Distractible - Tear Down These Balls

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

In a world of surge pricing, beanie babies, Kit-Kats, and sperm, Distractible always prospers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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whoa what are you listening to this for wait 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. Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractable. This episode, Anal Wade hates anime, has a projectile-firing phallus, and slaps surges.

Meteorological Mark unravels tornadoes, admits his addictions, the accent gap exists, and that Uber can be expensive. Thank you. Yes, it's time for Tear Down These Balls. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Distractible. I'm spinning out of existence accidentally. I'm your host today, Wade. Joined as always by my co-hosts, Mark and Bob. Welcome to the show where they compete for points, I make up literally everything else about it. At the end, one of them wins and they host the next one. How y'all doing?

I'm great. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Here for you, buddy. And I'm just here for myself. My skirm. It all makes sense. What is a skirm? Like a short for a skirmish? Maybe it's a sperm skirmish? I mean, that's everyone. All of us are sperm skirmishes if you think about it.

Does that count as like a civil war all the sperm fighting for one egg well if the sperm were a sovereign nation i don't know what kind of societal standards that they have as they're on the way to the egg but i've got an idea for another topic one day hold on they all live in peace in the balls but once they get outside their society those left ball sperm don't want to mix with those right ball sperm. West sperm is a bad place. West sperm story. The other side of the vast deference. It's like a Kit Kat commercial.

You got left sperm and right sperm. Oh, that's how they make the Twix. I see. Oh no, that's not Kit Kat. Kit Kat's got five of them. They got different names. Four. No, it's five, isn't it?

I mean, maybe they make a five bar, but it's standard Kit Kat is four. I thought standard was two and four were the biggins. Oh, it is four. But in my head, it's five, which is one more and thus better. I don't know why it would be five. Maybe it used to be five and they've cut back so much. They just literally took a Kit Kat away. None of us realized it.

Has they been shrink flated? Yeah, that's shrink. Kit Kat shrink flation. What's the what's the word for things? It's Majora's Majora's loss. What? What? The man demand.

The mandolin effect. The mandolin effect. The mandolin effect. Yes. Yes. Yes. Mandela. Is it Mandela?

Kit Kats used to have five fingers. Oh, when? Hang on. This is a long article. In the early 2000s, the bar was changed from five fingers to four. I knew it. No, I think it was a limited edition five bar version. No, Kit Kats used to have five fingers.

The original chocolate bar invented in 1935 had a typical finger shape with five sections. It was in the early 2000s. The bar was changed from five to four. This website, bargainbox.com slash blogs knows the truth, Mark. Okay, Bob, you get a point for being right. How did we go from sperm to Kit Kat? Well, we don't know that he's right because there's overwhelming evidence that it was four pieces.

He cited a credible source and he said it was credible. Well, I'm looking at every image of a Kit Kat ever and it's either four or 24. So no matter what, he's wrong. 24? There was a special edition that had 24 fingers. 24? I'm telling you, I'm looking at the same thing. There's also one that says five plus one free. So that would be six i think which is also not five what i'm looking at is not a special edition it's just old pictures of kit kats that have five in the regular kit kat wrapper yeah old but this is like when we grew up the early 2000s is when it changed i don't think that applies to, I think growing up occurred when puberty struck.

Its evil hand wormed into West and East testicle and yanked them down. Like, and that was, you know, a trying time for all men. How would you do for a Kit Kat bar? Oh my God, there's four. Also, I just did the Klondike bar jingle and none of you called me out for it. No, that's why I'm laughing, but I can't, my brain hurts. bar jingle and none of you called me out for it. No, that's why I'm laughing, but I can't. My brain hurts.

When you trick your friends into miss-singing the Klondike jingle, their balls descend. It's like sticking their hand in warm water, but you make puberty happen. The fifth finger actually was a Klondike bar, but it, you know, like the appendix, it became vestigial and broke

off on a previous evolution. I wonder if we have a taxidermied example left over of the old Kit Kat bars. Yeah, let's pull that up, mysterious fourth member. There it is. Whoa. Whoa. Make me explode. Do the fade to white thing.

Yeah, wait, why did that keep happening? Like fading to extreme brightness. I remember the focus still kind of happens why was it going bright weren't you like taking off the lens or something weird no it was i think it was happening spontaneous i don't know back in the day back you know before we changed yeah before we changed before we changed puberty wise again or before we changed like career wise career wise you know what's fascinating is that we've been around long enough to have multiple phases of missing the old version we are we went from caterpie to butterfree dude we are fully evolved now don't bring caterpie back in he just wants to

bring that back up yeah no this is a very spermy episode i gotta we gotta it wasn't he didn't have to say he didn't have to associate caterpie with the sperm again i was telling you not to do that and then you did it in the most obtuse way. But by telling me not to, you already implied that I was going to, which made me think about it. No, people out there didn't need to know the association. Some people don't watch every episode. And now they're going to be confused. Why is it spermy?

Why is it spermy, Wade? So how are you guys? Anything you want to talk about? Our small talk allocation. We haven't, we've used, but we haven't really used for the normal kind of small talk which is fine allocation small location i say you know we fucked up in terms of semi-annual which actually means two a year no you know what that's true i saw people talking about that the thing is i remembered that biannual was two a year so i assumed that semi-annual was one every other year what we meant was bicentennial

yes that's the one that's it that's it's even dumber than that it's by any not by annual you know by any old year we'll do it and that means every other year by any old year any old time by anal we'll do it didn't have to be like that do it. Didn't have to be like that. Yeah, again, you don't have to say everything that comes to mind. Wait, be yourself. Wait, you don't have to be yourself. No, you should be yourself.

You could also, you just can filter it a little bit. Yeah, there's the self in the head and society exists. There's a division between East and West Ball because we filter. When I hit puberty,

the East Ball, West Ball wall came down. And now we are fully one ball society. Mr. Balbatrev, bring down your ball wall. How's life? What have you guys been doing? Anything new? There was a storm last night.

How was the storm for you? It was crazy over here. You know, Molly asked me that same thing. She's like, so that storm. And I was like, what storm? I slept completely through it. Ew. So I guess it did happen mostly between like 4 and 6 a.m., which I was up for a reason I'm not going to talk about.

According to my phone, I was out by 2.50 last night. I was asleep before 3. That's like going to bed at 8 o'clock for you. I don't know. It was pretty good. No, the storm was good. It was, there was a little bit of hail. There's a tornado watch in Columbus.

There was a tornado warning which is pretty weird doesn't it like the city itself we were on watch from like 10 p.m till 6 a.m or something crazy did you guys know was it snowstorm or like rain just rain it was like 70 degrees right before the storm started so it was weird but do you guys know how rare tornadoes are in the rest of the world like i started realizing this because people were talking about it a lot but tornadoes don't happen in the quantity and power that they do in america and especially in like the middle of it you know that well you need a lot of big basically flat area which i think america has a pretty big oh monopoly on that's the word i a lot of like continental europe and other parts of the world are, there are big spaces,

but there are mountain ranges and things that are broken up by stuff, which really tornadoes don't like that. So you need three things actually. And it's super rare that you would have all these three things on a scale large enough to have this many tornadoes. Tornadoes happen around the world. We're not saying America number one for tornadoes because everyone else tornadoes puny, which they are. Well, we probably are number one for a tornado. Oh yeah, absolutely. But our number, we're not saying america number one for tornadoes because everyone else tornadoes puny which they are well we probably are number one for a tornado oh yeah absolutely but our number we're not saying we're number one but like we're number one but i'm not saying it like

you know what mark two points for number one on tornadoes mark's claim rest of the world sucks at tornadoes they sure do because you need three things. You need warm, wet air, which comes up from the Gulf of Mexico, right? You need warm, dry air on top of it to create a layer so that the wet stays at the bottom and the warm stays up high. And then you need cold air on a layer above that. So what does the Rocky Mountains do? It pushes air in from the west and knocks it up the mountains gets it cold and then it literally through like momentum comes out

over the plains on top of this warm dry air and then warm wet air it's either warm dry one of those is on the other i may not be saying that right but those three stacks is what you need you need an air sandwich exactly you need an air cream sandwich to be able to get this kind of power for tornadoes. You heard it here first. Delete it. Delete it. Yeah, I didn't hear a voice, everyone. Hey, you just say you heard it here fourth.

You were not inventing tornadoes. At least three other people talked about tornadoes before. Yeah, well, and also the thing I said, big flat areas. That's part of it, too. That's important, too. It all has to mix over a flat space. So it needs four things. So where's the heaviest concentration of tornadoes in the U.S.?

Probably the place they call Tornado Alley. Okay, I just said, okay, listen, if you were listening to the context clues, I said, from the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains is pushing. From the Rocky Mountains, to the Gulf Stream heat wave. See, this is why we think that you don't listen to us, Wynn. I listen. You asked a question which Mark was relatively directly answering, and you started singing a song during the answer that you asked for.

It was to help. To help who? As the host, I guarantee it was to help. Did it help? Yes. Yeah, good. So you know where Tornado Alley is then now? Yes, now I know.

It's between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. Close enough. Give yourself some points there, buddy. Nailed it. How close? Have you guys ever been even remotely close to a tornado? No, the most I've seen is a funnel cloud that was real wispy. I've been in

some pretty bad wind storms uh but it was never actually a tornado there was one that was like it like knocked power out this one we were in college i think you remember that windstorm it was like it was like the remains of a hurricane and it came up from the east coast and it just like slammed ohio and like knocked all the trees down and power was out for a couple days yeah yeah i don't know why i've got my camera way over here so i have to look all the trees down and power was out for a couple days yeah yeah i don't know why i've got my camera way over here so i have to look all the way to the right yeah guys yeah i have seen i was i remember that storm oh there we go hi i remember that storm yeah that might have been where i saw the funnel cloud i know when i was really young there was one that

was not too far because i like we've had to go to our basement a few times right over the years you had to go down whenever you hear like the tornado sirens but there was one that was actually not too far and actually a couple years ago i want to say within the last three years there was one that hit like four or five miles from where we used to live the street that my uncle lived on all of the trees on their street got uprooted and just thrown around like the houses themselves weren't damaged other than by like the trees and fencing and stuff that got destroyed the entire street basically just got annihilated by wind and the tornado landed just past them and did a whole bunch of damage like east of them and they they lived like a few blocks from us but like we were fine they were not it was the difference of like maybe a two minute drive yeah that's a crazy thing

about tornadoes there's so many pictures in a tornado alley where they get hit super hard and there's like an all a whole neighborhood that's just like flattened and then one house is like still standing perfectly with a flagpole and a tree in the yard and it's like what do those guys do what the hell they had air magic they have an air bender in there topical that just came out you guys watching the new the new avatar live action never watched any of it but i hear good things about the show apparently not the movie movie bad do you hear good things about the show yeah people seem to like avatar well the live action i don't know i mean i mean the show i mean that in general i

have not heard much about the live action the animated show you should watch it's excellent it's very good absolutely yeah and you should also learn the story about the voice actor for uncle iroh and what happened in the way they shot the second half of the season the first season or whatever it's excellent it's very it's very heartwarming and kind of sad but kind of touching okay usually when that that statement gets started it's usually terrible and horrible and i was about to be worried no no no the the guy who voiced uncle iroh had terminal cancer and he did like the first he he started the show but he passed while they were making the show and so they had to bring someone in to do the rest of uncle iroh's

lines but they the person that got to the voice just did like an impeccable match of the voice he had been doing but he did it from another room so they didn't see him they just heard the voice the cast members were like like we're talking to Mako. It's very touching. And it makes the Zuko-Iros story even better in the show because of the real life stuff that goes with it. It's great. It's a great show.

I haven't watched the live action. Heard bad things. That's too bad. Everything is going live action now, isn't it? Because Disney's been doing live action remakes, and then some of the animes have been doing live action stuff. That seems to be the the thing right now i feel like that's just the only way you can reuse like like some executive was like dude avatar is killing it people love that shit but we can't just animate another avatar it has to be different so

if we do a live action one and we could just reuse the same people will love that everyone always loves live action live action means better than dumb animation that no one can appreciate isn't really an art form if you think about it you know what point to both of you for that brutal honesty yeah i can't wait till ai takes all your jobs you dummies you artists this is a joke. Point to Mark for not joking. Put sarcasm in big, bold, blinking letters. Gah-king, gah-king. And then have an arrow pointing to wherever Wade is. Says, like, hates animators and artists.

Gah-ping. As the host, don't do that. I have something to bring up, because I guess I haven't brought a small talk up. But, Bob, I want you to look at that energy drink you have. I want you to look at the back. I want you to tell me what the vitamins in it are. B6, B12, biotin, L-theanine, 150 milligrams caffeine. How much B12? That's really difficult to read.

It's like a pink can. It's like light pink text on the pink can. It says B12. I love that for us. 2.4 micrograms is what it looks like of B12, which it says 100% of my daily. You know how like five hour energy and some energy drinks have a gratuitous amount of B12 or B vitamins in general, right? Turns your piece super yellow. There's and this is again, like most things I say about this and medically related stuff is like I'm just reading anecdotes. But I always try to like keep up with like the newest developments in things. And this is

pertaining to ADHD. Apparently there are some links, just links, not saying it's cause or like not trying to jump to too many conclusions, but there is starting to be some correlations between vitamin B12 deficiency and ADHD like symptoms. and i think back to when i was in college do you remember how many energy drinks and five-hour energies i drank i remember a four to six foot tall pyramid of cans of the blue amp energy drinks on your desk for quite a while a day no but not in a long enough period of like in a matter of a week or two or something like not enough time yeah i i drank a silly amount of those it was either the blue amp or blue monster it was always the blue ones and for some reason i just did those but

the commonality between those and the five hour energies is i think a five hour energy okay b12 it has 500 micrograms which is 20 000 percent what the shit so you cured your adhd that's what i have has 2.4 micrograms and what did you say five 500 micrograms jesus here's the thing though that's what the only thing that i could do to make myself steady. I thought it was like the caffeine, and it has a lot of it. But caffeine doesn't really affect me as much as most people. That's common in ADHD. It has sometimes have this inverse effect, and I'll get sometimes even more tired after

drinking caffeine. Oftentimes, I would be able to drink this stuff and go to bed right after. But now there's evidence coming out that there is an association with vitamin deficiencies and i think like in everyone's diet there probably is some form of vitamin deficiency so it doesn't mean you have adhd or something like this just because you're deficient but the supplementation that some people are taking you know that five-hour energy was 20 000 of daily recommended some people are taking supplements of 40 000 of your daily recommended and i'm not saying that's what you should do because like, again, like everything in moderation with this.

But I was just saying it's interesting because the only thing that, and this was before I was actually diagnosed or taking medication for it, I would gravitate naturally towards energy drinks and gravitate naturally towards these things. I was like, I have to focus somehow. And I, and that's a common thing in like undiagnosediagnosed ADC is you try to seek out things that will help alleviate your symptoms. And again, I'm not saying everyone go drink all the B12 possible. I only say these things because it's a fascinating part of my life.

And well, it's not fascinating. It's very burdensome sometimes. But it's something that I was like, hey, Bob, considering you have been diagnosed now now that's an interesting thing that you might look into no actually i think that's really interesting completely anecdotally because i like trying new energy drinks i only drink sugar-free ones because i'm diabetic so it's kind of a big thing for me kind of important but there are a wide range of them and some sugar-free energy drinks like there are some that i prefer my number one go-to is monster ultra zero the like white can and i never really understood why because it's not about

caffeine content i've had other energy drinks that have the same caffeine content but like they made me tired or they made me feel sick but i'm looking monster the monster that i like that i gravitate towards has 18 micrograms of vitamin b12 which is 750 but at versus i'm wondering if other ones that did not work for me they had the same caffeine but they had a different vitamin content or whatever i i don't know i'm trying to think of ones i i don't want to like disparage any brands or anything but no no it's because people drink different energy drinks they have different formulation that's totally understandable different flavor when did that start late do you guys know about like apparently red 40 is is just terrible i think it's always

been terrible i i don't think that's new that wasn't the red 40 but surge i think was it surge back in the day had like the color thing that was bad for you yeah what was in surge because they banned surge fast i thought it was the caffeine content was it not the caffeine content but so color thing that was bad for you? Yeah, what was in Surge? Because they banned Surge fast. I thought it was the caffeine content. Was it not the caffeine content? But so many things have caffeine. All right, so this is not at all disparaging, but you're making me think, Mark. This is an energy drink that I like the flavor of, but that never worked for me as well as the ones that I prefer. Zoa Energy Drink, which is Dwayne The Rock Johnson's energy drink brand.

They're very delicious, but I'm looking at the nutrition facts for one of the flavors. It only has 1.8 micrograms of vitamin B12 versus 10 times that in the one that I like that makes me feel better and more energized and focused. And I mean, they do say like I've heard for a long time that B vitamins are kind of like help with energy regulation and stuff like that. But but in reality, the names of these vitamins do not give an idea of what they actually are for. People say like vitamin A is in carrots, but it has multiple forms. There's beta carotene, which is mostly in carrots.

And there's retinol. Retinol is vitamin A. Also, that's the stuff you put on your skin to look like famous people. But they're both vitamin A. And they're just different forms of base compounds that are naturally occurring and artificially occurring that I don't know too much about that I'm not an expert in. But it's like, yeah, it can be confusing to know what these actually are. So I think there's actually multiple forms of B12 as well to complicate it even further because there's different like compounds of it that will absorb differently and break down differently and all kinds of stuff.

Turns out you can make pretty much when you have as many elements on the periodic table, you can make them in combinations that are almost infinite. All right, I'm doing it. We're talking too much about it. I'm drinking this. I haven't had an energy drink in like a week and a half. This might be about to go off the rails a little bit. So we'll see.

Well, if you guys out there are going to take in uh 20 to 40 000 percent of your daily intake of something do it in moderation well i kind of want to do that just to see i kind of want to get the 40 000 percent of daily value of b just just take it and just see what happens what if i turn it to what if it's like those pills from that movie where you become like on what's it called unstoppable or something where you you take the pill and you become magical yeah i it's uh no limit man i think that's yeah that's the one yeah that's the one yeah it's it's obviously people do take it and the thing is you'll piss it out anything that your body doesn't need is really good at doing that uh but if you take it too much you'll either cause problems long term or give yourself kidney stones which i help

i hear are not that fun it could be considered a superpower pissing stones so you would be unlocking a special magical thing by getting kidney stones when you hear kidney stones do you think that you're just pissing them out dude i imagine you go to pee and you better go outside because you're going to damage the toilet with the amount of like shrapnel you're firing out no i think you're right i think you're dead on i think that's an accurate but i like building it up in the imagination as being something amazing guys i think the caffeine is working i'm currently peeling the label off wow do i seem focused we've been going for a while i haven't even gotten into the topic so i'm going to pivot a little bit here so i guess we'll talk about some other smaller things i'm sure you guys have heard

about this but have you seen that um at least wendy's specifically has plans next year to start surge pricing like uber does where when it's busier prices go up on their menu your chicken nuggets at dinner time are going to cost a lot more than your chicken nuggets at midnight if they do that wendy's is one of my favorite fast food places if i'm going to eat fast food that's like top of the list for me if they actually implement that i am just not ever going to wendy's again i don't give a shit how much i crave their nuggets that's awful that doesn't make any sense though no mark the way it works is it's to manipulate when people come right if it's costs more at lunch they assume they're still gonna get a busy lunch but they'll push some

people who would have come at lunch who would have backed up the line and made it made someone not show up potentially they'll come later they'll still buy food they'll just buy it off hours the idea is that you manipulate people's behavior in that way so that you still make the money, but then you make extra money by having people who are like, I'll save money by going at three in the afternoon for lunch. You know what the craziest thing is, is if it's a busyness thing based on not being able to serve as many customers, they could just hire more employees. One costs them money. One makes them money. I just see, you know, like, In-N-Out is a nightmare. I don't actually like it that much. But where you went, that line was gargantuanly long.

But we were moving constantly. It was going because they have a ton of employees there. They have one guy that's just a... They're shitty french fries. Cracking out soggy french fries like his life depends on it. You drive up up you throw money in they throw a burger out and it's just you go on your way it's imagine if they had surge pricing you know because they're they have their downtime where they're not busy wendy's is actually

usually pretty good like from the one i've been to they're usually pretty good at keeping their line moving some places are a lot less so like there was a steak and shake nearest that like you would go there you'd place your order and it was like no matter when you went it was you were standing in that line for about 20 minutes which i mean was fine because usually they're making their stuff fresh but also some were faster than others and sometimes it just felt like your order was not high on their priority list so they would do a thing where like they would place an order and have you not pull forward or they would wait a long time to take your order because they didn't want to have a backed up line but like wendy's always been pretty good about it so for them to do that as

the first one's kind of surprising to me it's just so money it's just so money we've heard of looks maxing this is cash maxing some researcher at wendy's or somewhere somewhere was like well if you do this you can increase profits by like 15 on average you'll get even more business because of these reasons for behavioral science reasons or something it's just that it's just just that like stocks and investors and they have to be making money for them to keep getting invested like is that why companies can never be satisfied they always want more i mean pretty much right every every subsequent earnings report if it's not better it's worse you can't have two back-to-backs or if you have a

an earnings report where last quarter we made a million dollars this quarter we made a million dollars and one cent that's a loss that's a failure you have to make an increase in your in every earnings report and that's what drives it yeah it's so fascinating because brand loyalty is something that people try so hard to cultivate. And a establishment like Wendy's has brand loyalty that stretches back for some people for decades. You know what I mean? But it's really easy to break it. It's actually not.

Actually, it's not that easy to break it, but it can be broken. There are some lines that you can immediately lose it completely. Brands have done a good job. Like Coke versus Pepsi growing up. Like if you drink one that your friends weren't a big part of, like you got shit for it. Or like Nike versus adidas well my parents bought pepsi because they liked pepsi and everyone else i knew basically drank coke and none of us gave a shit what kind of soda the other people drank at least in the athlete section of things if you were wearing like i don't know adidas

back then weren't like seen as like the cool shoes it was jordans that were in right so you had to have nikes and jordans people always talk about coke versus pepsi i feel like that's just a myth that the coke and pepsi company is prop gay i've never experienced that in real life i don't who gives a shit interest i mean nowadays no but like when i was younger yeah that was a thing but the shoe one was definitely like that was bigger the clothing and shoes yeah is it mostly just what's the most expensive one it was jordans and then it was like Under Armour because Under Armour was obscenely expensive. I always wore, I didn't buy the expensive stuff because one, the cool clothes don't come in enormous sizes.

So I had to buy the, I had to buy the, you know, size 15 football cleats and the big 2XL, 3XL shirts. I always wore like Reebok and Champion. I was like the loser kid on the, in the sports groups, but. This guy, freaking loser. But they were also not insanely expensive i feel like nike under armor to a certain extent adidas when it became cooler they just get more expensive when they become cooler don't they there was a pair of jordans

that i had to have for my basketball team i convinced my mom i needed them we had to wear red and white i think at milford or red and black it was red and white at milford for the school team and these jordans were red and white but they came in a metal briefcase and they were like 200 a pair it's not even expensive by modern sneaker standards well no but back then it was getting a metal case with it is kind of the the nice bonus because i didn't keep the metal case right i didn't bring that to school i was imagine showing up at school with that slapping on the table click look at you you handcuff it to your wrist like i i got practice later i still have the case i use as like a storage box for like baseball cards or something i don't know what's in there the shoes

are long gone who cares about those so the shoes after i had to have them after practice or after a game or something i put them on top of my locker i was messing with my locker i forgot them i left them on top of my locker and they got messing with my locker. I forgot them. I left them on top of my locker and they got stolen. And that's where your basketball career went straight downhill. All right, so this is the thing I wanted to bring up. I'm curious if you guys have experienced this. I'm telling on myself for how much I get fast food,

but the McDonald's that I go to, the closest McDonald's to us, started this thing where they have, I'm not gonna call it ai because it's not they have like a computer voice assistant at the drive-thru now so you pull up and you don't talk to a person but you talk to a computer who like enters your order in and then you just pull forward once you're done putting your order in but so far it's got about a 50 success rate about the same as normal honestly it's worse than the high school kids that work at that mcdonald's most of the time but um have you guys experienced that it's awful like and not in like

oh i hate technology i like technology i think if it worked well that's cool it barely works if you do anything that's not like give me the number two and don't change anything it just doesn't work and they implemented that like it's functioning technology i wonder if it's a microphone quality issue because i i have a friend who has trouble speaking i don't know what the the actual term is called typically would only type whenever we like even we play games would just type would never like talk because couldn't talk but they have found like a thing that they use where they can kind of like try to speak and their microphone will go into the software it'll figure out the words that they're trying to use and then like an ai voice or a computer voice will speak so now they can hop into call and talk to us whereas before it was always

typing but like it's very good because like even during video games you're kind of like mumbling incoherently like it will pick up everything they're saying it comes through very clearly and like seemingly is very good at understanding what they're trying to convey so the technology exists to interpret even words from someone who has trouble speaking so for them to be bad at like a mcdonald's you have to wonder is it a speaker issue is it whatever software they're using where's the where's the difference in it there here's a here's probably the difference is that's one person trying to interpret how they so an ai can be trained to that to get it AI to be able to understand everyone's way of speaking almost across the board.

Think of how many times you and I, even in this conversation about like, what did you just say? It is a difficult thing. And yeah, systems can get good at that. But when you, yeah,

you have a bad microphone in the speaker, but also just like everyone talks differently. Some people mumble. I've gone up to the drive-thru. Don't take burgers on the list. Yeah. And, and I've had them read stuff back to me and I just go like, yeah, that's it. but also just like everyone talks differently some people mumble i've gone up to the drive-thru yeah and and i've had them read stuff back to me and i just go like yeah that's it and hope i just hope that they got it you know i even see it on the screen it's wrong and i go like well i actually wanted a pepsi pro i don't want to be bullied for liking coke and they're like and then i'm like thank you how much do i give you surge pricing thank you so much for your service

i was just a horrible flashback the double cheeseburger voice i did there was a guy that used to come and i used to work at united dairy farmers and there was a guy that used to come in i would be like hello how are you doing today because you always greeted people when they came in and every time the guy would not acknowledge anything you said he would just go giant chocolate malt and then he'd like walk away and like he was very irritable and impatient so like whenever he was giants are fine like making a giant's fine but they're kind of messy sometimes so sometimes they take a little bit longer that man you you better have that giant chocolate malt done but by the time he got whatever candy bar whatever he was getting from the other side you had to be quick give it to him and he was just like he hated you

no matter who it was he was so mean and i will never forget just every time he walked in anyway that guy am i right point to me for how to deal with that man i feel like you're winning this episode you've gotten a lot of points i'm not but you know i'm not but i've got more points than i should yeah i feel like one of us is in control of that more than the other two no that's fair bob i'll give you a point for that how about me i don't question your point system that's fair two points for that i questioned it even more deeply now than i did before that's fair bob i'll give you a point for that how about me i don't question your point system that's fair two points for that i questioned it even more deeply now than i did before that's some shit one half of a point for that i would i would sincerely i would just not go to wendy's or any restaurant that tried to do that would you guys like stop going would it impact you and i

mean it's not like i wouldn't want the food and it's not like i couldn't like i could buy the food i could probably afford the surge pricing it just pisses me off enough that i would be like no it is a very dick move because some people don't have the option of like waiting the ones they're gonna pay are the ones that don't have a choice because like if you only have a one hour lunch break during a certain time i mean sure you're going to wendy's which is already a luxury i guess versus like packing a meal or something else but like it's still kind of punishing people that don't have flexible schedules and i don't really know what the intent is other than just like you said making money it's so sad that you said that wendy's was a luxury and it's true like especially for most people now it's because like even when i was in college and even when i was like barely making

money like super in debt i would still it wasn smart, but I would still go and take advantage of like the Long John Silver's fish taco Tuesdays or whatever it was or Thursdays. And I would get the dollar menu. Those don't exist anymore. And now it's surge pricing. It's just like, what even is the point? Because I order delivery like quite a bit just because I'm lazy. And even that has prices add on i know that it's

exorbitantly feed oh yeah like it is incredibly feed and we know this because back in the day ordering a pizza there would be a delivery fee of like four to five dollars and then you'd tip and that was it the price of the pizza if you went in there was the same as if you got it delivered it's just they added on the delivery fee and that was it and with doordash like it's and uber eats and it's just they're all doing it you know it's it's yeah and how are they still not making money how are those companies still not making money well now you've got the fast food places charging the surge pricing and the delivery fee so for like a one dollar ten piece or whatever it used to be or whatever it is one dollar where do you live one dollar for a 10 piece.

Holy shit. All right. So four bucks for that, four bucks for delivery. And then like, what's the surge pricing even going to be? Has anyone seen a number on that? A couple cents? Is it going to be like an extra dollar? Like what?

If it's comparable to Uber, it will scale with how busy it is and potentially it will be dramatically different. So like, what would the lowest price versus highest price be, you think? What would you guesstimate? I mean, I would guess if you go the normal price when it's dead, you know, it's the middle of the afternoon and it's dead as quiet as it gets out of Wendy's will be, say, something is $3. I would guess all the way up to six or eight bucks, maybe even 10 if they're super greedy

and it's super busy. For a single item? Wouldn't surprise me. Yes. They're doing this knowing that it's going to piss people off. You think they're going to be afraid to do 100% price increase on something just to try and make a few extra percents? I'm sure there's a mathematical equation that someone at Wendy's has figured out and they're

like, this is what we should do. This is how we should do it. And then they'll tweak it as they get results and see how it works. It's whatever they can get away with. I'm sure it'll be exorbitant. It'll be ridiculous. It'll be whatever people are willing to pay, which is everything's expensive.

So who knows? I don't know. I just wouldn't be surprised if it was a lot. We have an update. This is from yahoo.com. But as of three hours ago, Wendy's blasted over CEO's pricing comment vows no price hikes at busy times.

Apparently, they're walking it back already. That's probably as true as anything else a company says. Whenever the answer is with companies, the answer is always more money, no matter the cost. Like Bob said, yeah, there's an equation. There's a pissed off equation of how much piss off they can handle for them to do it. And if it works, everyone else is going to do it and then it will become the norm. Yeah, well, and that's the thing, too, right? That it's like, oh, Wendy's.

Oh, it's not just Wendy's. All of the all of the big corporations that own all of the fast food restaurants and all of the restaurant chains in general probably have or are probably considering this and have people looking at the numbers and are like, if the equation balances out to where it's like, well, we'll lose this much business because this many people will not come because they're mad at us but we'll make this much more money anyway out of the customers that do come they'll start doing it here's what they said i wonder if they're just going to raise their prices soon because what they said wendy's in a statement said on wednesday it would not raise prices when

our customers are visiting us most instead it would it would allow Wendy's to offer discounts to customers more easily, particularly in the slower times of day. That's like the websites where they raise the price and then the website just says 24 hours a day like, oh, it's 30% off. No, it's just full price. You just jacked up the price. So you could say it's 30% off. That doesn't. That's what I'm saying. They're going to raise prices and then lower them during the not busy. This is literally just how shrink inflation works, too, because what they'll do is they'll raise they'll go through this stink and then they'll go like, oh, we try to raise price, whatever they do.

And then they'll backtrack and be like, oh, no, we're going to not do this. And then the prices will just stay higher. And then like to make amends, we're bringing back the value menu and it'll be cheaper stuff at the old prices and then that's shrinkflation i'm curious to see what happens because uh yeah it looks like uh they walked it back but they misconstrue we're not raising our prices we're just lowering them they're not busy times they apparently their shares dropped 14 last year so they've got to somehow get their money back up so i guess the their way they're gonna do is discount definitely not raising the base price it's just discount what you want to do is join

wendy's secret club and if you pay 28 a year in your annual subscription fee to be at wendy's club you get a three percent discount on every purchase that yeah no i love the world that we live in it's great great. Only good things. Well, that's our current update on the surges. Anything else you guys want to say about that before I move on? Nope. Nah. I, unironically, really enjoy Burger King's burgers and fries.

When their fries are on, they're one of my favorite fries. Fast food fries. Their breakfast is surprisingly better than it was. I don't even remember when they started doing breakfast. But yeah, we were on a road trip, Amy and I. i and we were stopping through and the hotel just so happened to be there was only a burger king in the area and i usually don't go to burger king this morning we need breakfast it's the only place to get breakfast it was shockingly good shockingly good they had these french toast sticks their their eggs are always scrambled but they're like perfectly made at least this location i have not tried it again but it was fluffy and i was shocked so i've always enjoyed their food but they had a promotion back in the 90s i think mcdonald's

was beanie babies and burger king was pokemon i think burger king you could get like little pokemon balls that had like little like different like little plaques and collectible pokemon stuff like that was also mcdonald's they might have done something else too but i think burger king definitely had one of them i think wendy's the only one that i didn't go to for toys at some point but mcdonald's and burger king there were definitely times that they ran toy lines there was a remember the batman and robin movie there was a time where i think i think it was mcdonald's where they had like glass cups you could get from mcdonald's from that batman and robin movie there was like a mr freeze cup there was a robin there was a batman whatever i had to go look up because i didn't

remember the batman and robin movie i thought it came out like the 80s or something and i had to go like is this another evidence that wade is older than he says came out in 97 i was like okay batman yeah look up batman and robin mcdonald's glasses they were actually decent quality they were really cool looking that was like a collectible thing you could get from i think it was mcdonald's back in the day those were like cool cups as a kid to drink out like that was awesome to have my chocolate milk in one of those. They do promos like that, but I haven't heard about any of them being good in a long time. But they do like big promos with like movies and like IPs that you would recognize. They're just not as cool as they were. But maybe I'm just out of the loop.

I'm not a connoisseur. Maybe other people know. And then the Beanie Babies, dude. The teeny beanies. Those, I was obsessed with getting all of those. I like all the tags i played with my beanie babies i fucking love those guys they were my bros we used to do football i would set them out of my bed and play like arcade football where i put them in formations and that was the best this is the news of this obsession i did too and then at like 10 years old we realized they had like value to them so i started caring about the value as a kid so my grandparents got me like a pricing guide i tried to like see

if mine had like any of the the rare like errors that made them worth more and stuff which none of mine did but like we started collecting them and like putting the tag protectors on so i've got them with tag protectors and sealed in like ziploc bags inside of a big tub they've got like three layers of protection now i'm looking up beanie babies on ebay to see if there's anything of value i'm going by highest price one million dollars buy it no there's multiple listings of a million dollars and 900 000 and buy them they're better than lenses there's so many of these purple because they're the apparently the princess diana beanie baby and there's so many of them on here for $750,000 a million. They're rare, Mark.

There's only a few in existence. I've got one in this tub. It's page after page after page. It's worth anywhere from a million to I'm trying to there's so many pages. Can you can you sort by like recently finished auctions and see if any of them actually sell for anything? Yeah, let me see. Ending soonest. Okay, this one.

Okay, there's a Princess Diana Beanie Baby that has a starting bid of $20. It ends in one minute. No bids. But you could buy one that's worth a million dollars? That's crazy. You could, yeah. You could do that, yeah. I'm surprised eBay lets you list things for that high.

Don't you need like an escrow service? That does feel like something that should have not been in existence after like 2012. In a related note, Pokemon cards. Do you guys know who Leonhardt is? Oh, yeah. I think he, didn't he fight in the boxing? Did he fight Ethan? Yeah, he's the guy Ethan fought.

Well, I'm not going to go too deep into it. I saw a tweet from him earlier where he said it's the last day to enter. He does giveaways. You can enter to win an $ thousand dollar pack of cards and the pack pictured looks like the packs that we just opened in the 90s like the the original three well it's it's like a retro pack right it's probably like an original series you know how many of those i opened back then that i if i just hung on to it's like if they're worth 11 000 each my god i could have retired i'm gonna teach james to never play with anything i get him every toy i buy put it in a plastic bag put it in a box put it on a

shelf hide that shit let twiddle your thumbs and wait till you're older because some of that might be worth money i you know you could just buy some stocks and some things oh but you could lose on that toy investments where it's at gambling on the value of collectible toys is the new is the new hotness right now okay you're right you're right by the way guys i totally didn't invent this but i have heard there's this new card coming out collectible cards the new hotness it's called ip liar cards it's great it's gonna be the next big thing i'll get you in on the ground floor five hundred dollars a box you're gonna give us five hundred dollars to open a box no you pay me five hundred dollars give you a box that sounds like a great deal sealed with the factory ribbons on them this is a weird episode

i had some plans actually in place we talked about some of it but really we just kind of chatted, which is fun. It was nice just kind of chit-chatting about things. I feel like this keeps happening lately. I think we're all just really chatty. It does. I think we just want to talk. We just want to talk and hang out. That's fine. You guys want to buy precious metals? Are you talking about rare earth minerals, bro?

I know there's a lot of people that are like, the world's going to collapse any moment. Buy gold and silver and stuff like that. And there are people that are like the world's going to collapse any moment by gold and silver and stuff like that. And there are people that are super about it, like really, really into it. Have you did you guys know that the price of gold and silver has not changed in like 40 years? It's one of the few things that has not kept up with inflation. That's not great for people who are big into gold and silver.

I would imagine it's just slowly losing money to inflation on your horde of your dragon's horde of gold. There is something to say about gold that has increased because gold's usefulness as a conductive material almost outweighs its value as a precious metal because it is one of the best conductors. Can I just say from a complete place of ignorance? I think it's really funny. The people that are like, don't use currency. Don't use US dollars. That's just arbitrarily valued okay use gold because gold has intrinsic value it's not arbitrarily valued at all it's it's not there's is there some aside from being a conductor is

there some magical quality about gold it's just arbitrary it's not as easily printable as paper money or fake you fake digital currency is. There is a finite amount of gold, theoretically, on Earth. Its value is just as arbitrary, isn't it? Is there a reason that's better? I don't get it. It's somewhat rare. Let me actually look up a list of elements in order of rarity on Earth.

Rare Earth elements? They found them in Wyoming! We're rich! We're rich! that's so familiar i feel like we talked about that how rare is gold i should ask chat gpd searching anything on google nowadays is pointless you will never find what you're looking for no you gotta scroll five pages in just to get past all the sponsored links and crap but while you're looking apparently gold bars are based on troy ounces and one troy ounce of gold is worth $2,029.80. And typically a gold bar weighs 32 troy ounces,

so one gold bar is currently worth $65,258. I mean, as long as nothing happens and civilization doesn't collapse, I'm sure that gold will remain very equally valuable to that, probably. If you get a 27-pound gold gold bar it's worth 750 000 mark i have your list according to chad gbt gold is the sixth most rare element on earth there you go number one is astatine highly radioactive number two is frankium extremely rare radioactive no stabilized stopes three is technetium or promethium and or promethium. Both elements with no stabilized dopes. Extremely rare in nature. Next is rare earth elements such as thulium, lutetium, blah, blah, blah, blah.

5 is platinum group elements. Platinum, stuff, palladium, osmium, iridium. And 6 is gold and silver. So it's definitely correct information. But I mean, but like, so it gets, so it gets less impressive after that. After gold, number 7 is lead, tin, copper, zinc. Number eight is nickel, cobalt. Number nine is iron.

Ten is aluminum. Those are incredibly common. We should collect astetines. Astetine? I would imagine that's one that you can't really find that's probably made in some kind of electron beam collider thing where they make heavy isotopes or something. I don't even know.

Let's get a collider. Mark's got enough lenses. We could probably make one. Yeah, Mark, can we use your lenses to make a super collider? I'm assuming that, yeah, that's how they work. They just put a bunch of lenses together and then they make, they yell at electrons to go, go, go, go, go. Trying to flashlight through a bunch of lenses that just keep condensing it into a laser.

Yeah, you need the right, you just get the sun at the right angle to shine through all the lenses and you focus the laser and then boom astatine i almost burnt my retina apart with a lens because i was looking at it you know i looked through it just check to see if it's um got any scratches inside and i hold it up near the sun i hear you want to do that during an eclipse. You should definitely watch the eclipse through your lens, Mark. That's great. Yeah, yeah. I could get a really good look at it. I can't really see in this lens that I better look at the sun.

Yeah, I was curious. I almost said that. I went like, whoa, that's a bad idea. And I was curious how much it would concentrate the sun if I pointed it at like there was this blade of leaf on the ground and I went instantly on fire. Alright, well I think we're going to wrap up there. This was fun. I pointed at like there was this blade of leaf on the ground and I went instantly on fire. All right. Well, I think we're going to wrap up there.

This was fun. I have a bunch of questions, I guess, to say for next time I'm hosting. But let me tabulate the points. OK, so, Bob, you are at 13 and a half points. I don't remember when I gave you a half, but apparently I gave you a half. You gave me a half for complaining about something that Mark got like two points for. Well, it was enough for you to beat Mark because Mark has 13 points. So you win by a half.

I ended up with four points. Well, as the winner, I will take the liberty of delivering my winner's speech now. And it feels good. I feel like the new rules that we laid out in the Council of Distractible are really panning out. I think it feels even as fair as ever, probably more fair than it's ever been before.

I'm glad that we did that. I'm excited for our biennial boat episode. We are going to have to amend that language, but I do think we want to. I don't know if we want to be on a boat twice a year. That's a lot of boat. I want to point out, Mark, you actually probably should have won this episode. But I have marked here last episode. Bob had two points to start from the end of last episode.

And that and the half point are all that pushed him over the edge. Wait, why? Why? Why? Because the end of last episode, I was like, two points, Bob, for the next one. Yeah, I do remember that. I don't remember why. So you got screwed twice over in this episode, Mark, by the half a point and then by the

two points from last episode. No, I wasn't screwed by the half a point because that I can agree was okay. It's okay to lose. It's not unfair to lose, but that two points is the only time I've been screwed because when did that happen? The end of last episode. It existed.

Red flag! I'm throwing it! I'm throwing my flag! I'm throwing my protest flag! What exactly are you challenging? I am going to the subreddit of this because I think, I think I have a case for this. Whereas like the prior two points qualifies as a handshake deal. And we ban those as part of the constitution that cannot carry over because your job, it's the delineation of when the host takes on. Okay.

Ignore the handshake thing. But I also stand by the handshake thing just in case it pans out and people like it. I'm going to tell audience, put that in the back pocket. If the argument doesn't carry through for the other thing, bring that one back out and really strike him in the jug. There have not been any precedent for the judging to start until the next episode begins and therefore point allocations would equate to Bob giving himself points in the next episode, which is an unfair advantage.

If we allow that precedent to stand, then there is no justice. I'm just going to put this out there. We absolutely have had instances already, I think more than one, where someone earned points with a non-judge, with their competitor who was not the judge that were later redeemed not in the directly following episode but in a subsequent episode where the person who gave the points didn't i get screwed by that i think you did i think i gave mark points actually just because i'm the one that took advantage of it does not mean does it not mean does not mean that this did not get addressed in the in the in the standards it didn't get addressed at all

and i'm taking it to the subreddit hey it is bold of you to appeal to my subreddit uh during my hosting episode it's a bold choice i'm wishing you luck i think if you look at the sub right now it it very clearly shows a bias towards me and my lens choices and you my sir are in the minority and i guarantee anybody out there that's on my side in this one i'll bring you onto the i'll bring you onto the podcast though if you make me win this you know i happen to think that's a lie mark is directly lying to you right now that's a that's a markup liar promise that's how valuable that is but i do appreciate you helping us trim the weeds we'll see who the treasonous jumpers are i'll start a poll and I will outline the injustices as soon as this episode airs.

And we will know the truth or whenever we decided that I'll look at the Constitution. We're all going to look closely at the Constitution. You know. You know who transcribed the Constitution? The subreddit who's going to come down on my side. Your side. Oh, for some reason, I thought that was me versus Wade. I didn't even, I forgot.

Oh, okay. You're on Wade's side. Yeah, it's not me. It's not me. It's Wade. It's you some reason, I thought it was me versus Wade. I forgot. Oh, okay. You're on Wade's side. Yeah, it's not me. It's not me. It's Wade. It's you and Wade, baby. Yeah, I'm throwing my flag at Wade here. Well, congrats, Bob.

Mark, thank you for a great loser speech. I hope the subreddit gives you exactly what's coming to you. Stay tuned for the next one where Bob will undoubtedly host. I have no doubts about that. And I guess we'll see what he has up his sleeve. Until then, you can find Mark at Markiplier, Bob at MySkirm, Wade, Minion777,

or LordMinion777. If you are on my side, I will bring merch back. If you're on my side, I will give everyone who votes for me. Mark's got Surge Pricing. You have to side with him if you want things. Markiplier's Surge Pricing, coming to a store-not-to-show podcast near you.

I will just say, bribing is part of the foundation of this podcast from the inception. I feel like you're threatening more than bribing. You're like, you want merch? Sign with me. It'll come back if you sign with me. If you don't. What's the difference between a bribe and a threat, really?

Whatever. We'll see you next time. Podcast out.