291. Nair and Nnail: Keratin Erasers
May 19, 2025•1 hr 9 min
Episode description
Lords:
* Alexei
* Evan
Topics:
* Silt clouds & underwater visibility as a game mechanic
* The bass pro shop pyramid and the utility calculations of weird buildings
* What happens when your Firefox root certificate expires?
* The Ailing Mirror-Smith
* https://medium.com/@EvanBalster/the-ailing-mirror-smith-9c4b5a76cd#9520
Microtopics:
* Roguelike Celebration.
* Virtual conferences.
* How to be in a conversation with one person in a room and not the whole room.
* Drinking a polymorph potion to put a different animal emoji next to your user name.
* Roguelikes and Roguelikers.
* Topic munching and topic grazing.
* How to design non-violent roguelikes.
* Spending your paw prints on the "become water" skill so when a human tries to pick you up, you just flow out of their hands.
* Imitone.
* Abruptly tooting a horn.
* Reading an email and then pointing at it and yelling "sold!"
* DSP for game developers.
* Video essays about maritime disasters.
* Penetration diving.
* Huge warning signs in front of every underwater cave.
* Silt Warnings.
* Guideline Entanglement.
* Moving in more directional axes than you normally do.
* Fast things that live underwater.
* Panicking and forgetting that the game is turn based.
* Playing Nethack with a screen reader.
* Multi stage dives to deliver oxygen further and further into a cave system.
* Retrieving the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald.
* Inventing special hells to put yourself through because the existing hells aren't good enough.
* Gabe Newell's lack of fear response.
* Remembering the time you blacked out and thinking "the brain is really cool."
* Borrowing some time from your cat attack to give to the car crash.
* Scout the Floof.
* Running out of adrenalin and being extremely calm.
* Entering and exiting Tennessee in a state of intense unreality.
* Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt.
* The acoustic properties of a gigantic metal pyramid.
* Getting married inside the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid.
* Hotel rooms attached up the back of the giant fish.
* Why the Egyptians built pyramids rather than other cooler shapes.
* A procedurally generated lady in Canada.
* Importing the Burning Man from Burning Man.
* Stopping at Saskatchewan for gas.
* Home of the World's Biggest Dad.
* Building Ram Pumps in Dwarf Fortress.
* Great Pyramid Ram Pump.
* Mummy Tea.
* A terrible waste of tax dollars that brings joy to children all around the world.
* Firefox telling you "oh shit, you need to update now, dog."
* Configuring Windows Firewall to not allow Windows Updates.
* Protecting your users from malware by opening the floodgates of Internet ads.
* Encino Man.
* Handing Firefox a Baby Ruth and it's like "this tastes like plastic."
* Picking tiny hills to die on as a way to remain mentally stable.
* Escalating lack of politeness from a UK security firm.
* Nitric Acid Piano: sounds great but hurts like heck to play.
* 3D printing new fingernails right onto your bare cuticles every morning.
* Working on a long project in which you see more potency than clarity of purpose.
* Valorizing craft for the sake of craft, disconnected from the use of it.
* In the worst case scenario, how could your tool be used?
* Avoiding doing evil by making morally neutral art.
* Sitting on multiple generations of Cold War techno-optimism.
* Keita Takahashi's manifesto about being a video game romantic.
* Designing things that people can do and enjoy in the world we want to live in.
* Striving to bring people some small amount of a positive emotion.
* Making curry for your colleagues and going totally overboard on it.
* I'm going to go do evil with this curry.
* Learning the flavors of new herbs and spices.
* Fenugreek leaf.
* The worst time in history to get enthusiastic about cooking quiche.
* Trying to figure out how to post.
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android
Open in Metacast