Episode: 1588
Title: HPR1588: HPR AudioBookClub-09-Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1588/hpr1588.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 05:34:34

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Hello and welcome to today's episode of Hacker Public Radio.
We are back with another audiobook club and I'm Pokey and with me today on the audiobook club we've got 5150.
Howdy folks.
We got Pegwall, the legendary Peggy.
We got a pretty new member to our community and a writer and someone has been doing lots of good work for each pair.
We got semiotic robotic.
Hey folks.
We got another returning favor to you.
We got Taj.
What's good everybody?
My damn near neighbor, good buddy, X-1-1-0-1.
Howdy folks.
You have to forgive us.
We started talking about this for probably an hour and forgot to record it.
So now we get the recording going.
You're going to be stunned at how natural it sounds this time.
Frankly, I think we are just all fantastic actors.
I've been pretending to be me for years.
I've been pretending to be an adult for 10 years and nobody's figured out that I'm not.
I've got a mortgage, a child, a job, and I'm like, okay.
That is some serious method active man.
Suckers.
Fake it until you make it.
All right, let's get this out of the way.
5150, what did you think of this book?
Well, I think you remember last time I told you that I tried starting it once before
and really didn't like it.
Now, I have to admit, I must not have given it a very good chance that first time.
So I didn't get much past Julius bringing Dan home to the place we lived, to Lill,
and I think I kind of left it off after that.
So I ran again, I'm glad you made me read it.
I'm not going to say it's my favorite book, but I thought it was entertaining and extremely
interesting on his take of where our modern online culture is going to take us.
Pegel, what did you think?
I really enjoyed it.
I thought it was different.
I appreciate any story that's just kind of out there like that.
When they got into the whole like the tribes that were not part of the bitch in society
and they have the people that go out there and convert them and as a result,
they get all their woofie, which is the reputation-based currency.
I thought that was, it was really kind of cool to me.
Was this your first time listening to this one?
No, I listened to it again just for this.
Cool, cool.
Oh, and just as a reminder to the listeners,
we, this show is broken up into three parts.
The first segment of the show is going to be the, just kind of a review of what we thought
of the book without any spoilers.
We'll keep the spoilers out of it.
We may, you know, discuss a couple of things that happened early in the first chapter,
just for like the setting and stuff.
Those aren't really, we don't really consider those spoilers,
but that we won't get into the plot details too much until we have our beverage review,
which comes somewhere in the middle.
And then after the beverage review is all spoilers.
So if you have not listened to this audio book or read the book yet,
but you enjoy the book club, you know, hang on, listen to the beverage review,
and you can, you can pause it after that and go read the book.
And we won't spoil it for you until after we review our beverages.
Semiotic robotic, what did you think?
You, you read, did you listen to any of it?
Did you read all of it?
And what did you think of it?
I did, I did read all of it.
New guy here does not understand the concept of hacker public radio audio book club,
but I did enjoy reading it.
I downloaded it from Cory's site.
And it is, it's my second time through.
My first time through was actually 10 years ago when it first came out.
It's 2004 if I'm not mistaken.
So I remember reading it a long time ago when it, when it first came out.
And at the first, I liked it well enough, but I didn't think it was Cory's best.
And I might still maintain that opinion, but my second time through, I actually enjoyed it.
A lot, a lot more.
I think that I agree with the, with the folks who said that the currency system is definitely
interesting. And I really, there's just something so deliciously interesting about a guy trying
to solve his own murder that I think is, is an instant hook.
I will agree with you.
I liked this better the second time through.
But I listened to it for a third time.
And I flash baked it the third time.
I sped it up as much as I could tolerate and listen to all the whole book a third time today.
And I can find, I found so many holes in the book when I listened to the chapters closer together.
I still like it though.
That's the thing.
It's got so many holes in the logic in the concept.
I think now, but I still loved the book.
I still thought it was a great story.
But yeah, better the second time than the first touch.
I'll be the odd man out.
I didn't really, I won't say I didn't like it.
I didn't like it.
It wasn't, it wasn't spectacular to me.
I think it's got a bunch of really cool ideas.
I glad to me on a girl, but I said when it was written, because that was one of the questions
I wanted to know, but it was too lazy to go look up.
Because I think the reason that I'm not thrilled with this is because I've seen other people
tackle the same issues.
And in my opinion, do it a little better.
And so I was kind of spoiled by this, although it wouldn't surprise me if this was
maybe the first time that some of these things came up.
And pros that, you know, people were writing about.
I love Corey's other stuff.
I don't know.
This one's just a hit, just a miss for me.
Dex, one, one, one, I cut you off.
What were you about to say?
Oh, I just was going to say that I look forward to hearing what you, the holes you found.
Because I read the book.
I actually finished the book.
I had started it a while ago, read half three quarters of it.
And then finished it on the way back from a NELF this spring.
And then after the first book club, I was looking for something to recommend.
And listen to this book, another of his books, and a couple of other things.
And this one's, I thought the, just a better story.
You thought this was better than which other one?
Eastern Standard Tribe.
I like the stories more interesting.
Yeah, I can agree with that.
Eastern Standard Tribe was a slow read.
But it was, I like that one too.
It was a fun, slow read.
Oh, I love Eastern Standard Tribe.
I just thought this was more fun.
It would have more interesting topics to discuss.
Yeah, I thought this was a little more relatable than Eastern Standard Tribe.
I didn't quite see technology playing out the way that it did in that book.
But this one, it's got hooks in the way we might want reality to be.
If that makes sense.
Well, I think I found Eastern Standard Tribe both too close and too far.
I completely understand the, all the people I talk to are on that side of the country,
or that side of the ocean.
But some of the extremes that went to in that story were,
just weren't as interesting as the issues that this story brings up.
Sure.
But now I'm reviewing the book that we didn't listen to.
So yeah, we kind of all are a little bit.
He's a very prolific writer.
And it's, I've read a bunch of his books or listened to them as audio books.
And it seems like everybody here has.
So it seems like we're all familiar with Corey.
So it's, it's kind of hard to talk about any of his work without talking about all of his work.
Now, am I correct?
I seems to be that this was his first novel.
I found lots of short stories that were older than this.
But this was the first bigger story.
Is that sound right to everybody?
Anybody?
Yeah, that, that to my knowledge, it really reflected on when I read this,
the second time is just how much Corey has matured as a writer in the past decade.
I think that the, his ideas are still as sharp and as interesting as, as they ever have been
over the past decade.
You cut out semiotic robotic that we lose you you cut out there.
All right, he may have, um, he just dropped off.
Yeah, not only was it his first novel, but it's also historically significant,
because it's the first novel that was ever released under Creative Commons license,
as well as being widely published.
And I know he's one of the bigger driving forces in, in that.
I know I've read, listened to a plethora of his works.
And at one point, I actually, I've enjoyed a lot of his stuff so much.
I went and bought two of his books, just to say, you know, thank you for all your good work.
It's been, it's been wonderful.
Keep it up.
Yeah, same here, same here.
I've bought books of his as well.
I never, I'm done reading.
Yeah, I have, uh, so I think I'm pretty sure I have a,
no, you cut out again.
Back this time.
But yeah, try it again.
You think you have a what?
I said, I think I have a complete collection if I'm not mistaken in paperback and
hardback, which I'm pretty proud of.
Oh, very cool.
That's very cool.
I've only got a dead tree copy of, uh, one of his books, and then I've got an
each, each copy of another one.
I purchased the ebook version of Little Brother.
And before I did, I emailed him.
I was like, hey, this might seem kind of odd like to ask or something.
I was like, if I purchase this through Google Play versus another sort of way of doing it,
which one would net you the most profit?
Because I dig your stuff and I want you to get the most out of my purchase.
Very cool.
They probably answered.
I'm guessing what was his answer?
He said, just buy it any way you want.
That is cool.
And one other thing that he does, if you download his books for free or you listen to the audio
books and you would like to purchase his books just so that he gets some money out of it,
but like me, you're never going to open the thing.
He's right on his website or somewhere on his, well, we'll have to look at something
put in the show notes.
You can purchase a book for a library and there are ways for libraries and schools to request
that you purchase books for them.
So you can just go on there and pick out a school and purchase one of his books for them.
That reminds me of an amusing story that I think I read somewhere.
I want to say that it was little brother and homeland were assigned, we're assigned reading
in a school, we're then banned from the school.
And then I believe he donated like 70 copies of the book to the school.
Yeah, that just happened maybe a month ago.
Yeah, I'd say about a month, yeah.
Yeah, I remember reading that and I wouldn't bought paperbacks of both.
And I'm going to put them in my classroom.
After a month ago, as of the time of this recording, we're mid-July here.
So by the time you're hearing this on the podcast is going to be much later, I think.
Yeah, I could call.
I know that I've got the physical version of homeland and I'm definitely one my daughter is
of age that's appropriate.
I'm going to suggest strongly that you read both little brother and homeland.
So I also invited Corey.
I didn't like in the past, I've invited authors like sent them an email individually
and we had one on.
One said they couldn't make it I think and others have just ignored me in the past.
This time I've just I've gotten in the habit of putting the audiobook club on my Google calendar
and just sending the invites to the people who have shown interest.
So anyone listening, if you're interested, you know, just contact HPR at hackerpublicradio.com
and just say that you want to be on that mailing list and I'll add you to the mailing list that
I use for the book club and I'll add you to the Google Calendar invites.
I kind of like Google Calendar because it does the time conversion for you.
That's kind of handy.
Everybody's on the same page that way.
But I added Corey to that and he actually responded and he apologized that he couldn't make it.
He said he would like to, but he's traveling and a lot right now.
And he's in such a different time zone that it just wasn't going to work for him.
But he actually did sound like he was, you know, disappointed that he couldn't make it.
And that just so that was really cool that he even bothered answering, you know,
just the invite.
It wasn't even a personalized email.
Well, Ken was on the show.
He would tell you that you've made contact.
You've got a perfect opportunity to set up another one of your famous interviews.
Yeah, it's not a bad idea.
Well, he responded.
I think that means he owes us a show.
Yeah, I thought that's where 50 was going with that too.
Now, I would, if you do, I do have one question I'd like you to ask because I was just looking
up dates. And I said, my opening comment, I thought this book was maybe a comment on our
electronic society because the wolfie seems, which we've talked, which we've talked about,
that this is the sort of only currency left that reflects the number of people who respect you
and respect your work and what you're doing.
It seems to seem to me like it was just making a total joke of Facebook and their likes.
But I was looking, this came out a year before Facebook ever started all.
I'm not even sure when they started doing likes.
So, and it might, he might have had it.
Well, I guess the question would be, did he, when he wrote this, did he have the
idea in his head trying to extrapolate our digital popularity?
But I guess there really wasn't a measure for it back when he wrote the book,
got like there is today.
Well, and here's, I guess we can talk about the wolfie and their economy without going into
spoilers. And that's cool because it's one of the holes I found in the story.
But so apparently they're in a post-scarcity society, but apparently there's
unlimited robots with unlimited physical resources to make anything you need.
And there's unlimited free energy to just provide everything you need.
So, therefore, currency, you know, based on some gold standard or even a fiat currency,
you know, based on, on physical value is really worthless.
So they go with this wolfie, which is kind of like kudos or, or it's social currency.
It's what, it's people's opinion of you at the time. And at first, that seems fine.
You know, it seems like it could work. But the more they go through the story, the more I have to
wonder how it works. Do they, as you acquire wolfie, do you have to spend it to get the things that
you need? Or does having a certain level of wolfie just entitle you to certain things? And
I read a Wikipedia article that tried to explain it. I don't know where the source was for
this. I didn't track any resource, but they said that basically you didn't have to have wolfie
to give someone wolfie. So even if your score was zero, you could still say, oh, that guy's,
you know, plus 50 wolfie. But then how do you stop like 12-year-olds from going, oh, that's a
funny face. Plus a billion. So I just, you know, there's, there's so much there that, that it is
unexplained. Right, I do think he says at one point, there are certain
on almost unmitatable luxury items that you actually have to spend or trade wolfie for. But I
think the rest of the stuff is you can, you can get stuff if you're a wolfie is above axe. It's not
like they subtract it. When you go to a restaurant and sit down, have your meal. But the thing is on the
wolfie. If your wolfie is zero or if you have low wolfie, like it talks about early in the
story, Julia is recounting his days as a student before he'd ever actually produced anything. I
mean, it's completely voluntary where you want to produce, you know, spend your life doing
anything. But, you know, it's pretty much your, you're, you know, you're, he was eating at the
university auto matter or or something like that. It wasn't like he could go to a really good
restaurant. And it wasn't like he could really live in a house like we would think of, but he had
what, you know, essentially had a sleeping cubicle at the university. And so, and then we see later
in the story, when your wolfie drops to zero, you know, you have, you even have trouble getting
that. Right, that's the impression I got is that you, you don't lose wolfie when you spend it,
but you, when you're rep, when your reputation gets quantified at a certain point, you can access
certain resources or enter certain areas, you know, of a city or whatnot based on your wolfie
score. Yeah, and there was another hole that I found, now that you mentioned that, but actually,
before we do that, David Whitman joined us. David, are you able to talk with us or are you just here
to listen or? All right, yeah, I was having trouble getting sound out of him earlier. He's on
on the road with clumble, but yeah, David, if you can pipe in later, feel free to do so at any time.
So anyway, yeah, if wolfies based on your popularity, how come there were no like real celebrities?
You didn't hear about like movie stars. I mean, he's a musician, but he was like a composer.
You didn't hear about like pop culture at all. I got the impression that kind of the thing,
the things that he was, they were doing, they were kind of rock stars.
Right. Yeah, maybe a very granular form of rock star. Maybe you just, you don't have the whole
world audience like a TV show nowadays does that's possible. Well, I guess maybe the thought would be
if there's no point in accumulating ridiculous amounts of wealth, there's no point in trying to
sell the pop culture. Therefore, the whole concept of pop culture kind of falls off and people
only make things that they really care about. Bingo. Also, also at one point, he'd composed like
quite a few symphonies and everything. And I think if everyone can do that and just do whatever,
I don't think there's really a need for, you know, the pop culture kind of thing.
Yeah, I don't know. I still think there's going to be sheeple.
Well, you can kind of see that when he talks about some of the people who haven't been around
very long, like they're definitely looked down upon is like the people who just don't get it.
And another thing to consider, I mean, you know, being a rock star or being a movie star,
that's work. If nobody works, then there would be no rock stars and no movie stars. He does talk
about watching vids at one point. So, you know, somebody must still be making entertainment,
but perhaps it's all entirely made inside the computer. And since they're in a society where
death isn't really something many people worry about, it could just be one of those things where
you just do it for a while until you get bored and then go, am I going to do some else?
Right. I think that, you know, what you have is a situation in which with no currency in the
traditional sense that we're familiar with, you also have to rethink the way you deal with
social relations, right? So, the idea that you have a currency that's based on what I can make for
myself and gain value from. Now the currency is based on what I can do for other people and what
they do for me and my reputation in their eyes. So, you know, it inverts the kind of the relationship
between myself and my self-interested actions and what I'm able to do for other people and how
that gets quantified and how I'm able to use that as a kind of capital. It almost parallels
some discussions I've heard about the idea of the almost reputation economy in the free
software and open source worlds where you are what you can do and you are what you have given
to the community. I think that's a perfect parallel and we all know the core is deeply entrenched
in that culture and I think this is a way to accept that notion from free software and free culture
into, you know, an entire social formation. Okay. I don't disagree with anything that you guys
have said there, but I don't see how any of that keeps celebrity from happening. I don't see
how a movie star wouldn't make a movie for the benefit of Wuffy. I mean, it clearly,
it's if the mind has evolved, it evolves into this type of society that we're all kind of
familiar with where the best leadership or the people who don't want to lead. So, the best
producers of Wuffy are the ones who actually don't want it, but you still can produce.
You know, I mean, this guy Jewels does everything for Wuffy. Everything he does, his goal is
to gain Wuffy and Dan is the same way once he's lost it at first, clearly he isn't.
But I don't know, I don't see any of that stopping celebrity and pop culture from happening.
Maybe it would be a little bit too risky to try to do that whole thing because look how we treat,
you know, like as a society, how we treat celebrities, like there are people that go, oh,
well, that celebrity did this and then once this report is like, you know, celebrity XYZ
frowned at a puppy and then everyone's upset at them, they'd be hemorrhaging Wuffy like there'd
be no tomorrow. That kind of tails into something I was going to say is that it almost seemed like
Wuffy was very, very volatile, which I guess being a reputation-based economy it would be,
and that that kind of points out, you know, you look at someone wrong and your reputation tanks and
then you pick up a bottle for somebody in skyrockets. Yeah, I think there's two things related to
Poke's comment. The first is that motive plays a role in Wuffy's kitchen. So, if somebody judges
your motives for doing an action as unfavorable or sort of, you know, unscrupulous in some way,
they can choose not to give you Wuffy or detract from your Wuffy. So, other people are the judge
and jury of sort of your own popularity and that dovetails into the notion of pop culture like
in a sense or in a way like we celebrity might still exist. It doesn't preclude celebrity
from happening but what it does is it allows a sort of, I don't know, populism of celebrity,
where the only people who are celebrities are not those who are manufactured to be made celebrities,
but those who accumulate enough Wuffy through popular vote almost. Yeah, maybe it's like
limited somehow, like a liquid democracy might be, or like if I like what semiotic robotic just said,
I can give him 50 Wuffy, but that's all the Wuffy I can never give him unless I take some of it back
that would kind of level the playing field. Well, I think, I don't know, you said something about
you didn't have to have Wuffy to give it, but see it, they did, they did indicate that
well at first they valued Wuffy from people that, they had apparently a poll or something that would,
well they could, they could see by what Wuffy people given to other people, somehow mapping
their likes and dislikes. So, Wuffy from people that, I guess Wuffy from people generally disagreed
with you was actually valued more than Wuffy from people that were in lockstep agreement with you
on everything. I want to remind me to bring this up again after the spoilers because there's
a lot that I was thinking about about this. And Sam, I will, I'll do that, Pokey,
but I almost had the exact opposite impression where if a group of people that I tend to agree with
have a lot of respect for you, I will wait that more heavily than if a group of people I disagree
with tend to have a lot of respect for you. That won't mean very much to me. But I did,
it did seem to me in the moot or in the book that somebody who had a lot of Wuffy could give
more Wuffy than somebody who didn't have have a lot of have Wuffy. Maybe if you're zero,
you can still give, maybe it's limited there, you can still give some, but it's it, it seems like
you'd have to, you had to have more Wuffy to give to, to, to really raise somebody else's Wuffy.
Maybe, maybe, and that brings into question, if you lose yours, does it then take some of
that other person's away? Wikipedia, again, this is not in the book, but Wikipedia based it on
something, and they, it was in reference to Corey's writing. And the way they described it was
that right-handed Wuffy was, Wuffy that you got from a person for doing something directly for
that person. So like if I sent Taj a bolt of fabric to make a hammock, he could give me right-handed
Wuffy for doing that. And people who he influences, his friends could go, oh, that was really cool of
him. And they would then give me left-handed Wuffy because it doesn't, it's not something I did
specifically for them. They just thought it was cool. Right. And related to that is the notion
that you can get Wuffy for things that happen to you, right? So I can't talk much about this
without getting into spoilers, but there's one point in the book where,
well, the spoiler police just shut you off, man. What happened?
The internet doesn't want spoilers. Did you drop off again?
No, I'm here. Oh, okay. What did you, you cut right out? What's as you started? You said,
um, and it just went down. Well, I said, you know, I don't want to get away too much, but you know,
you can get Wuffy for things that occur to you, not just the things that you do. So there's a point
in the book, which we'll probably talk about later in the post-drink section where Julius gets
Wuffy for things that are happening to him. He calls it sympathy Wuffy. Oh, right, right. Yeah,
and I didn't see that as being, you know, another category. I didn't see like, oh, there's
right hand, Wuffy left hand Wuffy and sympathy Wuffy. I just thought he meant, oh, it's because
they're sympathetic that they're giving me that, and you know, it might be left handed Wuffy,
since it's not something he did for somebody. But again, this is all, even though I read it on Wikipedia,
I still feel like it's speculation. Yeah, it's someone is taking the what they read and extrapolating
it out to what they think it means. Right. It feels like that, yeah. But then again,
it books been out for 10 years, and Corey's so accessible, someone might have asked him about it,
and you know, because Wikipedia has to be sourced. Corey could have written a Wikipedia article
over, oh, we know. No, that's not allowed either. If he was, someone would have figured it out and
deleted it. Yeah, that kind of behavior is generally frowned upon. So the other thing that this book
brings up without having to go into spoilers is the whole backing up and restoration
topic that you can you can back up your life and your knowledge and your experiences,
and you can be cured of anything by having your memories implanted into a cloned body.
And there's definitely stuff I want to say about this after the spoilers, but I think it's
plenty to say before it. Poke remind me there's some odd like loop holy stuff that I also kind of
picked up on there that I wouldn't would like to try and remember to bring up as well. It's probably
the same stuff, probably. You see, I didn't realize until in fact Wikipedia has it wrong that I didn't
realize till later in the book when they talk about deadheading that that's what they meant. They
actually take a backup and then they would kill off your physical self and then restore you
from backup after a certain number of years if you just wanted to now for a while. But the other
thing they talked about it using deadheading for because I thought when they first talked about
deadheading it was cryo refrigeration. They just put you into a cryo chamber for that many
years and then thaw you out. But the other thing they mentioned they also use it for space travel.
So if you I guess maybe not the short in in local earth orbit like Julius I think talks about
taking I'd go on up the space station, but definitely I got the impression they had interstellar
travel and for interstellar trips they don't transport your physical body. You just you know step
into the backup receptacle and you walk out and they knock in the back of the head and then they
make a clone and restore you from backup whenever the spaceship gets to the destination which
that that's one of the things I thought you know maybe one of them I'll be you were talking about
why would they even do that because it also said when they're talk later in the book when they're
talking about the backup system it's not like you're backed up just on disk you're you are across
the the network galaxy why so why would they you know what there wouldn't even be a sensation of
space travel they would just you know kill you here and then restore you from backup there.
No no he no they specifically talked about the body being stored and I forget what he called
them to something jars. Now he specifically talked about it and made it sound more like cryogenic
stasis than then a complete disembodied personality. Though your consciousness seems like it can
interact on a limited basis in that disembodied state but they he specifically talked about the
bodies being like so and even on short trips he said he uh stayed awake for a two-hour plane ride
and he was like the only one everybody else dead headed through it. Right that seems kind of
drastic to let yourself be killed for a two-hour plane ride and and uh come out on the other end
that was the other point I was going to make and since since they did say in the book it probably
takes like a day you know to to to restore you from backup that that that's that's that seems
rather drastic not to not to sit up and stay awake for two hours on the plane ride.
See I got he does say at one point that people switch bodies just to get over cold so you know
doing it to uh to fly for two hours doesn't seem that bad. Well I got the impression with the
the short-term stuff like the flights and even the space travel it was more like
possibly freezing your body but more like taking your brain and turning it off for a while and then
turn like like you would turn your cell phone off when you get on the plane and then you turn it
back on again when you land. Yeah exactly. Your cell phone is your brain. Right. Yeah that's what I
got out of it too was it was more just you know turning the switch off on your head but I don't
I think it's more than just that because Dan was planning on on well no I'm sorry that's a spoiler
but some people dead head for quite a long time and and you know their body's got to be there I guess
but yeah that's that's another part. I can hear the announcement now on the plane please check
off your consciousness until the pilot tells you we've reached a or a cruising altitude.
So this brought up a question for me which is I'm not going to say I'm terribly clever in thinking
about it because I think a million people have come up with it and I don't even think I came up
with it on my own. I'm sure I've heard it before but you know people and I have an answer for the
question but I'll give you guys just a shot the answer first but I'll ask is when someone is
restored from backup when they're when their physical body dies and their new body you know comes
back and all your memories are implanted there you know people always ask does the soul die with
the body or does it get moved into the new body with your memories are you the solar is this
something more ethereal and that's I think I think the book tries to ask that question and I think
I have a pretty good answer for it but let me hear what you guys think if you thought about it.
Well I think it didn't seem to me like there there's not that there's a lot of active religion left
in the world you're right they did say it is kind of mentioned you know is that the real you've
died the first time and but doesn't really go on you know not a whole lot of hand-ringing about
whether it is or not and you know this this has been approached in other science fiction like
kids but at least in the books on Star Trek you know it's first time somebody go on the
transporter and you know and we disassembled their molecules and reassemble I mean is it a
is it a is it the original person with their soul intact or is it a copy it comes out the
the other end and you know in that fiction it's never it's never really answered either they
they can say well we can do that no you know it's I guess so so important to their daily lives I
mean it would be like saying well you know to to keep your soul we've got to give up cars you know
how how many people are going to say I'm you know how you know it would totally transform their
society to give up this ability to constantly be reborn reborn into a younger body live forever
and not and not have to worry that you're going to go diving and and drown underwater
which is what happened to Julius at one point I guess it kind of also speaks to the brain
mind dichotomy it almost the only analogy I've ever come up with it makes any sense and it probably
only makes sense because of what we do is it's almost like the brain is the hardware and the mind
is the software that runs on it and then where does the soul fit into that is it a biological piece
is it some metaphysical thing that we can't explain what is it well I think like it's just that
culture in the book is just move past it because I I was thinking about it and I years ago I read
this and I can't remember what it was but it was basically the debate when heart transplants like
became like thought about like they weren't able to do it yet but they were thinking about them and
the big big question was is like well this take your soul if you like remove your heart and replace
it with another one which obviously nobody thinks about that anymore we just do it I mean it's
it's a serious procedure but you know it's pretty routine and happens a lot it's just one of those
things that people are scared of things that they don't understand but once a couple people do it
and it seems to be safe they're like oh okay well I guess it's not that big video the question will
be if we can get to the point where we can do a brain transplant what happens yeah so it's kind
of like your grandfather's axe you know this is this is my grandfather's axe it's had five handles
and three heads and it's just as good as the day he bought it so I really I like this question
pokey because I think that Cory missed a good opportunity here to explore this most of his
con most of Julius's conversations with Dan about this and they go back and forth about this all
the time it's it's one of the apparently one of their like favorite debate topics that they go
on and on about all the time and that all sort of happens off screen right so it all happens
through narration but you never actually hear the dialogue and so Cory never really lets us know
how the characters come down on this issue well no I think in a way he kind of does and they don't
talk about it like a soul either because I think X-101 is one that said that it's kind of a
religious topic and he just said the religious people just kind of died so you know they died
off so and that kind of and that makes sense in this story um they talked about it like um they
said if your if your body's destroyed and you clone a new body and your memories are transplanted
into it is the new you you or is it a new you are you gone and I think that's the way they put it
and uh I mean I guess I you know I'm thinking about the soul because that's the way we think about
it or I think about it anyway and uh but I think they did kind of address it and it seemed like
the people who felt like it didn't matter as much like okay there's a new body and there's my
my memories are implanted in it that's me now those are the people that switched their body because
they had a cold um whereas jewels did not like being refreshed from back up he said he would do it
if if something happened to him but he didn't like doing it he wouldn't he wouldn't just swap out
for nothing and that's why his body kind of got old um so I think that's how you tell where someone
falls and that issue is you know how how old is their body look at how often do they do this
well it almost brings another interesting parallel in it leaves all the things there and so I'm
gonna bring it in is I mean it says is it you were is it an exact copy of you I guess in the same
way if I go to Amazon and I buy an MP3 the their MP3 that they sold me didn't go away I just got a
copy of it what would prevent the them there for being you know ten of me you know if it's just
memories and a cloned body why couldn't I have my memories put into four bodies at once and get
more done yeah yeah I was gonna bring this up right I think I think the the point of you know
having a society that sort of is uh done with the sole debate is is because they've moved beyond
uniqueness right I mean it's it's it's apparent in their economy and it's apparent in their metaphysics
is that they the whole point is that things are not unique they are they are repeatable they are
duplicatable it's your memories your consciousness your body um and uh if the soul is simply an
accumulation I mean it depends on how you define the soul but if if they're if they're talking about
a thing that is absolutely unique and unrepeatable that has no place in the bitch in society because
the bitch in society uh doesn't value things that are unique and unrepeatable well they value
things that are unique the first time you do it and then they go and repeat it so you know it's
you know it's unique when you invent it it just is then repeated add in some item that's that's
a really good clarification yeah well and as they say in the book they didn't have to convince
people that they were right they just had to outlive them yeah exactly now my answer for the
soul question and now that I'm listening you guys talk about the self question if self is not
soul I I have to change my answer because does your soul die with your original body or does it
get moved on to the new one I think the answer that is it doesn't matter uh if you if you because
eventually you know you're gonna die and your soul goes away so if it if it goes away with your
first death and then your your your clones are now soul this individuals uh that doesn't make
any difference to your soul and if it gets moved along okay fine then it just gets to live until
you die so I think it doesn't matter but if self is something different than your soul I'm like
you guys are talking about where you could have copies of yourself which they didn't have in this
and I I wanted to bring that up and I wondered why they didn't um then self I think becomes something
very different I kind of like that it's kind of like a digital version of reincarnation yeah I
mean unless you are like like say I gotta I gotta be in two places at once shit all right so I make
a copy of me unless there's some law that says I can't do that I'm doing that and unless there's
another law that says well when you're done with that we need to merge these memories back together
I don't see how you avoid overpopulation within the first day or so of this I just got a vision of
a get repository of my consciousness that's awesome yeah well that's essentially what they have
right because when you restore from backup they have version control I mean Julius's ex you know
opts for a backup that can you know erase several years of real life and so they do have some sort
of consciousness version control I just want to be able to use the term go fork yourself
is this mean when you want to suggest somebody live their life differently you actually submit a
pull request to that person well see I think the other thing would be interesting is are there
going to be consciousness version control debates well you know I want my consciousness stored
and get because I think that does it better you've got to use bizarre no no you've got to use
oh I'm sticking with the old SVN's model I can't get it out of my eye life back up
can you imagine how snarky the issues that threads would be if you've got people fighting over
text editors now can you imagine consciousness editors oh my god can you imagine the the uh
like the boutique business that that would be editing consciousness for people
oh you can do it in emacs for sure is that a major motor or minor mode there's already a plug-in
I wrote a vim script to do that ages ago I'll drink to that who's thirsty
I ended up mining nano I can't remember anything well uh I'm surprised nobody's thought of the
the the natural extrapolation of that is okay just forget the whole physical thing go into matrix
you know we have all these people are bored saying uh okay there there hasn't been anything new
in a hundred years and I don't expect to see anything new and so I'm just going to tune out you
know I have myself backed up and have them knock me in the back of the head and then I'll I guess
like we we talked around a little bit that there there is a way it's your stored backup that you
bring yourself up and at least look at the newsfeed see if there's anything new and inside I'll go
back to bed for another thousand years uh but you know if you can do that and you're you're
you're you uh you don't want to live in the real world because there's nothing new to see
you know why not just stay in the virtual world and uh make whatever world that you want
oh I would there be anything why would there be anything new there then
yeah I got the impression that there was no virtual world fifty one fifty I don't think are
our soft I don't think in this book there's a computer powerful enough to run our software
at full speed it was just you know it can back it up it can store the data um but not
not run the software I guess if that makes sense if your post scarcity anyways I mean you should
be able to create anything you want in the real world yeah that's true yeah that's right uh
the only difference there would be in a virtual world the laws of physics need not apply whereas
in the physical world the laws of physics at whatever point you are need apply I mean I know they
talk about um being in space and so the laws of physics of space still apply but you can't just say
well I don't like this law of physics so it doesn't exist I was going to add a comment but then
I remembered it this boiler well and we haven't talked much about it you don't have to come back
with even a human well a human a human body but it could be modified uh you know uh
joys this old girlfriend uh modified herself so she could walk out walk naked out in the hard space
it made me very happy that in the future when apparently all things are possible there weren't
just a ton of people at Disney World with their assistance dog just just crapin up the place
one of the things that one of the characters said that I thought
was an interesting perspective but I don't necessarily agree with was he said he didn't want to be
a post person but in a world where I can be backed up restored to a body that's you know 20 years
younger I can have my arms add another two or three sets of arms if that's not post personhood
I'm not really sure what is I think that is what they're referring to is you can come out with
something you know different than the original human model yeah I think by post person he meant
just software only uh so one thing I wanted to at least touch on before we get to the drinking and
spoilers is what did everybody think of the uh readers voice and performance and such I thought he
did great I'd like sorry no it's the same thing I absolutely know uh uh difficulties with the reader
yeah it was kind of unremarkable so I guess that's good in a way um I didn't really pay attention
to the reader it was just you know very adequate for what it was I thought it was good
right there are some stories where the reader becomes a character in of itself and uh you
write this one this one just kind of faded in the background so what to let the material speak
for itself yeah I think the book we listened to last month the reader was more actively a part of
it because you got all the different personalities were more more drastic and the voices were more
drastic I occasionally I had a hard time with some of the more fringe characters because you know
you can only make your voice do so many things and it was one one person reading all the characters
there I was gonna say I thought he did an outstanding job considering the job that he had to do um
the the characters in this book aren't all that dissimilar and he did a good job at letting you know
when each character was speaking they they like if you read this book just the text of it I think
you'd have a hard time telling them apart if it didn't say Dan said this and Jules said that they
were they were so similar in in what they would say and when and you kind of needed that little bit
of a draw for Dan just to know and Dan wasn't very believable as a cowboy um I kind of I didn't
have to dwell on that I just marked that up as okay well we're in the future there isn't
gonna be many cowboys anyways so he's the closest thing um and and gets full credit for being it
and that's fine but the first time I listened to this audiobook it was on Cory doctor
was podcast and it was read by Cory and I thought this guy did a better job than Cory did
of of keeping these personalities distinct uh just by the use of his voice that was actually one
of the other reasons I suggested this version this book versus um Cory's reading of um Eastern
Standard tribe was uh that exactly this in addition to enjoying the story more for the
readers as we already talked about I thought that this the reading the the reading was better
well wasn't uh everything in this book pretty much uh first person uh from Jules' perspective
in other words is everything deep watch out all Dan watch out there's a spoiler there
no there everything was you know Dan said this and then he would you know the uh narrator would
go in the Dan's voice whereas other books uh you'd you'd have to use the voices to track who's
talking uh more of a first person versus a third person voice right and as far as reading and
editing quality goes I give this guy an a plus I only noticed one uh like editing typo I don't
know what he call that then it's not I'm not gonna say edit out that's ridiculous but one little
editing typo that I noticed in the entirety of of the recording it might have been in the second
episode and it was very small like a single word so yeah he gets like an a plus for his recording
and his editing okay go for it I take it from the commentary in the chat this this is the point
where we all go get our beverage yep yep we we can review a beverage here and uh and then we can
get into spoilers after the beverage review uh who's got a drink with him ready to review I'm good
to go it's reading cats and dogs here in Chapel Hill North Carolina so I uh decided before myself
a couple of my favorite tea which is uh mighty leaf ginger twist who makes that uh mighty
leafs is the mighty leaf is the brand yeah okay and uh tea with it twisted ginger yeah it's it's
a really really heavy uh ginger herbal tea um and it's fantastic cool cool so it's not it doesn't
have tea leaves in it when you say herbal tea that means there's no tea leaves right that's right
it's a teeson oh what isn't that the name for an herbal tea a teeson a teeson oh no I was asking
yeah it's not it doesn't actually have any tea leaves in it so it's a you know an herbal tea but
I think like the proper name to be to be specific about it is a teeson or a teeson is a is a
an herbal tea like beverage it doesn't actually have tea leaves in it oh okay cool can you say
that's one of your favorites so obviously you like it oh yeah yeah I've been drinking this tea
for years I was doing my masters at the University of Maine in Orno and I would have this tea when
it would get to be about oh I don't know 10 20 15 degrees sometimes below zero and whenever I
want to read books and uh stay warm I make a cup of this tea so when I knew we were having
book club and it was pouring out I knew it was time to make some uh ginger twist right so that's
so that's what like october to april bing I'm about two hours south of of uh humane oh man that's
fantastic I'm very envious I graduated from humane I graduated from what year I graduated from one
of the branches branches of humane in oh eight oh wow man we must have really uh we were over
we overlapped in our in our time up up in that neck it was what branch of humane did you graduate
farming ten so it's way out in the mountains up near scowhegan and now I live down in Wisconsin
gotcha gotcha I went to school at umo with uh somebody from scowhegan and we still keep in touch
regularly and I've been to scowhegan uh I loved it did you drink your tea with cream or sugar
or both or neither no way man straight up but I do steep it extra long I love I mean I'll steep
a bag of tea for sometimes ten twelve minutes I like it strong semiotic steepaholic
so should I expect a competing episode to my coffee episode about how you make tea
sadly there's nothing scientific about how I make tea I wish I was a little more scientific
about it but my my goal is buy a good electric tea kettle fire it up get a good full leaf tea
and uh experiment with different steeping times do you find one that works and then drink the
same tea for years so you don't you so you don't ever change anything that basically sounds like
my coffee episode right there right is the spice of disaster yeah man you said it x1 101 would you
get I am drinking a gift from a friend it is lugneetus imperial stout uh brewed in petaluma up
up near jessrose country I think I've had that one that's a good one isn't it oh yeah I just had
the first sip and that is delicious yeah you got my attention when you say stout what's what's
that one like well my snarky answer is it's stouty it's um little smoky little chocolate maybe
obviously dark enough but I can't see the other side of the glass which is how it should be
not much not much head on it very good though I expected it to be hoppyer being an imperial stout
but it's not though I've been drinking IPA so the past week so my op sense could be a little
overloaded yeah that'll temporary oh I like a good smoky stout they're not usually smoky how was
it unlike the creaminess uh not a really creamy it doesn't have that um somewhere between creamy
and oily texture that you usually get but this was in a um looking for the size of the bottle
not seeing it well a largest bottle prop oh 1.6 ounces bottle oh wow that's huge yes the oil
could still be at the bottom well I poured it I don't um I don't drink it out of the bottle it's too
big of a bottle yeah I'm kidding anyway and what about uh sweetness where is it falling that
spectrum and there's a little sweetness there but not at all overwhelming it just it's nicely
balanced oh man that sounds fantastic I'm gonna have to look for that one I'll snap a picture
and send it to you if you want to include it in the show notes um yeah I don't think I've ever
included a picture in the show notes I'll give it a try or if you just want to you know have a
picture of as you can go find it you could probably include the uh very advocate length easier
it's not a bad idea either 50 what are you drinking tonight okay this was something I almost
didn't pick up last week because uh well it's from fireman's brew which is in
ukia uk i a h california and this this is uh flavor beer from lamb that I hadn't seen
locally yet they they have another couple of them I think an ale in a in a logger that I you know
start seeing locally oh probably three months ago and tried both of them and was not at all impressed
I didn't really like either one of them they're fairly expensive here but it runs about eight bucks
a six pack so with with the experience that I had with those I wasn't I wasn't really eager to
grab this off the shelf but this this is a it's their brunette beer it's a double-bock and it's
made made with chocolate moths and and they say imported hops and we can see what imported hops
uh you know so you know I'm I'm a sucker for chocolate stout or chocolate box something like that
so I did try it's it's okay I you know it's not great but you know they're it uh I don't really
have a lot of choices around here right now for chocolate stout but my favorite beer that I've
ever had is mac acid which which is a milk stout also made with chocolate moths and they actually
they didn't really import the actual mac acid from Britain they they set up a brewery here and made
it for about three years so that I guess it didn't work for them financially and they quit so
but that's my favorite beer of all time and this is sort of this this is sort of an echo of it but it's
a very poor distant echo but right now it's about as close as I could get so you know I'm certain
I'll drink this again but it just could be so much better if you had young stubble chocolate
I have and that that kind of tastes to me like a yuhu so uh or or is a yuhu that the chocolate stuff
that you shake up the almost chocolate milk yeah I mean it's that's okay but that's not what I'm
looking for you there I mean it it it tastes like chocolate and felt no beer uh you know this
this is not really sweet mac mac acid is a sweet sweet beer by comparison this one isn't so much
it's a little on the sweet side a little maybe uh from the hops uh maybe a little spicy or tangy
it's not you know no no more than you expect from a double buck it's it or maybe less than you
expect from a double buck it's not it's it's not very hoppy I mean it's it's more hoppy than
American logger of course but it's it's no more hoppy than you expect from a beer a beer of this
type so at least I found one you know one offering from this brewery that I can tolerate like
I said I'll have it again because you know of that style of beer I don't think I have anything else
I can get around here right now there's that one milk stout that's popular I've seen it a few times
but it's it it's just a milk stout lactose stout without any taste uh hint of cocoa in it so
you know it's I don't think it's worth the price that's on it definitely
but uh like I said I don't I don't have much options for this style of beer here locally right now
so yes I'll give it a thumbs up on that well two things versus eight bucks for a six pack is a
is a good price in my area for a craft beer um a lot of them are a lot more expensive than that
there's there's a there's quite a few that are 10 and 12 bucks for a four pack but for a you
know micro brews are usually eight bucks for a six pack um but what is I'm not familiar with a
double-bock what is what is a double-bock generically oh you'd think uh being uh being on pod brewers for a
year uh I would be able to answer that but uh it's it's a type of ale but uh let me let me do a
little uh hitting Wikipedia while someone else tells about their their beverage all right peg
will you want to go next um I'm drinking some very cheap coffee that's all got word how do you brew it
in a french press here you go that helps screaming sugar screaming sugar
oh yeah drink it black and it's got hair and it's just I keep looking for trying to thinking about
doing a french press because I've done the um the way I do it for so long and I keep hearing
so many people talk about french press that it really does sound good it's different it's very
strong yeah it takes some of the bitterness out of the out of the coffee sounds exactly what I want
you get a lot more of the actual coffee flavor not just the bitterness and um really as far as
getting into it you can go to Walmart and get like a mister coffee one for like 20 bucks
I mean it's not gonna be like the greatest quality french press but it's gonna last you
for quite a while I've had mine um for about a year now I've gone through three of them because
I'm clumsy and I often knock them off counters and break them I bought a plastic one hey you know
what X-101 there's a discount store near my house and they had a single cup french presser
look I made about eight ounces and uh maybe 10 I I already have a french press I wasn't gonna get it
but I can pick that up for you could grab it next time you swing through if you'd like sounds good
to me let me know how much it is now hit you back with beers that was like six or seven dollars
it wasn't even beers it was like beer hit it was a wolfie right there you go beer wolfie
and Taj did you say yet what you're drinking I have not um I've decided to go crazy tonight just
throw a caution to the wind and uh I have a big old tall glass of water not any water but tap water
oh daring did you filter at least no no nobody got time for that slow down there man slow down
there aren't you driving yeah I want to party with that guy I knew something had gone to your head
I wasn't sure what it was well or city water I think we're on the city line right now we actually
have both um we can switch back and forth which is kind of nice but uh I'm pretty sure we're on the
city line right now go ahead 50 okay get back down if Tracy holds listens to this he's probably
going to drive up here to just to slap me I said this was an ale now a a buck is a sweet
relatively strong and alcohol and very lightly hopped logger a double buck is just more the same
higher alcohol content and sweeter usually tends for to be rather dark for a logger
uh so it's no wonder I don't taste a lot of hops I'm I'm you know I'm tasting like the
bitter dark chocolate flavor but uh but not but not really hops because there in a box there
shouldn't be uh any hop presence so okay I should have known that no hops well not not it says
a box you have no detectable hops like I said I mean it's it's a little I mean sweet and a little
bitter it's bitter aftertaste at the same time and then you know it's it it tastes like eating
you know baker's chocolate essentially so it's got hops but it's not a a platform for the hops to
stand up on and yell its name at you right right I you know I am not traditionally a big fan of
a hoppy beer I mean I you know I always like to try new beers but you know there's there seems
to be this tendency these days for you know my hops can beat up your hops and you know just just
have hops and no nothing else in the beer definitely I've said beer every store has has five to
fifteen IPAs and you're lucky if it has a stout I had a hot an IPA over the weekend that was from
stone which everything I've had from them is fantastic but they used what they were calling hop
bursting we're at the end of the brewing process where there usually isn't hops they take and
chuck a whole bunch more hops in it so it's basically hops with a finish of more hops oh that would
be a really that sounds like a not fun aftertaste you know dog I heard you like hops yeah it's kind
of how it was I think there's a beer that actually says that on the box I have to find that
okay so now fifty it sounds like it it's like when they say double does that mean like double
fermentation no it just just just just actually just extra just more probably sweeter than the
regular buck and also higher alcohol content though the Wikipedia story says that traditionally a
regular buck can go from 6.3 to 7.2 percent this is eight percent beer so this will catch up to
you pretty fast yeah that sounds it I usually one of my go-to beers if if they've got it I usually
grab it is a long trail it's a Vermont brewery they've got a beer called double bag and it sounds
like you're almost describing double bag but I know that's a double fermented I think it's I'm
pretty sure it's a double fermented beer but it's it's it's it's got just enough hops to make it
beer but yeah it's it's pretty heavy and malty and and not too sweet that's you might you might try
looking out for that one I see that all the time but with the with the poke stamp of a fruel like
that I've kind of we're gonna try that oh it's if it's my go-to beer if they have it if they don't
have it I'll grab Sam Adams of course but if they've got that and I I don't and I usually grab it
if they have it just because I like it that much and if and then like if I feel like experimenting
I'll experiment and if not then it's Sam Adams like Sam's my number two but okay so sorry
that has to be the thing I absolutely love having moved up here from from the Midwest is just the
plethora of micro and craft breweries you know when I usually when I told my mother when I went to
visitor to get me some IPA and I expected you know Sam Adams because that's craft brew where I'm
where I grew up and I was pleasantly surprised to get something else whereas here you know a craft
brew as you said you can spend ten or twelve dollars and get four beers and not feel ripped off
yeah yeah I still have to try yingling I'm we're still just a little too far north to get that
oh man I next time my head homework I'll get some and stop and drop it off
cool it sounds great it sounds great I almost cracked one of those tonight instead of the team
and I was a tough call but yingling is my go-to nice listen I can't I can't wait much longer I've
got a really special beer here tonight and I am dying of heat exhaustion here I got to try this
thing such anticipation sorry I'm pouring it man this thing's a very aromatic beer I'm pouring it
and I can smell it from like two feet away it's a it's dogfish head is the name of the brewery they're
out of Milton Delaware I'm already jealous and this one is the sazon Dubuff if I'm pronouncing that
correctly and I just pour this thing down the very edge of the glass and it's got like an inch and
a half ahead I didn't even get the whole twelve ounces in my glass which I usually have no problem
doing this thing built up the head real fast tons of bubbles coming up the side and a guy at the
the beer store no sorry not the beer store excuse me a place called craft beer seller and
Nashua New Hampshire he recommended it I told him I needed one that had a lot of characters I had
to review it and he said oh get this is all kinds of spices and stuff in it so the the bottle
says it's ale that's brewed with parsley sage rosemary and thyme oh yeah and it smells like I don't
know like a oh shoot what's that tree like a cedar it almost smells like a cedar tree like this
the needles you know man that sounds great yes but to say that sounds pretty fantastic and refreshing
I don't think I had that one but I'm sure when I went to filly last year that that one
pub that just had like 50 60 beers on the on the menu had something from dogfish had that I tried
wow this is fantastic he was absolutely right this there's like six or eight flavors in here
that are all kind of roll over each other it's it's real sweet it's very sweet it's um light
in color it's pouring out of the bottle it almost looked clear but once it's in the glass it's
it's got quite a bit of yellow to it looks like maybe a blonde ale um and the the head is just
almost pure white it's um damn it's really good it's got just all kinds of spices and it's like
almost peppery at the finish it's uh it's something man I wish I was one of those super taste
are guys who could taste a million different things at once I'm more of like a chocolate I
but like this is I can tell this is special the guy didn't lie to me this is a definite thumbs up
I had something from them over the last weekend that actually had a little bit of wasabi in the
finish and that was really interesting so that's cool I shared it with a couple of people and
everyone's like oh yeah oh yeah there's the wasabi and I took me about half my glass before I
got it's real it was really really faint on the tail end oh 50 this is the beer you ought to drink
on um on colonel panic nights because this is I can tell already this is real belchee
oh peckwell's already told me about the beer on the on the colonel panic nights
yeah you kind of have it tendency to just blow right into your microphone
yeah this is cool I wish I knew how to describe this but it's very complex I can say that I
can't really put much of a finger on it better than that just so I'm not not good enough as
there a beer reviewer but yeah this is something I wish I bought more than one now like
this that store if you ever can get to the craft beer seller and there appears to be quite a
few of them though like a chain but they let you break up all the six packs and you can just make
your own six pack out of whatever's in the store each beer is is priced individually like by the
bottle yeah I've got one of those two miles up the road oh you lucky duck they don't really have
very it's not a craft brew store that does that it's kind of it's called treats and it's kind of a
just a fine consumables it's got cheese and wine and olives and baked goods and it just happens to
have a little corner in the back with beers and make your own four or six pack I'm guessing they
probably sell like balls and rolling papers and stuff too no no it's not that kind of place very
touristy that town oh you're lucky the only place near me that lets you break up a six pack or even
has a really good selection to like they have half the stores like balls you know it's just it's
obnoxious though give the state a couple of years and maybe people will legalize and then maybe
they will start selling that stuff yeah it's not that I have a problem with it I just don't I
don't know it just seems to be like a big ridiculous obnoxious distraction get that it's own
store and get it out of my beer store yeah kind of did we get everybody I think we did okay cool
yeah sorry we got a full crew tonight and yeah boy the the carbonation in this one is is pushing
it in quick I can already feel a slight affection on this beer all right who wants to spoil this
thing well pokey and it's probably something you noticed uh since you're talking about the
inconsistencies uh but in the book when you know when Julius loses all is wolfie you know and in
you see you know he loses the ability to have this apartment the magic kingdom so you know so
you know he he moved from the house he served his girlfriend to you know uh sweeten her room in the
the modern pavilion or what and it's I swear I stayed when I was a kid we went to the magic kingdom
that not kind of like regular hotel room but real good views but uh but then he you know he
loses all is wolfie can't even get that you know it's like no you can't stay on the park there
and they didn't mention what he talked about college experiences you know you can get not even
like a cubicle it's just like a you know like one of these uh Chinese or Japanese hotels where you
rip you know like a coffin shaped space that you crawl up into um you know he loses the ability to
have a car you know somebody just takes his car decides decides that I'm more important than you are
so I can just take your car that you've been using but it gets down to the point I get I guess
he can still eat he couldn't eat in the park they won't feed him there so he's got to you know
go out to wherever the great unwashed masses eat and eat there uh but the one thing that they said
that he lost his network access and maybe that's because he's no longer got it wired into his head
yes that was I did notice that because yeah you know that's one of the things that the two things
that the two things they established early in the book was you know no matter how much of a bum
you are to drag on society you get to eat and you get network access you know he even said travel
he said travel in network access you can even get around well they will you know he you know uh
he when he uh hooks up with the girl who killed him uh you know and they they can go in the space
you know so they still he still has travel oh no but he had a pile of woofie after that
I was gonna say he had buckets of sympathy woofie at that point right because after that was after
the big reveal where it was revealed that he was actually murdered uh in a scheme to uh to
advance Debra's ad hoc right yeah but yes that was one of the inconsistencies that I noticed was
when his handheld stock work and I went wait I'm in it that's not supposed to happen and I didn't
catch that until like I said the third time I went through this book I I that was today you know
hall and one sitting at high speed and I kind of you know I like I like his word I flash baked it
I love those didn't uh when he was you know he was thinking out his options didn't didn't you know
thinking aloud or you know writing it or whatever he was thinking about going back to space even
before uh Dan publicly told about what what he did to it yeah well I think he he went back to space
just because he he realized he's finally done with Disney world he's finally he's outgrown it
um you know he kept going back there as you know hanging on to the past hanging on to this old
thing but he finally kind of evolved out of it um Lil's parents told him you know you're
magic kingdoms no good for you and you're surely no good for it and he said he realized it as
they you know at the same same time or just before so he finally it's not good for him he's it's
told them down told them back and he's just destroying it even at the end when he uh you know kind
of quote-unquote wins and gets all that sympathy woofie and and everyone realizes that he was
actually murdered he was right the whole time sort of uh even that he tore it all down again that
they they went back in and destroyed all that work again so he he had to get out of there
well yeah and that's part of it I mean I kind of breathe 31 around Julius that uh you know
his whole efforts to uh destroy Deborah's organization by by doing these underhanded
things were you know were completely non productive to his own cause I think particularly
because he was so bad at being subtle yeah subtlety was not as strong soon absolutely right
he had the subtlety of a drunken bull in a china shop yeah I was going to say a hoodie in a crowbar
is not subtle well no and neither is chasing around the naked girlfriend all over the space
station and bumping into everyone who's screwing but apparently that's very popular
well in space everything's popular I've already bought my ticket cost me like six HBR episodes were
the woofie but I bought my ticket now that's something we we could do it's to get a deal where you
get wolfie when you post that episode and you know people listen to it they can give you wolfie
about how good it was but we already have that we got the feedback you know you can comment on a
show if you like it I tried to I tried to comment on on you know as many as I can yeah HPR is already
pretty much a meritocracy where you know if you put good stuff out people pretty much appreciate you
and tell you about it yeah it's pretty bitching definitely bitching that's you go in the new promo
so here's another inconsistency that I found and didn't didn't notice it again I didn't notice
this until the third time you know flashback in the book is why couldn't they make a backup of him
just because the shitness head didn't work anymore that shouldn't affect anything I mean originally
there were people who got backed up they didn't have you can't tell me that implants before they
learn how to back people up nobody would volunteer to go on to the knife for that experiment
well no no because Julius Julius was alive before they did you know before the bit you know he
was on the tail end of the not bitching society he was 20 years old before they had the bitching
society and had that you know had were were post labor and but you know before they had that
before they had the tact you know slog you know he even talks about it that he did have the
implants surgically implanted the first time that leads those two ideas lead into the thing that
I had seen was kind of exactly but 50 was talking about where that first generation that was alive
during the revolution when the bitching society took over they had to have started out as 100%
biological and at some point had this cochlear implants implanted I know that every and every
generation that was born has to start out as you know 100% flesh and blood and then have the
cochlear implants implanted and then from there the any clones that they have could have it
grown in or whatever so if his broke why couldn't they rip it out and put a new one in other than
the fact that that's a huge plot device and would totally trash the story right because there's
that there were no well of course yeah the doctor said well we can't do that but obviously they
have to do it for adolescence the the first time I mean this is one of the things we talked about
that Wolfie could buy for you that you know if you if you had high enough Wolfie you could actually
get real doctors the doctor in this story was a guy all he knew to say was nope you're
you're sick we need to restore you from back up a technician not a doctor exactly they're you
know that the the implication was yeah it was probably scientifically possible but he wasn't worth
do you know like first heart transplants you know if you had to pay for it yourself
you'd have to be how are it used to be able to afford it and this is you know this kind of thing
here you're not important enough for for us to spend these resources on tp your screwed up body
alive and no it still doesn't work though because he had plenty at the end of the book and it's
known as body that he's trying to keep alive it's his memories of Dan that he's trying to keep a
lot of so at the end of the book he's got loads and loads of Wolfie if there's someone on the planet
who knows how to either implant new technology or extract the memories for his next backup you think
he would have done that and and in the context of the story that there isn't someone who can do that
but there kind of has to be because there's still there's Lill Lill's only 20 years old and she's
naturally born she wasn't cloned so she had to have had that the you know the the hardware the
wet where would have been to call it implanted do they ever actually say that though
did that not tonight they ever actually say that she was born and not concocted for lack of a better
word yeah you know her she's old she's only in reality 20 or so years old no but he's right you're
you're right x1 101 they said it said that she was their daughter but you're right it didn't say
that you know anyone went through the the birthing process or even copulation you're right she
could have been a gene spliced clone for all we know that's true you could you could you could clone
the fertilized egg I guess and then you know take with all the stuff in there and boom here you are
you're you know you're new born daughter maybe it's just me and I maybe made this up as part of
my head cannon to make it make sense and Poke you probably know because you just read it wasn't
there some reference to his like physical brain damage and that's why they couldn't do it like
in my mind it was like the biological hooks they needed to plug it in were not there anymore we're
not functioning see I got it was completely other way it was the circuitry attached to his biology
that was broke that's what I understood as well and one thing that really stuck out to me is
how people just go yeah I'm just gonna do crack it's what I'm gonna do today
but it was decaf crack but it was decaf crack yeah they didn't want to get the jitters
that's not something everybody does damn right no actually you guys are both right the doctor did say
that it was a malfunction with his brain or with the brain hardware interface from his clone but
I am certain the doctor was wrong he was taking a guess at it because the hardware failed the hardware
failed it got fried when he took the hit from that herf gun he didn't know he got hit from
the herf gun until a day or so later and he never admitted that to the doctor or to anybody else
only him and Dan knew that I think the doctor made an assumption there because again he's just a
technician this hardware failing the only way that I can think it failed was during your backup
because that's only was it eight weeks after that that that he went to see the doctor for that
not even I don't think so that's it that's an interesting point uh how come wasn't Dan fried
because if it would if it bounced off the uh fairy cage around the ride would it would it would
have got both of them so I always want to you know Dan just didn't say okay you're being a dick
and I'm sorry I shouldn't have said that but you're you're you're being unreasonable and point
at point of the Julius intentionally well because I don't think it was that it bounced so much as
that it was directional and it was fired from below Julius so it was fired through him and towards
the attraction yes absolutely he told Dan to set it to its its widest spread so that it would hit
it like a cone it would fire out a cone and he wanted the the widest possible cone uh first of all
so yes it did hit him because it was below his head and it he said it was highly directional but he
said to you know make the cone it's widest possible so it hit him um I don't think anything bounced off
of the shielding because I'm pretty sure I'm not I'm not 100% sure but I'm pretty sure that's not
the way a fairer day cage works I think it just kind of absorbs it and and grounds it out
but that was something that I had the benefit of realizing the second time that I listened to the book
I knew that his head got damaged at some point so I the second time through listening to this
I paid close attention to the timeline so that I could keep the story straight but I had the
the added benefit of forgetting how the book ended so even the second time I I listened to it I
forgot that it was Dan that pulled the trigger so that was all surprised to me but you know this
whole point we're going over was a really big sticking point to me not so much when I I guess it
was my third time through it really hit home because I read it I listened to it before I
recommend it and then I listened to it again just in the last week or so and the last time I listened
to it I'm like wait a minute they there has to be the ability to put this in to people the only
thing I think is maybe the stuff that was in him was damaged enough that they couldn't take it out
to put a new one in or he just wasn't worth their time would have been the other one but that again
gets shot in the in the foot at the end when he becomes worth their time yeah I think you're right
that's the only thing that I thought of was that it could not be replaced it could only be implanted
that first time I think I think we have I think I have to go with that because I couldn't think of
another one yeah I'm going to invent I'm going to invent something here but it's possible that
you know he's working with an older version of the technology right or or or a or a post like post
adolescent version of the technology maybe somebody of Lill's generation for example gets the
technology and planted at birth and so it grows with them but his was put in you know as
folks have already pointed out when he was about 20 years old so his version might be different
and obsolete he was the second or third clone at that point so it would have been only sounded like
it was only like a decade old yeah he'd just been murdered you know six months before you know
or a year I guess eventually I mean it would have been refreshed the year before when Dan killed
him and you you would assume they would do upgrades when they're when they're growing the clone
it wouldn't it wouldn't it they're not cloning the hardware they got just they got to build the
hardware like any other electronic device I don't think they're using nanobots to create it
means they were they would he would have had the latest hardware yeah that's very true and the
fact it remains that you can you know you can be age apparent whatever so and Dan shifts Dan
shifts apparent age you know in the middle or about a third of the way through the book so yeah
that that that shoots that theory now what about Dan did what did you guys think of him as a character
well up until the end when you find out that it was his doing that jewels gets murdered I found
him interesting and at the end I guess I still found him interesting and I couldn't decide whether
I liked him or didn't like him the word I want to use for him at first I liked him but the word I
want to use for him I can't right now um did this have the son has the explicit tag so go for it he
was kind of a dick um at first you know he seemed kind of cool nice you know helping jewels out
with you know getting food and all this other stuff and just whatever and like sharing his stories
and all that but then you well you find out later you know he hasn't killed but and he also
ends up hooking up with jewels his girlfriend it's not really that cool it's kind of a he's not
really uh you know much of a bro there well there you know I think we've all met people like this
who have tons of charisma and you know they're they're they're like because everybody wants to
like the guy and but they're you know they're sort of a user of all the people around them
right and I think that through Dan we get a little commentary from Corey like through Dan
and through his character development through his through his actions we get a little commentary from
Corey about you know the plausibility of a society based entirely on reputation it still does not
eliminate selfishness and Dan turns out to be a really really selfish character you find out
throughout you know especially toward the end it also I think goes to talks about how volatile I
know I brought this up earlier but how volatile a reputation based economy would be I mean it could
take you 10 years to build a good reputation and one petty thing to blow the whole thing the volatility
makes that that reminds me something I wanted to say earlier um if it is that volatile and it seems
to be and it seems like it would be I can imagine that just based on your location you have
runaway inflation like I can see things in some places very little wolfie goes a very long way
and then in other places like desirable places to be like the magic kingdom it takes tons of
wolfie to get anything done at all which I just as we can get back to that or skip it or whatever
it's not really that important what I wanted to ask do you guys think Dan really was a dick was he
just a dick or did he have a a lapse did he have like a oh because he lost all his wolfie and
and was broke and couldn't get anything done that he just had a weakness and and would he be okay
if he was okay again no I think he was maybe sort of a sociopath I mean you know it's so easy for
him to make friends and get people to do what he wants to do because everybody wants to hang out with
the cool kid uh you know he can afford to sacrifice friends he just doesn't really understand
he's no concept but that's only when he's popular you know he does still kind of need friends to
you know lift him back up when he's burned out I don't know I see Dan is like completely everything
he's does is totally justifiable by their economic system like if you take like the example of
jewels car like someone just takes it because they don't think he deserves it anymore I see Dan
is being like as much as he preached and railed against things he's like the perfect epitome of
how that system works and jewels is just old enough to remember something different I think you're
right and I think the only thing that made Dan a dick is that he's old enough to remember something
different because even Lil said it they were like dude they only killed you it's not like they did
something permanent right I mean it's not like murderers actually a crime I guess if they could
have caught the girl in the beginning there might have been some consequences but there's there's
absolutely no mention the book of anything like a justice system however he did take Lil and that's
a dick move I realized the only it seems like the only pardon me it seems like the only two things
of any scarcity whatsoever are real estate and quality people and clearly Lil is a quality person
or at least an interesting one but she bails on jewels so fast that I don't think she's that much
of quality person so I think taking her was a dick move of Dan's she bails but but uh
jules is also practically batshit crazy during the time she bails so I mean there might be a
little bit of a reason for her to do that yeah she's used to people on mood mood all-trick drugs
automatically implemented in planning in your brain because the computer in there says
yeah we need to mail you out a little bit I mean I don't know why people should take crack
would want to be smoking crack they could just tell their computer to just flood their head with drugs
or dopamine yeah the result of drugs no I kind of I saw what Lil did as not being uh
excusable or inexcusable I just thought it was being immature I think anybody who'd been around
long enough would have known hey there's really actually something wrong here and we have to figure
out what it is whereas she was just like well there's something wrong here and it's all about me
that's just an immature way to look at things and I can I can understand that because she was only
20 compared to his hundred and Dan's hundred and plus but I don't know I still don't think that
excuses Dan I don't think that I don't think that's any indication of her being a you know
spectacularly quality person well I mean ultimately I mean I keep going back to the economy I think
that that's part of that like if you're to get wealthy like you do things for other people which
it looks like a good idea but really you're always doing it for this selfish motivation to to make
more so I could I could see you know it a lot of people being all about themselves in a society where
there's no scarcity and everybody has their needs net their needs net wow okay so this
fear did get to me do you think that there is or can be such a thing as altruism well on one hand
everybody who's maintaining the park is doing it because they care about the park and they care
about people's experiences when they come to the park but they're also doing it to gain their
reputation of having done so maybe I think at first like emotion would be the reason while altruism
would still work but I think over time that would wear away like people would just get rid of it
I think the people who are old enough to remember you know like somebody does something for you really
nice and it's thoughtful you know that would be you know they might do it not because of wealthy
just because but as people compared that against other things where they got rewarded I think it
would slowly fade away it's it's to me it's the same thing is like the kids in my classroom
every time you ask them to do something the first thing that they ask is well what do I get
and it's all about that and I see it just kind of an extension of that going forward
and I see the people working the park a lot of it is you know doing something just to be doing
something to have something to do to give to to give their life meeting I mean if you have robots
you know building your spaceships and doing all that for you certainly you could have
robots running around keeping the park running running forever it's just I guess one thing is
scary there's scarcity of something to do to actually give your life meeting I mean not everybody can
you know write symphonies or you know come out with these new mass transit plans yet
I think that was Dan's main point into why he ended up well why he was going to kill himself
and ended up deadheading was the scarcity of something interesting yeah I see like the like everybody
that we see is into creative things and maybe that's like the one thing that they can't reproduce
you know creativity or like art in general because even when they're talking about redoing the
mansion and stuff in the Hall of Presidents like it's all in a way an artistic pursuit and the
Imagineers that's an artistic pursuit like that's writing symphonies that's an artistic pursuit like
maybe that's something that they haven't been able to quantify in the Wolfie system and so that's
what people are drawn to to do I am 100% with you Taj on that and on the last thing he said to
I do not think that running the park is an act of altruism I was going to say I think running
the park is an expression of art and I don't know where I heard it I heard it a long time ago
but yeah I've heard that poor people of the lower class they want their kids to be middle class
and middle class you know workers they want their kids to be you know technicians and scientists
and doctors and those people technician scientists and doctors the upper class they want their
kids to be artists it always seems to come around to artists and then artists I forget what they
said artists want their kids to be but it seems like in this society yes doctors say again
said they want them to be fed yeah that's true that's true and yes it does seem like everything
that people are working towards in here is art and if all your science is taken care of that
actually makes sense right that's sort of a harkens back to what we're talking about a little bit
ago with the pursuit of the unique right when everything else can be copied the perpetual pursuit
is that thing well we're we're constantly in pursuit of that thing that that can't be that
that is a once occurrence like that that novelty right the constant pursuit of novelty because once
it occurs you know we have the the flash of uniqueness and creativity that then can be you know
quantified copied and relegated to sort of the the dustbin in the search of the new again
well that's exactly what I think the flash baking is the first time is that it's something clever
and new and mind-blowing and then they want to do it for everything because hey this was a
cool trick and it worked yeah yeah see that and that kind of scares me because I'm not very artistic I
mean I'm creative but I'm not artistic but I can I can copy like geometric patterns you know
as far as art I can do that to like a fractal degree but I can't make like something creative
and unique I can't imagine things and then make them real from that it's just not that's not my talent
so I would be one of the dudes living in the little you know below ground coffins eating the
goop from a dispenser well I mean joyous says that at one point you know he says that folks who
who do the who do the do some of the work like he says that the the dull repetition of labor and
and he says you know tending bar or mopping up toilet he says those people command a lot of woofy
and they they they you know enjoy a ton of leisure time because they accumulate a lot of good will
for the task that they do and like you're talking about like not being artistic I think artistic
in a broad sense like um pass just like physical art or like creative art um I kind of like I'm
going back to like way back to start track like that's probably like the biggest example of a
post-scarcity society that pretty much everybody's familiar with if you're not in starfleet or
something like that in your human being because humans are the the ones that are post-scarcity um
if you're not into science and exploring you you're you're like a chef or like you run a winery or
like it's you know art can take lots of different forms you could argue that even being an explorer
or scientist is a form of art like there's there's there's something behind that I mean obviously
and in like a star track or even in this world they probably consent robots to do all the exploring
they've ever need to do like it's probably really inefficient to send the humans to do it but they
still do it because there's something there to do and it's it's fulfilling in a way and at least you
know in the star track you know comparison there are things that we're human beings we are still
better at than anything we can build right we can put improvisation that's that's about it
yeah exactly we can put a ton of robots on Mars but we still want to go there I mean if you
told me I could go there right now I'd be like all right I mean uh it's just there's there's
something there you know it's it's it's some drive that I think some people have and if you have
nothing else to do why wouldn't you follow that the Taj there is a place you can sign up good
of Mars that will never happen that Mars one thing um it'll never happen how much your money did
you give them no I just somebody's gonna it there's too much uh too much prestige that can be one
by doing that that they'll let just some upstart come up and do it somebody else will do it first
that's woofie Taj right yeah I you guys can have Mars I'd rather just go to the woods it'll be
mark shuttle worst now since I asked I thought Dan I saw him a little differently I didn't think he
was a dick by nature I thought he got desperate and made a bad choice that he kind of got stuck in
and then it's kind of like a um you know like a downward spiral spiral when you make a bad choice
and another bad choice presents itself it looks good I think that was you know just more weakness with
Lill I think he might have discovered that he was a hypocrite being that he you know once the woofie
was gone he really couldn't live his life you know where where he would like to go out to these
remote places where woofie didn't mean anything and he you know but he kept accumulating all this
woofie so he stayed comfortable um as far as that goes he reminded me of a buddy of mine who's
like the most likable person on earth um and just everywhere I go everybody likes this guy and
and and I love him he's like one of my best friends um I kind of pictured him as as him as my
buddy uh he not that my buddies ever gone through a thing where he turned into a dick but just that
likable side of him reminded me of him a lot and I could really see where jewels was coming from
where he he really loved Dan um you know as a friend not like you know boy girl lover or boy
boy love but just a friend love um there was no bromance right exactly exactly they were just really
kindred spirits they were they were close and I think he meant it when he said he did forgive Dan
um and I don't think that that's because jewels was so altruistic that he could forgive the act
I think it was because he loved Dan he could forgive Dan for anything he couldn't have forgiven
anybody else for that well you do have to take into account too that being murdered doesn't
mean that much it was a very minimal inconvenience to him image it meant a lot to him he took it
he took it very seriously he took it so seriously that people took note of how seriously he took it
and as well and in the end it did cost him I mean eventually it's going to cost him you know decades
uh uh of his life that he won't remember when he gets recycled the next time
but all the things that cost him were because of choices he made he could have blown it off like no
big deal because he made a backup like 15 minutes before if somebody told you they needed to
you to do something and it was going to cost you a day of your life and it was a good friend of yours
you probably laugh it off do it and not I mean it's like Dan asked him to help him move
I've helped people move that takes more time than he was in convenience um okay so you said that
everything bad happened and because of his choices I think I can counter that and say that all
of his choices were made because he was victimized if he wasn't feeling like a victim he would not
have made many of his bad choices but I think the him being murdered put Deborah closer to her
goal which eventually achieved of you know taking over not not just the Hall of Presidents but the
the Haunted Mansion as well right and that's exactly what I was going to say if it'd be 150 I think
that Julius wasn't so upset about being murdered it wasn't the actual act that really frustrated him
even though he did not enjoy it he says several times I don't enjoy being brought back to life
but it was what it represented right it was this moment of betrayal from who he this guy that he
really does genuinely love I guess his best friend in the whole world and instead you know his best
friend betrays him in the in the most insidious way possible he's teaming up with his art tribal
Deborah who Julius obviously disrespects and has has no faith in and who he sees as unimaginative
and just sort of I mean he respects her skill and her craft but he he doesn't he doesn't like what
she's what she is going to do to the park and so I think when we're talking about you know how
Julius feels towards Dan it's more the symbol the symbolicity of being of being murdered by his
friend it's why would you why would you do this to me because you teamed up with somebody you
know I I don't like and who's actively trying to undermine me and you know you know cut all
these changes towards flashbacking I mean that kind of make you know I kind of developed an
interest in the rides while I was going through this I mean I've been to Disneyland and Disney
World but kind of rekindled that might talk about that for a quick but you know the point was made
the book why rip out the original ride if you're just going to do flashback you can put that on
the net and people can people can experience it anywhere you know me I guess you could do and I'm
certainly you know why they have vids that that's a good question what maybe the flashback is such a
new thing but why sit down and watch a vid for three hours where you could just flashback the story
and you could be the star of the vid through the whole thing it seems like that's uh you know I
could see would be cool all we'd have a ride and you know you can walk in and actually experience
your own personal ghost story you know this this one of the things we like we talked about before
you know you can't you can't really have a ghost story in the real world but you could you can
flashback it and you can actually you know then remember being chased by ghosts and vampires
or or or what not so but you know why rip out the ride to do that why not just have it floating
around on the net real estate if the the importance of that was real estate it was the location of the
thing good jewels said it they could have done that anywhere they could have done it anywhere else
and it would have been probably just as well received I just don't think it would have come with
the the scale of wuffy you know that that comes with doing it there and like I'm totally on
little side with preserving the root goldberg machine you know just because it is art
um as far as keeping keeping the park the way it is I like it for its mechanical intricacy I'm
not with jewels for keeping it the way that it is just because it can be consistent I don't
I don't like his idea that I think I think you know they're they're very different motives for
doing what they did and I'm on little side and not jewels is in this particular case well actually
have it enhance some of the effects at you know for for that ride uh since they both opened I think
in 1969 for the one in the California I think is the next year or later that same year for the
for the one in Florida both both of them they're they're they've made subtle improvements but
you know I I was I said I'd like to get on this before we quit I know it's getting late but I
you know I went back through watching YouTube videos on how how the effects like the ballroom
and everything were actually done and you know it's it's just right I mean they're actually the
the visual effects is it's stuff that that dates back to the 1800s that they're that they're doing
and uh you know it's uh you know I just thought it was incredible hey they were you know they
they had this whole elaborate thing built in in 1969 this is supposed to be 300 years in the
future it hasn't been altered until then but jewels himself came up with all these ideas oh we're
going to rip out the tracks I mean they talk about ripping the big reflective uh window out out of
the place and I've got a little history on on that so you know what you do that it's no longer
the haunted mansion as any of us know it anyway so I'm not so sure I see too much difference between
you know having your animatronic uh ghouls run by people you know run by sad people working for
mirror from home but this you know I shouldn't say this uh but uh you know uh you know outsourced
to the internet you know people people are going to be running these ghouls around telepresence they
called it all right it's going to be complete it's going to be a completely different uh experience
after three four hundred years or whatever it's fit well I guess I've been that long because
jewels is only a hundred or so 200 years let's say uh yeah so he's all he's all four that you know
this sort this sort of halfway measure that he's come up with but after you know after things
been preserved as as is for 200 years I think you know you you change it and you lose all the history
yeah I I think jewels was a hypocrite to do all that and I mean absolutely he was a hypocrite it
then at first what he was talking about was preserving a place and so it was little for we know
their own reasons what you just said but yes when he did that when he said we have to change to
stay ahead of Deborah that was just a competition for possession that was not he he went totally
became a hypocrite at that point but I will stand by my earlier statements say that I think he did
that because he was victimized I don't know that he would have made that same choice if he wasn't
feeling I mean let everyone's been a victim everybody knows that feeling of complete powerlessness
and weakness and desperation and I think that's where he was when he when he made that decision
and we were talking go ahead back well we were talking about things that bugged us a little bit this
kind of just popped in my head I'm sorry for interrupting this part but when he was going to be
restored from one backup and the doctor says that he stroke prone and it actually goes into the
detail about how he died from a stroke at one point and he remembered all of that why in the
backups can they not fix that that's something that kind of did bug me well you've got a point if
they can give you extra elbows you know what why couldn't why couldn't they fix that oh I think
that's just because it was genetic that he was stroke prone not not software well they're not
giving you extra elbows and software I mean they had people walking around with you know extra
arms more joints than the rest of us you know I I think court was a little confused he said you
know reverse jointed like a like a bird or something at one point and really they had the same joints
and legs we do just their different links you know or like a cat or something you know cat that
you know you know he looks like it's backwards because you're looking at that what we think of
as a neon say a cat or dog that's actually their heel and they're walking on their toes and
they still got a knee it's just they have incredibly short thighs so by comparison yeah but those
but those things are all surgical yeah but no these people are being cloned with you know with
extra parts what we don't have so what why couldn't you fix congenital heart condition or an
erasm or something I don't think they were I don't think they were being cloned that way I
think he I think he was talking about them being surgically altered and he even made mention of
gene splicers turning out to the complete complete freaks and and he said he didn't want to turn out
like one of them because they were just apparently that was just not perfected then what we talk about
gene splicing earlier didn't think of it then but yeah he did say he didn't want to turn out like
one of those gene splicing weirdos or freaks or something I forget the word he used
okay I have to disagree I think these people were just through you know they they think
of something new they want on their body and they throw away the old one and have have themselves
cloned with extra parts I was under the impression that as pokie said they were added surgically
like to the existing body um I would I would hazard a guess that like once they died or got tired
or that like then they could just restore from another backup and just have a regular body again
okay maybe I missed that if you two said it was you know post cloning modifications all except that
I had a question I wanted to bring it up um simply because it's I just kind of want to get
everybody else's opinion on it um I didn't touch this book for a very a long time because it
had to do with Disney I'm the world's grumpyest man and I hate everything that has to do with
and so I wanted nothing to do with this book and why did Corey pick that like it's obviously
like a distinct reason I had my theories but why Disney why did he pick that let's hear your theory
because I know the answer oh you know the answer I just want to jump in and I just want to jump
in and agree that I'm also fairly anti-Disney and for quite a while I avoided this book
not not because I'm grumpy but because I think Disney has done a lot to harm the copyright landscape
and for that I really don't like them and I know that you know in the next 10 years I'm gonna have
to suck it up and deal with it because my daughter is gonna love Disney everything and it's gonna
be terrible I just Disney world sucks have you ever been like it's terrible yes that's the other
reason I don't like it like I don't mind Disney movies I mean some of them are cool I mean did
you go in the haunted mansion though because that was the one thing that I remember liking from
Disney world it was all right I'm like a roller coaster dude so like there's no there's like one
roller coaster and the rest of it sucks I don't know see I figured it was because jewels you know he
wants to be happy and you know Disney world supposed to be the happiest place on earth so what was your
guess because I actually do know the answer but I want to hear your guess I'm now curious this is
you actually don't the answer I don't know I think it was like because it you know in this
post scarcity post capitalist world like that even then even after everything else falls down
Disney is somehow like this oasis of happiness like I don't know how that happened uh just kind of
I wonder if it's like just irony or snark that he just picked Disney um or just because it was
something that a lot of people know like a lot of people have been there they have a connection
to that place and some people freaking love that place and I don't get them at all um some of those
people are in my family and they're like oh I got to go to Disney like twice a year and I'm like
what is wrong with you like there's so many better places on the planet to go um you know I've
got a bunch of different ideas but nothing completely solid so uh hit me with hit me with some
knowledge both of you what's the deal what's the deal I have a guess uh I want to avenge I want to
try to guess before I hear poke because I actually don't have to ask anybody else yeah I think I
would say I would have to say that Corey brings to the the novel a a love hay relationship with
this thing called Disney not just the park but this entity uh because he is such a crusader for
copyright reform and for the rights of creators and uh Disney as as we've already said a bit
you know as we've already said is is not been the friendliest uh entity with regard to those issues
but Corey also I think personally is enthralled by Disney imagining I mean the ability to I mean
they are science fiction practitioners I mean what they do is they create robots and they help us
imagine the future and Corey is a science fiction novel and he's invested in helping people imagine
better and different futures and that's what Disney Imagineering does and that's what the parks do
in the flesh so like I feel like embodied in Corey is this this this conflicted person who has
this love hay relationship with this thing called Disney and I think that that relationship fuels
a fur that kind of relationship fuels a first novel right I mean that that kind of intensive
emotional connection to a place is what you're supposed to do for your first novel right you
write what you know you write what you're passionate about and I I would guess if I had to guess
that that's why I picked Disney World holy shit that was a guess that would be my that would be my
guess you nailed it is that right well then yeah there's no way I could have guessed that actually
I must have read it somewhere then I must have read it because uh that that that I can't I'm
never that spot on with anything no good yeah maybe because you're exactly right he loves Disney
world he loves the Disney parks um he he goes on it great I've heard him go on a great length
about the attention to detail paid to every little thing in the park like um if you wanted to go
through a nitpick the park you'd be hard pressed to find a piece of gum stuck where that someone
stuck somewhere like under a bench or something that somebody didn't notice and scrape free is the way
he describes that attention to detail every little you know screw is is painted and covered up every
little repair everything is just it's it's perfect as an experience um and the artistry that goes on
that the imaginary exactly as you said um and also exactly as you said and and Walt Disney being
you know this guy pushing these Imagineers and pushing these people to to not just
entertain but to give people an experience he's he's gone on and on and on about that but then
there is that dichotomy there is the the the uh the damage that they've done to the uh copyrights
intellectual property um as a topic uh I don't know if he said this or if I've just thought this
so long but I think Disney has done tremendous tremendous damage to our culture um just in the fact
that you know here's this giant umbrella corporation that you know gives out glowing rays of
happiness yet they own you know corporations that own corporations that own corporations and
you dig down deep enough and and under the Disney umbrella you've got I mean you name it it's
it's covered under the Disney umbrella it's just a happy face that they paint on everything
and and they do a fantastic job of that in the park and I'm with everybody who said all their
rides suck and the only really fun ones are the you know space mountain and and I I did like the
the um the the haunted mansion if this were not about the haunted mansion I would not have been
able to relate with the attraction to Disney at all when I was a kid I we went there and just
waited all day in line to get to you know three rides and then when they had the uh the what
Corey calls the snow crash parade it's exactly what happened to us so we said to hell with this
parade let's go check out something that doesn't have a line and we went on the haunted mansion
six times in a row and it was it was it just trapped my attention every single time trying to
figure out how the the ghosts in the mirror work or the shadows in the ballroom that don't have any
anything casting a shadow it was just was stunning to me as a kid and I could totally relate to
I just wanted to throw a few more things into your the dichotomy of Disney discussion
Disney has gotten to the point where they own everything you know all the things that were
pool from my childhood marvel comics star wars Disney owns that now here here amen I mean to
tangent just a moment I'm really hesitant about what's going to happen with a new star wars
trilogy you know I've wanted it forever but because it's Disney that's doing it it kind of hurts
my heart a little bit I'm not worried about Disney I'm worried about JJ Abrams I second that I
mean he's already ruined Star Trek oh I I can't agree with you on that but I think that regardless
of how you feel about his previous work I think that him doing Star Wars and Star Trek just that's
one of those where you shouldn't cross the streams well his whole way of making Star Trek was I'm
going to make Star Trek into Star Wars and throw out everything that was Star Trek and then he
gets Star Wars and he's like oh yeah all that stuff that everybody read and love for like you
know the 20 years there was no Star Wars yeah I'm throwing that out too no that was Disney that did
that as far as I know anyway I bet he had something to do with it because that was his whole idea
with rebooting Star Trek because he didn't want to deal with the cannon because he didn't know it
and he didn't care and that's that is the thing for me is that there's so much Star Wars fanfic
extended universe cannon that's being retconned that's awful well I mean it you know and it's
ironic because you know no no other fantasy universe has paid more attention to cannon through the
years that then Star Wars I mean right after the first movie there there was some you know
due fiction I guess you would say that because they sure were written for adults they weren't
written for the little kids but about three Star Wars paperbacks that came out dealing with
Han Solo and Shabaka before you know the Vince of the of a new hope and in it you know they're
you know Han climbs into a Han climbs into a Z95 star hunter it's a head hunter yes and 20 years
later that shows up in the game so either Lucas someplace in his original notes had to talk about
the head hunter or somebody read through those old novels and brought that in and see I thought
that a shadows of the Empire which falls right after Empire Strikes Back I thought that was the first
officially licensed book and it was written in the 90s no there was well everything like the way
that it had worked with Star Wars is is that there were different levels of cannon and they were all
like it was one cannon but some things were like loose cannon so there were a couple books that were
before like shadows and the the the throwing trilogy and stuff that were they still counted so
they kind of cherry picked they picked the things that they liked and kind of retconned the other
stuff away and so so they just they've always had kind of a flexible continuity but they at least
paid attention to it I mean they there was literally a dude at Lucas that like that was job he was
like the the library and he took care of it the other point I wanted to to make before we wrap up
was just the damage they've done to the culture our culture because of the damage they've done to
the comments you know a hundred years ago things that were copyrighted fell into and I use that term
kind of loosely fell into public domain and now to protect Mickey Mouse and to keep Mickey Mouse
out of public domain they just keep pushing copyright forward and basically robbing the comments
whereas Corey is deliberately intentionally putting brand new things into the comments and that's
you know an interesting dichotomy when when I sorry X1101 I didn't mean to throw you off or the
text chat that we're throwing back and forth when I asked if we could wrap I meant for people to
make points not to say hey can I make my point before we wrap I meant does anybody have any closing
points well I hate it I said I'll do it quick you know reading this book did kind of bring
back the haunted mansion for me because I meant I mentioned earlier was a little kid probably five or
six went out to California and I saw Disney land and the haunted mansion was closed then and then
we went to Disney World a couple years later three years later I think well it would have been
72 and I was thinking I started well I have no recollection of going through the haunted mansion
I don't want to close why didn't I go through it and so yeah we I started looking at the video
you know the virtual tours online actually I got to all five of the different versions
and I mentioned that in the it I won't go over again I mentioned I mentioned in the post to
the newsletter but yeah I said I don't remember any I must have missed it but then for some
reason taking the virtual tours I you know soon as they got to the long gaining room I'm oh yeah
I've been there you know so I knew I knew I'd been through it before I don't really remember a whole
lot about the rest of the ride it was nice you know I said I went through a bunch of the virtual
tours of the ride and then there's a great I did post you might include a poke if you want
the links that I put on me in the submission to to the HPR mailing list yesterday there you
know it's really an excellent documentary on how they went about building the haunted mansion and
the original one and the one Disney world and and how all the effects were created and then there's
another one that I haven't watched that you know it is like about the same people I think up
behind the scenes look at at the Han mansion I think both both of them are are well worth watching
because a lot a lot of effects are that you know when you're going through that you know the ballroom
sequence it's be cut you know everything's done there's a big clear paint a glass between you and
everything in the scene what it is is underneath where your car is going that's how they do the
ghosts the ghosts are all under there and they're solid and moving around but they're they're they're
varying the intensity of light behind them to make them appear and disappear reflected off this
glass and the fact reason I wanted to mention that this glass is a very you know when it was made
for the original Han mansion in California was the biggest sheet of glass ever made and the
mansion was built around it and so I guess back in the 80s some Yehu got in there for pistol
actually shot holes through the glass oh no yeah and they they were like what do we do it's like we
got it you know to replace this piece of glass we've got to tear the roof off the place
and so I guess what they eventually did is they put these like spider web decals over the
bold holes fortunately you know it just blew a hole through the glass it didn't crack out
or anything like that so the bold holes are still there that wow that's almost worth the trip
just to go see that so I thought that was very I knew that when I got to the point in story where
you know for jewels thing they were breaking up that piece of glass I'm taking it out in sections
you know so that's that's like the end of the original experience when you take that glass out
yeah yeah for sure it's it's um astonishing that the the glass stood up and didn't break
all right I think it's a I think it's a pretty thick chunk of glass yeah still it's brittle um
all right anybody else have anything to say to wrap up or should we start having a public
discussion of our private chat about our next book I think we know what the next book
gonna let the next book's gonna be yeah last three chapters were posted this weekend so he I
I think he may have been since you had him on the mailing list uh Poke I I have to suspect he
may have been an anticipation of us uh making a choice now you might be right about that
semiatic robotic was that your guess too about what sayin were you were you talking about street
candles too oh no I and that's that's interesting no I didn't put that connection together but it
seemed like everybody was uh coalescing around cthulhu oh I thought everybody was saying put
cthulhu off and do it for October I totally that would be awesome to do around Halloween just
because that's such an amazing story yeah I can wait until then I've never heard it or read it
hey Poke if we're gonna do um because you were talking about possibly because next month is a
little shirt a little short um if we did street candles why don't we do that as August and September
and break it in half like we talked about before and then do cthulhu for October well maybe yeah but
I don't know the more I think about it the less I want to break uh street candles in half I really
think we should just I mean we did we're almost at three hours tonight uh you know not counting the
little bit that I recorded before we got here um hey we're like two and a half hours so for
something like street candles and this was a short story so for something like street candles
I think we just got a plan on it being a very long show but I my only concern about it being
you know we pushed this show back a week so it makes the time period between now and the next
recording very short if any of the the home audience you know our our participants at home players
long at home would ever call it I can't think of the funny word for that but you know if anybody at
home wants to listen to it that might not be enough time for someone who hasn't listened to it yet
I think we're all almost cheating because I think most of us have heard street candles and love it
and can't wait to do it but I have not so it'll be uh first time through for me okay bye yeah yeah
same here oh really okay cheese okay because I was thinking mate just for that reason and that
reason alone because it's a it's a long book it's a short month and it really deserves the
attention I was I was thinking of saying do that next month and do something shorter this month
um and semiotic robotic had an idea for a short one and I had an idea for a short one if we
wanted to go that way I'm not saying that you know we I'm definitely on the charge of the book club
this is a community project so um I don't know what do you guys think if it's a long book that
deserves a lot of attention and we think that we would benefit as a community from pushing it off a
month I wouldn't mind doing a short one now and then doing it uh in August that also if we
pre-decide that we're going to do that in August for the August to September month we can allow
people more time to read to listen to it if they choose to I agree that sounds like a good idea
so yeah like it's fine now oh that's uh actually a very good idea I didn't even consider that
yeah definitely put definitely put the link in the notes for uh for this one but yeah I can see how
you know I don't I don't want participants I have to just rush through it to uh to get it done
because it's it's not it's not something should be rushed through it should be savored
sounds like a plan okay cool that sounds good and then I know after that or the month after that
will do uh call a cthulhu that that uh bake oh shit I shouldn't have probably pre-nounced it sorry
I think you know that it's while that
now I'm the dick all right uh so uh so just beep out everything just beep out every reference to
call a cthulhu just you know I can't do two and a half hours of editing I'm just going to clip the
tail and the head off of it and put the music on it be done with it just so I can like this
so what was what was the one you were thinking of semi-out of robotic for the for the short one since
you are a newest uh host and we've traditionally you know let the newest host pick though it actually
it's kind of cutting ties couldn't be picked one yet but anyway what was your idea for short one
that's very kind but I was I in the chat I was responding to somebody else so I didn't I didn't
have a uh a solid idea for short one I make it certainly come up with some good suggestions
and an email to you but um you know I'll I'll save my uh new guy card for uh for the future
all right in Todd you haven't picked one yet right no I was the one that mentioned the short one
I think it was responding to me oh I'm sorry yeah alright so what was your idea for short one then um
it is a book that I found like last year and it hit every like geeky bone in my body and I loved it
and it's really short and it's just like a dime store novel but it's amazing um it's Seth Kenlon
and it's revolution radio oh yeah wait is there uh is it has he got an audio book of that
there is an audio book of it you do have to go to his site though and I'm not sure let me look
up and see what the site is bitch and we'll do that for sure we love Seth around here yeah I wish
I knew that guy personally yeah don't we all well that even be I thought I had a good idea for
short one but that tops it I was gonna say we do uh Cory doctor's other book that I just
refound true names because that takes uh the whole you know different merge your personality and
everyone's in an AI that takes that idea to its you know to Cory's vision of its ultimate end
and I thought that was really good but you know maybe that's like uh that's extracurricular if you
finish um would you say revolution radio was the name of it if if we finished if you finished that
before next month go ahead and listen to true names just because it's good yeah it's uh it's
called revolution radio if you go to Seth. kinlin.com so it's s-e-t-h.k-n-k-e-n-l-o-n.com it's
under stuff you can only hear he's got a lot of different uh sub things but it's under there
and uh you can get the uh he's got the the e-book or the audio book I like what a fantastic idea
yeah it's um I picked it up right about the same time I got into ham radio and the the common
threads between those two things are unbelievable. I'm really cool. All right so anybody following
along at home the book uh that we'll review next and uh we'll we'll meet for the recording August
what is it 12 so on August 12th uh 7 p.m. eastern time we'll review um Seth Kenlin's
revolution radio and when you finish that because the short one start listening immediately to
to uh street candles. No start reading now put put your names off we're not we don't have to
review that one we covered most of that here tonight anyway. No start in on street candles because
that'll be a long one we'll do that in mid-September second Tuesday and September.
Awesome plan guys thank you and I will have to say I'll be reading more Cory Doctrone now this is
the first uh first one of his I did or I'd ever done and when I tried it a year ago like I said I
said immediately I didn't like it so I'm glad you guys made me read it so it opens up a whole
bunch of new material for me to listen to. Yeah 50 you have to read little brother and homeland
like those are awesome. I was actually going to suggest um makers. Oh that's good too yeah that one too.
Yeah I was going to say crap wound if you if you have to have some more Cory Doctrone. Just
we're gonna say it's all there yeah it's all there do it all. The the one thing from my daughter
just read um uh little brother and uh there's something in there that the computer recognizes people
by the way they walk and they call it gate recognition and you know if I go to like I'm sitting
with my daughter and there's like junior high school kids around especially you can just point
go gate recognition because they all do have a unique walk and it makes perfect sense and we just
laugh at that every time. Hey Poke if she's more of a fan of physical books and your interest that I
have uh homeland here I can loan you guys. Oh we already bought it sure to read it on the
Kindle but thank you. Okay here's it here's an interesting catch I was going to ask about this
but I just verified for sure um revolution radio is going to be exclusive to the genutists this
is available in aug vorbos only as a as a download or as an AAC why an AAC that's kind of weird.
Okay so the genutists and the anti-genutists only. The super free and the super not free. Yeah
there's no empty three version of it. I'm good I listen to everything on my Android phone which
does play hog. Yeah I'm good too and if it's if it's that short and you get a whole month you can
listen to it on a but even a windows machine can play hogs so you're okay. Just download the
LZ you'll be able to use it. I was a dinosaur exactly the same thing. All right so yeah I think
that about wraps it up this has been one of the most fun shows that we've ever done this uh the
conversation was was really I don't think we've had this interesting discussion about a book
since we did um oh shoot now I can't remember the name of the book the Lester Del Rey book that we
did might have even been the first one we ever did but uh yeah this has been great guys thank you so
much. Hey my pleasure thanks guys really really fun. I can curve. Thanks for being the gathered
organizers at Poke. Oh thanks man that's sweetie you're welcome you're very welcome as long as
people keep showing up we'll do this. All my woofie Poke. Woohoo oh it's too heavy to carry. I need
I need a wheelbarrow. Use some of that woofie by wheelbarrow. Yeah figured I should finally come on
I mean you've been inviting me forever so yeah we need you around too man I love you. I love you too
man. Oh and you 250 I'm glad you came on tonight that was you had some very interesting things to
say and uh I just I love having everybody on here it's great having so many different perspectives
and and I'm it's weird that this book on the surface the first time I listened to it I thought it
was a really like lightweight story but then we get to talk about it there was so much there to uncover
and that's that was really fantastic I don't think I would have noticed that had it not been
our assigned book so uh all my woofie to x1101 for picking the book. I've just enjoyed you know
having a chance to listen to it a couple of times and getting really a bunch of different
perspectives on it because you know I've only had one set of experiences and having other filters
to process this book through has been really fascinating. Cool all right well uh that's all I
have to say so I just want to thank you guys and say goodnight and then maybe else has a closing
go for it because I'm all done I'm I'm I'm all I've taken all my time. Night folks.
Good night all. Peace there, brother. Bye y'all. Goodbye.
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Thank you for listening to Hacker Public Radio. You don't like pizza king?
I've never seen one. No pizza king is terrible. It's the uh how does it compare to little
Caesars? It's quite a step up from little Caesars. Do they give you a little paper crown to wear while
you eat? No, Pokey, that's Hacker King. Now, Pekwold, do you have the ones that have the train
that bring the drinks to you because that's like the only selling feature here for my daughter is
like oh the place with the train? It doesn't bring drinks to anymore. They got rid of that here
but there is a giant like train car you can actually sit in that's inside the restaurant.
There's a restaurant at the top of the hill here that I've since I've lived in this town since
like 2008 it's had like four different owners and it's never really changed much in quality. It's
just kind of bland but they have a train there now for the little kids to ride out in like their yards.
I want to go back again. That's the only reason why. So you can ride it? So my nephew can ride it
with me. Trains much too big for Pokey. I mean, he's the little teeny tiny bikes.
I don't need no stinkin train. I got my short bus.
Pokey, that fabric you sent me is awesome. I've been played around with it.
Isn't that nice stuff? Yeah, it's perfect. When you told me it was floral, I expected
something different. Man, it's it's pretty much camo. Yeah, isn't it? It's like, I mean,
it's got flowers on it but yeah, it's camo totally. To be fair, floral is camo if you're in a flower shop.
Fair point. Florals camo if you're in the woods actually. It's it's pretty good as long as
there's got plenty of greens and browns in it or reds, it's fine. Well, and if it's if it's too,
you know, too many of the same colors, even if it's camo, it makes a pattern and you can see it.
So I mean, a little bit of color is not that bad on it. Right, right, right. Hey, we got semiotic
robotic. What's up, man? You need a sound check, I bet. Hey guys, yeah, hopefully you can you can
hear me. This is my maiden mumble and I've never mumbled before, but I hope you can hear me. Yeah,
so I'm fantastic. Sweet, awesome. I think we'll give it a couple more minutes just to see if
anybody else shows up. I know a couple of people, I don't even pay attention to who says like, maybe
and no, I figure if everybody just says maybe to the invite that means they want to keep it on
their calendar and I'm fine with that, but I don't. Good call inviting Corey. I didn't know if he
would respond or not, but that was that was suave. Good move. Yeah, he only emailed me so I didn't
get like his voice, but the tone of his email, he'd seem disappointed that he couldn't make it and
he's just the combination of time zones and how much he's traveling right now and how little sleep
he's getting. This would keep him up well past midnight. So I think it would even start well past
midnight. So he just he couldn't he couldn't spend the sleep on it. Is this we know what I got out
of it. Yeah, I probably would have made some kind of Eastern standard tribe joke about that.
Oh, I definitely should have, but I did get a little something out of him. I was looking for
his short story, one of his short stories that I like a whole lot. I could not remember the name of
it and his website is really not good for searching stuff on, but he he told me what the name
that was. So I scored there. What story was it's one called true names and he wrote it with
somebody else, but it's it's fantastic. That was really a head trip. I remember reading that one.
I haven't read that. He write that with Charlie straws. I'd have to look that up and see who he wrote
it with. You guys hear me? Okay. Yeah. Loud and clear, man. Okay, it's weird. Ever since I updated
this computer, the fancy headphones and speaker or microphones haven't won a cooperate. I've
been breaking up like I had no bandwidth. So I want I want to ask him time to go switch the other
computer. There is something weird going on with it. You do sound a little echoey, but it's a
really short, short echo. It's not it's more like a weird sound than an echo. It's not like
distracting or anything. And it was a bit of static too, but it's not it's not bad. It's certainly
doable. Yeah, my a my end. It sounds like a little static around your voice. Yeah, I'm only getting
static. You can't hear me, Pegwool. No, man. I mean, I can hear you, but I mean, I'm only getting
that little bit of static there. I'm not hearing that go. Okay. And semiotic robotic. Are you using
headphones or speakers? I'm using a speaker. I'm actually on my mobile phone. Okay. All right,
you've got a real. That's plumble. I'm on plumble. Wow. That's the best I've heard plumble sound.
You must have a Wi-Fi connection. Even my mind sounded awful. Yeah, I'm on Wi-Fi.
What device are you using? It's a Galaxy Note 2. Hm, I've never heard one sound that good.
Yeah, I had a 2012 Nexus 7, and I might have just had some settings wrong, but I sounded bad.
Nope. Plumble just updated today in the FJord repose too.
Yeah, I was thinking to myself, boy, what great timing. I don't even know if I got the update,
though I guess my phone automatically installed it, but yeah, it was great timing.
Yeah, it sounds good too. Great. When I saw Corey on the invite, I had two conflicting thoughts.
My first was it would be really cool to talk to him. And my second was a very strong concern
that I would just go all-sandboy and it would be weird. Yeah, I had that worry myself.
I can't have the opposite worry because I didn't particularly like this book, but I really like
his other stuff, so I didn't want to like offend him. Well, that's, I've read several of his books,
and I haven't found one. I didn't at least appreciate it if it wasn't exactly what I liked.
Oh boy, I can't wait to begin the review. This is going to be good. Benjamin Rosenbaum was the
guy that he wrote true names with. Interesting. I definitely didn't know he collaborated with anybody
other than Charlie Strauss, so that's really interesting. I'll have to look it up. Obviously,
it's CC license somewhere. Oh, yeah. You can get it on his website in any format you want,
and I think I downloaded the audio version from his website too, but I listened to it on his
podcast a long time ago, maybe two, three years ago, and then this time when I got back,
let me tell me the name of it. I just downloaded an e-book and just was reading it on the Kindle.
Cool. It's a very good read. I'm enjoying the read even more than the audio book, which is
strange for me. Yeah, I'll admit upfront, I cheated a little bit on the old audio book club here,
and actually reread down and out because it was easier to do on the bus and before bed.
Interesting. Oh, we should start this thing then. Do you guys all ready to start? Any objections?
Do you have the recorder on? Yes. You asked me that last time and it made it into the post show.
Well, I figure it's funny enough. I should point it out so that doesn't happen again.
We should just pretend like we this is like the third take. Just pretend like that.
Take four. Just make it a running gag.
