Triforce! - Elves run this joint | Triforce Mailbag #74

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

Triforce Mailbag 74! We're busting open a varied bag today with emails about AI, English standoffishness, flat earthers and much more! Go to http://BUYRAYCON.com/triforceOPEN to get 20% off The Essential Open Earbuds Support your favourite podcast on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2SMnzk6 Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pickax. And welcome to the Mailbag episode, blah, blah, blah. We are here again to read your emails, and I've got a whole bunch of them here. What would you guys like to start with? Something we've spoken about recently or something perhaps that we haven't spoken about much. Hit me with your rhythm stick. Hit me with whatever you feel. Rhythm stick, you say.

Start with the best thing. Oh, well, now hold on. They're all good. Of course. This is a remix of Wind the Bobbin Up, which is going to serve as our intro song this week. Right. So we'll play this one in three, two, one play. So, have you ever heard of song, Wind the Bobbin?

Oh, I love this. Oh, this is great. God, this is an incredible tune. It's so weird. I love the brain. Wrap your hands together, one, two, three. You like that? I love that.

I thought that was... I thought that was a good little remix. Incredible. I love that. Yeah. Yeah, wow. Why not bobby? I forgot you've done that like that.

Yeah. That's really, really funny. So, all right, speed awareness course. I see anyone that listened to the podcast a lot. I went on a speed awareness course recently because I got busted for speeding. And as usual... Are you now more aware of speed? It does genuinely make you think about it more, and there are a few reasons.

We've had an email here from Ed, who points out was caught doing 33 and a 30. Now, you might think, oh, that's not the biggest crime, but listen to what Ed has to say. Pyrrion recently mentioned he'd been on a speed awareness course, and funnily enough, the day after I listened to that episode, I also took the same course. Found it very informative and actually quite eye-opening at some of the stats covered. I thought I'd share a few worth knowing. Going 31 miles an hour. Hang on a second. is if this is going to be stuff like

if you hit a child you are 27% more likely to be a fatal if you're doing 33 and then if you're doing 32. I think there's going to be like an element of that. Am I prepared? I don't... What are you wanting to do?

I don't have to be on a speed awareness course. Yeah, but you're apparently getting a car and you could ride around on that stupid robot lawnmower that you bought, couldn't you? Yeah, but I'm not, I've never been done for speed. I did get done for running a red light, but I've never been done for speed. You got done for running a red light? Yeah, that happens.

I got done for that. I ran a red light on my bicycle and I got done for it. Jeez. What? Sorry, carry on. Just to be clear, I'm just bracing myself for the most basic fucking stats thing. You don't want me to read this email.

No, do you know what? I'm just preparing. I'm just calling it. Let's see what comes out. Maybe the listener is actually inspired. Sorry, Ed. No, no, no, no, tell me. Well done on the course.

Was it literally what I said it was going to be? I guess we'll never know. It was in the middle of me really, it was a mouth. No, it was not, actually. But it's all right. Had a couple of stats in there, you don't want to hear them. Jazz apples.

Got a few emails about jazz apples, calling me out for saying that they were mid-apples. Jazz apples, you know what? I'm going to the supermarket today. Go back. Go back to the, go back to it. I want to know the stats now. I don't think you do.

It's important. I don't sense genuine love for stats coming out of you here. Me and the list is hanging now that. You can't dangle that. this for Ed. This is not for you. I'm doing this for Ed, who took the time to email in. I'm going to only doing 33 and a 30, but this is now you're going to feel all fucking pleads with yourself, because the first thing is, going 31 miles an hour will have a drastic effect on an emergency break. Your car will still be traveling close to 10 miles an hour

at point of impact. One more do you want? National speed limit. It's different for different vehicles. Traveling 80 miles an hour on a motorway will only net you in the region of six seconds per mile versus a car traveling at 70 miles an hour and the extra fuel usage and blah, blah, it's all right. I'm just trying to help the people, but no, that's fine, Lewis. But I get there quicker. There was some statistics in the email. What I should have said was his email from Ed.

It's boring. It's stats. Next. If I do speed, how much percentage do I get there quicker? That's what I already said that. How much longer can I play a video game for? It's six seconds per mile difference. Wow.

That's all you get. That adds up. Don't listen to Lewis. All right now, do not listen to Lewis. I had a lot of emails about AI, a lot. Right, okay. Of course. Because I made the mistake of saying, if you've had a positive experience with AI, please email in.

A lot of people are basically saying, hey, it makes my job a lot easier for this tedious thing. I'm pretty sure we said that if you have some annoying thing that you have to do where you're sorting through a bunch of data and it just needs reorganizing, that using AI as a tool for that, cool. It's like a sort function. I would never say that using the sort function on Excel is, you know, oh, you're taking a job away from somebody who would have had to do that by hand, of course. Ah, in my job, I use the spinning jenny. It's a great AI tool. Exactly.

It saves me so much time in weaving cotton into string. Exactly. No, exactly. That stuff is not what we're talking about, really. This is an example of the kind of thing that I've been getting. I've got a few of these. This is from, I'm not going to read this guy's name, actually. I'm a certified physician, associate, so PA-C, whatever that is,

practicing family medicine in Michigan. Recently, the software that we used to compile our charts was updated and now has an AI tool baked in that we can use if we choose to. There are others, but the tool I use is an AI stenographer called DAX that helps me with charting. So when, instead of attempting frantically to type a note whilst meeting with a patient, I go into a room, inform the patient I'll be using AI to help the chart, turn on DAX, listen to their story, and after the visit,

It fills in all the patient notes for you to review. Apparently, he does a pretty good job as a stenographer. And the key takeaway here from Ben's email is that he's not spending the 15 minutes that he's allotted to spend with the patient, which is pretty tight in itself, 15 minutes or less, writing things and saying, all right, hold on a sec, let me just spell that. The AI records it all for him and he has 15 more 15 minutes of time that he can just talk to the patient. I think that's fine.

But again, that's not like AI figuring something out for you. That's just a AI tool that can like text, speech to text, basically, isn't it? Like, that's not, yeah. That's not bad. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's still, yeah, I mean, I don't mind stuff like that so much. I think it's kind of, you know, if it helps people like it, in that specific case, like that, that sounds like a good use of like an AI tool, right? To free somebody up to actually be able to to do their job.

Because otherwise your job just becomes, you know, something that's not what you're meant to be doing. You know, like there's more value in him actually talking to a patient and, uh, and getting more information out of them in such a, I mean, the stupidest thing is that there is that, you know, these, these, these time restrictions exist. And I guess they have to to an extent, but they're so strict with them, you know, you go in and you say, you know, you want to talk about a couple of things and you just don't have time and you feel like. somebody is just rushing you out of there, right? Yeah.

You know, so I don't know. It's cool, but it's also kind of like needed because the root of the problem is just so stupid as well. You know what I mean? Like and the root of the problem will never be sorted out because the root of the problem will cost way more money than it will ever cost to just put in some AI to save five minutes here and there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know? There's good AI and there's bad AI. And it's considered that certainly on Steam's rules, the AI is that the bad AI is the art and the audio. Yes. The coding and the backend and the formatting of your documents and Google searches and all the other stuff, right? And on the disclosure form, you know,

we are in the era of your game not putting an AI disclosure form gets you cancelled in the community. There was a thing where Mecha Chameleon apparently used some And for a few days, everyone was saying, oh, we can't play Mechakamillion. It's being, you know, it's getting review bombed now because it's got used AI. It turns out it's all bollocks. But like, you know, the damage had been done or, but, but, and this happens again and again. We are in this strange, like, transitionary.

Now, we want AI to be good. I'd love AI to be good. There's so many good opportunities like, you know, um, uh, certainly we're working with special effect for jingle jam this year. and, you know, people who have debilitating illnesses where they can't, don't have a voice. You know, AI can suddenly give them that. And it's like, wow, actually, this is kind of amazing. And stuff like that.

Like, there is incredibly valuable use cases for this. And yeah, sure, like you go to the doctor and maybe they can put your scans through an AI and might spot a cancer or a tumour. Fantastic. Like, you know, maybe a doctor would have missed that because they're too busy or too overworked or whatever. Like, maybe you can put the symptoms in. It's the same thing where like this guy used an AI to solve a math problem.

And really it wasn't the AI doing it. It was just the AI using all the tools there that they have in that, you know, all of the equations, everything, to do something that humans had not gone around to. The only reason this math problem hadn't been solved was because humans hadn't had a look at it. It wasn't, it's capable of aggregating a whole bunch of stuff. And so you don't miss something or you don't pick up something. It's very much like the Gregory House, the differential diagnosis machine of, you know, put in everything and see what comes out, right? Like maybe there is some niche thing that you might have,

that your physicians have overlooked. And your doctors are humans, right? In some cases, I would imagine that, you know, giving them AI as a tool so that they spend less time with specific patients, more times of other patients, is that good? Probably, like any time it can save time is a good thing, or any time it can jump in. I think the problem is when it's used, because we don't trust it at the moment.

We don't believe it. And it makes up stuff. It does, it suggests the wrong thing. But then again, like, when it comes to medicine, as I've complained about before on these things, you can't be too careful. You know, you want to get checked. You want to watch out. You want to just not, you know, a lot of the time people get sick.

And certainly in my family and my partner's family, you know, they've had, the NHS has not had good communication or missed something. And it's happened so many people I know. And they, they then have a massive problem as a result of it. And, and, you know, when you have systems, maybe are AI systems worse than human systems? Who knows? And at the moment, we're in this strange period where there's, there's this confusion, this backlash, this fear. And a lot of hatred, a lot of vitriol towards AI. Like a lot of people think it's taking my job or it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, ruining things or it's going to do things wrong. Yeah.

In a sense, like, you know, I don't really want AI to take somebody's job. I don't want AI to like ruin somebody's life, but like, I don't mind AI, you know, enhancing somebody's like, uh, experience at their job or whatever. Like like, like the, the, the, the, the one that we just had from, uh, from Flax, the example. I think that, I think that's actually a pretty good. It's a pretty good, pretty good use of it. change inflection point where no one is quite trusting it to do anything and also scared of it. Yeah.

Rightly so. You know, what you've also got, and this has come up in a lot of the... I got about 50 emails about AI, so I didn't... I don't want to read any more. I tried to just pick a couple, but even then, I feel like we've already said pretty much everything that we're going to say about it. As good as these emails are, and thank you for sending them in. I would say that there have been a few takeaways.

First of all, a lot of people are saying, hey, this actually really has saved me a lot a time. A lot of people are saying, because we did ask for positive cases, that as long as you treat it with a little skepticism and you're careful with the results and everything, that generally, I think talking about AI is this big catch-all, is a bit like saying, I don't know, that some tools are bad because they're dangerous or they're, you know, you've got to know what you're doing, like chainsaws, but then also grouping that in with screwdrivers and pliers and things. So if you're, if we think of AI is just one big thing, of course we're going to come out of different angles and say this bit's bad, this bit's good. That's going to be hard to figure it out. But it is essentially,

I think depending on what you're using it for and which AI it is, because everybody seems to be saying that Claude seems to be pretty good. I don't know. That's all the emails have been, the positive ones. A lot of them have mentioned Claude. It's not just that one thing. It's not a homogenous blob called AI, because I've got an email here from a guy who uses it to survey buildings. The AI plots a route for the drone around the building, takes a picture, sifts through them to look for problems, presents them to the surveyor. So it saves hours of you having to do all that yourself. That's the kind of thing we think, all right, fair enough.

Like some of that stuff you think this is just time saving. That just sounds like a computer. We had that before. We had shit AI in the 90s. This is not a generative AI, I think, is that, again, it's like you said, it's the difference in good AI and bad AI, but it's all come along at once. And a lot of it is, anyway, it's a lot, and it's crazy. Our biggest problem as well is that we're using the essentially the shittest version of AI that there is, the search engine one, which I think everyone could agree is wank.

But if you upgrade to like a fancy pro version of these things, suddenly you've unlocked an actually powerful tool that can do shit for you. But the day-to-day interaction that most of us have with AI is some dog shit interaction with fucking Gemini or chat GPT or the Google's AI overview on the search that you just know is from shit. Those stupid fucking ads on ITV during the... Yeah, yeah. Really bad. I guess like, I just don't want... I already hate... We already hate fucking ringing up someone

and we get a stupid answer phone or have to work through our way through menus before we get to a human, right? It's only going to get worse. But it's going to be an AI voice. It's like, hey, I'm Sandy. I'm your AI assistant. Oh my God.

How do I get Sandy? How do I get more Sandy in my life? I love that. Hey, Sips. Hi, Sandy. I notice you're a streamer and YouTuber. I'm a horny, Sandy. I'm a big fan.

Let's cut to the point here, Sandy. Hi, I'm warning. I can help you with that. This is someone's fanfic right here, by the way. Do not send in your Lewis X Sips fanfic, please. This is from an emailer who had a problem. Visit in the UK from America. It was meant to be a seven-day trip,

10 into 24 days, his wife got very, very ill. And to summarize, they basically had to go from place to place. They went to three different hospitals because he kept getting sent home. The situation went pretty badly. This guy had to explain the situation to a bunch of doctors and nurses and everyone else. On the way back home through Heathrow, his wife gets very sick, passes out, and it's a whole big thing. And basically, the summary of the email is people don't seem to be believing that this person

is sick and that they need help. So his question is, are the English slash British typically more skeptical of people in abnormal situations? Or did I just run into people who thought it was making a big deal out of nothing? In other words, this guy's panicking, please get some help, calling ambulance. And the instinct that people seem to have is, what seems to be the problem, sir, rather than just calling an ambulance? I didn't think that that was a uniquely British thing, but thinking about it, I think

it kind of is that we tend not to panic too much. No. And if someone seems to be panicking, our instinct is to be like, okay, calm down, tell me what the problem is, and we'll figure it out. This is exactly it. This is exactly. You're 100% on the nose here. People will react based on how they expect you to behave. If you're not behaving in the way that is urgent and panicked and call an ambulance, get my wife's hospital, she's having it, whatever, you are treated as not urgent and therefore you can wait.

It's the same thing in A&E. You know, there's a triage system. People who are serious will go in first and you will, if you're not serious, you will wait until you collapse, until you pass out, until something serious happens to you that or until you start screaming. Do you know what I mean? There is, there is a, if you can bear it, then that is, you're not important. I'm afraid that other people go first.

And it's the same in all walks of life. We have an expectation that people will behave and act a certain. way. And if they're not acting or behaving that certain way, it's obviously not crucially important. Maybe they're just, and also, I don't know, it's, it's a Hollywood thing too, right? People sort of expect people who are lying to act and look and behave a certain way, shifty, or have a musical chord that makes them suspicious in the background. Do I mean, there's, there's kind of, we build up in our minds how people are, how social situations are supposed to be, but not everyone follows that and it may well be that this writer, this, this listener in, behaves in a slightly

different or unusual way around people in social situations that marks him as odd or off in a way that has caused people to interact differently, especially if it seems to happen multiple times. Do you know what I mean? Interesting. Well, yeah, there you go. I guess, kind of. What do you think, do you think the British people are less given to panic and therefore or sometimes less given to rushing to help? I don't think, I don't think, I think part of the British culture is that people, whilst they can be very sociable,

I think if you're coming from America, I think America's known as a place where people in, like, public social situations are a bit more outgoing and probably helpful as well, you know? In Britain, people are a lot more like, you know, not, I wouldn't say reserved to the point where, I'd say withdrawn.

I'd say they're just not so, you're, you know, outgoing. They're not quick. They're not quick to like start talking to people and stuff. You know, like you can walk down a street and nobody will say hi to or anything, you know, like in some places in North America, it's just not like that at all. Again, there is a very much low fuss, isn't it? You know, we don't want to make a fuss. No.

You're having a heart attack and you say, oh, I'm having a funny turn. I'm feeling a little bit faint, you know. You don't say, I think I'm having a fucking heart. I think I'm having a fucking big one here. Do you know what? I know when I moved to the UK from the States and when we'd come over here on holiday as well before we moved here, my mom told me that like as a kid in New York, New Yorkers, certainly when I was living there, I don't know if it's still true now, was very, very

nice to kids. If you went into a store, the guy behind the counter or the lady behind the counter would be like, oh, what's your name? And they'd talk to you. And it gave you like a lollipop or the little. they'd ruffle your hair or whatever. You know, they chat to you. Yeah.

They were very, they love kids. And you felt like the neighborhood, all the grownups and everything were like really sweet and they chat to you. Some old lady in the store would chat to you like, it was very chatty. I came to the UK and I tried to talk to people and they just wouldn't. No, they just sort of grunt at you and yeah. And I thought I must have done something wrong. And I was, you know, it was little.

So I got upset. My mom was like, no, no, no, there's nothing you did. It's just British people are a bit like that. I remember thinking, wow, it's kind of cold. Yeah. And you talk to the shop worker in the, I think it's different now. But certainly back in the 80s and 90s, I really felt that a lot. It's different in different places.

London is a lot more alien. This was born, man. More alien. I mean, any bigger city, especially in the city center, it's certainly different in smaller villages, I'm sure, and smaller towns. But yeah, like, I think anywhere where there is enough people that people are more strangers to each other. I mean, London is like,

every big city, everybody talks about, oh, this city, that city, they're all like that. There's too many people, we've all got someone to be, shut the fuck up, get the fuck out of my way, I've got to get where I'm going. That's the summary of living in a big city. Big cities, yeah. And that's not exactly conducive to have a lollipop.

Exactly, exactly. But New York was kind of different, I think. Because you're thinking that little kid's going to steal the lollipop. Because five minutes ago, there were five kids. in their stealing lollipops. Right, right. So here's what about gas meters. Old school gas meters, this is a quick one.

Old school gas meters do go backwards. We talked about whether that would work. Do you remember a girl emailed in and she, her dad would reverse the meters? Yeah, he'd like to go in and stuff. Yeah. So they used diaphragms to spin cogs that move the little things. If you reverse them, we went backwards. Because there's no electronic or mechanical device to sort of prevent that.

Modern meters use a lithium battery and measure the gas using ultrasonic waves, which pass through the gas faster if you're using more gas and slower if you're using less. There you go. That's from a British gas engineer. That's cool. It seems so much more complicated than I thought it would be to measure the gas, like that they need to use fucking ultrasonic waves or whatever. Is that really the most efficient way?

I guess so, yeah. I mean, I don't really know anything about that at all. So I'm assuming that that's probably the only way to do it. It's probably a little bit like how fire alarms have a little bit of radioactive isotope in them. And the idea is that they do. They are constantly, yeah. So that's the way they work is they constantly release like alpha particles. So does my yo-yo, little Kate Bush reference there?

Carry on. When there's, when smoke goes into the smoke alarm, it blocks the flow of the radiation. And so that is what triggers the smoke alarm. And it's kind of, it's just done. That's not true. at all. No? What do you?

Your whole description of smoke alarms is incorrect. Is that not true? No, no. I will tell you what it is. There is a tiny,

tiny little elf. I knew this was coming. I knew the elf was going to come out. Of course. He's very, don't put the elves out of work and don't, you dare diminish what they do.

Because you know when you push the button to test the smoke alarm? Yes. You're just poking the tiny elf. Yeah, he's like, that's why it's a physical thing. He goes, who,

who, like that. And if he starts to choke. He panics. He's in a tiny little white box. He's like, I can't be able to his voice so high pitch that it sounds like he's wailing rather than saying, I can't breathe in panicking. So are you saying that this lithium battery thing has put the gas meter elves out of work as well? No, because they drink the electricity. They're not like us. When you have to change the battery, You know when you haven't put a new backtrain and it just starts going occasionally, that's him crying out for help.

Right. Okay. It's this big cry for help. It's really very simple. This one is called Sips is not going senile. Good. Which I think you'll be glad to hear. Yes, I'm very so glad to hear this.

The actress that Sips was talking about while trying to think of the one who looks like Natalie Portman is Kieranightly. And they look exactly the same. They do. And in fact, in the Phantom Menace, Kier and Nyette is, Kier and Niteley. played the double for Natalie Portman. That was like the fate of Natalie Portman, didn't you? Yeah. The decoy.

Yeah. Do you do, do do do do you. Yeah, I remember. I hate those movies. Why? How much do you want to hear about gas power stations? Sure, hit me. I'm interested enough in that.

And this is from a lad called Colin. So this is a proper UK email. This lad is called Colin. He's called Colin. And he works at a gas-fired power station. power station and it's in the Midlands. That's as most, one of the most default English people

you could ever get an email from. Right. The power station, power station I work out as a CCGT combined cycle gas turbine, because he's a brumme so I'm in the accent. It's essentially a giant jet engine bolted to the ground is in a spin generator at

3,000 RPM. The hot exhaust gas is in use to generate steam for a steam turbine. This is also spun to 3,000 RPM which is connected to the generator using a fancy triple S clutch. If you're my fellow nanopinous viewers would like to learn more, simply search up CCGT. And do you want some stats

about gas turbine? Yes, please. He uses 22 compressor veins to squeeze air to 34 bar. Holy shit, that's a lot of elves. Your car tires are just 2 bar. So the mass airflow would fill 37,400 party balloons in one second.

Oh my God. The hottest temperature inside a guy. I would like to see you try to blow up balloons faster than that. I think they're They probably are sucking on it because it's probably being used to power most of them. Okay. Hottish temperature inside the GT is 150 centigrade. This combination gas passes through four power turbine blades and leaves at 630C.

Jesus Christ. It burns 16 kilograms of natural gas every second. 16 kilograms of gas. That sounds like, I mean, how much is you ever worried about running out? Like, is there like a dormancy period for like the gas? Like, does it pull back up again? Where does the gas? gas come from?

Yes. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Where does the gas that's being burned in the Midlands come from? Russia, probably. Oh, my God. You want to be honest.

The shadow fleet. Didn't they sink like all the, the whole Shadow Fleet pretty much? They have that huge pipeline. Yeah, but that doesn't go under the water or anything, does it? Yeah, I think it does. Does it? Do we, do we, I know? Email in.

Let us know, Colin. Where does that? Where does the Russian? Where does the Russian gas come from? Where does the Russian gas come from, though? How does natural gas? Underground. Right. It's just pockets of it underground.

It's just pockets of gas underground, yeah. So what happens when you run out, though? Well, you could ask the same question about coal and oil. Yeah, but like what happens, though? What's what's what do you mean? Well, what happens when it runs out? We have to find another thing to use. And if they don't find any more, then we have to use solar power and renewables.

I mean. But I was told that those things are bad. Well, they're terrible. Yeah, it's, you know, what can I say? Sips asking the real questions. Yeah. I love that. You were asking questions like a four-year-old might ask.

I think that's what we need now. We're answering them like an 80-year-old politician. Yes. Well, we just find more. I think some of these questions need to be asked, though. And it's interesting, too, but also, like, what, you know, what, what, what does happen? Like, you have, you, you should have to think about this stuff. I don't know if you're genuinely asking or if you're just asking to be asked.

He's shrolling. But I get it. Like, it's clever. Thank you. What we do is we find gas on another planet and run a huge pipe. Wibbly, not wibbley pipe. Is it a big wibbley wobbler as well? It is, yeah.

And it's elasticy as well. That's good. When the planet gets a little further away, a little closer, it adjusts. Good. We have the basically, the people who build and own the wibbley pipe do it as cheaply as possible. Yes. And then they take almost all the money themselves, which they then, used to buy yachts and things like this.

I'd love a yacht. It's a great system. It's a great system. Yeah. And then when inevitably the wibbley pipe falls and kills millions of people, they will not, they'll just, nothing will happen to them. Right. Because, you know, that was, it's called capitalism.

I love the sound of that. Before we continue, this message is sponsored by Raycon with Back to School season here. I've been thinking about one thing I really wish I'd had back in school, and it was these amazing Raycon essential open earbuds. This kind of technology was just beyond us back then. But now, if you're headed back to school yourself or your parent getting your kids ready for the new school year, they are a great back to school essential. The open ear design lets you listen to music or podcasts while still hearing traffic announcements or what's going on around you. As you walk to class, commute or make your way around campus. They sound amazing,

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this is from a lad who met an actual flat-Euther in the wild, which is quite exciting. Right. Yeah. So recently helped my cousin with a moving job, and I found out I've been working

with a secret flat-Euther. The person is not my cousin, but a man that frequently helps out. I have a job as a civil engineer, and somehow we ended up on the subject. I've made a quick list of all his points that prove that the Earth is flat. Number one, water is always level.

So if water's always level, How could you have a spherical earth? How could we be so stupid and not notice that? They've got us on that one. Oh my God, that's great. That's great. Have you ever seen a swimming pole? Duh.

Exactly. You can take a picture of a boat, even when it's really far off at sea, according to flat earthers. It's not like you could say, I don't know, go to the beach, set up a camera on a tripod, zoom rain and just watch for yourself. But, you know, someone posted a video online of a boat not disappearing over the horizon. So therefore, Earth is flat. He doesn't believe in gravity, thinks it's just all density. That's why we don't float away.

That's a common one. This one I didn't know about. What density? Things are just pushing us down. It's just density. That's it. What does that mean? They mean that dense things go down and less dense things go up.

Oh, right. Which is why we can't jump. Yeah, like a cork. Operation Fishbowl, the government shot nukes at the giant dome that encapsulates the earth. I've never heard of Operation Fishbowl. Sorry, I know people had to start a fucking. thread on the subreddit because I googled during the podcast, Operation Fishbowl was a series of high-altitude nuclear tests in 1962 carried out by the US. So this was just a nuclear

test. It was one of the things that they did where they high-altitude burst in nuclear weapons, but the flat earthers believe that the whole point of this was to break the... To try and break through... Wouldn't that be a terrible idea? Why would we do that if we were trying to break the bowl? I don't know. And also apparently this guy says that at sniper school, they don't take into account the curvature of the earth at sniper school. Of course. They don't.

Do you know what? I'm so glad that we have people like geniuses like this around because none of us would ever have thought of this stuff. But thank Christ this guy is around and he's on it. Maybe he could get a podcast or something. Yeah. And get other like minded. Yeah.

And I mean, these things are all like big time. Like what can you say to these? Like we're so stupid. Like how did we not see it? Yeah, we are so stupid. Just wake up, cheap, wake up. Fuck. This is an absolute, sorry, go on.

Says here that, okay, so obviously any kind of boat to boat combat has to take into account the curvature of the earth. Because a lot of the time you're firing over the horizon, aren't you? Yes. Yeah, but they just say it's lying. I mean, look, I'm not kidding, Lewis, but they think that all the airlines. So not boat snipers, but. No, I mean, if you're firing, I think if you're firing a sniper, if you're firing probably around 2,000 meters would be the most,

would be expected to shoot out to, and that's like extreme. Right. So the curvature of the earth at 2,000 meters is not going to be a huge factor for you. It's roughly 8 inches per mile squared. I have to weigh down my bullets because they'll just float up in the air. Well, they use extra dense bullets, you see. Oh, I see. Yeah, that's where they go down.

You can't even, it's like small, but you can't even pick it up. It's like so heavy. Yeah, so heavy. Right. Super dense. Okay. This is a cracking subject header for an email. The fear of looking.

Oh, all right? I love this. Oh, hang on a second. Check this out. Go on. Snipers apparently do have to account for, I think, the Coriolis effect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They've got to account for that. Because the earth is rotating, and as the bullet travels through the air, the earth continues to rotate beneath it.

Okay, where are you getting this, this information from? That is true. That is true. That's true. That's true. That's true. Woke.com. That's really cool.

Yeah. Yeah, it is crazy. But, I mean, I'm pretty sure that you went. You have to be able to see your target through the scope, right? So the curvature of the Earth has already accounted for in the terrain. Like if I can see you, I don't need to account for it, but if I'm shooting you when you're 25 miles away at sea or I'm firing a missile, then obviously I will. But I mean, these guys believe that airline pilots are in on it and have to constantly nose

down the plane so they don't shoot off into space. They're idiots. Right? They're idiots. Anyway, this is about fear of looking up. I've never met somebody that believes any of that stuff, but I'd imagine that I imagine that it would be frustrating, like a frustrating conversation to have. I have met a couple of them.

I think these people are not inquisitive. They are just, they're just... Very matter of fact, like, I know it all and I don't even really need to talk about it a lot. Like, it's just... They think that they're in on something and that the rest of us are mugs. Right. It's what it is. It's true.

I've spoken about this at length before, but it's a... It's a bizarre. It is bizarre. Like, imagine if you just... could not visualize how gravity might work and the spin of the earth and all the rest of it. You just can't visualize. You can't understand it. So you want a much simpler things that you can see with your eyeballs explanation.

And if I tell you that look at a lake, water's flat, therefore can't be flat on the earth. So the earth must be flat because water's always flat. That's the simplicity of their thinking. If they cannot see it with their own two eyes and if their tiny brains don't understand it, they still demand an explanation. Well, I think here's the thing that they get, though. It's too complicated. They, they, they, they, they, they, um, or the ordinary person doesn't have the answer to that. Yes, no, exactly.

Some guy at the pub. The ordinary person can't immediately answer that whole water flat thing. Do you mean? Yeah. Or, you know, like, they're just, it's not in their immediate ability to counteract it. It's the same thing that all these conservative debaters, inverted commas, their power. Yeah. Is that they keep embarrassing all these.

these students who have no counter for their gotchas. Right, right, right. But it's often because the average person doesn't actually understand the nuances of these odd arguments, right? And so they don't have an immediate reply prepared when that makes them look stupid. They're not arguing the same way normal people argue or debate or talk, which is we discuss things and we say, I don't know, I have to think about that. I'll look it up.

They come with a pre-prepared, like, bullet point list of things that they know the average person has no answer to. like you said. So they're like coming in armed and the average person goes in thinking, well, I know this is, I'm going to have like an open-minded debate. Yeah. Yeah, I'll just wing it. And I'll know that the truth will come out. But they can't, they can't shut down these points. So it looks like this person is a genius and has won and destroyed that liberal round-eirther. But in fact, they just don't have the answers to these bullet points. But they are out there. There's a guy called, I think his Professor Dave explains is the name of his channel.

And he's got a little off the deep end. He really has done nothing but debate flat earth. for years and I feel kind of bad, but he also, like, climate change, skeptics and all that. He doesn't debate them so much as he does the same thing back to them, where he's got like a literal PowerPoint presentation that he makes and he shuts down all their points and he knows all their talking points ahead of time. Right. So he just plays them at their own game. Played that's funny.

Well, I think, remember, this argument is one way, right? He is, like, we're not going to him to educate. We're not telling him about something and trying to teach. you about something he doesn't know about. Right. He's coming to us with his pre-locked-in madness, and as a result, you're not doing it. You're always fighting uphill.

Anyway, let's carry on. Yeah, no, you're right. Sorry, this is about the fear of looking up. Okay, a struggle with looking up at tall ceilings and tall man-made structures. Right. It took me many years to discover and really understand that I had this fear,

but essentially, I cannot look up at tall ceilings. for example, the interior of a cathedral, or tall structures like high-rose buildings or skyscrapers from street level. When I do, I get what I can only describe as a sensation of falling upwards into the air. I lose my sense of balance despite being fully aware of I am or what's around me. I imagine it's similar to vertigo when looking down from a height, only reversed. It doesn't only affect me if I'm looking up at the sky, objects like planes, mountains, etc. I've only met a single person in 23 years who experienced the same fear and sensation of me.

My phobia doesn't stop me from looking up, but I must be. be seated or holding onto something secure. So I think this actually is vertigo, because what you're describing is the exact same symptoms as people who get vertigo, but reverse. I don't know if that's a phobia so much as like something with your perception, and maybe when you look up, it's also compressing some of the nerves in your neck

that might be having an effect on it as well. I don't know. If anyone has heard of this, let us know. This is odd. It says in just Googling it, it says, Dizziness when looking up is most commonly caused by benign, paradoxismal positional vertigo. There you go.

So it could be a condition that doesn't seem to be life-rending in any way. It's revertergo. You can call it revertergo. You've got revertigo. That's fascinating. I mean, I hate trying to look up at these tall buildings when I'm in London or even in a cathedral. Like, for any length of time, my neck is immediately like fucked. I don't know how Michelangelo painted the scene.

Well, apparently there he painted it on his back. down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think if they're doing a tour of something that has a great ceiling, they should sell gurneys that you can lie down on and someone will push you around on the gurney and describe what you're seeing. That would be so cool, yeah.

A load of beds. You get loads of the tourists who are falling asleep, though. That was my first. It looked like they'd be all dead. I'd love that. That's a great idea for the, to do it at the Vatican or whatever to look at the ceiling. Everyone should get little beds and be pushed around.

I'm on board. That's a great thing. I'm down for a journey, yeah. This is about something that we had a while back about taking pictures of people in Germany. I think this was when I talked about techno Viking. Oh, yes. He was angry.

I'm a professional. Good Morgan Flax clicks heels together. I'm a profession. I added that bit. I'm a professional photographer in Germany. Yes. You cannot take pictures of couldn't talk. You cannot take pictures of a single person

even in the public spaces unless it's strictly for artistic purposes. and also words a photo exhibit, but you don't sell the photos and get no financial gain from them. You can, however, film or photograph people in public and groups of four or more. What's interesting, you can easily have three or four out of focus and this rule still stands. But even if you did everything right, it can still become a lengthy court case. And generally is a big reason for street photography being almost dead in Germany. Cheers for my small penis have in Berlin.

You can't take pictures of people in public. No. God, that's bonkers. I think that's great. I think it's tricky here as well. Certainly you do see a thing where, I don't know whether it's, certainly you do see a thing where you have to blur out

all of the people you haven't had assigned consent form from when you're filming in public. I don't think that's true. I'll tell you what, I'm pretty sure that the rule that we have in this country, and please, please, just two of you email in about this, all right? Get together and figure it out.

Exactly. Don't just Google it. Someone who works in the industry and has genuine knowledge, can you email it in. I don't want to hear from anyone else because I could Google this as well, but I just can't be bothered because I'm good time. I'm pretty sure that if you are in public, you have no expectation of privacy. I was watching a video this morning from old Chris Spargo when he was filming in London. And he was blurring everyone else out. Yeah.

So I don't know. I mean, if you talk to someone on film, I know that they have to sign a release that says, yes, you can use my image and you own the rights to it throughout perpetuity, the universe, et cetera, et cetera. But if you're in a public place, you don't have an expectation of privacy in a public place because it's all very well saying, I don't want you filming me. But what difference is there between me looking at you? What, because it's recorded?

Yeah. That doesn't really make any sense. Because it's recorded in my brain. I can just remember having looked at you. What difference does it make if you're at the Cenotaph or you're at the monument or you're at the Empire State Building or you're at the Grand Canyon? And I take a picture and you're at the Sanitaph. you're in it, how is that worse than me looking at you and you're in my line of sight?

What difference does it make? I'm not using that picture of you. You just happen to be in the background of whatever I'm filming. Yeah, but I think part of it is also using pictures that have people in them for monetary gain, you know, like so like you. But that's a picture of a person. So if I go up and take a picture of you and then make money from that, they find filming a statue and you walk in front of it.

Yes. But you know, like, say like album art or something like that, you know, like you might have like a a picture that's taken like in a city and there might be people in that in that picture, you could potentially, if you're one of the people in that picture and you haven't given your consent, you could like sue them, you know? Yeah, especially imagine. Imagine it's like some sort of, you know, flat earthers or, you know, propaganda video thing. And you're in the background.

You happen to be in the background, yeah. You don't want to be in that. I think there is. And what is commercial use too? because everyone has their social media presence, right? Even like a small influencer, I guess, is considered commercial, right? So even what they think is, are their private pictures, they're posting them on their Instagram, you know, is that now commercial?

It's very vague as well, like what the idea is like of commercialization. If, is it, even if you say, oh, this image or video is specifically used for marketing, what if you've just got a clip, what if you've got an advert in your video on, you know, on YouTube or whatever? Yeah. You know, where's the rule? right? And so we also, I think there's a lot of abuse of it. People taking pictures of other people without their consent, certainly on these like prankers and YouTube channels like, you know, filming reactions and stuff. It's out of control, kind of. Yeah, I mean, that kind of stuff where

you're literally involving someone without their permission, I think is like, that's clearly bang out of order. But if I'm shooting a picture of the House of Parliament and you and your family walk in front, Is it okay for you to stomp over and say, delete that? Because you're in a public place. It depends. Like if it's... Is it Taylor Swift?

Yeah, it depends. I don't really want to be in anything, though. I haven't signed up to be in anything. So I don't really want somebody to take a picture that I'm in and use it for something. You know what I mean? Like, I get it. Yeah. Exactly.

Imagine it was you with your family. You know, you didn't want pictures of you and you're family on someone else's thing. Yeah. But then if we have that rule, you basically can't take any pictures outside. Well, that's what he's saying basically in Germany. Yeah, and that's bonkers.

It's almost stopped, yeah, because... That is bonkers. Anyway, let's talk about smartphones because we talked about this. But this is a good email from Peter. Street photography, like, that is then used for like a commercial purpose is dead. But you're just taking a picture of like your wife and your kids in front of a statue that happens to have people in. Of course you can do that.

You sure? Some German might march over. I demand that you delete that photograph. You could use it for commercial game. Like, no, it's just for my personal use. Prove it. Yeah, I don't think that happens very often. I think it's more so that like, you know,

somebody sees a picture that they're in after it's been commercialized and then says, that's, you can't do that. Like Techno Viking did. Yes. Exactly like he did. Yes. Yeah.

This is from a tiny peepie have a peter. As someone who has struggled with being addicted to my smarter than it should be smartphone, I welcome a shitty Commodore phone where I can just listen to Spotify and not be flooded with brain rot. Even if the phone doesn't work well and is objectively crap,

that's almost a feature. Keen to learn of any more habits you've had to kick we'll never get around to. That's interesting. I suppose by removing features from your phone deliberately making it shitter, it does remove the potential for you to just sit and fucking hammer

that thing for eight hours a day and achieve nothing. Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. I think it's like, it's such a like a time filler, isn't it? Like you're never kind of, you're never, you're never like bored anymore, right? You're never standing there waiting. You know, if you have to stand there and wait for somebody even for five minutes, you're just on your phone, right?

You'll just check your phone to see if what's going on. If anybody's messaged you. And then you just check the news and then you start checking everything else. And it's just like it's the same thing. And then you go in a cycle as well. You're like even though you've seen. seen everything on this thing. You're still checking it over again. I load it up again, 10 minutes later. It's bad. It's automatic. We can't, it's almost like a reflex action. It's hard

to break that. I agree. I'll even be watching a movie. And if I'm on my own, sometimes I'll pause it to check something on my phone. I'm like, what am I doing? Yeah. I can't just turn off. I'll find myself automatically. As soon as I load Chrome, I find that just automatically type in Reddit. Like, that's what I've typed in. I'm like, Why have I typed this in? It's bad, but I mean, obviously, the one of the things I did to break some of it was years ago. I turned off all notifications. I have never a notification on any platform.

I do not want to be notified. That's why it's hard to message you. My silent all the time. I have no, in fact, I don't have any dumb calls or dumb messages come through. Only WhatsApp calls or messages come through. I have to make the other calls or text. And if someone text me, and I noticed a guy had texted me

and I was like, dude, I do not use text you will have to WhatsApp me if you want a reply. Do you mean? Because I just do not open that. And I think that's been healthy for me to have like a distance because I have my phone go on Do Not Disturb at like 11pm. And so then it's like automatically, you know,

even more muted kind of than it was. You know, like I, and I will put it on, well, if I'm, you know, if I'm expecting a call or expecting someone to come around or whatever. I'll have it on loud, whatever, temporarily. But yeah, I don't know how to break that cycle of social media and it's still really bad.

Get a Commodore phone. It'll be so bad. Yeah, you won't be able to do it. And it's actually a good shout. I actually do like that. Get a Commodore phone, yeah. Get a Commodore phone when they come out. Guys, I've got to go.

I'm sorry, I have to go. So I'm going to have to cut this episode short. It's a short, a short but sweet one. Listen, short ones can still be enjoyable. There you go. That's where our tiny beepie have us as well. We've got a whole audience of 20 people. Enjoy yourselves.

Enjoy yourselves. Your gas fired power plants and your concerts. Have a good one, everyone. Enjoy yourself. Thank you. Bye. We've got to love yourself. Goodbye. Love yourself.

Bye. Love yourself. Bye.