Triforce! - Triforce! #170: The Fake History of the Pennywhacker Empire

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

Triforce! Episode 170! We explore casualties of the .com boom, try to understand the world of fake history and laugh at Sips because he's dumb and hasn't read any Isaac Asimov! 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

Pickaxe. Now through April 15th, get 30% off all Sephora collection. Also, for beauty insiders, get 10% off the rest of your purchase on brands like Glow Recipe, Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez, Amika, and more. Don't wait. Shop at Sephora today. Exclusions and terms apply. Discounts not combinable. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning, which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do.

Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly hello welcome thank you for joining us here on the triforce podcast very energetic i mean glad you got energy energetic but also also kind of weasley like that

well thank you for joining us on our journey through our crappy week yeah no it's been that well it's slightly later this morning yeah i was a little late sorry i my wife uh my wife she had a um appointment at the hospital and i was still waiting around for her and she finished up But by the time we got back it's a little bit late so you know But all good All good yeah yeah she's very pregnant and the baby is growing at an exponential rate I gotta say Did he say it's growing at an exponential rate Mr. Brothers? Yeah yeah

That's what they say if there's some sort of alien you're bursting at the seams bitch what's going on there's an alien virus growing at an exponential rate yeah it was pretty good yeah so um no i didn't actually go in because it's like it's still with covid and everything you can go to some stuff and other stuff you can't go it was like with the midwife or the head midwife or whatever so like we were living in a new world now Where you know you can't have these comfort requirements these sort of? Standardized things that you see in a movie where it's like coming and hold my hand It's like no just fucking go it on your own you could do it before

I'm not gonna give you any moral support you do it on your own yeah Yeah, you're not allowed in Supermarkets in pairs and stuff really they sort of they don't tell you off for it but they sort of look at you funny outside yeah one only one family do you guys have that thing where like if you're going to like a smaller shop it's like only one family is allowed in at one time oh when we when we get in there and there's nobody else in there man we we like pitch a tent we're there all day like it's amazing you get the whole story to yourself you're looking at stuff that you're not even interested in just because you have the luxury of not having like that one old lady breathing down your neck or standing in front of you like you're looking at something she's not interested in it the minute you start looking at it all of

a sudden she's just like up in your grill looking at it and stuff like okay come on i get it i get it i mean but now she can't come in at the same time so i i i i just seem to see no more than two customers in the shop is the sign i see on smaller shops like news agents and off licenses and stuff so there's like a little queue of people waiting outside and you always i'm always judging the people in there i'm like why is he spending so long looking at the peanuts you know just pick a bag of peanuts and you can see i think it's because people are so bored with being locked down and stuff that they're interested in stuff they've never been interested in before.

All of a sudden they're like, wow, peanuts are super interesting. What's the ingredients on this one? They have to look like, oh, peanut. Of course, it's just peanuts. I never knew. Like they're just amazed by this. Oh, Shopkeep, these ones say with the shopkeep these ones say with vegetable oil And these ones say with sunflower oil

Could you please explain the nutritional differences and the flavor differences between these two kinds of peanut? Well, I'm glad you asked young man These ones have vegetable oil which comes from vegetables which vegetables and i bang on the door i want milk i want milk but then when i'm in there oh shopkeep shopkeep what's your turn sonny i've explained to this good good lady about vegetable oil i've got all my own questions when i when it's my turn as well to be fair could you tell me what you were telling him about the difference between vegetable oil and sunflower oil. Why, could you explain it to me in the language of love Spanish, please? I'm very bored. I need to spice up my day. Muy bueno.

Hola, amigo. Muchos gracias and mi casa es su casa. Okay. Well, see you later. Bye. I think that would go well. I get the impression I'm rushing, though, because I'm conscious of all those people outside. You know, there's certain things like a bookshop you want to take your time in. A lot of people, like, chill out in a bookshop and they just let themselves relax. They look at, they wander around.

They don't really want to buy anything. You know, when was the last time you went into a bookshop and actually bought a book? Every time I go in. it's different when you have kids lewis you buy lots of books like especially if you don't want your kids to be dumbasses you have to buy them it's true like if i'm going to the bookshop i pretty much always come out with with books either for me or for the kids i feel like every time i i see anyone in a bookshop i don't i see people i see them full of people but no one's actually going to the counter and carrying anything there and i'm always just looking at stuff so i'm like

you think it's a big browsey kind of thing it is like and it's nice so it's a nice experience like they're very cozy and comforting that's why they end up with coffee shops in them and stuff you know it's i think that was because they were going bust i think that was the big thing is like how can we make some yeah how can we make some money because i remember borders do you remember borders i remember borders yeah so there was a borders that opened in bournemouth it was fucking huge it was absolutely massive it went back for miles and i loved it because i mean it was completely miles it came out exactly the wrong time and because all of a sudden people just started buying all their books online and and it all went to shit but because amazon used to just sell books like that was the

thing right amazon was like a bookseller yeah yeah i remember and now it's everything but so borders was there and it went back all like absolutely miles and they would have in in the print section where they did all the newspapers and magazines they would have all like american magazines and newspapers like you could buy the onion as a paper like it was but the onion started off as an actual newspaper before it became a website and everything it was it was a newspaper um and it was like a broadsheet newspaper and it had all adverts for local businesses where the onion was printed i think it was a college town i can't which one it might have been san francisco somewhere i apologize onion fans out there but i used to buy it all the time i'd go in there and get it and it was literally been San Francisco somewhere. I apologize, Onion fans out there. But I used to buy it all the time. I'd go in there and get it.

And it was literally the Onion as a newspaper. And that was it. Because then they did all the, I mean, I've got loads of, you see the collections of Onion articles. Those used to be in print. Like that's how you'd buy it. So I'd buy that and there'd be like American magazines about video games and sport and stuff like that

that you just couldn't get. And then all that whole magazine newspaper thing just disappeared, which is a shame because it was nice to browse but i didn't buy much to be fair as you say but the browsing was quite fun and they'd have all weirdo books that you didn't get published over here like if you ever go to america go to the bookshop there'll be whole sort of sections of the library you just don't get over here i'm sure we've got the same thing books loads of books about about you about American politics and sport and people that you've never heard of.

And they'd have those at Borders. I guess they just didn't sell. It was a bad business model. But I do kind of miss it. What was the other fucking... There was like a website back in the dot-com boom. Was it pets.com when they were selling pet supplies? Two cows.

I don't know. Lycos. What the fuck is that? Yahoo. Lycos. There was like basically though, Amazon was a just a bookseller but it's strange how it's turned into this thing yeah i wonder if one of the other like early internet brands could have pivoted you know pets.com could have pivoted from pet food into you know into the other market that amazon ended up doing i mean amazon had a

general grocer it is a good name like google like um regardless of what the search engines are like i'm pretty sure the google search engine was meant to be the best one back in the day when it was like alta vista and stuff like that was the you know there were there were competing search engines oh my god but google had a good name and good branding and it was a good engine and that and i guess i don't know if they promoted it a lot but um it was like just a really smart thing amazon i mean pets.com sounds shit like it just sounds shit it's a bad name amazon sounds awesome amazon sounds like endless possibility i don't know though i think i think it took a little while for it to stick though i think probably at first

people are like what is that you know like um it's like anything right yeah like now you look back and you're like oh yeah fuck you know obviously but like at the time i'm not sure if it was i think it is still a better word than than pets.com oh sure and there was no do you remember boo no there's a book about how it all went to shit for them they had things like their security guards they hired gherkas as their security guards, for no reason other than they had gherkas as their security guards. Just showing off.

The offices were meant to be bonkers. There's a book called Fucked Companies, which used to be a website. It's a really good book. Literally what it's called. Yeah, Fucked Companies. And it's a list of all these companies from that dot-com era,

how they wasted money, how much venture capital got pumped into these firms. They would hire like 200 people. They have these amazing offices in Manhattan somewhere and everything. And then they just piss all this money up the wall. All these companies in that bubble, that dot-com bubble, were all desperate to be the next big thing. And only a few were. Google, Amazon. I mean, MySpace came and went.

Facebook was after all this dot-com bubble. But like a lot of those, a lot of those were built to sell, right? And I think that's why they pumped in a lot of like eccentricities and stuff like that and got like, you know, nice looking offices and everything.

Because it's just, it was all just to sort of like create this image, right? Yeah yeah this is what you're buying you're buying something so cool like you know you're old you don't understand what like you know younger people want and are into and this is what it is and you know pay billions for this or whatever that that was kind of the start of a lot of that it's exactly like you said about pets.com about why companies like that failed. It's because, I mean, there were companies that had this idea that you would do your

food shopping online and people just weren't ready. I honestly think a lot of these firms were ahead of their time in a way. Obviously, their execution was terrible a lot of the time. I like Pets.com just sold pet stuff. Why would you limit your business to just pet stuff? Why wouldn't you say you can buy all your groceries on this website? But they were like we're gonna go after the pets market because you've got to focus on what you know you've got to focus on that niche right but it's not like they knew much about pet stuff they were build a website i mean you could pick anything they were called pets.com

you'd assume that they knew at least something about pets then you had to spell the word pets yeah and i guess that's it they got a a really good domain for what they're doing, honestly. Almost as good as porn.com, which is a website. Yeah, which is... Very clever, whoever got that one first. And sex.com, I think. Porno.com. Are there single character web URLs?

Like W.com. P.com. P.com. I wonder if there are. Well, let's have a look. Let's have a look and see. What happens if they go... I wonder if...

I don't know if we're going to go P.com. I'm going to go A.com. What about poo.com? It's available to buy. That's have a look. Let's have a look and see what happens if they go to A.com. I'm going to go A.com. What about poo.com? It's available to buy. That's weird. It's not there. What about B.com? W-W-Hold on.

No, these don't exist. Okay. What about poop.com? Poop.com. Well, that definitely will exist, right? It's thinking. It's taking a very long time. I don't want to let this load up.

It's found something. Oh, the I don't want to let this load up. It's found something. The site can't be reached. Check if there is a typo in poop.com. I've definitely got it right. Let's try www.poop.com. Apparently there is an x.com owned by Elon Musk. There's only

a few single letter domains. It is there. Do you know what it is? It's a white sheet with the word X on the top left. That's it. It's the whole website. It's just the letter X in the top left of the screen. Yeah. Ominous.

Pooh.com didn't want to load. Pooh.com just doesn't exist, I guess. I mean, Zombo.com is the only website you ever need, really. Well, if you're... Yeah, sure. Welcome to Zombo.com. Talking about fronts for a company, I'm sure you've heard this story before

because it's sort of been doing the rounds on Reddit reddit this week but there was a great story about accuracy international who makes sniper rifles and stuff and um they were like originally this sort of olympic shooting group of guys who were sort of british olympic gold medalists right right and so they the one of one or two of them i think had were basically making custom guns because i think i don't know if it works on that's how it works at the Olympics, but I think you bring your own gun. Yeah, you probably... I mean, with anything at that level,

there's always going to be some degree of like, I have to have these very certain specifications or else I won't be able to compete or whatever. Sometimes they have custom shoes and custom bathing suits and shit like that. Right, for shooting. That'd be weird, wouldn't weird well there's what's that event where you have to run and go swimming and then do some shooting oh right yes the um there's one of them like the heptathlon yeah or something like that it's like it's just a bit of everything you just gotta love

that kind of good at like like just about everything you gotta do some running you just you just see a guy with a backpack running along you gotta shoot some stuff you gotta do some archery on the way and some bobsledding you have to write a poem all sorts of stuff you're pressing flowers a lot of stuff to do what if you went to the wrong one you went to a regular like triathlon you had a rifle they were all looking at you think what the fuck is this guy doing gets to the second stage and just starts blasting everyone else just turns up with a gat what are you talking about this isn't the hexagon this is the hector plexa decadode decahedron i can tell you're familiar with the event sir yeah uh so the story goes that like in the 80s there was this um little group of guys and they were working out their garage making this specific guy's Olympic rifle.

And they'd come up with this design and they wanted to try it against the British sniper rifle. Because there were some trials that happened with the military every so often where they, you know, they apply for people to say, bring your rifles along. We'll choose which one's best and we'll try them all out. And so they entered this trial not expecting to win, but expecting just to see what would happen. And they obviously completely won the trial. So the British military wanted, you know, 1,000, I think 1,100 rifles off of them.

And they were just three guys in a garage. So they said, OK, of course. They said, OK. Of course they did, yeah. Because that's what they do. And they rented out this um but then the british government said oh we're gonna send around a couple of our you know requisition lieutenants just to give you an inspection because it's standard procedure and they're like okay so

they rented out like a neighboring workshop in like an industrial estate and put some workbenches on out and puts their rifle parts on the table anyway these these army lieutenants come over and um you know they show them around and they're quite quick they're like this is where this happens this is where this happens it's all good let's go for lunch so they went for lunch and um over lunch the tenants were like oh yeah this is just procedure really we just wanted to make sure you weren't you know three guys in a garage and they were like yeah and so yeah that's that's kind of like one of these things where it is a business often is like that right it starts with a lie yeah i think the story carries on that like they the guy made the first hundred in his um garage and they were really good rifles really really well accepted and

then they sort of scaled up the production with this other company who sort of cut a lot of corners on material costs and one of the things they cut corners is they used the sort of cheaper material for the firing pin, which feels like it sounds like an important part of the rifle. And anyway, what it would do is it would break, and quite spectacularly so, in that it would do a breach explosion. Oh, God, yeah. Which is where the bullet just explodes in the breach and blows it out. Man, I did one of those on the toilet the other day.

It was really bad. And it injured a couple of servicemen and then the same garage guy uh came back in and fixed it and it was still in service and some of these rifles i think back in the day but this was something about the 80s they were still using a modified world war ii right so what they would do is they would yeah they would basically take regular rifles that were used in combat and test them in ranges until they found the most accurate rifles. Because some rifles are more accurate than others just by build quality. So they would take the most accurate ones they could find

and then they would stick a sniper rifle scope on them. And that was the sniper rifle for a long time. But yeah, this was more of a sort of, this has sort of evolved. But even now, I think this is like, this rifle is still like the core design of it still used across the world I think it's the the AWP because they've made the Arctic Warfare. That's where in the inspiration Fucking bullshit. Okay. I don't know if you've ever been shot By whether it's like a one shot though, like you get hit in the foot with that thing and you're dead Yeah, that's not true. You just get legged.

It wasn't in CS 1.6. No, you just get legged. A lot of the time you could just get legged. If you jump at the right time, it means you shot him in the leg with the AWP. So you're aiming for the head or body. It doesn't matter with the AWP. Body shot is enough.

Even with full armor and Kevlar and a helmet, you'll still die. But if you just shoot him in the leg, you can the orc shot on like just a few hp right really yeah yeah in cs go i just want to just for anybody wondering we're not talking about real fucking life or i don't want to know this is a good this is a good anecdote all right to add to mine i think you've you've brought you've brought us back around to gaming. Thank you. No problem. Always looking for an angle. I constantly hear these little weird stories that seem apocryphal. There was the one which...

I was talking to Ben about this, and he said he watched the CGP Grey video from a couple of years back where they were talking about how New Jersey and New York had an argument over who owns Staten Island. Yeah, I saw that as well. So they had a racing competition about trying to go around it in a boat. And when you look into the story, of course, it's completely apocryphal.

Oh, yeah. There's no, it's complete bull. It's just such a good story, though, that it sticks around. And I think you notice this throughout history, too, in terms of things. There's this guy called Herodotus. You know him? Yeah, the historian, right? A Greek historian from like fifth century B.C.

So, you know, talking two and a half thousand years ago here. And some people, you know, call him the father of history. But other people call him the father of lies. Because he kind of is this character who probably made a lot of these stories like heard the histories heard different stories from oral tradition and then yeah shows the ones that sounded the best or or kind of exaggerate he's gonna make a living i mean anything from that long ago is gonna be there's gonna be an element of telephone to it right like somebody tells the story some of it becomes myth some of it becomes legend or some of it becomes legend or whatever.

Oftentimes it's exaggerated or embellished to make it sound better or more interesting or whatever. People had nothing to do back then. They just sat around campfires. They died of old age when they were 12 years old and they told stories. There was nothing else to do. So of course there was going to be some lies. They were doing a lot of good stuff. They were trying to one up each other all the time. They were very enlightening the greeks did i tell you

the one about jason and the argonauts um you know i just made this up uh just now because uh you know tony told a really cool story that i'm trying to one up or whatever but you know it people are people right it doesn't matter the the day and age it's just nowadays there's more stuff documented it's true we have archives of things and we have proof that something has happened or not. I wonder if more people nowadays are being forgotten than ever before. Okay, by which I mean like the person who – you could be so anonymous on the internet, right? There might be like an amazing Reddit post and then the creator of it deletes his account. So you never know who that was, right?

It's like, I saw this thing on Reddit this week of a guy called, apparently a baseball player with one of the worst pitching ratings of all time in the league, but they don't even know what his name is. His name is something Lewis, right? Brindley Connor Lewis. It wasn't... it wasn't it wasn't um so so i think i think this is a story from like 1905 or something where he was brought in as a sort of trial pitcher did a couple of innings or whatever they whatever it is in baseball i don't know the

throws a couple of you were right round right in. And they sort of, it was so terrible. And I think they wrote in the paper that he was the most dreadful, useless person or whatever. And they put him out to the field and then he was never, never appeared again. But of course, he's lost the time. Like no one knows who he was, anything about him other than his surname. Right. You know, he went, and so like, you know, even like, you know, in recent history, we can easily forget people. I'm just saying like or lose people, you know, and there's certainly it certainly feels like that's a long enough ago, 100 years, 120 years that no one is alive now to even recall that person with any degree of kind of accuracy. Yeah, you're right.

That guy, that guy's probably smiling in his grave as well because he's like oh yeah great i sucked really bad and nobody remembers you know what i mean like that that's i mean that's how i hope i go out that is true we do forget things and and you know things are lost like the name of that picture for example but we didn't even know how many people there were 2 000 years ago there are estimates but nobody is conclusively, this is the correct answer. Like most, 99.9% of people aren't even written down anywhere. Like the whole of humanity was just lost. You lived and you died

and there was no record of it at all. You left nothing. That's even scarier, I think. Like at least now there is detail. I mean, if you, in a thousand years time, presuming we don't destroy ourselves and everything, there will be records, permanent records, that we existed. And our names, where we were born, and when we died, it was all there on the register,

who our children were. That is there. That data is preserved, whereas it just wasn't. I mean, when they talk about ancient battles, they always refer to the number of men fighting on each side. And there's the actual accounts from the time and then what they probably were and it's normally like you have to divide it by 10 because they normally like 200 000 archers fired on the 800 000 spearmen and a million men were killed and you're thinking

that doesn't make sense because no there's probably like maybe uh like you know like a van halen concert versus 12 yeah it was it was nuts like well you say, like a Van Halen concert. 10 versus 12. Yeah, it was nuts. Well, you say that, but there were historians throughout history. There was this guy called Thucydides. Was there, though? Do you have proof? Do you have any of his hair clippings or nail clippings or anything? Can we do a DNA on him?

No? Okay, well. Isn't it Plato or Aristotle? One of them, they say, wasn't a real guy. He was like a bunch of different people, like Shakespeare. People aren't even sure if Shakespeare was a real dude like kaiser soze as well i mean same thing you're right well to some extent yeah some of shakespeare's plays that aren't necessarily guaranteed to be from him and the same and that's relatively recent you're right but the same thing

with the books books of the bible you know the authors you know vary it varies on how long after jesus lived that they actually even wrote those books allegedly lewis allegedly lived well i don't You know, the authors, you know, it varies on how long after Jesus lived that they actually even wrote those books. Allegedly lived, Lewis. Allegedly lived. Well, I don't know. Some things there's little evidence for. Some things there's a lot. Like Thucydides was in, I don't know if I'm saying his name right, but I only read about him on Wikipedia.

I haven't been educated. So here's the problem. There's a guy called Josephus. He was a historian, supposedly contemporary to Jesus. He was a Roman historian. And supposedly, you can look all this up, he said there's a guy called Jesus and a bunch of Christians follow him and believe in him. And this is happening over in Jerusalem or whatever. And the problem is that that quote has been modified.

So the actual quote is, there are some people who believe that there's a guy called this. Not there is a guy called this. So history has changed. It's not just is it inaccurate at the time it's written, because you've got to judge one of the motives of the person writing it. You've also then got to say, this then gets translated through all these different scribes over time, and some of them are biased and change things i mean the bible has happened since antiquity though

so so since i mean egypt right um there's this uh people were finding sort of lists of kings on walls of tombs and they would notice when they were excavating these tombs that some of them were wrong because they didn't because they were they had an earlier version or a different version. And it's like any ancient Egypt, you know, we're talking a long time BC here. They were actually editing their own history to remove people they didn't like or didn't favor. They were deleting kings. They were actually changing their own history back then.

And, you know, I think it is a part i mean it's a it's the same thing with this staten island thing that when you start looking back on it what you have is the reason that we have this anecdote now is because we saw it on reddit but before reddit there was some newspaper thing from 1950 and a documentary from 1925 and a newspaper report that that was based on from 1885 and then it keeps going back and it loses something every step of the way and then when you look back at the original documents you're like wow this is completely different and sometimes those documents don't exist at all sometimes they're actually really rich and really detailed and have a lot of really interesting stuff to say because some people did keep very good records and did there are historians throughout history who who were sort of scientific almost in their efforts to to preserve what they saw as important knowledge for

the future um and so we do have some really great bits of real history if if you if you if you if you're looking if you look in the right place much but at the same time we are surrounded by bullshit every day you know that anecdote I told about that rifle thing, that might be bollocks. I just saw a Reddit thing and have parroted it badly. You know, I could have made mistakes. Yeah, but it's an interesting story. It's an interesting listen.

Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, it doesn't, you know what I mean? I don't know if it matters really in some cases. What we took away from it is fake it till you make it. I think it does matter it i think it does matter i mean we are doomed to repeat the failures of the past that's humanity right but yeah if we if our history isn't accurate it's like not knowing if you didn't know your own life history as as a species us not knowing where we came from and how we got here i i think first of all it's

very interesting to know all this stuff that's The main point of history is it's just really interesting. I mean, there's no scientific benefit to knowing how the Egyptians carved hieroglyphs or really being able to read them other than, wow, isn't this fascinating? I mean, there's no material difference to people's lives when you go to look at a piece of ancient, some ancient relic that's like 5,000 years old

that dug out of the ground. It's worth checking they don't mention aliens, it's worth checking checking you know i mean there's no material benefit but it is important to us i think to know because we all know that we're going to die so it's interesting to go and see that there were people before us and the assumption is there will be people after us it's all about this continuity and saying we're all still here there have been people here and there will be people here don't worry because i think most people i definitely suffer from existential dread on behalf of the human race not like some kind of martyr but i just think wouldn't it be awful if this all stopped like if we all just died and went away how tragic would that be

we're so rare we're like a jewel in this galaxy, this amazing, intelligent life that can explore space and do all these wonderful things and all these awful things. It would be tragic. So knowing that there's continuity is important. I think that you I think that I think that we are in this world of since since sort of thermonuclear weapons suggested of actually wiping out life. We do live in an age where for the very first time we could completely be wiped out and that is pretty terrifying because throughout history you know humanity's kind of been going like cockroaches throughout everything plagues and it was plagues and disasters and you know it was but somewhere humanity would be quietly progressing towards the next um you know advance whether it was in china or south america or somewhere you know where they you know they were we're constantly

improving and it's obviously it's been an exponential rate of increase lately uh but but yeah it is it's terrifying that we now have these fears that an asteroid could strike and wipe everyone out, or that we could kill ourselves with climate change, or that a solar flare will knock everything out and descend into anarchy. I mean, you've only got to look at the way our media has changed. End of the world scenarios are very common these days in movies and stories and stuff like that. There's a lot of focus for that reason. And then again, back in the day, I think God was going to destroy the world.

It was going to be the end of days. People were thinking throughout history that the end of days is imminent and it sort of ticked on. But they also all thought they'd go to heaven. They were like, yeah, God will come down. He's going to rain hellfire. But I'm one of the good guys. You also need to understand that a large majority do still think that.

Yeah, yeah. It's some crazy amount still believe in this kind of fairy tale stuff. It's pretty surprising. I think, I know I'm reading this book called Sapiens at the moment, which is really, really good. It's all about the history of mankind and where we came from and stuff like that. It asks them really... It's a great book. Yeah, Yuval Noah Harari yeah i've read it it's a wonderful wonderful book everyone it's like if you go to

any meeting with like trendy people and they'll all be like oh have you read sapiens oh yeah it's one of those it's one of these things it's a very good book i mean it does ask some interesting questions um so sometimes like a lot of the stuff he says actually makes you question like uh your opinion about about broad things like at the chapter one at the moment is like empires and he said that throughout history people one way or another have lived under some kind of empire whether you even realize it or not the influences of those empires stay with us yeah they stick around so for example when the Roman Empire fell and everyone was like,

you know, yay, we're free or whatever. They still spoke the same languages and they had all these vestiges of that empire. So the influence of it is so vast and it permeates so much of your society that it's impossible to really say that the empire didn't have a lasting effect.

There is no freedom from it. Once you are in it, you're in it for good. And even if the empire falls over you are still going to live that same life because your society has changed according to whatever the the dominant empire was at that time there's stages of it too though right like sometimes these these empires start uh very small as like a a revolution against a like an existing structure or whatever and there's a lot of

popular support for it. And it means something different than it eventually becomes, you know, we remember an empire in its, in its final days and that's what it's remembered for. But, um, in some cases you, you, you remember a fallen empire for some of the good things that it did or introduced to the world or whatever. And think now especially nowadays in modern times we have that ability to to to look at it from all angles rather than maybe you know centuries ago where we might not have looked at it that way we might have just think thought oh it's old so it's bad right you know what we're doing now is the way you know like it's it just i think it just it's just like a natural evolution of uh thoughts and what you know what people are willing to do put up with like uh it it's it is interesting

stuff for sure i mean his main thing was that when we when we talk about uh we need to you know they're destroying this this way of life and everything what you're actually doing is replacing one empire with another so yeah there is no original like that's that's his point is you have to go back so far to get to what actually was the original culture of a place that all you're doing when an empire comes in and replaces what feels like the way of life there it's actually just you're replacing another empire which whose effect was there and you'd have to replace that one and go back and go back and go back through history to the point where essentially you're saying well anything that's happened since like 3000 bc was when there might have been some original settlements and and sort of

countries and stuff like that everything since then is just empires stacking on top of each other throughout history i think that i always thought that was interesting because we always think of whatever happened before now as being the original that That's the way things used to be. So the example he gives is India. And India, prior to Britain yoinking it and taking it over and being dickheads. Prior to that, the people were like, oh, they've taken our way of life and our empire. But they'd already been conquered by a previous empire, which was like whatever the empire was in India. So that wasn't the original way of life.

And actually, you'd have to go back past that one and that one. And I thought, wow, I never really thought of it that way like we come to accept yeah yeah i think the original empire that took it over was actually uh the pennywhacker empire and uh went on to do a complete map paint total world domination uh with yes oh yeah yeah ck2 you covered the entire that was a real epic achievement. I saw the pictures, I couldn't believe it. Sure was. Yeah, I couldn't believe it either.

Man, it was frustrating though. It was a frustrating task, but I did get there in the end. You know, it does amaze me- The game breaks. It's just not- the game was not designed for you to do that, like clearly. Right, but what amazes me is I didn't think you were designed to do that. Like you personally, Sips, I didn't think that you would be able to put up with that bullshit because like me you're very sort of ah fuck this and i'm yeah no i there was many times where i was like yeah fuck this i don't

want to do it anymore but you get so far down a road where you're like man i just have to do it you know yeah i don't want to let down my fans i don't want to you know i don't want to let down let down myself mom uh like you know my my god and everything like i just owed it to everybody at that point just to see it through and i i got there have you played stone shard yet uh yeah you know is that that one that looks really nice it's like um like an rpg or is that that horribly hard it's really oh my god so i played it yesterday and the tutorial level is hard enough. Like, getting out of the tutorial is like, fuck me, this is hard. There's a boss fight at the end of the tutorial,

and I had to do it like 10 times, and I finally did it. It was very tough. It is a hard game. I had some gripes with it at the time. I didn't like it that much from what I remember, but I can't remember what the gripes were. I got into it. I really liked it, but I had to quit playing

because at a certain point there was a ghost enemy who had 99 physical evade and i couldn't escape yeah and i didn't have anything that didn't because i was playing the warrior right so i had nothing that did anything other than physical damage and so i literally couldn't beat him so i was like what the fuck yeah so that's when i rage quit that game but it is an excellent game and hopefully maybe so i rage i rage quit about 10 minutes after the tutorial so i did the tutorial okay i remember rage quitting that game as well it was for the simple reason there's no way to fucking save like the difficulty i don't mind but there is the only way to save is you have to go all the way back to town and sleep so the issue with the game is not that it's hard i don't mind that it's hard

that's fine like if it's gonna hard, at least I'll give it. I mean, Tarkov is a very hard game. But when I die in Tarkov, I don't lose everything and go back an hour. No. It's madness. Yeah, yeah. It's madness to design a game this way. And I was talking about it because I played it yesterday on stream.

People have this idea that being able to save the game is like some recent cod like coddling of the gaming community and oh nowadays you can just save any time in my day we you know that was now they designed games they couldn't save the game we had a horrible experience where we had to do that we just can't save the game that's why it's there i think the thing with the with with designing a game though is that there it's a it's a i think the thing with the with with designing a game though is that there it's a it's a balancing act right like if there's something really hard in the game uh it has to be balanced out with with a payoff for it being hard right but in some cases i find that a game is just hard for the sake of being hard it's like it's like a half-baked mechanic or exactly

idea and it doesn't make sense like i don't know why i don't know who sat in a room and decided it was a good idea when you're trying to to make something engaging and ultimately fun for somebody to come back and do over and over again um just to put somebody off like that especially at such an early stage in the game, just seems like bad design. I agree. There's no other way to explain it. And if a game is designed badly, it's never going to go anywhere. And the problem is, now as well, I find, especially like in Twitch chat and stuff,

I don't know if people defend bad design just to spite you or if they actually think that it's worth defending. But you know what i mean it's not it's not meant to be that way like these these games are just meant to be better than a lot of them are you know what i mean but they're just poorly designed balancing act right behind between hard and you know think of some of the most popular games dark souls is a prime example very hard game very very very very hard and but very satisfying once you know what you're doing and actually you get better quite quick like pitching that difficulty is very tricky because

you don't want to just end up with a button masher or something that doesn't make you pay attention to what buttons you're pressing or something where you're not learning and suddenly you get to a boss and you can't beat him because everything else has been easy and you haven't had to learn or you haven't had to take anything in it i guess it's just very tricky and i think they do end up skewing to the side of a very difficult to begin with like i remember i played um remnant from the ashes i died on the first boss like 20 times and then didn't die again in the entire game right um it was very strange to play that as an experience because it kind of felt like the difficulty was out of whack yeah um so so here's the thing when i was thinking about this a lot of the games that i have an issue with when it comes to difficulty like dark souls is very very hard everybody knows

that but the point is you you might have to restart a bit of a level or you might have to you know but you dip in and out you don't lose everything like it's not like you go back to zero like you used to like it used to be like battle turns or whatever it's you run out of lives that's it you've got to start the whole game again from scratch they figured out checkpoints and saves and stuff like that yeah it's just the concept of lives and continues from right nes days right like right that's what it was that's what you you had to work with you knew like if you're playing a game like double dragon 2 or whatever you knew that there were certain parts that were tough that you just had

to really sort of like hunker down and get through them as best you could to make sure that you had a better chance at beating the game like after them or whatever right right like that stupid jumping puzzle with the spikes that was just a one hit and it would it was just designed to eat quarters so here's what i was thinking with something like Battle Brothers, which is a very hard game. Like, I play that game on stream quite a bit. It is a brutally hard game. Sometimes the round will start, and their guy on the opposition, like I said, it's a hex-based, turn-based fight-em-up, basically.

You have a squad of mercs, you fight enemies, you improve your gear, you improve your skills, you fight quests and stuff like that around the map. It's a fun game, but it's incredibly hard. I have to play it on easiest difficulty most of the time. Otherwise, the combat is just punishing. And the amount of time it takes... To the point where you're doing fine,

you go into one fight, and then you've lost everything. And it's like, oh, what? You can literally have turn one with no actions on your part. Literally nothing that you can do. The round starts. They have a crossbowman with better initiative than you. And he dones and kills your best lad with no input from you. You're literally hands off the keyboard and you can lose something that's like, well, that's literally the game.

Because that guy is the most important guy that we have. And it sucks because there's no arcing progression either. Like you've already invested everything in getting to that point right and then you lose it in an instant to something that either you're not aware of or that you weren't aware of enough of to be prepared for it's not recoverable it's not like you've lost a guy and you're like fuck it he's dead i could recruit another yeah you know recruiting another guy of that quality or that's a similar or even an inferior replacement costs you all the resources that

you've that you've got from the next 10 battles and it represents probably gonna be it represents i know it does and so it's it's not very well designed in many cases that game so here's what i think with regards to stone shard and games like that is you've got to think who's making these games these are not made by committee or a large group of people quite a few of these games are made i mean not putting dark souls and stuff like that aside let's talk about the smaller indie games that are brutally hard the problem is if there's a one or two person team they might just be really really good at games and to them it's like oh it's easy you just it's not you just do this and you do that these people are specialized these you've got a guy who's doing the art he's doing the game

design he's doing the fucking coding he's doing everything he has to make a fun game and experience based on what his experience is and his experience is you ask him have you played this game have you played he will say no to all those because he's not he's not a superhuman who knows everything about everything and has all the time and then he's designing a game based on his experience or whatever i understand that. But I just think that, like, if stuff, if certain games were designed a little bit better, or at least if they took feedback from people

and didn't just, like, completely ignore it and think that they know better, some of these games would just do better. You know what I mean? I think there's a mixed bag, though, too, right? Listening to the community can ruin your game. Sure. Fucking hell. And I think, like, I think, anyway, basically, I think what's a mixed bag, though, too, right? Listening to the community can ruin your game. Yeah, fucking hell.

And I think, like, I think, anyway, basically, I think what's happening here is the same thing as with Empire. We have these very deep roots set down years ago throughout history where they affect things today in ways we don't really understand. You know, walking around Bristol, I will see Church of England schools and I will see, you know see lots of things that were kind

of obviously changing and looking at how Colston Hall used to be called Colston Hall, which is the way they threw it out in Bristol. There's been some riots this week. I don't know if you want to talk about that. Oh yeah, I'll talk about that. But it's certainly an interesting thing to go into. But one of the things they've done is they've been changing the names of these places like Colston Tower is now beacon tower a lot of the pubs that were named after slavers or people

who investors who got a lot of money from the slave trade um have been sort of changing their names and it's because these are just deep roots that have gone unchanged for many many years and i think with religion and the way we do things honestly, a lot of the time it's just, oh, it's always been the Colston Arms or whatever. Like, you just don't know. No. Well, there's no need to change it either, right?

You don't think so. And I think that a lot of empire and a lot of systems and a lot of things we have stick around. Looking at, I was listening to a podcast about apartheid in South Africa.

And, you know, that was still going into, you know, the 60s and 70s and that was like the 92 or something stupid was it good lord it was fucking so late and that is that is obviously something which was you know i mean apartheid means apartness that's the actual where the word comes from and the idea is that it's segregation really and black only beaches and white only you know water fountains and things like this and it was astonishing that that has been so prevalent and you realize it is from this very deep-rooted racism and very deep-rooted sort of thing that that's so ingrained in the society

in the empire that you can't change it and a similar thing with video games you know these we thought we're 37 i'm 37 years old i'm just assuming my age 27 but we've been playing games for years and games have been shaped and have been created in in a certain way but also this massive now there's so many people involved and so many people who were just doing their own thing and getting on with life and and don't have don't have a desire or or it takes a lot of effort to make big changes, right? And someone's going to have to deal with that. If you were a politician and you were like,

oh, fuck it, can't we just leave everything as it is? Let's work for me, isn't it? That's the basis of conservatism, is we don't need to change. Everything should pretty much stay the same. It's fine as it is. That's the nature of conservatism. It's like the laziest idea ever, isn't it? Well, yeah, but it also really appeals to people.

I mean, here's the thing. If you've grown up in an area, let's say you've grown up in Bristol your whole life, as I'm sure many people have. If everything to you seemed fine and people come along and start changing it, in your mind, it doesn't need changing. Like the core belief of conservatism is

why can't we just keep things as they were? Like, why do we need to change things? Everything's fine as it is. It's a very selfish point of view which is i don't think it should change and even if changing things like the name of a fucking place or taking down a cocking statue nobody cares about even if that to you means nothing it represents change and change is bad and scary and i think in the minds of some people why are these people meddling they're just messing with things it doesn't matter to me therefore it doesn't matter and that's that's the problem is that when something really does matter to people if it doesn't actually fucking affect you and it

doesn't why are you so against it if it really does affect people that the idea that a fucking slave trader has a pub named after him it should change because what difference does it make it's still a pub but it matters to some people just because it doesn't matter to you doesn't mean it's not an issue i think that's the problem is we're very self-centered and focused on well it doesn't matter to me load of bollocks in there it's like those people like i if you see on twitter like when people when mf doom died i think the guardian or a couple of the newspapers published like mf doom it was a legendary rapper he was fantastic rapper yeah he died half the fucking replies were oh never heard of him and that to me represents the same issue that you have when you want to change the name

of something is well i've never heard of it therefore it's not important but i still feel that my voice must be heard i don't understand this i don't know what it's about i disagree yeah just because i don't like change or things that I don't know what it's about. I disagree. Yeah. Just because I don't like change or things that I don't know about. It's the same deal. I hadn't heard of this Colston guy before all this happened. But once it was brought to my attention, this guy was a fucking slave trader. And by the way, a lot of people in Bristol made a lot of money from that.

We all did back then. If you say that needs to be addressed, suddenly you're some, oh, these upstarts and all protesters and everything. How is it not the right thing to do? It blows my yeah i don't understand hold on this why do you want to cling to past you didn't even know about i agree i don't know why it means it means so much to people on the side of um don't change anything i don't get it i don't get what their investment is in it it's like the statue's been there forever what exactly you never even fucking notice it so why don't we just take it down and replace it with something like a bit more appropriate it doesn't matter like if it doesn't matter to you you shouldn't care about it coming

down either like it's well companies keep actively proactively rebrand themselves don't they every 10 years because their brand feels like oh it's a bit old a bit of a boomer brand now let's just rename ourselves zazzle uh then suddenly it's like the new fucking thing i think there is this this thing where um there's this idea of um which i always remember from reading foundation isaac asimov when i was younger and i'm sure you've read it as well p flex it's kind of i actually haven't loads of people keep telling me i should that's really insulting i look and it's so big it's a very classic you didn't even consider me as a candidate for somebody who would have read it. You just jumped right to Flax.

You're like, oh, I'm sure. Me and Flax being intellectuals, I'm sure Flax has read it. This dumbass over here probably has not. He's just going to make some more poop and dick jokes now. As someone who wrote a sci-fi book, which was very much inspired by these old sci-fi as I assumed you did say within this for 50 minute recording yeah I don't read much like you literally maybe he didn't hear that that was just a throwaway comment we listen we listen to you so anyway there's this idea of a psycho history which is which is kind of the idea. I'll just go to the bathroom. I mean, this is just going to be far too much for my little brain force.

No, it basically says that, you know, you can't predict the future, but you can predict the actions of large, very large groups of people, such as an empire. So you can see where the empire will be in this amount of time. But like, kind of like broad predictions about history. Like if we know where the population of the earth is going, we can see how many people will have by this date and if things keep going this way. You know, if you put sort of, we can model,

the idea is that you can model the future with history and sociology and look into the past to see what's going to happen again, because history has this habit of repeating itself. It's a very interesting concept. But, you know, Bristol certainly has like a history of rioting throughout, weirdly, throughout history. And fairly regularly, like just before we came to Bristol in 2011,

there was this thing called the St Paul's Riots. And we actually had our office was actually just on the edge of St Paul's. Yeah, well, that's an area that's that's um sort of coming up now isn't it's like being gentrified and it was like a little bit around sort of like cabot and stuff right it was yeah i mean that has its own issues because that kind of squeezes out people with lower income which is a bit of a problem that's the nature of any gentrification is that i mean it surely if you if you go to these places before they've been renovated that they are not great places to live like they just don't of any gentrification is that, I mean, it's surely, if you go to these places before they've been renovated,

that they are not great places to live. Like they just aren't. And the fact is that coming in with some money, doing up the houses, building some new buildings, new shops, new amenities, it also forces government

to build better links to those places and things like that. People can now commute from there to work. It does improve neighborhoods, lowers crime, raises education, all the rest of it. But it does push people out. The people that were living there get pushed out

and they can no longer live there yeah or it's like why wouldn't i sell like now my house is worth five times what it was 10 years ago so i'm gonna sell but then where do i go so they have to move out to another neighborhood and they're pushed out and pushed out and those communities get destroyed so there are there are ups and downs to both sides and it was largely i mean i was talking about sort of slavery although bristol was very involved in the slave trade and has you know a lot of history with that i mean even before you know what we consider to be the main area of slavery you know there was you know we were selling welsh welshmen and irish people and english people were slaves back in yeah back in like 11 like 1100 1200 like recently

no so bristol was involved in slavery back in the day and then obviously the the sort of set that the whole the whole triangle you know of um sending sending slaves from africa to america and then bringing back sugar to britain and then um i there was i don't know what we were sending down to africa to buy the slaves. I assume the goods that we produced, like ramen stuff, I think we were selling back. So it was this kind of triangle. And Bristol was this big part of it. But as a result, England or Britain didn't ever have many slaves.

And so much of the black British community, I think, are people who've come back from Caribbean countries in the Commonwealth, in the Windrush generation. Which is something which I didn't really know about until there was sort of this sort of scandal relatively recently. A lot of these people were not were kind of a lot of these people who'd been here for 50 years were suddenly found that they didn't they weren't really allowed to be here or whatever. Well, funnily enough, speaking of MF Doom, the same thing happened to him. He was born in uh he was born in london his parents moved to new york he was raised in new york he doesn't even remember uh living in england ever because he was so young when he moved to new york um he lived in in new york his whole life um one year he decided to go on tour came back to the states, didn't have documentation.

And they're like, sorry, you can't come back. And he was just like, OK. And then had to actually had to move to the UK. Really? They left him, lived in the UK? He did, yeah. He moved to the UK, I think, in 2010 because he had to. They just wouldn't let him back in.

And he was away from his family for about two years as well because his wife and kids were still in New York and they had to move over. He just couldn't get back. It is pretty amazing how shitty all this visa situation is. Even between UK and USA, it's so difficult to move around. It's crazy really how difficult it is, bearing in mind we're two of the most you know safe and successful countries in history potentially you know the fact that you can't it's so difficult for people to be with their family

I'm just stunned about that anyway but that's unrelated so there is there is this very big especially in St Paul's there was this big community of largely I guess like black people of African Caribbean descent, you know, but now just British, you know, as British as you get. But they were kind of being harassed, I think, a lot by the police.

And, you know, this was even, this was only 10 years ago. There was this place called the Black and White Cafe, which was like the most raided cafe or premises ever in in ever by the police I think they raided like 300 times you know it's insane yeah and so eventually I think it just it just people just got angry and there was one time they raided and they were taking some stuff away like I think they were taking some alcohol away and um and it kicked off into a sort of a little riot really and and I don't think anyone was killed i think a lot of people were injured on both sides so these riots they had the other day did you see any so

obviously the first thing i knew about it because i'd been out that day walking around bristol and i hadn't seen anything and i heard all these helicopters like in the sky and they're so loud you know you really can tell um what's going on and so yeah we like um they're i got a text off my mom saying oh are you all right and i was like what do you mean and she was like oh there's some riots going on in bristol and i was like it's there and obviously i was like oh well i guess that's what all the helicopters are and so um i was looking up on the news and i know as much as you really and then the day after i went over to have a look and basically what had sort of happened was it had been a fairly... So we got this...

After the previous thing where Bristol hit the news because they chucked the statue in the canal, there's now this new sort of crime bill, which is kind of cracking down a bit. You can get 10 years in prison for destroying or damaging a memorial, which is what that counts as. That the people who did that that's fucking crazy 10 years i mean the thing is how how how how different is that to like uh you know somebody you like there's there's a case over here recently where a guy was had had they found a ton of like uh you know images like child

porn and everything and he got like two years for it. And you think how that's much more damaging than somebody tearing down a statue. You go to prison for 10 years for that. It's just completely out of whack. It just doesn't make any sense. It does feel like a little bit of a, then again, obviously there's always circumstances, you know, it depends what people do. If they bomb something or, you know, I don't know, there's there's different levels you know if someone bombed towel bridge i think that would

be quite different to hitting a you know or hit it or throwing a paintball bomb at like a slaver statue anyway i think people in bristol were unhappy about this thing they did a march and then i think a few people took it obviously way too far and started kind of like setting fire to stuff and graffitiing and smashing the windows at the police station which is quite a ballsy thing to do really you know if you think you're having a riot you go straight to the police station and start shelling that which is kind of like you think it will be date or the opposite right you think you try to do it as far away from the police stations as possible it's kind of like i don't know like

you're gonna go after the death star lewis like you know of like, I don't know. Well, you've got to go after the Death Star, Lewis. You don't go and attack some outpost. You go to the Death Star. That's it. That's the Rebel Alliance way. I kind of respect that. So one of the things I saw on Twitter was that Somerset and Avon Police had posted,

due to COVID, please don't attend this protest. Please protest virtually. And I was like, you're fucking joking me. Please attend virtual protests on Zoom. You know, what good is that going to do? Do you know what I mean? That's almost insulting to the point of kind of, I think stuff like that, like being so out of touch

and being so kind of, I don't know, almost to me annoys me, stuff like that. So I think a couple of people were very um but obviously what you have is you have some people who just want to cause chaos and so you end up with a kind of a problem so yeah it's it's i think a few police policemen had were injured and and some things were set on fire but But right around the next morning, and the only thing around there was a few sort of boarded up windows and one burned out bin

and a load of police, a load of TV cameras, a load of BBC TV team, loads of cameras just on every street corner looking at a building. You know, it's like, oh, they'd obviously sent all their police or their film crews down. So it was just a road full of cameras looking at nothing because there wasn't

really i mean that area is a bit of a shithole anyway uh it's always a bit of a mess you know it's not like it's um it's not like it's fucking you know some beautiful complete mall or you know some elegance are you right now being the i couldn't tell the difference guy is that i kind of couldn't yeah no just check so a friend of mine um was there was a conversation on facebook i didn't dip into it because i sometimes like to read my friends conversations on facebook and just there's no point getting involved you know just creep them so a friend of mine was saying um that he's agrees with the protests and fair enough but why did it have to descend into violence? Why'd they have to do this, that and the other?

So a lot of the time, the way that we're told about these protests is obviously via police spokesmen and establishment news like the BBC and stuff like that. And they don't want to come out and make a statement of any kind of political statement. So the way they report these things is always very careful and the wording that they use is very calculated to create a very clear division so that people can say, oh, I'm sure that, you know, it was a bit of

six of one and a half a dozen of another and nobody really blames. The protest happens and we feel bad for the protesters, but they hit a van. So, you know, it's sort of, you know, it's an even fight and you don't need to pick a side. That's pretty much the way it's presented. And one of the things you'll often see is police injuries. It'll say seven police officers were injured. So there was a Guardian article you can find about this. There's a protest a while back. I think it was one of the ecological protests.

And they listed seven police injuries. And due to a Freedom of Information Act, they went and got a list of what those injuries were. Six of them were insect bites. One of them was toothache. These are the official police listings of what those injuries to the police were. Six of them were insect bites. One of them was toothache. These are the official police listings of what those injuries to the police were. Anything that happens to them whilst they're on duty counts as an injury. Right.

And it's injured at this riot. Therefore, you look at the newspaper headline and you see seven police injured and you think, wow, they really must have been cracking heads. And I'm sure that rioters were fighting back and all the rest of it. But a lot of the time it's absolutely bollocks. So the way it's reported is very important. and what we don't hear when these riots are happening it's not often it's an interesting point reporter in the middle of i i found out about this uh via the national news like the 10 o'clock news um but had it not been for the for the actual violence and stuff like that would it have been covered on the national news? I don't know. Like, I mean, it was still a fairly big protest about something important, but I think possibly without the fact that a police car was, was set on fire and there was a lot of like, you know, some violence and

whatever. I don't know if it would have made the national news. And personally, I probably wouldn't have heard about it unless I would have read about it in a local paper or whatever. I feel like a riot doesn't have to be full of death and carnage. It just has to hit the national news. As long as it's got that attention, it's fine. I'm talking about these St Paul's riots and stuff, and they were actually in the 80s, when there were a lot of other troubles, a lot of anti-Irish sentiment, and there was a lot of poor Irish population as well who were involved. And so there's lots of social injustice type situations

that have been going on for a long time and still are really relevant today. And I mean, even, so what happened in 2011 was in Stokes Croft, which is up kind of Gloucester Road. It's the kind of sort of trendy, Banksy area, you know, of Bristol, kind of quite, quite kind of grimy, homelessy, pink, pink hair, kind of, you know of Bristol kind of quite quite kind of grimy homelessy

pink pink hair kind of you know that attitude very chilled very nice place actually to live but they had so their riot

in 2011 was about the opening of a new Tesco Metro you know because it was because they were sort of raiding these squats and stuff

to like to move people along so that they could make way for this gentrification area open up coffee shops and all the things that yuppies need. All the vital work.

And it kind of upset the community, and I think it kind of ended up with this sort of very loud and explosive and very colourful riot, but probably the only injury was when the police went to the pub afterwards and accidentally hit one of the other ones with a dart or something i don't know jeremy like you said it's kind of like not it's not it wasn't it wasn't conventionally but that in a sense like that's i think these protesters also don't want to hurt people necessarily they just they're just angry and they they want to to make a make a noise yeah yeah and

some of them do want to cause chaos there are definitely some people that like anarchist groups and stuff like that that go to protests like of course yeah because they just want to they literally want to dismantle the state and this is their sort of expression of that and you know i'm sure anyone that's been to protests will know there's always some people there that are looking for trouble but equally i think the idea that that the police are not also some of the riot police are also looking for trouble there was a documentary following the riot police in london having a big bust up with i think it was a national front or bmp or it might have been some of the uh tommy what's his name's lads and the officer going in they were like what are you hoping for at this right he goes a bit of sport that was one of the

riot police took it he wanted a bit of sport in other words he wants it to kick off yeah like they want the fight why else would you fucking join the fucking riot police like you want there to be trouble yeah so how do you like they're not just there to keep the peace they are there in case it kicks off and that does attract a certain kind of person like you can't just suggest that all these people that are enjoying the right because i just joined to keep the streets safe and protect statues they want there to be a bit of fucking trouble because otherwise they don't get to swing their sticks and hold up their shields and cattle people and shit like that so it definitely it happens on both sides but i honestly think the police's responsibility is to let people protest not to fucking shut it down that's the point no and i think that's been

removed that's what happened this time as well. Like it was it was people protesting and then the police moving in and saying, you need to stop this right now. And then them getting irate and it led to this confrontation. And then people get angry. That's the thing. I mean, there's OK. I mean, I'm sure there are times where there's no provocation needed and, you know, things get damaged and things get out of control or whatever but i'd say like i i would probably wager that a lot of the time police turning up and then trying to move people along and uh and trying to to stop them from doing what they're doing uh just aggravates the mob right right and

then things get out of hand off the back of that like it's i mean you wouldn't like it if you're being shoved around by the police people's response is to be negative and fight back that's just human nature to ignore that I think is ridiculous people are riled up, they're out there for a reason most people aren't going to be leaving their house to protest unless it

really means something to them I've got great respect for these I've got great respect for people who do go out there and protest I'm just too much of a person or two I'm too comfortable in my existence to feel like I want to go out there and do it but definitely like I have seen the Hong Kong protests and everyone out there it's like it's amazing to see people you know standing up for something that they feel strongly about

and I think that great great respect to people who who do and i'm sure some people listening to this will disagree with with our opinions on this and that that's fine but the point is you're allowed to to protest that and you're allowed to disagree if you look at hong kong the act of protest itself is being made illegal that is an issue yeah if you don't see that as a problem just because you're like here's the thing just because you're not on these protesters side doesn't mean you shouldn't defend what they're doing that's the whole point they still have a right to speak they have a right to to protest or whatever but the nobody wants there to be a violent protest nobody wants a riot you know what i mean like there's the it affects everybody at that point even if you have nothing to do with it you're not involved with it there's there's knock-on

effects down the road right like and nobody wants that but it's you know it's unfortunately it's just one of those things that will always happen because a lot of these things are just handled so poorly in the first place i mean yeah i'm so poorly that people feel like they have to protest in the first place i mean what the fuck we that people feel like they have to protest in the first place i mean what the fuck we elect these fucking people what are they doing all the time it's their strange though every time people are people are always gonna protest you know even like the fucking um religious people saying you know we hate fags or whatever but that whole that whole family who used to do that at protest you know they we hate fags or whatever. Do you remember that whole family who used to do that at protests?

Westboro Baptist. They were obviously crazy, but at the same time, they were doing this thing. So there are protests that are bad too, right? There's loads of negative protests happening. But I wonder what the other options are are if there even are any i wonder how this history of protests has bled through time and become this thing where in order to get noticed you have to cause disruption yeah and i don't know like i just i'm so ignorant about this whole world really and i don't really understand i mean i suppose it's impossible for us to actually know

the truth of any right how do you make you have to actually know the truth of any riot. How do you make change? You have to look at the core of what were they protesting about? How was it instigated? What kicked this off? It's interesting. Does this affect me in some way? The police bill does affect everybody. That's the protest or the Sarah Everard stuff.

It does affect people. I think it's easy. Like Lewis said, I don't go to these protests. No, I don't either. I mean, I remember we were in central London. They shut down Waterloo Bridge. affect people i think it's easy like lewis said i i don't go to these protests no i mean i mean i remember we were in central london they had they shut down waterloo bridge the extinction rebellion guys and shut it down they were handing out pot plants to people they were handing them out you walk around they give you a plant and like as a way of saying you know support the protest they

gave you again gave me a little pot plant i was like this is the nicest protest ever i look at those people and i think they're not going to be setting fire to fans and they're painted as the bad guy so part of the reason is if there's a if there's a protest and you turn up with heavy riot gear and police vans and drive vans into people it turns into a riot now they're rioters they're not protesters anymore all i'm saying is at least look and look at what the people do in the protests were like when did it get violent and what was the motivation for it to turn violent if there was no reason for it to turn violent that's what made what's the difference between a protest and a basically a deliberate riot which i don't support i think it's very easy for deliberate violence to be seeded by negative

groups as well you know you it's like a it's like a catalyst for stuff you know if you have an angry police who are looking for a fight or you know you plant a bunch of angry mobs into a more peaceful protest i think it can this is all political conspiracy bullshit really but yeah i think it's it's a fucking mess it's a mess you know what we should all do man it's a mess and you know what i'm glad that we do an hour podcast every week where we can sort it out because I think the world needs this. I think the world's ready for us to sort this out. Let's put our fucking rubber gloves on and let's get our fucking hands in the toilet and let's unclog this shit.

Put us in charge for a bit, government. Give us a week. Give me a week. Give us one week to fix this. And if we don't, fair enough. You can have it back. But what I'm saying is, give us one it back i'll put my hands up and i'll say i failed i did but at least you tried fuck me man geez oh my god well there you go thank you

that's enough for that this week that went a bit serious it's kind of interesting because it's happening in my backyard listen i just want to say if you are um if you are interested in um in in in riots for whatever reason in anything we've said today there's a good uh there's a good documentary on netflix called la 92 about the um about the la riots following the rodney king stuff and there was a i think it was the i i think it was the arrest of a of a woman as well relating to possibly like a murder or something. But there was like some some bullshittery around that one as well. I think it's something, again, to do with the police. And then the and then the guys who beat Rodney King, not there was no justice for that.

You know, they all got like they got let off or whatever. And then there was the riots in L.A. I think this is this is actually something which is a problem as well, though, because I think, I mean, I saw a lot of kind of very American, you know, all cops are bastards. A lot of very reddity kind of stuff out about around this riot. And I think it's partly because we're so plugged into the American culture that we plug it into our own.

And I think we, the Bristol police are very different. But no, it's an interesting documentary because it covers everything. It covers like the sort of like causes of it. And then, you know, the actual riot itself, but then the knock-on effects as well. I mean, it cost the city, it was astronomical, like billions of dollars in reparations and stuff

it was unbelievable unbelievable yeah they were massive it was crazy yeah but yeah really interesting if um if you're if you're interested to like find out more about some of this kind of stuff yeah that's a good call yeah no problem no problem they call me mr documentary man i've got my finger on the pulse i watch a lot of documentaries so if you ever need any documentary advice uh so interesting thanks very much we'll do cheers all right thank you for thank you man. I've got my finger on the pulse. I watch a lot of documentaries, so if you ever need any documentary advice, you let me know. So interesting. Thanks very much. Thank you, everybody. Have a lovely week. See you next time.

Goodbye.