm Jeff. I'm Danny. And I'm Jim. And this is Topic Lords, the only place on the internet you can hear topics discussed. Jeff, would you like to introduce yourself or do you have anything to plug?
I'm Jeff Gerstmann. I cover video games online. And by online, I mean the internet. I've been doing that for a few decades now. And you can learn more about it at dopeassvideogames.com. And you're still, you're still digging it like as a gig. You're not just, you're not just going through the motions now. No, no, it's, I mean, it's, it's different, uh, you know, working solo now instead of for a big, awful company.
Um, is, uh, has been Danny knows he left before. Danny knows it's awful. It was awful. Anyway. Um, you can't do anything to me now. Land zone. I'm free. That's right. Is that a noun? What does Jim Lanzone run now? I don't know. He went to, I think he's a dating site or something. Oh, nice. Did he run Match.com? Anyway. Well, you're married, so you're safe.
Yes, exactly. No, I, you know, it's a little bit different now because I can call more of the shots and I'm kind of, it took a while to shake off some of the funk of just like, must cover new big game and, and then move on directly to the next big game. And about a year ago, I decided that I was just going to rank every eight bit Nintendo game that came out in the U S stay current. Yes. Yeah. No, that's been great.
And going down that road has been like, it's been super fun just from a like exploration of that catalog and the disasters that exist there. But also it's been really.
freeing or like it's been a really good learning experience for me to just like be able to step away from the meat grinder of just like whatever the hot topic of the week is and just like that can go on the podcast and i still play current games and try to stay current on the things i care about and then i've got this whole other thing um and and so that variety has really been
great if i was trying to cover every single new video game alone i would have exploded by now yeah no this is much more like i feel like i could i could get new game coverage just about anywhere But you can't, I mean, but you're right, but like they fired everyone. Maybe I don't know that because I don't actually want new game cover. Yeah. No one, no one gets, no one does that as a job anymore. That all went away. Well, okay. All right.
Yeah, I don't know. I think no one is truly capable of covering the 9,000 video games that come out every single week. Even IGN, they probably have the largest staff of anybody left. And they have to be very choosy about what they cover as well, just because there's so much coming out all the time. What are you supposed to do? Yeah, I'm now at the stage where a game will get a review on IGN. I go like, oh, they had time for that one. Cool, two-point museum.
awesome great whereas like you know there was a time back when I was reading GameSpot and Jeff was on it that like it felt like there was like seven reviews a day sometimes you know of just every possible weird little sports game that came out on the you know Every version of it is like, okay, well, the Xbox, what if the Xbox version is different from this one? And you know, yeah, we, yes. Yeah. Yeah. The NES, like the NES catalog.
it feels like an endless ocean until you get like halfway through it. And then like, then you, then you realize this is, this series is going to end someday. Yeah. And then, then what do I like, then what do you do? Like, Oh, so a lot of people are immediately like, I can't wait for you to rank every Super Nintendo game. Yeah. I don't think that works.
No, I don't think it does either. And the reason I always give is because as soon as you get to this, even just the 16-bit era, games become complicated in a way that it becomes very hard to do. Like, let's say a weekly three-hour video where you cover any...
where from three to five different games, it becomes a situation where you're like, well, now I'm playing one game a week and that's going to take the rest of my life because these games are, you know, somewhat more complicated than they were before. So the thing I always, the thing that I think about. And the thing that I actually want to do and probably will do, but I'm not going to roll right into it. And then we're talking about things that won't happen for a year, but. Sure, sure.
I want to play every game that came out for the Sega Master System. Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah, that's a good fit, I think. Yeah, it's a smaller catalog. I'm familiar with a significant chunk of it already because I had a Master System growing up. And just from a historical perspective. I'm much less familiar with that catalog. And I think, well, whether the audience follows you there, it probably determines like how much of this is nostalgia and how much of this is historical interest. Yeah. Right.
Yeah. Well, I think for me, it's been, it's been equal parts of that as well. Cause I, you know, you think, you think, you know, Like when I started this, the two things I thought were like, well, you know, everyone has played every single game that came to this platform. Emulators have existed for so long. Like everyone knows all this stuff. And also I'm sure like a zillion YouTube channels have done this exact thing before. So like.
I don't know, but I, I swallowed that and I tried not to let that because I've, I've killed so many ideas under the guise of like, some YouTube channel with 300 views did it 15 years ago. So why should I, you know? Um, and, and so I just, I just kind of started it. Um, and it's, it's, The thing I've discovered was like there's a ton of games that I have never seen before in my life because I abandoned the NES right around the time the Genesis came out.
because I got a Sega Genesis at launch. So it's like 89, you know, like, so there's all those games that came out when the NES became like mega popular in the late 80s that then through the 90s became this like weird slop. Of people going, this system is hot. We've got to get some games out there. And just like the floodgates opened and just a billion things got ported from, you know, localized from Japan that you look at and go like this.
If this was 1988, they would not have brought this over. The seal of approval used to mean something, goddammit. Exactly that. Exactly that. You're playing something like Alfred and Chicken, and you're like, this is Nintendo fell asleep. It was originally an Amiga game. Alfred Chicken. Alfred Chicken. I mean, I was watching that. I've played that one. That one, I feel like it's a workman-like game that just nobody cares about. The seal of approval is for games that are broken.
And that game is not broken. It functions exactly as designed. It just is not good. Yeah. Nintendo lot check can't like guarantee that a game is going to be great. They just guarantee it is not going to burn your house down. Like some recent NES cartridges I can name. Oh, is it a CD 32 game? There was a CD 32 version, but yes, there's, yeah.
Oh no. How have I never, I get like, I get, I feel like this immense, like a guilt, like generational guilt whenever somebody mentions an Amiga game that I've never heard of. Cause I feel like at this stage I should really have heard of. I've spent enough time on Lemon.
an Amiga over the years. But Alfred Chicken, never seen it. It looks awful. It looks like an Amiga game. Yeah, I can see it. Right, you're an Amiga guy. What's your knowledge of the origins of various famous samples, like mod samples? Yeah, the demo scene stuff. I mean, I was kind of, because I was born in 86, so we had an Amiga because my brother and sister.
We're getting the Amiga kind of, so I was kind of, I feel like I played a lot of Amiga games, but I wasn't sort of hip to the demo stuff. You weren't in the tracker scene. Okay, all right. No, unfortunately not. You don't know where the beat this sample comes from then. Okay. Probably like Finland or Sweden is what I've learned. Yes. Some all night demo scene party in Norway. Whenever I talk to anyone in who worked for dice.
They were all just Amiga demo freaks. All right. Well, if you can't help me, why don't you introduce yourself instead? Sure. I'm Daniel Dwyer. I'm a goat farmer in Northern California. And I occasionally make documentaries about video games under the guise of Noclip, which is a thing that I do. I made one about you once, Jim.
I made two, actually. That's true. We did. We did Frog Fractions. Back to back. That was fun. Yeah, that was a while. That was the first calendar year. I think it was technically 2017 we recorded those ones. That was a lot of fun. We should do it again sometime. I agree. But I haven't made any. Well, that's not true. I still have been making games, but they're like all jam games.
So I don't know what you'd talk about. That's what we should do. We should do like a sort of... Let's talk about Pico Stevemo. Yes, let's collect them all up and just, you know, go through them one by one. You know those like, they've gotten very popular, these like...
Vanity Fair and GQ interviews where they'll interview like, you know, Robert De Niro about all of his movies he's been in and they'll just go through them like two minutes a pop, you know? Tell us about Godfather. We should do that with all of your... With all the jam games? All the jam games, yeah. That would...
Wow, that's a fun idea. Yeah, I'm down. Let's make it happen. We'll make a documentary about just about anything, man. We'll make it. We need to get freaky. The games are, you know, we've been doing it for almost... nine years now and they're getting sick of our shit. They know we're in the pocket of big video games. I'm going to leverage your authenticity.
to make Noclip cooler. Not a lot of big video game left anymore. Not a lot of indie left by the looks of the funding situation at the moment. It's a topical. this show about topics but did you did you do a nolf documentary at some point? Did you already do that? No, never. We were talking to monoliths, so that happened today, but about a year ago I was talking to somebody over there about doing something, and then we just never got around to it.
Probably actually easier to do it now in a weird way. I think a lot of the leadership had left as well. I think a lot of people have moved on. But I was talking to... To Jeremy Jane at Noclip, because he left the year, I left GameSpot around 2015, I think. And we gave Shadow of Mordor the game of the year in 2014. And it was so cool for that studio, because it was like, Monolith had made, obviously, so many cool games, like Blood.
and Fear and Nolf and Shogo and Condemned. The Condemned games were awesome too. But it was a real high point for them. And then it kind of ended up being the death knell because they became this big franchise IP studio.
And then obviously the second one did all right. And then this Wonder Woman thing just completely. Yeah. What happened, man? You have to be owned by a company that wants to make video games to make video games. I think if you're, if you're going to make it with that scale and Warner Brothers. spent like three years unsure about that fact. So. Well, yeah.
Terrible. But who knows, by the time this podcast comes out, probably some other tragic studio closure has happened. So much to look forward to. More room for the games made on zero budget. There you go. That's it. That's it. Everyone's going to get a Pico 8, whether it's software or some kind of hardware solution, and then we're going to go from there. Honestly, this is what I've been hiding in the Pico 8 community from what's happening in games, and it's been great.
I can't recommend it enough if you're not trying to make a living. Are we ready to start on some topics? Sure. Jeff, your topic is what's happening on Blue Sky?
Oh, man. So this is sort of an evolution of a topic that I dropped in the bucket around the last time I was on the show where people were getting really... like someone made a bunch of stickers about like that they get attached to their posts that say like, don't reply to me, you know, like, like really trying to order people around about how they did and didn't want to be replied to on social media.
And how did they stick them onto their, what would they, was it like an image? I think they would just attach them as images or, you know, like there was a variety of uses, but I think someone did make physical stickers as well for this, you know, for, for whatever. It's like post no bills. Yeah, exactly. It was like, why are we doing this? And so, you know, like as things have continued on in the ensuing months, social media...
is just getting so weird. And I like it because it's dumb and you can just like, I need a place where I can just like type out stupid garbage. And Blue Sky has been great for that. But there's this influx. As these fledgling new social media platforms get more popular and get mainstream attention in the way that Blue Sky has, it's started to attract a mainstream sort of user. And this is going to sound like...
like I'm gatekeeping and I'm going to sound like a real jerk here, but these people suck. They're terrible people. They're like, it's like an eternal September situation. Like they fell out of AOL circa 1994 or whatever. And they just have like that same. cluelessness about how anything works ever, reading a room, whatever. There was a site called post.news. In the ensuing wars to create the next Twitter, a billion sites came and went. One of them was called post.news, and it's gone now.
but it was the most, it was the place where people would like, they would write their bio and go like, I'm a Twitter refugee. And I don't like drum. And just like, like, it's like that type of person. That's just like, I'm going to repeat the daily show jokes from five years ago. And that's all I've always wondered where, where these people are. Cause yeah, you're right. Whenever I go to like a Colbert thing or it's like, it has millions of views and I'm like.
Who is posting this? I assume it's like all, you know, 50, 40 plus 50 plus year old resistance people or something. Yes, it is. It is like the resistance libs. The brunch time liberals, like whatever you want to call them.
uh and they have like flocked to blue sky and they all have like the same bio it's it's reminded which reminds me of these stickers where it's like the bio is just like i'm proud mother and this and that you know like the the typical almost ai generated thing but they all say The same thing, no DMs.
Oh, like there's a toggle. You can just turn off DMS. You don't need to say, don't send me any messages. Like just turn, you just turn them off. You just turn them off. And they are posting like the, the Instagram style, like big image. That's just text.
of just like, well, I think the orange one said this and it's just like they can't say his name and like they're just completely broken in the brain and they're intermingling with people who are, you know, like a lot of the early posters to Blue Sky, it had like. a really massive like and really funny and great trans community um and uh and a lot of people who are inflicted with posters disease
And, you know, our irony poisoned, whatever you want to call the rest of us that are just like completely broken inside. And so there's this interaction where like as as Blue Sky has been built out in ways where they don't quite have an algorithm, but there are ways.
for you to see posts from people you aren't following. These people are so broken from their time on Twitter that they seek that out for whatever reason. And so it's these people who don't follow you replying to the nonsense that you've written, not understanding the... joke at all and also relating it to just like
Well, I think that that person is a so-and-so, you know, that person sounds like a national socialist to me. And it's just like, it's this weird thing where it's like, okay, like politically, I probably like agree with you, but you're the worst. You're the worst. And that's been social media a lot lately. Mastodon feels like blessedly free from this stuff because it's still just people complaining about flavors of Unix and good on them. But, you know, the rest of it is just getting.
Real, real weird. So who was on Blue Sky before this? Because I thought it was always like, here's people who see something that looks like Twitter and that makes them go like, yes, I want to be there and not running away screaming. The early, early, early Blue Sky community, as I understand it, before I was there, before my invite, before I got in the invite and when it was still not open to the public, but it was. Yeah, it was like there was a real tech bro.
kind of almost crypto mentality. Jack Dorsey was involved with it at that point. He no longer is. But like there was a real, you know, like any new tech product, it's a bunch of tech jerks that show up to it first. And then as the invites started to spread, as they opened it up a little more, you know, they're a...
community of lunatics really flourished and kind of took over. And so there were the early days of Blue Sky where like, as it was catching on during the, it was one of the writer's strikes or whatever, like Jimmy Fallon decided to create. a blue sky account and posted a picture of him. And he was like holding a Nintendo switch. I forget what it was. It was like Jimmy Fallon with stubble because they were on strike. And was he, was he holding up his, his, his, his ape picture again?
Yeah, no, nothing that good. And he's like, I'm here, let's do this. And people ran him off the site immediately. People were like, pay your writers, asshole. What are you doing? Pay your writers. What are you doing? And people just hounded him so hard that he abandoned ship. after like one post and and so it had there was a great juice there in blue sky where people were like
There was solidarity in let's keep these brands and dirtbags and losers off of this website. And then when it opened up and no longer was invite only, you know, you get what you get. they've had to add features around that. Like we're going to make it so you can limit who can reply to your posts. Like there's this knowing thing, I think from some of the people working on blue sky where they're just like, yeah, yeah, we should probably put some controls in there too.
help you not get this stupid stuff and and so it's uh it's been an interesting kind of clash of these various cultures of people who don't want to be on twitter anymore You know, I think everyone has pretty similar reasons for why they don't want to do that anymore there. But like they go about it in such different ways that it's just like it's it's it's a real oil and water situation in a lot of cases. And it's been fascinating to watch.
I love the idea that there's all these older, middle-class, frustrated Americans who use social media as a fight club or something. It's like a place where they can go to vent off their... Right. Excess frustration. And, and that we like, we secretly, we kind of want the algorithm to put us in our, not a bubble.
but to get, get, get the cops out of the feed, get the, get the, right. You know, it's like, well, that was the threads problem is that it was all cops. It was like, here's a website with every, where every account is a brand or an influencer who wants to talk to brands.
And that was their whole idea. And that's been going great for them, I'm sure. But yeah, exactly. And, you know, they tried to do... blue sky specifically tries to do like anyone can go create a feed you can do like a you know you build like a regex or whatever to you know what what goes in the feed and what stays out or whatever and so people try to build topical feeds around like
Professional wrestling is the one that I look at. Oh, cool. But there are a ton of different topics and it's messy because how do you, what word filter or what do you create that? is a catch-all for all the video game discussion on a social media platform. You end up with some weird stuff in all those cases. Just to prove that fans of things are the worst people ever.
Like the wrestling feed, just as the site grew in popularity, like all the quality of these discussions just immediately hit rock bottom around people complaining about like which of the two major companies doing wrestling in the US is better. Some things never change. Exactly. Yeah. It is just the exact same fanboy conversation that has, you know, that, that isn't the only reason that video game conversation online got decimated, but.
but it is significantly a part of that and, and so on, you know, it is the Ford versus Chevy over and over and over again until we're all dead. And I can't wait. It is fun being part of this sort of end game version of social media where I'm sort of pure Joker fight at this stage. Like I just don't care anymore. There was a time where I cared.
I've got to curate my followers. Well, yeah, because like, you know, on Twitter, you know, it's like I you think like, oh, well, there was you were. Were you at GameSpot when they decided that they were going to like send around a list of everyone's social media followings and try to convince people that if they.
didn't have enough followers that maybe they were going to get fired it was even worse it was uh it was uh it was clout scores they were going to use right clout was the website that was basically you'd put all your feeds into it and it would give you a a grade on how social media you were and as the person on the side at the time they tried to do this with the biggest social media following
I told management this was really fucking stupid and that it seems to be a reason you're trying to single people out to get them fired, which then got me in a bit of hot water. And then subsequently, that's exactly what fucking happened. They basically... use that to get rid of a bunch of the editorial team. They had been looking for excuses for so long at that point to move on people. I spent most of my time showing people how to delist their accounts from clout.
Because I had done that a while ago. Clout with a K. Yes. They were just like abstractly trying to let people go, not like specific people. I think they knew who they wanted to let go and why. They just needed to drum up reasons because the job descriptions for these people, they were technically meeting expectations. Thinking of metrics until they found one that fit. Exactly. Okay, all right. Yeah.
Yeah, and slapping new metrics onto people that they couldn't possibly. Yeah, I think the general feeling from management was like, there's just some people there that are just not, they're just sticks in the mud. They're just in the way, you know, they're not really. contributing in a greater way. They're just writing articles about video games. I was like, well, yeah.
And some of them were like sticks and sticks in the mud, but they were perfectly fine to work with. If you were a human being, you would just, you would, you would meet them where they were. You know what I mean? Like they're sure. Are you telling me there are some people who write about video games who have.
been doing it for 15 years who maybe are set in their ways in some way. Like, sure. Yeah. Who could imagine? I know, but you can still use these people and value their work. And you know, yeah, it was so...
It was so... And the guy who brought that in was subsequently fired for sexual harassment. And I was one of the people who reported him. Fantastic. Yeah. So God knows what he was doing to... Because he walked over to me and... one time and asked me to come with him and then showed me a book of, I guess he used to like take pictures of like women in like bikinis in Florida or something.
And he showed me this like fucking booklet of like pictures that he had. It was like a psychopath, like a serial killer showing me like his notes. I was like, what are you? doing. He was an ex army guy. Now you show him your bikini pictures. The ones you've been collecting. That's the cultural exchange. I'm sorry. I was new in America. I didn't know how things worked. Or, you know, you might have a, maybe you like feet, you know, like.
Everybody has a collection. Everybody has a booklet they carry around with them at all times. My feet book. That was a weird era in GameSpot at that stage. It feels like that, that era never ended in like that specific era ended, but it feels like that they've just been one weird era after another over there. I don't know. Um, tricky times. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, what's happening on blue sky.
I like blue sky. It's fun. It's, it's like, it's, it's just as dumb as any social media ever was, but I just, that's my closing thing is I just, you know, all of it, like people get very You know, like, I can't believe people are using Blue Sky instead of Mastodon. Don't they realize they're just going to fall for the same problems over and over again? And I'm like, yeah, but who fucking cares about any of this shit?
At the end of the day, it's just like, I just, I'm going to go over here and I'm going to post my dumb things about dumb things. And I'm going to post links to my content, which is ostensibly what this stuff was for. And it does best on blue sky. So, you know, like engagement is up, baby. Yeah. It is. God, my stuff on... Check out my feet pics book. Oh, God. Self-published. I'm back on board. It's all my feet. Okay, I'm out again. Danny, you run a goat farm.
Yeah, recently. Do you want to see some goat feet pictures? So what I was thinking was, have you ever followed Jeff Minter? Oh, yeah, of course. I was going to say, is this a Jeff Minter situation? My Blue Sky post earlier today where I posted the first video of our...
darling goats was the text was, uh, Jeff Minter is probably to blame for this. This is, this is what I was going to get at. Like you, you don't need to, you know, you were talking about how like you were like done with social, you don't need to like, you don't, you don't need to, to. Do it the way you've always done it, is what I'm saying. You don't need to be like, oh, they're self-promoting or like...
I don't know if you do this sort of thing, but you don't need to like search for people's arguments and then reply to them. Like search people with bad opinions. Wait, you don't need to do this? No. They keep showing me them. Well, Jeff, you do because you don't have a goat farm. Oh, yeah. All right. Once you get the ungulates in your life. What I found is that even if you do do that.
they're like a really good like anxiety slash depression tool. You just go out and spend like five minutes with them. And I'm like, Yeah. All right. We're doing all right here. And you're providing a public service of like, you are also bringing a little bit of that to other people who follow you.
There you go. Sure. No, I'm not posting these goats. The goats are mine. The goats are mine. You don't post the goats? I'm not posting pictures of my goats. Can you at least post pictures of you holding... drinks or food and say i am in the curry house i mean we you know you need we need a modern jeff mentor in addition to jeff mentor right right we need two of them i do need some llamas because the goats need like
You either get llama or alpaca or donkeys to be their guardian animals. Is that what's happening there? So they don't get hunted. So this is the problem. It's like a... fucking russian nesting doll of animals you went or a domino situation where you end up like the pen zoo yes you end up with like a donkey but then you're like well you can't just have one donkey that's cruel you need two donkeys so the other donkey doesn't get bored and then like you know i'll fuck it
might as well throw some pigs in here. The donkeys need a kangaroo. Exactly. I don't know why she swallowed a fly. You know what I mean? Yeah. So that's the thing is that like, I feel like the goats are a gateway drug. You know, they're pretty easy. They're not that hard to.
Like this is the hardest they'll be because I have to bottle feed them twice a day because they're quite young. But like, you know, eventually they'll be able to take care of themselves. And that's when I'm like, okay, let's get some hogs in here. You wake up one morning and a box of 20 snakes shows up and you're like, did I, oh, did I get drunk and order 20 snakes again? I did it again. Put them with the rest. All right. I'll be ready for another topic. Sure.
Danny, your topic is using Google Earth and YouTube to rid myself of nostalgia of places I've lived. Yes. I guess this all kind of goes back to COVID in some respect where like using YouTube to escape and be in the world. And I started following a bunch of these like urban exploration.
channels, like Shie is this guy who jumps in the back of trains and stuff in Eastern Europe and does all this crazy stuff. Do they still have boxcars in Eastern Europe? Yeah, they're just full of weird minerals that you probably shouldn't be... lying down in for an extent, breathing in. They don't have that anymore here. It's all flat cars and containerized shipping.
Oh, they're not open on the top or anything? Yeah. Oh, no. Boxcar, you're saying the ones you set. Oh, no. No, sorry. Where the hobos go. No, it's not, though. Sorry. It's the container ones, but they're just. they don't have tops on them and they're full of like rough, you know, refined materials. Oh shit. Okay. They just jump in those, which seems like a bad time. Sometimes they'd be in like, I remember one time he was in the back of one.
And it was like in a tunnel, but like a really long tunnel at night. And he was like having trouble breathing after a while. So, you know. But anyway, this, I feel like, was the start of this new type of YouTube where... There was a couple of people I follow. There's a guy who recently, he just like posts videos of his time working in 7-Eleven.
And like two weeks ago, he got fired from 7-Eleven. He just got rehired, but he's not going to film the videos anymore. But the one specifically that I'm talking about, which has really helped me recently is, oh, what's the name of the channel? It's like, I think it's... London Eats is what it's called. And it's an Uber Eats driver in London who's on like a moped.
And I was feeling like recently I've been like, you know, I've moved around a lot and I get wanderlust and all this shit. I'm like, oh man, we're living in London was awesome. Like I had such, you know, great time in life, lots of friends around. I could go have, walk to the pub. you know, all these things that, you know, things I can't do here. And, oh, that was such a good time. And then I started watching this channel and it's become this like really great, like leveler of...
Oh no, like London's like shit in all these ways that I totally forgot. I'm like, oh yeah, it rains all the time when this guy's there. It's busy. It's really expensive. None of the modes of transport are great, but they're always super clammy and cramped. And the version I had in my head is...
this beautiful rose-tinted glasses situation where I only remember all the nostalgic, beautiful time of my life, all this stuff. And then when I watch these channels, when I watch this channel in particular, I feel that way. And what I've started doing now is using Google Earth and being like...
man, Maryland was really nice when I lived there. Then I dropped the pin down in like some places I was and go, oh yeah, I fucking hated that neighbor. There was nothing, there was two nice places to eat within 10 miles of us. So it's become this like weird... I don't know, like it's deleting my nostalgia or something. And it feels really good because I don't know why. The nostalgia I feel is this like longing.
It's not like a, ah, that was a good time. It's like this weird, like, I had that time and now it's gone. And so it's nice to sort of have this as a, I don't know, like a palate cleanser for my soul or something. I'm just like, oh yeah, that was... It was really fucking annoying. I remember having a really expensive apartment in London that had mold coming down the wall. That was really terrible. And everyone had that. You should get into the Google Earth VR.
I've done that. Yeah. That's, that's one of the, that ended up being one of the first cool VR things I think I did. And I was doing something similar, but like, I, I think I, it was like stuff from when I was a kid more than. Right.
than like places I had lived or whatever, because I really hadn't moved around at all at that point. And it was weird. It was like, oh, this is the elementary school I went to. And you're like kind of standing there, but because it's Google Earth, it's this warped... like melting yeah like version of it and and nothing looks quite right but it's just close enough that if you squint you're like yeah
No, that's the bush that when I was in the fourth grade, a fifth grade girl wanted to show me her body. And so we went in this bush and I saw some things. She took out her book of all the pictures. Exactly. We flipped through all the photos. Or like, you know, the backyard of my parents' tire shop or things like that. And, you know, and seeing like, oh, yeah, this is, you know, after school every day. I was back here climbing on junk tires.
And in some cases getting the exposed steel belts out of these radials poking and cutting through my arms. But we built some cool forts. And so it was really interesting to like revisit that time. That was like, I had an emotional moment. Right. In VR because of that specifically. Google Earth VR in particular also plays this sort of like nostalgic music. Yeah. Do you remember that? Yeah. It's real obsidious. They should make it so it's super racist.
Regional music. Like you drop down in Berlin and then they start playing. Right, right. Well, so when you're just out in space looking at the whole planet, you're hearing all the musics at once. Oh, that cacophony of national anthems just being screamed up at you. But then as you zoom in, it gets more specific.
It does help a lot with like when you're going to a new place, the VR thing I used to do. I haven't done it in a while now, but yeah, like just get the lay of the land, just be like, oh yeah, okay, this is where, you know, that's where the thing is. But in a way it's kind of sad.
Because it's deleting all these beautiful memories. I literally did it earlier today. I was watching a video and it reminded me of when I lived in East London. And I was like, oh, I want to go see that building again. And I went and Googled Earth and it was... This is probably some deep-seated problem about how unhappy I am in my life right now. But I was looking at the apartment. And I'm identifying with it fully and going, yes, yes, you're exactly right. So yeah, it's probably telling.
I went to like a listing for the building I used to live in just to rent from this big apartment block. And of course, like when I rented, when I rented there, it was like a two year old building. And now it's like a 14 year old building. And like the bathrooms are all fucked up and stuff now. And I was shocked. I was like, oh, I hate this. Getting old sucks. Is that what it is? Is that what it is? Getting old does suck. You know, yeah, I guess so. You know, I...
There's that aspect of it. The thing that I, the Googler thing that actually really bummed me out was we would occasionally look at our old house in Petaluma. Right. And at one point. Relatively recently, we've been in Southern California for, I think, four years now or something, but the image finally updated and it was no longer our cars in the driveway. And it was like, oh, yeah, now these weirdos that we sold.
All right. All right. Never looking at that again. I bet you can get the historical Google Maps info. You can definitely dig into that. But there was a lot of stuff like that, you know, like, you know, before my dad passed away, you know, it was like, oh, his car is in the driveway. of of my parents house and now it's not you know yeah like there's there's weird something weird about
And I don't think they could not have intended it this way, but there is something very weird going on with Google Earth when you use it in those specific ways that it's like touching. Yes. human in a way that you never would expect. And just like all of, all of that stuff is unintended side effects of just technology, I guess. I remember when they first launched it in Ireland.
it was this massive deal because we just have like, our problem is we have most of our country is like B and C roads. Like it's all just, you know, tiny roads that no one goes down. Like a lot of them are at least. And they were announcing and they said that there were...
I think they were said they were only doing Dublin. Maybe they were doing Dublin, Cork and Galway, I forget. And they'd secretly done the country. And so they launched it that morning and everyone was like, oh, there's going to be the dubs or it's half the country. And then suddenly it was like... Like my uncle's farm, which is down a road that has like a grass strip in the middle of it, was in...
Google Earth and everyone, Google Street View, was it Google Earth? No, it was, yeah, Street View. And people were like losing their minds. Like Ireland did not work that day. Everyone was just like, oh my God, let's hear, trying to find the most like random place, you know, and shit.
and stuff so yeah it definitely has like a big we love surveillance as it turns out we love it when camera drive around with cameras and just take pictures everything we love that shit when we're doing it yes i want to speak to the idea of like the idea that The phrase that comes to mind is the idea that history always ends happily, where hopefully at least you're in the spot in life you're in because this is what you want. And you're not in those spots.
spots that you had before because that's not what you want anymore. Your priorities change. So it makes perfect sense that you would look back on those and be like, how did I live like that? Yeah. Yeah. And that's that you're right. Cause that's the thing that I would realize when I watch these videos is I would go, Oh yeah, of course. Like.
here are all these fundamental reasons why I had outgrown that place or I needed something else or something different. And I think it's maybe because I've sort of left a lot of those places on good terms. Like I never felt... You know, I loved Ireland. Like I only moved to London because I...
wanted to break into this industry and I had to, and then, you know, I really loved my time there and then I sort of had to come here. And so, yeah, no, it's a hundred percent speaking to that. Yeah. You kind of remember what life was like then. Um, and in a way that I got, I kind of wish I I could click my fingers and go back because I'm like, now I have confidence and I know I wouldn't have any of the...
cowardice or I wouldn't worry so much. And then, then you think, okay, well, if that's how you felt, then think that now be that way now, you know? Be that sort of confidence. Imagine that you're going to live for 40 years and you can figure out all this shit. But yeah, such is life. It's easier to do in retrospect. Yeah, yeah. Well, because you have all the experience now that you didn't have then. Of course you'd be...
Like, I would know how to approach all those problems. And I'd know who won the Super Bowl for all those years. Yeah. Could you imagine? I got the almanac. Yeah. What crypto to invest in? I'd buy a Bitcoin, you know? Just one. Who needs more than one? I don't want to be greedy. I thought about mining Bitcoin when I first heard about it and they were like, there's a sandwich shop in San Francisco where you can pay with computer money.
I thought, like, I'm going to set up my computer to do this. No, it wasn't. And instead, I got into SETI at home. oh yeah that's like no i'm gonna i'm gonna instead i'm gonna find aliens this bitcoin thing whatever this is this is not a thing yeah yeah i know a guy who mined like 15 bitcoin back when you could do with the cpu like and then spent it like buying uh like ProVigil off of the black market. Nice.
Illicit prescription meds, yeah. That's the thing. If you'd mined the Bitcoin, you will always regret when you sold the Bitcoin. Unless you were so freakishly lucky that you managed to do it. at the right, right time. But, you know, we were too busy folding at home on our PlayStation 3s. Exactly. Folding protein is more important than whatever this fake money is. I still feel that way, honestly.
Oh, well, yeah, that's like, why, why do some, some shit that's going to make money, but you can do bullshit. Exactly. Yes. That mentality has gotten me this far. Why stop now? Why can't, why stop making the worst possible decisions? Just live, laugh, love. That's what the sign says. Let's see. Yeah, exactly. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Video games. Yeah. Ready for another topic. Yes. My topic is dad talk. What do we do about porn? This is something that like.
Winston is six, so it's probably going to be a while. He doesn't have internet access. I hope it's going to be a while. But someday he's going to have internet access. And my thinking on this is like, you know, there's no there's no force on earth that's going to stop like a 13 year old from getting porn. But I can stop like a 10 year old from just stumbling into it. Yeah.
Um, and so I was thinking like, okay, we got the proxy system, set up a proxy, whatever they have now, they have proxies, some sort of like filter net nanny. No, that's, that's the, I mean, right. I've heard that phrase, set that up. And then as soon as, like, as soon as the first hint that he's actually interested in it, shut it all down because, like, I don't want it to be adversarial. Yeah. I don't think that's helpful. Yeah. The apple in the tree it becomes then, you know.
Yeah, it's so my oldest is five and she's five. So it's not even a concept yet. My son is three and, you know, he's no, I don't know. But they but they both know how to use a remote control. Yeah. And they watch most of their programming on a Plex server. There's a lot of stuff on that Plex server that they should not see. And so, yeah, luckily Plex is pretty good about, you know, you set up ratings-based account filtering and whatever else, and you kind of lock people out of certain...
types of content and libraries and whatever. But it got me looking at like what movies from the 80s were rated just PG. Oh, yeah. Because like Frozen and Frozen 2 were rated PG, but PG means something very different now than it did then. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom also rated PG. Right. Kind of a different level of PG. You see why they made PG-13 when you look at that. And so that's been my filtering issue right now. Just the name PG kind of implies you have to make a decision here.
right yeah like this is your job you figure it out yeah it just you can't just automate this shit yeah which is annoying because then every piece of software tries to automate this shit and you're like wait no well and you're like well, you know, Top Gun, if my son accidentally watched Top Gun, and they had no interest in any of that stuff. There's a billion movies on that server that they have access to that they never watch because they're just watching.
Paw Patrol over and over again. And Yo Gabba Gabba lately, which is a heck of a show. But as for porn, I'm trying to think, you know, I had, you know, I grew up in the backyard of a tire shop with a bunch of guys in their 20s. who, you know, were dirtbags. And so I had as much access to porn magazines as a kid that age would want, which is to say all of it all the time. And I turned out fine. Is that the modern problem being that sexy mags back in the day...
We'd get a lot of, I was in, I was in Ireland, right? So my brother was getting some of those, I'm sure you've seen like Maxim and T3 and all of these like lifestyle mags that were sort of, you know, rubbing up in that direction. But yeah.
The problem with video on the internet is it's like, it's binary. It's like, if you can access any porn, you can access all of the worst shit. You know what I mean? Or like for a child, certainly. Like, just like areas of... human interaction that they are just not.
prepared for in a way that like even when i was a kid my brother would come oh but jesus the way i first got like porn was my brother would come home from trinity college with zip discs full of shit that he just pulled off the server and he wouldn't even know what was in most of it he'd just be like
doing dumps. So like sometimes it was Grand Theft Auto 1 and sometimes it was half of Half-Life and sometimes it was you know people in Kosovo getting their heads chopped off and sometimes it was porn. And so it was like a fucking pachinko machine or a lucky dip of like a grabber machine of like, what's on this weird video? Because it's named Britney Spears something, something, but it.
probably is going to be somebody getting stabbed or a car or a train running over from gore.com or Ogrish or something. But at least then it was only like, you know... couple of videos here and there. I just think like, yeah, is this always the way it is? The next generation, you always think it's way more hardcore for them. It must be right. Like I, you know, so when I was, uh,
13, 14. When I was in junior high, I had a friend who was two years older than I was and he had a friend who was two years older than him and that friend was...
working at a video store at the video store in town. That was the, the, this is the porno video store. What was it called? Sterling video. It's where the staples is now. Okay. Keith Sterling. I don't know, you know, I don't know too much about Keith Sterling. I never worked for him. I never met him. I know a lot of people who did work for him.
I'm just going to say the man liked him some butt tapes, judging by what was on the shelves behind those saloon doors. You think he was personally doing the ordering? I... So I know people who worked for him who walked in the back and saw him just watching tapes, just sitting there, not doing anything untoward, just like watching and going, hmm. I got to write this. But maybe he's just like, well, this is going to be a good earner. I don't know. Maybe he's like purely.
Looking at it as a businessman, I couldn't tell you. But anyway, when I was 13 or so, we had a pipeline to get as many of those tapes as we needed. And so... I, being the technological minded one, was like, well, okay, we're going to get two VCRs. We're going to get this. We're going to copy all this stuff because we need it. And then my friend, being more enterprising, was like, yes, and then we can sell it.
Beautiful. Yes, exactly. Yes. And so, you know, we started down this road. It didn't get very far. But it was like this road of just like, okay, write all these names on the list and then you can bring it to school and you can convince people at school to buy tapes. And I'm like, this is going to go bad. And so we never really got too far down that road, but we did amass quite a collection. Beautiful.
you know, at, at that age cinema. Yes. Uh, of, of, you know, and, and it was, you know, it was the eighties, it was the late eighties, which I think, uh, and maybe everyone's thinks this way because it's when you're first exposed to the filth, it really was special then. Adult film used to mean something, guys. It wasn't just four hours all action, you know, buying at the gas station. It was like these films had stories. Got some plush. Yes. Had some acting.
And it's wonderful stuff. Great soundtracks, lots of saxophones. Yes, yes. That's plenty of amazing synthesizer work. not a lot of tracker, you know, like you would think that maybe it would have been some overlap, some demo scene. Oh yeah. You know, deployed there, but. I think I was the only one using an Amiga for video editing purposes in the 90s. No TGen music on the porn. Yeah. This porn brought to you by the Hacksaw crew. Special greets to Amber Lynn, Tom Byron.
Seika. Right click the skip. Here's my question about like, like the end of the golden age of porn, like film was way more expensive. Like just shooting on film is very expensive because you have to. pay for the film, pay for it, have it developed. Shooting on video, much cheaper. Why didn't the acting get any better? They could have done like, they could have really iterated on the scene and done more takes. So in the 90s, you saw multiple efforts along these lines.
like attempts to try to make this stuff better, where you would get people that had been in porn for a long time that maybe had ascended to these directorial roles and they say to themselves, no, I want to make a good movie. That also is porn and they would, you know, you could tell because you would look at the set design and it would be like a cut above.
Some of the, you know, a lot more lingering, you know, kind of set up shots into these scenes. It wasn't just like bang, bang, bang. It was like they were trying. but they didn't necessarily have the chops for it. And these films would still win awards at the AVNs because they would look like, they would still look like real movies to a certain degree.
But I think the acting didn't get better because it didn't have to. And I think a lot of the people in that line of work just it's the same reason the acting and wrestling doesn't really get better per se. It doesn't really have to.
There's a law of diminishing returns on performance. It's like you get up to a certain point and you're like, okay, you've said the lines, the story, the plot has moved along. People can fill in the blanks, whatever. You know, we're not going to get a better take out of you.
You haven't slept in four days. This is your ninth scene in the last hour and a half. So yeah, let's just, let's wrap it up and keep it moving. And then a lot of that early video stuff was kind of like, especially when like, you know, high age and like really cheaper cameras.
came in kind of the point of it was that it was cheap you know what i mean it was kind of dirty and weird and then you were got into like stuff that was getting shot out in the field and but the thing is like when you talk about that in the 80s stuff it sounds like you recognized as a contemporary teenager during that period that this stuff was hokey and weird. And I know when I first interacted with porn, I also viewed it through the veil of, well, this is not, this is not.
For me, this is for the older people, and this is hilarious or weird or dumb. And I wonder if that's always the case. If a child finds this, a teenager finds this stuff, does it always feel... like something that's not for them. It has, it has this, like, I guess I hope that it has this cultural separation so that maybe feels otherly. I do feel like there's a lot of, there are a lot of forces that are like,
pushing kids away from porn in the adult world that are like, and they probably hear about like the, this is something that is for adults, which is what makes it special. That's what makes it so much fun as a kid, even, even if you're not turned on by it.
That's the thing. Yeah. Because I definitely found these things way before I had any desire to see these things. It was just like, it had the same feeling when I like, I remember I got, I got like some Beavis and Butthead trading cards with curse words.
You know what I mean? I was like, I will be in trouble for this and I will also be in trouble for this. God will not be happy with either of these decisions. But it wasn't like one was better than the other. They were pretty much equal. Actually, I preferred the Beavis and Buttock cards. They were cool.
No, I think there's definitely an aspect of it there, but also I think culturally, if you think about it, like so many of the kind of generic scene construction of like the plot five minutes before the action begins of just like. pizza guy delivering pizza or plumber, you know, like the kind of classic setups that didn't really get used by the time we got to the late eighties. You didn't see nearly as much of that as he probably did earlier in the eighties, I would guess. I don't know, but.
Yeah, I think that that stuff kind of became pervasive because I think that across generations people saw this as ridiculous. But they accepted it because they're just like, well, whatever. I'm not here to watch a scintillating scene about a man delivering a pizza. I'm here to watch a scintillating scene about a man delivering a pizza. Pepperoni. I call it that sometimes.
Delicious. So how are you going to keep your kids out of this world? Technology merged with like a firm hand of like explaining some of this stuff. I think that there was a certain. When my parents, I think, first realized that I had been exposed, there was like, I think my dad was a little more like, eh, you know. And my mom was way more like, now listen, that's not how the real world works.
These are movies. This is not meant to be done. They're doing this a different way and tried to explain a certain amount of... love or whatever you want to call it, you know, in a way that like stuck with me, but maybe not in the intended way of just like, I think that's really important for them to know.
Yes. And I don't think you need to, I don't think you need to go into any more detail than that. Like this is, this is a movie it's constructed. Uh, and that's not what life is like. No one lasts this long. Don't let this ruin your life. But, yeah, I do think that, like, that, yeah, talking to, like, just being willing to have the conversation, I think, goes a long way. Yeah. But I think to, like, Jeff's point as well, like a light touch, like.
It's nice to hear that your parents care enough to say something, but I almost feel like... Probably you don't want to hear it from them. Exactly. Which is why I was like, yeah, you don't need to go into details about it. Like what's unrealistic and what would realistic be like? Yes. No, nothing. No, no, no examples. But I think, you know, a lot of, and this is something, you know, my, my daughter started kindergarten and she's in her first year of, you know, proper school. And.
There's a certain amount of exposure to other people and other points of view and the real world and what have you that like is kind of out of your hands. Yeah. And so my daughter comes home and talks real sassy. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Way that I'm like, whoa, what is you? I don't think you're not getting away with that. What? Like this is just like stuff like that.
And she came home and started asking me questions about Sonic the Hedgehog that I was not prepared to answer. And I was just like, okay, oh man. Have you watched those movies with her yet? No, no. They have not had interest in the films, thankfully. My daughter just got it. We mainlined one, two, and three in a week and she adored them just before. Yeah. She's big on like Moana 2 right now and kind of she's on the Disney. But like, uh, yeah, the, she.
You know, she is encountering boys who play Minecraft and she is playing Infinity Nikki and she's playing Super Mario 3D World and other. She's playing a lot of Switch games and stuff. like that right now she's playing princess peach showtime or whatever that that thing's called
And so, like, she's just interested in a dramatically different list of games than, like, the kids at her school who just seem very focused on, like, Minecraft. And I showed her what Minecraft was and she, like, wanted to know more about it. And then she was like, ugh, no.
this is, I think this is terrible. I was like, well, you're five. So it's, it's understandable. Like you can barely use the right analog stick. Like you don't know how to work the camera. So of course. But at the same time, it's, it's, it's interesting. She's picking up bits and pieces of information about the world out there in a way that then she brings home and we have to contend with as parents. And thankfully, all of that is way more lower stakes than exposure to pornography.
But I think it is all kind of part of the same process is that, you know, like in some cases, again, growing up around a bunch of, you know, guys. Working at a tire shop, I learned how to say the word motherfucker at a very young age. And my dad eventually kind of had to say, like, look, you can swear around me, just don't swear at me. And that was, I held to that until his dying day, you know, like did, you know, I was like, yes, I can, I can abide by that.
But, you know, like you, you don't know where to deploy those words all the time and you're not always, you know, deploying them, you know, in front of the right crowd and you, you find yourself getting in trouble and your mom doesn't know about the conversation you had with your dad about how it's fine.
And then suddenly you're like, oh man, I, okay, well now I'm in trouble, trouble. And the rule seems to be as far as I can tell that like adults can swear on adults and kids can swear on kids, but not around each other. Neither of the two should be. Yeah, exactly.
I think because we're all parents of like kids that are like fairly young and I feel like the next the sort of the next version of this is kind of what we're talking about is like what happens when yeah it's like this this external stimuli and it doesn't work as the same as it does when they were
three or four where you're basically like in charge of basically the entire filter of what gets to them. So I kind of feel like at a certain point you have to just try and build the person and make them, make them as smart as possible so that when those. things happen that they're able to figure it out for themselves and not. Yeah. Equipped to make strong choices. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because what else can you, because I mean, it's going to happen eventually. It'll happen when they're 13.
happen when they're, you know, the hardest decisions they'll make in life might happen when they're 18 or when they're 35 or whenever. And you just kind of have to lay the groundwork and then, you know. Yeah. Winston is a very deeply feeling boy. Oh yeah. Like he gets mad and he stays mad. And like, we've taught him, you know, over and over again, like really like drilling into like, here's, this is how you calm down, but he doesn't want to calm down. Yeah. But he's got the skill. He can do it.
He knows like the techniques and he knows like he's much more cognizant of like his own, like the physiological symptoms of being angry and what to do about that and how to cope with it. He's extremely cognizant of that at this age even. And I've seen him like, you know, he's always improving. And just watching him like deliberately go take a break, take a deep breath and calm himself down.
Um, that wasn't a skill that I was ever taught. No, I don't think I can do that now. Yeah. Like I had to figure that shit out and it was in my twenties, you know, I need to lay in bed and curse at ghosts. In order to. And I feel like this is this is a general like just having a better understanding of what neurodiversity you might have.
It's much more broadly understood nowadays. I think this generation of kids is going to grow up a lot mentally healthier. 100%. In that particular respect, at least. Emotionally, emotional intelligence, I think. Yeah, my daughter had a, yesterday she was like, she's been a bit like sort of frustrated, I'd say, the past couple of days. And then she came home and she...
talked to my wife about how she said, I figured out why I'm frustrated. It's because her like bestie she's had for years, she thinks is not really listening to her feelings. And my wife is telling me this and I'm like, fucking what she's like six and a half like what i think i was like in my 30s before i could grapple with any that level of introspection and it's like, yeah, you know, they're all right. They'll be, they'll figure it out. If they're figuring that stuff out now, you're like,
Well, hopefully, you know, and I see it with my friends, kids who are like proper sort of 17, 18 year old teenagers. And they're all like that whole generation, they all go to the gym. They like take care of themselves and do all this stuff. And it's not like, well, you don't just like, you don't have your favorite six.
bushes in town where you stash your booze like this is like go watch cky2k and then breaks up stuff like what get some ideas for what to do on the weekend you know yeah so i don't know Fair play to them, I guess. I hope that our kids are on that similar road. Again, our oldest is five, so a little bit younger than yours. And she will catch herself sometimes and be able to kind of...
like simmer down a little bit but we haven't had we haven't had the big like friend falling out at school or like there's just a lot of stuff like that that just kind of hasn't happened it's still kind of in that like oh well i'm just bopping around from person to person and everybody's my friend you know
And, you know, no one's heart has been broken yet. And so we were just talking about that today. And it's just like, eventually we're going to get to a point where, you know, this sort of stuff is going to start happening. And a part of it is even just like, you know. reminding kids like hey don't get kidnapped like hey don't open that door don't do this it's like not everyone is your friend and it's like then and they're like what yeah what do you mean okay how do i talk about okay how do i
How do I tell you this without scaring the crap out of you, but also sort of scaring you? Yeah, there's a lot of different juggling acts around, like, conveying that sort of information. My dad scared me off of... Not that I was on them, but he established a rapport with me that was like, anything you want to know about, ask me. I did it all.
And so he was like, yeah, you know, if we were taking LSD right now, then maybe that newscaster's face would melt away and there would be a skeleton on the TV. And I'm like, that sounds cool. He says, yeah, but it's 15 hours and you can't turn it off. And so I was laying in bed just and I couldn't.
And I couldn't go to sleep because it was happening, happening. And I'm like, okay, yeah, you're right. That does sound kind of bad, actually. That's a good honest way of doing it. So I was able to just like, and something that I think about is because, you know, like because of that. I don't have any of those experiences to draw on. So, you know, everything is going to be secondhand when I am telling these stories about like, well, you know, if you don't want to sleep, then yeah, I guess you.
Let's go get an eight ball, kids. I don't know what even happens in those types of situations. Hey, look, if they come asking questions about energy drinks, no better man. Yeah, I got that covered for sure. I think to some extent you need to let them find their way in that, like. You know, if you don't let your kid climb, for example. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Or like run around and like.
And then hurt themselves in small ways. They're not going to know their limits. They're not going to know how their bodies work. You end up with an adult who doesn't know how to climb a ladder safely. Same with water stuff. I remember at the start, my daughter being really worried about her near water. And at a certain point, we just came back from a week on vacation where she was in a pool the whole week and falling and getting...
catching her breath by accident and doing all that, you know, and that's how you develop the way, like skills to get out of the situation when it gets bad, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Learning how to fall is like a whole.
like important thing i think there are like my mom never played sports or anything growing up and she couldn't fall well my dad fell recently and was relatively okay because he played you know hurling and getting football his whole life and soccer and was able to he knew how to fall properly and he was okay and I remember yeah
learning about that, just, yeah, all that stuff, body knowledge and just experience of how far you can push yourself is super important. And it does, you know, it starts it. Kind of starts at this age, but it's hard as parents, right? Cause you're just trying to wrap them in cotton wool all the time. Yeah. Our, our backyard has a, uh, upward slope. Like there's, so there's like a kind of a low wall to like a garden area. There's trees. And so there's this slope of dirt up.
to a higher wall and they keep climbing up this little dirt mountain and walking all the whole length of the backyard. And I still hate it when they do it because they always slide down on their butt and rip up their clothes and all this other stuff. And I'm just like, just don't. I want them to know that it is not safe.
But also, I want them to do it and learn kind of their limits a little bit and try to figure it out. They learn that it's not safe by getting hurt. Yeah. But that is a situation where the parts where they could get hurt. they could get really hurt. Okay. You're right. That's bad. This is like a seven or eight foot tumble down a dirt mountain onto a cement, you know, it is just like, okay. Yeah.
Like, how do I, where do I draw the line? What do I let them get away with? Especially because like kids are surprisingly resilient. And a lot of that is just that they don't weigh very much. Yeah. Yeah. Center gravity is super low as well. They're, you know, they sort of sort of flop. when they fall the, the drugs thing specifically, I think is relevant here because, because they're illegal. I think there's a big drugs are illegal absence of like,
cultural knowledge on how to deal with that, like how to, how to deal with it safely. Right. Yeah. I feel like I will be having done a decent amount myself and, but never haven't gone near the stuff that I would consider dangerous, dangerous. I feel like. being honest about like, you know.
certain amphetamines and and and like weed and stuff and like not you know and then but don't go down this road i mean and in a way it's like i think where you live because like i mean jeff you're from up around here i feel like like there was way more like drug abuse problems that I see. Or like I know people, a lot of people who are clean and sober or in recovery here in a way that in Ireland...
Obviously, we have alcohol, and I think drugs have gotten worse back in parts of Dublin, heroin issues and stuff. But it feels like kind of... there's an element of sobriety culture that exists here because, you know, people up in Lake County or other parts of here. Forget Lake County, try, you know. Downtown Petaluma. Right. But yes, but also, yes, Lake County. Yeah, no, it's there's definitely like I first became aware of meth when I was in high school.
Someone told, someone told me, and this was, so this was like 91, 92. And they didn't call it meth then. They called it ice. Um, and someone said, oh yeah, they, they were driving to like some kids that we went to school with were going to San Francisco for something, which already was like, you went to San Francisco. What were you doing? I was like, yeah, he smoked ice. And then he woke up and they were in San Francisco. And I was like, I don't think that's how any of that works.
But, uh, but that was the story that went around when I first started hearing about it. And, you know, then it became known as crank and then, you know, like all of this other stuff and, and yeah, you know, there's definitely like a, um, like a. I remember I was standing in, this is more Petaluma lore for you, but I was standing in Gale Central Club. Beautiful. Like a Tuesday night, completely empty. It's just me and the bartender were hanging out. And across the street.
This is on the boulevard, the main drag in Petaluma. Like it doesn't get more downtown than this. He's got a pickup truck and he's got the hood open and he is just like. punching into the engine compartment and screaming at the top of his lungs because the car stopped running or I don't know who knows why. And then, so like we're watching this, like me and the bartender were standing there and she's watching it and going like, oh yeah, another one of these.
And I'm sitting there going like, yeah, I guess it is another one of the, I guess it's not the first time I've seen something quite like this, but, but man, this guy is punching this engine block like nobody's business. And then he just took off running down the street. Okay. That's the end of that story. You know, like there was a moment of just like, should we call the cops? I was like, no, he doesn't know why. I mean, you know, he's not, he's just, he's just punching that car. Who cares?
But he just he took off running and then the car stayed there for the rest of the night. And I don't know what happened after that. But it was just like this moment of just like, you know, I'm not going to go mess with that dude. I'm not going to go ask him, hey, can I give you a hand? You know, just like that guy's going through some stuff.
All right, we'll see how it goes. The most trash I've been in the past five years was the Nightingales. I came from the race track and I was there drinking beers. on my own, watching the racing, loving it. And then I went to Gale's. I was like, I'll have one on the way home. And then there was like this really good band started. I stayed for another song. I was there for like three hours talking to people. And yeah, I like, I don't.
Don't get blackout drunk ever. Like I'm a pretty decent functioning alcoholic. I can drink and go home. And I remember walking home out to like sunny slopes. So like, you know. Oh yeah, yeah. And at one stage I was. There's like a creek around there where there's like a little river and there's a sort of cycle path. And I was like, oh, I'll just take the gap here and I'll get home.
two years ago i ended up in some fucking guy's back garden where he was having a party and he was like nope nope nope and he like pushed out i was like oh shit sorry i didn't know i i was like i'm trying to get home i didn't mean and then i don't uh i got home like five minutes but I remember thinking, man, I was that guy. I was that drunk, weird guy that night to some other people. And I went, I tried to find the house to see if I could see where it was.
and it wasn't where I thought I was at all. I was like, well, that figures. I don't know where the fuck I was. Yeah, so Gale's has an energy, I think. Yeah, I've seen some things inside of Gale's Central Club. I've seen some things in there. And that's all the time we have for topic Lords. It is. That's all our topics. All right. Well, no, we had so many more topics, but we just, you know, the time goes by.
Any poem this episode? Well, we had one. We don't have time for it. We'll get to it. You two won't, but somebody will. I'll hear it as a subscriber to Topic Lords. Oh, thank you. Absolutely. Jeff, if this is something that you want, where can people find you on the internet? Me? I'm at patreon.com slash Jeff Gerstmann or you just look up the Jeff Gerstmann show on pretty much any platform.
twitch or youtube or whatever i'm there doing video game stuff and yeah blues guy and yes i'm i'm doing three hours of podcasting about video games every tuesday oh man okay so then if you're probably way past me on total hours With only 140 episodes or whatever. Damn. Yeah. There goes my flex. You know, that's why when you say, oh, we're just like, I'm just warming up, baby. And Danny, if this is something that you want.
Where can people find you on the internet? Yeah, Danny O'Dwyer, it's not a very common name. If you put it into the internet, you'll either get me or you spelt it wrong and you land on a Cockney actor.
He's also a pretty good follow. You should also follow him. That's good to know. Nice. Or Noclip. Look up Noclip. We've got some fun docs we're doing. We've got a four-piece on Dwarf Fortress coming out pretty soon. Get some Doom cheat codes in there. Exactly, yeah. Well, I feel like a Dwarf Fortress doc is sort of like... within the, I feel like your listeners.
You know, a lot of engineers, a lot of smart people listen to this. I bet there's some interest there, yeah. Yeah, so we're working on that. We spent some time with those lunatics up in Kitsap County, those Adams brothers. So, yeah. Hope the money hasn't... changed them no and it's very funny the story of what they did with the money it is exactly what you'd imagine great very little and yeah you know apartments with no furniture
Nice. See, I was hoping that you were going to say that they built a dwarf fortress. Oh, they should. You're right. That should be the end game. Yeah. Strike the earth. Thanks so much for being on. Thanks for having me. Anytime. Hi, this is Jim. This is the audio I append to every episode of Topic Lords. Congratulations to our newly anointed Lords. This episode was edited by Esper Quinn, who can also edit your episode if you contact them on Twitter.
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