Podcasts about calvinball

It's hard for me fathom, but the Hebrew people had no formal code of law or order at the time Leviticus was given. Life together was one big game of Calvinball. A chapter-a-day podcast from Leviticus 6. The text version may always be found and shared at tomvanderwell.com.

In this episode of What The Frock, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod dive into the chaos of current global tensions, using the concept of Nuclear Calvinball to explain the unpredictable and ever-shifting nature of international relations. They discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine, the escalating rhetoric from Russia, and how the U.S. and its allies are navigating the nuclear threat. The hosts explore the absurdity of the situation, drawing parallels with the chaotic, rule-bending game of Calvinball from Calvin and Hobbes. Between discussions about world affairs, the duo also chats about Thanksgiving plans, mishaps with Taco Bell salsa, and their respective family traditions. From power outages to political scandals, nothing is off the table. Get ready for a conversation filled with humor, skepticism, and a whole lot of questions about where we're headed next—if anyone can even agree on the rules. Tune in for an unfiltered, insightful, and sometimes hilarious take on the state of the world, and as always, be prepared to ask yourself, What the Frock?

Dr. Calvin Ball has been around and both the Rev and I have known him for a long time. He's been patient and focused on making Howard County the best it could be his entire career.  He served as a Member of the County Council, which he lead for at least two cycles and now as the County Executive he's leaving his mark on a County that doesn't come to decisions easily. We were so happy to catch up with him poolside, one thing Calvin Ball knows is where business get's done and that's in person face to face at the ISSC Maryland Party.  Calvin has been friendly to the development community and continues to work together wth them as Howard County continues to expand. Calvin is well known for his focus on education, public safety, and environmental sustainability. During his time as County Executive, he has been a strong advocate for improving public schools, expanding affordable housing, and fostering economic development in the region. His leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic was marked by efforts to ensure public health while supporting local businesses and communities through various challenges. Calvin Ball's commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equity has also been a hallmark of his administration, as he continues to work towards creating a more inclusive and prosperous Howard County for all its residents. Let's hear from our friend as we dive into what makes this leader tick... Thanks Calvin for all you do!  As we top off our Vegas series conversations with County Executives this is another great one and we want to thank all of them for joining us... Two more great poolside conversations coming and we're outta Vegas... Enjoy!  

Join the conversation with C4 and Bryan Nehman.  a DPW worker died on the job.  A 16-year-old was shot in a car jacking attempt.  Calvin Ball joined the show to discuss the shooting at the Columbia Mall and adjustments to Kirwan/Blueprint.  Three months to go until election day.  Most Americans believe that the first amendment goes too far.  Listen to C4 and Bryan Nehman live every weekday from 5:30-10:00 a.m. ET on WBAL News Radio 1090, FM101.5, and the WBAL Radio App!

Rev. and I are thrilled to be warming everyone up with a series of interviews we conducted in Las Vegas at the ICSC this past Spring....here comes the Vegas Series... A full cast of amazing Marylanders including Howard Perlow, Johnny O, Steuart Pittman, Calvin Ball, Aaron Tomachio and Nestor Aparicio.  We were thrilled to welcome them Poolside at our Moblile Podcast Center for chats about everything politics, Baltimore Sports, the work that's being done at TradePoint Mid Atlantic and so much more... Let's get it started with our first guest of the day Nestor Aparicio where we talk sports and crabcakes two of his favorite subjects. Nestor Aparicio began his career in 1984 chronicling sports for The News American and The Baltimore Sun before hosting sports radio in 1992. In 1998, he purchased WNST-AM 1570 and retired in 2006 after hosting 14 years of daily sports radio - including three as a nationally-syndicated host on Sporting News Radio - assuming a full-time role as C.E.O. of WNST.net where "We Never Stop Talking" Baltimore sports has extended to the mobile web with the area's largest social media footprint and around the clock conversation, news and views. He loves the Ravens, Orioles and all the local teams. If you didn't know it he has written three books including "Purple Reign 2: Faith, Family & Football - A Baltimore Story" & "Purple Reign: Diary of a Raven Maniac." He doesn't hold back as usual and this turned out to be a great conversation......Vegas Series...we have acheived lift off..... Enjoy!      

As Democrats move to block any challenge to Kamala Harris's nomination, liberals wake up to the rules-changing Calvinball that has become American "democracy" with establishment elites calling the shots. Listen to the voices calling out voters' dislike of Kamala as CNN's data expert suggests don't look good if she's the Democrat candidate for president. KJP pretends Biden and Harris are "tight as ever" as a watchdog group reveals a stunning 92% turnover rate in the Vice President's office.

Joe Biden looks to impose term limits on the High Court because the Conservative bench doesn't rule in his favor. As Biden mumbles through an NAACP address and continues to lie about Donald Trump and the Republican platform, Bob Menendez gets a brutal beat down in court. Don't miss the show's final sound as North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson shares his story of inspiration from the stage at the RNC.

To anyone paying the slightest attention, there's been nothing normal at all about the hush money trial that has kept Donald Trump off the campaign trail for 5 weeks. But the judge's instructions to the jury before they retreated into deliberations were nothing short of outrageous. Listen to the voices calling out the judge's manipulation of justice and those who support his TDS. Which side makes more sense? Plus Alan Dershowitz with a chilling prediction of the final straw Judge Merchan may pull out of his hat in order to find Trump guilty.

Join the conversation with C4 and Bryan Nehman.  Jayne Miller filled in for C4 this morning.  The latest with the situation between Israel & Iran.  A school shooting plot was discovered at a high school in Montgomery County.  Calvin Ball, County Executive for Howard County joined the show to discuss a number of topics.  Jayne & Bryan Break down the senate race.  Will Caitlin Clark be a boost for the WNBA?  Brett Hollander checks in to preview the Orioles series in KC.  Listen to C4 and Bryan Nehman live every weekday from 5:30-10:00 a.m. ET on WBAL News Radio 1090, FM101.5, and the WBAL Radio App!

Join the conversation with C4 and Bryan Nehman. The latest info related to the collapse of the Key Bridge.  Minimum wage hits $20 in California.  County Executive of Howard County Calvin Ball joined the show.  Baltimore County Schools Superintendent Myriam Rogers joined the show to discuss a number of topics.  The former County Executive of PG County Rushern Baker also joined the show.  Listen to C4 and Bryan Nehman live every weekday from 5:30-10:00 a.m. ET on WBAL News Radio 1090, FM101.5, and the WBAL Radio App!

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Lsusr's Rationality Dojo, published by lsusr on February 13, 2024 on LessWrong. Why aren't there dojos that teach rationality? The Martial Art of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky For the last 6 months, I've been running a dojo that teaches rationality. Why I was at an ACX meetup and met an acolyte who grew up in an evangelical Christian community. He had recently discovered the Sequences and was really excited about this whole Rationality thing. He was very confident in Yudkowsky's teachings. I asked him a couple questions and he realized his beliefs were full of holes. He wondered how he could have understood so little. After all, he had read all of Yudkowsky's Sequences. "I have read 100 books about chess," I said, "Surely I must be a grandmaster by now." At that moment, he was enlightened. The problem The objective of rationality is to become right instead of wrong. Being wrong feels exactly like being right. We are not aware of our own biases. We are not aware of our own mistakes. We are not aware of the lies we tell ourselves. This is almost a tautology. Other people are not tautologically blind to our mistakes in the same way. The simplest way to become less wrong is to have someone else point out your mistakes to you. Except this doesn't actually work. If I say "I'm right," and you say "you're wrong", then we get nowhere. The more we argue, the more frustrated we get. The solution There is a better way. I call it rhetorical aikido. Rhetorical aikido is a Daoist form of Socratic dialogue. The simplest form of rhetorical aikido has three steps: You let someone confidently state a belief A that you know is wrong. You let that same someone confidently state a belief B that contradicts A. You let them notice that A contradicts B. Examples: [I'm the guy in the dark green chair on your right.] Notice that this technique follows Dale Carnegie's guidelines. You smile. You agree. You show genuine interest in the other person. You don't say "You're wrong". You never even say your own beliefs (unless asked). There's nothing for the person to get angry at because you never attacked them. Instead of criticizing, you point out errors indirectly, via a joke. You cheer them on as they dig their own grave. After all, you're trying to lose too. Perhaps more importantly, this technique makes password-guessing impossible. You're playing the bastard offspring of chess + Calvinball. There is no password to guess. The right conditions Rhetorical aikido is useful for diffusing conflicts at family gatherings and the like. If you want to go even further and deprogram people, it's best to have the following conditions: Two-person dialogue. Arbitrarily large groups can watch, but exactly two must be allowed to speak. Curiosity. Both people must be genuinely interested in the subject. I am interested in so many different subjects that I mostly let the other person pick what we talk about. Earnestness. Both people must be genuinely interested in getting at the truth. I start with earnest friends. When I put a camera in front of them, they turn into paragons of rationalist virtue. This whole thing started with off-the-record conversations with my friend Justin. It took a year of iterations to figure out what worked best. Conversations turned into unpublished audio recordings turned into unpublished video recordings turned into structured video dialogues. Eventually, after recording a video, a different friend asked me what I thought about rationality dojos. "Welcome to Lsusr's rationality dojo," I replied, "Today is not your first day." The right topics I've had great conversations about economics, business, racism, homophobia, IQ, war, history, psychology, rationality, ethics, Buddhism, meditation, social skills, Israel, Hamas, antimemetics, and the Matrix. Therapy and self-help are bad top...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Lsusr's Rationality Dojo, published by lsusr on February 13, 2024 on LessWrong. Why aren't there dojos that teach rationality? The Martial Art of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky For the last 6 months, I've been running a dojo that teaches rationality. Why I was at an ACX meetup and met an acolyte who grew up in an evangelical Christian community. He had recently discovered the Sequences and was really excited about this whole Rationality thing. He was very confident in Yudkowsky's teachings. I asked him a couple questions and he realized his beliefs were full of holes. He wondered how he could have understood so little. After all, he had read all of Yudkowsky's Sequences. "I have read 100 books about chess," I said, "Surely I must be a grandmaster by now." At that moment, he was enlightened. The problem The objective of rationality is to become right instead of wrong. Being wrong feels exactly like being right. We are not aware of our own biases. We are not aware of our own mistakes. We are not aware of the lies we tell ourselves. This is almost a tautology. Other people are not tautologically blind to our mistakes in the same way. The simplest way to become less wrong is to have someone else point out your mistakes to you. Except this doesn't actually work. If I say "I'm right," and you say "you're wrong", then we get nowhere. The more we argue, the more frustrated we get. The solution There is a better way. I call it rhetorical aikido. Rhetorical aikido is a Daoist form of Socratic dialogue. The simplest form of rhetorical aikido has three steps: You let someone confidently state a belief A that you know is wrong. You let that same someone confidently state a belief B that contradicts A. You let them notice that A contradicts B. Examples: [I'm the guy in the dark green chair on your right.] Notice that this technique follows Dale Carnegie's guidelines. You smile. You agree. You show genuine interest in the other person. You don't say "You're wrong". You never even say your own beliefs (unless asked). There's nothing for the person to get angry at because you never attacked them. Instead of criticizing, you point out errors indirectly, via a joke. You cheer them on as they dig their own grave. After all, you're trying to lose too. Perhaps more importantly, this technique makes password-guessing impossible. You're playing the bastard offspring of chess + Calvinball. There is no password to guess. The right conditions Rhetorical aikido is useful for diffusing conflicts at family gatherings and the like. If you want to go even further and deprogram people, it's best to have the following conditions: Two-person dialogue. Arbitrarily large groups can watch, but exactly two must be allowed to speak. Curiosity. Both people must be genuinely interested in the subject. I am interested in so many different subjects that I mostly let the other person pick what we talk about. Earnestness. Both people must be genuinely interested in getting at the truth. I start with earnest friends. When I put a camera in front of them, they turn into paragons of rationalist virtue. This whole thing started with off-the-record conversations with my friend Justin. It took a year of iterations to figure out what worked best. Conversations turned into unpublished audio recordings turned into unpublished video recordings turned into structured video dialogues. Eventually, after recording a video, a different friend asked me what I thought about rationality dojos. "Welcome to Lsusr's rationality dojo," I replied, "Today is not your first day." The right topics I've had great conversations about economics, business, racism, homophobia, IQ, war, history, psychology, rationality, ethics, Buddhism, meditation, social skills, Israel, Hamas, antimemetics, and the Matrix. Therapy and self-help are bad top...

The first of our Dublin field recordings is with Archie O'Donnell a long-time face green building in Ireland, a fella who Jeff has a lot of time for, and someone Alex and I hadn't met yet. It was a good call. Originally trained as an architect, Archie has worked his way through the industry, recently joining Danish/Irish consultancy KOSMOS, so there was plenty of scope for the conversation to meander from observations on how the green building industry has changed and is changing, to costing sustainability, accounting for language, the impact of the EU taxonomy and imminent evolutions in energy rating.Interestingly, we didn't recognise the significance of Jeff's Calvinball analogy though, so listen out for that. In Calvinball nature of the game was to make the rules up as you go along, so you're never really held accountable, you can't lose, and the game you're playing can't be brought to an end. This definitely echoes the nature of our fossil fuel, ESG, and sustainability accounting systems. Notes from the showArchie on LinkedInThe KOSMOS websiteCalvinball - check it, Jeff may have stumbled onto something there**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**We don't actually earn anything from this, and it's quite a lot of work, so we have to promote the day jobs.Follow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn pageJeff, Alex, and Dan about websites, branding, and communications - zap@eiux.agency; Everything is User ExperienceSubscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)Check Lloyd's Substack: Carbon UpfrontJoin ACANJoin the AECB Join the IGBCCheck out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women (but not in a patronizing way)**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

 This is a tipping point in American history, and we have a front row seat. Senate Democrats silenced Republicans yesterday and forced votes on judicial nominations WITHOUT debate, erasing 234 years of congressional precedent. Can ONE PARTY censor another? You'll hear truly astonished senators who can't believe they are being muzzled. PLUS, the push to oust Rep. George Santos. Senator Bob Menendez can have gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollar cash stashed in his home and STILL receive classified briefings... but George Santos is the problem? Two tiers. Podcast Production: Bob Slone Audio Productions 

Join the conversation with C4 and Bryan Nehman as they discuss issues in Howard County including an update on the School buses and his feelings on juvenile violence with Howard County Executive Calvin Ball. They talk about the murder of Pava LaPere, a member of Forbes 30 Under 30 and entrepreneur by a repeat violent offender. Also last night, Orioles legend Brooks Robinson passed away at the age of 86. Keith Mills joins the show and discusses the legacy of "Mr. Oriole" on and off the field. C4 and Bryan Nehman live every weekday from 5:30-10:00 a.m. ET on WBAL News Radio 1090, FM101.5, and the WBAL Radio App.

From the hikes in Centennial Park to the concerts at Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia always brings us back. Howard County Executive Calvin Ball tells Nestor what makes his county successful and how the kids going back to school is a good thing. The post Howard County Executive Calvin Ball tells Nestor what makes his county successful first appeared on Baltimore Positive WNST.

Kyle discusses the consequences of removing "fundamental fairness" as a bedrock principle from an independent judiciary, a double-standard for Democrat elites, and why those on the front lines need to take a stand. _______________________________________________________________________ Today's podcast supported by https://CatholicVote.Org If you are interested in supporting the going litigation against the FBI over religious liberties, you can visit https://CatholicVote.Org. Visit http://PatriotCoolers.com and use Promo code "KYLE" for 10% off and free shipping over $50.

The gods play Calvinball with the universe. Sue has lady concerns, Reed has bad news about Altair 7, and Chris Evans has a destiny. Look out for the thrilling conclusion in Act 3, coming later this week!

05-19-2023 | Jim Jordan tries to make up his own rules about whistleblowers. Sean Hannity interprets the Durham Nothingburger Report for the reprogrammable meatbags: "In other words..." And Christiane Amanpour has advice for the graduates of the Columbia School of Journalism that sounds... familiar. More at: http://proleftpod.comYouTube Ep 718: https://youtu.be/2KX0jJhk2v8Support the show:PayPal |  https://paypal.me/proleftpodcastPatreon | https://patreon.com/proleftpodKeywords: politics, Christiane Amanpour, Columbia School of Journalism, Jim Jordan, Dan Goldman, progressive, media, Joe Biden, Democratic Congress, Democratic Senate, Democratic White HouseSupport the show

Is free speech more at risk in the U.K. or the U.S.? Should Britain adopt a First Amendment? How can it possibly be legal for the police to place "non-crimes" on Brits' criminal records? Why is Scotland so censorious? And is it getting better? On Episode 27, Charles talks to Toby Young about these questions and more.He also discusses the delicious political candidacy of Calvin Ball (yes, really!), and answers a question about martial arts.The dial-up tone in the introduction was recorded by lintphishx and is used under a CC 3.0 License.  

Join C4 and Bryan Nehman as they discuss pushback coming from journalists about a town hall scheduled to air on CNN with former President Donald Trump. Chuck Todd joins the show to discuss the Whitehouse meeting on the development of A.I. technologies and if it's too late to put the rabbit back in the hat. Also, they revisit yesterday's interview with state Inspector General Richard Henry and discuss if the school system is too corrupt to be reformed. Listen to C4 and Bryan Nehman live every weekday from 5:30-10:00 am ET on WBAL Newsradio 1090, FM101.5, and the WBAL Radio App.

Gary Collins is in for Bryan today, Join him and C4 as they discuss a Baltimore Sun article that says that if recall elections were instituted in Baltimore City, it would make the City ungovernable. Howard County Executive Calvin ball calls into the show to announce a new youth program in Howard County. Also, Commissioner Michael Harrison joins the show to discuss his time as Commissioner over the past 5 years and his plans on if he would return if his contract is renewed. Listen to C4 and Bryan Nehman live, weekdays from 5:30-10:00am ET on WBAL Newsradio 1090, FM101.5, and the WBAL Radio App.

In This Episode Erin and Weer'd first discuss their plans to attend the Gundie Awards in Texas, and then YouTube's harassment of content creators with gun-related channels; Weer'd again fisks the Brady Campaign Podcast, this time on the subject of community-based violence prevention; David had a chance to examine an  S&W M&P 5.7 and gives us his thoughts on it; and finally Tiny tells us the story of the time he was swatted... twice! Did you know that we have a Patreon? Join now for the low, low cost of $4/month (that's $1/podcast) and you'll get to listen to our podcast on Friday instead of Mondays, as well as patron-only content like mag dump episodes, our hilarious blooper reels and film tracks. Show Notes Main Topic: Cam and Company: Surprising Coalition Challenging Part of NY Carry Law YouTube Says Silencer Video Takedowns, Gun Channel Deletions Were Mistakes Off the Ranch: YouTube's Final Decision on GUNTUBERS was Not Expected… Weer'd Audio Fisk: 186: Brady in Brief: We Respond to Common Arguments Against Gun Violence Prevention Safest States to Live in Brady Combating Crime Guns Initiative The evidence for violence interrupters doesn't support the hype Midnight Basketball  Erin Davis Resume Brady Litigation Parents of Colorado shooting victim nearly bankrupt after failing to sue gun retailer used by James Holmes and getting stuck with its legal fees Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act Tiahrt Amendment Newspaper Publishes Gun Owners' Names and Addresses Herald gets action! Gun sale data shared by the state taken down Gun Lovers and Other Strangers M&P 5.7 FN 5.7×28mm .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire 9×19mm Parabellum M&P 5.7 Picture M&P 5.7 Stripped Brena Bock Author Page David Bock Author Page Deep Thoughts from The Land of rocks and Cows: The Not-So-Secret Black Market Of Twitter Handles Darknet Diaries:  EP 97: The Pizza Problem Orange Box Hacking VoIP 'Swatting' a Growing Problem  

Tom's Newsmaker guest today is Howard County Executive Calvin Ball. In November, he was elected for a second term to lead Maryland's sixth largest county. Funding for Howard County Schools is a front-burner issue, as is the project to mitigate or prevent future flooding in Ellicott City. Calvin Ball joins Tom today in Studio A to discuss these and other issues he's working on in his second term.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week's episode Patrick and Greg talk about an alternative to familywise Type I error control, the false discovery rate, and how it offers increased power in that middle ground between no error control and the severe control of Bonferroni.  Along the way they also mention: Leif Ericson, discovering Columbus, The Flintstones, brontosauri, dying grandmas, Coors Field homeruns, hitting Richard, more Calvinball, the power reaper, Thelma and Louise, making flights on time, intellectual judo, wet paper bags, and distribution of blame.Stay in contact with Quantitude! Twitter: @quantitudepod Web page: quantitudepod.org Merch: redbubble.com

Io and Margaret go through the Star Wars narratives, Andor, and Rogue One, and talk about where they overlap historically with real resistance movements, what the narratives are commentating on about current resistance movements, where the representation falls short and generally why the Mon Calamari are the downest people in the universe to have on your side and why they should hangout with Roger Casement. Host Info Io can be found on Twitter @Bum_lung or on Instagram @Bum.Lung or you can find shirts and patches that they make on Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/BumLung Guest Info Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. She is also the host of Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff and Live Like the World is Dying Publisher This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript AGPH 1 Mon, Jan 23, 2023 10:18PM • 1:01:05 SUMMARY KEYWORDS fucking, people, revolution, rogue, empire, revolutionary, anarchists, star wars, insurrection, rebellion, shit, kill, big, irish, revolutionary movements, watch, doomed, sergey, throwing, character SPEAKERS Margaret, Io Io 00:45 Star Wars talking about Star Wars Margaret and I Oh, here we are podcast. Hello. Welcome to the anarcho geek Power Hour. It's a it's it's a podcast.We are just trying to do trying to do a fun, fun, fun little podcast for us. Come on this journey. Well, you are we talk about nerd bullshit with all and I got a pal right here and you just heard her and it's Margaret killjoy. Margaret. How's it going? Good. Hello. Um, thanks for having me on as a guest on your show. I'll probably be trying to talk my way into being on this particular show a lot because it's pretty cool premise. Oh, yeah. Cats. Yeah. And anytime door doors always open because we, cuz we're all living on the same fortified mountain compound. So yeah, the general premise of the show is just we're going to talk about nerd bullshit and Ooh, we got one right out right out the gate something. I'm just just over the moon about we got and or That's no moon. Yeah, no, it's a television show. And a fairly good one. Mark. Margaret, what's your what's your background with Star Wars? Margaret 02:07 I grew up not liking it as much as Star Trek to be real. But now that I'm older well actually both both franchises are really hit or miss. But I like a lot of the newer Star Wars stuff. And I particularly like Rogue One. So I was particularly excited about andorre Samah you well. Yeah, more more or less. Same though. Io 02:30 You know what, let's scale that back. I am captured by Star Wars. Star Wars has my ass for life because I like it for the same reasons. I like like the Ramones, like because I grew up with it and it's stupid and it's stupid and simple and it's easy and that's why I liked it. I'll watch I'll watch all that garbage. And would you believe they made a good they made a good Star War not just a good Star War but a good show about my favorite shit which is morally complicated resistance movements. It really is kind of a a gift specifically to you but to probably half the people listening to this too. Yeah, if you haven't well if you haven't seen Andora highly recommended pause pause this podcast and and returned to it. Maybe someday but go watch and because we are going to talk about spoilers Io 03:27 Yeah, the whole premise basically it's in a star war. You got your you got your Jedi you got your space lasers. Between all the all the Banthas and the R two D tos and the GES music you forget that the plot is about a rebellion and finally they're fucking doing something with it. I grew up really into Star Wars it was like my first it was my first fantasy sci fi anything and I read a lot of the extended universe which is no longer canon. Chewbacca is no longer canonically killed by a planet which is a real shame Margaret 04:06 when did they when did they retcon at all when did they take the extended universe out Io 04:11 when Mickey Mouse got his hands all over this franchise? None of that no, we're not dealing with any of that shit. So they just pick and choose the stuff from the extended universe they want to fuck with and some of it stays some of it when it's all it's all Calvin Ball in in the galaxy now but um yeah, even in the extended universe before though there were a few like really great like the Han Solo trilogy it's been you know, like a decade but I remember it really, really fucking whipping and these Margaret 04:48 are the books right? Yes, the books Io 04:53 and a couple of others deal with like, the rebellion but not not like not like This not and we're not going to. Well, Margaret, I don't know about you. I'm not here to argue that Rogue One is anarchists propaganda. Margaret 05:10 No one might argue that Andorra's bar anarchists propaganda. Io 05:13 Oh, yeah. Okay, well, I'm not here to argue and endorse anarchists propaganda made by made by the Mickey Mouse Corporation, but me as an anarchist and I'm really fucking enjoying it. And I just, I was trying to get everybody into this for so long because it's like, obviously coming from this place of knowledge of the continuum of revolutionary movements the writer said he was influenced by like Palestine and the Russian Revolution and the Haitian revolution. We watched Rogue one the other day, and you pointed out why does everyone have the slightest Irish Burr? I think because they were also influenced, especially in the funding about, especially in like the Mon Mothma funding of like, the Irish revolution, but okay, but yeah, let's, let's, let's get into it, get into it. We both recently finished. And or what do you think overall, Margaret 06:12 I liked it. And I'm kind of, I mean, I'll watch junk TV, you know, because life is short, and why not spend my short life watching it. Okay, I don't have a really good excuse for why I watch drunk TV. But I will happily watch drunk TV, if, you know when I need to turn my brain off or whatever. And so I kind of like go into almost any TV show sort of expecting that. And then instead, I found like, actual depth and like, a less one or two dimensional resistance movement than I see. Basically, anytime I watch, especially TV, but movies as well, like resistance movements are so always clearly painted by people who've never either read history or threw a rock at a cop. You know, and like, I don't want to make any criminal accusations towards anyone involved in writing this, but I will guess they've at least read history. If not throwing a rock at a cop. Yeah, there's toxic cops, kids. It's I'll do whatever you want. Io 07:13 I'll say it I got I got less the loose. Go empire. Yeah, yeah, fight the Empire. Everybody. Subscribe to our Patreon so you can see the video of me doing hand quotes Io 07:32 Yeah, it is a there's dimension in it that I was not expecting from Star Wars. I was and I didn't really expect from, from anything. It's like writing writing is a hard job being able to like Express, like the moral complexity of a of a gorilla. What a gorilla sell who's gonna go rob go rob a big bank on some on some fucking planet. But they did it they pull they pull it off really? Well. Margaret 08:10 Yeah. Tell me about tell me about the how this relates to the funding of the Irish revolution. I don't know if the other direction they want to take this but like, I'd be really interested in like, some of the more obvious or some of the historical parallels that we've picked up on. And I I would love to hear more about that. Io 08:31 I was noticing the fact that they had Mon Mothma up in the mix who is a character from the original Star Wars who's the one who's sort of she says many Bothans died bring in this as these plans and she's always given the given the spiel and bringing her back as like someone who's down for like she's not she's not involved, obviously. But she's like, doing whatever she can to like get the money to these people who are off fucking Killing cops across the galaxy. While still like sitting pretty in high society and like working in parliament in this in this very like subdued liberal way that is like toeing the line in a way that a lot of especially like Irish representation in England was and even in some English representation in England was and like it's definitely like No, there's nothing that's a one to one on on Pandora and I wouldn't say that but like the way the IRA and the like pre Ira revolutionary movements funded themselves with a lot from the Irish diaspora who like made it big in Boston and New York sending money back or, or straight up sending boats full of guns back. Okay, to see, to see not only the like the scrappy people in the woods, ready to do whatever For and the shadowy Stellan Skarsgard who I would love to get into because I I love the whole Skarsgard brood but still and especially to see not only the like the cloak and dagger part of things but the be able to have some fuckin Game of Thrones political intrigue was Yeah, was very fun. Margaret 10:27 Okay well and to go and continue with the Irish fundraising thing I'm sure someone out there fortunately I don't live in the parts of the Internet where people complain about the shit is like complaining that like two of our primary revolutionaries are in a gay relationship right? And you know two women who are who are dating and you know the tension in their relationship based on which one prioritizes love and which one prioritizes revolution but someone somewhere is like, Oh, they're making all these people gay or whatever it is no gay revolutionaries in history. First of all, it's like, obviously bullshit. But in terms of the Irish revolution, one of these such a good example of a character who does actually feel kind of a an and or Star Wars characters to some you heard of Roger Casement, the gay Irish night. If anyone's listening, there's this guy named Roger Casement, who was a big part of bringing down King Leopold from Belgium, the fucking monster who murdered millions and whatever is one of the worst on all of history of historical ghoul. Yeah, and there's just so there was this like, colonial Irish guy who was like part of the English colonization of Africa. And he was like, Oh, I'm on the wrong team, like absolutely on the wrong team. And he got like, really into Irish nationalism, as well as working really hard to fight against the exploitation of Africa and South America, actually. And then he like, went and spent his life and lost his life smuggling guns into Ireland for the for the Easter Rising, and he was so fucking gay. Just so completely, tragically gay. And I don't know, he feels like a very Star Wars character. I guess he's not again, he's not one for one. But yeah, these but he was part of the English establishment. He was a fucking Knight, you know? Io 12:15 Yeah. And there was plenty of those. I mean, in every, in every movement, you know, death to the bourgeoisie, whatever, whatever. But who you can get a lot done if you if you know it, if you know in your heart, what's right and your positions. And just as an as an aside, because I it because it wouldn't, it wouldn't do to zero in on this, but maybe on a later episode. Definitely on a later episode. But there Yeah, yeah, the queers have been in every revolutionary movement in the early in the 19th century, there's a quote from somebody from some open, openly queer person that says, if you want to be yourself, you go find the anarchists. Margaret 12:57 Yeah, I can't remember whose that quote is from. Yeah, no, totally. And, and so it makes sense that I really liked that we've entered a stage of gay representation in Hollywood or whatever, mainstream TV where it's not like the shocker. I mean, there's a little bit they play a little bit on the leg, oh, they're gay, but only like, the tiniest little bit, and no one is upset by it, you know, and that's nice. Io 13:23 Yeah, and I it's a little bit of a hobby horse of mine that I the great meaty, the big media establishment knows that. By and large, the people consuming things like liberal culture is very ascendant in, in media, we'll see how long that lasts, but they know that, you know, representation or whatever, like cells, you can sell a terrible movie on the concept of representation when you put a diverse cast that they're like, the right mushroom and, and the, and the people making the decisions are still Lily whites and straight, but they all they'll sell it to you with whatever. And Star Wars very famously was like, we got a gay kiss in this one. And it's like two women kissing in the background, very easy to edit out for whatever international audiences wouldn't allow something like that. They're like, dogshit this one where they don't, it's not a big deal. It's just a fact. It's not Yeah, it's just a fact of it, that they that they are lovers in a, in a struggle together and the tension being that like you said, one is market is not more committed to the cause, but like the relationship is is eclipsed by the cause certainly. Yeah. Is like like a great a great tension to play with and I'm excited to see like they at least have a season to play around with. Margaret 14:58 Yeah, I mean, it's kind of funny watching this because Just like well, you know how the characters end up? Like, yeah, you know, you know that andorre isn't ending up with Beck's in any way that like, at least like in any way that is worth note in, in Rogue One, you know? And then also, spoiler, they're all going to die. Well, at least at least Cassie and Endor is okay, well, my other historical parallel that I want to draw that I've been like thinking about a whole bunch since I saw it, there's this whole trope within it, and I really am curious to see what they'll do with it. I'm afraid they'll do it badly. But so far, they've kind of earned my trust more than most things. There's this thing about authoritarianism on the rebel side, right? There's this tension. I am incapable of remembering names. You've got your head honcho. Revolutionary guy, right. Who is the doomed revolutionary? What's his name? Skarsgard. luthan. Yeah, that's the actor's name. Io 15:59 The one who's who's a antique seller. Margaret 16:03 Yeah, you don't remember his name either. luthan. Something? Okay. luthan. So, you've got Lutheran and he is the tragic leader. And he specifically refers to himself as doomed at one point. And I think that this is probably consciously a reference to Catechism of the revolutionary bias organic net chef. And so again, that chef was this. This Russian revolutionary nihilist who actually if you want to hear me and I would talk about search, Sergey net, you have listened to my episode of cool people that have cool stuff on the Russian nihilists. Io 16:39 Find it anywhere you find podcasts, folks. Margaret 16:43 Yeah. And I fucking hate this guy, historical guy, Sergey, like he is trash. And he is absolutely the kind of guy who will get his friends arrested on purpose in order to advance the cause without asking their permission or telling them what's happening, right. And I think he has like, lost his ethics in what he's doing. And his whole thing he writes this book called Catechism of the revolutionary that is the revolutionary is a doomed man is one of the main concepts of this book, in which basically like, you don't have friends, you don't have lovers. You have the revolution and you will die. And it has like a romance to it has like a beauty to it. Right? I think fundamentally, it's a flawed concept. But what's really interesting to me is that in in andorre, you have a character who I believe is a conscious reflection of the Sergey model, although Sergey was not actually the leader of revolution he wanted to be but he was a fucking whatever he was also tried guy who fucking killed his own side more than he killed the other side and all around sucked. And so So luthan is almost this like, the positive incarnation of a Skynet ship so far, in that he's doomed. And he makes the hard calls and stuff. But he's not quite a fully authoritarian leader. You know, there's a couple points where he gives people full information and lets them make their own decisions. His assistant whose name I also don't remember clearly has a can exert a certain amount of power over him. He's not quite a dictator. And he's clearly tormented by the fact that in some ways, he is a dictator of, of the revolution. And the thing that I find interesting, almost some of his rant, and I'm really curious are your thoughts about it? The thing I find really interesting about it is how it compares to the manifesto that were being presented by the dead kid. Io 18:35 And he made the mix the fucking hot the hot space, the space twink the crime the crime think loving little revolution, the crime Margaret 18:44 prank. Yeah, the crime twink. Who rules and I love his character, because he's like, afraid, but he like does it anyway, even though it literally kills him. Like that is something to aspire to. I mean, I want to survive. Io 18:59 It's I aspire to be crushed by a metaphor for galactic capital myself. Yeah, Margaret 19:06 exactly. And in his manifesto, that we start exploring right at the end of the season, he talks about the enemy specifically as authority in a way that like, this is why earlier I was like, I will go to bat a little bit about andorre being anarchists propaganda, but only a little bit, right. But it's not the enemy isn't the Empire. The enemy has authority in what he what he is writing. And I'm wondering whether this will cause conflict in future episodes, or whether they kind of in this case mean authority mean like biggle authority like the Empire, not like scars, scars character, but I I'm really excited about that tension. I'm really excited to see what they do with it. Io 19:51 Yeah, me too. I love that he has his little his little monologue that beautiful, beautiful monologue. I've made my mind into a Unless place and I I work for a sunrise that I will never see and again for what I do and I'll and all that shit as he's talking to this this guy who infiltrated the the Empire to give them all information and he's prepared to preparing to sacrifice a squad of like nine people on his team just so the Empire doesn't get wise. Margaret 20:26 It's like 30 people I think it's a bunch of people up Io 20:31 to too many people. I'll I'll go ahead and say it. But yeah, he he does represent that very, like the revolutionary isn't doomed man. thing in a more competent braver way than, than that fucker. Yeah. But I love it. It's more, it's really, I mean, revolutions are morally complex, you're not going to get out of them with your hands clean. And I like that they're not like the original theory of the original Star Wars. Is, is Past is past the point where there's nothing you where the Rebellion has been built up. But to organize something at that scale in a galaxy of apathetic, or unorganized or unmotivated people is, is going to be a fucked process, especially when he's like, Yeah, we want, we want the Empire reacting, we want them. We want them cracking down and making people's lives miserable, like OB like, yeah, like, obviously, fuck that. And but acts of insurrection are going to make your enemy crack down in that way. And he's, he's preparing for that eventuality. Margaret 21:58 Yeah. So he once again, is presenting this like, like, there's a version of him that he could be like, full on accelerationist, right. accelerationism being the concept of like, kind of making things worse, so that people realize they're bad, and then try and make things better or whatever. Right. And, and he absolutely, he makes several statements about how like, look, it's going to get worse, right? But he's not quite so far. It's not like he's quite making things bad on purpose, so much as he's not stopping them from getting bad. And to me, and maybe I'm just like, I want to like him. Talk about luthan here. Yeah. But to me, this is a really big important difference, right? Like, people have been making the claim that you shouldn't do anything disruptive, because it'll like look bad. Or even more than that, it'll cause the police to crack down, right. And that claim stops people from resisting quite often, because realistically, people don't want bad things to happen. That's why we're interested in fictitional representations of revolution, is because we want a better world for our Star Wars characters. And since we want a better world, we want to take certain actions to try and get a better world. But when you turn it into a fight, the other side's gonna fight to. And so, you know, I don't think that it is ethically on the person who throws a brick at a window. I don't believe it is on them, the police crackdown on to resistance movements that could result from that write ethically, there's all kinds of arguments that people can make different ways about this. I think throwing the brick to make things worse, is fucked up. But I think throwing the brick, because it is the best expression in the best way that you are able to choose what to do when the Empire puts that moral weight on us as potential rebels and says it's your fault that we are hitting you. That is like, I mean, it's abuse of logic, and it's a real fucked up thing. And like, you know, you get into this like the very the climax of the entire season. Is that this kid who I have a shitty memory I think maybe his dad got killed by the Empire throws a bomb at the very end. And they did a what's good? Yeah, he does a hey, market for anyone who wants to listen to that episode about the market. And so first episode ever of cool people do cool stuff in which someone throws a bomb at some cops when the cops had been really fucked up and the cops opened fire and it causes this whole big fucking thing. Right? And, and I'm not mad at that kid. Was it the right move? I've literally no idea. Right and the world will never know whether or not it was the right idea because we only get the one thing that we saw happen. Yeah, I'm always Io 24:48 I'm almost 100% of the time on people who have the bravery to try. Try some shit and the others side, like the fascist playbook is to use our conscience against us for for in a in a Stop hitting yourself type of way. Margaret 25:12 Yeah. Io 25:14 That is not. Yeah, you can't. Like I can't imagine somebody even having the foresight to being like, Oh, I'm going to do this because it'll make it worse. But the argument of just like, what will the news say if this happened, or that this that and you're not going to get you're going to turn people off from our side is this is has, has failed for has failed for centuries? Now. Margaret 25:42 I will say, though, I don't sorry, look, Io 25:44 I just don't want to fuck with it anymore. Margaret 25:49 But I think of as an ethical argument, it is like a, I think it is a bad ethical argument to say like that that kid should have thrown the bomb, right in, in this fictional Star War that we're talking about. I don't care about the ethical argument against that. But if you're throwing a bomb at the oppressive force that is busy oppressing you, your conscience is clear. From my point of view, right? The strategic question is where it gets really interesting. And is it a good idea? Is a very different question from is it? justifiable? You know? And that's where it gets into, like, really messy stuff where it's like, well, that's just hard to know. I mean, the history of people killing tyrants in on Earth is a real mixed bag. Right, in terms of its efficacy, Io 26:43 it tends to assassinations do tend to have a tendency to get messy. Margaret 26:48 Yeah. And often, they make everything worse. And not just in a like, everything has to get worse before it gets better way. But sometimes it's like, no, everything just sucks now. And everything. Io 27:00 But but the extent situation was analysis was like unsustainable something. Yeah. Like, no one, no one can predict how things will play out. But there was a chance that they could have could have gone well, and if, if nothing else, you sure you've shown power to be vulnerable? Yeah. Which, which echoes through history? And I don't know, I guess the I guess that's a bigger question that we can keep getting into, but to bring it back into, into and or a little bit. Uh huh. As as for numix Little manifesto, every act of insurrection pushes our lines forward? Margaret 27:51 Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. No, go on. Yeah, and they even use the term insurrection there. Right. Yeah. Which is like, Io 28:01 they got there. They get so explicit. I didn't expect them to. Margaret 28:04 I know, a manifesto for pure Io 28:07 rocks. Margaret 28:09 I know and like, and it's specifically like, I'm with I think it's Kropotkin I don't know I actually just mostly, I don't always read all of the, the old books by the people. I used to read books about the people. But you know, dead anarchists. Pokken I think it was him who was like, why do we have this like dichotomy between insurrection and revolution? It might have been Malatesta one of these fucking dead anarchists was like, What a useless dichotomy between insurrection revolution, like revolutions are made up of like, insurrections, that's what you know, as compared to this legging. You know, the traditional way presenting the dichotomy is that you need to have, you know, on a purely insurrection aside, like all that matters is the insurrection the larger overarching goal is not worth attempting to accomplish, or setting your sights on, right. And then on the purely revolutionary side, it's like, Oh, don't do the insurrections because they'll diffuse our energy or the wake the sleeping dragon or they'll, you know, cause the cops to crack down on us or whatever, right? All that matters is building up the mass to have the one big, glorious revolution. And like, history, at least the history of revolution is like no, no, no insurrections or that manifesto is right, like an andorre. They want to have a revolution. What that revolution should look like there is not a agreement upon which kind of rules Io 29:34 Oh, that's the bet that's the best part of the show when he when he goes to me. Saga reira mine yeah, man. The cool yeah, the cool guy. He's talking about so anarchist. Yeah, I don't, I don't I'm I'm not gonna fuck with that guy. He's a he's a human supremacist, and those guys are separatists for et cetera, et cetera. And they're there. I'm the only one Just think pure ideology here. Yeah. And I'm like, Yeah, I've been in a room with him. Margaret 30:06 Yeah, totally. But his, but then they say his ideologies like, well, anarchy is not an ideology or I don't remember the actual quote. Io 30:15 Yeah. And his response is just a shrug because like, Whatever dude, I'm not, I'm not here to convince you. I'm off. He's on. Maybe Maybe I'm just projecting what I want to see. But he's on the like, yeah, you know, there's there's action and then there's whatever other useless surrounds what, what action is being taken? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, he's right. Yeah. Well, this is all like laying this ideological bedrock that eventually morphs into the same neoliberal government that easily falls to Deathstar. Three and Force Awakens. Like you've got we can keep on this but maybe we should talk about Rogue One and in a second because we just watched that a few nights ago, like the early days of a revolution are ya so spicy? Margaret 31:15 Yeah, that's when I like everything is still possible. And but to use Sagar era to tie us into Rogue One, you know, by the time Rogue One comes around saga gara is basically just like the terrorist who's still like, who's still just been like, No, I know where the Empire is. So I'm gonna fuck them up. You know? He's not like trying to think like fourth dimensional chess or whatever he's just trying to fuck up the Empire and like I think that fucking rules and I think that yeah, I I like him. I mean, obviously by the time Rogue One comes around he's like his neuro divergence has continued in a way that makes him probably unsuitable to be a leader have Io 32:02 a bit of a Chase had a hard he's had a hard go of it. Margaret 32:05 Yeah, he is. He does not mind revolutionary suicide. He is perfectly content with revolutionary suicide. By the time he gets his chance. Io 32:15 Yeah, how Yeah, how could you not and they the plot of Rogue One is they need to get close to Sagar era they so they break. I forget her. I forget her name. The main the main character of the movie. Yeah. To get her close to saw because they want they just want to kill sock cats there. Because he's making them look bad, essentially. Yeah. And because they're developing into Yeah, like liberal revolutionaries hmm And so and saw is still is still out there on Jetta. Just just like stealing shit from the Empire blow blowing shit up. They can't get to him. Margaret 33:00 When I thought they were there to kill him. They thought they were there to kill protagonist, dad. And they just needed to get to saw in order to find out what protagonist dad was. Io 33:10 Like, right before they and or gets on the ship. There. They're just like, Alright, remember that thing that we told her? Fuck that no kit when you see saw Calum? Oh, I think that though, I think maybe they do the same thing with Matt's Matt's Mickelson's character. Margaret 33:27 Okay, so that ties into what you're talking about, about. You've got into like, hard choices guy luthan. Right. And he's presented as like, the real radical in in andorre. But it's the same attitude of kill people who are making us look bad because you're thinking about the big picture that leads us into the liberal state stage of revolution that you're talking about right where they you know, are just going to end up being like the sort of like less interested in revolution revolutionary movement and I think that those are related I think that the cold hard calculating leader is absolutely the person who's going to be like alright kill saw All right, kill protagonists dad. Because because they think they're thinking about strategy instead of ethics. And I know ethics is like a word that people have a million different thoughts and feelings about but like what I mean like doing what's right, rather than like, what is believed to be the most strategic I think is and that's what I like about saw is he does what's right which is fight the Empire. Yeah, Io 34:35 I see him as an ideological insurrectionary anarchist and luthan as just a straight up insurrectionary who, like a like an insurrectionary who wants to get extremely Sun Tzu about it all. Margaret 34:51 Yeah. So if I can, I mean a nihilist in like the Russian sense not in the like anarchist sense, you know? Because It's not a coincidence that most of the Russian nihilists were like Social Democrats at heart. Maybe that's getting a little too off. So, Io 35:08 yeah, like I don't I do see I see a lot of people trying to square this to as like Disney published like anarchists propaganda that's like this and that and I'm like, I don't think they did that it's it's in its set in outer space. It's it's a thing, but it's obviously made by people who like, give a shit about these things like and like you and me care about, like the historical stories and context of revolutionary movements. Yeah. And it's from its from that perspective of people who like who are interested in also think it's just think that fighting cops is the coolest thing you can do with your life? Yeah, and making a show about cool people fighting cops, and that is cool to me. Yeah. But uh, do you want to do you want to talk a little bit about about Rogue One? Sure. So well, I guess we were I guess we were already kind of kind of on it. Saw he lives in the holy holy city of Jeddah where the Jedi began as a society of monks and they were guardians against galactic tyranny and fascism, but eventually became a liberal military arm of the Republic or whatever the fuck, and a bunch of other shit happens, but where I think, oh, where this movie really starts screaming is you get to this fucking this stupid. General Assembly is suddenly ready to pack it up. Because suddenly they're up against these overwhelming odds and like, you remember that? That nerd? This fucking nerd shouts What is she proposing? And everyone's just like, oh gosh, crumbs? Well, I guess I guess we're done for packet in everybody. But luckily we plucky heroes. This platoon of doomed men who say fuck this they go rogue because a man with nothing to lose in a sharp stick can take the day and they're the last chance to to save the galaxy to do some overwhelming violence against the Empire against and go against all this bureaucratic cowardice is just a big they all pack into one shitty spaceship. Huddled bunch of cuddle puddle revolutionary saying fuck it life sucks book the Empire. Let's do a cool suicide. And do they Margaret 37:42 wanted to get out? I'm sure they did. Yeah, Io 37:46 they do. It was not. It was not likely. And yeah, it wasn't for this. This is a part of canon. This is the part of the Extended Universe candidate that has transferred over the Mon Calamari you all know Admiral Ackbar it's a trap, etc. Um, that that planets and and race of like people involved in the rebellion are like the most ready to throw down. And I'm glad that that transferred over a Rogue One. Everyone else is just like, beans. Well, I guess the Empire wins. And Mon Calamari was like, Oh, we've got Rogue One. Awesome. Love those guys. Margaret 38:30 Totally. I mean, and that's why I like Rogue One so much right? Yeah. As because you have your doomed revolutionary cuddle puddle that goes off to go do massive violence and steal some plans. And then the like, solidarity that it will kill you is like what breaks my heart more than anything else. If you want to see me cry in a movie, like the second Lord of the Rings movie when the right of the row Hyrum went Rohan shows up to support condor is a safe space for nerd for being a nerd. So when when they roll up, and they yell a red day, a blood day and it's actually this Norse maybe not Norse is the Scandinavian poem. That's the Tolkien's ripping off but it's fucking beautiful. And then they like scream like death death death and then like run charging into the forces of Mordor. Right? To have the backs of Condor that's when I start crying the most consistently in in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. And so Rogue One operates on the similar principle of the like, Well fuck it, I guess will show up like like sometimes when all your friends are jumping off a bridge like you should probably show up to support them anyway. You know? And like, Io 39:48 would you rather die all at once rather than piece by piece? Margaret 39:52 Yeah, yeah, totally. Which is you know from and or, and then there's also a quote from Blackhawks speaks, which I haven't read in a long time and so I Um, I apologize for possibly paraphrasing this badly but in the war against the colonization of what later became the United States or whatever, right? You know, a bunch of people are sitting around being like, well, we should go to war against these fucking white invaders. And someone is like, No, we shouldn't write because it's useless. If we do it, we'll die. It's like killing mosquitoes. You can kill them, but they keep coming in. There's, there's no point to it. And then the rest of the council is like, alright, well, we're doing it. And this isn't fiction. This is a nonfiction piece. And, and the same guy who was like, well, we shouldn't do this as like, well, I'm coming with you. Because I'm not a coward. You know, and I, I really like that concept within Rogue One. The like, well, this isn't how we wish it had gone. This wasn't what we planned. But we're not going to fucking just let you go out and do there. On your own. We're not cowards. Obviously, some of the people in that council chamber were cowards. Yeah, a Io 40:59 lot of people didn't show up. And I think a lot of other people were invested in the in the assembly or didn't invested in the in building an army against the Empire, rather than we can get we can really get a lot done with some sabotage. We can get a lot done with with a plucky group of fuckers. Yeah, just plop it plopping down and, and putting on some weird uniforms. Margaret 41:31 Yeah. And it, it was considered right. Like, I think a lot of what we're talking about about like, insurrections are what pushed us forward. You know, it wasn't like, like, let's just, I know, where we can go throw a bomb, let's just go throw a bomb randomly. They were like, What are we going to do? You know, like, the first big action and AND, OR is like, we're gonna steal all this money because we need it. Right. And so all of the actions have a purpose, they tie into a strategy and I love. That's one of the things I love about Rogue One, right? It's like, you know, all right, well, against all odds, we're gonna go get the Deathstar plans. You know, rather than just we're gonna go explode a thing, because the Empire has lots of things. You know, Io 42:22 I got a lot, they got lots of things. And I'm, I think that I think that there's a, there's a poetry in an affirmation of life in attacking something symbolically. But yeah, what you've got, you got a symbol and a rush of adrenaline and a, and a huge danger to yourself and everyone else around you, if you're going to put some danger out there. Be sure of it. And I don't know, maybe, maybe have some maybe have a little bit more more payoff? Yeah. Yeah, like, in Minecraft? Margaret 43:00 It's totally like, in Star Wars, you should, you know, think about like, if you're gonna gamble at all, you should wait till the pot is sweet. I don't know, whatever. Yeah, no, it's Io 43:15 go bigger, go big, and then go home. Margaret 43:18 Yeah. Through your safe house. I do think that the Star Wars rebellion in general, does relate to a style of revolution that is less the style of revolution that I would guess the average person listening to this, like, thinks about, like, the history that they're drawing from, at least based on what you were saying is like, national rebellions for against an oppressive outside force, right. You know, we haven't seen we've seen revolutionaries on the capital planet, but we haven't seen them being like, here's how we're going to take the Capitol planet, you know, as ours, right, because we're from here, whatever. Instead, you see all of these colonized forces, these colonized people, being like, we don't want to be colonized anymore. So we're now in this alliance of all these colonized people to fight against this oppressive force. Io 44:12 Oh, that's just another thing that I like. I like a lot about andorre in that the end of the end of row of not row one of A New Hope is just this like, Lily, this this Dyess of of lily white heroes of the rebellion that might as well be out of like Triumph of the Will and like cheering and Chewbacca doesn't get a medal. I know that's well trod territory, but like, justice for my man AND and OR has very few white characters making up the the core of the rebellion. Margaret 44:57 Yeah, yeah. And just under this funny problem that we're running into, from a cultural point of view that all of a sudden we're watching all these prequels, right? Or at least like I watched the game of thrones show, the new one house of dragons. And I liked it. I liked it a lot. I liked it possibly more than I like Game of Thrones. I've literally no idea what that's a statement that drew everyone mad at me or not. Io 45:20 And dragons. You can't argue with that. Margaret 45:23 Yeah, and it's less white. It's still majority white. But it is like markedly less white. And there's something kind of depressing about watching these prequels that are less white. Io 45:35 Something very, something very bad must have happened between then and then. Margaret 45:40 Yeah, even though what we're actually watching of course, is that, you know, the media that better choices getting made. Yeah, exactly. I don't know just something I think about when I watch that kind of shit. Io 45:55 This one This one sort of maps to my, you know, my, my, my headcanon of like, obviously, it's just the casting choices are better now. But it also maps to like successful revolutions. And especially like the one that installs like Princess Leia, Princess into like, royalty into positions of power in like a new Neo lib chorus on seated government eventually were like the people who did the dirty work saga Pereira and Andorra and whoever else are long forgotten, we're just we're all just cannon fodder for this respectable and hard they they fought hard, but they but they were put in an impossible position but like let the let the lower castes get their hands dirty in a way that every successful revolution winds up winds up doing which is why like, like, you know, I'm obviously interested in in a in massive change but the thing that really interests me is not the end result but the the process the affirmation of life of being able to resist in your modern day and live for Me and artistically. But just live rebelliously in the time you are in not for some far off future not what am I supposed to do put put all my put all my fucking plans and morals on hold because I hope that the the proletarian revolution is going to come off some way. Come on, come around. If I if I just joined enough DSA chapters. Here's your sign. Margaret 47:52 I mean, I feel like andorre gets into this kind of stuff in a useful way with the whole prison sequence, right? Where they're in prison or Prison Break. I know and so they're all in prison and they're all doing prison labor. And, you know, is a brutal regime very controlled, it does the thing where like, part of the systems of control it's very panopticon ish, like, part of the systems that control is also that the, I guess in that Fukui way or whatever, right where like people are controlling themselves because they, you know, the prisoners are in charge of the prisoners on some level. Right. Io 48:32 And you got Gollum is the boss. Margaret 48:37 Yeah, and oh, I thought you were telling me we watch this together. I thought you were telling me that the really old guy was Gollum. Io 48:47 The no Andy Serkis. The other prisoners the guy who did mocap for for the one who literally literally call them I wasn't making I wasn't being ageist. Margaret 49:02 But I thought you were saying the old man was the person who did the motion capture for Gollum. Io 49:06 Oh, he used to be very spry. Margaret 49:10 Okay, okay. I mean, so, so go we all you know and and so, you know, so you have Gollum who is the sergeant essentially, he was telling everyone what to do on the cellblock. And then as soon as they know that they're doomed men. They're able to be free. Right? And as a very literal metaphor in this particular context, that as soon as and then the fact that they're like, What is freedom mean? Freedom means jumping into the water even if you can't swim and trying. Right? Is a very non subtle, and they just express it as beautiful. They just have this beautiful scene of everyone jumping in the water. They don't have a grandeur. land they don't hold the guards hostage in order to get I mean to be clear might have been smarter if they had held the gods hostage in order to get like an escape vehicle but whatever Io 50:09 oh they would they would they would have just bought bombed the planet. Margaret 50:13 I know mainly but yeah, that's true. That's you know, like, Io 50:16 like modern you know, a modern prison uprising will hold Guards, guards hostages for the sake of like the people who are holding the guards hostage hostage are going to get extra years on their mobile a ton of extra time on their sentence, if not outright killed by it, but could win could wind up winning better conditions for people inside I don't have I don't have faith that prison officials were uphold their end of the bargain. But yeah, a resistant resistance is is beautiful, no matter. The end result somebody somebody slipped Andy Serkis a copy of blesses the flame. And they're all like, fuck it. Let's go. Yeah, no, let's go for a dive. Margaret 51:06 Totally. And like the ones who die immediately while throwing a wrench at the second armed guard are just as like beautiful and free as the people who swim to safety, you know? And like? No, I really like that whole long extended metaphor that they did around what it means to just actually be free. Which is why I do hold that. The I don't know. I mean, I guess the real question would be to know the writers and you know, because like, people talk about, oh, Disney made this like, no, no, Disney didn't make this Disney put their name on it. It was made by people in the same way that like workers make all value. You know, the the writers and the actors and the directors and all of these people like made and or? And yeah, exactly. So I don't know I don't know where I'm going with that. But Io 52:08 we'll I had a if you want to if you want to think about it a bit I had. I wish I could remember who said this so I would credit them but somebody put out that when Disney was making was making the Lion King and Pocahontas at the same time, they put all their stock into Pocahontas and really micromanage the entire project. I've never seen Pocahontas it sounds like it's a decent movie. But Lion King undoubtedly turned out awesome. Because the because all the writers and artists involved got creative control of it because they didn't have they didn't have Walt over their shoulder the whole time. Same thing happened with Star Wars because Andorra was being developed at the same time that Obi Wan Kenobi, A, A and nobody, and nobody asked me, but the show was good. I did not have a good time watching goon McGregor do his thing again. But yeah, they really micromanage that and they were just like a thing that's like rogue wants share proceed and makes me a little nervous about season two because they'll see that this is is like it and I read I don't really know much about the writers I know that they were interested in like Palestinian resistance and the Haitian Revolution and things like that, which you can see in the show and that the next season is going to get more into like the the ship that I was so excited about, which was like the internal politics of rebellions like I would love I would love to see saw Guerrera talk some more shit about about space to Kunis or whatever. But yeah, yeah, fingers fingers crossed, they'll they'll realize that it was successful because they didn't get their fucking fingerprints all over it. Margaret 54:02 Well, maybe next year, we'll be sitting down to do another episode and we'll be we'll know whether or not everything went to hell or whether it pulled it off. Io 54:12 You'd be like No, they weren't they brought a AR two d two is there for some reason. That's another that's another great thing about this. Like it was like I think it's great because the rebellion never really got its do it's like the entire plot of Star Wars and nobody ever really like fucks with it. It's just like the just like the scenery. But also we don't have we don't have to hear anything about space lasers and the Jedi and Mother I guess there is a wisecracking droid, but I love that little guy. Margaret 54:48 Yeah, nice. And he's, I don't know. I mean, you need the wisecrack. Enjoy in the same way that you need. The animal who sits around and tells jokes or you know, whatever like that is a good is a good character that gets added to TV and movies. Yeah, bring up at Ewoks. But it still was like, way more. I mean, it's essentially it's it's more proletarian than like, we're working class or whatever jargon word I supposed to use here. Instead of like space nights and space princesses and space royalty and you know, all that shit. It's just like, fucking people in the muck getting it done. Io 55:28 Yeah the space the space serfs out there, perfectly capable of braiding a stormtrooper? Yeah. As good as Luke Luke Skywalker. Yeah. Well, I think we did it. We talked about everything AND and OR. But, Margaret, any final thoughts? Margaret 55:46 I'm just, I'm excited for the quality of the storytelling that we like now have available to us as we go forward, because the world is in very dire conditions right now. And we need better stories are so little Gwen has the story of is the quote about like, we need authors who can remember freedom, you know, and I think that we're like, we're starting to see those stories. And we're starting to see him, including in mainstream places. And I think that's like one of the most promising things that I've ever seen as a radical or whatever. So I'm excited. Who knows, maybe it'll all go off the rails, but for now, is good. Io 56:28 There will always be small examples and whether it erupts soon. Being that freedom as a pure idea, or we just have to keep settling for these little diamonds in the rough. I don't know. I'm excited. Yeah, there does seem to be a lot more good stuff recently. But that's us. That's the anarcho geek review. We did it folks. Margaret 56:52 In our cooking, or our Io 56:54 that's the one. That's what Margaret 56:58 this is where anyone is listening. We used to have a blog called a narco geek review. And that's not what this show is called. Io 57:07 No, not related to the anarcho geek review. We disavow we Margaret 57:12 know that Reza vacco splitters they're split out yeah, we've Io 57:17 split we split off from them. They were ideologically unserious. Yeah. Margaret, you want to tell people where where they can find you? Margaret 57:27 Yeah, I've got some podcast once called cool people did cool stuff. I referenced it like three times this article, I asked to talk about individual and community preparedness on another podcast by the same strangers network called live like the world is dying. And until well, by the time you listen to this, I might not be on Twitter anymore, but I'm currently on Twitter at Magpie killjoy Instagram at Margaret killjoy all that shit. I Oh, what about you? Io 57:53 I'm, as of this recording, still still on Twitter, at bum lung. And I'm also on Instagram at bum lung. And if I get on any other social media fingers crossed, they won't have to. It'll probably be under that as well. And before we go, I would I would love to thank we have a Patreon patreon.com/strangers In a tangled wilderness and I would love to thank some of our Patreon supporters. Right now. Hoss the dog. That's a good boy. Mike, aka mkhaya Kaya, thank you. Like I Margaret 58:33 say yeah. Oh, actually. Actually, that's funny. That's right MC. Mikayla, actually my a veteran, right. Make Io 58:42 that McCain or mkhaya. Please settle this bet and whichever one wins I was the other a coke. Chris Sam Kirk. Eleanor. Jennifer Starr Oh, cat J. Chelsea. Dana. David. Nicole. Mickey. Paige, S J. Shawn Hunter, Theo. Boise. Mutual Aid. Milica and Papa Runa. Hope I got that one. Right. Thank you. Thank you all for your support. Big hugs and kisses out to all of you. And thank you everyone who listened. And yeah, to tune in next time when we'll talk about some other nerd bullshit and I'll see you at the movies. 59:40 The times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. And then, I'm sure both by the scale of the enemy. Remember this? Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random Acts of insurrection. are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy, there are a whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the course. Remember that the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this imperial need for control is so desperate because it's so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort, it breaks, it leaks. Authorities brittle oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that and know this. The day will come when all the skirmishes and battles has moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege remember this try

Join C4 and Bryan as they discuss the notion that since the rules of the squeegee collaborative started on Monday, the squeegee people have just moved to different corners. What happens next, how will the city enforce the rules? Howard County Executive Calvin Ball joins the show to discuss his ascension to County Executive president and what he hopes Annapolis can do for Howard County during their legislative session. Also, Ben Jealous joins the show to discuss his new book the history of race relations in America. Listen to C4 and Bryan Nehman live, weekdays from 5:30-10:00am ET on WBAL Newsradio 1090, FM101.5, and the WBAL Radio App.

It's the end of the year, Jen and Noam are exhausted, but Twitter is relentless and brutal. Trump makes a big NFT announcement, another round of Twitter Files dropped that nobody noticed, and Elon plays Calvinball with the Twitter content moderation rules. And yes we acknowledge that the rules were altered AGAIN after this episode, we pray they are not altered again but know they will be.  This is our last episode of 2022 so to all of you, no matter if you were here from Episode 0 or just joined us, THANK YOU for making the first year of this pod so successful. Trust us, we have no plans on leaving you guys and we have some big plans for 2023 so prepare yourselves… Chag Hanukkah sameach, merry Christmas, Habari Gani, and may you all have a happy and prosperous New Year! We will be on our regular Callin schedule this week of Wednesday night at 8:30 Eastern, what we'll discuss is anyone's guess at this point  https://www.callin.com/show/all-crossed-out-jVWglWcHxW  Show notes: Just….Twitter. There's too much to link to and it'll all be out of date by the time you read this 

We're back for another season! That's right: season eight has arrived, with new players (along with some old favorites) returning to claim all the pop culture trivia glory. Abhi, Alexa, and Ethan kick off proceedings with a snooty, French round of My Champion, before pivoting hard back towards the absolute trash bag nadir of American society: New Jersey. With a quiz about all the horrible things that movie and TV characters do when they're there, we'll lighten things up with a round all about pop culture-themed pinball machines. All that, plus the venerated lightning round! NOTES ⚠️ Inline notes below may be truncated due to podcast feed character limits. Full notes are always on the episode page.

Josh Kurtz of Maryland Matters joins Nestor for a discussion about where The Free State goes under Democratic control and Wes Moore

By Jesse SpectorI woke up on Sunday and looked at the score. I'd been awake when the game was played, but I didn't tune in, or figure out how to tune in, or keep up with what was going on as it happened. I had been dialed in on catching up on the day of college football, after coming home from the APOTO Dollars 4 Dingers fundraiser raffle and Mets-Pirates game. I knew the game was happening, but I avoided it.It wasn't because I didn't want it spoiled. I barely even know what anything means when I watch. The game was Essendon against Richmond, round 4 of this AFLW season — the Australian women's football league — and, as it stood when it got underway, the biggest creative block I'd faced in years. It was all over something so simple, a Q-and-A with Jessica Wuetschner, the Essendon forward who I've followed on Twitter, and who for some reason follows me back, and agreed to talk about her sport.I've been curious about Australian football since the first time I heard about it, and I've watched more hours of it than anything else on Earth that I do not understand. The mystery is part of the appeal. What is this confounding sport of “disposals” and “behinds” and “marks” all about? I know it's good when the official, who used to wear a huge-brimmed hat when I first became aware of the sport, does double finger guns. That's the signal for the scoring play.As the years have gone on, technology really has made the world a smaller place, and it's rather easily illustrated by Australian football becoming more available – on satellite in bars, then on specialty channels like Fox Soccer Plus, and now online through the AFL's own site. Or through Willets Pen, right here. Here are the highlights of Essendon-Richmond.I have a much better idea now of what's happening than I ever did before, and that's not just from watching, but because I've started to pay more attention, ever since AFLW, the women's league, grabbed me and my insomnia a couple of years ago.A lot of the time, women's leagues are derided because – okay, because misogyny – but also because, like, you're not seeing the tippy-top, upper-echelon level of the sport as played by men. The same people who deride women's leagues here also often happen to be college football fans, so go ahead and ask them sometime about that dichotomy and watch their brains explode.Take the WNBA, where the Las Vegas Aces just beat the Connecticut Sun to win the title in Becky Hammon's first year as coach. Now, read that again, and think about how that sentence would have read in 1997. The WNBA has evolved in its own way, and taken the sport in new directions. If you want to see innovation in basketball right now, it's the W where you need to be looking, not to the league that's quickly turning into Formula 1 for tall guys – and that's said with all respect, because it's fabulously compelling, but simultaneously strategized and optimized within an inch of its life.What women's leagues have, and what the ones that succeed take advantage of, is a blank slate. They are not trying to be a direct replica of whatever the local men's league is, but to push the artistry of their sport in new directions, their own directions, bringing fans along as they build it. In America, with the Aces, look no further than Kelsey Plum, the Olympic gold medalist in 3x3 basketball, and now WNBA All-Star Game MVP and champion. Plum already was really good, and the things that the WNBA has gotten right, have put her in position to be a legend, right alongside A'ja Wilson and Chelsea Gray, Vegas teammates themselves carving out legacies.In Australia, Wuetschner has done her own scrawling on the early pages of a league's history book. She's Brisbane's leading career goalkicker with 37 in her six seasons there, and now eighth in league history with 40 total goals, thanks to three so far this campaign for expansion Essendon. Also, she was struck by lightning while working as a stevedore, very open about the ensuing mental health issues, and came back in 2021 and scored two goals in the Grand Final. Don't think it doesn't mess with my head to have someone agree to chat with me, just me, not me with a press pass around my neck because I work for someplace. She's a freakin' rockstar — look at this in the biggest game of her life, even if you know nothing about her sport whatsoever.She didn't score in this weekend's game. Well, that's not true. She did score, one point, on a behind – the consolation point for missing a kick wide of the big goalposts. Goals and behinds, that's how they score — and Essendon lost its round 4 game by two points – 26-24, or 3.8-3.6, or 26 (3.8)-24 (3.6). Had that behind been a goal, well… ifs and buts are the familiar language of all sports, aren't they?Essendon is second in AFLW with 27 goals, and also second with 33 behinds in four games. Brisbane, Wuetschner's old team, leads the league in both categories… and they're 4-0. Scoring is good, and lots of behinds means that you're getting lots of scoring opportunities, and that's starting to seem rather familiar in a hockey way, and… hmm, Essendon's next game is against Collingwood, the team with the second-fewest points in the league, and…It can be hard, when you're excited about something, not to fall so hard into it that you lose what you enjoyed about it in the first place. I want to understand Australian football, but do I? When I understand something, I start having opinions about it. I start finding sources of stress in it. I… I know I'm not the only one. I know that burnout is real, and that “do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life” is among the biggest lies that capitalism ever told.I spent 20 years working in sports, right from the time I got out of college, a dream come true that started with taking high school football scores on the phone at the Daily News and took me so many incredible places. I did love it, but it was absolutely work, and I found my love waning as the years went on. I knew the danger was there, and had long said that if sportswriting wasn't a fun job, then you might as well go do something else, because there's no sense in working that hard, for that amount of money, if you're not all in. Not to mention, the world doesn't need so many white male sportswriters in their 40s. Let's hear some other voices.I'm working outside of sports now, and my relationship with sports has never been healthier than it has over the last few months since I quit my old job. I don't have to pretend – I probably didn't have to pretend, but I did have to pretend for myself – that it's okay to have different levels of care about different things, and that those levels can rise and fall.There was a point where I recognized, and I'm far from the only journalist of my generation who did, that pretending to be completely objective is stupid, and that it is, in fact, responsible to admit your biases. Hockey people know that Greg Wyshynski is a Devils fan, for instance, and nobody really cares, because Greg knows the sport up and down, and he's open about how his fandom formed his understanding of the game.There's something different in admitting ignorance. Among the lofty goals of journalism is providing an expert voice, and – I don't know how much of this is just me, and how much is more relatable, because we don't talk about these things – admitting that you don't know stuff is a sign of weakness. And if it's not externally, it sure is internally.The only episode of The ELAINE Show that's aired so far is my chat with Craig Calcaterra about baseball's antitrust exemption. It was a great time, and the next one, with Claire de Lune about the Knicks, was plenty of fun, too. You can listen to it at the top of this page, in fact. (Claire de Lune? Remember Claire de Lune? It's a podcast with Claire de Lune.)This interview with Jessica was initially meant to be an ELAINE Show episode, except that Essendon, much like the New Jersey Devils under Lou Lamoriello, have a no-podcast policy for players. Fine. It's in-season, I know full well that different teams in different leagues have different policies, let alone in different sports on different continents. The policy actually saved us some trouble, because getting a good quality podcast recording set up between New York and Melbourne is not easy.We ended up having a really nice interview, and I was going to get it transcribed and post it here. Then I read the transcript, and it turned out that I was Chris Farley interviewing Paul McCartney.How could I struggle so badly with something that I've done hundreds of times before? That, more than “what's a disposal?” became the question gnawing at me, and unlike so much writing, wasn't something that I could solve by simply pounding through it.It's not like I've never had a long conversation before and walked away feeling like I got nothing from it. I interviewed Derek Jeter dozens of times in his career and nobody has ever been more polite in answering every question you have while saying not a damn thing. But this was different. I'd had a good conversation with Jess, felt like I came away having learned a bit more about her sport… and yet the transcript didn't feel that way at all.Was it really like that? I don't know. It's easy enough to chalk it up to something that was going to be a podcast, turning into not a podcast, and a struggle to adjust. It quickly went from being about Australian football to being a referendum on myself and my ability to do Willets Pen. I couldn't run it as it was, I couldn't figure out how to make it something that would read at all, and I couldn't move on to anything else until I cleared this block that very quickly became almost existential.I know that I felt like I wasted Jess' time, betrayed an unspoken promise to her, and failed in what I really wanted to do, which was to learn more about this sport, which is so fun, but which learning about is so scary because of my own tendency to ruin things.So, I'm not going to run it, because I know that it would be a waste of your time to read me bumbling not only through Australian football, but through my own understanding of what I set out to do with the interview, because that absolutely wasn't “divert into talking about various basic things about Australia that Siri could answer, let alone a Google search.”Tasmania, where Jess is from, is about the size of South Carolina, or about 19 times the size of Long Island… Long Island's population of 7.6 million is about 14 times the population of Tasmania. That was knowable information without talking to the first goalkicker in Essendon Bombers Women's history, in a game that was moved from Port Melbourne Oval to the larger Marvel Stadium because of the demand.“I've been lucky to play in some pretty big games before,” Jess said. “So, the thought of playing in front of a big crowd, I wasn't any more nervous. I wasn't too concerned about that. But the atmosphere and the level of, just, sound – and feeling – in the stadium that night, it was just electric. It even outdid my expectations in terms of the feeling within, the fans, the team, the clubs. It was, I don't know, electric is the only word I can come up with, because you're kind of buzzing the whole time, while obviously playing football and focusing on that. Like, if anything happened, anything big happened, you just heard this overarching, just ooh or ahh, through the whole stadium. It was crazy.”That reads just fine, but the transcript is mostly not like that. Or at least it doesn't feel mostly like that. It feels mostly like this part:Me: The scoring gets confusing because the score gets, like, it was seven, parentheses, eleven. How does that work? I know it's goals plus behinds equals…Jess: Yeah.Me: You've come up with a sport that has algebra in it.Jess: I don't know. I don't know algebra.Me: So, how many points is a goal?Jess: A goal is six points, and a behind is one point.Me: Okay.Jess: And you just add them together.Me: So, 6x+y=score.Jess: Yeah.Me: You could say the same for American football. We just, we… but do they refer… like, when you say the score… (somehow, a digression from this)All that to eventually find out that when you talk about the score of, say, this week's Essendon game, it was 26-24. Or 24-26. We didn't talk about whether you say winner or home team first. Partly because I was busy getting in my own head even then, partly because for as torturous as that bit is to read, it really only took a few seconds in real time.That's how I got tripped up by an extremely simple format, with the cascading effect being a feeling of… if I can't do this simple thing, a thing that was the backbone of my early career – offbeat one-on-one interviews – what am I even doing here? Certainly, I made the right decision to leave the business, but what am I doing here? Should've just given up.Except, what I'm doing here isn't what I was doing early in my career. Admitting a level of ignorance, and seeking out greater understanding of something – for greater appreciation of it – is much different than talking to Orlando Hudson about Steve Spurrier turning around South Carolina football back in the day. And it's not an extremely simple format. The ELAINE Show requires that I actually do have some level of knowledge about the subject, so that I know what questions to ask.I do want to learn more about Australian football, so that I can root for Jess with Essendon and wherever she goes, so that I can root for my best friend's favorite team, St. Kilda, and so that I can appreciate what I'm seeing when I watch a sport that seems like chaos, but does have rules and strategy and so much more to appreciate than, “wow, this seems like real-life Calvinball” and “ref does the finger guns.”Did I set a trap for myself by reaching out halfway around the world to interview someone I admire about their specialty, a thing that I'm curious but openly ignorant about? Certainly, nobody is better than me at sabotaging me. Except, I got ahead of that jerk by being here at Willets Pen, where I don't have to keep trying to make a podcast concept into something written, and can instead let the lesson of the lost ELAINE episode be that the plan you thought you had doesn't have to be the plan you go with, just to prove that it was a good plan.And that sometimes scoring points in Australian football is bad. That's still confusing, but not just to me.“My partner, who's British, used to cheer when we got a behind,” Jess said. “And I was like, ‘What are you doing? Like, this is not... you don't cheer a behind. It's not a good thing to get a behind, unless you need one point to win a game.”You might not cheer a behind, but you don't say no to the point on the scoreboard. I did wind up learning about this sport, and I'm not scared anymore to keep learning. I have a blank slate, too, and I can learn how to love and appreciate sports in a healthier way than I ever have before.Just as the WNBA is not the NBA, Essendon is not the Knicks. My relationship with AFLW will be one forged, for me, as an adult. And what I do here will be different than my career. It's okay if I'm dumb about some things, which fundamentally I knew because that's the entire point of The ELAINE Show. I just wasn't ready for how dumb I really am. It just means there's that much more to learn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willetspen.substack.com/subscribe

In the opening episode to Season 4, Greg and Patrick delve into ordinary least squares estimation: where it came from, what it attempts to achieve, and where it can take us from here. Along the way they also discuss Golden Retrievers who are neither golden nor retrieve, Olivia Newton-John, sub-conning out their own work,  the meat sweats, sh*t you should know, being intolerably self-righteous, losing your camel, saying ham in French, Calvinball, Frank finding Gauss's corpse, crudely describing regression, and Sexy Hulk. 

Join C4 and Bryan as they discuss EVEN MORE fallout from the Lady IN The Lake extortion attempt that happened last week in Baltimore City. Who's telling the truth in this story? Alan Kittleman joins the show to talk about his current campaign for Howard County Executive against incumbent Dr. Calvin Ball. Also, Gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore has gone on record saying he would accept Governor Larry Hogan's support if offered. C4 and Bryan Nehman are live weekdays from 5:30-10:00am ET on WBAL Newsradio 1090, FM101.5, and the WBAL Radio App.

Join C4 and Bryan as they discuss the current re-election bid and the current state of Howard County with Howard County executive Calvin Ball. More information has been released about the threat that stopped the filming of Apple Tv Plus series titled lady in the lake. Also, Lamar Jackson liked a picture of him photoshopped into a Miami Dolphin's jersey. Are you worried that this contract won't get done? C4 and Bryan Nehman are live weekdays from 5:30-10:00am ET on WBAL Newsradio 1090, FM101.5, and the WBAL Radio App.

We are back with Lauren Passell, founder of Tink Media and Podcast The Newsletter. Lauren, ever the overachiever, chose two topics: Calvin & Hobbes, and Disney.  We chatted about Calvin Ball, learning how to let your imagination set you apart from the crowd, and the wonderful world of Disney. Tangents include: the age girls get mean, being an only child, and an epic parenting conundrum.  Read about Lauren winning the Disney Marathon after breaking her hip here. Sign up for my newsletter at our website, tandonproductions.com or on my Twitter (@marissakumari). We'll be back next Wednesday with Gabriel Urbina! 

This week's episode covers New York Rifle and Pistol Assoc. v. Bruen, where the Supreme Court struck down a New York City gun law on grounds that it violated an new interpretation of the Second Amendment.  Brett and Nazim discuss how this case amends the standard and how much it affects States' abilities to regulate guns. Law starts at (04:40).

Astro's Playroom - I'm Your GPU VoxMakers - Je Code Avec Le Q Weird Al Yankovic - It's all about the Pentiums Kazoo?! Schein Padouane (Pavane) Crumhorn Krummhorn Cromorne SUSE GmbH. - Uptime Funk (A SUSE Parody) DJ Omnimaga - Quest for the Legendary Axe Avec deux thèmes on fait une émission de deux heures, car c'est ça le talent. On parle reco culturelles, Victor Hugo, cromorne et composants informatiques. Rejoignez nous sur Discord : discord.gg/4RnA9v7 Au aussi sur Twitter : twitter.com/Calvinball_FM Donnez nous un pourboire ! : www.patreon.com/calvinball

Zach and Rafe discuss the modern card games, in particular Flesh and Blood, and how their in-person manifestations foster the most important of human endeavors: building community.  As complicated or bizarre or esoteric as these or other card games may be, at their heart they are opportunities to build and strengthen communities.  Today's conversation wends through all the interesting particulars of belonging to a card playing community, from rare cards to low-stress tournaments to crazy rules to Calvinball to  Cheetos and Cheerwine, probability and statistics, and everything in between. 

Join C4 and Bryan as they discuss the current battle between Gubernatorial Candidate Peter Franchot and Governor Hogan over who can stop the impending state gas tax increase in July. Howard County Executive Calvin Ball joins the show to talk about his increase to Howard County's police and fire budget. Also, Baltimore County's F.O.P. has sent a letter to Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski asking him to get rid of Baltimore County Police Chief Melissa Hyatt. C4 and Bryan Nehman are live weekdays from 5:30-10:00am ET on WBAL Newsradio 1090, FM101.5, and the WBAL Radio App.

Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * Cort * https://twitter.com/postgoodism * Jenni * https://twitter.com/horsewizrd/ Topics: * Novel uses for hundreds of surplus ceramic clown statues * Thinking about household stuff as a system you can design to meet your needs instead of a cultural lifestyle obligation * Sidetalkin' * https://sidetalkin.com/ * Big Black Elephant * https://www.poem-generator.org.uk/18tpkl8q/big-black-elephant.html * People are reluctant to shift their paradigm in real life but give them a video game & they're all for it * http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/12/invaders-from-mars.html * Games or sports that started out as fictional, but that people actually play Microtopics: * Jenni, she slash her. * A poem that could've been an email. * OST Jam. * If every time you were in a room there was someone else in the room doing the game thing you were doing. * Just trying to enjoy a leisurely video game when suddenly a co-op partner shows up and starts getting impatient with you. * Animals but wet. * Animals but they are in the ocean and don't have legs so they can't kick butt. * The duality of having legs. * The many-faceted world butt. * Try fish: you're welcome. * Becoming deeply involved in the design and production of novelty clown statues. * Who's this unsold clown? * Whether the prenup addresses any of the potential clown situations. * How many clowns could fit in a bed and breakfast. * Monogrammed businessclowns. * How to buy yourself a Lordy. * Sending unsolicited clowns in the mail. * Stacking the clowns until you can ascend to clown heaven. * Cleaning help and support for neurodivergent people to clean our filthy filthy houses. * The act of living in a house and putting things in places. * Keeping your silverware in the freezer. * A house where the forks turn into spoons. * A basket for clothes that are not so dirty that they need to be washed immediately. * Food that is technically rotten but not so rotten that you can't eat it. * The room in your house where the gravity is lower and you float. * Holding a phone up to your face like a taco. * Hundreds of pictures of people holding weird shit up to their heads. * Why all the women are at the end of the page. * Announcing a new consumer electronics device by submitting it to sidetalkin.com. * Side-snorin'. * A fun web site for if you want to look at objects. * A pregnant woman with her belly painted to look like your face. * Copying all the worst aspects of the Virtual Boy. * Whether you want to download jivetalkin.midi. * A poem shaped like something. * Updo bleak curious quiet. * Desert thumbs. * Rather pale pagasus. * A poem that generates its own blurb. * The entire front edge of the pegasus. * Why so political, pagasus? * Any thumb you want it to be. * Defining a thumb by its oppositionality. * Rooting for and with the thumb. * Your boomer aunt who has a really specific idea of gender roles. * Disrupting your toothbrush. * Your beaver farm where the underwear comes down the chute and you feed the underwear to the beavers and put the beavers in the juicer and sell the beaver juice to Lenny who gives you gems you can use to play Scrabble but you only get so many tiles per minute unless you're willing to sit and tap video ads, and whether that's a paradigm shift. * Willingness to think through processes and systems. * A shmup where you control a whale research vessel. * Taking the one skill you have in this life and using it to create heavy handed, ineffective political satire. * Making an exit poll to find out what percentage of players actually learned something from your propaganda simulator game and what percentage just min-maxed the numbers because it was a fun puzzle. * What paradigm you're imagining shifting, exactly. * Every game developer's cottage-core retirement fantasy. * Making video games without ever talking to anyone on Twitter. * Who's the beardy guy dot com. * Scrolling through pictures of beardy guys until you find the right one. * Jugger. * Carrying the macguffin into your opponent's goal. * Arcane rules about who's allowed to touch the dog skull and when. * The global governing body in charge of the rules of Discs of Tron. * The schism in the Jugger community. * Teaching a three year old chess boxing. * Snapdragon. * Taking turns grabbing raisins of a flaming bowl of brandy. * Tucking a clove into one of the raisins and whoever grabs that raisin out of the bowl of flaming brandy gets to stop reaching into the bowl of flaming brandy. * Flaming tennis ball catch. * Calvin Ball, III. * The delicate balance of taking letters out of a username until you get to one that's not taken, before you get to names that are definitely taken because they're so short.

Join C4 and Bryan as they discuss a senseless act of violence that was caught on camera in West Baltimore with Baltimore City Council member Isaac "Yitzy" Schleifer. Also, Howard County Executive Dr.Calvin Ball join the show to talk about his proposed budget for Howard County that would give schools an astonishing $1.026 billion. And Elon Musk has officially purchased a controlling share of Twitter. Are you staying, going, or going back? C4 and Bryan Nehman are live weekdays from 5:30-10:00am ET on WBAL Newsradio 1090, FM101.5, and the WBAL Radio App.

Welcome to episode 117 of activist. Today's part two of my three-part conversation with author, financial analyst, and applied mathematician, Brian Romanchuk. Last week in part one, we talked about his journey to MMT, and his 2021 book, Modern Monetary Theory and the Recovery. Today, and next week in part three, we talk about the various techniques used by bad-faith critics of MMT. More broadly, these are some of the things simple bullies do, when they'd like their followers to think they're not bullies. This interview was inspired by chapter five of Brian's book, his recent appearance on MMT Podcast, and my own post of good-faith critiques. (A list of the audio chapters in today's episode can be found at the bottom of this post.) This interview inspired me to write a new post summarizing the techniques Brian and I discuss today, plus my own definition of a good-faith critique. These techniques are not exclusive to MMT, of course, but Brian and I share several anecdotes, and link them to actual MMT critiques and critics. And now, let's get right back to my conversation with Brian Romanchuk. Enjoy. Audio chapters 3:17 - Trillion dollar coin, needle in a haystack, institutionalism 6:43 - Good-faith critique- a definition 12:26 - Critiques come from the overwhelmingly dominant school (hrespecs) 14:48 - "MMTers ignore X" 21:39 - An MMT supporter was wrong (or a jerk) 27:40 - Newbies and "taxes don't fund spending". 30:12 - MMTers are deliberately deceitful and they keep changing their positions. (Calvinball) 39:42 - I will only view a child through their report card. 42:09 - Thomas Palley's household analogy 44:23 - MMT is wrong, because if it were right, it would be bad. (Just don't like the politics.) 48:28 - Duplicate of introduction, but with no background music

Welcome to episode 117 of activist. Today's part two of my three-part conversation with author, financial analyst, and applied mathematician, Brian Romanchuk. Last week in , we talked about his journey to MMT, and his 2021 book, . Today, and next week in part three, we talk about the various techniques used by bad-faith critics of MMT. More broadly, these are some of the things simple bullies do, when they'd like their followers to think they're not bullies. This interview was inspired by chapter five of Brian's book, his on MMT Podcast, and of good-faith critiques. (A list of the audio chapters in today's episode can be found at the bottom of this post.) This interview inspired me to write summarizing the techniques Brian and I discuss today, plus my own definition of a good-faith critique. These techniques are not exclusive to MMT, of course, but Brian and I share several anecdotes, and link them to actual MMT critiques and critics. And now, let's get right back to my conversation with Brian Romanchuk. Enjoy. Audio chapters 3:17 - Trillion dollar coin, needle in a haystack, institutionalism 6:43 - Good-faith critique- a definition 12:26 - Critiques come from the overwhelmingly dominant school (hrespecs) 14:48 - "MMTers ignore X" 21:39 - An MMT supporter was wrong (or a jerk) 27:40 - Newbies and "taxes don't fund spending". 30:12 - MMTers are deliberately deceitful and they keep changing their positions. (Calvinball) 39:42 - I will only view a child through their report card. 42:09 - Thomas Palley's household analogy 44:23 - MMT is wrong, because if it were right, it would be bad. (Just don't like the politics.) 48:28 - Duplicate of introduction, but with no background music

Heard Tell for Monday, March 14th, 2022, is turning down the noise and getting to the information we need on Russia and China getting closer under crisis, but how that plays into China's history of wanting other countries in their debt, and how a weakened Russia beholden to the Chinese Communist Party is bad for everyone. We discuss the confusing economic messaging of the Biden Administration and the Democratic Party, and parse out what is/isn't their fault with the economy, and what is. Guest Grace Bydalek joins us to explain the term "Calvinball", and how is is an apt description of the uneven rules and contradictory policy coming from governors and others over COVID-19 restriction easing. Also, since Grace is a working actress and performer, we talk some arts & culture, how COVID-19 interrupted the entertainment industry, but also left a bunch of folks missing the important this the arts can provide. Plus, we talk about the looming fight over the Iowa Caucuses, and the Odessa Opera company sings at the barricades in an all-too-real moment of art come to life. All that and more on this Monday Edition of Heard TellSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/heard-tell/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

On this Heard Tell Good Talks, guest Grace Bydalek joins us to explain the term "Calvinball", and how is is an apt description of the uneven rules and contradictory policy coming from governors and others over COVID-19 restriction easing. Also, since Grace is a working actress and performer, we talk some arts & culture, how COVID-19 interrupted the entertainment industry, but also left a bunch of folks missing the important this the arts can provide.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/heard-tell/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A guest speaker comes to class to teach women that marriage is bad. A. Talmage talks about why the BLM protests of 2020 made him give up on humanity. Calvin and Hobbes are revealed as the mad geniuses behind woke politics.

There is an old saying attributed to the 19th century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck: “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.” This show is about law and sausages in California. If you ever took a civics or government class in high school or college, you probably learned about how a bill becomes law through a clean and straightforward process. You might have learned about lobbyists and interests, too, but probably never traced legislation from its origins to its implementation. The actual process is a good deal more sleazy and arcane than we are taught, and is more like a game of Calvinball, in which the rules are made up as you go along. My guest on this show is Allie Detrio, Founder and Chief Strategist of Reimagine Power, which she founded. At Reimagine Power, Allie focuses on policy and market strategy for microgrids, distributed energy resources, cleantech, and sustainability in the west coast. She works with clean energy developers, cleantech startups, nonprofits, serves as the representative for the microgrid industry, intervenes in regulatory proceedings, lobbies for bills, writes papers, organizes grassroots support for policy, and serves as a liaison for many trade associations. So she is thick in the middle of California law and sausages. Sustainability Now! is underwritten by the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation.

What do Return to Play and Calvinball have in common? Taylor, Logan and Mark discuss it, along with That Stephen Johns Interview and a little bit of everything else in the Dallas Stars universe. Here's what's on deck: Stephen Johns: great guy, or greatest guy ever? What kind of fallout should we expect from that interview on The Ticket? Is Roman Polák a singular case or a possible vanguard for European players who decide they're safer at home? Will the 2020 Stanley Cup be considered legitimate or an asterisk candidate in the record books of the future? And should the NHL even be in the business of trying to award it during global pandemic? How do you think players should social-distance on the bench? Let's discuss.

This week your nice hosts discuss making game demos and physical games! Martha is nostalgic, Mark eats some marshmallows and Stephen can't remember his childhood. Oh, and Mortho likes sports. But you probably already knew that.Photo credit- Neat Corporation press photo of their game Budget Cuts. Have you played the demo?GLITCH BdayOrgan Temple VR, Sara's VR gameOneirogen, Andrew's VR gameHere is the cool print out of Mark's play-through of Oneirogen!The marshmallows Mark bought with his tax return Making a Demo 0:12:40 Mark LaCroixMarketingProductionBudget Cuts demoStanley Parable demoNetstorm Physical Games 0:41:21 Martha MegarryPhysical GamesShips across the oceanCalvinballCup stackingJohann Sebastian Joust

Michelle makes a bold prediction about the Boston Blades, Hannah goes to bat for Ann-Sophie Bettez, and nobody can figure out what's going on with Team USA's goaltenders. All that and more on this week's episode of Top Shelf! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices