Advertise on podcast: Feature Creep: Built-in Microwave

Ned and Meg chat about Ned’s recent visit to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, a sprawling logistical water puzzle with giant boats that people solve in real time, which sounds like a fantastic job. We also discuss the recent death of one of the world’s greatest artists, Yayoi Kusama, RIP. And last, Ned’s stones! Ohhhhh the stooooones! Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don’t be a dick!

Ned and Meg brought Damon in on the pod this time to discuss potential podcast titles before we get around to discussing Toeboats. Or, Toe Boats. Either way, this million dollar idea can't be kept under wraps. Here it is for your enjoyment. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg discuss the phenomenon of decision fatigue as it relates to dinnertime. It's a cruel trick that at the end of a day of decisions, one still must decide what to have for dinner, and at a time when one is most incapable of making choices. Is this a cultural disease? Is this why we have restaurant delivery from horrible companies who are bottoming out our economy? Also, crab parasites, WTF. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Meg and Ned talk about how a lot of solutions are really just another problem, and our rabbit hole discussion of immanentizing the eschaton leads to a book recommendation, Douglas Rushkoff's Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires. You know it has to be good because of the colon in the title. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned sent Meg a KEXP video of a band named Angine de Poitrine and it consumed her entire day from the moment she woke up and into the next day, the day we recorded this podcast, which is about the anonymous Canadian rock orchestra that Meg now cannot live without. A serious internet rabbit hole or ten later, Meg and Ned discuss microtonal music, instruments, bands, synthesizers, Dan Deacon, mushroom music, Matt Berry and Jemaine Clement in an Orchid Synth promo video, and a bunch of other stuff Meg already forgot about. Check out Angine de Poitrine on YouTube, and you're in for a wild ride. Thanks for listening to us and to Angine, wash your hands, and don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg kick off their convo with a discussion of how to piss off men, technofeudalism, sports!!, and the Hum. We talk about the AOMC faltering, how much Ned appreciates espresso over other forms of coffee, and whether or not one might stave off the inevitable loss of coffee through private cultivation. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg talk about microgenres in art. We also discuss a new turn of phrase, aesthetic erosion, which Meg learned today. We follow the history of microgenres from the 1970s through to the contemporary digital world of art. We talk about all sorts of weird stuff in the process, including unfilmable books, online journaling, Yacht Rock, jewel theft, and whether we should apply color palettes to each of the microgenres we can find. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned introduces Meg to the mini-genre of music and visual art called Vaporwave. If you grew up in the 1980s and 90s, you will immediately get the aesthetic, because it's digitally repackaged nostalgia for things from our youth, before they failed to deliver on their promises. Thanks for listening, listen to vaporwave, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Ned and Meg discuss the long history of the concept of hedonism and how it gets sort of a bad rap. For four thousand years, give or take, people have been arguing, sometimes strenuously, over the concept of pleasure and how to measure, maximize, and promote it. We talk about the philosophy of hedonism as well as the neurology and biological basis for it. Are you a doomer who thinks you can only experience a certain amount of happiness no matter what you do? Are you locked into a hedonic treadmill or can you alter your experiences enough to remain happy? Check it out and see what you think after this utterly riveting episode. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg generally don't find reaction videos entertaining, until the personal strife of the reactors becomes apparent, in which case Meg thinks they're riveting. We talk about consuming other people's misery, getting rated for inland water sailing, and the dangers of ingesting household chemicals. This one's a shorty! Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

In today's episode, two pseudoscientists tell you how to live, and it all starts with woke butter and homeschooling. We talk about alternatives to dairy milk and how non-diary stuff has gotten so much better than what was available only a few years ago. We consider whether milk leaches calcium from your bones and whether you ought to eat fruit before noon. We discuss kitchen gadgetry, ice cream vs gelato, the school to prison pipeline, the rights of nature (finally!!), colors of the day, and a fabulous book recommendation at the end. Thanks for listening, do as we say, wash your hands, don't be dick.

Have you heard the Good News? Ned and Meg are starting a cult! Which cult will it be? That is still up for debate. We haven't really settled into anything yet. Gravity, books, and white noise are all in the running for the focus of our hypothetical cult. What cult will you start and what are we gonna do with all the cash? As always, thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Meg and Ned decide to design a cult, but first we need some background. You would think years of Catholic 'education' would prepare Meg for this but whatever they said in CCD classes never stuck and Ned was raised without religion, so we need to do some research. We also forgot to get into the shit with Janja Lalich but more on that in #2. For now, join us on our preliminary endeavor into designing a cult. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

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

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