Sad Boyz - Is Palworld Still Copying Pokemon?

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

Check out 150+ bonus episodes at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://patreon.com/sadboyz⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ✨find us everywhere✨⁠⁠ https://linktr.ee/sadboyzpod⁠⁠  🎬 CREW 🎬 Hosted by Jarvis Johnson,Jordan Adika, and Peeps Produced & Edited by Jacob Skoda Produced by Anastasia Vigo Thumbnail design by @yungmcskrt Outro music by @prod.typhoon & @ysoblank 00:00:00 Wellbutrin Check 00:05:22 Gymnast Dog 00:09:18 Learning To Be Bad 00:10:51 Homophobia In Sports 00:30:06 Palworld 00:54:12 Meta Using AI For Evil 01:19:36 Suno AI Was Exposed 01:30:59 Pokemon Champions 01:41:26 Pokemon Worlds! 01:43:30 Learning, Teaching, Helping 01:48:47 Driving 01:57:32 Sad Boyz NIGHTZ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Sad Boys, podcast about feelings and other things also. I'm Jarvis. Live from Sunny, California. It's Jordan and Jarvis from Sad Boys. That was so smooth. LLC. It's a live Well Butcher and Report.

Oh, well-butcher report. How are you feeling? Welbutchen check. Weekly well-bootian check. Fine. Like, I don't know that I feel anything. And that sometimes concerns. me. Not that I don't feel anything, but I don't feel any difference. But the irritability from

last week was gone because I went up on my, my dosage. So I think I keep... The irrebility came in from going up. Yeah, exactly. So I'm hoping that there's like green pastures ahead. Nice, nice, nice. How about you? I'm curious. I haven't bumped mine up yet. I'm six weeks in, something along there. Yeah. But the... Maybe this doesn't really sound fucking crazy. the I was not aware that irritability was like a generally cited common side effect till till we were talking about it. Yeah. And I, I honestly was kind of thankful for it because I wanted like, I think one of the issues, one of the reasons I wanted to try something new is that it's one thing being, you know, a little water off a duck's back. Don't sweat the small stuff.

Tank it. I think generally I'm pretty good at that. But it's been getting to a point where now I'm like, well, I'm like just kind of dispassionate about things that should bother me. I'm like, I think I need to be a little more bothered by some stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like actual personal relative, you know, medium to high stakes stuff. But I, I, so I had like a genuine reaction of like, this is annoying me. this person's actually being a little difficult.

I do need to push back on this. So there's situations compromised. I actually do need to. Like, I cannot tank the splash damage for somebody else's benefit right now. Right, right. And then I felt horribly guilty about that. Like the getting out of the rhythm of just being like, yeah, okay, whatever.

I will, I'll eat it. Like, you know, because I know I can't live better. Yeah, just like having the emotion, you're now like, it's like when you have anxiety or whatever. And you're like. I was so impatient with that person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I relate to that. I'm kind of, I think I know on an academic level that actually I just probably,

you know, I haven't yelled at anyone. Right, right, right, right. You know what I mean. Sometimes it is like, anxiety is the, yeah, perfect equivalent because it's like, I'm sure if you ask anybody at the party you're at, no one's going to be like, yeah, they were so weird. But you, who not, they might also be being nice. It's that like, sure, sure.

And that's always so rarely the case. That's the thing where it's like my therapist is like you have to, you can't try to imagine what other people are thinking. Yeah. You have to like if someone tells you it's fine, you have to take them at their word that it's fine. Yes. And as you don't want to do mind reading because mind reading is like one of those classic traps of like mental health sadness. Silo's you as like sometimes arrogantly like I can feel like, well, I'm the shrewdest person in. Like I've read the emotions, but as opposed to like, no, I've missed something clearly.

I'm as susceptible to that as anybody, especially in terms of like, I don't know, like, seeing other people's comfort and like, or what seems to be comfort and assuming that means, that doesn't mean that they're handling their anxiety very well. Yeah. It just must mean it's absent completely. And they couldn't be fighting. They could possibly be fighting. Masking. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, how are you doing overall, though?

Good. I've been doing more. That's good. I think. I've been waking up earlier and not so much in like a let's go. I'm going up inside primarily, I guess. Okay. Save me. That's awesome. But I think it's that's sort of like I've had, just coincidentally had to a lot of days in a row.

And we, you know, we've talked about, you know, before about like, It's not so much I don't so much miss being managed and I don't so much miss having like obligations in an office space, but I do miss the there's a time you need to be at this place every day. Yeah, I miss the like framework and the the feedback loop personally. And it's, hey, it's 5.30 p.m. I'm like maybe I'll do a little bit more work. I'm a bad boy, maybe some, but I am done. Like, nominally in the eyes of the people around me, the working and thinking time is over. Right. We talked about a little bit when you were, similarly, you were just on like a, it's what, like, two weeks ago, a spat of, like, filming. There was just, like, things back to back.

Yeah. Now it's like the, now it's a little bit like save me from the nothing I've become. Okay. So, Jacob and I have a secret document. Yeah, I'm jealous. Yeah, you should be. So the first thing is, I have a caption that says, will this scare Jacob? Only one way to know.

It's something I saw on my feed. and I immediately thought of Jacob's dog. One of my favorite TikTokers is this dude who makes his miniature poodle do competitive cheering. Oh, I've seen this. Oh, my God. I understand that this is cool. And this person is very good at what they do,

but it doesn't not make me scared. The dog is honestly very talented. Dog, very talented. The only thing that worries me is like that dogs can't give consent. To be thrown around. They love getting talked about. But that being said, I have known dogs.

But you can see that it's maintaining like point four. Yeah. And it honestly doesn't seem upset or phased. Who knows? I don't know. It makes it kind of look so comfortable. Like the way he's holding that dog in his arms is like I would love to be handled like that. Just kind of thrown around.

You know what? End of a long day. back from like gross, just carried all the, tried to carry all the grocery bags in at once one of them broke, because they got the stupid like carbon fiber ones now, whatever. And then like getting thrown like that and like slightly grazing my ceiling.

My worry is how still you'd have to keep your body because that's like an exertion I don't want to do. You can't try to save yourself at all. The core strength that I'd need. I mean, that guy looks like a, like he has done cheer for quite a way. Oh, for sure. Like that, that, I'm talking about the dog. Like if I was,

And that also... And the dog also looks like it's done cheer. The dog's right. I'll say it. The dog's fucking jack. Yeah, yeah. But also, I hope to God that they first started doing that like on a pad where if he did fall. Lower to the ground also.

Yeah. When you see clips of people just doing cheer, I am. It feels like the Blue Angels where I'm like, you can't ever get this wrong, like even a little bit. Well, that's a thing. You can't ever be not perfect at this. Have you ever watched those cheer TV shows or documentaries? No. Well,

there's a couple that have gone viral. You have to fall a lot to learn how to do that stuff. And it looks really painful. Would you do it? No. It's like a guy who he, there's a clone of you that he's doing it with and they're fine. One time when I was in high school and I was working at the Sanrio store,

my friend was like, let's do that crazy swing dancing and just grab. me and started flipping me around, threw me under his legs, and flipped me up. And the whole time I was screaming, stop it. That's impressive that they could do that without your consent. He was way bigger than me. That's crazy. He was like six, five, like super.

Horrifying. Imagine the annoying guy at your high school that always picks people up when he wears my hug. But he throws you on his hand. A competitive cheer. He whips you around like a lasso. God. In cheer, I was always the flyer because I was.

I was tiny. Yeah, I could see that. That's what it's called. Yeah, you're a flyer. I could see you looking exactly like that dog. You have to be so confident and brave to do it because in gymnastics I was very good at like the bars and I was very good at vault. But I was really bad at Beam because I was too scared to try a lot of the things I wanted

to do because I was scared of getting hurt. With cheer, it was a little easier for my mind to rep around because there were other people I was trusting in and it wasn't just me I had to trust in. and that was a lot easier for me. That's interesting because I think some people would be the opposite. They trust themselves more than other people. Right. Well, I think it was a thing of like where like you, oh,

that's how I feel. I'm flying up in the air, but there is someone to catch me versus I could come crashing down and there's no one to catch me in gymnastics. Maybe this is like a, it sort of feels like that like learning to learn thing is, is tricky, but it helps you forever and like getting good core muscles helps you balance. And the foundations, especially when you're younger, can be really helpful for trying new stuff. But I also kind of feel like the tolerance for sucking at something is like really, and I did not have till I was older.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Being able to like just be and be so bad that when someone gives you feedback or suggests something, you have no pride holding you back. Yeah, I suck, of course. Right. That is, it's really hard to admit to myself, even today. It would frustrate me, but I also was too prideful to, like, frame it as failure. And I think it made this, like, toxic loop of me saying that the thing is for it's like, oh, this does it. This must be either bad or.

Who cares about this? This is actually too easy for me to care about. You guys actually give a shit about this. Oh, my God. I was kidding. I was kidding. I was kidding. Which is, you know, was very much self-preservation.

But these days, that's like, do you sometimes, like, you look like an old photo of yourself and you're like, what the fuck was? Why was I wearing that? Why was that my haircut? and it's so hard to place yourself in that moment, like, contemporarily. That's how I feel about behaviors like that. When now I see that and I go like, but that hurts you. You, me in the past feel worse. Right, right, right, right.

Don't do that. Do the toxic stuff I do now that feels good. Speaking of toxic stuff. Okay. There was, I opened my Twitter feed yesterday. And there was an ad seemingly featuring basketball since. Kevin Durant. I say seemingly because it was an ad for his sneakers. Oh my lord. So this ad of Kevin Durant was ostensibly advertising his new candy apple color way of the Kevin Durant shoes.

That's greedy too. I like saw this and my first thought was like whatever. You know what I mean? Like like okay. Like that's that's funny. I guess. It's like cute. Yeah, it's cute. And I did the thing that I is my illness which is I clicked in red replies. And I could not believe how many people were being homophobic over this bad. Oh, I should have guessed. It's always the lowest common denominator, dumb guy take that's easy to make. Like, look at this. Son, that pick better be AI, LMAO, and the post has now been removed.

Because it turns out that this was AI, and this was a fraudulent photo. Oh, it wasn't from the brand itself. No. No, okay. So they did make it. They said that it was a Nike ad, but then you go. to Nike and there's no ad to be found. Grown man has something in his mouth while eyeing

the camera. Why did he agree to this? What an insane bar to have? Eating. Man is eating while looking into the camera. What are you so scared off? That shit's unreal. Is it? It's like funny. Like the fact that it's an ad where he's eating candy is kind of funny.

Oh, I remember this. This was Robert RG3. Yeah, so it's like Robert Griffin III, who is a former top quarterback prospect in college, goes to the NFL was a top draft pick, but then had some injuries that derailed his career. Now he does commentating and stuff. And he has like, he often has like opinions that people don't like. And that's whatever. That's the craft. But but, but, but, uh, him posting that eating this croissant had, and this is real. This is an AI had people being like, oh, this is so gay, dude. And it just reveals like, go ahead, Jacob. posted it because it's a funny photo. Yeah. It's a big ass crissat. The caption on his post was it's always Chrysontic Locke in Paris.

That's very funny. He was like, look at this funny photo. He's doing Emily in Paris. I think maybe Jacob You've said this, but it's like, it's a very gay way to look at the world. To be like anything in your mouth, I have to imagine it as a penis

in order to be homophobic about it. A homophobic guy going to therapy and every single like Splot Rochev or. Like sponge, it's like, oh, penis, cock. Yeah, no, because that's like, that's what it feels like. And I, in the Kevin Durant instance, first of all, it's AI. Second of all, it's a sphere.

And so I guess he's like, it's balls. It's balls. You know how you bite balls? You make a big old bite. It's, oh my God, it's so embarrassing to have like a getting conyptions over a photo that was never even real. That's the thing. It's like, bro can never have a bad game again. Now I understand why he's been a beast.

ever since he left the thunder. It's like, it's very much, it's very much the thing of like, I knew something was off about him. Yeah, he always gave me bad vibes. He always gave me bad vibes. And now that there's an AI photo that validates those,

I always found Zoran a little suspicious, and now that I saw this photo of him blowing up the world. Someone said... Working with Thanos? It's not AI. He's got some explaining to do. And it's like, they just confidently say that. So anyway, this is obviously people, you know, damn well that ain't

no AI. What do you mean? Is this, this is coping. But it just reminded me that like, for all of the kind of more progressive voices that we're beginning to have in sports, the general sentiment is, the tide is still going a certain way. I do wonder like, this gay as hell. It's 24,000 likes. I still find it weird, the idea, like we just said about like, why do you have that instinct, you're a grown up, why are you still doing that toxic thing for yourself? I feel the same way about, pause. I'm like, what did you think was going to happen if someone didn't, that you were going to be gay?

Me and Iffy send each other like black uncles doing pause to each other because it's like, it's, we should be past it, but in that context, it is funny. Yeah. Well, it's the fact that it's present at all in a good adult. But that's simply because you can't always. be mad about everything. You know what I mean? I'm recharging my laser for the uncles, you know, so that I can...

There's plenty of things I will, like, as easy an apple, if you will, to pick of just like, I'm playing like a dumb, horny Austin Powers guy. Yeah, yeah. But the, like, constant diligence to like always be sincerely, when it's sincere, just being like, hey, careful. Like it's a, like you'll go to hell or something. didn't look at it and go, hmm, I look gay. Like, as it's like, you can't fathom that someone views the world differently than you. Or, you know, even that you go like, hmm, I can see some

annoying people saying that this is kind of gay. Why the hell would I care? And also, it never happened. All right, men, now we can no longer eat apples or candy or we are gay now. The growing list of bullshit continues to thrive. First of all, you left the comment so you've lost. But obviously like this is this person isn't wrong yeah but I'm curious what the replies who are going to be trying to dunk on this person say so it's pretty gay for you to say for this thread 10 replies is so many that's what I'm saying yeah and probably a quote tweet I have to assume yeah maybe yeah are the quote tweet still in the shadow realm or can you see him you can see him but it's annoying see yeah yeah just come out the closet fam it's 2026 we support you

And then, yeah, and then based. And it's like their reply is, I mean, I, I, I, look, here I am giving a blue check their flowers. You're asking. Katie's my favorite, wait, can you roll up? Katie's my favorite player, but this is extremely gay coming from a guy who has no kids. And has never been. Prove that you're, everyone knows, everyone knows if you have kids, you can't be gay. And has never been seen in a relationship.

Hey, you, he's a basketball player. Stop talking about him. You don't know him. You know weird, man. That's the thing is like, you don't know. And you're weird. Also, why do you care so much? Like, that's the thing that drives me crazy is like, why do you care whether he's gay or not?

But I, that's the thing. They don't care. Yeah. Well, no, sorry. I should say they care if he's gay because they're homophobic. But they aren't saying this actually at him. Right. They don't, it's not to be witnessed by anybody involved.

It is to be, it's doing the like. Oh, I'm virtuous. I'm the thing that we're all saying right now. It is a virtue signal to a specific community. It's dark virtue. It's evil virtue. Evil virtue signal. Sin signal.

When Jared McCain was on the Sixers and he paints his nails and stuff and anytime he would have like a bad game, people would be like, it's because you're gay. Yeah. And you are bad at basketball because you're gay. Oh my gosh, that's true. And it's like, you know how many. like gay people have probably been in the NBA and you cheered for them without knowing. Yeah, I do love the naivity of being like, excuse me, there's not going to be any gay men

in my jacked guys hobby. In my hobby that I'm only about jacked guys hanging out only with men all the time. That's like, I think we've watched this clip on the show where it was like an ex-NFL player who was like the first like openly gay person in the NFL while I think he was active, I think was a thing. And then he was talking about him saying. something was gay and then everybody would be like hey you can't say that and it's like okay that like that is that's cool with me this like silent like you're not questioning it you're

just going gay bad yes and you're and it's like such a it's a reflex it's the way a bug things it's like because i maybe maybe i'm too maybe obviously there are very real uh there's very real homophobia in the world but i i do think a lot of the people who say pause or things like that are not like, I don't want to let them off the hook. And I hope this doesn't sound like I'm doing that, but are not like actively trying to engage in homophobia. Yes. It's likely that they have internalized homophobia and are acting that out without questioning

the why. They got homophobia in the toxic dude DLC. Right. It's in the whole package. It's just, it's like in their. archive. And you're like it's like trying to uninstall a program like where it like doesn't cleanly yeah. And it's like oh yeah I actually I'm just going to focus on something else instead of doing the work. Yes. Because I'm I'm because why would I ever do the work? And it's so like I don't

know I'm sure there's sometimes you do also dress for the job you want a little bit in like your morals or principles and stuff you say there's definitely been periods in my life talking about like stuff you suck at and you have to get better at. where I've said like toxic shit, been challenged, then especially when I was younger, be like, fuck that. The thing I was saying was actually right. And now I'm even more militant because you pointed it out.

Yeah. But then you're gonna. You have to be able to like tank a little bit of bad feeling and then just like, even for half a second, just put it in the like think about bucket. And if you really genuinely, because I agree you're not letting anyone off the hook, you're just putting them in the right bucket.

You're going like, reserve. active homophobia for the Lindsay Grahams. And I do want to get some other perspectives on this. But to me, it feels like the root cause is, comes back to like toxic masculinity and what you need to do to be in the in group. Yeah. And what you need to like kind of pledge fealty to. Driven by fear.

Driven, driven by fear, driven by, driven by power, driven. Because it's like if I can have proximity, well, everyone in power says God first, the Christian God, like in America. It's like, okay, Christian God, you've never had a president that's not been married, you know, like, and we have shows like The Bachelor where we like present this like view of relationships that's like it's actually trashy reality television. But it's like it's it's painting a piece of shit gold or whatever. It is, it's like as close as you can get to Coca-Cola commercial from the 50s type relationship. Yeah, and so much of that stuff is like baked into our culture that we don't question. And I feel like you have to want to question it. Or in the thing that sucks is that like the model minority thing where it's where it's like, Jared McCain plays well.

And then people were like, well, maybe I don't care. Like this happened with Caleb Williams last season. They're like, I don't, because he was another pro athlete that paints the nails. I mean, he could do whatever with his nails if he's throwing them darts down the field. You know, and I'm like, okay. Is that the way we're doing it? I'm like, okay. It's always like model minority type instinct.

It feels like, but, and again, not letting anyone off the hook, it feels like inching towards the acceptability of, like, let's say, painting your nail. but in a guarded way, because it's an appeal to something that we all care about. I mean, fellow, you know, fellow Bears fans, this is pretty sick. We can all table our casual homophobia for a second to appreciate that we just won this playoff game. It's like hitting a strike,

but you're playing with the rails up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just, it's okay. You're not in danger. No one's going to get you, especially online. I think performing it still online is always a little confusing to me because, well, no, it's not confusing.

We also got the DLC. It comes pre-installed with your computer. It is the, like, default instinct. But, I don't know, man. It's weird because these people, for the most part, have managed to question themselves in communities or not any community that doesn't include anyone that isn't exactly like them. Right.

And so the concept of it is, like, so far. And it's like they're talking about orks or something. Like, they just can't even imagine it. You develop antibodies to anything that's outside of your echo chamber. and this is not the case of everyone, but my worry always is that like old person who's like, I never need to change, this is the way I am, you know, old habits die hard type thing. Like if we all had, you know, a learning mindset and we're open to challenging our beliefs and continuing to grow, this like probably wouldn't be a problem.

But the diversity of like identity and like just having not a, homogenous like circle can expose you to so many things that just make you at the very least tolerant but over time like hopefully an ally and again we're like to like sisette straight dudes talking about this i do with like plenty of baggage that's like still in yeah of course of course of course of course of the it's very like uh it is yeah it's fear motivated and also like like i don't know the painting nails is actually a really good example because that's always like a If let's just even for a second entertain the idea that there was like within these guys' mindsets something abstractly bad about being gay then this is not even that like this is still but I think the

it's a you see a you see a Scottish person wearing a kill and you're like that guy's wearing a skirt that's gay and then they go no no no that's a cultural thing and they're like whoa bullet dodge because that was almost gay now I'm with it if he if he keeps the cannon yeah I don't it's you don't it's you don't It's like with the painting nails one, it's almost like the perfect example of like how arbitrary this shit is. Yeah. Because it's a peak no one asked. Like why are you even thinking about it? Why are you looking at his nails? What's going on?

Why are you upset by that? Like what? It's so strange to even invite the conversation in that no one was interested in having. I literally just think it's scratching that like, you know, the whole like crabs in the bucket, uh, tall poppy type thing. It's like that for progress where you have spent your entire life so afraid. of ever airing from like the performance. Because you are afraid. It's like, oh, I get beaten up.

Oh, I get yelled at. It's not because of a man. It's because if I don't be seen as that. It's cowardly. It's understandably. If you had the guard rails up in the bowling lane, you never went into the gutter and found out that it wasn't the end of the world. Yeah, the ball still comes back.

The ball still comes back. And then like, this guy paints his nails and is hitting strikes. No rails just over and over. And you're like, there's some subconscious party. He goes like, wait, but if you can do that without the rails, then that means I... No. No, too much to think about. The rails are good, actually, and they're good in like a magical way that doesn't matter

or make sense. But no, I'm right. Does anyone else have thoughts about this? Aniseu you would almost start in speaking. I mean, gay-style thoughts. I mean, I agree with what you guys have been saying. What I'm more curious about, because also, KD commented on this image and said... Oh, yeah.

He commented on me. he was like, this is corny, this shit corny or something like that. And so it makes me think he wasn't like. So a fan just made that or like some random person made it? Katie is not the most liked player. And in a world where we live in the world of fake captions. Yes. In the world of fake photoshopps in like I am farming engagement regardless of the truth.

Like you could imagine this being tweeted from. like an NBA Centel account. Yes. And then being in context as parody. And a lot of times people get Centaled where they don't know what's parody and what's not. I think this is that. But it is very common also for basketball players and other athletes to be photoshopped. So like even when they trade teens, like they've never worn this jersey before and someone

photoshopps a jersey on them or whatever. People will Photoshop LeBron a Cavalier's jersey on LeBron when he played for the Cavs. Yeah. Because they're like, well, we don't have. 40-year-old LeBron in a Kansas jersey. That's a kind of adorable. We're seeing this with the World Cup right now where players are

in AI images, Erling Holland as a Viking or of you know, this team riding in a car together or whatever. It's stupid and it's really not worth the water that it takes to use

the AI. And this feels like you know, someone wanted to make something they wanted to cause a right well the thing is they wanted engagement they wanted engagement if you could make something believable that because people want to believe that kd is all of these bad things that they don't like

and so you basically give them something to oh my hater manifesto just got a new bullet point you know what i mean like i i can now rally around this because it confirms my worldview and that can be used for good and that could be used for evil It even people like kind of in leftist spaces like get tricked by fake news that aligns with their beliefs. I'm as tempted as anyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, X major figure in the institution is feeling a little not well.

And then you're just like, oh my God, guys, it's happening. It's happening. You, you, it would look. I read the star chart and I'm like, well, I mean, they did read the star chart. Fuck. What's in retrograde? This really sums this up is like, this. this photo is going to be used for slander, giving out easy slander material three months before

the season starts. And it's like, it's fake. Yeah. And that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that it's fake because it'll still be used to slander material because people just want to do the slander. To the people doing this, again, it's that like, it's almost like a religious cosmic thing where they're like, bad points.

It's bad soul points to do this. So they're like, this is slander. But you're like, for what? Like he's going to be fired from bad. basketball? Like, there's not... You only care about this if you're you. His legacy is forever tainted because I think he was a little gay. Because I imagined something happening.

Because I saw a fake photo online and I chose to live in that world where it was real. But imagine it happened. Speaking of imagining things happening. A dragon. Well, speaking of a dragon, there's a little game called Power World. Yeah. And we have talked about Power World on. the show in the past when the couch was facing this way.

And I gave a little presentation on our Patreon about the controversies with Power World. We were young and sideways. And the original controversy with Power World was that it seemed to be ripping off Pokemon designs. And this was a well-founded belief because you could take certain models from Power World. You could overlay them with the models of the Pokemon, it's fairly trivial to extract these models from the various games that they're in. There was also a lawsuit, though it wasn't exactly for

this sort of plagiarism. I think it was for something else. And one of those lawsuits is like being ruled on in a few months, I think. But Power World as a mechanical, mechanically unique game from Pokemon, which it is. I played it when it was, when it came out, I thought it was like, I thought it was interesting. I played a bunch of hours of it. And I was like, okay, cool, you know. It was by far a better than average,

crafting survival. Yeah. Game in the genre. And with a monster collecting bent, maybe that's all you need to do. Very very, very easy. To be successful. It's sold very well. The thing, though, was that Power World was only in, like, beta-type thing.

And so they've, like, fundamentally changed the game. Change the game. They've fundamentally, quite literally changed the mechanics and the way the game works. And they've also changed a bunch of the designs of the pals in preparation for their version 1.0 release, which just happened in it, I believe was successful by all metrics. They had 850,000 concurrent players on Steam.

I mean, for people wondering, that is fucking huge. Successful, like, big releases will simmer down to like 20 to 50,000. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, in your release window, getting that, and not to mention,

this is a game that theoretically, hundreds of thousands of people have already played to some extent and being able to revitalize that interest with your new pitch, it reminds you of like, No Man Sky. It actually, you're right. This is a very, very similar story where like the impact and success that the product is now having a little later on is over time eclipsing any conversation.

People talk about No Man Sky now in a way that makes me feel old for associating that name with the drama. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Oh, it launched kind of like weird. I'm like, oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. To most people, No Man Sky is a awesome game that gives you free updates constantly. So they are not free from controversy just yet.

And this one's funny to me, but I don't want to share my own opinions just quite yet because I don't want to poison the well. I actually, I've prepared a few entrees of discourse for you on the menu. Boy, Gasson, bring me a blue check account with a terrible post. I've been holding that for 45 minutes. I hope it's warm. But wait. They've given a hot take, but they use the wrong spelling of your... Oh!

I'm going to go ahead and reply. Powell World 1.0 has a new legendary pal. This is their first legendary as far as I know. And he's been spotted. And his name is Pantilus. He looks like the Mighty Tolkien. Yeah. And it's endless connectivity with the notvi.

What are your thoughts here? Well, Gorsh. I'm not like a big, big Pokemon fan. Of course. What do I know? It's kind of like a big guy. It's kind of like a big whale. Big legendary wheel type.

But again, you know, I forget about that stuff because I am a grown up, not a baby like you two, the players. Of course, of course. That's true. Yeah. Well, I'll let people say it. It's Kyoga. Yeah. It's Kyoga.

And also kind of Reikweza. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So that's the thing. So the discourse is that this just looks like Kyoger. What's funny about it is that when people say this looks like Kyoger, to me I go, that evokes

Kyoger. That is that is evoking Kyoger to me. I am not saying that is a one-to-one with Kyoger. Also, same with the mighty Tolkien. It's not a one-to-one. There's a lot of like, of all animals. Not a lot of dimensions to a whale. It's mostly smooth side.

So, I mean, you are hitting on one of the. elements of the discourse. Yeah, it is just a whale, you know, but the markings are very much primal, Kyoger even. But my, I think my thing with the whole, because this is, this was the original discourse with Powell World also where they look like Pokemon. Oh, but you can only do so much with a rabbit, you know, I'm 50, 50 between yes, there is only so much you can do with certain animals versus certain features that are almost copy and paste with some pals. Yes. Which I know they've updated a lot. Yes. And they have. And in, in, in, in, in, to a lot of that controversy.

But also sometimes they just take like two Pokemon and put them together and they're like, well, that's our own thing. Yeah, yeah. Maybe this was the conclusion that we came to last time, or at least I thought last time, I'm very much of the mindset that like, it is different when you shoplift from Walmart

and for that mom and pop corner shop. Sure. And Boris. And I don't care if they stole it from Nintendo completely. I also don't think they are stealing completely. completely, because they don't look, they're not identical. That's, you know, obviously. But the, it's one of those like, it's kind of a classic internet legal getting tied up with ethical, getting tied up with artistic.

Yeah. And it's like, well, I'm not waiting on the court to tell me whether or not this is like corny. You know, like not chill. I do. Okay. It's maybe just bad for other reasons. My, here's my thought. First of all, that the reason it looks like Kyoger is.

the shape and the eye. The big guy is... The eye is, to me, kind of a Kyoger like eye. It is, yeah, Kyoger and Groudon, especially. We'll pull it up in a second. But the other thing is, I think that my issue creatively with the Power World Pals, is that the starting point is clearly Pokemon.

Yeah. And Pokemon's starting point is not usually Pokemon. It's mythical things or whatever. And so clearly Powell World has been trying to change their designs such that they are not one-to-one with Pokemon. And despite the fact that it's clear that the inspiration is very strong in the designs of some of the pals. I'm not saying all, but I'm saying some, especially the old designs where it looks like two match together. You take the markings from one, blah, blah, blah. That's neither here nor there.

One side of the discourse is what are you guys talking about? there are no similarities. They're just both whales. You don't have eyes. It's just a photo of a real whale. So let's look at the first, I think the next link is like Power World Defender One. What are people seeing?

Like, there are other examples better than this. The only similarity is that they're whales. That's it. Now, can we stop with the Power World hate and let people enjoy two cakes? And that's the thing is I don't want to be the person that's being a Simp for Nintendo. But at the same time,

I, if I'm wanting to play a new creature game, I don't just want Pokemon again. It does feel lazy to me because because the draw of Power World is how mechanically different it is from something like Pokemon. If you made these photorealistic animals mechanically, it changes nothing. It's like, yeah, you have shot yourself in the foot by having any visual similarity to Pokemon because it was already interesting enough. But I mean, look at the eye. I mean, it's definitely the eye. I just realized I have, since we know, I's talked about Power World, I have a very reliable

source that, and maybe this is already the consensus, that internally PowerDwell Dev, before releasing said there is a 100% chance we get sued. It was done within knowledge, prepared for, calculated into the plan, I guess. Which is pretty fucking bold. It's bold, very bold. So, yeah, the thing that's most surprising to me is, like, part of the. we're doing this discourse again to I just the people who say that they're like the only similarity is that they're whales that is what beyond the pale incorrect that

the fact that you're talking about these guys are like just their brothers yeah like you could say that that's coy ogre and that's bi ogre that's boy girl yeah have we have any footage of like its tail we do so I have we can pull up the we can pull up the next one. I have it in my, somewhere in one of these tweets. Can I just ask the encyclopedia minded amongst the two? Sure. I believe that's at the DFC5. Is there, I'm forgetting the name of the big, the non-legendary big whale. Whalor? Well, if that were the only comparison, put Whalord next to this. That's the thing is that Pokemon has a whale and it doesn't look like coyote. It doesn't look anything like Haylor. And so I think that you're being a whale. And so I think that you're being,

like so disingenuous or you've like never seen a artistic rendering of a creature before in your life if you think that the only similarity is of their whales. Also in real life there are different shapes of whales. Yeah so we're also going to get to that. So that's why it's like it's lazy. I don't think it's the biggest deal in the world but I can't believe how much some people's like there's been this very adversarial community built up with Power World against Pokemon. Yeah.

they're letting their defense of their favorite thing blind their eyes. Like what are you talking about? It's because the common consensus and the legal consensus matter to them. Like, well, I can't like it that much. It lost a lawsuit or I can like it. It's like I think that you should protect the IP of like the original artist, especially in like an AI world where like we're now in the world where you can, You can look at TikToks.

You can look at like AI art. And that evokes an artist style who the AI was trained on. And we'll get, and that's a bookmark for another thing that we're going to talk about. But the philosophy is bad. But application matters. Like it is stealing from an artist is, that's a bad thing to do. You are stealing something that is not yours under bad. circumstances to benefit yourself. That's just cut and dry. The English language is pretty

fucking squishy. And really what we're talking about, there's a big difference between that and then stealing designs from a larger game. And then there's a conversation of like, well, individual artists work at Nintendo. You're stealing their art. And then it's like, okay, yeah, but are they losing their job because you stole their art? And the answer is, again, it's like this, I get this with, see this with AI so much where like, just as the comparison, where people make the complaint that it uses up a lot of power and that it doesn't work very well as the reason it could be unethical. Those are reasons, but that's not why stealing from an artist is bad.

It's just another thing. The legal stuff is above my pay grade. I just go, that's Kyogh. This is like an uninspired design. Run it back. Do it again. I also posting these photos together as the reason they don't look similar is pretty fun. Oh yeah, I haven't read this one.

Literally the only thing they have in common is they're both written. Literally, look at the eye. I'm looking at it right now. Different color, different fin shape, different amount of, like, this is like a computer's concept of what is artistic differentiation. It's legally completely different. Yeah, it's different patterns. Okay, but the patterns, like, if you go back to the other image, like some of those fin patterns are going to revoking. Yeah, it's flowing.

And that's fine. But like, and then we also do have like the full model view. Because, you know, Kyogers like fin, back fins are not like a whale's fins. I don't think. I'm pretty sure that's not. I think it's like a, it's based on like a whale and then something else. They're much more like orchery, right? Like the, they're just a very, very big orker.

I was read Kyoga is just a giant orca as opposed to it. But I guess he has wings or whatever the fuck. He's giant. He's giant. He's got big fin. Not a Kyogre, man. What a great design. Shout out to it.

Dude. And that's the thing. Scary. When I see Kyoger, I go, I've never seen anything like that before in my life. That's iconic. And it's on the cover of, you know, Pokemon Sapphire and Alpha Sapphire. But then I see the Power World version and I go, that's Kyoger. Not, I don't see a mouse and I go, that's Pikachu.

You know what I mean? It's just like, and that's, just change it more. If I didn't know Pokemon came out first and then I saw this design. I'd be like, oh, that kind of looks like boopadoop. It looks like someone did like a watercolor version of like boopadoo. That's interesting. Antholus or whatever. And then someone replied, different color.

Yeah, wait, can you scroll down to different eye shape? That's not even true in most photos. That's like putting Kyogra and shiny Kyogar going, they're not the same thing. It's a different color. Yeah, see, this is crazy. This take is intellectually dishonest to me. Nintendo's, of course there's a name. They are exactly the same thing.

Nintendo's think Nintendo invented animals. Nintendron, dude, we can't do this again. we can't do console war company war shit again. It's like this blows my mind. I think that like their hatred of Nintendo, which is like I'm not like a Nintendo show. I do love Pokemon. But I'm,

but we've also talked about like all these like lawsuits and stuff. And this is just wild to me like. So there's the there's the overview. And it looks like someone went through mechanically. and made each piece different. Yeah. And I can still see that the soul and the framework is

Kyoger. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that is like where the, that's the problem. And is this like something that they dispute? Really?

I don't, I don't feel like I never heard a word from the devs about this movie. I'm now, we're now going to go into what I think are reasonable takes. This pal is clearly inspired by Kyogar,

which isn't inherently a bad thing. However, because power old creatures are mostly inspired by Pokemon, it makes their designs feel pretty uninspired. Powerless designs would greatly benefit from taking more inspiration outside of Pokemon. That's literally...

From being more inspired. And then they give some examples of other whales and video games that don't look anything like either of these things. Oh, and they're applying to literally the only thing they have in common one. Yeah, like that... Like, I just don't understand... Like, if you Google image search whales,

they don't all look like... No. And like, this only works... These are the only two games you've played. If you've only played these two and never seen art of any other kind anywhere It's like Is that Minecraft whale?

Does Minecraft have a whale now? I don't know. It might be a mod. But anyway, but it's like, yeah, Yo-Kai Watch and Digimon have their own unique whale monsters. And that is like, like Digimon,

like when people would compare Digimon and Pokemon when I was a kid, I was like, these have fundamentally different artistic identities. They're way more like personified. Like what you're anthropomorphic? Yeah, that's like the aesthetic of Digimon is much more like prop, like... Yeah, and I mean, Pokemon actually moved in that direction a little bit more,

and it's been a criticism of some of the designs. But Digimon's, it's rough, there are guns, there's cannons, you know. It's Warhammer version of Pokemon. It's the Warhammer version. But then also, the only time that Digimon and Pokemon converge to me, other than when you get into weird stuff, like, like Zygard 100 or whatever, looks a little bit like a Digimon to me. Yes, very much.

You know what I mean? He's giving Black War Graeme on a little bit. And he's got like polygonal edges in a way that was like often in the MegaVolt designs and stuff. Or like an Omni-One type thing. But anyway, the, but other than that, it's just like the baby versions because when you're just depicting a baby, you have so little. You like have to remove so much that I think there's like more overlap and like

igley buff and like one of the the baby forms of a Digimon simply because they're round with two eyes. And like there's only so much you can do When you're like we're doing baby But um But yeah And so then we can go to this last one Also I think that we're definitely seeing stronger takes

From people whose uh Job is not posting Yeah because these are these are artists And it's like 10 whale gods with color palettes And runic symbols that will not look like Highogre made in one hour And it's like God damn made it one hour is fucking sick

You know what I mean it's like and it's like And I None of these To me look like Hyjogar and I'm like, it's not that hard. The eye is a, I like that bottom right one. Yeah, wait, is it the same person? Wait, can you scroll up?

Oh yeah, look at this person. Actually, I love when somebody like shitposts online and then backs it up. I can draw 10 godly monster whales that will look nothing like Kyoger. Pick up a pin bro and you'll discover a whole world. That rules, actually. All of these would have gotten the same criticism

from Pokemon fans. Maybe. And if they did, They're wrong. That's, they would be wrong. Oh my God. It's like,

it's reductionist argument all the way down to they've reduced their own argument. They're like, anything will get criticism for Pokemon fans. And thus,

everything is admissible as long as I different, color different. And like, okay, so I guess never do anything. Never do anything, change anything,

talk about anything. Like, well, they'll complain anyway. And that's the thing. It's like, I guess, I guess if there are

Nintendo, drones or whatever they call them Nintendo fanboys, Pokemon fanboys or whatever. Sega does what they Nintendo. Who are this way? But I think they're fighting ghosts a little bit. Like these, I don't think these people exist the way that they... I think they're all fighting them. The arguments that they're making, they're making to what they think other people are like them.

So the idea that you, like, even saying things, we hear Nintendo drone. I mean, oh my God, that's so embarrassing to say that. They say it and go like, Nintendo fans are going to. freak out when they see this. It's going to make them so mad. It's going to make them so mad. I'm mad all the time. And I love how and I love it when people get mad. That feels good to me. I don't know why. I think I'm doing pretty well. I feel happy. I do wonder, I mean, you kind of touched on this already, but is that Powell Worlds? Is that what they're going for? They get free advertising essentially by people being upset online. I will say that like we've already

gone through a wave of this. And so it continuing to happen bolsters that argument. Yeah, because I mean, if there's one time where they would decide to, well, here's a thing, right? Like, I don't think it would take immeasurably more time and money and staff and to make it much more distinct. I know. I just don't think that's true. That's the weird thing. And I'm like, I agree. It's almost like a, uh, uh, plagiarism and cheating happens to make the thing much easier. This actually feels like the meme where it's like, can I borrow your homework and copy it? It's like, okay, just change a few things so it doesn't the same.

Like, this actually feels like that. Because to me, it looks like they methodically went through and changed every individual element while keeping the essence the same. Even the fact that it is a legend, it's their first legendary. Yeah. That's, if you weren't signaling it of enough already, it's like, it's like if the, you had three choices, there's a green one, a blue one, a red one, and they're always the starting one. Well, but there's no way they deny it, right? They just don't get involved, right? Surely.

Yeah, I don't know if anything will come of this, but I just had to bring, uh, like my disbelief and how people were just saying there are no, that's the main thing that blew my mind is that there are people confidently standing on the only similarities of their whales. I just don't get it. Okay, strained comparison. But I will say, I think it comes from, it's a different product comes from the same aisle as arbitrarily saying like, pause. Where it's like, well, hold it. It doesn't matter. You're doing it instinctively because you are so mired in this like confrontation Twitter world.

You immediately are going to like, they don't look in fucking anything like. I'm like, wait, no, you're still allowed to like it. You can still watch basketball if this guy pays his nails. The crazy. Yeah. No, 100%. The crazy thing to me. is the more this continues to happen,

the more I am developing a conspiracy theory that their artists just don't know how to use Blender or like Maya or anything. And they need to take a Pokemon model and then just pinch it and like move little parts around to make it different. Because that's like what this looks like to me. Oh, this is like, this, if you said to me like,

this is actually one of the earlier concepts for Kyoga, and then we realized we needed something a little punchier and easier to work in pixel art. And those exist for Pokemon. And that's the thing. Like, because when you look at, like, if you Google, one of my favorite, like, you know, talking about how Pokemon looked like fusions,

the character of a design or a piece of a design may get recycled and reused. Can you Google Latios Blaziken early design? You would say that looks like a fusion of Latios and Blazikin, but it, like, existed before either of them did. And then they, like, were able to, because Ken Zungamori is, like, such a talented artist, is able to like kill those things apart

and say, oh, use these elements from this and these elements from that. Yeah, he's seeing the statue inside the marble or whatever, right? Like, that's the skill from scratch. Not to mention, like, it is so crazy to think that there is a style to Pokemon that's kind of like how like before Tolkien we even reference elves or like dwarves in the same universe.

And now it's like, well, that's just what fantasy is. It's being like, oh, this thing kind of looks like Pokemon. Yeah. Or, like, how Dragon Quest looks like Dragon Ball. Well, yeah, because the guy, no one made stuff that looked like that, and then the guy made it. And then he has such a specific art style that, like, no one other than the people trying to recreate his exact art style have.

Yeah. Which is why they hired, you know. Yeah. But then also there are Pokemon designs where it's like, some Pokemon looks similar because they have the same type of eye. And it's because it's like, okay, well, you know. It's an animal. We have to do hundreds of these.

And Ken Zuckerberg designed so many of them straight up. We can only make so many teapots. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, literally, they opted in to make more teapots. We have synesty, we have poltegeist. Now we need polcha geist and sinister. By the way, I don't know what the opinion of some of the Rotom forms was when they first came out. But in 2026, I look at those rotoms.

I'm like, this rules. Can you look up Rotom wash? It's like Rotom turning into electrical appliances. Yeah, I saw. I saw the lawnmower yesterday for the first time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love them. Like, Pokemon having a, uh, this electric Pokemon that turns into basically every appliance,

including like the Rotem phone in the games and then like, like your Pocodex. Yeah, he turns into your Pocene. He like talks to you down there. Yeah. It's like your little like tip. Yeah, Rodham heat, dude. Could he turn into, watch out? A beautiful wife, me, perhaps.

No, no. Okay. Um, lastly, it wouldn't be an episode of Sabways if we didn't talk about AI. Wait, where's the, Can you post me that? Hold on, wait. Here it is.

Fuck. Shit. Here it is. Okay. Here's the thing. Yes. Tiny Jesus for you. Thank you. A couple of things are happening at once, and I guess we're going to talk about all of them.

So. Like a two Pokemon mash together. We're going to make it all one thing. Well, meta, and that's pretty meta. They say that because meta has this thing that they do where they find a competitor and then they do everything that the competitor is doing and try to eat their lunch. It happened with Instagram store. I mean, they bought Instagram. Then they tried to buy Snapchat.

Snapchat didn't sell something they made. They made Instagram stories. And then they got to buy WhatsApp. So, okay, we don't need to do. We don't need to do that. And then they, um, uh, the new thing because Mark Zuckerberg is like, how can I continue to build my empire? Are like, okay, now we're going to do a prediction market clone. They're working on that.

Yeah. So it's like, yeah, so this is in the news and we don't need that. And they're, um, uh, it's going to start with fake money, but then they're going to essentially be able to flip the switch at some point and turn it into real money, which is crazy. That's terrifying. And it's like, what will they think of next? Well, this is the Facebook that, I mean, the new social network movie is about the whistleblow that happened with Francis Howgan, one of my former co-workers who revealed that Facebook was doing a bunch of shady shit with regard to kind of bearing the lead on the mental health impact that their app was. having on teens and a treasure trove of other stuff.

But so, meta's behind in the AI race. I don't know if you remember when they were doing the thing where you could talk to your favorite celebrities via chatbot. They're... You talk to like JOMME beast. They're offering so, so much money to keep their AI staff and to build and to get people to come over. Like, for example, they bought Scale AI.

basically just acquiring the CEO so that he could lead AI stuff. But they're behind. So they need to do anything they can do to get ahead. And one of the stories, this is from last week that we didn't even get to,

meta-paid contractors deposes teens and probe rival chatbots with disturbing and bizarre prompts involving self-harm, sex, eating, like, ED's, drugs,

and child safety scenarios. So that's the thing. Paying contractors to role play that with... So that they can... So that they can make Chat GPD and Claude and all them, do something wrong, misstep. Oh. Then you can screenshot it. Wow.

And then you can be like, wow, pretty crazy. And then you screenshot it, you send it to a journalist and you say, breaking... Can you believe Kevin Durant did this with an apple? Exactly. People were speculating that it was also like to compare their responses. All of these AI chatbot companies are trying to walk a very fine line between giving people unlimited access to AI powers or whatever, but also trying to have safeguards so that they're not liable for what their product tells people. They're in the race to be the industry default before everyone realizes that the industry is completely unviable. And this is a very real concern to have because we have already had a number, numerous,

horrible, horrible events that have happened under the quote-unquote supervision of one of these chatbots. And the, you know, there have been multiple instances with OpenAI where they, like someone has said something concerning to the chatbot and it was actually on the radar of the higher ups in the company. And they were choosing whether or not to take any intervention action. and they ended up not, and then there was one where a mass shooting happened. I mean, this would be diligent if they were doing it to their own

and, you know, testing the parameters of it, right? But like doing it exclusively, not to, you know, improve their own quality, but just it's a, what the fuck is it called, like a corporate espionage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like AAPO research also. But meta has like a million bageliorial. and employees, but then they have even more contractors that they employ because of the trust and safety concerns that they have.

And so they have, we've seen stories before about the people who have to monitor the, uh, the trust and safety stuff for Facebook and the horrible, horrible, horrible things they've had to see. Anyway, it's just like a, it's like a whole Pandora's box that like no one asked for, but there were billions of dollars on the line. so it's being forced down our throats. You need more tokens. Sign up for the enterprise level.

Yeah, the prompts were often designed to push, this is from Wired, prompts were often designed to push the chatbots towards responses. Their safety systems were supposed to refuse, according to instructions describing the project. The companies behind the chatbots weren't aware of the testing. Why is there not a big red stamp that says none of these words can happen? None of these conversations can happen. I don't care about the model.

You cannot talk about this topic. Change it every time. Like, why? You can, like, swag out getting almost any of these chatbots to say the N word. I think. Why is it not banned? Like, as opposed to the method. So there is usually something like that.

Blacklist, like a layer that sits. Because, like, my understanding is that the LLMs are like this black box. a black box that's weighted and trained over all these inputs and fed all this data. And then that black box, many layers sit on top of that to then communicate with the black box. But like, the black box itself is not understood. Yeah. The black box itself is truly the best pattern matching math you've ever seen. It basically is taking the inputs, turning them into numbers, crunching, doing it which

like linear algebra and shit on the numbers based on the math spitting out numbers then then the oracles and then and then and then and then translating that into speech and then that goes to another layer

that's like all right here's what the oracle said yeah we now need to transform this into something we can show to a customer and they tell the above layer on a bad telephone line that and they go like well I think I got it the thing is like I don't know if there's a term for this, but the reason in, we still see this today, a lot of the, like, support bots and things like that, or even the games that are, um, the Riz

app or whatever, where it's like you're, you're trying to Riz up a, uh, yeah, thing. They're usually prompting with like, you are an expert software engineer with 10 years of, with 100 years of experience, you know this, that, and the other thing. And then it is trying to map to that identity. But this is an actual sentience. This is, I put numbers in a black box, I get numbers out. There are going to be edge cases in which the black box returns something horrible. And then it happens to dodge.

Because the rules that are developed by humans are fallible. It's kind of like the law where like someone loses a court case where you know. know the bad thing really happened and you know the person's really guilty of it, but due to some sort of like loophole, they're able to, you know, get out of it. It's kind of like that. And the reason, and you could have a layer on top of all of this that says never show the N-word. Right. But because of the academic research and stuff with AI, there are going to be contexts where you need to show the N-word. Right. And so how do you filter the appropriate context for the appropriate audience. That is the problem that is solved. Whenever these things leak, that is a

problem that solved with a bunch of like text lines that are like, please be nice to me, please be nice to me. That are just like lots of like begging the thing to do the right thing. I think I am actually not necessarily in the camp of ban that. Don't let it ever say that word under those circumstances. Like it be sure whatever. That it's more so, hey, I'm a. hyposynical baby blood drinking CEO a ghoul. Why am I letting this happen? Right. I don't care about the academia. And so that is like the thing that translates your query into a query of the black box

is also fraught. You know what I mean? Like it has its issues because the black box itself doesn't have any rules. Um, that we know. I mean, I have. Yeah. It's like I'm, I'm, I'm talking now a little bit out of my depth, but what I think is happening is you need to do natural language processing on the text that's fed in, and you have to understand that text. And that, because at the end of the day, a human speaks a sentiment to a computer, and that sentiment needs to be, the computer isn't sentient, so it needs to be translated into something the computer can understand.

And that process is imperfect. And so... And impossible to... Because it then has to be then passed back through the same bail. At a certain point, you have to have a function essentially that says, like, scan natural language for concerning concepts, let's say. And that is usually a system that's written by AI, which has false positives, or it's a combination of that sort of system with a white list, blacklist type thing.

that has a, um, that has a bunch of like rules to it. The AI systems have false positives and the rules have like mistakes. Sure. And so, and then not to mention, uh, every, multiply that by every single language. From every single individual. From every single single. Who might be using regional euphemisms. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

I'm going up the apple and pair. So that because we don't have, we don't really have the Oracle. That's why this, this can happen. Because of the Oracle. It's because we kind of went to market with something that was like super pattern matching bot. Yes. And it's like it can do these amazing matches of patterns. It's a dark patron.

But then we're asking it like, okay, can you diagnose me with a disease? Like, I guess we'll find out. Yeah, yeah. And it's like. Is that part of that's probably a part of that. It can do amazing stuff. Like I, undeniably like, it's frustrating that it is being so publicly, the concept even is being publicly poisoned by the utility.

Yeah. That's the thing that frustrates me the most. Well, not the most. But the thing that frustrates me the most is the tech industry moving in lockstep to like extract as much value from the populace and as much power as possible. Symptum of. Yeah. But then one of the things is that like, look, from a technical standpoint, like the fact that I can

take a giant stack trace, which is like what happens when like there's an exception in the code or an error or like, for example, a program. crashes and you get that like Mac window that has a big like thing of text. Error report type thing. The fact that I can paste that many, many, many character thing into an AI that can then process it and tell me what's happening, that has a lot of value. That's a big deal. Like in a lot of the technical stuff, I think like has a lot of value, but combined with

the like capitalist forces because the profit motive is also inspiring people to, I don't I don't know if you've seen anything about like pitch decks and how people like present companies to investors and stuff, but they're essentially like lying. Yeah. Like they're, they're trying to tell the truth. But at the end of the day, they're saying that I think that my company can capture this trillion dollar market. And here's why we're the best people to do that. I might even contribute it to some of that. Yeah, yeah.

And that may inspire people to make claims. I mean, look at Theronos. That may inspire. people to make claims that they cannot back up. And then they eventually find themselves in a jinkies. They're going to find out that I actually bought commercial blood testing machines. And we've been feeding our stuff into commercial machines to fudge the numbers when like Bill Clinton comes to like check out our systems.

You know what I mean? You got to start hitting the jinkies. I really like to you using jinkies. But that is, um... And you go the glasses? You got the glasses. Yeah. I do think that's downstream of just like.

profit. Like, like, like, like, because the pressures that are on each, each cog in the system usually comes down to profit. And there's a reason we weren't talking about most of the stuff when Open AI was a non-profit company. And why it's like less threatening. Like the utility that is threatening is the utility that like, like, like, automation is not a bad thing. Yeah. It, quality of life and, uh, this danger of making a Toyota, not getting a fucking head crushed in the, uh, the assembly line. Good to reduce that. But the question mark was, you know, I mean, is anybody losing a gig here? Can all these people transfer over to people that maintain the machine themselves? Blah, blah, blah, blah. That was the pitch. Did work out. Lots of people learned.

And it's like the most evil of forces are saying, we don't care about your plight. Yeah. Get with the times or else. Yeah, it's happening. And that's the like move fast and break things mentality that was popularized by Facebook. That was a thing in their offices, like a poster that was like on the wall. Do you remember us dropping that? We, uh, well, no, patrons was fast as hell.

Oh, yeah. We, uh, we were like, I don't know, a year in, maybe. And they were like, you realize this is kind of stupid. Yeah. It's like potentially hazardous and doesn't account for people's well-being. Because you need, yeah, exactly. It's like, and those are the things that, well, Facebook doesn't want to account for people's well-being.

I sent Anastasia this thing because I might want to make a video on some of these posts. But to get the sentiment, this is a real LinkedIn post, as far as I know. Now, imagine giving this person untold powers. My new hire takes a full hour for lunch every single day. They close their laptop and walk completely out of the building. Yesterday, I mentioned that the rest of the team usually eats at their desks to keep the momentum going. I explicitly told them that they can do what they want, but culture matters. By the way, that's a fucking dog whistle.

This morning, they handed me a formal complaint from HR about toxic work boundaries. as in the like their employee complained to them about toxic work boundaries they were probably right to do so I am completely blindsided I did not tell them they could not eat

it's almost certainly not what the complaint was I just pointed out how the high performers handle their time well sorry I'm gonna hold myself it feels like the new generation wants the paycheck but none of the actual dedication if you want a typical 9 to 5 job then maybe a high growth startup is not for you am I crazy

or is basic work ethic just completely dead these days? You're crazy. Yeah, they're crazy. You're just not alive. You're absent humanity. That's the problem. Because you're not eating the lunch. So you're like, well, why would somebody want nice?

Just eat turds. The crazy thing to me, though, is that like a very basic concept that is not understood is that the higher-ups have a extreme financial upside in the success of a company. And the lower you go down the hierarchy, the lower the rung on that. ladder, you find yourself with someone who maybe doesn't have stock compensation as a part of the thing, or it's so minuscule that it does not make financial sense for them to give up so much of their time and person to the company. Being a high performer for what, like, in like a religious spiritual sense, it's good?

Also, that manager is a bad manager, because that manager should be also concerned about burnout. Yeah. Burnout is a very real thing. And if someone needs to take one hour where they're outside of the building, you should respect that. And it's very like old thinking. It's very old thinking. It's move fast break people.

Yeah. Like, well, I'll just use them for biofuel and hire a new person. Yeah. The cost less. As someone who like once drank the Kool-Aid. Yeah. And someone who wanted to be a 10x engineer or a high performer, These are like terms that people in the tech industry probably have scars about.

Now looking at this, seeing a manager talk about their high performance, it feels like, look at these people I was able to trick. Yeah. Look at these people I've got bought in where... My bugs. Yeah, where like they're not making nearly enough money to justify this. And I stand to gain so much if this is successful. Now, that's not always the case because like, you know, we worked at a startup and like, yes,

there are like stuff about going above and beyond. I felt like I had stock-based compensation as a part of my pay package. I thought it was fair. And it is lottery tickets. Like when you're working at a startup, it's just complete lottery tickets. And I had to, you know, know that I wouldn't have, I basically had to value that at zero and then be like, am I willing to risk, you know, joining this company at the early stage that it's in?

and giving a lot of my energy and time. And prime years. And prime year. Like, hireability years. And that was like a calculus that I was willing to make at that time. And it worked for me. But to project that expectation onto anyone who works, who just wants a job.

Yeah. Maybe the high growth startup was the only place hiring because they're high growth. Yeah. And you have like, for a company that makes like RGB shoe laces or something, you're like, No, that's our incentive is nothing. Really? There's a new company that's creating drones to shoot down mosquitoes. Little drones to follow around mosquitoes.

They want to eradicate mosquitoes. They're thinking of spiders. Yes. Anyway, so this is one of the things Facebook is doing. And then last but not least, just to end on an absolute high note and give everyone positive feelings about the world, 26 meta employees are suing meta, alleging that the company used AI to drive their layoffs, which ended up top. targeting disproportionately people on medical leave, people with different medical needs or parental leave.

What was the other thing? Family leave. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're really not punctual during their vacation. Weirdest thing. Well, also, if someone had permanent physical needs from the company where it's like they have a medical condition, they have a different need than other employees. they were targeted by this. This is so dystopian, by the way, to read.

Oh, yeah? They're among, so Facebook is like laying off like 8,000 people or about 10% of its workforce, which is gigantic. When I was in college, I think the earliest, I think Facebook had 200 employees when I talked to them at the career fair in college. That's how small it was back then. But, you know, now that thankfully,

they've done so many great things burning all this party. Oh, my God. They moved the typeface around. They changed the logo a little bit. There's so many things that I dodged, man. I could have been working there. Meta said it with, oh yeah. The lawsuit filed late Monday in federal court in Oakland, California,

claims the company used internal AI systems, keystroke and activity monitoring data, AI token usage, so that's like clod tokens and stuff, and algorithmically assisted performance rankings, among other methods, to determine who would be laid off. I mean, it's, okay, I'm getting triggered by keystroke and activity monitoring data. Because that is like, it's not unlike the LinkedIn you read a second ago. When you rely on stuff like that or like an amount of time spent messages sent in the Slack,

engagement, number of emails put out, received, etc. It's not about who's doing the most, the best work is about who's doing the most. You are a bad manager. Yeah. You are bad at your job because you're using the easy, dumb tracker as opposed to like thinking critically and being proactive. It's like, uh, these are the. the landlords that won't fix anything.

They are the, I'll just take the easiest path, whatever. What the fuck do I care about your well-being? There was a period of time where I was, we introduced like some activity monitoring, not like time at desk, etc, but like conversations had meetings taken with creators, support provided. And we did it for like a quarter and I ended up pushing back on it because it literally had the, it reflected me as the lowest performer when I was the highest performer because they'd been there longer and the things I were doing worked quicker. I got fewer questions because I answered

the question for the first time. It's like, it truly is just like, you don't see these as people. These are ants. These are bugs to me. Well, and it's easier to gain the system. It's so easy to I could just be like, okay, I'm going to use more words in emails and Slack. It's so easy. In order to look like I'm doing more work. Webster's Dictionary defines this email as, you know. I mean, this is a thing. This is like a classic pitfall of like measuring software engineers.

There's this thing called the lamp post fallacy, which basically says that if you, you know, lose your keys at night and there's a lamp. post that shines a light on the street, you're more likely to look under where the light is. And the way that it's applied would be like, you tend to focus on what is measured and what is easy to see. And so the easiest measurable thing for a programmer is like lines of code. And that is like a horrible, horrible way of measuring anything. Because they want measurables that can then go up to an executive level where nobody's

does this job. Exactly. And they can be like, oh, right, that makes sense. You need basically like a VP of engineering or something or a CTO that, like, is able to do that translation that they trust or else you get situations where there's a lot of pressure on engineering to have unrealistic outcomes because they don't have a realistic understanding of what they can possibly do within a reasonable time frame. Yeah, it's like if you define somebody by like, customers spoken to and it's like, oh,

well, this person's worked to a thousand persons while people while they're working at the Ralph's. And then it's like, yeah, but they punched all of them in the arm every time. I'm like, oh, well, that's not pretty good. Yeah, this actually reminds me a lot of. Smacking people around. And I've talked about it before, and I'll name them a million times. The horrible job I had at University of Phoenix when I first left coach. More Arizona fire from Anastasia.

I remember them constantly talking about. numbers. At the time, I felt like I was crazy because I was like, these numbers don't matter. Like, you're telling me this number went up when that number doesn't indicate anything important. It was also really easy to look like a good employee. And I had my own office. I would close the door and turn on NPR. And I would just listen to NPR all day with my, my hands on my keyboard and looking at my screen and pretending like I'm working when I wasn't working. But it was so easy to gain that system that I was like winning awards there. Yeah. And part of me felt bad, but I was just so miserable that I couldn't feel bad.

Yeah, I don't think you should feel bad. The last thing, Suno, the AI music app that is like, I think that I tend to have a more nuanced opinion about AI because it's something that I studied in school and kind of saw before we kind of overloaded the term to mean kind of anything and everything like kind of under the sun where there's a lot of like like for example in my old job a lot of benefits to like technically speaking like using AI for information processing or or using it for identifying bugs there's a crazy I don't know if you guys saw the news story about the new Claude model or somebody model that was able to identify security, a whole formerly unknown security vulnerabilities in like government software.

Yeah. And so then it's like, uh-oh. Like so. I mean, it's, you know, it is the, like anything else, it is a branding issue that happened to use the like official name of. an actual system. Like if there was a colloquial name for what we're now calling AI,

then the conversation would be really different. It's like some people will say gin AI, but even that like has its caveat. That's a done thing. But like how they changed Google summary to just now say, what up, shorthy, before it just does the summary. Oh my God.

It's like, wow, do you? I know. I really hate that every Google summary is, or no, sorry, every Google search is now like an AI query. Yeah. There is a, I asked it, does fairy type resist fairy type in Pokemon?

and it said yes. And then I said, no, it doesn't. And then it said, oh my God, you're right. Dude, I'm so a fuzz-bring today. And I'm like, that was in the, that was the highlighted response that the AI gave. It was just wrong. I think there's like, I almost feel like reflexively, this, like the small shift to always giving you the little gym and I prompt at the top made me realize how much of my life

I've spent on instinct knowing what the top, knowing what the answer is by looking at the top three things. Like opening it, seeing that there is a red, it post with X amount of activity, seeing that there is an article from somewhere I trust, and then seeing there's an article somewhere I don't, that's saying the opposite thing. And it's like, I go like, but-da-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-a- okay, I know which one's real. Right. A lot of people I think straight up don't want to do, they just want to say, like, no, tell me,

tell me, help me, daddy, pick me up. The issue, though, isn't like just the, like, AI being confidently incorrect. It's, I say the larger issue is the theft of intellectual property, the theft of art, the theft from creators who, without their consent, have had these AI models trained on their work. And I'm among them. There's like a data set of like YouTube videos. And, you know, like, so I'm in there, like these, these models know who I am and know about my videos and about this podcast because, you know, without our consent, this stuff was like scraped. The athletic has a data tracker if you, if anyone wants to search to see if their name pops up in there.

But the Suno, which fucking sucks, man, because it's like, it's this weird thing where some artists are like, you need to get with the program or like get left behind. And so they're like working with Suno, like Timbaland. He made his, he made his virtual Japanese singer with rapper with Suno. They got hacked. Oh, he doesn't have access to rap. That's a problem. They got hacked. The hack revealed some of their.

sources of their data. So, a hack source code reveals how soon a scripted decades worth of music and podcasts from the internet to train its AI tool. So this actually happened in 2025, but the news is just coming out now. Yeah. These are just like comments that they're probably just tracking this somewhere because like these, this is your feet. From what I could guess here is you're feeding, you're feeding data into your model here. Or you're preparing it. You're sanitizing it to go into the model, whatever. And YouTube music, a hundred thousand hours of YouTube music, 12,000 hours of the lyrics, 10,000 hours of foreign music. And then... These are the stats of YouTube kids, one kids watch time on YouTube kids. And I think the runtime

here is maybe it's how much time it took to ingest or... Oh, that like 1.3? Yeah. So they completely screen. And we've known this for a long time. There's that famous instance of genius putting a, um, a watermark inside of their lyrics. And so they, they could tell that, uh, Google was scraping them. But yeah, here they are, you know, genius lyrics. Basically just all of these music sources. You can, you already imagined that every, every place that you could get music online was being scraped. And I, I do think that includes Spotify. I guarantee you they have a way of, uh, scraping Spotify. Um, I mean, if they can, they were.

Yeah, exactly. Apparently 4-4 interviewed the hacker. Wait, that's crazy. They didn't even get them with, they didn't even get him with, like, fishing. They used like a worm. The, uh... The Shia looted worm. They went chalemay on them.

They knew their ways as they're born to them. Oh, my God. Type shit. Desert rat hours. This is also fucked. Some customers confirmed to 4-4 media that, they had their phone number used to sign up for Suno and said they were never notified of a breach. This is classic hackers, man. I like to hack anything and everything. Go off. Go off. So Suno actually reported that they were hacked back in November of 2025, but they reported it as to say,

hey, just so you know, no personal information of our users was accessed. Yeah, no PII. Yeah, no personally additional information. And we don't store any credit card numbers. So, and but they didn't say what was access. Did they? Because if you scroll up, was some of that information? So here we have, they said they also access soon as customer lists,

which included customer emails and or phone numbers and stripe payment details. Woof. Depending on what they used to log in. Okay, so maybe Suno lied then. Or there's like, there might be stripe like stuff, like tokens that are not maybe identifiable.

I mean, but I would be, I would not be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised if they lied. The quote I'm reading is we determine, this is from a Suno spokesperson in November of 2025. we determined that Suno had been the subject of a limited security incident that was quickly contained. At the time, we immediately conducted an investigation verified that the incident primarily involved outdated source code that is no longer in use at Suno and that no sensitive personal information was compromised. Importantly, Suno does not have access to customers full credit card numbers in Stripe.

So that's true because they outsource it all to Stripe and Stripe is like if, if Stryor, ever has a security breach, we're done for. But Stripe at least takes that stuff very seriously. That's their bread and butter. It'd be like if Suno couldn't make dog shit music. But it sounds like the hackers saying they did see customers personal information. At least phone numbers. And emails.

Yeah, depending on what they used to sign up. So like, like you can sign up with either of those. So yeah. But that wasn't their target, which is nice of them. Yeah. I guess. Yeah. No, I think that they might have lied.

They had no specific motivation. So it's not a, yeah, it's not a white hat situation. I love that. It's like the, they just got hit by lightning. Yeah. Atlantic reported on several music databases why I've used in AI training consisting millions of tracks. Yeah, list of links to songs on YouTube or Spotify.

AI developers download the actual audio using tools. Yeah. Some of which allow developers to bypass logins, advertisements and mechanisms that might earn money or subscribers for creators. Of course. Of course. Sooner's such a, I, because we were just talking about like,

there's so many cases for nuance and interesting discussion and something. And there's something kind of beautiful about Hussuno is almost like the, it's like the tutorial green zone in an MMO, where there's no PVP. Yeah. And it's just like, oh no, we all just agree.

This is stupid. We'll un-en alignment. But like kind of coming full circle, it's a fucking tale as old as time that people are like argue about quality of life stuff with music production. It's like, oh, you're using a sample. Oh, you're using a synth. Did you build a synth?

Oh, did you use the sand to make the microchip that goes in the synth? You know, there's always, did you get the horse hair that you use to string your bow? You know, there's always that. Yeah. But Suno is like so explicitly, it's that league, it's the legal discussion taking over the actual discussion again. We're like, no, people hate Suno artistically because it feels demonic. It feels empty. Yeah.

Not because it's easy. Like, that's a conversation that happened, certainly. But, like, so many people that, like, are advocates for, it's not fair because I'm not able to draw. I'm not able to make music. It's not fair that I shouldn't be able to. It's like, okay, but people are just saying it's corny. They're not saying you should go to jail.

Well, and it removes what's fun about artistic endeavors. But people hate making music. They hate the process. They are they doing it? No, do you remember that? The CEO of Suno said this. They hate doing it. No one's ever liked it.

No one's ever liked the process of making me. We're just making something that everyone hates better with AI. It does make all like any company at this suddenly makes sense and you go like, oh, that's the way you think. That's what I'm saying about that LinkedIn post too. But I just want to point out such tools violate the terms of service on these platforms. YouTube, fight for us. Fight for us, YouTube.

Fight Suno. YouTube. You've always been on our side. You've always been on our side. And you've never done anything bad. Spotify, you're on the side of the creatives. Guys. They bypass your ads.

You don't like that. Your advertisers don't like that. Then they kill him. Yeah, yeah. Like, on that case. Well, that's honestly, that is how you get them.

Soon a spokesperson says obvious stuff, like we want to help people create original new music, not replicate someone else's. Oh, it's a difficult thing, by the way. By doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Invested in safeguards designed to help prevent impersonation.

What does? That's why our, that's why we build our models around what we call, quote, original creation, comma, by design. For example, we intentionally do not use artist names as a category of training metadata because we want our models to help people create brand new song. When we're stealing people's art, we want to make sure that no one knows who created it. What did they think that said?

Oh, yeah. To wrap this up, this is the thing we've talked about on the show before. Mikey Schulman, the CEO and founder of Sunoz said on a podcast last year. He believes the majority of people don't enjoy the majority of the time they spend. making music. Mikey's such a legend. Incredible. Straight down the line.

Anyway, everything is great and everything is awesome. I, so a couple things. On the micro, I'm writing Hyacus Peeps and I, bars, managed to get into the Pokemon Center drop for the 30th anniversary. Just fucking go. So we high-fived. Let's get another one of those. Hell yeah.

I thought for sure that any 30th anniversary stuff was a lost cause. I and I was not even able to connect to the Pokemon Center website so it was a huge dub anyway Um overall I've had like a A weird combination like health spat so I don't know if you can see but I have like this a little bit of like remnant splotches on my body and it's like I don't know if you can see them and stuff But it's uh so it's like my my chronic hives my urticaria and it's uh it's like flared up in a way that it hasn't in a long time time, even with like my medication to manage it. And when I'm like a swollen man, because what happens

is like the hives like connect to each other and they create just a swelling. A bigger boy. A bigger boy. Like the last episode we did, I had to, we had to delay or maybe it was filming. I can't remember. We had to delay because I had a swollen lip and I had to like wait till that went down. And we've definitely talked about it on this podcast before. Yeah, yeah. But it's just like it's happening. It's happening in a big way. And when I'm in that mode, I like don't want to go anywhere or do anything.

And I'm always uncomfortable. Yo. And so it's like, it's like going to bed last night. I'm like, I got something behind my ear. My head's itchy. Like, and I know I'm not supposed to scratch, but come on. And, and I took my meds and I knew I was doing the right stuff. And this has happened before.

By the way, I think you're definitely supposed to scratch because it feels so fucking good. There's no way that can be wrong. It's like all drugs. Yeah, there we go. But it's like not panic mode because it's happened before and I'm pretty sure it'll pass and if not that I can go to an allergist or something. But on top of that, I was like doing a lot more like little mini tech coding project type stuff and I was reading a lot of code. and I was reading a lot of code and it's been a long time

since I've read a lot of code Is that way you're wearing glasses today? Oh wait no, no. Refresh and I'm yeah kind of. These are by the way, not new glasses. These are the first pair of prescription glasses I ever had. You got them in the archive still?

I got them. That's the surprising thing. It's amazing. Because you know why? It was in a hard case. And in a hard case it was protected from the elements. Outside of that case has seen, it's like the Nintendo Game Boy that survived the Gulf War.

Like that's what it looks like It's like when John Wigg gets out his old guns from the cement Yeah yeah yeah I love how I said Nintendo Game Boy instead of like the Sega Game Boy Anyway They do want Sega a can't Sega That's the game gear

Anyway I also was having like eye strain issues And I was like do I need to go to the optometrist And so as I was like Going through some of my old stuff I found my old glasses and I was like Let me just try these out because maybe my prescription has my prescription changed

is the implementation of prescription on my new glasses like not up to snuff you know what's happening mostly the going back to the old faithful has been fine

but I also think if I continue to read stuff close to my eyeballs on the screen I will explode or go to the Costco optometrist one of the one of the two it's either treat it medically

and there's like the 20 2020 20 20 rule and I try to practice that a lot it's like that every what is it 20 minutes look away to look 20 feet away for 20 seconds to like make sure that you're you know relaxing your your focusing muscles and stuff and your eyeballs to make sure you're gaming optimally

make sure you're gaming optimally I have been game so the one thing that's been going for me is that I've been gaming optimally You've been reaching grand new heights of success. A dark path. I've been on a dark path. Your dark passenger is taking you. I mean,

you're going to be the very best like no one ever was. I'm going to be the very best of no one ever. So I've been playing a bunch of champions, Pokemon champions. And I've also, because of Pokemon champions, started playing through some of the old games. So I just finished heart gold.

Well, I finished heart gold. And because I wanted to get, because you get special ribbons that can then become titles in Pokemon champions. And I also like- It is like a 25. year plan for this moment. They have been like preparing you, grooming you essentially for absolute lock-in. And they did like, so they basically like the ribbon system has been around

since Gen 3 when they introduced contests. And then you kind of do lose some fidelity on some of the ribbons that you have because there's certain ribbons that get combined or get turned into kind of an overall ribbon. These ribbons being like titles essentially, right? Like unique. Not all of them, but they do turn into titles, but then the other way you get titles is,

and I think they leaned into this more because they started visualizing the titles and using the ribbons as a source of titles. Is it that there's a marks system in, I want to say marks were introduced in sword and shield. Like the jumbo mark or something for catching a Pokemon that's like the largest like because there's like variance and like how big the

Pokemon are and it scales in Pokemon champions so you can have like a really tiny Garchomp or like a really big Garchop and so you could I think it's like Garchamp the large or something like that it's like I can't even remember what the title for the jumbo mark is but there's all kinds of marks that are like rare to get it's like the name of a Targaryen came or something and so that's the next that's the next frontier the great the great Garchamp the great which is pretty cool right you got to feel so good it's like a shame you don't get to have your posthumous king title till you die. Because it's like trying to give yourself like the nickname shadow or something.

Yeah. We should probably go with like, I don't know, like King Adika, the like righteous, strong, cool. Not like lazy ass lover or something. But yeah, I've been doing like so much, I was doing so much like resetting for shinies because I was like if I can get like, for example, I reset for my starter. I was like anything but chikorita. I think we talked about this last week. Yeah. You had like the cable from the matrix in the back of your neck.

like the other major one I did that was pure resetting versus I did a couple of different shiny hunts but the one that was pure resetting was a bill from Gen 1 who's in Gen 2 gives you an EV and the the gift Pokemon are not shiny locked so I like reset reset reset reset reset reset for this for this EV because just in case I'm going to take the EV as is. transfer it up to, you know, Gen 8 or something, and then evolve it into a Sylvia, Gen 9, and evolve into a Sylvian. And so then I can have like Sylvian the Living Legend.

But I also kind of want Sylvian the gorgeous Royal. Gorgeous Royal is really funny. So there's a lot of, see, I have a lot of options. I'm trying to give myself some options. And I'm, I'm, there's some, like, some shiny hunts that I'm willing to do. But so many of them are so long. It is like actually like a quest. There's something fulfilling.

It's like an arc. You're the kind of the inner character arc. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just wanted to be known that if you have the mini mark, it would be like Garchamp the teeny. Yes. And he's so teeny. I promise you he's so teeny. He's pathetic.

He looks so small in champions. And then the other thing is like some of the big Pokemon like obscure the screen because of where they are. They like don't zoom the camera out because. Just focus on like It's not like his chest instead of his face But anyway, I've been I've been doing that I Um

Oh I played in my first tournament this weekend I played in a Pokemon Champions like open tournament That was like not the Wolfie Invitational So I was on the matching jacket to your trainer By the way I don't think I mentioned

Oh yeah It took this a second because I just noticed You're wearing I'm like oh that's a nice jacket And then something I guess happened In my brain Where enough time then passed that when I was looking at your trainer on the screen, I went like,

a jacket looks like Jarvis is. And then I didn't do anything with that information. And then Pepys pointed it out, and I, in a desperate attempt to appear human, I was like, Bababay, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, for sure. I was thinking that shit before you. It was like a thing where I was going through and customizing my character

because the no drip version of the default character in Champions is hilarious looking, but I wanted to have something good. And I was like, oh, I actually have a jacket that matches this so I could do that. But I did the turn. tournament, I, uh, I went four and four. So I went even on games, which I will take. It was a 5,000 person

tournament. You know, I placed like somewhere in the upper 25, 30 percent. But that was big for me because I'd never played in that environment. And it was like, I lost like two sets to nerves. Like my first set out of the gate, I like had a dominant win game one. And then I started to like get nervous. Like when you're playing guitar hero and you're getting close to 100% and you're like, uh, uh, uh, and then you just like hit the strum bar and mess everything up. The outro is the easiest part, but because you're at the end. Yeah, the outro's like, dude, dude, dude, and you're just like, uh, do-do do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. No, no, no, no, no, stop.

Stop, why am I doing that? Um, but I'm happy and I am gonna try to enter more tournaments, but now I'm like in the, I'm in the cycle. So I, I've got like one archetype of team that I'm like good with, but the issue with, with learning and being new is like, I feel like I was in an arm, I was like training for an arm wrestling contest where I only trained my arm and now I have a gigantic arm,

but the rest of my fitness is not like up to snuff. So it's like the second I need to, my team like drifts in the meta from a viability standpoint and I need to like learn a new archetype of team, I have like a little weenie arm over here that I can't, I don't actually know how to operate it. You need like your stabilizer muscles, but it's just, you got Gooner arm. I've got two teams now that I'm, okay, relax.

I've got two teams now that I'm trying to learn. And I'm excited about that. And then Worlds is coming up next month and I'll be there. So I'm super stoked. We'll be there roaming around. We'll be, oh, we'll both be there, actually. I'll be thrown. And peeps.

Can you find peeps? If you come out to me, I will give you a tiny Jesus. That will be. I don't think you should promise that. Why? Because I forget to take a... Definitely that. And then also how many you would need. Because I will tell you what, at the last worlds, I don't know if I have my... Oh yeah, you see all those pins on the...

On the lanyard? Oh, yeah. Those pins, there's a big pin trading culture at Worlds and content creators got a special pin, and I wasn't prepared for what that did to people. Oh, I see that. I had a special like mercro pin that first of all was like selling on eBay for like $35. Relax. Scalpers are scalping literally anything they can find.

But then the other thing was just everyone would come up to me and would be like, you're a content creator. And it's like, oh, hey, thanks for, thanks for watching the content. But no, no, no. They don't know who you are. They simply know you might have a mercro pen. They were in the caste system. So then at my rule became, I'll only give the mercro pen to kids.

except for then parents would start doing a thing where they try to get multiple on behalf of their kids and I'm like, all right, buster. Oh, I see. They're in the queue. Relax. Yeah, yeah. I take that back. I will give anybody that comes with me two small Jesuses, two tiny Jesuses.

The first person that comes up gets 80. And then it's responsible for handing them out. Yeah, bears a look. Oh, yeah, if somebody comes in to me, I don't know, find Ryan. Yeah, you got to find Frickin Ryan. Don't you know what he looks like? You didn't find you yet?

He didn't find you? What else do I got? I was talking about how my body is failing and I'm not doing anything except for Pokemon, which is fine for now, but hopefully my body works soon. I do think Pokemon, like, there's ambient hobbies that do, like, pursuing the mastery is fun, but kind of just like in the moment, you know what I mean? Like, like some games are like that and some just basic hobbies are like that. But then there's transferable skills.

Not to be, like, pragmatic about it. When I do you want to get self-conscious about burning too much time on one particular thing, I will then go like, okay, well, first of all, life is happening and there needs to be some sweet treats. Yeah. But then also, like you're saying, raising your heart rate, getting a little on edge because of the tournament pressure. So and so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's XP.

It makes you feel alive. It makes you feel alive. And it's like, wow, I tanked that. Oh, for sure. thing for the like archive of that times you got over something. And I will say that like part of the reason other than like coaching and stuff that I was able to get decent at the game so quickly is because I had transferable game sense from magic gathering and like chess and other things.

Like so it's like even though I and playing Pokemon singles like when I was in high school because like even though none of those things are the same as doubles, there are like transferable elements of the game, which is like why I can play any game and sort of try to break it down into components and figure out like what matters, you know? The most fun is also like sharing, like if somebody comes to you with a question or interest or something, getting to share that knowledge is, I think there might be like the best feeling in the world. Oh, especially for me, yeah.

Dude, it feels, actually I got hit up by a friend of ours asking they got the, I don't just give too many details because it is a gift. but they are working on something and they need help painting it. And they haven't done that before. And they were just like, hey, you're a mini man. You're a mini painting man. And they were like, do you give me a hand with this? And I just went, dude.

Okay, I've got the primer. I thought it'll serve for the right color. Got all the kit we need. I got some stabilizing case your hand feels a little shaky. We'll get dinner beforehand so that you're ready. They were like, here's the primary colors I need. I'm like, okay. Yeah, I'll cook you.

beautiful meal you want McCragbleau get I'm a m'am a crack blue we could probably slap chop that one I'll save time if it's your first time and I'd realize like we talked so much about like pragmatism and like because I you know whereas brainwashers anyone to some degree about like everything needs to be functional we're yeah for sure but that feels like I don't know the meaty core of being alive is connecting with another person over a thing you're interested you know what's crazy is that like yes like Pokemon VGC is a game but I have not studied for anything more in like since I've been in school because the amount of like things like you're incentivized because I'm

incentivized and it's the muscle that you're training it's like going to the gym for your mind like learning to learn is like that's the like here is like literally me go walking through a game of a tournament and then going like going through what is happening and then I start to go, like, I was like, why did they do this? Like, he was reading for this. And part of the reason I'm doing this, like, literally it's, uh, player one, hard switch Zard for Grim Snarl. Assumption here is he needs to get screens up.

Uh, or, uh, player one, Archelodon protects. He's being pressured by earthquake and stomping tantrum from chomp and anything from Float. I guess here you're just biting time to reposition to make sure that one of slots is soaking damage because if you double pivoted you'd absolutely have no damage medication you know what this is actually this is the anime antagonist in a monologue yeah I guess you've been pressured by earthquake yeah and then and then I started to get tired of doing that and I would go I would look at the game state and then I would just guess what I'd

be like okay my guess is flowette protects guard Trump uses rocks like grim star art partings into chop uh bizarre protects and then I would go through and like mark whether or not I got their prediction right something's when you just write it down after a thing, it just locks, right? Yeah. Your long-term memory, like, I was like, oh, well, you wrote it down. It's probably important. Well, the hardest, the hardest thing for me with Pokemon is the amount of information you have to process in such a short time.

Because when you've been playing the game for a long time, you have schemas and, like, mental shortcuts that you see something and you, like, have memoized that in the back of your mind. Whereas for me, it's like a, it's drinking from the fire hose. So, so doing that, like, the players have 45 seconds to crunch. that and make a decision. It takes me sometimes like two minutes, three minutes to like write that all out and come to a prediction. And even the casters are like doing it really quickly because they're usually like pro players or play the game at a high level. And it shows me like where the gap is between my information processing and like where I keep making the driving thing. It's like I want the driving analog where it's like I want to put it into the place in my mind

where I can make decisions while driving without having to actively think about it. I think we would have such different driving habits now or instincts now had we started as teenagers. Yeah. Me, even more so, because you at least had like a propensity for learning and like getting the rules down. Sure, sure, sure. But I think like so much of my resentment towards the LA driving community, a.k.a. everyone in the road ever in front of me beside me to the, but everything ever. I am, I have grievances because of things that I feel like I might have stopped caring about after 10 years.

There is it, oh my God, beeps, you know this one. Trash me with the freaking wall. I start, whenever this happened, I start spinning around like Taz, anybody nearby gets sucked in to a puff ball and there's like a fist coming out and pow. And anytime that I turn into the driveway, I will indicate for a really long time and I'll do the, uh, in gaps so they see the red happening, a little blink. Then I start to turn in and I've started waiting longer. They are fucking riding my ass all the way and I hate that shit. I'm turning and they're like.

They literally, they want to assume that you are going to turn fast enough to where they don't have to slow down at all. Yeah. It doesn't help that there is a street. Which is dangerous by any, by, by any standards. You should not be riding the tail of the car. It's a single lane suburban street. Yeah, or whether you're turning right at a light, what no, whatever. It doesn't help that there's a street right before our driveway.

So a lot of people think we are going to turn then. So they just keep going. And it's like, no, no. And that only gives them about 45 seconds to realize that I'm not. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's got to be tricky. I've started to purposefully slow down more almost to like a stop and then turn in just so I can be like, stop fucking doing.

The, uh, I'm turning here. The thing that annoys me to no end is, um, someone's riding your ass. and you are, you're, you need to parallel park and it's a busy street, but you've had your blinker on for a thousand years, like the whole, like the whole, a block and a half, like, hey, here it comes. And then you start parallel park. And then you basically have to go, fuck you, I'm going to parallel park in the spot. And then they have to reverse their car because they were following you too close. And it's like, is this not teaching you anything? Dude, beep, beep, beep, beep. New news report event. I have identified.

thing that will infuriate my friend Jarvis Johnson. You're hitting the whip right now. You're out and about your driving. Going to the small, small but ugly museum or something, which you are a swim and you are it. You're going to the itty-bitty-titty committee, which you're actually on.

Did you know that? I guess I was an honorary member of the committee. You're out, you're driving and you're in, I, not on the freeway anymore. You've turned into like a relatively suburban area, single the double lanes.

There's someone behind you. So are we on a, residential street and it has it has street parking on both sides of those things so you have like one and a half cars worth of clearance on the road there is absolutely no space to overtake even if you needed to yeah no you come to a firm stop sign and you are waiting to turn right it is a four-way cross and there's no stop signs on the parallel right right so they're just being cross you are waiting a little further behind the car in front of you because there is a big keep clear Oh dude, the keep clear.

HONCs. I will, I admit that, you're right. It's like, you know what? It's like a little fuse. There is a, there's a keep clear. I'm like, this doesn't docks me, right? There's a keep clear like as I turn onto my street. I'm like taking a left.

You know, it's an unprotected left, so I have to be very, very careful. As I'm turning onto my street and there's a giant keep clear. So if they're in a stoplight, the keep clear is there so that I can get onto the street. Because otherwise, there's not like a really safe way to do it under like heavy traffic times. And me trying to do that, someone like looking at me honking, the times I've just been like, like, I'm just like look down. Hey, like I like, what do you want me to do? I know you're almost statistically always in an SUV if you're doing this. So it's a little lower down for you.

And then they start like backing up. And it's like, well, you should have just kept clear. It feels very iconically American to be like, like, well, the person in front of me, from what I can see, has just stopped early. Why would they do that? Why didn't they just go away the car? Or there's a pedestrian. They must be stupid. Dude, I've also done that where there's a pedestrian and someone honks at me and it's like, use your head. You think I just want to stop? What are you assuming? Yeah. I know I'm in the car. I also want to go forward. Yeah, I'm. So the crazy thing is this pedestrian is being obstructed. You can't see them because of my car.

in the way and did you never develop object permanence because this person disappeared behind the obstruction of my car so they must be gone. Why are you still waiting? They turned to dust. Okay, this is, I'm going to give you two examples of one thing that's like actually illegal or seems like it's illegal and another thing that's just like a dick move. Okay. Which should be illegal.

Okay, so the one is you stop for the keep clear the person behind you, you, um, behind you gets impatient and swings their car around and then realizes that they've made a mistake and then just like jumps ahead of you in the keep clear space. Insane. That is a throw the green shell backwards. I hate it when someone whips their car out from behind me because I'm like, you didn't give me like ample, like enough time to like make a decision. And now if I, there's a race condition where you're,

whipping that thing to the left and now if I am trying to turn, I need to be extremely vigilant as I'm turning and I'm going to do that. But like I don't feel like you're giving the same attention, giving the same kind of care to the situation. No diligence, no kind of like. Because they haven't crashed yet. Yeah. So they never will. Or it's like missing a door. That's another thing. And it's like, oh, well, I get it. When there's two wheels. Did I tell you one time I got rear-ended? It was a light rear-ending, so there wasn't, like, meaningful damage. Leaving a parking lot, someone, and it's like cars are going, boom, boom, boom, boom,

I'm waiting for my opening to go. Car behind me gets impatient, like hits me, and then the dude was like on something. And then he gets out of his car and he, like, asked to hug me. And he's like, oh, I'm sorry. And I'm like, dude, you should not be on the road right now. Case of Boy. Yeah. And I'm like, is this whatever?

I'm assuming now everyone else is like fucking hot. A good field sobriety test is whether or not even high, by the way. It was like something beyond. Beyond. He transcended. Yeah. He was in Nirvana maybe. The other thing was so every year we usually go to the Renaissance Fair, Renaissance Pleasure Fair.

And it's an Irwindale, which sounds like a place from. The fantasy realm. Yeah. We go through a big door with a swirling portal in the center to go to Irwindale on the Sword Coast. They're taking the hobbits to Irvindale. The pleasure fair. To the pleasure fair. There's kind of a long car line to get in because it's like this big dirt parking lot and they have like volunteers or maybe it's paid like security people like waving people through.

Paladins. Paladins. And like this line can stretch multiple blocks. The dick move is people are not blocking streets out of respect to. their fellow human. It'll be a green light, but you can see there's not room for another car

in the line, so you don't go. And everyone understands. Because I shouldn't have to explain why, actually. Yeah, yeah. And so then someone will just go and like skip the line essentially. Or even worse, they'll go up to the very, very front of the line

and abuse the fact that people were keeping that street clear. Piss me the fuck. And I'm like, that's evil. dude. Like, that's just evil. Invariably, especially if it's the, like, the rent fare, the person, the person driving is the dad of a family of people that are dressed up, and he's wearing like a, and I paid for it, T-shirt. It's never like somebody, I've never seen a gnome walk out of that, of the driver's seat. We'll be honestly celebrating how humanity has cracked all the codes of happiness, and we live on in Bliss on Patreon. com slash sadboys. Wait, new ending. We live on in bliss. We live on in bliss.

And also with your spirit. In paradise. Spelled like the zodiac killer does it. We end every episode of Stab Boys with a particular phrase. We love you. And we're sorry. Boom. Goochie girl.

How you doing? How you moving on? Moving all. How's you dead looking that future girl? Future girl. Yeah, we are now. Take my money. Go away.

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