Distractible - I Tried So Hard And I Got So Far But In The End It Didn't Even Matter

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

Today Bob's story of Google Glass inspires Mark and Wade to find great stories of failure in history. -- Grab your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal by going to nordvpn.com/distractible to get a Huge Discount off your NordVPN Plan + 4 months for free! It’s completely risk free with Nord’s 30 day money-back guarantee! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Whoa, what are you listening to this for? Wait, who's talking? You know you're driving a 2024 Ford Escape with available Alexa built-in, so you can change the music. Oh yeah. Alexa, change station to 99.2. See? Purchase a 2024 Escape ST-Line all-wheel drive with Tech Pack at 3.49% APR for 72 months with down payment. That's just $267 bi-weekly. Cash value of $40,294. Plus, eligible Ford owners get a $1,000 bonus. For details, visit your local Ford store or Ford.ca.

This episode is brought to you by Secret. Secret deodorant gives you 72 hours of clinically proven odor protection, free of aluminum, parabens, dyes, talc, and baking soda. It's made with pH- ph balancing minerals and crafted with skin conditioning oils so whether you're going for a run or just running late do what life throws your way and smell like you didn't find secret at your nearest walmart or shoppers drug mart today good evening gentle listener and welcome to Distractible, a Will F. production. This week, Bob judges and indulges in podophilia and masterfully baiting whales.

Wade reveals black market firefighters and has grave job opportunities. Mark gains prescient PAM points with a yarn about hiding in BS and exploding tons of stinking sperm. Yes, it's time for I Tried So Hard and I Got So Far, but in the end, it didn't even matter. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show. Hello and welcome back to Distractible. Unless you're new here, then just regular welcome. And where have you been? It's fine.

It's fine. Don't worry about that. This is a podcast hosted by myself, Bob, and competed in by my two friends and occasional hosts, but mostly competitors, if we're honest, Mark and Wade. Hello. Howdy howdy. Hello. Howdy howdy.

Hello. Oh, they're stuck in a loop. Nope that pause mute whatever if you don't know if you don't know this podcast is a competition i'm hosted today which also means i am judging and my two co-hosts are not actually hosts because they're trying to win over the course of the episode they will accrue points or something like points, and at the end, I will decide a winner based on points or maybe not, and the winner hosts the next episode. And I'll get to compete in that episode

against the loser of this one to show them how much of a loser they are. So yeah, it's a very uplifting, it's a very positive podcast, you know? It's a positive mental attitude kind of place we got here. But before we jump into the competition, or maybe it's all competitive, we usually like to do a little small talk.

How are you, gentlemen? How are your feet? I don't know why that's last. Those are good. Man, so good. Feet solid. Man. So good. Feet solid. Yeah. 10 out of 10 on WikiFeet or the Good Feet store.

Good Feets. Yeah, I did it right the first time. Good Feets. Good Feets. Good Eats sister website. That would be the best follow-up to Alden Brown having Good Eats. It's like a weird celebrity foot photo website called Good Feet, hosted by Alden Brown. Their toe licking good.

I don't know. I can't even lick my own toes. We can lick each other's toes. Can we reboot the episode? Can we just stop and get the rewind sound effect in there and then not talk about feet? How are your hairs? My hairs? talk about feet how are your my hairs i don't know i was trying to think something neutral that's not hurt or injured

on anybody that everybody has that was not a good choice just like with family members i've lost a lot over the years that's how my hair is okay great can, great. Can we go back to feet? Can we go back again and try once more? Howdy, howdy. How are your elbows? No, nothing controversial about elbows. Tell you what. Oh, my weenuses are great. That's fine.

That's fine. That's what it is. My weenuses are moist. Well, my elbows are good, strong. No accidental falling over, breaking your elbow situations no why would that occur i'm fine you know what bob i'm gonna go ahead and suck up for points here i like your questions thanks man it's not that his questions are the problem it's you wade and your responses to said questions that i have trouble wow competitors saying the other competitors the problem how original i love it points for mark thank you all right you know fair enough

more points for wade for kissing my ass though i love that oh yes that is that is expected uh anyway great small talk we've learned a lot really caught up personally It's only been 36 hours since we were together doing this. What do you mean? That was a week ago. Yeah. Anyway, does anyone have any funny news stories or anything, Mark? I'm the host, but that's sort of your game. Is that a request? I hadn't prepped any.

Do you have your magical list of hilarious shit that Pam finds for you? Come on. Our resident international reporter, Pam, hasn't updated the list since the last time I tapped into it, so there's not... I don't have a Pam. I've got some funny news. Huh? I've got some really funny news to pretty much everybody, I think.

Except Mark. Stadia's dead! How's that for funny? Well, kind of stealing Bob's thunder there for the whole premise of the episode, aren't you, Wade? It's news. I found it. I get to deliver it. I don't think that's true even remotely.

We were all here five minutes ago. You know that, right? But I found it. You found it? I found someone else's work and I took credit for it. The message that Amy left in our group chat That says it that we're all looking at is that we're counting as you finding it. No, I found it on social media I didn't see it here. No

Amy did find it first. Yes This is a hundred percent true That's like where that info came from when we talked about that literally right before we were all like all right let's record it wasn't though i was i was scrolling through twitter and i saw it it was i assumed you had seen that no that's what i thought too i was scrolling through twitter and i was like oh guys i got the biggest breaking story thanks to Tom Verge. You're behind the times, man. I don't ever look at our own Discord. Okay, I concede my points to Amy.

It's fine. That's fair. I don't know. Amy takes the lead in a rare fourth party point concession. Is Amy the fourth person in the Discord? She's the fourth wall. We must not break her, I guess. Oh, God.

Don't break don't break amy first roll of theater never break amy all right well we're off to a great start i do have news if you want it but i don't know how much more derailed this episode can get no i like it this is how i like to host all right oklahoma man leads authorities on pursuit. Found hours later hiding in cow manure. Is there a picture? There's no picture.

You clearly had to have misread the word Florida, man. Yeah, that's all the story is. Nine is Oklahoma, unfortunately. Police in Nahuatl County, Oklahoma, say 23-year-old Wolf October Berry. What? What was that name initially fled from officers who were attempting to make a traffic stop for not wearing a seat belt Barry sped away from the officers drove down a country road before crashing and continuing to flee on foot authorities say

Barry was located later that day after hiding in cow manure for several hours damn and that's it he must have been in some deep shit he almost made it to the 12 hour cutoff too if he had just made it four or five more hours they'd have given up but the stars were flashing on the screen they're about to go away do you think they circled the pile of cow manure before they found him you know they're like i know he's in there i can see his head sticking out. It's like when a parent knows where their kid is and they're just pretending not to. He must not be here. He must. Where could he be?

I think we lost him, but let's hang around for another hour until maybe we'll find him. Anyway, that's the story I got from award-winning reporter Pam. Pam does such a good job. Pam does a good job. I concede Mark's points to Pam. Fair enough. I'll allow it. Yay.

We're going to have the next week off, man. It's going to be great. Yeah. It's going to be me, Pam, and Amy. Mark and I are going to go to, I don't know, the Bahamas or something. Yeah, okay. Oklahoma, I hear, is good this time of year. They got great shit.

Yeah, great shit. It's starting to cool down, too. You really need to find a place to stay nice and toasty. That's why they call it Cold Lahoma. Let's move on immediately. I was thinking through it, and I was just about to say, you know what? I think that's the best version of that.

I'm going to give it to you. All right, I'll take it. Because Oklahoma is way worse. Oklahoma. Oklahoma. That just sounds like a terrible drink. Yeah. But we have to do this part, guys.

I'm sorry to tell you. We have to move on to the competition now, where you'll tear each other limb from limb metaphorically and verbally just punch each other right in the face a bunch probably maybe or maybe it'll be really fun oh no no we'll see anyway i'm gonna roll a d20 to stab mark in the heart what why i rolled a two did i was 60 you stabbed yourself in the feet next time when I check in on your feet you'll have a real story to tell just like every competition I defeat myself

harder than anyone else can I've learned long ago that I simply need to say nothing and you will destroy yourself in due time I will joust us both alright alright on to the topic of the day the year 2013 i'm a young lad actually the years probably before that i don't know the specific year 2012 probably i'm a young lad i've worn glasses my whole life and i've loved technology

my whole life i wish i didn't have to wear I guess. But also they kind of round out my face. You know, my eyes are really squinty. So glasses kind of help with that situation. And I have kind of a strong brow. And I wish my eyebrows were naturally a little less bushy. But that's not the point. I have to wear glasses and I love technology. I've always been really excited about smartphones.

I almost had a panic attack the first time I got a smartphone. Parents got it for me for my birthday it wasn't an iphone it was the android version and i was a big android fanboy for a long time until i got an iphone where was i going with this oh right it's 20 sounds familiar it's 2010 2012. 2012 again anyway suddenly out nowhere, the company that I'm a big fan of makes Android. Google announces a new product. April of 2012. Sergey Brin wore a prototype of a thing called The Glass

to an event in San Francisco at the Foundation Fighting Blindness. May 2012. They demonstrate for the first time how you can shoot videos on this thing. Effectively, if you've never heard of the Google Glass technology, it is like a little camera thing with like a little display thing that sits right on the edge of your glasses. Or if you don't wear glasses, it sits right on the edge of a weird looking frame that doesn't contain any lenses but goes all the way across the front of your face and it's the i don't know if it's fair to say the first but it's one of the first hands-free wearable pieces of technology with a camera and a display it's like the future it's like science fiction you could talk to it you can say google take a picture and it'll be all uh we'll put in a picture sound this is a shutter i was gonna try and make it with my mouth but that

i you know what pictures sound like put that in that's a camera that's why i didn't do it with my mouth yep i love that camera model that's that's one of the 1800 models you know the steam powered anyway i got so excited about this did you guys see google glass when it was like announced yeah and the explorer thing yeah it was 10 years ago i've got like three pairs now they're great well that'd be impressive uh anyway for 1500 bucks you could buy one of these bad boys i didn't have that kind of money when i was that age so So I never actually bought one. But man, did I want one. I looked at videos of people using it.

I looked at all the features it could have. We started... All the wet... What? We started Drunk Minecraft in 2012. Yep. So weren't you rich? Oh, well...

Is that how that works? Well, that's a secret. I don't know. Gotcha. Anyway, I coveted these bad boys. They had a ton of cool technology. They were tiny. They were the future to me.

And I think a lot of people saw that and saw the future of like wearables and technology. At that point, I didn't even know if the Apple Watch existed. Not at that point. No way. I don't think so. So like wearables were still coming. And Google was like, sci-fi glasses. Boom.

Take that. And yeah, they went on-fi glasses, boom, take that. And yeah, they went on for a while in 2015. Technically, the beta ended. They were like early access science glasses until 2015. And they actually lived a lot longer than I thought. But ultimately, as I slowly and painfully arrived to the theme of this episode, these glasses from Google turned out to be basically nothing but a big huge colossal failure on google's part and i maintain that it was mainly because they were way ahead of their

time because i think if something like this came out today and was a little bit more refined and cool i think people would go crazy for that oh yeah i think we're in a time period where people are all about wearables and and tech in your home and all of this stuff it's way more common like tons of people have apple watches and google watches and sam like there are all these smart watches and stuff i think it was just way ahead of its time and it didn't quite maybe have the technology to stand up to what phones were capable of so it felt a little bit weak but turned out to be a big failure they sold almost 8 000 google glasses whoa 8 000 yeah oh wow just barely any at all compared to

most technology and although the product didn't live on they released like google glass enterprise in like 2015 2016 they released enterprise 2 or enterprise edition 2 in uh 2019 it doesn't say they stopped like supporting it but i haven't heard a single thing in the news or anywhere about google glass since like 2014 2015 it absolutely fell off the planet or it was so successful the government stole it and they're secretly doing it with all their alien experiments and stuff and wearing their glasses and we're just not allowed to know they're secretly doing glasses yeah is that what you said yeah that really was they're selling to the aliens okay yeah i hope so because i would totally buy some Google Glass. So I hope the aliens bring it back. To be fair, like there is government and industrial applications for these things that or at least that's what they're trying to sell to.

And if anyone knows anything, it's it's that governments and corporations are really fucking stupid and they'll buy anything that gives them even a modicum of improved productivity, no matter how cumbersome or annoying or stupid, if it's fancy. Okay, well, I was hoping you were accidentally setting this up to be a good note, but oh well, sorry, Nepal. I was going to point out that in June of 2014, very early on, still technically in beta, the government of Nepal adopted Google Glass officially into there as a piece of tech to supplement their, I don't know if it's park rangers or what. They have a problem with poaching wild animals because in Nepal, they have the Chitwan

International Park and other parks that are listed under World Heritage Sites that house, you know, rare and or endangered or at risk species. And so they adopted Google Glass as a piece of tech for their like rangers to use to coordinate their defense against poachers nepal's not in minnesota that's saint paul where's nepal it's like in north of india in that part of the world oh that's far from minnesota okay got it thank you not not an american state or city no got it. Thank you. It's not an American state or city. No. Got it. It's a whole country. I should have just said South Asia. It's in South Asia.

I gotta work on my geography. Well, I don't have anything against Nepal. I don't believe so anyway. I'm pretty sure. I was going to say, I don't believe it exists. I don't believe in Nepal. It's like Santa. What kind of name is Nepal for a country? I don't believe in Nepal. I turned around and Nepal was gone.

Anyway, but it is one of those things where I don't know what the practical application of it is. I don't know how it increased productivity. But HoloLens by Microsoft is like a competing product. And I went to their website and they're selling it for, guess how much it costs? $1,300. The industrial edition costs $4,950. Okay, what about the normal edition? $3,500.

What about the discounted edition? $3,500. How about HoloLens SE? $5,199. Comes with an included hard hat. Oh my God. Oh, so is it like attached to a hard hat? It is.

Yes, it is absolutely attached to a hard hat for safety. That is the geekiest hard hat you could own. It really is. You guys want to see it? It is the nerdiest shit. I'm already Googling it. It's in the discourse. Look at that. Look at the efficiency.

Now that it seems like one of those gopro stick things coming out oh my god that hard hat looks like it's hardly on the dude's head it's got a little thing in the back that's ratchet yeah no that doesn't look super comfortable i mean it doesn't look really heavy but heavy is relative i don't know how how heavy your thing has to be on your head for it to wear your neck out super fast aren't hard hats supposed to protect more of your head than just the very top of your tallest hair that's honestly like a perfectly normal hard hat wade i'm sorry that you don't know how hard hats work how low are that guy's ears on his no there's no way that's that's a very standard hard hat i hard hard hat. It's not a helmet.

It's not a wraparound thing. Hard hats on head protect you from something falling from above you. Not something that like hits you in the side of the head. So they're designed to deflect stuff hitting you on top of your head. That's falling from above you. Primarily all these images i see there's like a quarter inch between the hat and the ear that's like a full inch inch and a half look we're not here to critique the hard hat of it when it costs over five thousand

dollars they could have at least given him the full hat they like cut out the hat to give him the glasses cheapos i like to imagine that that turns construction workers into like video game characters and they just have a little line in the ground in front of them. It's like, get some wood. He walks over there. I was imagining they were NPCs just walking into the wall. Picks up an armful of wood and it's like, boop, drop the wood off at the construction site and shows them a little line on the ground. They get a few cents out of their paycheck every time they complete something.

Booping. That's four cents. on the ground. They get a few cents out of their paycheck every time they complete something. That's four cents. There's a bar that's the maximum amount they could earn and then everything they do chips away at the progress bar. Honestly, that sounds great. Like, you know exactly what your work to pay ratio translates to. It would be so low. If you work for

five years, you could invest in experience points either having a day off or getting paid another dollar. Well, okay, that's a little pessimistic, but yes. You mean realistic. No, I could see what you're saying, because that would be more satisfying. As you're working, the thing is like, oh, that's some money. Ooh, that was a big one.

That's a lot of money. You know it would be like, oh, you completed a wall? You framed in one whole wall in this room. Two cents. Yeah, of course. Better hurry up. Oh, no, I got a time bonus negative modifier minus two dollars. What if it could be like, OK, imagine it was a fair world where you actually had your pay

based entirely on the work you did. It wasn't like a preset. You get paid 18 an hour to do this and you fill up the bar slowly like that. It was literally like each task in the work that you do which is already categorized by the company has a price attached to it so even if you're doing something like just manually transferring data and organizing and whatever some boring office job it had a price per thing and you could see it progress as you do it like and then work was paid fairly for how much you did and you only got paid as much as you did,

but you could see it in real time. That could be fun. Interesting. If we didn't live in the dystopia that is America right now, I can understand what you're getting at, but I can't view that as anything other than the bad guys from Ready Player One

just mining your soul and trading you a nominal amount of currency in exchange for pieces of your humanity. Yeah, you're right. But yeah, if we were in another universe where stuff was equitable, that would be cool. I would appreciate what you're theorizing, for sure,

because then it would be satisfying. You would feel motivated motivated to keep going to keep doing the next thing it'd be hard to track like certain jobs like emergency services it's like if a firefighter is just sitting around waiting for a call are they getting paid for that or is it like when they get calls they have like some kind of perk where they get a base level of constant earnings that's really low but then when action comes they earn a lot all at once because it's such a dangerous activity they're doing so then there's gonna be like a black market of firefighters hiring people to start fires so they can make more money that's how it goes god we haven't had a good fire in like two weeks i'm going broke here

i'm gonna make the call timmy you know what to do yeah you got it boss i got the fire boss yeah we had two very different timmy's like the vision of everyone's in the firefighter school in firefighting class and the the teacher's like a middle school gym teacher and they're all right half of you use your firefighters half of you use fire starters get this going Cops and robbers. We have the firefighters and fireys. Fire, fire, fireers. Fireers. Fireers. The fire lords and ladies.

Fire lords and fire peasants. The lords start the fires and the peasants have to try and put them out. Do you guys remember, I don't know if you did this, Bob, but whenever Mark and I were going to Milford way back in the day and like junior high, we had to take this like little job survey quiz. It was like seventh or eighth grade. Sure. And it like gave you or 8th grade. Sure. And it gave you a list of probabilities of what jobs were good for you.

Mm-hmm. Do you remember that? Yeah, we did that. I got like... Oh, God. What did I get? I got like... Firewatcher?

No, I got weird things. I had like Gravetender, Clerk, Archaeologist, and like... I don't remember. I don't remember what that one was. Gravetender? Gravetender. They were like... Psychologist and like I don't remember like They were five things that were not in any way related that all came up and they were all like I don't like any of these options pool looker at her. Yeah

grave watcher Yeah, sand raker old person rub downer being a pool watcher and that being your job rather than being something you get arrested for sign me no don't sign me poop sniffer ah see you from oklahoma you guys ever hear the uh the old joke about the the diesel fitter the diesel fitter guys applying for a job at a uh new company and the uh guy interviewing me is like oh i think you're gonna be a great fit i think you're gonna do a great job here this is interviews to you know cursory i think you're basically hired sounds great and uh the guy starts working and he's useless he just sits there they give him a they give him a job it's like a machine company where he's supposed to be you know putting pieces together helping assemble mechanical parts for like engines or whatever and after after a couple

days the guy who hired him comes down to the floor and it's like what the hell man you your resume was perfect you seem great why aren't you doing your job and the guy's like i don't know what you want me to do i'm sitting here but this i don't understand this isn't what i signed up for and the guy or items like you said on your resume you've been a diesel fitter for like a decade and for anyone who doesn't know a diesel fitter is like a guy who works on diesel engines and is good at these things. And the guy's like, yeah, I did. I did.

That's what I did. Last decade, spent the whole time. I don't think that's true. Tell me what you did at your job. And the guy sitting on the floor is like, I sat at the end of the pantyhose production line and they told me every 15th pair of pantyhose, I should pull them over my head and see if these will fit her.

Oh, my God. Yeah, well, now you could feel the pain that I felt every time my dad told that joke. How long have we been? Okay, there is a topic for this episode. Is there? Failures. Right. we're getting older like that joke and google glass uh-huh i want you to tell me about some hilarious failures the more effort that went into it the better for example google glass millions in experimental research

and development it was actually done by Google X, which is Google's cool to push the boundaries tech sector sort of thing. Pretty big failure. Maybe not the most colossal tech failure that's ever happened, but pretty big failure. Nobody liked it. It was basically a joke. Find me these things. Tell me some good stories. It doesn't have to be tech, but big failures. Okay. That's the topic i got one it's titled google takes on this open seas i've got one too can i give my title yeah sure we'll do it old school all right my title you locked that right well that's fair it's fair it's fair you get the title points.

You go first, Wade. So I'm going to take you back a couple of years, okay? 1453 to be exact. Whoa. Okay. I remember that. Sure. The Ottoman Empire is assaulting Constantinople.

Cool. Constantinople, the Byzantines, they're entrenched. They're ready. No one isople, the Byzantines, they're entrenched. They're ready. No one is getting in. Byzantines. Byzantines are entrenched. Will, make me sound smart. No one's getting in, except somebody forgot to lock one of their massive gates.

They simply open the door and flood in. Constantinople falls. Ouch. Not only did they lock the gate, they were well that's locked we don't have to watch that literally they left a gate unlocked allowing the invading turks to pour in and just annihilate them wow there's a long there's a long time ago gates were big right big like metal trellis sort of thing or like big enormous wooden door of some sort i imagine the lock is more than just a little turnkey i imagine it's

something like pretty big i don't know like a big wooden thing you slot in i don't know but i imagine there's something pretty obviously missing with a giant locked gate yeah it would have to be something where it's like it is the physical brace that would hold the big doors together and as soon as people were like checking is this a push or a pull whoa it opens they were through they flooded in there yeah it's a constant problem for invaders back in those days you get up to the gate and you're like i never label these is this a push or a god damn it i can't tell if we're pushing and it's not gonna go or if we're pushing and it's just locked how do we know big hold up big problem for lots of invaders real tough real tough who yell about their problems kind of like

seinfeld i mean i could have gone in depth with the whole story but i felt like that was a pretty big uh lapse in protection there they had a great great plan really entrenched uh gotta lock the door though that does seem like a pretty monumental fuck up to be fair they probably had a lot of i don't know how many i mean it's a pretty big city i think at least i imagine it was and uh probably had a lot of gates a lot of entrances so yeah but like an easy oversight but a pretty big oversight maybe it's harder than i'm thinking it is but if you're under you know siege if you're defending the walls of your city locking the gates is one of the only couple things you really have on the checklist isn't it like what do you stand to your posts inside and watch and make sure the door's locked i would think and maybe fire back with your catapults or whatever no no no no no no no no

do you forgive their mistake mark you don't think it's that big deal happens it and also what's the odd that it was an inside job i mean it could also be like someone paid someone to keep a certain gate unlocked and they just got away with it. Maybe it was too embarrassing to think that someone betrayed them. No, actually, it would be too embarrassing to leave it open locked. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. Just a prankster was like, I'm going to unlock this.

They locked it. I'm going to unlock this. What an embarrassment oh also we're all dead he had like a stone tablet and a chisel he was like taking a selfie with his stone tablet like epic prank man taking a selfie used to take days he was so busy taking his selfie like he couldn't even pay attention to the door it was actually like a couple guardsmen who were like wait wait we're defending the city let's get a selfie of this they're sitting in front of it with the hammer and chisel like us locking the

gate slammed open and the invaders just come right in and then they're still like oh god they're coming in it's like oh it's still developing wait change it change it it looks different no delete that one just smash it with a big hammer and start over well bad job constantinople very bad very bad let's go to the future all right about google and the oceans they didn't have either of those things in the past so yeah oceans didn't exist until about 1832 as we all know google didn't exist until about 1843 soon after oceans google and oceans very closely tied together as we all know so this actually is a mystery google once built not not two, but four custom floating barges between the years of 2010 and 2012, intended to be used as, quote, an interactive space where people can learn about

new technology, end quote, possibly as luxury showrooms for Google Glass and other products on an invitation-only basis. Google halted work on the barges in late 2013 and began selling them off in 2014. So to put this in perspective, when I say barge, I'm talking about an enormous shipping container. Not as huge as some of them are, but they are in the range of about 250 feet in length and 72 feet wide, with a gross tonnage of about 2,000 to 2,500 tons of pure steel weight. Why they made this, or why they thought this was a good idea, or why they thought a floating barge was the proper way to bring Google Glass or any of their products to the world is still a mystery to this day. I don't know who authorized this project in general. It seems like the brain

child of something that a mad scientist would conjure up, like between making your evil layer on an active volcano right up to there in the Arctic in the most inhospitable place, volcano right up to there in the Arctic in the most inhospitable place. Four different huge barges just to bring people on and show off. The details of that are really what get me. If Google was like, oh, we want to have, you know, they're there in Mountain View, which is really outside, but really close to like the Bay Area. Right. So they're close to the ocean. They're close to San Francisco, big city, lots of stuff happening in that area. And if they were like, we want a barge so we can like park it somewhere in the near San Francisco

because real estate is expensive and hard to come by, but maybe they have a good spot where they can put a barge as a thing where it's like, come to San Francisco, see our cool exclusive barge thing. Just, you know, as a way of it's like come to san francisco see our cool exclusive barge thing just you know as a way of like dealing with that okay weird solution but okay why did they start with four they were so sure the barge thing would be huge they were like fuck it buy a bunch of them these are gonna be great like what that's why there's so many theories that what Google said was a bullshit excuse as opposed

to the actual intended usage of it. Because one of the main theories was that it was going to be a data barge. Basically, they were going to have a floating server that could float around. And I think this was in conjunction with Google's Project Loon and various other connected world kind of ideas so that you could have the data centers wherever you would need them and then probably like locally deploy a fleet of balloons to connect Internet and spread around. This was in seriously. Well, maybe not seriously, but like this is the theory because Google's entire idea was just like the Internet must spread and we must be the ones to bring it to everybody. That's why I think or they think that there were four because servers could be rapidly cooled in the ocean.

The ocean water recycling it out would be an infinite supply, an infinite thermal bank to dump heat. You just pump water in, make sure none of it spills out of the pipes, but you pump water in, flood it across radiators and dump it right out the back. The move would naturally cause the water to flow and there wouldn't need to be a lot to keep things cool, which is one of the biggest problems. Energy would be provided by wave energy systems or the giant diesel generators on those barges anyway so it's like it could have been something but either way at some point someone in google was like this is a fucking stupid idea just like the hot air balloon internet idea was dumb let's get rid of that like i don't know what the decision process i think it's got to be like a council of elders style situation you know where

you walk in you get the five big chairs in the darkness one big chair in the center and you gotta peel your case cigar smoke coming out but you can't see their faces oh absolutely yeah 100 like the elusive man almost from mass effect yeah exactly like that i love that wave generated energy is actually really interesting and i think it's in a different place now than it was a decade ago, probably. But have you guys seen, I'm not going to circle back to the Google situation, but have you seen the wave generators

where it's basically like a series of tubes and at the top is like a turbine, like a fan blade thing that when it turns, it generates electricity. And then the water is just allowed to come in and out of the tube and it creates air by the motion of the waves that turns the turbine that generates electricity. I have not seen any recent developments, but that does sound super cool.

And there are other forms of wave generators using the, you know, up and down motion and floats and different things. It's very cool because it's, aside from the wear on the moving parts of the thing itself, it's actually, I think, a pretty like of the thing itself it's actually i think a pretty like efficient and consistent way to generate electricity it's very neat and so i could absolutely see the idea of like a barge that's largely self-sufficient or completely self-sufficient maybe it was a different time back then infrastructure wise why is the data center's location as important why can't you just there are so many cables across the bottom of the ocean

and satellites and stuff is that better is moving a barge with a huge data center on it better than just giving people connectivity into the existing infrastructure probably you would know i just feel like that's an insane thing probably yeah i mean probably why i don't know man i don't know no clue i don't think it's places that that have trouble connecting to the internet or don't have connections to the internet are like, it fucking better be gig speed. If you give me that DSL shit, I'm not even going to use it anyway. Like, I don't know if that's a huge issue. I feel like satellite internet's pretty effective.

It's not the fastest. But also, to get back to Google, I your uh the council theory but i also like the idea that they just have a room somewhere with a bunch of monkeys that they just take care of and pamper and the monkeys just hammer out ideas and like 99.9 of them people look and they're like banana shaped cell phone well maybe i don't know but then like the boss has ordered it better do it the barge thing came out and and some person reviewing the ideas was like, maybe I better bring this to the corporate. The corporate.

The corporate. The corporate. The corporate needs to know. Yes, you've reached the corporate. I don't know, man. That's a wild one. I don't know what resource you're looking at. Is there any idea how much this costs barges cannot be cheap uh i actually have no idea but it has to be in at least

the tens of millions building something of that scale with the functionality that it needed would be like astronomically how much does a shipping container cost to build do you mean like a container ship yeah yeah container ship it's all right you're right that would be very different i got different results eight thousand dollars okay average price for a geared 500 teu was 10 million dollars but higher ranges 6500 to 1200 TEU. I don't know what TEU means. What does TEU mean? TEU. Tulsa University. TEU. T-T-E-U-T-E-U. 20 foot equivalent unit. So that's how many 20 foot containers it can carry.

Ah, okay. So something that could carry 9,000 of them is about 1, about 1200 feet long so this is in the 1000 teu range it would probably be about 20 million per ship to make so this is at least a hundred million dollar project which for google i'm sure they didn't even notice but that's a pretty good fuck up that's a pretty big fuck up if i'm comparing these stories head to head i have to say i don't know what the valuation of the city of constantinople would be adjusted for you know modern currency values or whatever probably pretty valuable this is a very large city i mean it still is a pretty big city right it's istanbul now istanbul i don't know i don't know how these compare i think the google one is funny because it's completely insane

and they really chose to do that whereas the door being unlocked is just an unbelievable fuck up that no one did on purpose or it was an inside job we don't know true that's true i hope they got paid well and weren't just killed like everyone else when the invaders got inside yeah well it's a thing i always find funny in stories around that are similar to that one where you know it's in some historical time period and a person is like i will betray my city but it's okay because the random soldiers who come in from the enemies will know that i'm the guy who did the thing for them they won't hurt me really you did a deal with like four people who are not going to be here when an invasion happens or whatever why do you think you're safe for some reason yeah and even if the first guys

see that oh that guy let us in the guy a thousand people back is gonna come in there be like who do i kill that guy's standing there he's got no weapon unless there's a way for him to like leave through the unlocked gate before they invade how there's an army he just walks out the gate and he's like i don't know i don't know what the gate was like i don't know if it's just like a doorknob or if it's like a big pull rope or i don't i don't know i'll be back guys no i'm just uh the king was like get me some milk and you know the cows around here they'll be back our gate guard went to get milk and he never came home. I think he might be betraying us.

I'll go find him. He'll come back eventually. Right, step gate guard? What? What? He leaves and then another guy comes like, hey, I'm your step gate guard. I know I'll never replace original gate guard Guard but if you ever need to talk And I brought milk with me

Anyway This is a surprisingly tough one Maybe I'll withhold the points We'll go another round I've got more stories, I've got more titles Give me some titles Wade first Whoops, guess I'll die

That's pretty good Well it's well established that we know that I like that title. Mine's just, and boom goes the dynamite. I like both of these pretty similarly. And out of fairness, I'm going to let Mark go first this time. Oh, hell yeah. All right. So mine's a pretty simple one.

May have been mentioned in the past before. Probably not the feature of an episode. But once upon a time, there was a whale on a beach. one may have been mentioned in the past before, probably not the feature of an episode, but once upon a time there was a whale on a beach. And then a few days later, there was no longer a whale on that beach. Now the story in the interim is as follows. There was about a 45 foot long sperm whale that washed ashore on the Oregon coast. And it was looked at and determined to be too heavy to move because the sand was too soft. They couldn't get any kind of like

heavy equipment vehicle out there. It would have been extremely difficult. And the problem is when you get a creature of that size, a 45 foot long whale, as it decomposes, it starts to smell really bad really quickly because of the sheer amount of stink that it could possibly produce so they thought we'll blow it up with dynamite obviously and then it'll be cleared out and the resulting pieces would be small enough for animals to eat and a the circle of life you

know it's like the lion king all over again well then comes in a man named george thornton now george thornton if you want to imagine this man imagine uh the demo man from tf2 you know really angry really drunk one leg one eye and just like dynamite strapped to his body because he was chosen to be the supervisor of how to blow this up because he was an engineer he was also a military veteran with explosive training uh so he thought hmm it might not be a good idea to use too little because we don't want to accidentally not do this oh wait no i'm wrong this guy actually was not the demo man he was uh the the the the lady who's trying to keep all them in check. Paulson. Paul.

Paul. Paulton. Paulson. Paul-o-ton. Paul-o-ton. Paulton. Paul. Paula.

Paul. TF2. What? I don't know enough to. Miss Pauling. Okay. Miss Pauling. It was Miss Pauling because I misread this. A charge of one half short ton of dynamite was selected which is 450 kilograms

george thornton said that might wait no sorry stop back up george thornton is the demo man there was a military veteran with explosives training miss pauling was on the scene george thornton is the demo man and the military veterans said that the planned 20 cases of dynamite was far too much they had 20 cases of dynamite and he said that instead 20 sticks of dynamite would have sufficed but his advice went unheeded for reference 20 sticks is about eight and a half pounds of dynamite the planned amount 20 cases is how much the planned amount okay so it's 3.8 kilograms for 20 sticks they used 450 kilograms of dynamite on november 12th at.m., the dynamite was detonated. And the explosion was so unbelievably powerful that large pieces of blubber landed near buildings and parking lots like hundreds of feet away from the beach's location.

Cars were crushed by the sheer amount of whale that was blasted into the air. And then, literally, the explosive expert's brand new vehicle, purchased during a, quote, get a whale of a deal promotion in a nearby city, was flattened by a chunk of falling blubber. Later that day, Thornton told the Eugene Register Guard, quote, it went just exactly right, except the blast funneled a hole in the sand under the whale, and that some of the whale chunks were subsequently blown back towards the onlookers and their cars. And thus, the story of the whale on the Oregon shore ends with a bang.

I imagine the guy who was given the advice to only use 20 sticks walks up and he's like whale whale whale look who was right and everyone's like shut up carl so i have one question that i don't know if the information is good is the whale when this is all beginning is the whale dead before they decide they need to explode it? Or is the whale just laying on the beach like, Help! Please, God, help me now! Can you roll me back in? And the people are just like, we gotta explode it!

We gotta get rid of this whale! And this whale knows English enough to be like, Oh, wait a minute, hold on now! The whale's the old guy from Monty Python. I'm not dead! I'm feeling better! I feel happy presumably it's already dead but only presumably or maybe not only presumably yes the stench uh would suggest it was dead or it didn't bathe you could be right i'm no whale hygiene expert why would i need to bathe i live in the giant bathtub

terry there's a difference between getting wet and using soap you gotta use this soap man who's talking to the whale is it another whale uh it's like a it's like a sea lion or something it's like his buddy it's just you know it's not a disney movie what's the movie the company that makes ice age it's one of those movies dreamworks no it Dreamworks? No, it's different. Skyfall Entertainment. Something like that. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter guys. Doesn't matter. Do you think they warned the surrounding areas

that they were doing this or do you think they just got this all together and were like, yes, perfect. No, there was a promotion at a car sale. It was like the whale of a deal thing. That's real. Well, they knew about the whale but do you think they sent out flyers like, hey, we're going to make a big fucking explosion on wednesday afternoon just so you know just so you're not afraid the like russians are attacking or something i think they did because there were

like observers people were watching this it was a clearly an event and that the established cordon of safety was not anywhere nearly far enough away from the blast so not only were like chunks thrown but smaller and a wash like a you know an explosion mist of of uh whale debris rained over the onlookers it was like gallagher's whale show there's probably one guy who like really loves whale debris who was just really having a great time while everyone else was miserable how how would you come to know whale debris guy was there love having a great time while everyone else was miserable. How would you come to know that you love whale debris? I mean, he probably discovered

it there, you know. Something was awoken in him that day. Everyone's screaming and freaking out, removing blubber from their eyes. This one guy's just like, Fuck yes! He tries to play it cool at first, so he's like, Oh, oh no! Oh no! Oh god, oh this's like, Oh, oh no! Oh no!

Oh God, this is so gross. Do it again! Oh no, hope they don't do it anymore. Spends the rest of his life trying to bait whales to get washed up on beaches. What attracts whales? How do I get whales up here? He puts a carrot on a stick. He's like, please, please, come on.

Yeah, whales. Notorious carrot eaters. Whales are like ocean horses. Sure. I'm not going to question that at all. Me neither. Whales are like ocean horses. Nope, I'm not going to question it. I'm just going to leave that one alone.

Perfect. A classic tale. That doesn't seem like that crazy of an idea at its core. I just don't know how someone who supposedly is an expert in explosives concludes that that's the correct amount to use. That seems like the mistake. They probably saw the opportunity to make a big-ass explosion. They were like, dude, I'm doing this. There's some guy who was like i can convince

them i'm an explosives expert and we can do whatever i want what's on a mustache see i'm paula dean from uh the team fortress 2 i don't know what you said oh hey y'all i think there's a spy around us. You know, Paula Deen. Who? Yeah. She's Southern, right? I don't know.

Good story, Mark. Thanks, thanks. A classic explosion of a whale story. We all have those. We all do. We all do. Wade, what was your title? All right, I'm going to make mine short, sweet, and to the point.

My title was Whoops, Guess I'll Die. But I want to get to my last one. I've been saving my favorite one for last. So I'm gonna do this one here. Let's go a little bit forward in the future from the 1400s to the year 2000. You guys remember 2000. Blockbuster was still in its prime. And Blockbuster's CEO had a meeting with an upstart dvd mailing company called netflix

netflix wanted to sell to blockbuster for 50 million dollars and the blockbuster ceo apparently tried really hard not to laugh them out of his office as he said no uh no thank you we'll be fine without you and uh the fast forward to 2022 netflix while people are upset with it right now, is still worth over $32 billion. And Blockbuster is just a memory in us old people's minds. In a similar fashion, a company called Yahoo, remember Yahoo? Yahoo? I love Yahoo. Had chances to buy both Google and Facebook at different points and declined both companies.

So, where are those companies now? Whoops. Guess they died. Hey, Yahoo still exists. Yeah, sure. I mean, it does. They do stuff. Blockbuster, I think, has one store somewhere.

Yeah, it's not. Blockbuster is actually dead. The Blockbuster, the world's last Blockbuster that exists or whatever is like, it's like a it's I mean, it's not a joke. They they take it seriously but it's like they do it privately they just bought a bunch of blockbuster shit and still run a store it's not a thing but yeah no that's just seeing those now that's very funny yeah but i would imagine companies in the like yahoo was at the top of the search engine game uh maybe not a decade ago 15 years ago i had forgotten that netflix started off as dvd rental i remember seeing like the little machines outside of like

the stores where you could go and like put some money in and like get a dvd to take home yeah i had forgotten about that until i was reading up on it again yeah i never did any of it i never rented it i never rented one either i was like that's i'm just gonna go to blockbuster dude my dad was a very early Netflix adopter. And we used to, he had like the subscription, where it's like you could have two and you had to return them at a certain time. And when you return them, you'd get the next one. It was like library stuff, right?

You'd have like a queue of things you want to rent. And when you return one, you could take out the next one on your list or whatever. I want to say we had Netflix in like 2005 or or 2006 yeah i'm gonna use yahoo to google this i'm gonna use yahoo to google this listen it's not yahoo's fault that nobody yahoo is anything okay have we forgotten the other word for google this is search for no that doesn't sound that sounds stupid oh okay i'm gonna altavista it i'm gonna ask jeeves about this one i'm gonna plug it into my stadia okay so netflix dvd service their mail to your house dvd service apparently

started in 97 oh really that early okay that's wild maybe that's just when the company was founded officially but like that's earlier than i even thought so there was like one person who had some like i don't know if they had dvds in 97 they probably had the vhs tapes they did they did dvds started okay i thought they didn't send vhs's to anyone's houses that's for sure yeah it's like one paper boy who's like his dad's like dude hey uncle tom paid five dollars to rent this video can you just drive it over there uh he can return it and get another video afterward if he pays me like 10 more bucks and the kid's like i got an idea clear what'd you say clear throat i got an idea now son you know i hate it when you talk like that can you sorry dad sorry dad i just want to make you proud dad that's what all young ceos sound like they've all got the same voice. But seriously, though, it must be

so hard when you're a company that's on top of whatever your business is. I can't imagine how many times you see stuff like that come across your desk where it's like, oh, this new startup has kind of taken off. You want to buy a Glimp Glomp for $30 million? No. Those guys are idiots. No, I want a Glimp

Glomp. That sounds cool. I mean, it does sound cool, but they normally don't. They normally sound stupid. For every big thing like that that we hear about, there were probably a hundred companies they turned down that they rightfully turned down. Yeah. So they look stupid in hindsight for like that one decision, but we also don't see all of the ones they made the right decision on.

There's a lot of Quibbies in the world. For every Netflix, there's at least a few dozen Quibbies. Yeah, probably more. Even though Quibby is on my list, I have another story here if you want it. I've got another one, too. Are we titling? Keep going, boys. All right, I'll go first this time.

My title is Fun Times in Cleveland Today. Mine's not that good. Mine's just where's the key mark wins this one that was did you know i like those videos that much we've talked about this i love those videos that much i fucking love if you uh listeners if you've never listened to the cleveland travel bureau promotional videos on youtube you should check them out they're very funny yeah you have the stage mark so this is uh taking place in cleveland many of you might have heard of this story on YouTube. You should check them out. They're very funny. Yeah, you have the stage, Mark. So this is taking place in Cleveland. Many of you might have heard of this story, but we're talking about the great and calamitous Balloon Fest of 86. And for those of you who don't know what Balloon Fest is and wondering, oh, when's Balloon Fest coming back? It never will.

It wreaked havoc on the ecosystem for years untold. But what happened? You must be asking. Well, Cleveland is well known to be Cleveland. And as such, it has a reputation for being incredibly depressing and having nothing going for it. This still holds to this day. But in 86, there was a shiny beacon of hope for Cleveland. And it's such a fun coincidence because the anniversary of this event was merely two days prior to the recording of this particular episode, which will incredibly date it for everyone that is listening. In September of 1986 in Cleveland, someone, I forget who, it looks like the local chapter of United Way, which is a charity organization, I believe, decided that they wanted to set the world record for most balloons released in one go. And where better than Cleveland?

It was intended to be a harmless fundraising publicity event, but the balloons unfortunately did not cooperate on that particular day. Nor would they have ever cooperated on any particular day when you see the pictures of what 1.5 million balloons looks like when released into the air no just for a moment just like try to contemplate the sheer number of uh of plastic rubber balloons that are just launched in the sky all with streamers of various different colors but then know that the footage that was recorded is still 1986 footage, so it looks very desaturated grain. It looks like an amorphous blob of horrific nightmares that are sailing through the sky like some ethereal Cthulhu-esque horror

that creeps its way across the sky. It was so thick, it literally blotted out the sun for a great deal of time for the initially very excited and then soon very horrified onlookers in Cleveland. It was not a harmless event at all. And it actually resulted in casualties. Two fishermen, Raymond and Bernard, who had gone out on September 26th, were reported missing by their families on the day of the event.

Rescuers spotted their boat was anchored, but they searched for the two fishermen in an area that was described as being an asteroid field of balloons. Because once they go up, they must come down. And they came down not over the lake, Lake Erie, which is a very, very big lake. It would have been just as bad for them to go out there. No, it circled back around and then rained down on the entire sweeping area of about like several hundred, maybe even thousands of acres of land where these were found. Unfortunately, the two fishermen, their bodies washed ashore.

And the Coast Guard suspended its search on September 29th. The amount of damage that was caused is unknown, but United Way settled, I believe, from a lawsuit for the fisherman's family for $3.2 million. However, the actual cost of how much it took to clean up everything and the time it took is unknown. Of how much it took to clean up everything and the time it took is unknown. And even to this day, you can still find balloons strewn about the greater Cleveland area. That's so insane. It is. While you were doing that, I also looked up the video.

It literally looks like what they make CGI like villains and monsters and stuff look like now. Yeah. The way when they initially release it, the way it engulfs the building just like a skyscraper and the balloons are just like yeah and it like it has it has the aesthetic of a terrifying calamity that's happening yeah it's it's cg artists wish they could have done it like that. It is truly terrifying. The scale of it, it just, you cannot comprehend. You have to watch the video. My description does not do it justice. So I know it was a different time,

but it's not even that different of a time. This happened in 1986. That's 40, almost 40 years ago, I guess. Yeah. 36 years. Not a single person heard this plan and was like, where are the balloons going to go? Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.

No one thought about where all of that shit would end up. It sounds like it would look really cool, but then do the balloons just float off into space? Yeah, yeah, they'll just keep going into space. They'll be fine. space? Yeah, yeah. They'll just keep going into space. They'll be fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't believe no one had that thought. Yeah.

It is insane. You guys want to try to beat the record? Yes. 1.500001 million balloons. We'll do it over the ocean. No one cares about the ocean. Let's do 10 times as much 10 million balloons i also like that they were all filled by hand and there's there's videos of

people just sitting under an unbelievable mass of balloons trapped in the world's largest net just filling them tying them and then letting them go and hoping that they float straight up into the net of balloons and all for the sake of like they sold the balloons at $1 per balloon for charity. So at the end of this, they were only open to raise like at most minus all of the costs of getting it to actually happen. There's like one and a quarter million. I don't even know how much balloons cost. It might be less than a million dollars they raised with all the costs of coordinating oh it was even less sorry it was one dollar for two balloons oh no man their revenue their total revenue before subtracting costs and stuff was

750 000 for this yep that is just not even worth it to begin with. Yep. It took six months to prepare. It's got to be a more efficient way to raise money. Six months. I'm looking at the Wikipedia article for it, and I like how they say, but the balloons drifted back over the city. Like, oh, yeah, it would have been fine if they landed somewhere else.

Oh, man, if only they landed on the woods or the harmless woodland creatures or something. Well, you know what they did is before they started, they all said a collective prayer to the wind god to take those balloons over to michigan and torture those idiots yeah it's it's funny because not only did the airport have to shut down the runway for a half an hour after balloons started to land there without calling their traffic control tower and like the nerve of them. But there were also car crashes reported as quote, drivers swerve to avoid slow motion blizzards of multicolored orbs or took their eyes off the road to gawk at the overhead spectacle.

This is it. There was a guy that was standing around who got covered in like the balloon debris and he became whale debris guy. He just was waiting for this moment. I'll never relive the glory of those whale days. Oh my God. The only way that this may have been worse is if they literally brought in the National Guard

to aim all their AA guns and any weapon they had up at the skies like let the balloons have their fun after 10 minutes take them down nothing better than firing bullets up into the air surely they won't land anywhere balloons up there we gotta shoot those boys back out of the sky after after everyone's had their you know moment 1.4 million balloons and 3 million bullets because we didn't have the best sharpshooters oh yeah well you kind of just you know spray up there and hope you hit something that's what i do anyway i what a beautiful event i already knew that this happened but every time i think about it i'm still completely

flabbergasted because the consequences that happened are so painfully obvious you think you would think i love the idea that they're actually just ohio state fans trying to punish michigan and they're like oh wait and the balloons come straight down oh no yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's a pretty bad that's a pretty dumb mistake yeah that's a bad that's a pretty bad. That's a pretty dumb mistake. Yeah. That's a bad. That's a bad failure. Yeah.

I do gotta say shout out to Wikipedia and Men's Journal for helping me find my articles. I don't know how sourced it works, but I found all of mine from the art of the fail, the 11 worst failures in history. So this last one is a story you're all familiar with. I call it Shit Wears the Key. But everybody knows the story of the titanic right big boat unsinkable hit iceberg sink whoops and leonardo dicaprio died because that door was not big enough so one of the theories as to what went wrong and it's not just a theory there's like factual evidence supporting it it might not have made the biggest difference but

it also could have the two guys in the crow's nest did not have access to binoculars to help them look for icebergs And one of the reasons for that was originally there was a man named David Blair who was hired to be one of the men in The crow's nest and a couple of days before the Titanic was set this are going to set sail They actually replaced him and the other dude They got some other guys in that apparently had more experience and they're like, okay He's these guys have been on big ships before they got some other guys in that apparently had more experience and they're like okay he's these these guys have been on big ships before they got more experience we're gonna put them in there and david was kind of sad he wrote a postcard to his sister-in-law like oh man i was really excited to be on the titanic but now i'm not gonna get to do it but that's okay the problem

is david here also called davy good old davy had a key to a box in the crow's nest where the binoculars were stored and davey did not give the key back he forgot and uh he took the key with him so the dudes in the crow's nest trying to find binoculars couldn't find any and also didn't have a key to that locked box that who knows what the hell was in there turns out that's where those binoculars were that key's actually on display now and is well known as being the key that could have saved the titanic oops wait so that guy survived and then like in the lifeboats was like oh he wasn't on it he they uh demoted him and he was no longer on the boat at all i'm a good listener yeah well that's not great on april

9th he left the titanic with the key and i think the boat set sail a couple days later because it was april 14th is when it sunk so I don't know exactly whenever when it started the voyage but he was not on the boat his postcard to his sister he wrote this is a magnificent ship I feel very disappointed I'm not to make her first voyage and uh yeah he had the key and I think someone like one of his descendants later donated it to like a museum or something to be put on display the key to the crow's nest whoops whoops yeah whoops kind of a big uh thing because yeah i think binoculars have been like a pretty well mentioned thing as to like why couldn't they have seen the iceberg through the binoculars because you know binoculars those things that

have been basically around since the 1600s in one form or another you'd think on a big boat looking for icebergs maybe you give the guys up top in the crow's nest access to something to look for him no rather than just putting their hand over their eyes in the dark like i see those leonardo's making out down there but man oh man i sure can't see past that i mean could you tear your eyes away honestly could you from those buttons no i'm sorry were they looking all the way into the shipping area what's that called the car where they do it well haven't you seen the movie silly after they fuck in the car they go running and skipping up on the deck holding hands and being like you were saying you could just have sex well you don't you don't know what they

did there's no telling what actually happened there right no it's yeah it's unclear unclear that's true oh well they probably just hung out and talked in the car well we could just ask him let's leonardo we know you're a big fan of distracted but what happened on the titanic get back to us in the subreddit that well it's hard to argue that sinking the titanic on purpose is not a pretty bad mistake he was so bitter that he couldn't be in the crow's nest. He intentionally took the keys like, good luck spotting icebergs without this, bitches. This is my souvenir.

I keeping it. I keeping it. I keeping it. You no keep, I keep. There's so many good stories. I thought I was going to struggle with this one, but man, there's so many good ones. I don't even know if I picked the best ones. Humanity likes to make mistakes and especially big ones with obvious consequences, guess i don't know how that all happened but yeah you'd think

they'd be obvious but turns out no yeah no it's just me with my hindsight being all 2020 just monday morning quarterbacking these guys it's not fair who would have known so many balloons would be such a problem uh all right well i suppose i need to pick a winner then don't i well you don't have to i suppose i carefully kept track you always pick the loser i could do that i uh i carefully kept track of all the points that you all both accrued over the course of this episode thank you for your uh research and submissions i do appreciate it i will say you both had some strong stories and well while i think it was will say you both had some strong stories and well while i think it was close i think i know who the winner is which means that i know who

the loser is and the loser of today's episode is clearly mark back on top baby it honestly was close because i liked all the stories i think the main thing unfortunately for you mark is i knew about the whale and i knew about the balloon fest i felt like we've talked about the whale before those are excellent those are excellent tales of massive screw-ups and failures but uh i think the the excitement of them was undercut that i had just sort of heard both of them before but that's fair i get that i get it though good good stories i hadn't heard the balloon one before that was new for me the google barges is excellent and i love that but uh wade wins do you have a do you have a winner's speech wade look humanity has made a

lot of big mistakes through the years it's true and bob might have made one today but it's too late now because i'm the winner all right hey. Wait a minute. Hey, I think. Am I offended? Or are you offended? I don't know. The biggest mistake of all. Only the future will know. You have a loser speech mark.

How's it feel? I feel unfair or something. I'm mad, but at least next time I don't have to come up with a topic. I'm mad. No. Well, take that, Wade. That's what you get for winning.

Yeah. You guys have any ideas for a topic for the next one? Nope. Poop? All right, you heard it here first. If the next episode's not about poop, you're a liar. Thank you. It's true, and I might be.

You might be. Thank you, listeners, for listening once again to the greatest podcast you've ever listened to, probably. Make sure that you follow Distractable or subscribe or whatever. Whatever thing you listen to this on or in, whichever is the right word, hit the plus sign or the checkmark or the subscribe button or all that stuff. Because it comes out every Monday and you don't want to miss it. And you're always as good or better than this episode was.

Except for that one, which is just a terrible piece of shit. We don't talk about that one. Surprisingly, we talk about it all the time and I love it. You can find Mark at Markiplier on the internet in internet places. And Wade is LordMinion777 or Minion777 if you want to find him on Twitch. I am MySkirm. I'm now streaming on Twitch again, so if you haven't seen that, you

can watch or whatever, but you'll never spell it, so good luck. That is all for today's episode. Like we always say when this thing ends, merch. I don't like plugging the merch, okay? As we always say, merch. As we always say, you better go to store.striple.com

and buy some shit. We're a little split here about the merch. 70-30, 50-50. you better go to store.striple.com and buy some shit we're a little split here about the merch 70 30 50 50 it's hard to tell no i'm a failure fine whatever that's it all right podcast out