The Gargle - Mice VR | AI Nation ship | Christmas gifts

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

Guest editors Tom Neenan and Charlie George join host Alice Fraser for episode 141 of The Gargle - the sonic glossy magazine to The Bugle, with one rule: no politics! Mice VR AI Nation ship Cow dung rockets Reviews Christmas giftsStory 1: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2406986-scientists-have-invented-virtual-reality-goggles-for-mice/Story 2: https://www.techradar.com/pro/the-first-ai-nation-a-ship-with-10000-nvidia-h100-gpus-worth-dollar500-million-could-become-the-first-ever-sovereign-territory-that-relies-entirely-on-artificial-intelligence-for-its-futureStory 3: https://www.thejournal.ie/cow-dung-rocket-fuel-japan-6242884-Dec2023/HOW TO SUPPORT THE GARGLE- Keep The Gargle alive and well by joining Team Bugle with a one-off payment, or become a Team Bugler or Super Bugler to receive extra bonus treats!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateCONTENTS00:00 Start01:37 Front cover01:59 Satirical cartoon02:19 Story 1: Scientists have invented VR goggles for mice06:33 Ads07:53 Story 2: A ship worth $500m could become the first sovereign territory that relies on entirely on AI for its future13:03 Reviews17:59 Story 3: Japanese company tests new cow dung based rocket fuel21:27 The Gargle Christmas Gift Guide25:41 Bye / Anything to plug? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's producer Chris from The Bugle here. Did you know that I have a new series of my podcast, Richie Firth Travel Hacker, out now? It's the show where Richie Firth and I talk about how to make travel better in our very special way. In this series, we discuss line bikes, Teslas, the London overground, and a whole bunch of other random stuff that possibly involves wheels

or tracks or engines of some variety. God, what a hot sell this is. I mean, you must be so excited. Listen now. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite.

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Acast.com. This is a podcast from The Bugle. The shadows move in the castle keep. Robes rustle in the darkness. A lantern is unshuttered, casting its low light across the arcane symbols carved into the stone. Without a word, dim figures move into a circle, movements practised and smooth. Power gathers in the shadows, somehow making pitch black more pitchily black. Somehow the silence rises to a hum, harmonies sliding into dissonance, writhing up the back of the neck of the one forbidden watcher.

She barely breathes, terrified of discovery, then bites her tongue to muffle a scream as a hand grasps her ankle. She turns like a snake and mouths furiously, I thought you were asleep. Teeth gleam at her in a small face. I wanted to come watch. Silly, it's not for watching. It's the gargle. The Sonic Glossy Magazine to the Bugle's Audio Newspaper for a Visual World. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are Charlie George and Tom Neenan. Welcome.

Hello. Hi. My mouth is not working today. Well my throat is very gravelly so we can compliment each other on that. We'll do a jazz edition. I've stolen actual equipment to be here, so that's good. Before we join our gravelly voices together and raise them in a chorus of praise to our top stories this week,

let's have a look at the front cover of the magazine. The front cover this week is a newly divorced Mrs Claus talking about mental load at Christmas in a tell-all, reveal-all, double-fold centre spread this December. Yeah, yeah, sure, Santa delivers the presents, but who thinks about the presents before that is the real question. And the satirical cartoon this week is a picture of world leaders at a meeting workshopping better solutions to geopolitical issues than war.

The whiteboard shows options including weaponised Olympics, genetic experiment competition and online flame wars to the death. And now it's time for our top story top story this week virtual reality goggles for mice uh news and that's the that is the news uh that you can study the brains of mice better if you give them virtual reality goggles tom Tom Neenan, you live in a mediated reality. Can you unpack this story for us? I do. This is another chapter in the rich world of science, or as I call it, vermin bullying,

which is most of science for the last 20 years. So yes, so we have to look at a guy called Daniel Dombeck, who works at the northwest university of illinois and basically they got i guessing that they just don't have the woodworking skills to create the mazes they used to um and it was somehow easier rather than make a maze to make goggles for mice that replicate a maze or i guess any other kind of um environment for them that then they can sort of navigate their way through um and this is what happens when pinky in the brain cosplay goes wrong exactly i always think of like you know how fievel goes west he was a mouse wasn't he fievel goes black mirror

that's what this vibe is giving exactly so basically they're creating a matrix for mice but without even the sort of side benefit of those mice being used as batteries or whatever. And it just seems cruel. It doesn't seem like it would have any real world benefits other than the fact that they don't have to make sets for mice anymore. It's what, do you remember when like all those Star Wars films started using the volume instead of actual sets? And they, it started sort of, I don't know,

it lost a bit of its a bit of the the je ne sais quoi of like those films and this feels a bit the same but for mice and i i do not approve i think leave them alone well also i mean they say they've created virtual reality for mice what they've they say they have created a simulation that is indistinguishable from the real world yeah how do they know how have they asked a mouse they say they've observed brain patterns that are too large to be attached to freely moving mice that could just be the brain patterns of a mouse that's going holy f**k someone stapled goggles to my head

but also you're gonna find go on oh no please i was I was just I was gonna make a joke about cyberpunk so please I love that but do like I was just thinking like do rodents need to escape reality like isn't it just eating cereal from our cupboards I suppose like like if you could remove all cats from like the world that would be quite nice like and would it be like you know like how people having like these vr second lives or holidays like what would a mouse vacation from like the everyday treadmill of life look like would it be like just like a very different wheel that doesn't squeak or something like i don't know yeah that's very true mice already

exist in like their own virtual reality where because they're incontinent just they're the whole everything they see is a toilet which is heaven which is lovely did you just say all all mice incontinent yeah apparently so as i as someone with a mouse problem in my house right now they are they are 100 constantly incontinent. You know what? Do you want with them? I've lost all sympathy. I mean, again, it feels like there's so much projecting going on with these mice. You don't know they're incontinent. Incontinent implies they're not doing it on purpose.

Right. And it isn't a message directly aimed at you, Tom Neiman. It's vindictive is what it is. And I feel like I am the victim of this. The thing is, so they can run around and they'll imagine all the obstacles that they see and things like that and react to them. But that also means that you can do the inverse,

which is you can make them run into things because they think they can run around with impunity and then put an obstacle course that they keep on bouncing off of. So really, it's still just bullying by scientists that has gone on for far too long. I'm now back on the mouse's side. I've now decided that I'm going to champion them.

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And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Nice Stalgia, which is that thing where you remember people or events of the past as though they were nice when they were objectively horrific. And, oh, no, you're at the ballgame. Your boyfriend is sweating and winking at badly disguised friends and family concealed in the crowd. He's going to do a public proposal, you think, as he clutches at his pocket.

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acas powers the world's best podcasts here's a show that we recommend recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite. Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era. Curling has Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided, corporate rivalry, and a performance-enhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate. Available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Everywhere. Acast.com. And now it's time for AI Crypto Bros at Sea news.

This is a recurring story on the podcast here and in the magazine, Tom and Charlie. This is a story that comes around every time people get too rich and they have to jettison something off the boat that is their brain and the thing that they jettison is common sense. They always want to do a nation. They always want to do it on a boat. They always want to make a sovereign territory. Charlie, George, you've wanted to start your own nation before.

Can you unpack this story for us oh my gosh yeah so they want to um the the blue sea frontier compute cluster or bsfcc very catchy yeah it's just so smooth um they want to uh become the first ever sovereign territory that relies entirely on AI for its future, which I like to imagine there'll be lots of conversations on board this ship that's like, AI captain, no AI captain, no AI captain, no AI captain. But yeah, essentially, it's another one of those things where they want to do like an operation in international waters. And whenever someone says that, it's never good is it it's usually because they because they want to be unregulated um and i think a part of it is to do

with the fact if i was reading the article correctly like it's to do with um uh the fact that there is some regulations coming in around ai and they're sort of trying to control it more so they've decided the response to that is to create their own frontier cluster in the middle of nowhere where they can sort of do what they want um and i imagine that you know maybe i don't know what they'll get up to out there maybe sort of sea shanties or like algorithmic anthems will be made by this thing what i couldn't get is are they gonna live there is anyone gonna live there or it going to be a sovereign state that is AI and runs on AI and no one kind of exists in it? That's what I couldn't quite get to the bottom of.

Because I don't think I'd like to live there on a place that runs on seemingly the whims of an algorithm. Do you think it's going to be like HAL? Like, is it HAL in that space thing where it's like, so it's literally just a machine that operates it. And instead of like the ship's wheel, it's like just a sort of spinning, spinning type thing. So there would be a small there would be a small population for maintenance and security forces. And other than that, it would mainly just be a place to keep all of your computers so that you can dodge international law.

mainly just be a place to keep all of your computers so that you can dodge international law because of course the law of the land won't let you be as moral and kind as you'd like to be the the horrifying regulations that are coming into place is something actually genuinely i just read my my brother is in a think tank about ethics in ai and he just asked me to cut a thousand words out of his paper which is specifically on how you assign fault when an AI like tells someone to kill themselves oh god so like what what doctrines there are in law that might you know figure out who could possibly be accountable because someone should be oh my god like when that kid asked for a fun activity to do from alexa and alexa said sticking a fork in to a um into a powerpoint might be a good idea you know it feels like someone should be at blame for that but these people are trying to set sail away from that blame and onto the high seas

i find myself deeply conflicted about this story because on one hand it is a horrifying dystopian scenario that can only end in at best abuses of power and at worst a kind of a creepy horror movie but also I watched Sequest DSV as a child and so the idea of an autonomous underwater nation state is like deeply appealing to me and if there's a dolphin that you could weaponize um to have human intelligence i'm i'm all in you know what a reference what an absolute plucking that from like the depths of my of my youth

uh something i didn't even know i missed but yeah sea quest what was it sea quest dsv dsv had roy scheider in it from jaws can you explain yeah explain it to me how would you summarize it to someone who's never seen it sequest sequest dsv was a beautiful utopian story um like an underwater star trek for children sort of a utopian and scientific underwater community had a a dolphin that could talk to a handsome boy and that's about all there was to it really that's nice i love it dolphins and hats yeah because i'm thinking like atlantis but with like more chat bots and data and i've always thought like you know underwater worlds or like like you say like a sovereign sort of landscape

isn't there film like water world and stuff it's always sort of sexy and watery and amazing. And I think it takes the edge off if it's like automated. Yeah. Robotic. But also mainly a scheme for, let's face it, tax evasion, right? Like surely. And for what sounds like crimes. And now it's time for your reviews.

As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to review something out of five stars. Charlie George, what have you brought in for us this week? So I'm going to review Priti Patel's Instagram Advent Calendar series. It's really spectacular. I highly recommend going and checking it out if you haven't. But I have only given it 1.5 stars. Because of the low quality visuals and the editing,

the door that she opens looks like it was found on Clipart and isn't fireproof. Also, the content was weak. I'm not sure you should talk about the importance of supporting local businesses in a cost of living crisis whilst wearing a Louis Vuitton scarf. That could be perceived as insensitive, maybe a little bit cold,

but the comments were somewhat enjoyable, so that sort of made the 1.5. She is an attractive woman, even if she wants other migrants dead. Ring the politics bell, pet. Politics bell pet. 1.5 stars out of 5 for Priti Patel's Instagram advent calendar. Tom, what have you brought in for us this week?

Well, I went on a roller coaster. So I went to what originally was going to be billed as a carol service. But it was a roller coaster? It ended up being a roller coaster. I got my picture i was happy um no so it but then it it morphed in the publicity to be christmas songs so it'd be a christmas uh sort of a chorus of christmas songs the set list was bizarre so you open on silent night classic absolute classic good opener strong opener then then straight into Fairytale of New York, which

given that we've recently lost the Pogues frontman is obviously very meaningful but difficult, also not obviously a carol, a Christmas song then they go, they're back into carols for Oh Holy Night after that so we're really kind of flip-flopping between sort of pop

and sort of choral but they're managing it. They're keeping it going. Then, Don't Let the Bells End by The Darkness, they do sort of a choral version of that. I am spinning out. I'm like, where are they going to go next? What's happening?

Then they hit us with Winter Wonderland, which is like neither sort of a pop Christmas song or a choral song, it's like sort of a standard, it's a Christmas standard they do quite well on that, then Good King Wenceslas, then they bring out Good King Wenceslas, and I don't I'm now, there's like two songs left

and I'm like, this could go either way this could be amazing then they get All I Want for Christmas is You and I'm like, okay, fine. Then they end, they end on a German Christmas song I had never heard before. I tried to record some of it or work out what the lyrics were and I couldn't even hear it.

So they end on this like German song in German that no one understands. And then they leave and I'm bamboozled. It was an incredible night. I feel very Christmas-y but what originally was going to be a sort of evening of carols ended up being sort of a grab bag of any Christmas songs you could possibly want

I'm going to give it five stars, I had a great time, there was free mulled wine but they couldn't decide on a tone and if anything I think that added to it, so yeah that would be my the and that was at sin i've written st adelaide's church is there a sin adelaide i don't think there is i think i've miswritten that anyway i went to this church it was weird merry christmas five stars that sounds

incredible i feel like what what you've experienced there is the reason that i can't watch tiktok because i feel like everyone has a brain that looks for narratives in the world, but I feel like particularly people in our job, our job is to find and create stories. And so if someone presents you with eight pieces of information in a row, you think, well, what are they trying to tell me with these eight pieces of information? And if they're just being randomly thrown at you by an algorithm

that is essentially throwing the dice, presumably from a floating nation state in the middle of the ocean, so it's not responsible for what it's doing to your brain. Yeah. You get, I get like, I genuinely, if I'm doing TikTok or Reels or any kind of Instagram thing, I get like eight or nine videos in and I feel like I'm losing touch with reality.

So I'm like, but why this one then? What are you saying with the next one? Like, what are you trying to tell me? So weird. So, uh... But you know you'll have made it as a stand-up when you appear next to someone doing diy a set of yours appears next to someone doing diy or cutting an avocado then you'll be like right i've finally made it i feel like you know your level of success

on the internet by the amount of deranged meanness you get in the comments starts with friends and family saying oh how, how lovely. And once you get to, who is this person? I don't understand her accent. Then you're like, oh, yeah, I'm in the big leagues now. Now it's time for rocket fuel news. A Japanese company has been testing out a new rocket fuel that is made out of cow dung. Charlie, George, you've gone to the moon before. Can you unpack this story for us?

Yeah, so a Japanese space company is testing out new cow dung based rocket fuel. And this experiment saw the engine blast out blue and orange flame 10 to 15 metres horizontally, and they are pretty chuffed about it because the raw material from the region's cows has so much potential, apparently it's nice for shit to finally have great potential, and they're looking for an energy source that they already have loads of, and they have quite a lot of cow waste. And I think this was my favourite quote, I'm excited to think that our cow waste um and i think this was this was my favorite quote i'm excited to think that our cow waste could be used to make it fly he said of the rocket

um so yeah their their space program is going green or should we say brown um with eco-friendly cow dung rocket fuel um i i like to i like to think of it as the term dung rocket fuel. I like to think of it as the term dung shway, but I don't know how acceptable that is. Achieving balance in the cosmos by redistributing the shit. I like that. It's pollution-free era with dung rocket fuel. Well, I mean, sort of cow waste, particularly cow cow farts are one of the most polluting things going round so it feels like

maybe if they can capitalise on that it'll end up being a good thing maybe I don't know or I mean you could just do it the old fashioned way and feed a cow enough beans that it fires itself to the moon so

you know you just said we as humans search for narrative right even if things aren't connected i'm looking back at the three stories that we're discussing on the gargle today right so we've had three blind mice we've had a cow jumping over the moon and of course Humpty Dumpty sat on the blue sea frontier computer cluster created by US firm Dell complex. Like, is it, is it, I was thinking the owl and the pussycat went to sea,

but like fine. And the, it all matches up is it deliberate that this is a nursery rhyme themed episode or is that just

something that's happened I think it's probably subliminal that this has happened but you know this is the

problem when you look for news that isn't political you find the real meanings underneath everything yeah

I think I've uncovered it and there's nothing more meaningful than a fairy tale I think I would like I think I've uncovered it. And there's nothing more meaningful than a fairy tale. I think I would like, like, I think I'd like to be more eco-friendly

and I think that using my own farts or shit for stuff would be quite helpful, actually. As a woman with IBS, I think, I think sort of that would be great. I've been thinking a lot about death and mortality recently and I think my shit being flied from a rocket into space is quite an interesting one that people haven't really thought of before. They always think of eulogies and what song you play and cremation.

Just what no-one's ever thought about, I want to fling my shit into space. It's sort of an ultimate legacy. The final insult. Yeah. And now it's time for our Christmas gift guide section, where we ask our guest editors to recommend gifts that you might buy for your family or friends or frenemies or enemies this Christmas.

Charlie, what do you recommend people put their hard-earned cash into to bring the joy of the season to their loved ones? Oh, well, I have a special project product for you all i have the merry misdirection mangle manual sorry the merry misdirection manual the mangle is a very different product the merry misdirection manual sometimes known as jingle bell jargon and it's basically a book of stock phrases for a merry drama free christ Christmas. So has your mother asked again when you're going to have an immaculate conception or bring someone home who's actually worthy of the kingdom of heaven? Try laughing hysterically and saying, sorry, I can't concentrate whilst your

paper crown is on backwards. It will be discombobulating and take some time to realise there's no front to a paper crown. Is everyone asking about your weight gain? Try the phrase. My New Year's resolution is to die alone. It's a guaranteed conversation stopper. I've got some other ones. If you don't have money for elaborate presents and you're feeling criticised and diminished by what you've bought

and the looks on people's faces as they unwrap your gifts, try sharing some random facts or social commentary and be remembered for completely different reasons did you know i'm dreaming of a white christmas was written by a man by psoriasis this one is true actually and it's great in catalonia there's a unique christmas tradition called cagatio where children beat a smiling log until it poops out small presents yes you heard that right pooping logs um the merry misdirection manual is available now in all good bookshops wonderful and tom neenan what have you got for us to give

this season i've been looking into personalized 3d photo crystals um if you haven't seen them they are little like blocks of sort of glass or perspex, and you can have an image put in them. And what my friends have been doing over sort of the last few months is testing basically what is and isn't allowable to be put in as a photo on the personalized 3D photo crystal. So obviously it's advertised with like a picture of a dog, a picture of the family, a picture of a toddler. So and so you can obviously upload the picture and it will reject it or not. So far, you can things that have been rejected, things that have been accepted are a middle finger flipping the bird or someone that's acceptable. Similarly, most just like text. So like if you if you upload most like text, it will say whatever you want it to.

And coming back to what you said before, if you wanted to, you can upload pictures of dog feces if you want. But those all go through. Things that haven't gone through so far are anything pornographic. We haven't tested it in a way that is, that I think is upsetting to anyone.

But you can't do anything pornographic or it can't be a licensed photo. But use with it that you will, that you can post your enemy over Christmas, your hand doing the middle finger, which when emblazoned in crystal, when you put that much effort into it, really feels personal and really feels like you mean it. put that much effort into it really feels personal and really feels like you mean it so tell someone you hate uh that you hate them this christmas with a middle finger in a personalized 3d crystal what a wonderful gift i uh i have the recommendation of a number of options that you can bring to uh christmas to answer the question that young children ask of you about whether Santa is real or not, including options like, yes, Santa is real and he's watching you right now.

Yes, Santa is a representation of the spirit of giving. And when you become old enough, you too become a Santa. Or yes, Santa is real. He's actually Satan. He's spelled backwards and he's here to destroy the spirit of Christian Christmas and turn it into a pagan celebration of capitalistic hedonism. Weep, weep, child, for the folly of mankind. And that brings us to the end of this episode of The Gargle. I'm flipping through the ad section of the back of the magazine. Charlie, have you got anything to plug?

Can I say my social media stuff? Because I'm basically doing some work-in-progress shows for my first ever stand-up hour, which I'm going to do at Edinburgh next year. I have those coming up in the new year in London and Leicester Comedy Festival and various places. But the best place to find out about that would be to follow me online at CharlieGeorgeorge comedy um and at cg does comedy on twitter but at charlie george comedy on everywhere else

wonderful i recommend that while social media lasts cg comedy is a good follow and tom have you got anything to plug i've got a few things to plug i realize i've got a website and i pay for i update it every year uh and year and I pay for the web hosting and I never direct anyone to it it's tomneenan.com it doesn't really do anything it's just some pictures of me and some links to

like my showreel and stuff but just go on that if you want to see some pictures and some links to reviews and things because I pay for it so may as well may as well get some hits tell you also

what's a great Christmas present is one of Tom Neenan's paintings that he has. Oh, yeah, go on Instagram, tpneenan on Instagram and say if you like any of the paintings or if you have any recommendations, then I'm happy to do that because I sort of clock off work on, I think, the 21st, 22nd and I will probably be doing some painting at home.

So, yeah, request those. Good point. Thank you, Alice. That's alright. I've got your back. Thank you. Can I get a painting of my ship being flung from space from a rocket, please? I've already started it. That was a given. That was already, yeah, yeah, definitely. It's gonna be

a brown Christmas. I'm Alice Fraser. You can find me online at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser, where can find me online at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser where I run two writers meetings a week if you are working on anything creative

and you would like to join a gang of people. I also do a salon every week which is a more general chat which you can join in on or just lurk in the darkness

and watch people have a conversation. Patreon.com slash Alice Fraser is also where you get a first look at whatever I'm releasing, whether it's stand-up specials, podcasts, or blogs, and that all starts at a dollar a month. When I say it starts at a dollar a month, you get everything currently for a dollar

a month, and I'm going to at some point bring different levels of access back in, but at the moment you just get a ridiculous amount of value for money. This is an Alice Fraser and Bugle Podcasts production. Your editor is Ped Hunter. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week. You can listen to other programs from the Bugle, including The Bugle, Catharsis, Tiny Revolutions, Top Stories and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts.