← Feed

Posts

• View post

  Almost everything I know about D&D and Tolkien, I learned from Nethack. For example, I know that a Mumak is much more dangerous than a Rothe even though they're both a gray q.

• View post

  Topic Lords #356: ICANN has Cheezburger? ft. Felicia and Andrew. We discuss the indestructible mailbox, emulating the timing of the Reality Display Processor, Moo box vs. Groan Tube, Front Mission 2's color configuration menu, and finally realizing The Incredible Machine 3 is literally the same game as The Incredible Machine 2 https://topiclords.com/icann-has-cheezburger

• View post

  Today on Twinbeard plays Mario, everyone loves a Traditional Festival! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiC3WcvxMx8&list=PL3SbI8kec0NtrbOq7YwQzVPlqRalEFydP&index=95

• View post

  Current mood: trying to figure out where to go for lunch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_foraging_theory

• View post

  Steve update: another of Winston's friends asked if I was Steve. I wasn't even wearing a blue shirt at the time. Here's a photo of me cosplaying as the Statue of Liberty for comparison. #selfie #eyecontact

• View post

  When I was a kid, my voice got more nasal when I felt like I was saying something smart. I also remember reading a book, one of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat books, describing the protagonist's voice as "growing nasal" as he described the cool part of his plan. I don't experience this phenomenon anymore, and I've never heard anyone else talk about it. If you search around for why nerd characters stereotypically have nasal voices, the prima...

• View post

  This waterpark is really out there like "we're open ten days a year" as if that's totally normal and doesn't demand elaboration

• View post

  The department that decides what to make thought the world was ready for mushroom bacon. The department that designs the packaging decided to avoid the word "mushroom" at all costs. #food

• View post

  Topic Lords #340: Too Young for Doom, ft. Matt and Cort. We discuss Doom Modding, the Boston Marathon Stampede, secrets in games becoming grotesque, and Dammit I'm Mad by Demetri Martin. https://topiclords.com/too-young-for-doom

• View post

  A few years ago someone tried to Venmo me $20 but I didn't have Venmo. Eventually Venmo gave up trying to email me about the $20 that's waiting for me, and I assume they kept it for themselves. A few months ago I ordered a burrito at a food truck and when it came time to pay they said they don't take credit card, only Venmo. They apologized and just let me have the burrito. Everything works out in the end.

• View post

  In Tears of the Kingdom and OG The Legend of Zelda, you start with three hearts. (Probably other Zeldas too, but these are the ones I've played recently.) Losing a single hit point is a disaster and you track and protect each meticulously. TotK maxes out at 38 hearts and Zelda 1 at 16, but endgame health is more likely ~20 and ~12, which feels closer to an analog meter rather than individual, discrete tokens. I think this change in feel is a deliberate part of the perceived power progre...

• View post

  I guess these guys have been making the rounds for a while but I just heard about them a couple days ago and goddamn, this is by far the catchiest microtonal math rock I've ever heard https://youtube.com/watch?v=0Ssi-9wS1so

• View post

  Today on Twinbeard plays Mario, it's the one you've been waiting for all your life, Super Mario Bros. Special. https://youtube.com/watch?v=A-o8bwVhE60&list=PL3SbI8kec0NsZ6qnRLEEo2f5NZde1CA9A&index=1&pp=iAQB

• View post

  Topic Lords #339: Become Uncoffinable, ft. Watson and Wren. We discuss faction design in historical strategy games, linguistics making it easier and harder to name things, belonging in SLUSD, The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W. Service, and the magic systems of Brandon Sanderson https://topiclords.com/become-uncoffinable

• View post

  Stumbled into this dadaist billboard covered with context-free baseball words. Keep the Bay Area weird!

• View post

  Personsplaining the history of riot prrsons to my person boss while eating this person dinner in the heat of the hot person summer

• View post

  When Esper started editing Topic Lords, I added a line to my pre-recorded spiel at the end of the show saying you can pay Esper to edit your show as well, by contacting them "on Twitter." Then time passed and everyone left Twitter, so she started doing this bit where if someone said "Bluesky" during the episode, she'd copy that word out and paste it over the offending "Twitter" in the outro. This quickly devolved into doing jokes. Do...

• View post

  I found out recently about Bunnyrom, the program that every knock-off Tamagotchi runs. https://bunnyrom.neocities.org/ I love the mystery of it, how despite its ubiquity, nobody seems to know its provenance. I hate that it's ruined the mystery of the unplayed knock-off. Before I knew about this, I could look at a knock-off Tamagotchi on the shelf, or in an online store, and wonder about it. Yes, of course it'll be bad, but it might be bad in a new interesting way?? Nope, it&...

• View post

  If I'd started recording Topic Lords on the day I was born, and I released an episode a week until I reached the maximum human lifespan of 120 years, there would be 6240 episodes of Topic Lords. I didn't start Topic Lords when I was a baby, and I'm not quite 120, so there are only 335 episodes of Topic Lords. That's a mere 5.3% of the theoretical human maximum. When will we see the first true 6240 episode recording career? Only time will tell.

• View post

  Hash tag teeth #teeth

• View post

  I've been listening to the audio book "A Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge. The spacefaring humans in the story use units of time like "kilosecs" and "megasecs," which come across one way when read on the page and in an entirely different way when pronounced aloud.

• View post

  Does anyone know what this is? My wife chose it as her Xbox Gamer Pic and now we're both curious. It was on the default list of Gamer Pics that came with the Xbox. If you do a reverse image search you'll find someone who used it as their band's logo on Bandcamp and also a thousand web sites that scrape user data from e.g. Xbox Live leaderboards.

• View post

  Topic Lords #336: The Four Colonoscopies, ft. Ben and Jason. We discuss colonoscopy prep, how to do things you're bad at, the Trustworthy Shirts Tournament, and Do not go gentle into that good night, by Dylan Thomas https://topiclords.com/the-four-colonoscopies

• View post

  Life hack: if your joke isn't funny the rest of the year, it won't be funny on April 1st either.

• View post

  Our TV just went kaput (after 11 years, thank you for your service) and there's no way I'm getting an Internet-connected TV because I'm already worried enough about my blood pressure. There don't seem to be many consumer options, but is there some reason why we shouldn't just get a commercial display intended for digital signage, like this one? https://www.cdw.com/product/tcl-te65n-ten-series-65-led-backlit-lcd-display-4k-for-digital-signa/8463458

• View post

  This is a fun one. These folks were able to, with the right lighting conditions, see video frames encoded on a laserdisc using a microscope https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZuR-772cks

• View post

  IMO it's fucked up that you can't just sell people a list of cool sci-fi ideas, you have to come up with a story to put the ideas in. And then! And then! A better writer can take your cool ideas and put them in a better story and they get to have the bestseller. But that has to be allowed, because otherwise someone could have all the ideas and trap them all in a shitty story forever.

• View post

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=8hoT8Gg7G4w

• View post

  Today on Twinbeard plays Mario, it's the level where I spend a dozen lives figuring out the first jump https://youtube.com/watch?v=Cb6Lk0H5gaE&list=PL3SbI8kec0NviwCJF2AETmxYBiMZzmKqA&index=74

• View post

  Topic Lords #335: Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll: Pick Any Two, ft. Andrew and Aubrianne. We discuss reading every Hugo-award-winning novel, accidentally making Frog Fractions 2.5, the perfect video game genre, When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer by Walt Whitman, Software Toolworks Multimedia Encyclopedia CD from 1992, and fixing your slow computer with time travel https://topiclords.com/sex-drugs-rock-and-roll-pick-any-two