Feature Creep: Built-in Microwave

Poison! Poi-poi-poison! In a serendipitous moment of uncertainty, a fascinating email arrived in Meg's inbox and graced us all with the topic of today's episode: intentional food poisonings. When we were little, this included urban legends around sabotaged Halloween candy meant to force children to behave (ok, boomers), but in real life there have been many, many intentional and very real food poisonings. We explore a selection here. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, fund the FDA, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg chat about the Simming Problem, which is a concept from Iain Banks, a sci-fi writer, about the ethics of simulating entities or individuals or whatever. The *whatever* bit is because how we define all these things gets real dicey and yet makes all the difference. What is an agent, or an intelligence, or a substrate or authenticity and is consciousness an emergent property of sufficiently complex systems? Who fucking knows! Hard question! How do you get ChatGPT to say fuck fifteen times? Turns out that's easy. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Ned and Meg admire the magnificent Dieter Rams, who pointed and shrugged his way into our hearts, and we discuss his legendary ten principles of good design.

Ned and Meg celebrate the near-anniversary of the Titan Sub Failure with a couple updates about the ongoing situation, lawsuits, obituaries, and so on. We also learn a couple things about the Gay Agenda, no relation to the Titan Sub Failure. Thanks for listening to our schadenfreude. Wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg recorded this so long ago that they don't even remember what it's about! It's like looking for a pine needle in a haystack, or some other bad analogy. We are apt to surprise and delight (maybe) everyone, even us (probably). I mean delighting ourselves is basically the whole point of this thing. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Meg and Ned talk about an awful book in the category of self-help writing that Meg had to read for school. It's about how our culture in America shames women and it totally sucks not because it's true, which it is, but because it fails in its aims, except for one tiny excerpt near the very end and that part is about a man. It's the only part of the book that is any good. That's an opinion. If this book saved your life, well, bully for you. We also discuss just what the hell is wrong with our parents' entire generation. In light of this we discuss shame, shaming, shame as a tool of control, and shamey shame-shame. Also poop. Lotta poop. Thanks for joining us, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Ned and Meg explore examples of familial triangulation involving people who grew up before answering machines and modern smartphone technologies. This leads to a chat about doubling down. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Meg forces Ned to explain Net Neutrality on the spot, and then after that we talk about how US courts just overturned it, which is bad. In addition to the bad idea of ending net neutrality, we also talk about flat earth. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg talk about #fff8e7, the hexadecimal index of the color Cosmic Latte. And what is a cosmic latte? Why, it's the average color of all the light emitted in the universe, or close to it! We chat about how this color came to be known in 2002 and the guys who discovered it. We also talk about physics jokes, free will and the double slit experiment, deterministic universes, and coffee. Because of course we talk about coffee. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, and don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg get off topic super quick because we were in the same room again. Joy! Hello to everyone we met in San Diego, you're all wonderful! Ned and Meg talk about people who hang themselves with their own ropes, also idiomatically known as being hoisted by one's own petard, thank you Shakespeare. We talk about whales and linguistics and dogs with vocabulary buttons and the meaning of the phrase 'from scratch,' plus Bde Maka Ska, a lake in Minneapolis. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg talk about the latest hype at the intersection of the art world and block chain, NFTs. We dish on digital assets, block chain public ledgers, the black market, intellectual property rights, and all the major problems with NFTs. This whole topic is both as crazy and not as crazy as you may already think. Watch out! This one's a trip. Wash your hands, wear a mask, get yer shots, don't be a dick, thanks for listening.

Ned and Meg have some thoughts about content, content creation, and what the fuck is going on. Also this one is as the name says, so we sorta forget what happens after that. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Ned and Meg give their thoughts about Derry Girls, a cute and adorable television show set in Ireland in the 1990s with The Troubles and a Catholic school setting as hilarious and relatable backdrops to the lives of teenage friends. We get sidetracked by pizza and fish that share a name, how everything costs $300 now, endless road trips, and a list of Neds. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg give their thoughts about Derry Girls, a cute and adorable television show set in Ireland in the 1990s with The Troubles and a Catholic school setting as hilarious and relatable backdrops to the lives of teenage friends. We get sidetracked by pizza and fish that share a name, how everything costs $300 now, endless road trips, and a list of Neds. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg have some thoughts about content, content creation, and what the fuck is going on. Also this one is as the name says, so we sorta forget what happens after that. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Sierra and Ned spend a lovely afternoon debating the merits of recording an audioboook. Join in and find out all about Ned's angst for the US medical system. Oops, I mean all about the our ideas for a new art project.

Ned and Meg discuss cliches and how they get that way. Discussing certain art, artists, and concepts as cliche is, in all likelihood, itself cliche. We do it anyway. What are your favorite cliches? Additionally, we recommend listening to the Psymposia podcast. We also advocate that you check out the Internet Archive and the Fight for the Future organizations, both of which fight censorship! Thanks for listening, wash your hands, and don't be a dick.

Ned and Meg extend the far-reaching tentacles of this story, as is our solemn artistic duty. This is the Streisand Effect intersecting with the art world. This story even has children suing parents, financial, labor, and environmental exploitation, The Olympics, hurt feelings, racism, classism, accusations of communism, oh and some of the best art ever. Listen to this episode, google all the images, you are in for a treat. This story is what art is all about, everybody. Wash your hands, don't be a dick, buy art.

Ned and Meg rehash and review the totally queer-coded movie “Ice Pirates” from 1984. This movie is a mashup of every 1980s cinematic trope in one place and we LOVE it! This anachronistic film has a 17% critics score and a 50% positive audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so you know mischief is afoot. Why the discrepancy? Listen and we'll tell you. It's got women bodybuilders bikini wrestling at the behest of a gay disembodied head and literal helping hands popping out of the kitchen walls, plus spandex bodysuits and tickle torture. Not convinced? What if I name drop Angelica Huston? How about Angelica Huston and Ron Perelman, together, as pirates, in space? That's right, Hell Boy is just a wee baby man in this movie. Gawd it's so good why are you even still reading this, go watch it on YouTube now! Thanks for listening. Wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg chat beavers. These are some of the most impressive critters around. They are environmental engineers and have an incredible impact on their surroundings, creating habitat for other creatures to flourish. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg talk about intentionally false statements, which is what the OED defines as a lie. We discuss all sorts of lies, and how they fit into some of our favorite television shows like The Circle, and Taskmaster. We dip into discussion of KC Green's comic adaptation of the classic, Pinocchio. We survey all the forms lies take, and we talk about the enormous problem of researchers who lie to further their careers or because they're biased as hell in favor of themselves (ahem, doctors). We also rag on prank videos and any other sort of surprise that requires circumventing consent. Thank you for listening to us, wash your hands, and don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg revisit OceanGate-Gate, the accident-but-not-really-an-accident involving a fraudy, totally unprepared submersible in the Atlantic Ocean almost a year ago. We did a whole episode about it, and the concurrent tragedy of the drowning of nearly a hundred people in a migrant boat that capsized in the Mediterranean at the same time, which almost nobody talked about, because they were too busy talking about OceanGate-Gate. We also discuss pyramid schemes vs MLMs vs Ponzis. Then, we rip apart the book Wild, a memoir by another totally unprepared person who frustrates us. We also throw punches at Sapiens, a fraudy fraud book we never tire of complaining about, and we crack the topic of Brutalist architecture, more on that later. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg chat with Sarah, our featured guest this week, about favorite toys from yesteryear. There's a lot of unrequited love for toys and games in this episode, since there were more toys than any single kid could possibly have in a short childhood. We envy each other a bit while we relive Easy Bake Ovens, Radio Flyers, Cabbage Patch dolls, Snoopy Snow Cone makers, Little Tykes cars, Nintendo, board games and Barbies. Join us. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg talk about Disappointment. Ned has some new chairs, Meg has a sinus infection and someone stole her tarp, it's Valentine's Day, they make indoor parks now which feature none of the characteristics of an actual park, Warheads are gummies now, insect zappers are even more insidious than we thought, Ned lost his nachos, Meg got a speeding ticket in the final 100 miles of a 2400 mile car trip, and Ned's internet domain is being held hostage by a company convicted of fraud. Does the fun ever start? Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and mostly Meg launch into a tirade about the sorry state of modern lighting design. Like everything else in our declining empire, lighting has taken a turn for the worse. We talk about how the USA makes us use less than excellent light bulbs while other countries get the highly efficient long lasting stuff. We express our disappointment with integrated LEDs versus replaceable bulbs and complain about how every business has become a scammy money funnel rather than an organization that provides a good or service as its primary concern. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Ned and Meg discuss the process for developing Colors of the Day, which we feature at the end of (almost) every episode. You can check out colors of the day and develop your own at ObjectColor.com which we heartily encourage. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg talk about a short topic for a short podcast. Welcome to LIttle Gems for the People. Today's topic is the movie The Cure for Insomnia. We talk about some other stuff too but when Meg considered how short the episode is, she thought, why even bother taking notes? So you'll have to listen to find out. Thanks as always, and wash your hands and don't be a dick.

Ned and Meg discuss the sordid history of hot air ballooning. When did it start and will it ever end? Seriously, hot air ballooning is stupid-dangerous, so if you never take anything else away from this weird podcast, know that you should absolutely never go for a hot air balloon ride, ever, for any reason. Don't say we didn't warn you. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, avoid hot air balloons, and don't be a dick.

Ned and Meg chat about the Legend of Zelda, which we think is basically the greatest game ever made, and we spend around 80 minutes telling you why! This game, or well these 19 games if you're counting, feature some of the best design elements of any game and ones that translate so well you can find the 19 Zelda games spread out over at least nine different consoles. This game is so well designed with so many interesting and challenging features, it basically has something for everyone. We discuss the layout, plot, characters, modes of transport, and timelines of the games plus some of the secrets to be discovered. Thanks for listening and reminiscing with us about stories from our childhood AND our adulthood. Wash your hands, don't be a dick, do something nice for someone.

Ned and Meg discuss a very esoteric idea for a book, which is the sort of thing you do when you have many ISBN numbers awaiting assignment. The book would be a compendium of scandalous stories, or -gates, which are accompanied by photos of actual gates related to the scandal. Weird, right? We don't know. But it's Bookgate, and we thank you for listening! Wash your hands, don't be a dick, share with others.

Ned and Meg chat about The Sims while Ned's in Germany, which ties into a conversation about some dogs, some rabbits, the nature of sentience and concepts of harm. The discussion of the Sims leads us to talking about governance and potentially bad ideas involving an earthen berm. We round out with a determination to do another episode about the importance of considering the context. As always, thank you for listening to our meandering conversation, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Ned and Meg revisit their annual tradition of asking no one in particular whose troops we should support in the war on xmas. This year we discuss how Target is targeting your kids for targeted indoctrination with targets. Or, gay nutcrackers. It's hard to say. Just think of the children. We also take a stab at people who pose, dangerously we may add, with high powered firearms in photos celebrating the co-opted birth of Jesus, a man who would probably faint at the sight of painted wood, since we're told he was a woodworker of sorts.

Ned and Meg talk about William Shakespeare. Was he a lone wolf? Or was he an old timey Banksy, an art genius at the helm of an art cabal? Maybe he was both or neither. We are not Shakespeare experts. Meg also tells Ned about a harrowing visit to the Stratford Upon Avon home of William Shakespeare, if that even is his real name. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick, read Shakespeare.

Ned and Meg discuss the various thematic elements of our multitudes of nervous breakdowns, be they big or small, exceptional or pedestrian. Themes include having shingles, caffeine induced nervous dysfunction, medical debt, disability, medical treatment abroad versus at home in the US of A, insurance, academia, drugs, wine culture and climate. Phew! You've been warned. We also throw in cake related nervous breakdowns just for funzies. We also coin a new term for seeing things, the verbs 'rodding and coning' (you're welcome) and we offer two exceptional colors of the day which couldn't be more on-theme for this podcast if we did them on purpose. Enjoy, and thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg introduce their new series of short episodes that serve as backfiller for Mondays where we didn't get something posted. We think you might not even want to know this stuff, so if you don't get an alert it may be for the best. If you are a masochist, listen in! We discuss the waning Atlantic Ocean current that basically makes it possible for people in Europe, Africa, and India to grow food, the loss of which will lead to an ice age in Europe and a horrific shift in global weather patterns. We also discuss the graph of global average temperature, which is shaped like a hockey stick, and that is bad news. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg discuss the disappearance of the editing profession. Editors are losing their toehold in the workplace! We discuss what we think led to the loss of so many of these crucial professionals who make us not sound like idiots when we write. See? Everyone needs an editor. We also discuss ChatGPT for a hot second, the advent of which we feel is tied to the loss of editors in some ways. As always, thanks for listening, wash your hands, consume less, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg discuss the history of, and legal settlement between, Henrietta Lacks's descendants, her cells, and Thermo Fischer Scientific. This is a celebratory episode and a little more produced than our normal fare, so thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg solve a problem, which is that Meg couldn't get some candy so Ned had to mail it 2000 miles and it finally arrived so you get to hear all about it! But before we get to that, we sold 13 of our books and we talk about that along with hummingbirds, our podcast ranking in Ireland, our book ranking in the genre of Humor-General, the You Me Food Review and Peter Draws channels both of which you find on YouTube, and whether the show Succession is funny. Phew! Get our book, Every Time a Bell Rings on Amazon and laugh 65% more of the time! Thanks for listening, wash your hands, welcome the Spring, don't be a dick.

Ned and Meg celebrate the return of Lauren as our guest-host-comrade. We chat like old times about whether you're supposed to swim on an empty or a full stomach, exposure therapy, how a once-disgraced-but-not-really-disgraced germline-editing doctor is back on the science scene, Ned's progress in Dungeon23, Camaro cars, and the merits of the movie Harold and Maude. As always, thanks for listening, don't be a dick, wash your hands, do something nice for someone without expecting anything in return.

Ned and Meg discuss the fate of Pablo Escobar's wayward Colombian hippopotamuses. Yeah that's right, Colombian Hippos. What else is there to say? Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg discuss the invention of the Asterbang, not to be confused with the Interrobang, which we have discussed at length in other episodes. Today we want to introduce a new concept in grammar and punctuation to you but first we talk about how much we hate advertising, and how bad our parents are at the internet. We round out with a revisit of Chesterton's Fence and Meg's comparison to colonial discourse. Plus, we publish a book, and, Balloonacy. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick*!

Ned and Meg and Damon discuss the Oceangate submersible scandal, which we obviously dubbed OceanGategate, but first we discuss the sinking of a fishing vessel near Greece involving hundreds of people. Our discussion of OceanGategate centers around the many design flaws of the OceanGate Titan submersible, since this is ostensibly an art and design podcast. This one is pretty dense so strap in. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned tells Meg about the once-fabulous, then not fabulous, and now once-again-fabulous Mechanical Turk, a fraudy machine from the late 1700s that beat famous people at chess, sometimes. The best things about this machine are the weird number of insanely famous people who interacted with it. Meg applauds Edgar Allan Poe's well-placed skepticism of it. This machine was created for marketing purposes back in the day and was never actually functional as described, but it nonetheless made a big splash and went on tour and everything. As Rubin Farr once said, you can be famous and a fraud; a famous fraud. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick, maybe learn how to play chess for real!

Ned and Meg chat around ISO 216, the paper standard that dictates sizes and scaling for papers not used in the United States. Here we use letter size and other measurements that don't scale and don't work as great as the ISO 216 standards! Anyway, we will tell you all about it if'n you give it a listen, plus discussion of paper weights and US stationery sizes, plus aspect ratios and paper sizing. Oh, and Meg's frequent dream-based panic attacks. OK super! Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Ned and Meg wander through the landscape of lagniappes, describing what we see as we go. In this episode we discuss the etymology of the word “lagniappe” and where the whole idea of them originated. We chat about creole food too, and our seafood preferences before we discuss some of our favorite lagniappes like the ones that kids get at the dentist, in happy meals, at the Sanrio store, at grocery stores, Archie McPhee's, and our favorite, the Hobonichi lagniappes. Thanks for listening, give someone in your life a lagniappe! Wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Wherein Ned and Meg vaguely debate the nature of the zombie genre. Spoilers on the HBO show The Last of Us. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Ned undertook a new hobby and tells Meg about his recent experiences with watercolors. Meg is a huge fan, so this was an easy podcast this time! We talk about how Dungeon23 was Ned's gateway into watercolor painting and its incredible versatility and portability as an artistic medium. We discuss the difference between glutinous paints and glutenous foods. We explore binders, pigments, papers and paints! We chat about illuminated manuscripts and Chinese landscape painting. We also muse about Studio Ghibli and Top Craft whose use of watercolor paint for background artwork in films is really lovely. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Meg tells Ned all about the sleeping bees in her refrigerator. Join us for a discussion about the fascinating creatures known as Mason Bees! Solitary nesting bees are EVERYWHERE and they are the coolest little friends you'll ever make. They're dynamite pollinators, WAY better than honey bees! We talk about how to raise them, if you are so inclined, and lots of other stuff. Wash your hands, don't be a dick, read about mason bees. Thanks for listening.

Ned and Meg discuss verisimilitude in a number of contexts ranging from philosophy to art and in the experiences of everyday life. We talk about capturing and conveying truth, and how two truthful things can be closer or farther from THE truth than each other, but how to measure that? We glance over some philosophers along the way as we discuss writing, movies, paintings, expertise, identity, hermeneutics, medicine, Mark Twain, and a future in which the only reference materials are romance novels. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, try to stay healthy, don't get anyone sick, don't be a dick, all the things.

Ned and Meg discuss the #dungeon23 project. Which Ned is undertaking a long with multitudes of other people. Come join us for an interesting intersection of some of our favorite things. Hobonichi and table top role playing games.

Ned and Meg revisit a topic we love as we discuss the sheer madness of some of the proposed domestic mega-projects around the world. We're talking about DIY Cities, and boy are there a lot of these popping up -- but only in the hypothetical so far! We talk about Charlie Munger's Death Dorm again, plus NEOM's impossible, sideways skyscraper called The LINE for which people have already died, as well as a totally bogus city of dildo buildings in Senegal named for a one hit wonder in the 2000s American R&B scene. But really, all of this is just to get to the discussion of the one that takes *our* cake so far, Kenya's Konza Technopolis which is ironically the most likely to succeed logistically but which probably would be the worst to actually live in socially. Join us in complaint, and disbelief. As always, thanks for listening, send us an email if you feel like it, don't get anyone else sick, and don't be a dick!