The Morning Stream - TMS 2962: Vocal Jazzercise

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

We've Always Been Stupid. Useless In The Apocalypse. Brian's Got the Gomboo. This is the day Bobby sat in. Flex Your Chicken Dance Muscles. It's Very Hard To Be A Serial Killer In 2026. Thumb reversal, hell of a skill. Cloaca Experts Incoming. Radioactive Pig-Boar Hybrids. Shitty Ribbons. Sonic Streaming Burgers. Just Remember, It's All Fake News. OG MLM. A Typical PB AND J. Looking Fantastic w Tom Merritt and more on this episode of The Morning Stream. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One time I saw wasp in concert, and there were wasps there, and one of the wasps bit me. I've gotten over it, but to ensure that, you should sign up at patreon.com slash TMS today. Coming up on the morning stream, we've always been stupid. Useless in the apocalypse. Brian's got the gomboo. This is the day Bobby sat in. Flex your chicken dance muscles. It's very hard to be a serial killer in 2026.

Thumb reversal, hell of a skill. Cloaca experts incoming. Radioactive pig boar hybrids. Shitty ribbons. Sonic streaming burgers. Just remember, it's all fake news. OGMLM. A typical PB&J.

Looking fantastic with Tom Merritt and more on this episode of The Morning Stream. Apparently, I'm attracted to a lot of women that carry pepper spray. Skeletor, the master of the universe. The morning stream. Ah, that's the level of stupid we're looking for. Hello, everybody, and welcome to TMS. This is the morning stream for Wednesday, February 11th, 2026. I am Scott Johnson, and sitting in today for a gombu having,

it's what my dad used to call it the gambu, illness having Brianibut. He's down for the day, getting some rest. We don't know what. I don't know what the gombu is. I don't know what he got, although suspiciously close to his, his date that he had at the place where they put VR goggles on and walked around looking at stuff. Hmm.

Hmm. I'm just saying. Anyway, sitting in for him, we have Bobby Frankenberger. Bobby, welcome back. Hey, thanks for having me. The show must go on, as they say. So I was, I'm here. You were at the ready.

As soon as I said, hey, Bobby, you down? And you went, yeah. I basically wake up every morning and think, is this the day that I sit in for Brian on the morning stream. Well, because it's, the possibility exists. The question is what is the likelihood, the probability. And so I, I always want to be ready. I do my vocal warmups.

I do, I do some exercising in the morning and make sure that I can, what are the exercises you would need to do to get ready for TMS? Oh, gosh. Well, I grabbed this thing. Check this out. Got this on TEMU. This thing right here. Right.

Okay. I do about 15 of these. This right here. So for people listening at home, it's like a weird device. that you sit with and sort of it exercises the it gets you ready to do the chicken dance it exercises those muscles. They're important. You can't forget.

You can't neglect your chicken dance muscles. But in my case, it's actually been really good for me to do to have a thing handy where, all right, I just finished show, I got to get ready for the next thing or I got a call or something. I'm going to whip out a few of these. And it just is helping my like upper, like less tension in the upper body, like, less tension in the upper body. like less yeah i get less bound up and like or whatever i don't know it's good now that i'm in my 40s everything's falling apart you know and so yeah welcome there are all yeah thanks thank you thank you i'm glad to be here um but uh there's all sorts of things hurt now that shouldn't be hurting like i just

dusted all the i just dusted a bunch of stuff yesterday that was high up and just by like looking up for a long time, my neck is sore today, and that never used to happen. So I'm realizing that I also need to add like some kind of simple muscle workouts to my routine as well. You know, and I should, there's also the need at least a few times a week for some good sweaty, you know, whatever, which I am, you know, right now sorely lacking. But, but, you know, this has just been nice and you know I did some check and I didn't just get this like it was a fad. I got it because I was like what's good for sort of upper body? Don't worry Scott. Anybody who saw the video of you using that definitely does not think that you got that because it's a fad.

All right. So don't worry about that. It's supposed to reduce the size of my man teats. Yeah, it does not look like no one would mistake that for something that people are doing on TikTok to look. interesting or cool. I mean, it's basically resistance training, right, in your arms, makes this sound. Yeah, and that's a sad, that's a, that's a sound that makes you feel like you really are working. There's nothing like that feeling when you, when you, when you have worked out some muscles and you wake up the next day and it's sore, but it's like that soreness that tells you you did something. Yeah, yeah, it feels meaningful like you actually pulled something off. Yeah. You know what I'm saying. Anyway, it's a good day of y'all here. It's good dad, Bobby here. We're

going to have a show. And man, sometimes I think we live in the most misinformation filled time. Certainly it's the most easily widespread era of misinformation because, you know, the internet and the far-reaching implications of all that. But I found this thing yesterday that happened in the 80s that blew my mind. And I didn't know about it at the time because I was just a kid, living in kid life, enjoying life as a kid, not thinking about politics or the world or any of that. I was in a very privileged, you know, upbringing of middle class, white kid, you know, Utah. I just didn't have the challenges a lot of other people had. So to me, it was a pretty blissful existence. And this is really interesting. The 80s would like us to hold the two 2026's beer just for a second.

There was this Proctor and Gamble satanic president thing going on. This blew my mind. So Procter and Gamble, big, huge company made a ton of product. everything from they did a bunch of food stuff and I think they were into some biotech or anyway, they were huge. They were like Monsanto today, you might say.

Anyway, one of the most persistent rumors of the 80s was that the president of Procter & Gamble appeared on the Phil Donahue show. Now kids, listen, when I was young, my parents were really into we're no shortage these days

of Talking Head show or a person walking around with a mic asking people questions, uh, Jerry Springer style, you know, all that stuff. Most of that came out of this Phil Donahue era. A little bit of Oprah as well.

Oprah was around for that. But Phil Donahue is this guy with, with, with, uh, with, premature white hair, kind of like Steve Martin sort of. And he would walk around with a microphone in an audience and he would have a guest on,

like some controversial something or other. And he'd walk around and the people in the audience to do Q&A. Like what we're going to do in our tacular. couple of our panels, right? Walking around go, what do you think? Oh, well, I wonder what the hell's going on. Anyway, supposedly the president of Procter & Gamble at the time, I'm going to use his name here because it doesn't matter

for the purpose of this, supposedly goes on the Phil Donahue show and admits on camera on national television, national syndicated television, that he was a member of the Church of Satan. Wow. That was the claim. Proponents argue that P&G's Man on the Moon logo

contained the number 666 hidden in its curls, of the moon, the moon's beard, sorry, and that 13 stars were a mockery of the Bible verse. Okay, so that was the basis for this, that he's the president of the company that made a logo that was already an abomination unto the Lord or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Here's the reality. No P&G, Parker and Gamble, no P&G executive ever appeared on the show, not even once. The logo data backed in 1851. so it wasn't one that they, you know, built in the 80s to then suddenly bring on the satanic panic.

The star simply represented the original 13 colonies of these state united. All right. And then P&G eventually sues Amway distributors for spreading the rumor. Amway distributors, right? The OG multi-level marketing scheme for spreading the rumor and won millions in damages. They ended up winning. Wow. So, here's the fun part.

I looked at this and it actually helped me. I saw this and I went, we're always this stupid. It's just levels of exposure. You know what I mean? Like, it isn't like it's that, it isn't that different. It's that way more wackadoos have a megaphone that they didn't used to have because they all they had was their parents to hear them complain in the room in the other room or whatever. and there was, you know, there's always this stuff. And then I started reading about how, like, why are there less serial killers today?

And it's also, it's like a side effect of the same thing. There's so much more exposure now. It's very hard to be a serial killer in 2026. Totally, totally. You get caught way too easy. You ain't putting stuff under your floorboards at night. You're, you're getting caught because we're a much more, not open society. What's the word?

We're much more exposed. There you go. That's the word. So, Bobby, I'm just saying, all I'm saying is sometimes history, even recent history like this, not that long ago, is good for people to just get in there and just realize that, you know, the wackadoo has always existed. The cool-headed have always existed. And if we believe ourselves to be the cool-headed, we don't need to panic too hard about how weird somebody gets, per se. because this has always been a thing. So instead, what you can do is less about,

it's less about going, but it's never been worse. Well, it's just not true. So, right. There are things, there are things that are bad. Don't get me wrong. So I'm going to get heat for this because people are going to assume what I'm saying is everything's great because history had bad times. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is for your own personal mentality, for your own personal mental health,

I think digging around in history, even for stuff that you didn't never hear about before or you weren't here for because you didn't exist, you didn't live on this planet, then, it's just cathartic for you to do because it will give you perspective. It will give you a larger view of the timeline. That's all. Yeah. Yeah. That's all. I 100% agree with you. All these things were happening to one extent or another. It's just somewhere. It's just we didn't know about it. And often in the dark on purpose, right? Because they would take advantage of the fact that society was less exposed in your term and they could get away with a whole lot more. Everything up from higher echelons of power

all the way down to your next door neighbor, hiding, you know, the cat he murdered or whatever. Right. I don't know if I ever had a neighborhood murdered a cat. I'm just using it as an example. But I think that's, I think it's important. Just to see it from the larger perspective. Doesn't mean there isn't work to do now.

Doesn't mean we can't improve it. Doesn't mean any of those things. It just means, oh, yeah, it's not just me. I'm not the main character of this story. I am but one MPC in this giant game. Yes. There you go. Agreed.

I agree. It's good perspective to have. All right. Well, I'm glad you agree. I only like having people around me that agree with me. You know what I mean? I know a lot of people in power who are like that. Yeah, it's, and it's easy to just go, well, what about this?

I guarantee I can find you an example of, well, here's this that happened in 1974. Okay. Well, what about this? Well, here's. here's the story of an entire village burned to the ground because one guy didn't like the look in their eyes or something. You know, like there's just always something.

You can find it. But you got to get out of your you got to get out of here. It's only happening to me or it's only happening to my time mindset and realize that A, you can still do something about the problems of your day. Right.

But you don't have to feel like you're so isolated in history because you're just not. Like by the next. numbers you're not. Emotionally, it sure feels like it. You're here now. But I'm telling you right now in a hundred years, no one's going to remember anything I'm saying right now. They're not going to remember me. And it's hard to know what those things that are going to stick out and last are going to be. But I tend to think that optimism and hope are good default ways to be because if you're not optimistic and hopeful that things can change and you can do things to change them, then it's just a

self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Right, you're never going to go in. Even if it's just in your own little sphere where you can sort of control stuff, yeah. You're never going to, you're never going to feel like you've gotten past it. Right. Take climate change, for example. It's really easy for us to all think that we can't fix any of this. But if we, first of all, we can, it's also not all or nothing.

You can, maybe you can't get back to where it would have been, but you can still make things not get worse. But also, if you just think that it can't be fixed, then whether it can or not, you've already given up and you've already decided, it won't get fixed. Yeah. You know, so you have, do you have no choice but to think things can get better? That's my, that's my, the way I look at that. I do too. I get a lot of heat for this sometimes because they think it's naive.

But I really do think history is a rising road. that eventually it does, things do improve. We can show that, like, you can show practical examples of this, whether it would be levels of famine or levels of disease or, it was a bunch of metrics you can look at and go, well, hell, we're way better than we were even 100 years ago. However, it doesn't, it's not designed to ignore the problems now. Right.

You know, I think you have to believe that things will get better through action. Let me, let me, there you go. Modify what I was saying. Right. That's a great way of putting it. because otherwise you're just talking. And all that talking ain't helping. Also, I don't, I got no,

I got no space for Dumers anymore. I'm done. I can't have, I can't have, I can't interact with people who are just constantly just, all you have to say is like this. Um, I don't know. What's a good example?

It's like, uh, uh, like, well, okay, me just saying that, that the history is a rising road.

And their immediate reaction is to go, well, the road's busted and they're going to have to have the cruise. come in and fix, fix the road and all the cars are backed up. And they're going to come up with just some reason to say, well, it's all not worth it. I'm not doing. I can't be around that. I can't.

I already, every individual has a little bit of that in themselves anyway. I don't want more of it. I don't want more people doing that. You know, I got kids and their kids. I'm trying to ignore that voice in my head already. Yeah. Yeah. We're already doing.

We'd be better off if we could do that collectively, obviously. Right. Anyway. Yeah. Just remember we're MPCs in a giant video game. Yeah. That's not a doomer perspective. It just means you have so much control and you should use that control to better your immediate NPC environment.

Cultivate your own garden. Yeah. Thank you. Hey, real quick, the nerdtacular update, I got one for you. All right. For those who don't know, by the way, Bobby's in charge of programming at the thing. Did you guys know that? That's right.

Well, I am. And I'm loving it. It's a very active thing that I get to do and be a part of helping make it happen. Yeah, I handed these keys to Bobby and said, all right, the three day or the two days and one night of this thing, we need to, you know, figure it out. And boy, howdy, is he all over this thing. That includes, by the way, the addition of, let me pull it up big here, some photos up on the site. So as announced last week, Liam O'Brien, the great Liam O'Brien of critical role on a billion video games and anime and TV shows and all this other stuff you've heard him in. voice actor extraordinaire will be joining us all day Friday and uh that may that may expand but right

now that's the commitment that's what we can get him for he's very very busy and scheduled out um yeah he and i are collectively shocked that this is even going to happen we're so stoked about it yeah and so i think we should pause for a minute and really appreciate how exciting it is that he's going to be there like that's really cool really really cool if you've ever wanted a chance to be around, see, or meet Liam O'Brien, I know where you need to be in June. Yeah, there's a, there's a direct answer to that. Yeah. Come to Nurtacular in June. But he and I have been friends for ages and we always have said, we got to get you Nurtacular. I know I want to go so bad. And then when Critical Role took off in 2015, it was just like pulling hair trying

to figure out a way to do it. It just could never happen. He tried to do Vegas before, had to pull out last second, like all this stuff. No one's going to isolate, pull out last second and do anything with that, right? That'll be a, that phrase won't happen to be in Jamie's, uh, hard drive. Anyway, he's in and it's great. But here's everybody. Look at us. We've all decided to use, I've, my photos from 2017.

Liams is from a few years ago. Tom's is like 10 years ago. Uh, that's Brian Ibott and I think is late 30s, uh, right there. Uh, that's a Randy image from 2013. That's a recent image for John. So good on John there for a 2013 image of Randy. That image. with the soft focus and the

that looks like it's from the early 90s. I agree with you. It was a long time ago. A recent one from John, pretty recent from Bo. Looking all schlubby. My daughter looking like she's in the Matrix somehow. Anyway, all these...

That looks like her headshot that she's passing around to get cast in all the next Matrix movie. For sure. Everything about that photo makes her seem very rad. And she is rad, but she's all also just a big, dumb sweetie like the rest of us. Anyway, there's Bill Duran and all of his get-up.

You got Brian Dunaway. His thumb looks like it's AI generated, but he actually has that condition, but that thing where you can bend your, there's a name for it. It's a kind of double-joinedness that makes it so you can make your top half of your thumb almost fold in half against the back of your thumb.

Wow. And he's doing that there. Because at first, Randy, and I think maybe I did, We were both like, dude. What a skill. Yeah, it's a hell of a skill. He's going to be more useful than you in the apocalypse. I fully agree.

You got Dr. Tolbert. He'll be able to at least fit into smaller sized gloves. Yeah, for sure. And by the way, most of these people here are going to be big help. Bo grew up in a house. His dad was a professional HVAC guy, so he can be useful in the apocalypse. Dr. Tolbert, obviously, we need a doctor. Wendy will be there for all our mental health.

so that'll be good. You got Dr. Nicky in case any of us butt heads. Get it? Do you get it? And then, oh, by the way, she's going to be here. I haven't heard her answer yet, but I think Tuesday for the top of the show next week to talk about the cloaca, I keep bringing up.

She's actually an expert in cloacas. So she's going to explain all the shit that I don't know. Thank goodness someone is. I agree, finally. Here's Timu Jesus, or as we call them, Bobby Frankenberger. my lovely wife Kim and of course TV Travis there will be more added up here but we got a lot of like little sub helper people they're going to get a little splash on here anyway the reason I'm telling you all this is I just want you to head over there click on get your tickets and reserve hotel the event schedules up there as well this is what Bobby's been working so hard on we got all this stuff laid out about when and where like it's it's really pretty amazing how early we've got some of this information but go go check it out it's at frogpants.com just click on the nerdtacular banner and come join it in June. There's so many really fun events

that are going to be happening that I'm so excited that we can actually now talk about because we've mentioned NerdTacular before when I've been on but we've been careful not to talk too much about it because we had things that we hadn't been locked in yet. But it's so exciting to be able to actually talk about things

we're going to have a big karaoke event that I'm really excited about. Don't get nervous people. It's not what you think. Like it's not pressure on you to sing. Absolutely not. It's just everybody's going to hang out and be able to do some karaoke. We've done that.

The whole theme of this thing, Scott and I talked a lot about what vision and all these other stupid corpority words. And really the idea was community. Everything we do, we need to ask ourselves a question, is this really about community? Because that's what the frog, that's what frog pants is about, right? Yep. community. Yep. And so the thought was, we could, what are we going to do about?

In past Nerdtaculars, there's been a musical guest performance at the end. And we thought, well, Tom and Brian had this great idea for daily music headlines. They were thinking about a karaoke event. And Scott and I were like, what a great community way to have a musical closer to Nerdtacular was the community is the musical guest. Yeah, right? Yeah. So I'm really excited about that. Also, KT Data, aka Kevin in our chat, he is in charge of all the AV efforts. That dude is locked and loaded, man. He's so ready for this. And Thursday morning, tomorrow morning, my daughter and maybe Kim, are going over to the venue to do video walkthroughs of all the spaces so that me, you, Kevin in particular, everybody's going to have a way better idea of the physicality of stuff. stuff so that, you know, we don't get there and go, oh, we thought that was a wall or, you know,

whatever, whatever it is. Yeah, it's all going to be great. So I'm very excited. It's a big, happy, happy place for the frogpants family to hang out and be together. And it may be the last one we ever do. I don't know that for sure, but it may be. The idea here is to have. You might as well assume that it is because it could be. It very well could be. Always assume, never underestimate or something like that. That's a new phrase. That sounds like I could. Did you see that on a bumper sticker earlier today, Scott? I did not, but I'm going to make them now. I'm going to make them.

Hey, guys, let's get to this news. We get some news to the cover before Tom joins us. We've got a great tech question for Tom today. I'm very excited about it. Oh, awesome. Yeah, it's going to be good. But before that, this. This episode of the news is brought to you by All Around Science, the podcast.

Bobby, tell me more. All Around Science is the podcast that I, do and it feels like I should rhyme something. I should do. I don't know. I set that up like it was going to be a rhyme. All around science is the weekly science podcast I do with my co-host, Mora, and we talk about science. I mean, that's the basic premise. We're just excited about science and we want you to be excited too. So we just, whatever we're thinking about and getting excited about, we do our best to share it with each other because we both love talking to each other about science. and we will let you listen in because we assume that science is for everybody.

So, well, there you go. Science. Available now, wherever you get your podcast. All around science, yeah. Let's talk about this story. This is interesting. I chose a top of the thing, new story that was sort of science related. So you're going to have to speak on this from your science perspective.

All right. Okay. Radioactive pig boar hybrids. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you all heard me. Yeah. Just tracking so far. Are thriving in Fukushima after that disaster they had, the nuclear disaster some years ago.

Oh, wow. Remember that? And you always hear about this with like the Ukraine. What's it called? What's wrong with me? What's the one that was, they made a show on HBO and that I love it? What's wrong with my brain? I can't think of the time.

Oh, my God. Thanks for wiping my brain of the word. Chernobyl. Holy shit. Chernobyl. Thank you. He's Louises. All right.

Oh, the chat's now yelling Chernobyl. Fantastic. You always hear about those. It's like, oh, there's a dog with three eyes and three chickens that run the place or whatever. It's always like some weird, you know, animals overcoming the contamination and mutating into something more. Well, that's kind of what this is. Radioactive pigboard hybrids are thriving in there, according to scientists. And they actually finally decoded the genetic mechanisms behind the boom.

of radioactive pig boar hybrids. I just like saying it. This was 2011. By the way, this feels like five minutes ago. So how it's 2011, I don't know. That's wild to me. 15 years ago. Yeah, it was a long time ago.

Anyway, following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident and evacuation of people, a small number of domestic pigs escaped from the town's farms and began reproducing alongside native wild boars in the area. Much of the evacuation area and rain sealed off due to ongoing high levels of radioactivity, How long as that takes, like a thousand years or something weird like that, right?

Or 100 years? I mean, that's what I've heard, but I don't think it's a thousand years. I don't know exactly what the number is, but I remember when I was younger, that was the number that got thrown around. But I think I heard later that it was maybe less. I don't know. Well, earlier tests by the Japanese government on contaminated wild boars in the area showed levels of cesium 137, more than 300 times higher than the safe limit.

yet these boars are like, whatever, man, freaking let's go. You know what I mean? Yeah. Let's see. Where are we here? With no further introduction of pigs in the area, minimal human activity, the region has become to site for a natural experiment to understand domestic pig hybridization and their wild relatives. Such hybridization between domestic and wild animals is a growing concern worldwide,

particularly in areas where feral pigs and wild boars increasingly overlap and are often linked to ecological damage. However, the biological mechanisms behind these changes have remained poorly understood. The important thing to remember is, if you're in Japan and you're suddenly accosted by a radioactive pig boar hybrid,

talk to your local physician. That's all I'm getting out. All right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What would you do if you saw one of those? What would you do? I'd sharpen my butcher knife. Hell yeah. ain't taking no guff from no hybrid pig boar radioactive or not um i looked it up so so the reason it's not

a thousand years i mean maybe it would be a thousand years for for practically all of it to go away but the reason it's not at that um radiation dissipates uh based on half life and all that kind of stuff like you have a certain amount of radioactivity that'll that'll dissipate over a certain amount of time. And they say that most of it actually goes away in the first 24 to 48 hours. But the, and 90% of it is gone within the first, I think, I think the first seven years or something like that. Oh, okay. But still on the safe levels on the long time. Right, right.

So the I, but the, it, there's a seven to seven to one or seven to ten rule apparently that, um, that for every, for every seven years that goes by, it gets, the amount, the level of, of radioactivity that's there is reduced by an order of magnitude. It's reduced by a factor of 10. Oh, but, but when you start with a lot, that means like, you don't need a lot of radioactivity. exposure to to increase like to to expose yourself to dangerous levels of radioactivity so um that's why you it's not really safe to be there for decades later right is because even a small amount exposing yourself to even a small amount over a period of time can can be because it's it's it increases your lifetime risk of like cancers and stuff like that down the road. It's a nice, it's a fun anime concept though, right? These hybrid radioactive pig boars and maybe the Japanese government militarizes them and uses them.

You know, there's some fun to be had and some bad anime, but otherwise stay away. That's what I'm saying. Great. Well, that's our news for today. We brought you the big story. All right. The big story. The big story.

And we did that so that we could bring you a much cooler story. That's a smaller story? Then we got a smaller story with that guy. Isn't technology wonderful? Yeah, technology is pretty wonderful, but only when Tom Merritt's here to talk about it. Hello, Tom Merritt. How are you doing? Yeah, I can't compete with Godzilla.

I know, right? Rising up out of the boreholes of Japan. I assume that's what you're talking about. Kind of, yeah, there are actually these things they call radioactive hybrid. Where to go? I lost it. Radioactive pig boar hybrids. Pig bore hybrids.

Which is not a fun idea unless you're writing a story, I figure. And you've written some stories, Tom. Get us a science fiction novel about the radioactive pig boar hybrids. Yeah, and the pigs that come out of them. Yeah, and the pigs that emerge. The radioactive pigs. Yeah. And I wish it was boar, B-O-R-E, and they're just boring.

But no, they got bore blood in them. Yeah. It's just holes that boar pigs. That's right. It's not a really good story. Well, as you can tell, Tom Merritt has joined us. We're going to talk about a technology question because that's what happens when the purveyor of all things Daily Tech News show joins us here on the show on a Wednesday. Tom, we've got a big one for you.

Are you ready for this? All right. My body is ready. Excellent. Steve wrote in. We have no last name and that is fine. You guys can do these anonymously as you feel like you want to. He says this.

We're seeing a massive push toward edge computing. we might need a tiny after we're done reading this a little bit of a definition of edge computing but anyway because Microsoft would like you to think that's the browser you should be using but anyway

push toward edge computing and local It's when the guitarist from you two Oh that is what it is Bano computing and edge computing Oh okay well now I understand Where was I Oh and local first software where data is processed on device

Rather than in the cloud do you think that this shift is driven more by genuine need for data sovereignty and piracy? Or is it just a privacy, sorry? Or is it just a strategic move by Big Tech to offload the astronomical energy and compute costs of the modern web onto the consumer's hardware? Asks Steve. Literally astronomical, as Elon Musk would like to put the data centers in space. Yeah, it really would. Nice and cool up there.

Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Yeah, it is. In fact, you want a great explanation of what the actual. challenges are for putting data centers in space. Check out the attention mechanism this week, Justin Robert Young and Andrew Main. Andrew Maine does a great job of going, this is not a problem, this is a problem. It's good stuff. Yeah, I'll check it out. But side note on that. So edge computing is just when you process the data close to its source. So it can mean a lot of different things. It could

mean the data center is in your neighborhood. It could mean you processing it literally on your phone, which is what our questioner Steve means here, which is, I have seen a lot of companies tout, including Apple, the idea that when you ask a question of a large language model, the answer is processed on the device. And that is a privacy advantage, because when you process it on the device, you can make sure that your query is not being stored on a server somewhere. It never went into the cloud, et cetera. Apple goes to great lengths to have what's called private cloud compute so that when your query does need to be sent to a data center, that it can make sure that no one sees that query. It's just processed and the answer set back to you and that's it. No one else knows what's going on. Kind of an end-to-end computing or end-to-end encryption way of doing things. That's all background to Steve's question, which is, hey, when you hear Apple or Google or anybody saying, and it's done on device, do they really care about you as a person?

Or are they just greedy money-grubbing corporations who want to save a buck? And the answer is yes. Both those things. I do think it is more of a privacy advantage these days to do on-device, just because on-device is never these days as good as in the cloud. It can be good, and it can be good at certain kinds of queries on-device. but if it were good enough for them to offload a lot of their compute, they'd be doing that. You'd be seeing them push more things onto your device.

And instead, what you're seeing is them push things on device when they can because it's possible. And that is really because they want to get you to think of them as protecting your privacy. That is also a win for them as a business to say like, hey, we're the ones who protect your privacy. and you think, oh, I'm going to choose that company because they're doing that. And certainly there's a lot of folks who don't want to send any query into the cloud at all. So on device is the only way they're going to use it. So you want to get those customers to. And at some point, I don't know when.

It might be a long time from now. On device will start to reach parity with what you can do in the cloud, at least functionally. And then, yes, they will want to push it onto your device because, having it on your device is better. But I don't think we ever get away from having the cloud do something, because if you can do something on your device, well, then you can do something even more powerful in the cloud. Yeah, there's always, you always go,

one day our phones will do everything, but you're forgetting that the other things that you're thinking at what we're place are also going to be advancing. So you're always in that kind of, you're all advancing at the same time. So that brings up my question here. If we do get to a place where our devices, our local environments, whatever they be,

desktop or phone or whatever, are capable enough to do everything we think we want this stuff to do. And sometimes we don't even know about things we want until they get here. But that seems like a danger to the corporate side of it where they've invested billions in data centers that may one day not be needed for this. Does the same rule apply? We're like, well, yes, that may get to the point where we can do on our phone

what the data center used to do for us, and there's no longer a need for that or as much of a need for it, but also those data centers are going to do other things, and so it'll all grow together. Like, what do you think will happen there? Yeah, yeah. I mean, show me, I guess there's two ways to answer that. One is data centers will continually need to be updated as they always have. The racks in the data centers right now, today, forget about large language models, are more advanced than the ones that were in the data centers five years ago, because chips keep getting more powerful and companies want to do more with them and they want to do it cheaper and you can do more for cheaper if you have the more powerful equipment the vacuum tubes keep

getting smaller they do right they're just tiny tiny little vacuum tubes uh in the fallout universe so yeah i think what will continue to happen is the data centers will continue to have the more expensive, more highly effective hardware, and you won't on your phone. You'll have very highly effective hardware that will be able to do a lot, but there will always be able to do something that you can't do on your local device in the network, and companies will take advantage of that to say, hey, you can do all this stuff on your device privately and secure, but if you want to do this amazing other thing, then you'll have to go to the cloud. And I don't think that's a scam or anything. That's just, there's always an advantage to distributed computing versus local computing

because you get more power out of distributed computing until we hit a wall. If we hit Moore's law and suddenly, like, all of the hardware is equally powerful and you can't have more powerful data in the cloud, then I guess that might not happen. But even then, I think scale, like just being able to put hardware at scale and use it in parallel would always be able to do things that you couldn't do on your local device. So let's do a quick version of forecast far off flung prediction. Do you think that actually ever happens? And I don't mean singularity levels. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? No, because we'll all be beings of light. Yeah, not that far out. Okay. But do you think that's possible? We hit a point where just like,

it's all as good as it's going to get? Right, right. Never say never. I, and in fact, I think you do hit that point at some point where you've kind of reached the physical limits of what can be done but every time we think we've reached the physical limits of what can be done we find a new way of doing it right like well sure we've reached a physical limits of silicon but if you do photonics then you can do this other thing so I I wouldn't yeah and then quantum computing is coming along right right exactly that's a great example so I wouldn't bet that we won't come up with something and scale just mathematically I

I doubt that scale will ever be irrelevant. And that really is what's going on with the network is I can have a data center full of thousands of components that I can use and you have a device that is one component. So if they're all the same component, let's say like the hardware gets to the point where it's the exact same hardware in your portable device or your implanted device as it is in the network. work, but the network can still do thousand of them and probably get something out of doing that in parallel that you couldn't do locally. Wild. By the way, can I just tell you how good your camera is this week? What happened there?

Beautiful. Oh, I went back to my old camera. Oh, you look great. Thanks. I'd been using the FaceTime 4K, and I just could not get it to look as good as I wanted to. So I went back to the old Panasonic DSLR. Well, sometimes, yeah, sometimes what you had was the best. But whatever, whatever it is, you just look, you look fantastic, Tom.

You too. Thanks. You would Bobby, you too. Yeah, Bobby, you're looking great. Look at you over there in your awesome camera. Well, Tom, I know there's a lot going on busy wise in your life, but do you have anything in particular you'd like to tell fine folks about? Yeah, a couple of things. On Fridays, we've been doing the hangout live, and I mentioned this last week, Scott Johnson. Do you know? I'm familiar with him. I'm familiar with him. And the guy named Scott Johnson came on. So Scott and I sat down last Friday. and just talked about nerdtacular. So if you missed that and you want to get a little inside scoop of how Scott's brain thinks about it and how all the planning and work that goes into it, check that out. It's in the DTNS Live feed or available at YouTube.com slash Daily Tech News Show.

And this Friday, we're doing a love bomb. We had a listener who said, you know, I am a teacher and I want some help figuring out how to do better podcasting. And so I just put out the Clarion call and said, hey, everybody, if you want to help that Charlie Dude out, come on by. And so this Friday, we've got like 10 podcasters. It's a little crazy. Getting together to help that Charlie Dude and everybody else listening to improve their podcasting. So if that sounds interesting to you, again, check out the Friday. Hang out at DTNSLive's podcast feed or at YouTube.com slash daily tech news show. I feel like you just designed a new reality show where somebody with a common question is kidnapped, put into a theater, take the mask off, and then the room is full of all these experts. There's something there. I don't know what it is. That would be cool.

I want to learn to sing better, and you're kidnapped, and they unmask you, and there's Lady Gaga and Junkuk from BTS and Bruno Mars. Yeah, that'd be amazing. That's amazing. I love it. Well, good luck on your pilot, and I hope it goes well. Thanks. I hope it auto pilots right into production. Get it?

You get it? Hey. That's pretty good. Tom Merritt, everybody. He is ace to tech on all the places. Go find him there. Tom Merritt, have a fantastic week. We'll see you next time.

Bye now. Take care, Tom. All right. Always good having Tom on. Oh, yeah. All right, y'all. A couple more things. All right, y'all.

You know, it's getting serious when you say, all right, yo. I know, right? I get all southern. there's a lot of southern family in town because my mom's or my mother-in-law's post-stroke condition and everybody's trying to help out. She's hit in the phase where

it's a kind of stroke where it's called vascular dementia and the way it works is it's like Alzheimer's in terms of like kind of the effect of it but it's an opposite way of where you know usually what happens is somebody has dementia it's like this slow

you know losing memory losing touch with time and space and reality and whatever kind of reverting or bringing out weird old memories he never thought you had and things like that this is more of a physical thing where her vessel her brain's blood vessels have like a plaque growing on them that weaken the vessels and cause strokes which is where the stroke came from we think she probably had some minis before this anyway long and the short of it is where all everyone's all hands on deck doing what we can but she's starting to go like she wants to get out of it. out of the bed she's in all the time.

She can't really do it because her right side's all paralyzed. But she keeps trying to get out of the bed and people say, mom, you can't get into bed. She goes, I have to. I'm going to be late for school. Stuff like that. And, you know, she hasn't been late for school for 60 plus years or something.

So it's a lot of fun. Why did I bring that up? Oh, just probably because I'm venting. There's a lot going on around here. Sometimes you just got to get it out. It's in your head and you got to get it out. I think that's it. So my poor wife, we basically, you know,

we had the baton handed to us. My mom does her thing, year of rehab and eventual downfall and then her passing. And then the very same day, the stroke happens. The baton is handed from one mother to the other. And then we're holding it up and we're doing this again. So yeah. Yeah. Lots of fun, guys. Lots of fun. The universe doesn't ask if you're ready. No. It doesn't care. Oh, I think that's what I was trying to talk about is the reason I'm saying y'all a lot is because all these Southern family are around. And they all say it constantly. And so I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm back. in the mode. I'm back in the Southern mode. All right, y'all. That's where this started. All right, y'all. Yeah, that's where all this sadness began. Quick note about the Olympics. I wanted to share a story.

Medals are breaking during celebrations for Olympic athletes. The medals they win. What are they doing? So you're not, it says here, don't jump in them. Not sure what that means, but I'll read it. Handle with Care. That's the message from gold medalist Breezy Johnson on the Milan, Cortina, Winter Olympics, after she and other athletes found their medals broke within hours. Olympic organizers are investigating the maximum attention. I guess that means scientifically.

It means like tension, like how well they staying together, right? Is that what that would mean? I guess the maximum attention? I don't know. Maybe it's a typo. Detention, attention. Anyway, after a spade of medals have fallen off their ribbons during celebrations at the opening weeks of the games.

Oh, they're falling off to just the rhythm, or ribbons. Don't jump in them. I was jumping in excitement, and it broke women's downhill skier, a gold medalist Johnson said after her win on Sunday. I'm sure somebody will fix it. Heavy metals, that's all. Yeah, they're heavy metals with shitty ribbons, which is an Italian thing going back for a thousand years.

Just kidding, I don't know. I'm glad to have been having problems with shitty ribbons. Shitty ribbons. Hundreds of years. It says, I'm sure somebody will fix it. It's not crazy broken, but a little broken. I guess the whole metal is its completeness, right? You don't just take the metal.

You count all of it, right? I guess. But look, someone said, let's see, are they manufactured in Italy? Says Claire, I assume so. But those people, they make Ferraris. You know what I mean? Also, they make some really bad, like, economy cars. So maybe that's bad.

Ferraris and metal ribbons are basically made in the same factory. Maybe they messed up and it's noodles. It's like pasta. I bet they didn't make them there. I bet you they did it. It was made somewhere else. Guess where the, let's find out.

Where do you think, you guess and I'm going to find out. I'll see if you're right. Who do you think makes the metals? The metals themselves? Yeah. Like where are they manufactured? Oh, geez.

I bet you the metals themselves, like the actual metal is, might be made in Italy. Okay, so maybe locally. Yeah, because I think I remember when it was in France, the Olympics that were in France, they were making, they were doing something interesting with the medals and making them there. So, but the ribbons, I'm sure, don't they just do what everybody else does? They just go on to some, they just Google some website somewhere and buy some lanyards that are made by. It's like we're going to for June be the same thing.

Yeah, exactly. You're just like, okay, which one's the cheapest? Well, okay, I can give you an answer for, you're actually on the money in terms of the host cities typically have them made in their host nations. So right now, the Instituto Polygryfo Izeka delostato or the IPZS is the Italian state mint. And they are doing it. Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Let's see. For the first time, they were made in two interlocking halves to represent the partnership between the two host cities, Milan and Cortina.

Sustainability. These are the first Olympic metals made entirely from recycled metals, gold, silver, and copper and produced using 100% renewable energy. So that was a big effort this year. And that's the first year they've done that. Oh, that's interesting. Because that's what they were in France, they were trying to make them out of recycled metal. So maybe they just weren't 100% recycled materials in France. They get better overall.

or overtime. In Paris, it was done by Monendé de Paris the Paris mint, basically. Tokyo 2020 was at the Japan Mint. Rio, 2016, Casa de

Maruida de Brazil mint. And in Salt Lake City, Utah, 2002, Winter Olympics, right here in my backyard. Designed by a guy named Scott Given. That's a given. Better than taken.

By a, local jeweler. If Kevin's in the chat, he's going to know this. O.C. Tanner. Yeah, that's right. Now, if you're a local, that's going to make you laugh. Anyone else is going to go, who? But it's this local jeweler thing. They've been here forever, and they make crazy amounts. Like radio commercials and all. Yeah, there's just like a, see, look at Kevin. He's already laughing. It's a cheesy thing to even bring up. O.C. Tanner is a weird. I don't know even know why. It's just like a local legend thing that exists. and of course they use them for those.

I don't know who we'll use for the 2030s. Probably them as well, for all I know. Anyway, oh, I didn't know this. Silver and bronze. Silver medals are usually 92.5% silver and sterling, while bronze metals are typically a mix of copper, zinc, and tin. Oh, man, third bronze is. Third place getting some bullshit.

Or is that just bronze? That's just bronze. Oh, is it? I didn't know that. I mean, it's copper and tin is how you make bronze, but zinc, think can be a stabilizing metal in if you add it and make an alloy. Oh, okay. Help stabilize things.

That keeps them from getting cold, stuff like that, right? Just kidding. Yeah, you lick it and stick it up your nose and it'll help prevent a cold. Yeah. Eldon AFK says, wow, mining taught me this. Is that true? Is there, are there recipes and I never do professions? Yeah, you have to make, in vanilla, you had to make bronze by by mixing. copper and tin.

Yeah. That's actually cool. I didn't know that. This website's acting like it's special that it's, oh, it's typically a mix of copper, zinc, and tin. No, it should always be because that's how you make it. Typically, yeah. Let's see.

It's like something more about that. Typically, you make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich by mixing peanut butter, jelly, and bread. Holy shit. Have you just cracked the long mystery that we've not really had? Typically. Well, if you don't want your ribbons to break, don't jump, you dummies. That's all. Yeah.

That's all. You know, that'll take care of it. Or go back to the Mint de la chocho, whatever it's called, and maybe they'll fix it up for you. I don't know how it goes over there. You know what I'm always blown away by? Like, there's always talk of how much sex is happening in the Olympic Village, all these, like, you know, prime human beings, prime of their life, squaring off with everybody. I always have to have tons of condoms available or whatever, all that stuff. But what always blows me away is the food available to them is often kind of not great.

Like, I mean, some of them have to do big carb loads and things like that. But there's, there's some, like it's hot dogs. And there was, I saw a video of a guy making basically a doggorito. He's rolling hot dogs in a, in a tortilla. And it was just part of the food they had there. And it didn't look great. I thought with the Italy hosting, it'd be like, hey, look at this. buffet of traditional Italian cuisine or whatever.

Yeah, I bet you the runners get carboloaded with lots of pasta. Do you do the Olympics? Do you watch them? Are you into it? I'm not. Stephanie likes to watch them, but, you know, ever since we got rid of cable, it's always, whenever the Olympics come around, it's always like, well, how do we watch them? And then we kind of just run out of steam before we answer the question. Yeah, I get it. I get it. I mean, I'm getting Pacaque for like 99 cents a month so it was easy for me to do it. I hate signing up for new subscription services. I know. I do too. You know what I do. I have a trick. So I don't use any kind of app for this or anything. I just have when I sign up for something, I have a running reminder that

says when cancellations come up every month for whoever it is. And what I do, if it's one that's, you know, like, I don't know, when I was paying, when I first signed up for Pacaque, there was a, it was an entry level promotion. But when the promotion ends, you were going to go back up to the 16, whatever dollars it is. And so every time Peacock, Peacock comes up and it says, you're going to get charged tomorrow. I'll go in there and cancel.

And so far, every time they've said, hey, what if we gave it to you for 99 cents for the next three months, six months, whatever? And I take it every time because it's like, well, why not? That's so dumb cheap. Let's do it. And every time they give it to me, even though they're about to renew it to full price, they always give me the Cheap-o thing.

The only site that doesn't do that is Netflix because they don't need to. Everyone else is dying for attention. They don't need to. They just say, oh, you want to cancel your Netflix subscription? Okay, no problem. We're also going to increase the price of it for next time you want to do it. You're going to pay an extra four bucks or whatever. And you'll do it.

Like, they kind of have that attitude. And they're probably right. Obviously, it's working for them. I still have Netflix, even though I don't want it because I have kids that want it. That want it. They need their K-pop demon hunter on 24-7. Yeah, or whatever old Nickelodeon show from 10 years ago, they're binging constantly.

I mean, Hulu, Hulu did this. When I raged canceled Disney for being Dix, I canceled the whole package, which was that, the sports thing, and then Hulu. And they came back to me. So what if we gave you Hulu for like a dollar? And I said, well, like King of the Hill Futurama and the Simpsons, let's do it. Let's go.

So I pay a dollar to those idiots. Yeah, Bob's burgers. So anytime that ends, I can just go back in. And I have this thing that just reminds me. And it's very easy. I have the link right there. I go in. I say, hey, I'm going to cancel.

They give me a deal and I continue on. Or if they don't give me a deal, I cancel them. It's just there's a discipline to setting that part up. But if you can do that, you should be good. You'll never forget what you have. You'll always be on top of it. There's probably an app that does this, right? I need to do more of that.

You want to, there are budgeting programs. that keep track of your your subscriptions they like discovered them and everything and you want to hear a quick story i know we're getting to the end of the show but a very quick story about um uh Stephanie is going to hate that I'm going to tell the story but I'm going to do it anyway um the the I've got this budgeting app that'll like I said it'll look for recurring um payments that you make and try to identify like subscription payments and everything for you so you know lots of budgeting apps do this now. Sure. Where they're just like finding the subscription service you pay for that you didn't know about.

And they just notify you about it. They say, hey, there's this recurring payment you might not know about. We're going to, we just wanted to make you aware. Well, I got a notification the other day and it said, we noticed a recurring payment to Sonic. Hold on. Sonic, the food, the burger. Sonic, the fast food joint. Oh, shit. How do you subscribe to Sonic? I told Stephanie, I said, Hey, Stephanie, do you have a subscription to Sonic? And she was so, she was like, yeah, I guess I do go to that, like, once a week. What do they do there? Is it a, I can't.

She just, when she gets off work late, she'll, like, swing by Sonic, and she always gets the same thing. And so it's like, you know, the same price it shows up in the, as a, as on the, you know, expenses that the budgeting program is identifying. They were like, oh, do you subscribe to Sonic? Every week you're paying, you know, 985 or whatever it was. That's crazy to me. I didn't know they had a thing like that. Yeah, I just thought it was funny that Stephanie eats so much Sonic that the budget program thinks that we have a subscription to Sonic. I mean, the thing that Brian does with Panera, similar, I guess, it's like his coffee, unlimited coffee things like 14 a month or something.

And that's a subscription. Yeah, Sonic does not have a subscription service. What are they charging for? all I know is they have a $6 All-American Smasher meal. Let me grab that. I like Sonic. I'm a fan.

That's good. They have got great burgers. They might have been known for their hot dogs before, but they're great. Their burgers are really good. Yeah, they're all right. There's one location that I'll never go to here

that seems like it's run by monkeys. I can't tell what's going on in there. Like actual apes. Like actual like, you know, Spider. Sonic is awesome. We have good ones. We have tons of them.

We got like one every five feet, it feels like. But there's one in particular. where I've watched them just be, it's the most debauchorous back kitchen looking nightmare where they dropped a burger on the floor, picked it up, cleaned it up, put it back in the bag,

gave it to the lady, stuff like that. Maybe that's all changed, but I just, I decided then and there. I was like, I'm ever going in there again. Half that. Yeah. But I do like it. I like a trip to Sonic. Might do that today.

Kim and I need it. Yeah, I know, right? This dumb is terrible. You're closer to lunch than me. Yeah. In fact, you're right up there. I know as soon as we get off, I'm grabbing lunch, so I'm going to have to resist the urge for Sonic now. I'll tell you what. In the meantime, everybody, make sure you go to our website, frogpance.com slash TMS, where you will find.

You may as well click on the nerdtacular link while you're there because we want you there. But if you go to the website, I'll go to the shows myself right now. There's TMS right there. Look at this. You get to see all the show info. It tells you all the places to go, the Patreon, the audio RSS, YouTube, Apple, Podcast, Spotify, bleep, blep, blep, all of it. but look down here you got a couple of swag items i don't like bees beanie and the uh i can definitely see why you like it beanie that's got that's on a lady in this photo got lady and a man

lady and a man well more of a boy and a lady but anyway uh those are available now and uh you can check them out uh go over there right now frogpance dot com slash tm s and you'll find links to all of other stuff as well today at four p m mountain time at frogpance dot tv it's just the uh twitch channel just takes you there. You will find myself and Brian Dunaway talking about an old-ass video game for an episode of play retro. So please come on back for that a little bit later today. Bob, you got anything coming up? You'd like to find folks to know about before I thank you for being here. Oh, I mean, just check out all around science. We've got episodes about science coming out every week. This last episode that came out on Monday, Mora went through. The Artemis is launching their moon. mission sometime any any time now really um they're getting ready for that and so mora got curious about and this is how all of our episodes go they're all inspired by just something we were curious about in the past week morrow was curious about what is the the countdown you know you hear t-minus so-and-so and what she was looking into it and she found out that that they're first of all there are two

different countdowns there's an l-minus and a t-minus and they run concurrently and they're for different things and they start like two days ahead of time and there's so much to this countdown and it's very precise and so we we talked a lot about how the countdown works and how it can actually be paused and rewinded I didn't know that all kinds of stuff so if you are interested in that or any kind of science you check out all around science then I'm guessing the David Bowie song is not very accurate or not David Bowie three two one earth below us you know what I mean they don't that's not how you count that down Well, you'll have to listen to that episode of All Around Science to find out if it is indeed accurate.

Or the final countdown. They're just talking about the final countdown. They're not actually doing it. Yeah, just like we were talking about the final count. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys will learn all about this. And also that'll probably be in the karaoke at Nerdtacular, if I had to guess. For sure.

Probably. That's going to do it for us. Now, Brian, a bit, thankfully, left me with a song to play here. Very kind of him to even worry about that today. I was like, go to bed, go to bed, get some rest. but he did this and it was super nice. This is from, let's see, it's a request from Bob Finnegan. Hey, Bob Finnegan calling in.

He says, turn 58 this year, hoping to get to a TMS Vegas at some point in the future. Well, come to Salt Lake next June. That's bigger than that and just as cool, all right? But also there'll be future ones of those two. Anyway, he asked for any deeper cut cover of Kansas Journey or Zeppelin. All right, that matches the age. I like this. You want a deep cut?

You got a deep cut. According to Brian, this is an all-female Led Zeppelin cover band called Zepparrella. Not to be confused with Les Zeppelin. That is another all-female Led Zeppelin cover band. That's not them. Or heart. Don't get confused. It's Zepparella and their cover of, did I put it down here?

I did. It's their cover of Sick Again. This show is part of the Frogpants Network. Yes. Get more at frogpans.com. Thank you.