Triforce! - Triforce #309: Epic Gamer taken down by Actual Gamers

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Triforce! Episode 309! What have we been playing in 2025? We take on the recent Elon Musk vs Path of Exile 2 controversy and Lewis is taking the leap onto the property ladder... in this day and age! 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. restaurants in Canada. Hello, everyone. Welcome back. Hello, Louis. Let's try for. Hi. Hello, Sips. Hi. Hello, Sips.

I'm good. Hi, Perian. Hi, Perian. Hi, Louis. Hi, Ted. Hi, Chris. Hi, guys. How are you guys? Hi, guys. Doing great.

I'm doing good. How are you doing, Sips? OK, I'm doing great. Thanks so much for asking. I hope you guys are good, too. I'm doing good. Oh, good. How about that weather? Oh, you fog. Oh, never stops.

Geez, just need the summer now. I feel like there's weather every day now. What's this? It's always weather. I feel like there's weather every day now. What's happening? It's just, fuck, it's always weather. It's the weather. It's the weather weapons. They're deploying them all over the place now.

It's not even just in the USNA anymore. The USNA. N-day. Yeah. The USN-day. That's the United States and assholes. That's the one. Did you guys...

So this is something I forgot to mention about New Year, right? When I was at New Year. We were in Spain and they have this thing, I don't know if you know this, where they eat grapes at the, they eat grapes at the New Year. Oh, how exciting. In time with the bongs. The bongs that go off, I guess, 12. Big bongs.

12 bongs. And, which I guess is like the Big Ben bongs. It's a whole mishmash of the culture, isn't it? That whole thing. It's all very confusing. Everyone has their own thing they do. We sing Auld Lang Syne for some reason. Well that's a song.

Auld Lang Syne. About New Year, isn't it? Auld Lang Syne. Yeah. Is it? Yeah. Is it about new year? Yeah. Yeah. Should old acquaintance be forgot? Oh, okay. Maybe it is. Never left to rot. But it's so, it's so horrible. The thing is that didn't happen. It was like a, I was at a hotel full of English tourists on that night and they didn't do it all. And I was like

kind of disappointed, but everyone else had their own little things. Like some people I was at a hotel full of English tourists on that night, and they didn't do it all that time, and I was like, kinda disappointed. But everyone else had their own little things, like some people were dancing around, and some people were shaking everyone's hands. It was all like, I wasn't sure... Did you, uh, you weren't there for Christmas though, so you missed out on all the Feliz Navidads. Feliz Navidad! It's a tune.

Feliz Navidad! I like it. Honestly. Feliz Navidad de comple, año. Feliz Navidad de comple, año. Feliz Navidad de comple, año. Feliz Navidad de comple, año. I like it. Honestly. I did say that to a few people in the street. I think that's a mixture of, I want to wish you a Merry Christmas. Kind of nice. Kind of ironically.

I sort of said it in a kind of, like, jokey-toe... there was a guy, like, stood by his bike that he'd crashed into something and it was like, sat on the floor, and he looked at me and I was like, oh, police never dad. Wait, you said it at that moment? English to Spanish. I'm doing a Google Translate here. I want to know... I want to wish you a Merry Christmas. Yeah. Quiero desiarte

una feliz Navidad. Yeah. Is that what you were saying to people? I wish I had learned Spanish. I learned, you know, spent ages learning German and French. I don't really want to go there. What? Those great countries. Yeah. I know. I know.

Exciting. Exciting. Do you want some Birdwatch 2025 news from Blacks? I've got a new bird thing going on. Okay. A new bird thing. Bird thing going on. This is like the Triforce's answer to country file. Yes, that's what it's going to be. I have my office window. We know how old we are. My office window I tend to have open because I've got quite a lot of equipment in a relatively small room and it pumps out a lot of heat so I have the window open, especially when I've got the door closed.

And because it's January and the pigeons are thinking, we're going to be having babies soon, better find somewhere to nest. There are these wood pigeons that keep flying up and landing on my windowsill and I'm only a few feet from the window and I look at them and they look at me and they're just sort of hanging out. And I think they think, oh think oh that would be a cracking place for a nest but this husband bird, the male bird, he turned up and then his wife turned up and she had a look in at the same time and I could see her thinking it's a bit big for what we need isn't it and he was like oh no it's you know we could have room to expand look we could put an extra room in there she's like no

so she hasn't come back but but he keeps coming back. That's it. Right. They are. They are so intelligent, really. You know, they a lot of people think these are just rats with wings, but they're not pigeons. Also, these are pigeons. These aren't rock doves. I love quote, quote, pigeons you see in Trafalgar Square are rock doves. They're not pigeons. I love when they I love when they walk in their head has to move every time. Yeah, what is up? I love that. Yeah, it's like a white tail. Yeah, white tail. They tell has to wag.

It makes me laugh every time. Yeah, you just got to make sure, you know, if you if you like pigeons a lot and you are letting them into your house, you should never let them into your house. But if you do, for whatever reason, or you decide to keep them or whatever, be warned, their poop is quite toxic and can can overwhelm and kill you. Especially if there's lots of it. Yeah. That they always say, you know, like if, you know, if somebody's like working on an old barn or, you know, like a place where a pigeon would typically

like to nest or a lot of them would like to nest and call home, you got to be careful. Like a loft or whatever. If they've pooped everywhere, their poop can be quite, uh, quite toxic. Yeah. So here's why it's because it gets linked to something, a fungus called crypto caucus. Right. That's cryptocurrency. This is crypto.

I think that's the other name for Elon Musk. Exactly. Crypto caucus Musk. That's the other name for Elon Musk. Yeah, exactly. Crypto. Cockus Musk. That's his Latin name. Elon Musk. That was his. That was his hardcore character in Path of Exile before it died. Oh, my God. Can we talk about that? Please have to just briefly, because I just want to say, if you are going to pull the wool over people's eyes,

I genuinely think the one group of people who you were never, that's never going to work on is, is hardcore gamers. Yeah. Because they take the game so seriously. Yeah. And they're so online. He live streamed himself clearly not knowing how to play this game. Yeah.

Clearly. What did he think was going to happen? These are not voters. These are gamers. And what did he think was going to happen? These are not voters. These are gamers. There's a big difference. He had a top 10 hardcore character. To put that into context, the people who are top 10 hardcore have played basically every waking moment.

The game has been out. Yeah. You know time to do anything else like they are shitting and pissing in a trough next to their computer, and stuff. Like, it's... It is like, the most hardcore. It is insane. And he was like, number six, or something. He was not. So, I mean, it's actually impossible.

I think one of the... I said this somewhere else, but he... One of the things he said back in the day was, he doesn't have time for anything, and so even like, his whole bullshit of like, oh, I don't even have time to have sex with a woman, so I'm just gonna get her pregnant, get her to go to a clinic. You know? It's quicker for me to just wank off and give it to her in a tub. Like, what kind of... And how has he got time to do a thousand hours of Path of Exile 2? It's insane. I mean, it's not impossible. He's got a team of like four people running it for him. Like even things like he had his maps saved as Elon's maps.

Yes. Which was like, why did you do that? The pair of gloves that his character was using, he commented at one point, he said, oh, you know, these gloves are only level 52 and I'm level whatever 90 or whatever. So they're kind of low level. Those gloves are the best build and gloves in the whole game. Best in slot. Yeah. Then they're not like, they're not like mega difficult to get, but you know, they're, they're out of reach of, of people who are just playing the game for the first time or whatever, you know, like, yeah. I, I, I look at some of these, of people who are just playing the game for the first time or whatever.

You know? Like... Yeah. I look at some of these people who post on these subreddits, right? And I played the game, I played Path of Exile for a thousand hours, okay? And there's people who are doing... I went on Reddit like once, and there was a guy who did one run. It was like a TikTok kind of clip of him just going through a thing.

And he got more loot in that thing, like a hundred times more loot in that thing than I'd ever got in a thousand hours. The people at this high level are on a completely different level to regular people. And there's no way Elon Musk is, of all the games to pick, right? If he picked Civilization VI, we would never have known. If he picked any reasonable guy, but imagine if he picked Dota, we wouldn't know! You cannot! You know? It's ridiculous.

It's ridiculous. I guess it's just tied into his ego, or, you know, he just has to be seen as being great at these things that maybe he holds in some esteem. Well, I think in his head though, his head works. In his head, he thinks if I had the time, I would be this good, right? So therefore I can pay someone and then act like I'm this good, right? That's the delusion that sets root in his head. That I am talented, I am skilled at this, I'm a natural. And I could be... I'm just taking the shortcut there because I don't want to waste my time. My time's valuable. I'm saving the world, guys. I can't be sat here on my

ass playing Path of Exile 2 like you losers, every day. You know? It's so strange. Oh God, I've played so much of it so far. I've been playing it a lot. It is frustrating, but also very addictive and quite good as well. I've enjoyed this more than I enjoyed the first one. You're worse than Elon Musk at it though. So consider that. That's true, yeah.

He's far superior. He is, yeah. Even when he's not lying, he's probably better than me at it. But what can you do? But no, it's been fun. There's a big patch coming up for today, actually, that's going to fix a bunch of stuff. So I'll be good to exciting. I've I've been playing single player talk of.

Yeah, that's fun. That is really fun. But this is a this is the full mod for single player talk of. Oh, so there's there's two versions is the PVE mode, which is the official battle state games. Yeah. Single player version. That's the one I was playing and I enjoyed it.

This is so much better. Is that? Yes. I like I've installed it and a bunch of other mods to go with it. And it feels like talk of like really does. The fights are quite really fun. It's like the AI is pretty good. Genuinely, at times you're like, holy shit, they're like flanking me. And it's it's you can adjust it so you can make it easy.

You can make a hearty, you can make a loot scare so you can make more of it. And you can have like little quality of life months. The one I've got is a fucking map in the top right corner. Oh, that's nice. Like a mini map. And then you can bring it full screen. It'll show you where you need to go for your quests. Here where are the extracts? Where are you on the map? Which is so much.

It's so useful. Nice. So I couldn't recommend it enough. I've been playing that for the last couple of weeks. Maybe not even. Yeah, I played it a couple months back. I was playing the just like the PV one. Yeah, me too.

Not modded. Yeah, it was fun enough, right? Yeah, it was fun., right? Yeah, it was fun. We had a couple of groups. There was the usual, you know, team killing and, and, you know, fucking wild goons just like getting one shotting you from halfway across the map. Oh my god, yeah. But I mean, all in all, though, it was fun and just it was nice and chill, you know,

like you didn't have that layer of brick in it, knowing that Super Chad was out there hiding in the bushes with his meta defining, meta breaking loadout and everything. It was a nice change for sure. A nice change of pace. I appreciated it. I would like to see your mod list. Is it on your stream? Me?

So you should get Me? Yeah. So I've got, I've only got about eight mods installed at the moment, maybe not even that. I'll tell you what I've got. I mean there's a bunch. Just for me personally. So there's one called Swag slash Donuts, which we're waiting, everyone's waiting on that to be updated. Swag slash Donuts? Yeah, I don't know what that means. I don't know why it's called. I think it's the two

guys that made it, but it's basically like a mod that adjusts how the enemies spawn and where and what kind of stuff they do. Okay. Oh, right. So I've got, I've got one. If you guys have played talk of called continuous healing. So, you know, when lots of bits of you are damaged and you go to heal it and it takes out the med kit, heals that one thing carefully, puts a med kit away. Loda Wang, you just keep the make out and he just heals everything all in one go, which is nice. Checkmarks. So every item has a little checkmark and you mouse over it shows you, you need three of these to build this item in your hideout.

You need two of these for this quest. You need four of these for that, which is good. A progressive bot system. So the bots, it's called acid phantasms progressive bot system levels up the bots level up with you. This is so weird to even I'm like thinking, why would you go from this multiplayer experience back to a single player experience? Like, in a sense. Just having more control over some of the parameters and stuff. You can't control how good other people are, but you can, you can, you can fine tune a single player experience to, to fit what you're looking for at the time.

I think it makes a lot of sense. No, it does. I mean, I'll give you an example of what it's done for me, especially when I played the PvE mode. But even now when I'm playing this playthrough, is that this is talk of is a genuinely fantastic game. It really is. And it's got this, this is the feel to the world and the guns and

the fighting and everything. Even just the medical system, the way you're sort of desperately bandaging up. And then as you advance, you get better armor, you get stims so you can fight longer and you don't take damage, all that kind of stuff. I didn't get to experience that in the PvP game because I'm just not good enough. Because there's no matchmaking and there's no lobby system, you are thrown in with the top Tarkov players in Europe could well be on your server. And then you throw out hackers and stuff like that on top of that, it's just so difficult.

So there was a huge amount of the game that was gate-kept from me by my own skill that I've now been able to explore. I learned labs. I've never fucking learned labs before. No, I mean, I've never stepped foot in labs. Labs is like the sweatiest map in the whole game. Well, now that's where all like the turbo nerds go and farm and stuff. And all the loot hoovering guys. Yeah.

So now with the single player, I got to explore that map and it's a great map. I'm fighting bosses. I'm trying to take them on. So it feels like I've been able to adjust the game so that it's hard enough for someone of my skill level that I am feeling challenged and having fun and not thinking, oh, I bet that guy was hacking or that was desync between me and the server. The server is running on my PC. Like it's a little server client that runs on your PC and then you play a version of Tarkov that attaches to that server. So it's all you.

There's no desync. It's much better. I think when you're playing against other people who are just, you know, in another league better than you at the game, the thing that hurts the most is you just feel like your time has been wasted. By the time, I mean, and the thing is like playing Tarkov, not PvE on your own or with friends or whatever, the time to get into a map is long. There's lots of loading and waiting and lobby and stuff like that. And then only to just get in and just get instantly killed by

somebody who, again, just knows the game way better than you, knows where you're gonna spawn, probably is waiting for you, ready to kill you and take your stuff, and you've just wasted half an hour of your time for nothing. You don't learn anything from it, you're not gonna get better from that, or, you know, it sucks. Just sucks. ALICE Is it also in the back of your mind that there might be people hacking or cheating in some way as well? ALICE You can't help but think sometimes, yeah.

I mean, it's probably only a small percentage of people, right? But it's very small. There are, but I mean, at this point it's quite an old game as well, isn't it? It's not new. So the people who are playing it are playing it because they're good at it. It's been out for years and those people have just been playing it for that long. And they just know all these little tricks and you know ways to get ahead because they're used to playing against people who are on their level so you

know I walk into a map and it's just it's just free free junk for them it's a free kill it's free free stuff like I'm never gonna take one of those guys down you know what I think is weird is it's really only video games where people get kind of, I guess, precious about how other people are playing. Yeah. Like I know that some people like, why would you play this? Why wouldn't you play PVP? You know, you're not, you know, hardcore or whatever. And they'll have that attitude. Yeah.

I think. Can you imagine that in any other circle of life with other people's pastimes like knitting? Yeah. If you were knitting and people in public were flaming you knitting and saying, oh, you're pretty slow. That's unacceptable. Why are you using that wall? You should be using this wall. Which is like you need a scarf.

No one fucking wears scarves. Scarves? That's like tier one, mate. You want S tier. S tier is hats. You get this a lot in. Well, POE is a great example, because normally if I'm playing something I'm really into it, I'll watch it as well. You know, like I'll watch other people just to see, you know,

what they're doing and stuff like that. And what you find is like POE is the kind of game where if you're streaming it, it's very popular to play it hardcore and it's very popular to play it like solo self-fund. So that means you have no access to trade. You can't join other people's games or anything. Like everything you find is your own and your character has one life. And if it dies, it dies.

And what you'll find is like these guys that, that, that play this way are very good at the game and they understand all the systems, they understand all the little things that are going to give them the, you know, the edge or keep them alive longer or whatever. They got all these little tricks and stuff, but then you see their chat and like there's no way everybody in their chat is as good as them or playing the same way that they are. But they're talking the talk big time, you know, like,

there are all the stupid casuals ruining this game. So it's like, okay, man, like you are a casual. You are, you're not even playing the game right now. You're watching someone else play it. Like that is not hardcore of you to be watching someone else play the game. Well, like just because you're watching somebody who's good at the game, it doesn't make you good at the game. Like there's this, there's this big, there's like a massive Canyon of space between you and that person that you're watching being good at the game. Like you, you know, anybody can just turn up somewhere and give it loads,

but you probably suck. Okay. Just get, just, just get real before you start ragging on somebody else and calling them casual and shit at the game because they're not playing the way that you've decided it needs to be played or whatever. Just have a, just have a look at yourself. Look in the mirror. You know, you're not there. There's not thousands of people watching you. They're watching the guy that you're watching as well. You're not him. Okay. Let's that I've just, I just thought I'd say because there's a lot of it and there is a lot of it. Sometimes I play the game and I look at a streamer playing the game and I'm like, yeah,

I'm playing the same game. Sometimes I look at a streamer playing it and they're playing a different game. They're like, their game is like, I'm like, have I been doing it wrong? How has he got all this stuff? What is all this stuff? Like, I don't understand what you're doing. And that's POE every time. Even after a thousand hours I felt so fucking clueless.

There's so many aspects of some games that you just cannot possibly assimilate all of the information on. Yeah. Well I think for this game the devs wanted to slow it down. They wanted to make it more... less sort of like screen clearing, you know, quickly and stuff. But there's lots of stuff in the game right now that people have figured out. I think it's a lot more like PoE 1 right now. They might change it again, but it's fast. Everything dies immediately.

People have figured out builds where you're just melting these bosses that were designed for you to spend three, four minutes fighting, going into phases, having to learn the abilities and stuff. Like it's quite funny, but I mean, this, I guess it is a community where they tinker around with stuff and they figure stuff out. So it's, it's been interesting, but I don't know. It's it, I guess it's early access. A lot will change, but it's been, it's been a ride for sure.

It's been interesting, but I mean, I've enjoyed it as well. It's nice to get stuck into something. You've already finished. You've given up. No, no, I'm still going. I haven't given up yet. I should give up, but... I played, um, played Tactical Breach Wizards this week, which I really enjoyed. You should check it out. Is that asynchronous? No. Oh, thank God. It's like an XCOM. It's like a new XCOM. It's not like an XCOM. Stop saying that. I'm sick of people saying that. It's nothing like XCOM.

It's more like Chimera Squad. No! XCOM. It's a puzzle game. It's a puzzle game. Like a lot of these games. It's great. Oh man. If you're a fan of XCOM, let me tell you why Tactical Breach Wizards is not going to fill that XCOM shape hole in your life. This is sounding great.

Go for it. Number one. Let me tell you something about Tactical Breach Wizards. Let me push my glasses up here and really go to town, frankly, on the nonsense coming out of your mouth, Louis Brindley of the YARX cast. Okay? There's some furious typing. Go on.

So, first of all, there's very little to no customization of your characters. The guys that are in your party are fully formed characters that have fixed dialogue. And there are some vague options of doing things, but it's a much more rigid storyline. There's no base building. There's no sort of exploring the world. There's no choosing which mission to do. It's a linear playthrough system where you're absolving a story, a quest, if you like, as you go through. And there's like cutscenes, if you like, and characters that come and go. And it's every single level that you play, you just breach into a room.

And now you have like, oh, this enemy is going to do this, this turn and that this turn. And so if I do this and do that, I'll push into there. It's more like a chess puzzle or any of those puzzle games. I'd say it's much more like Into the Breach than fucking XCOM. It's really very little like XCOM other than there are people and it's turn-based. That's it. Mason. Yeah, fair enough. But I think at the same time, this is the thing, right? Where it's really good. The writing's great, the story's great. It's an encapsulated experience. I'm having a blast

with it. And I just think that... I read an article this week by a guy, I can't remember who was talking, who's saying that he thinks that shorter games and gameplay experiences are increasingly on the rise. These long, epic, slow games. Yeah, this is the... This Josh Sawyer said this, right? This was the... Maybe.

Well, that's interesting because we've got Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 coming out next month and Civ 7 coming out next month. Neither of which you would describe long game short form gaming. That's a long shit. I feel like you guys might like this. I played this game a couple of weeks ago. I did a promotional thing for it. It's a raw Furious publishing.

It's called Blueprints. And it's like a it's a puzzle game where you go through this huge mansion and you've got to find you. You got to like you basically pick the room you want to go to. And it sort of forms, you know, a layout on the grid. So you can kind of dead end yourself. If you're not lucky, you know, it rolls like three rooms. And you know, if you're lucky enough to make it to like the, you know, the end bit cool,

but you got to collect stuff along the way. You got to get like keys, you got to make sure you have enough keys and, you know, you got to, you got to recharge your steps. You have a certain amount of steps because each day it resets. So you have like, you have to do it in a certain amount of days, but each day the whole thing resets. So you have a couple of tries at it. It looks like Betrayal at House on the Hill, or one of these board games. It's really cool though.

Where you draft a new tile to go in as this room. So you're going through a room and it's like, open a door, I would like to go to the foyer, I want to go to the anbillionth room. Some rooms can buff the whole run, some rooms can debuff the whole run, and it's just lots of trial and error, figuring things out. Some rooms just have puzzles, like math puzzles or logic puzzles. I can't imagine this game in its full release is going to take thousands of hours. No, but I think it's one of those, like you were describing, you know, just a quick kind of fun experience. A short, interesting, really well polished experience.

Yeah. And, don't get me wrong, I like those. I've been looking for those kind of gaming experiences. Yeah. Well, in Blu-Print, you play the demo, you'll like it. I think you'll really like it. I'll add it to my wishlist. Did you play the Golden Idol games?

No, I didn't. I did love them. Oh, they're fun. They're really, really cool. I mean, oh, I love Dobredin. I love Papers, Please. Yeah, well you'd love this then. Those are kind of quick ones as well.

You'd love Golden Idol. It doesn't take long and it really gets your brain ticking. It's great. Golden Idol games. The art style and the little animation style is really, it's really endearing. It's really unique and kind of really funny. Really cool. But it's like the puzzles are quite good. Like they're like, ooh.

The art style is everyone is ugly. And there's this great scene where there's like all these models on the beam. That's the theme of my stream as well. Yeah, it's funny. It's kind of funny. I like it. I think it's just great. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Nice. I think it's just great. Yeah.

Yeah, I like games like that. Calling all sellers. Salesforce is hiring account executives to join us on the cutting edge of technology. Here, innovation isn't a buzzword. It's a way of life. You'll be solving customer challenges faster with agents, winning with purpose, and showing the world what AI was meant to be. Let's create the agent first future together. Head to salesforce.com slash careers to learn more.

What have you guys done other than gaming in the last week? Anything? We are back. We are back in full swing. Tradesmen visiting our house all the time, finishing up this job. Why are you doing this? Just just burn the house down. Well, it's got to be.

It's I mean, we got the loft is done. The kids are up in their rooms. The rooms are done. The bathroom is almost done up there. Just needs some some some fantastic mastic. And but the thing is the rooms that they moved out of hadn't been touched since like the 80s like they're there and you know they got all these old shitty dingy like plug

sockets and skirtings and stuff so we're freshening those up because one of them is gonna be the our youngest new room and then the other one's just going to be a spare room. But I mean, like the carpets, like completely threadbare, you know, like it just hasn't been touched. So it seems stupid to just get a bunch of work done and then just leave a bunch of stuff unfinished, you know? So it's, it sucks. It's a bit of a slog, but hopefully when it's all done, we just won't need

to do anything for a very long time. Everything will just be up to good standard, fresened up and everything and we're good to go. So that's what they're doing now. They're replacing ceiling tiles that are, because there's so much weight up in the loft now that there wasn't before. So stuff is, you know, underneath the floor, underneath on the ceiling, especially is cracking and coming loose and stuff, you know, where it wasn't before just because it's old and brittle. So, yeah. Oh God.

What a nightmare. It has been a nightmare. Yeah. It's been a lot of, uh, reminds me of Tarkov actually, because every time a room is done, we have to like shift a load of stuff into it. Um, and you're like, it's like inventory management on cracker house right now. It's just fucking piles of stuff everywhere. Yeah. That house right now. It's just fucking piles of stuff everywhere. They get, yeah, they gets moved around.

So these two rooms, when they're finished, everything from our, our bedroom is going to wear, which is where everything is being stored at the moment. It's just like, like an episode of hoarders in there. All of that stuff is going to get dispersed into these two finished rooms. And then finally they can come in and actually do our room. So that'll be the last thing. So we're talking like weeks, we're weeks away from completion. Oh baby. That's exciting. Yeah. Well, let me tell you something, there's some big news in the Forsythe household.

We got a new lamp. Wow! What did you call it? Well, lamp three. Geez! Lamp number three. And what's the voltage on that bad boy? Is it like one of those? Is it used like one of like the shaving plugs, you know, like that's

or is it just used like a normal plug? It's a standing lamp, like a floor lamp. Wow. It was one of those things. We were we had the Christmas tree up and obviously that's lit up, but it's got the lights and we got used to having that extra light in the living room. And when we took the tree away, we realized how dark the living room was. A lot of the time we were like, fuck, it's so dark in here. We need a lamp.

How do you, how do you switch it? How do you switch it on? Is it like got a little floor button? It's got a floor button. OK. And is the floor button on the cable? Do you have to do you have to do like yoga basically to reach it? Or is it in a very accessible place? It's right there. Oh, man. You're living the dream.

I know I was this lamp. It's changed our living room. We got our lamps like behind our sofa. And so we got to you got to be like a contortionist to get back there. Oh, no, no, no. And there's two of them. So you've got it. You got you. You click one on and then you have to like sort of shimmy along the back of the couch to click the other one?

Oh, I hate that. It's no good. Dude, do you have to get them linked into an Alexa plug or something? Yeah, well that's it, that's why I was asking about the low voltage, because there's like a low... You can get low voltage lamps that... You can get the bulbs, the bulbs are actually... Smart bulbs. Smart bulbs, actually smart bulbs. I think

so. I'll do a smart bulb as well. I tell you what, much easier than that is you just flick a switch and it's on. That's what I'm going for. Yeah. But you could say it. actually have got house viewing latest today. What? Whoa. Going to see a house.

What, just for fun? Or you think going to move in? No, he says he's making, he's taking the plunge. He's going to be a big, he's going to be a big boy. He's going to be a big boy property owner in this economy as well. You're insane. You are insane. I know.

It is what it is. I just had a phone call from the, um, the state agent though. And so I've just had a missed call. So I don't know whether they're going to cancel, cancel the view. They're not, they're probably, they're probably getting like food ready for you and everything. Man, a stay agent is not going to be cancelling a house viewing in this day and age. They are fucking desperate. Nothing is shifting. Well, over here at least. It's pretty bad. What's your advice for me looking at the place? What should I watch out for?

Make sure, don't take a place, don't look at a place and say, we can change this and we can change that, we can change this. Make sure that the place you buy is good to go. Right out of the box. No changes needed. Can you leave all this, can you leave all this furniture? Can I ask that? Can I just have everything?

Not so much, but just- Can I have all your stuff? Like if you go to a place, say, this is where I'm going to put my current furniture, I can see that it's going to look fine. It's going to fit. I'm not going to have to make any changes. The minute you have to start making changes, it's over, buddy. You're dead. Like, don't change your house. I disagree.

Don't don't have any. You're not going to find a perfect house. No, there's going to be stuff where you're like, hmm, I don't really like that. But as long as it's not like tube grand, yeah, too, too much of a grand design situation. And yeah, yeah, yeah. You could be like, oh, yeah, we could just change that. That's no problem.

Oh, anything to do with decorating. Oh, if it's decorating. Easy. Yeah. But yeah, if it's like some fundamental structural problem you have, just find another place that doesn't matter. But I agree with that. But but the the number one thing is the neighborhood. Above all else.

You want to make sure, what's the neighborhood like? Even if you like the place, come back in the evening. See what it's like in the evening. Like, genuinely. Do they have a good internet connection around there? Number two is what's the internet like? Because if it's dog shit, that's a big problem. And Bristol has a big problem, just like London does.

Like anywhere that's historic, apparently the internet is not compatible because it involves digging and running cables and you can't do that everywhere. So check that. And yeah, it's just one of those things I think if you have a good feel for a house, that can be great. But then when you get the surveyor in, which is a very important thing, the surveyor will come in and top the bottom survey the house and come back to you with a list of problems that he could see and things that were negative about the house. And sometimes it can feel like, geez, this is so many things. But it's their job to find

every little detail. So there'll be like the flashing around this part of the roof, it looks a bit bad. Some of these tiles aren't great. Bit of a question mark about this brickwork. The pointing on this side of the house needs redoing. These drain pipes are not fit for purpose. Drains look small, you know, and internally they can't move anything. So sometimes people will conceal things from the surveyor. But generally, the surveyor is an experienced person and they'll they'll know. Like they'll come in and say, like, well, that shouldn't be there and that's clearly dodgy and this

piping is old as fuck and probably need replacing. The survey is super important. I would say if the survey comes back, if it's an older place and there's asbestos, I would walk away, to be honest. It's not worth it. I can't imagine that would be a thing, but you don't want to fuck with it. It is a whole can of fucking worms. Because depending on the type of asbestos it is, and if they have to come in with the hazmat

suits and create an airlock and shit like that, it sucks. It takes forever. It costs a lot. Like I would not, not bother some, some, some of the asbestos is like not as bad, you know, like in some of the, some of the older building materials, but then some of it is super bad. And when it's super bad, you have to get, you know, like I said, they gotta come in, it's like the scene where ET is sick in the whole house, it's like that, you know? You don't want that.

I would walk away. I'm not gonna buy somewhere with asbestos. And I think honestly, like, if you were trying to sell somewhere with asbestos, no, it's not a new build. It might even be listed, that's the problem. It's not to say, but I tried to google around and I found a thing that said it might be a listed building. If it's listed I would just not even turn up to the appointment. No. Get the blue plaque on there that says Lewis Brindley of the Yogs Castle. Yes. Yeah. No, you're not allowed, you have to apply it to be able to fart in your listed house.

So yeah, I understand. So I... Touch that with a verge pole. Nah, I mean, it may not be too bad, but it's like, moving is so stressful, but you know, like depending on the type of place that you're moving into, it could be even more so. So well, the thing is, this place I'm looking at, I saw it a couple of months ago as well, and it sort of went off market after a couple of weeks. So obviously someone made an offer, and I asked the guy on the phone, he said that, yeah, someone had made an offer and it'd been

accepted, and then they got married. And then because they were married, they counted as a single entity or whatever. So that one of them already had a house. So they would have had to have paid second home stamp duty, which would have been like an extra sort of 50 grand or something. So, and so it fell through. Yeah. But I guess like, that's a shame, but also like, I do feel like certain houses in certain locations do go off the

market quick. So I feel like I can't, if I like it, I can't really mess around. I don't know, there's this pressure, but I know that that's the estate agent will say to me, Oh, you know, we've already got 10 people interested or whatever. I'm just like, I hate, I hate the whole- Is it like way out of the city? Process. No, it's like just on the edge of the town. All right. So you could still like get to the office. And honestly, like I'm not too worried because I know loads of good places are going to come

up in the next like in March and April and stuff. But you know, after everyone has this new year's resolution is to sell their house, right? And move house. And so there's this glut of them coming on the market in March and April. I'm never selling my damn house. Not after all this. Standing on a pile of rubble. March and April. I'm never selling my damn house. Not after all this.

Standing on a pile of rubble. It's like that. It's my hill. I'm staying here. I would have dialed this hill. Yeah, right. That I built my with many men. Yeah, many men. Many, many, many men. Men, men, men, men. Yeah. No, well, good luck. I mean, it's exciting looking around houses and stuff, but also, um, try not to get too discouraged because sometimes it just takes a little while, you know, don't, don't rush it. Make sure that the place that you get is like ticks most of the boxes. If not all don't compromise too much.

Don't feel like rush into a decision. Speaking of something that this summer, I've just been reminded, we're thinking of going to Japan for a couple of weeks. That'll be the summer holiday. And the kids are incredibly excited about it. It's quite a long flight, but I figure two weeks is fine. What tips and or tricks do you have, Lewis, as someone who's been there? And if anyone wants to mail into the mailbag about a potential holiday in Japan, what's good? What should we not do? What kind

of barriers are we going to face? What's the language going to be like? I know someone said you need a lot of cash, because paying by card isn't as common over there or something. So what? It might have been changed since Covid though. Like, that's the case. I didn't actually even spend my, use my card once when I was on holiday for two weeks over Christmas. Cause I think everywhere's just got little beepers now. That's sorry, that was in Spain obviously. But I think Japan's changed a lot since then. My advice is not to go in actual summer because it's fucking hot there during the summer months of July, August. So probably September, October. Well, that's your first mistake.

Well, having kids that have summer holidays is the thing. I mean, yeah. Oh, okay. Well, it'll be hot. So make sure you stay somewhere that has a hot going to be. It was fucking 36, nearly 40 in London a couple of summers ago. So it can't be much worse than that. I'm sure they used to it. I think they have air con and stuff over there too. I think they do. They're up on it. There is so much to do though. You can spend like a... People will write in and give you their tricks. Yeah, I'm sure they will.

But I've got a friend of mine actually lives there and is like... If it's your first time going, how long are you going for? Two weeks. Two weeks? Yeah. I mean, it just depends like what kind of stuff you like doing generally, but I mean, Tokyo is huge and there's tons to do there.

You wouldn't run out of things to do or see in Tokyo. I guess you'd probably want a couple of days where you're just chilling and stuff too. Not really doing too much, but there's shopping, there's historical things to see, just the atmosphere of the place generally is crazy. It's a huge, huge, it's like 30 million people live there or something. It's wild. Yeah. But I don't know. Cause I, when I went, we just stayed in Tokyo. We didn't go anywhere else. We didn't, we didn't travel. Yeah, no, we're going to do a little traveling and we're going to, we're going to take the bullet train or whatever. Nice. Yeah. It's good. The Shinkansen. It's worth it. Honestly,

you'll have a great time. I couldn't recommend it more. Yeah, it's good. The Shinkansen. It's worth it. Honestly, you'll have a great time. I couldn't recommend it more. Everyone, I couldn't recommend more going to Japan for a couple of weeks. It's like the most alien place. But they really don't speak English, do they? No. They do in Tokyo.

There's a lot of signs in English. Outside Tokyo it's harder, obviously. Okay. But around the tourist areas, you're like... We had to do a lot of pointing. And so much of Tokyo is the tourist areas. Went to Subway and ordered a sub and had to point at all the topics. Okay.

Like it was, it depends. Some people are fine and then some people just don't speak a word of English. You know, just. I'll get the old Google Translate out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We live in this crazy day and age where it's not, it's not as much of a problem.

Like when we went, we went in 2007 and, uh, there was a lot less of that available. So it was like, I mean, I think we still had a book with like common phrases. We had to like read and it never worked. It was awful. Yeah. It was different. Uh, Domo or regatta. Like it just, I don't know. We didn't have a clue.

But people were generally like nice, helpful, like understanding, you know, like it was fine. It was fun. Okay, this cannot be right. This is the Google Translate for I would like an Italian BMT sandwich with tomatoes, lettuce and ranch dressing. Okay, are you ready? This is in Japanese. Tomato, retasso, ranchi dressingo, osso etta, Italian, with an R, BMT, sanduiccio, or enegashimasu.

I really want you to order that. Can you film the whole trip, please? With you doing that. Sanduiccio is amazing. Sanduiccio. Sanduic that. Sandwich is amazing. Sandwich or enagamashi. I'll really try and practice it. Ranchi do re segu.

You're gonna have a lot of fun I think in Japan. Yeah, I think you will. Yeah. Just put a U or an O on the end of shit. Hamabaguru. And they'll be like, we got you. Apparently, that's like we've had emails about that before. Actually, people saying they go in a cab and they were like, oh, can you take me to

the Hilton Hotel, please? And they're like, huh? Hiltonu Hotel. And they're like, oh, yeah. Go to Tokyo Disneyland just for one day. Flax, go check it out. Maybe I don't know. I mean, it's already quite the flights alone are expensive. Like I don't know about Disneyland tickets as well.

And also, I mean, the tickets are expensive, but if you're not actually staying over there, it's obviously a lot less, you know, just for the day. Yeah, I don't know if you're not like if your kids aren't into it, but some of the new stuff looks nuts. Like it actually looks pretty cool. Yeah, maybe, maybe. We'll see. It's a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah. Flights alone. Oh, God. Yeah. And two weeks. Oh, my God. Yeah.

I mean, the thing is, the yen is super bad at the moment. Is it like Mrs. F was like the Japanese economy is in ruins. We should go there. It's the best time to go. Yeah. So it's like reverse economic migration. Right. It's like the the best time to go. SEAN Yeah. So, it's like reverse economic migration, right? It's like the country, the yen is super weak, we should go. It's even tempting to buy some yen now, in case they recover by the summer, I don't know. But yeah, it's really cheap.

Yeah, exactly. I know that when Lids and Rabz and, I think, Tom and Ben went out there actually last year. They said it was amazing and they had a ton of fun and it was way nowhere near as expensive as they thought it was going to be because of Japanese economy. Yeah. It is mad. It is mad. God.

Do you think that the biggest problem for the Japanese economy, apart from I know there was some banking problem they had a few years ago now, is that they used to be this big export country and everybody bought all their electronics from Japan. I think they're probably just running. Now China's taking over. I think they're running out of 12 year old girls because I was told that the entire Japanese economy is hinged off the back of young girls buying like stationery and toys and stuff

like that. This is what I was told. Hello Kitty is in tatters. Yeah. The economy was entirely caught up by Hello Kitty. If they're not having as many kids as they once had before, and there's no... Well, that's true. They're running low on young girls, you know, maybe that's why the

economy is suffering so much. So the birth rate in Japan is an average of 1.26 births per woman. Okay. And how many of those will turn into 12 year old girls? Well, I would say half. Well, not quite half because some of them will sadly perish before they get there. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. But that's lower than Canada, which is 1.33 and the US is 1.66. So the birth rate has been declining

since 1970. It's been a steady decline. Right. So obviously that means less girls flooding the market, less 12 year old girls fighting the market and buying stationary is one thing. Yeah. So pensions, you have the age expected life expectancy of Japan is high, so you have an ageing population that is sucking money out of the economy without contributing, dare I say it. They already did their contributing, but now you need other people to come in and contribute to make up for their lack of contribution and it ain't happening. Demographics. Yeah, I mean they don't look great around the world.

I think South Korea has a number less than one. So, you know, each woman has less than one child, which means they get a population that's going to shrink quite dramatically. But they've also, these countries are notoriously anti-immigration. Both of them, Korea and Japan, are very racist against each other. People coming over there, there is Chinese people coming over there. And so they really anti-immigrant. So they hate the idea that somebody's going to come over and steal their jobs and

help their economy and look after them in their old age. Yeah. It's very strange to steal their germs. Yeah. I think it's, it's, it's, we're in a strange situation there, but no, I don't think that's too much of a thing yet. I think it's a thing that's a worry in the future. Right. No, no, no. It's bad now. I think they've had problems already. Yeah. Well, I did see there was like an article about a Japanese train that was running just for one student to take them to school. Yeah.

Which just feel like a very Japanese thing to do. Was it a 12 year old school girl? With a backpack just fucking***ing bulging with stationary. She's having to do a lot of heavy lifting to keep that economy going. She's having to buy so much hat. She's got so much corrective spine surgery because the backpack is so heavy. So, to give you some idea, by 2070 they expect the population to fall, projected to fall by 30%.

Shit. Yeah. So that's 50 years. Yeah, but do you think that- We're all gonna be dead. No, we're not. A, that- It's hard having kids though.

You can't think ahead like, oh well, 50 years, who cares? I mean, by that token, why do anything for the future at all? But think about it though. The fact is, it's happening now, and they have to do something about it now. Yeah, but think about it nowadays. Okay, you have a kid, you still both need to work. It's almost impossible now for somebody to stay home with their kids. Listen, you go to Japan, Pflac, and then you tell me that it's a problem if there's 30%

less people. You go to one train station in Japan, you'll be like, I wish there was 80% less people in this train station. Yeah, that's true. It is rammed. It is rammed. Everywhere is packed. Yeah, that's true. It is fucking rammed. It is rammed. Everywhere is packed. Yeah, it's not like a desolate ghost country.

If there's 30% less people in Japan, they'll be way better off. You wouldn't even notice. You wouldn't even notice. I don't know if that's true. It's fucking packed. You just wait, honestly. It's one of the most densely populated places on earth. They think it's a crisis, and you're saying few less people sounds good to me.

But everything has to be growing though, right? Everyone's obsessed with the idea that we have to have more of everything, right? And I think finally only people are coming around to say maybe we should have less of a few things, I don't know, less like, pollution. And less, I don't know, just less consuming. But Lewis, that's a problem for the future. Unnecessary time. That's 50 years time. Who cares?

30% less people is not a problem, if anything. If anything, it's a solution to a lot of other problems. We'll see. But it's who the 30% less is though, because the thing, it becomes a problem when there's nobody to take, to come up and take on important jobs. You know, if you got a country full of 60 year olds, well, you're doomed. Nothing's going to happen. You're not, you're not going to have any doctors. You're not going to have any teachers. You're not going to have, and then they are going to have to get them. I mean, it's happening, it's happening everywhere

already. Listen, we, we live in a global economy though. Like there's countries like the Philippines who train up nurses and send them across the world and they work everywhere. That's not great for them. No, it's not great. I don't think that that's at all sustainable though. I think a lot of that stuff needs to be pushed in our countries. You know what I mean?

There needs to be more incentive for people to get into these jobs, because they mostly suck. Like, fuck me, imagine being a teacher. Yeah, but they don't want to pay. I can't think of anything worse. Like it's very hard to pay people this money, apparently. Yeah, but they also like, I think even a long time ago, well, I say a long time ago, even like 50 years ago,

it was much more common for somebody, like a couple, to have a house that was big enough to have a couple of children. I think the average age of somebody moving out of their parents' house now is like 30 or something. It's fucking insane. Like what the hell are you going to do? You can't even get one foot on the ground. Like you, you're both going to be working for sure.

Like there's no way that somebody is staying home and looking after kids in your, your, your post postage stamp size flat. You, what are you going to have four kids in a, in a one bedroom apartment? I am not, I am not arguing against any of that. Yeah. You're right. You're right. There's zero incentive for people to have kids.

And then they're wondering why nobody's having kids. Well, fuck me. It's not that hard to figure out. I mean, most of you guys have managed to make so much money. Like it is kind of simple economics. Like it's really not difficult to see why people are choosing not to have children. Like it's just impossible. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think that, but this is it. We live in a economy and, uh, if people

want things to happen, they have to encourage those things to happen. You know, if you want to make it, you know, if you want to offer subsidies on growing corn, everyone's going to grow corn. Like that's how it works. But like the cost, the cost of childcare is astronomical. It's not even that safe half the time. Like there's every, every, every other week now. These, these things are so complicated. Those SIPs, right? Then we've got this massively interlinked global economy with all these different problems going on and which one's the most important. You know, there's, there's, there's, it's, most important. The world is so difficult to grasp.

We want... It sounds so simple. Let's get all of Bill Gates' money. Let's get all of Bezos and Musk's money and give it to teachers and they can all get pregnant and then we have more 12 year old girls to buy tat and plastic crap and then we save the world. Okay, let's write that down. Let's send it on a letter to fierce Dharma.

I think a long time ago, maybe there was more incentive to do it because it was a more respected job. I mean, probably children were different a long time ago. Listen, we totally don't respect teachers. But our sizes are enormous now. don't respect teachers and a lot of the people who do services. I can't believe my kids' classes have not just one teacher, but they'll have a teacher and two teaching assistants. We didn't have that when I was a kid because we just didn't have 30 people in a class when I was a kid. So we did have 30 kids in a class.

But there was a difference. Certainly from what I've seen, when I was younger, the kids who were special educational needs, who were disruptive, who were a problem, went to a special school. They don't do that anymore. They don't do that now. They put them in the mainstream population. Yeah. And then your kids basically spend half the day cowering in a bunker while... Yes, dodging these kids.

Well, this one kid is just off on one throwing chairs around and breaking windows. And that's literally what happened. I know I was talking to my youngest about it the other day. And she said she said I just you know, I was talking to my friends the other day. Primary school was crazy. I'm like why and she was like listing all these things that had

happened where it was always the same two or three kids who were just hitting people, smashing chairs over people. One of them had a stick fight with the headmaster. Like he had a massive stick and he was coming out the headmaster. The headmaster was like defending himself with a smaller stick from this kid. There was teachers in tears because they didn't know how to cope with these kids. It's unbelievable. So you then have these teachers on these frozen pay people bitching about, oh, they went on strike because they want more. Oh, my God.

You have all that. There's not enough money in the world that I take to have to deal with kids. Who would do it? You're a saint if you do it, honestly. So I will not hear a fucking word against teachers, because I know exactly what it's like. Cause I know a bunch of teachers. Well, we were all in a bunch of shits in our time.

Do you know what I mean? And we've all had teachers. I was a very good boy. I was not. I think there's certain things you could all associate with, you know. Well, I was on report all the time. Uh, academically I was very bad. I was very good.

I was very good. Too much talking and clowning around all the time. Yeah. I did get chucked out for talking, but that's not disruptive. No. Well, it is. That's why you got chucked out. But they just beat you out. It wasn't like hitting people and shit.

No, it wasn't like, I wasn't, uh, I wasn't having like a psychotic episode every time I was kicked out. I was just- That made us into the men we are today, guys. What? Getting stood outside and then Mr. Hawkins would come out and say- That was our Vietnam. He would say, and why are you in all ways?

And I'd say, uh, talking in class, Mr. Hawkins. He'd say, it looks like you'll be having detention with me after school, boy. And I'd be like, oh, yes, Mr. Hawkins. He was a loon. Yeah, yeah. We had a couple... Sometimes yeah, the teachers had their own way of controlling. I guess it does make sense to have a couple of assistants in there because certain teachers could not handle the class and others did it with their technique of being mad, actually insane. Like a couple

of teachers were frighteningly... And they would flip on a dime as well and be like shouting at you and crazy, you know. And then they'd be back to nice again. And it's like, oh, you know, they were the ones that you treated really carefully. You know? I mean, my daughter was telling me the other day that her teacher, one of her teachers, was just interrupted the lesson to berate the kids for 20 minutes about how they were never going to amount to anything and they were failures and it was a disgrace and all this stuff. And I'm like, I sometimes wish I was there so I could like at least step up and defend them in some level. Because, I mean, I just

feel like as much as I have respect for and love teaching as a profession, there are some teachers that are so fucking bad that it's like scarring to kids and changes their view of education and that subject forever. A good teacher will absolutely change your life, but a bad one can too. And I think sometimes people forget that, that there are some really shitty teachers out there and they just don't seem to get found out. And it really pisses me off. There's the GPs are the same, you know, some, some are incredible and some are dire, you know, it happens.

It happens everywhere. Yeah. But it's like my, my stepmother always says, uh, what do you call the person who finished bottom in his class in medical school? Doctor. I was like, all right, fuck. So some guys scrapes through doctor school and he's still a doctor. Yeah.

You could be a doctor of all sorts of things. Like, I mean, look at Dr. Dre, just generally a doctor. But you could be like a doctor of music. You could be a doctor of the arts. Dr. Simon Clark. Dr. Simon Clark. You could be Dr. Simon Clark. I'm tempted every time I see him.

You could be Dr. Phil. I've got a rash time I see him. You could be Dr. Phil. I've got a rash. What a roller coaster ride that's been. Dr. Simon Clark. I've got a rash on the inside of my elbow. I've got a really itchy asshole. My penis is sore. Can you look at it, doctor?

Oh, I'm not that kind of doctor. Oh really? What good are you then? I've got a sore penis here for Christ's sake. You're walking around calling yourself doctor and I'm walking around with a sore dick. I've got to go over to this house for you so we have to stop. Oh look, I'm going to stop. I'm going to stop.

I'm going to stop. I'm going to stop. I'm going to stop. I'm going to stop. I'm going to stop're walking around calling yourself doctor and I'm walking around with a sore dick. I've got to go to this house view. So we have to stop the podcast. Oh, let us know what it's like. We're going to do it. The next episode we do of the podcast is going to be Lewis telling us all about his new potential

house. Oh my God. Well, tomorrow we're doing a mailbag. Do we want to do the house viewing next week? Do we want to talk about it next week? No, no. If he's going today, it's going to be fresh. We'll talk about it tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow we're doing a mail bag. Do we want to do the house viewing next week? Do we want to talk about it next? No, no. If he's going today, it's going to be fresh. Yeah, we'll talk about it tomorrow.

Yeah, we're talking about it. All right. Cool. All right. See you. See you tomorrow. All right. All right. Goodbye. Bye. Bye.