Triforce! - Triforce! Mailbag Special #11: The Perfect Workout Companion

Episode Date: March 22, 2023

Triforce Mailbag Special 11! Sips starts working for Amazon to develop Alexa apps (for free), we're giving you ENERGY for your HARDCORE WORKOUT and we're taking sides in the Checkers war! 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. of you. Think about something you're good at. Now think about how you got there. Chances are you had someone to help you get started. If you're thinking about starting to invest, Questrade's award-winning support team is here to help you learn how to become a better investor. From placing your first trade to setting up customized stock alerts, we're always by your side. Just a few of the reasons why we are Canada's number one rated online broker by money sense get started today at questrade.com hello welcome everyone to a mailbag. A mailbag? I love the mailbag.

Although every time we do this, it makes me never want to say anything ever again. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, you get called out a lot. Well, so do I. You get ready for this week. Afterwards, I'm like, I need to just stop having thoughts and opinions and ideas because they're wrong or they annoy someone or they upset someone. Don't think like that. Don't think like that. Because nobody else lives their life like that, do they? Like your average non-podcasting listener out there.

How often do the things that you think and chat about with your mates get listened to by what the two dozen people that listen to this podcast so all of them seem to write in every week telling us we're all wrong uh let's try i'd like to flip that around i'd like to flip that around i want someone to record their conversation yeah and this get a bunch of people to listen to it and we'll fucking critique the shit out of that oh my god that's a great idea this is what i always say to people if you have a podcast i suck at gaming i always say you know what record yourself playing a game and uh and let me watch it and and critique it and let's see let's see how that goes that's been my favorite part of streaming dota um the in-houses that we do my favorite part is these lads that sit there and chat

lmao lol ha ha ha that's so you're so terrible then you watch them play and they're fucking abysmal and they're like i didn't say i was any good i'm just yeah yeah yeah no i'm certainly gonna uh i'm certainly certainly gonna comment and critique the the best one i find is when they're like oh my god you're such an idiot do this and you're like well you can actually do that oh i don't know i've never played this game before i was like okay here we go like those are the worst ones do you know what i can always reward you guys to make me feel better don't you worry dude i get backseated a lot when i'm playing games especially tarkov because everyone thinks they know how to play tarkov and and apparently knows how to play tarkov if you're watching somebody play tarkov it's because you're too scared to play Tarkov yourself.

Exactly right. So I was playing the other day. I am too scared. I got backseated in-game by a stranger. So I'm in-game. I'm hiding on top of a little shack with an SKS, waiting to see if I spot a player. And this other scav runs past.

He goes, dude, do you really think you're going to hit someone with that scav gun? The durability on it is so low. moa is gonna be huge i was like just i'm just having fun dude it's like good luck and everyone's like shoot him shoot him yeah you should have just shot him honestly but it's just like you can't get away from people fucking telling you what you should be thinking or doing shut the fuck up yeah it's crazy first email you let's so with that said thanks for sending us thank you honestly most of these this week are fantastic like some really good emails it's i pick out the ones where people are being particularly sassy

because i think it's funnier by the way it is can i just say i occasionally get people tweet me uh a picture of where they're listening to the trifles podcast and it always cheers me up always i love that every time someone says it like even if it's just like a filing cabinet or like you know like a drab windy rainy morning like i just i just i just we did this ages and ages ago we just said please tweet us pictures so long ago yeah people still do it all the time it's great i i love seeing them just my favorite is when they say might be a little late on this but you said to send in pictures of where we listen i'm like that must have been like three or four years ago we said that it feels like a long time it's never too late yeah please keep doing it yeah all right

uh hey guys i love it jackie here smiley jackie i'm writing in, not just for me, but for my seven other gaping vagina havers in the room with me right now. Right. We're all longtime Yog and Triforce fans. I showed them the first episode of this podcast. We basically talked about it every week since. Seeing as we've all recently had a chance to get together for the first time since COVID, I believe we're hosting what could potentially be your personal hell of a podcast listening party for the newest episode. Although we may be eight women in a hotel room, we are also in the process of donning several thousand dollars worth of brightly colored animal themed outfits at a particular kind of convention.

Smiley face. Fair enough. I mean, that's fair enough. Oh, no. Yes. What is that laugh? Oh, no. Yes.

What is that laugh? I feel like if they listen to the wrong podcast, they might just be horrified, though. Because sometimes we express some anti-furry sentiment. We don't mean it. Despite your frequent assaults on our lifestyle over the many years that this glorious show has gone on for, we've decided that our weekly dose of dad-ranting bullshit philosophy and 80s media recommendations are too important to miss. glorious show has gone on for we've decided that our weekly dose of dad ranting bullshit philosophy

and 80s media recommendations are too important to miss yes we've had a good laugh thinking about the sheer look of horror on your face should you somehow open the door and uh hear the of course perfect podcast being listened to in such a godforsaken way and of course take your comments about us in jest for real so thank you to the three of you uh blah blah blah yeah man that's that's crazy because like now all i can imagine i'm imagining eight women in a hotel room dressed up in chip chipmunk costumes like uh making uh chipmunk noises and stuff like uh whilst listening to this podcast you know like uh imagine imagine bursting in on uh on like uh on santa's workshop like and all the elves are like busily like working away or whatever.

I just imagined that, but it's a bunch of women dressed up as, as animals and listening to a podcast instead. So thanks for that. That's wonderful. Yeah. This reminds me of something that happened over Jingle Jam. So we worked with the Wallace and Gromit Grand Appeal.

It was one of the charities. Oh yeah. And we invited all the charities to come down to Bristol and meet us and, you know, say hi and sort of get the idea. Because some of them were not really familiar with what we were doing. Right. But the local Grand Appeal, because they're local, they're in Bristol, they're building a very cool jingle jam building house thing.

Anyway, they're great but they brought with them their wallace and gromit costumes which are just and then they sort of had to kind of draw there were about four or five women and they i think there was a guy and they um had to sort of draw straws amongst them to which one would have to go it's like these horrible sweaty costumes it's just because they they they i think they've all variously done time in the costumes now they were super upbeat and excited and like they had such i don't know i think if you work for a charity you have to be a very nice kind of person i think i i I don't know. I guess you don't stick around very long because I'm sure the charities don't pay

as much as they should do or whatever. And I'm sure it must be a bit of a stressful job. It's a labour of love, I think. To make it feel like I'm being paid a salary to work for a charity, but also I do have to try and at least make my money back. You know, I need to put this work in, right? You know, you feel like you have to be, you know, I guess it's more.

I think it must also be very rewarding because if you're working for a big company, you're essentially working to make the people that are extremely rich already slightly richer. Like that's essentially your job is to pay your salary and make very wealthy people slightly richer. If you're working for a charity and your job is to make people who are really struggling slightly better off, surely that's much more rewarding. I would hope so. And it should be the goal of humanity, really,

to do that rather than anything else, I think. I think there must be a little bit of pressure, though, to be, I don't know, to be efficient, to be effective, to feel like- Of course. To feel like you're not- Anyway, yeah. I mean, if you're working for a faceless corporation, you can just browse Reddit all day. Anyway, these charity people were super lovely, like super energetic, like so excited and nice and kind of like, almost like we're a bit like

jaded and tired and boring and like, you know. Whereas they were just like, what you're doing is amazing. And it was like this real shot of adrenaline that we needed right before the jingle jam. They're also, a lot of them are on drugs. Charity workers, famously big, heavy drug users. I don't know if the... Well, actually, that would explain how high energy they were. Yeah, fucking cat, cat mate is the opposite gets them in those suits they're hitting glass hard they're on that they're on the good stuff

the meth but the wallace because the was to grow it costumes um i assume they have to do events and stuff and things but but it's even like the senior um the more senior members of the team i not see not that they're that old but you mean the ones who'd be already been working for the charity for 10 years still had to do their time in the costume oh you gotta do your time it wasn't like it wasn't like they could just get the young the young new one the new blood to to suffer in there um but yeah it was so funny because i've got a crack these costumes are great anyway sorry carry on this is from roe i'd love to hear your lad's opinion on this um because it takes a it takes a turn that i was not expecting all right right the appearance i'm roe big fan tiny penis moving swiftly on i've had the pleasure of listening to your podcast

while serving in the british army i'm part of the R.E.M.E., the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers, as an armourer, repairing and maintaining all weapons held by the army. So far, a highlight has been taking part in public duties in 2021. Whilst on public duties, we supported the Queen's Guard by standing guard on post

at all four royal locations in London. However, we have a slightly different uniform and no bear skin, which is that big hat. We had... So this is where it takes a turn. We had a four palace challenge wherein you would wank at each royal location. Oh my God.

This cannot be. I have no idea if this is a tradition slash goal for the other cap badges that come under the Kingsguard, or if it's an odd goal of the R.E.M.E. known for their heavy drinking and lewdness uh i'm back on public duties at the moment if you'd like free entry to the tower of london i can get you in for free as i'm on duty here holy crap we are we i mean jesus yes please i first and foremost i would love free entry into the tower of london but i mean I had my suspicions that people were jacking off everywhere all the time. I'm not going to shake your hand if I ever meet you, Ro. No.

Because you might be on part four of the challenge. Yeah, he might be at the end of the gauntlet. Exactly. I'd definitely shake his hand. Yeah, but you don't know what his hand has just been doing, Lewis. That's my point. Yeah, but he's an engineer. He's probably got grease on his hand anyway, right? He's an electrical engineer, buddy. Come on.

Electrical mechanics. These guys are the tank maintainers and stuff. They're basically the engineering wing of the army. I have some knowledge of them because when I was in the cadets, we went to Germany and we did a week staying with these guys. They organized this thing for us young lads. And I spent time with these guys. And I can't say they were heavily drinking wankers, particularly.

I thought they were very nice. I actually got a cat badge. I've still got it in one of my drawers somewhere. Rimi, like a cat hat. So I can pretend I'm in the bloody group. It's like metal and everything. There's not a lot of them. They're not that big of a unit of the army, I don't think.

So yeah, I can imagine this is an army thing though, right? What, like the jerking off challenge I guess women can take part too it's not necessarily limited to I suppose so sure much more easily I should think

like there's I think you could just lean up against a washing machine if there's one of those knocking about I think it depends what you're working with doesn't it though well a vagina I mean no i mean if you're a man oh i see to tell depends what scale we're talking here you know man oh man i've got an email here this is this is all the four royal i don't there's buckingham palace there's uh kensington palace uh there's the tower l London... What about Windsor? Where's Windsor?

Windsor is in Windsor. Yeah, but there's another... Windsor Palace is like, isn't it up north or something? Am I going mad? No, you're thinking of the castle, Windsor Castle. There's Windsor Castle, yeah. Windsor Castle. Where...

Does that count? No, it's not. Well, it's like... It's in Berkshire. Yeah, it's like just on the outside of London, but not quite London. I can't think where the other one would be. Four royal residences. I reckon if, I don't know if it means something else to the army, you know?

You've got Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle. Oh, Windsor Castle is considered part of it. It says the Palace of Holyrood House and Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland. So I guess you've got to do all four. I don't know. Either way. You've got to do like one in each country. Yeah. uh this is from this is i'm gonna get this lad's name um this guy's name is beata wank around the aisles sorry i love that beata half porson i think uh so

i think he's icelandic um he says i'm about to become a dad for the first time an interesting turn of events given my grotesquely tiny penis, but a welcome one for sure. I was wondering if you could get Lewis, with him being the only non-dad of the podcast, to give me some advice for my new upcoming role. So Lewis, and then Sips, you're going to critique Lewis's advice. Sure. Let's see if Lewis is ready for a dad. You're going to give us just a brief bit of a one-minute little monologue.

I'll cue in advice about becoming a dad for the first time. Okay. So I think the thing is just to go with the flow. People have been having kids since ever. You wouldn't exist if thousands of people hadn't had kids before you. That's so true. So true. You've got to just rely on your your your paternal instincts um do what your your wife or partner says you know squeeze her hand when she's giving birth yeah and um you know make sure you got the

car got some towels down in the car don't take it personally when she just tells you to fuck right off like mid labor and then like you know maybe limit it to like two kids max later on i know like there's the temptation to have more but resist yeah my dude um you know god make sure to like just abandon all your friends and life commitments you life will never be the same again yeah you know get your holidays done get your site you know get your will made, you know, tidy your cupboards. They ain't going to be tidied for the next seven years, for God's sake. Oh my God, there's no way. I've seen anything about Sips' house.

Yeah. You know, just wet wipes, you know, just be prepared, just get prepared, you know, be like a prepper, get your ducks in a row. Yes. And just be ready for the apocalypse. Pretty much. Yeah, I think that's pretty good advice, actually. It's that time.

Yeah. I think that's- I feel like that's solid, Flax. I would give the same sort of advice as well. Well done. Well done, Lewis. You fumbled your way through that one. I've listened. I've listened to you guys.

He's been listening. Yeah, right. Advice for new dads. God, good luck to you, my man. Indeed. Good luck. Holy crap. Okay, here we go.

This is... This might be a bit nuts. This is from... Hello, Triforce. My name is Jazzy, and I've been a longtime Yogs fan and Triforce listener. I work for Chant Protective Services in the US. While most cases are just petty neighbors or divorced parents making mountains out of mole hills, or mole holes is what they've written here.

Mountains out of mole holes. There are still some really tough moments. A while back, I was interviewing a kid regarding some really heavy stuff. Since I was listening to the podcast recently in my car, the Triforce logo was on my lock screen due to it being paused. He noticed and said he loves the podcast too. And we had a good chat about it to lift the mood after a tough conversation. I thought you'd appreciate that.

And just in case it has to be said, I did not tell a teenager that I had a tiny penis because obviously. Also, in regards to your discussion a few weeks ago about people naming their children dumb stuff, I see it a lot at my job. I've spoken to kids named Zelda, Link, and Ganon, and also a girl named Magic. Right. Aw. Yeah. I suppose Magic is quite sweet, but Link and Ganon.

I mean, Zelda, Link and Ganon. Robin Williams started off, didn't he call his daughter's name is Zelda? Zelda Williams, I think that's right. I don't mind Zelda so much because there's even like characters called Zelda in like Sabrina the Teenage Witch. It sounds like a Greek name. It just sounds like a Greek name, like Zorba. Like Zorba. Zelda the Witch. It sounds like a Greek name. It just sounds like a Greek name. Like Zorba.

Like Zorba. Zelda the Greek. It does. I think Link is a boy's name anyway, right? There's like Rhett and Link, you know, Good Mythical Morning. I think it's Lincoln, right? It's just short for Lincoln. Oh, yeah.

So that's not too bad. And Ganon is a bit of a weird one. I think most people don't tend to name kids after bad guys. You don't see many Hitlers running around, that's for sure. But maybe Ganon's had like a redemption arc that I didn't know about. Not many Voldemorts. Get some Voldemorts in there. No, there's not. But maybe they're just

Vol- I actually wonder if Adolf is still like, was still a popular name after World War 2. Or if it was just one of those names that nobody went near sort of thing. No, I think a lot of people changed their name away from it. Yeah, yeah. But it must have been... It's got to be like one of those old, old sort of like traditional names though, right? Like Adolphus, isn't it?

I think. Yeah. There's probably a Pope Adolphus, isn't it? I think. Yeah. But there's probably a Pope Adolphus. Is there any other name in history? This is definitely something we've spoken about before. I'm getting serious, serious, uh, triforce deja vu here. Is there any other name in history where you think, I mean, Genghis springs to mind as a name that you couldn't-

Genghis. Yeah. You only think of one person. Adolph, Genghis. Yeah. Who else? Attila. Attila. Well, it tends to be- name that you couldn't guess yeah you only think of one person adolf genghis yeah who else well it tends to be that these these people were the these people were the hitlers of their time though right like we we talk about hitler because he but but napoleon used to be you know the yeah napoleon the bad word right no one would name their kid Napoleon. Well, maybe in France they did. Bonaparte.

You know, certainly like those- Man, that reminds me. I was playing Hitman 3 yesterday, and I found an item, which is a little doll of Napoleon, but it was a remote explosive, and it was called Napoleon Blonaparte. Just thought I would mention that. That's good. That's a good one. Thank you for sharing.

No problem. No, I think like the thing I have about these kids' names is that some of them work well when they're a kid, but then what if they were an old person? Like having a name like Magic to be an old person, you just sound like an old hippie, wouldn't you, right? Yeah. And would that have like a nominative deterministic effect on you as well? Would you be more into magic, you know?

I feel like people that you meet called like something baker tend to be competent at cooking. That's not true at all. Because they feel bad about like not being, you know? I don't know, it's just like a constant reminder. I think you're you're i think you're really reaching here but okay but well we talked about this before but i i there's a million bakers out there who have never once uh baked a loaf of bread in their life and or and never will there's millions i am fascinated about how these like things like psychologically like like change

your choices you know if your name's magic how's that going like like to change your choices you know if your name's magic how's that going to affect you in your life you know I'm and I know and some people it doesn't affect them a jot honestly I think it probably the only the only real tangible effect on their life is that they're more likely to just have their name legally changed at some point, whereas most people probably don't bother. Right. You know? This is from Tristan. But then again, Magic Johnson, you know, he was like, you know, he was- True.

His name, he was not born, his first name was not Magic, though. It was Dunks. It was, what was it, okay, hang on a second. It was Three Pointer. It was Basket what was it? Okay, hang on a second. It was Three Pointer. It was Basketball Johnson. He changed it to Magic. It's Irvin. Also Magic Johnson. Irvin.

Magic Johnson, yeah. Magic Johnson. Did people not think Magic Johnson was a... Okay. You know what? I think the main thing, if you have a really unusual name... He did use his Johnson quite a bit as well. He did.

That's how he got into so much trouble. Yeah. Right. I mean, he got AIDS because he slept around so much. That was one thing. Good lord. Yeah. It's quite a sad story. Anyway, I think if you have a memorable name like Zelda or Magic, the number one thing that's going to happen is people are going to remember your name. And that does matter because you then at least are memorable. So yeah, I do think there is something to be said for having a memorable name, but I don't think that having a name like Minnie Driver, for example,

isn't an Uber driver, is she? She's an actor. So Minnie Driver is a memorable name, that in itself is enough. Harrison Ford doesn't own a Ford. No. Just saying. But Minnie for me is a name where if your kid is called Minnie, it's okay. But then as an adult, it's probably less okay, right? Minnie is just a bit of a, I don't know. I don't mind Minnie as a girl's name. I think it's quite sweet.

I think it's quite cute. I don't like Junior. Junior, yeah. What about Junior Soprano though? That's suited him. Uncle June. Uncle June. Uncle June. Come June. Uncle June.

Come on. All right. Come on. Let's move on. This is from Tristan. This is interesting, because I was talking about archaeologists the other day with someone out of nowhere. Hello, gents.

I'm an American archaeologist working in New Mexico, and I have a story about my recent fieldwork in the desert. We were camping in the remote desert wilderness a couple of hours drive from any civilization, looking for signs of Native American occupation in some canyons. We would hike 10 hours a day through rugged terrain with little shade trudging through thick desert brush. Let me tell you, let me tell you, the plants here are mean as hell. Right. Everything from small grass.

The plants are mean. The plants. But wait, everything from small grasses. The mosquitoes or the snakes. You wouldn't get mosquitoes in the desert, just saying. No, no. Everything from small grasses to large bushes and cacti have some sort of barbed growth or massive thorn

which thoroughly rakes through your clothes. I had a 10-centimetre thorn pierce the sole of my thick leather boot and stab into my foot. But it's not the flora that's concerning here, it's the animals. While crawling on my hands and knees in a rock shelter looking for artifacts, I felt something tapping my head

and looked up. I saw a 23 centimeter desert centipede scuttle at speed into a crevasse. Look these things up. Fucking nightmare. Less than a minute later,

I crawled over a boulder and put my face less than a foot from a diamondback rattlesnake. He didn't even care, but I had to work around him for the next couple of hours and had to dodge one of his friends coming back to his shelter

when I was leaving. At night in our tents, we would hear the coyote packs running through camp, and in the mornings we would find cow carcasses with hunks of flesh still attached to the bone. Even though my job is nothing like Indiana Jones, some aspects like the snakes ring true. Keep up the good work and wish me luck in the field. Good luck, Trist. Good luck in the field. I'm glad it's you doing it and not me. I would not like to do that job at all.

Jeez, I would hate that. Send us a picture. He has sent me three pictures. Wow. I will endeavor to drag them somewhere and save them. Put them in the Discord. Yes, I will do that. Hold on a sec.

Yeah, that's what I want to see. Yeah, God. Well, he's making it sound like it's packed full. I thought the bloody place was empty, you know? No. I didn't realise it was like... Also, what's a cow doing in the desert? How did they get that in there?

How did they get... How far did they drag that from? Well, I guess that it sort of wandered off. They probably milk it every damn day to help them keep going, you know? No, they usually bring it with them. They've got to bring it with them, yeah. Yeah, they brought it with them. Fresh from the source.

Here are the pictures. So, you've got... Let me see. So, the top one is the bits of cow. There's a fucking hoof still attached there. So, that's pretty grisly. That's pretty grisly. Then that's the kind of wilderness we're talking about with all the desert brush.

Yeah. And then there's a rattlesnake in a hole. Oh, it looks like Death Valley, doesn't it? Look at that. There's a wee rattlesnake in a hole. Sorry we can't share these with you, but just imagine them. Just imagine. Imagine, like, it looks like the scene out of a spaghetti western, if you've ever seen one of those, right?

That's kind of what, like, the landscape looks like. You could just imagine. Oh, yeah. This reminds me of the story that I read back in the day about the germans who are missing in death valley i think we talked about this ages ago but man if you never read that story it's really worth reading it's like it's basically um this family of germans were missing in death valley and it's really remote right really really kind of like super remote to the point where it's a day's drive out there and you you're you know there's no phone signal and no you know it's

just a nightmare don't take your family there would be how i would put it no it's funny funny enough like for me it's in the name i'm not going to a place called death valley uh daddy what are we going to hell canyon and i'm not going to hellscape and i'm not going to death land those are all places that i've just i'm not going to really becape and I'm not going to Deathland. Those are all places that I've just, I'm not going to really be going to. Especially not with my family of young children and my wife and stuff. I won't be taking them to that either. So yeah, if you Google up Death Valley Germans, there's a guy's blog, which is still up, where he just catalogues his attempts to find what happened to this family.

And eventually, spoiler, did find out what happens to this family and eventually spoiler did find some did find out what happened to them like a shoe and then found like it sounds like uh it sounds like a great documentary honestly yeah it sounds like uh firewatch the game firewatch if you ever played that really good game really really good actually really nice vibes in that game yeah but the story was uh like that sort of built up in in like while you were playing it. It wasn't what you expected. It wasn't what you expected, but it was pretty good. It was all right.

Yeah. I like that when I watched. I watched, T.Y. watched, I watched The Menu. Have you seen The Menu? I haven't watched it yet. No, I haven't seen that. I recommend. It's not what I expected, which I like.

I'm still watching that. That's all I need from a TV show or movie these days. I'm still watching that Ken Burns, the US and the Holocaust documentary, which is long. That's all I need from a TV show or movie these days. I'm still watching that Ken Burns, the US and the Holocaust documentary which is long. It's interesting and pretty grim but long as well. But really detailed. I don't think there's going to be a twist there

though. No. Yeah, it's all. It's not the kind of place where there's something. Also, I watched it. It was quite good. It was a bit unexpected? I don't know. But anyway, yeah, let's carry on. This is a great, by the way, it's a great podcast today. Loving this.

I'm glad you're happy. Shout out to all the little groups of people. Like, shout out to the furries sweating their little furry balls off in costumes and the Rimi guys sat in a greased up under a tank. It's just great. And the guy in the desert.

I especially like the fact that nobody's called me out on any of my nonsense today. It's been especially good because I don't know if you listened to the last mailbag. Well, we'll see. You got one email Sips. One. In the whole time we've been doing the Triforce. One.

Well, I have standards. i'm criticizing you for not paying the the fucking extra calling you a bozo and that's all you can talk about i can't get over a week well i have high standards i might no but no but sips is the darling of the podcast no one is above criticism all right maybe in future if I get one that's in any way critical of Sips, I'll censor it like some kind of government agent. Okay, no. I'll put a black line through it. There was the charitable Bozo guy,

and there was the Wisconsin guy as well, if you remember. You brought that on yourself. I did not. You criticized Wisconsin, and believe it or not, a bunch of people from Wisconsin weren't happy about that. I didn't think that that could happen, though. Like, not in a million years did I think that that would happen. You didn't think they had computer accesses, would you?

I didn't say that. That's like leopards ate my face, isn't it? I did not say that. I didn't think they could complain about me. I thought I was untouchable. I thought it was safe to make fun of Wisconsin. This is from Sean. Sean works for Amazon in the Alexa home products Q&A department.

Oh, no. I've been working on creating skills for Alexa devices, like games and functions. Was wondering what ideas you guys might have, realistic or not. So, what ideas do you guys have for what the Alexa could do? Man, I'm not doing your fucking job for you. Do your job. How about you come up with the ideas? No, no.

I've got enough to do already. I don't need to be doing this, too. Jeez, now I'm going to be racking my brains. Thanks so much for this. I honestly think the smartest people in the world have not figured out how to make Alexa useful or like, or like anyone asks Alexa more than Alexa, what's the time? Can you think of a way where I can ask Alexa to play radio friendly versions of otherwise very explicit songs? Because I would love my kids to be able to listen to some hip hop classics, but

it's impossible to get the radio versions to be able to listen to some hip-hop classics, but it's impossible to get the radio versions to play on Alexa. So, maybe that you can start with that. So, Alexa can detect swear words and beep them out. Or like sometimes they cut the swear words out. But no, she doesn't even need to do that though, because mostly on Spotify or Amazon Music or whatever service you're using there are radio friendly versions of like all of these songs because a lot of these songs as explicit as they are at some point were in the charts so it would have had to have been played on the radio so there are versions out there it's just impossible to get alexa to pinpoint the one the version that you want to play. So for instance, how about that?

Please. The one that goes la-di-da-di-da. It's the motherfucking D-O-double-G. Yeah. Why can't it just be the mother fluppin? No, it's the one and only. The one and only D-O-double-G.

Snoop Dogg. Mother flipper. Mother trucker. Yeah, exactly. Like it's not, they exist. They do exist, but it's just, it's not- It's not hard. They exist. They do exist, but it's just- it's impossible to pinpoint them on Alexa.

I would like to talk about the alarm system on Alexa, because I feel like the voice recognition is that you say alarm, and then it just- it flubs it a lot when you're asking it. Like, I'm like, Alexa, can you set an alarm for 7 30 every weekday except fridays when i want it to be 8 30 and it goes setting alarm for tomorrow 8 30 it's like the fuck so i don't know if it's my accent or i don't enunciate or it just doesn't hear me or whatever but i wish it would say sorry what was that last part you know just just ask for some clarification because sometimes it just has a goal and then you're like fucking fine alexa cancel all alarms

you gotta start again. It's just not very smart. Just smarten it up. Right? Smarten it up. It's been around a long time. Make Alexa smarter. Yeah. I think a lot of people, yeah, like we said, do just use Alexa for alarms and basic crap,

right? What's the weather going to be like is what my daughter asks every morning. And then she tells us. Alexa, what's the weather going to be like today? It'll be 11 degrees and we'll rain around lunchtime she's like guess what dad i'm like what and then she tells me i'm like cool so that's about it at the moment yeah so your daughter is kind of like a pseudo alexa yeah alexa if it could run upstairs and and tell me things i wait alexa here's one alexa make me a cup of tea or get the kids to make me a cup of tea please that would be

a good one all right and what does that do then? Does that send them a text message? No, it just says to them, I will keep making this noise until you make dad a cup of tea. It just doesn't shut up until it gets confirmation from me that I have had my tea. That would be good. I feel like Alexa's tried everything, right? They've tried like text adventures. You know, they've tried like drop adventures you know they've they've tried

like drop in phone calls you can like drop in to other people's like to talk to them but that's just none of these things are are actually very good yeah um i feel like like this they've tried so like so much and none of it's really stuck because people aren't really comfortable buying stuff over alexa because we never trust that she can hear us yeah that well and you don't want to buy the wrong one exactly and also you don't really want to buy like something without seeing it a lot of time because half the time even the shit i buy on amazon like i bought some um something some varnish the other day and it was like a minuscule bottle and i got like scammed do you know i bought a litre of it and I bought a fucking tiny mini bottle.

A tiny 10ml. I think the core problem that Alexa has is, what can she do that my phone can't, is I suppose the problem. Because the only thing it's got going for it is, I can just talk to it and it will sometimes do what I ask it. That's it. That's essentially the selling point of Alexa is, it just sits in your house and listens to everything you say uh even though it says it doesn't it does i'm sure and then you ask it to do stuff and it quite often flubs what you've asked it to do or it does something that you could have done in two seconds anyway so it's kind of just redundant it's a bit like people have when alan should have brought out that phone that did email at the same time as BlackBerrys came out.

Well done, Lord Sugar. The Amstrad emailer. All right, let's move on. Let's move on. This is from Ryan. I was saddened recently to hear that one of my fellow countrymen had written to you in criticism of beans on toast. He's an American, by the way.

Right. Americans have many things to be embarrassed about. In my experience, the topic of gross foods doesn't come up often, but I assure you that beans on toast is not always the first one mentioned. I proudly write to you as an American beans on toast fan who occasionally indulges in what I call the half American breakfast, which is eggs, sausage, home fries, or hash browns, and beans on toast. There's nothing better, although the Heinz curry flavored beans aren't really worth $5

a can. This is getting very specific. They got a barbecue flavor beans as well. That's kind of nice. The Heinz. Yeah. If you're ever looking to spice things up a bit. Well, I mean, okay. Hold on.

I get this. There is more. There is more. Just hold on. Americans do love to hate British things. It's not a texture thing, I'm sure, because we eat baked beans with hot dogs all the time. But like many American things, baked beans here are sugary and are often heavily flavoured with things like

bacon, maple syrup, honey, onions and barbecue sauce. Molasses as well. I was surprised to see beans on a dinner, on a diner breakfast menu recently and had to test to see if it was the sugary American kind or the tomatoey savoury British kind. I was disappointed. The British ones are still very sweet.

They are, but not as sweet as the American ones, I think is his point. So he's saying that any country that gave the world the culinary delights of meatloaf, grits and cheese whiz should on occasion step out from behind their cheeseburgers and apple pie to appreciate what else the wide world has to offer. You're sincerely, Ryan. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you, Ryan. Thanks so much. Finally, somebody said it, you know. Yeah. Yours sincerely, Ryan. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you, Ryan. Thanks so much.

Finally, somebody said it, you know. Someone's talking sense, right? Thank God. Thank God. Yeah. Well, okay. So, first of all, I've heard good things about Branston beans. They're very good.

Yeah, they're good. Is this a thing? Good beans. Is this the truth? Yeah, they're good. We have them now. And Branston pickle as well, yeah. Much, much better.

Much less of a soupy sauce than the Heinz. It's a better consistency. It's better flavor. But I'll say this. American listeners out there, if you want to make your baked beans better, my friend Sarah from Texas sent me a bottle of Salt Lick barbecue sauce. This stuff is the best barbecue sauce I've ever had. Hands down.

If you put a big old, I'd say, let me think, a big, big tablespoon of that into your beans when they're cooking, mix it all through, you get amazing barbecue beans and that's the best. So add a little bit of a Salt Lick barbecue sauce. This podcast is not brought to you by Salt Lick, other barbecue sauces. It's not? Apparently not. I'm always looking for an additive to my beans, but I always felt like was it was just gonna okay here how about this sweeter you're ready for this

i got a couple of things that you could add to your beans this is a little recipe okay add a bit of molasses into your beans okay not too much molasses what year are we get some molasses in there then get a little just get like a little tiny bit of brown sugar in there as well. Sugar and molasses. And then get a little squirt of French's mustard, American style mustard in there as well. Right. Jesus Christ.

Oh man, it makes your beans real nice, trust me. Get some candy floss and fold that in there as well. Yeah, sure. Get some Haribo, why not just dissolve those in there? Put some of those flying saucer UFO sweets. Break some of those flying saucers open and just pour the sugar.

Get some sherbet on there and a couple of grams of sugar and some more brown sugar. Very sweet. I'm not sure. This is from Joseph and the Park Runners. That's not a band. That's what they do. I'm from Bournemouth. That's why I'm reading this out.

And I listen to the podcast while doing the weekly park run. Right. Like most runners, I love stats. Sorry, you're reading it out because of the Bournemouth. Yeah. I love stats. So he gets some sort of special treatment. Absolutely.

I love stats. I track my running speed and times, etc. I'm sure there must be many others like me that listen to the podcast while tracking our exercise. Could you please give us a power boost during the podcast to help us push us to our limits and get those pbs i i always wonder what those runners are listening to and i just assume they're listening to trance or something right like some some banging venga boys or whatever like just just some something like that like that that just gives them that,

like something to run in time with. I always imagine them listening to like Lighthouse Family or something, like, you know, like, lifted, do-do-do-do-do-do-do, lifted, do-do-do-do-do-do-do, you know what I mean? Like stuff like that.

All right, so let's each give them a power boost. Sips, you can go first. Give these runners a power boost. Come on, guys, keep your peckers up. All right, let's's each give them a power boost. Sips, you can go first. Give these runners a power boost. Come on, guys. Keep your peckers up. All right. Let's see you work those glutes. Oh, my God.

That's great. You're doing so good. Well done. Clapping. I'm clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. Is that good enough? Yeah, sure. Lewis?

Don't give up. You can do another five yards or whatever, how far you're pushing. I know, you've got to believe. Just think about how good this will look on your fitness tracker when you look at that when you get back later. God, you know, just come on. Work off that flabby baked beans on toast that you ate this morning. Get rid of it.

You're working off. I'll do one as well. You are feeling very sleepy. Go and have a nice lie down. There is no more running for you. Ooh, go lie down. So tired. Feel your legs getting heavier.

Ah, that's just to balance it out. Nice. Yeah, that's good of you. That's very good. It's good of you to provide balance. Well done. Oh my God. All right.

Well done. What's next? What else have you got for us? I was listening was listening to the episode of y'all talking about that 90s show when you got to calling

Wisconsin the middle of nowhere and stuck in the 70s oh man well I'm sure you'll be glad to hear you've got listeners in Wisconsin angry

me being one of them holy crap I would say in general you're pretty accurate in that there isn't anything too crazy I'm sure they've got like a giant

ball of string or something. If you want a bit of an exaggerated example of Wisconsin and the Midwest, here are some things that we are known for. Wisconsin Dells, which is the water park capital of the world. Chris Farley, who was born in Madison, Wisconsin. Jeffrey Dahmer, friend of the podcast, born in Milwaukee. Yes, friend of the podcast, born in Milwaukee. Yes. Friend of the podcast.

Harry Houdini, born in Appleton, Wisconsin. Wow. Mark Ruffalo, born in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Jeez.

Cheese and dairy. People refer to themselves as cheeseheads. And beer and breweries. Yes, Wisconsin. We don't have any of those things. No. Here in the rest of the world. For Sips, I'd say the easy comparison of

Wisconsin and other Midwest neighbouring states is a lot of Canada. Basically, a lot of nature in the outdoors, and he's saying he does like Banff and Jasper in Canada, whatever those are. Well, I mean, they're beautiful spots, yeah, and not very unique, like, compared to

say, Wisconsin, for example, because it's other mountain resorts. So, you know. Hmm. So not so much criticism, so much as pointing out some very ordinary things from what is a very ordinary place. Yes. Yeah. So, I mean, Mark Ruffalo is like he's he's pretty mid. You know what I mean?

I like Mark Ruffalo, but you wouldn't describe him as like exciting he's very wisconsin i would suggest i didn't know how he was from you know baratislava or somewhere and changed his name you know i just assumed he was one of these no he's from wisconsin i didn't realize he was a just a all-american you know i'd like to point something out that he was from wisconsin and he was an escape artist. So he escaped Wisconsin. That was his first quarter of business. That was his big start. He got out. If I can escape Wisconsin, I can get out of anywhere.

Sounds like a bad action movie, doesn't it? Escape from Wisconsin. Escape from Wisconsin. Listen, I'm sorry for describing Wisconsin in an unflattering way or whatever. I've never been myself. I only hear things about Wisconsin. Okay. Like people tell me that Wisconsin is just kind of plain, kind of boring, like a little bit Fargo or whatever. And I believe them so yeah you know if you're coming at me with uh with with some knowledge bombs to to dispel those myths great that that's good because i honestly i don't have any uh any any any i don't have like a dog in this fight i don't have a horse in this race like i just don't care he doesn't really care i really don't i think the world generally has moved on a lot. And I think we do watch a lot of 80s, 90s stuff where maybe Wisconsin was more of a

part of a joke than it is now. I mean, well, hold on. Things have changed a lot. But at the same time, a lot of the people writing in to defend Wisconsin are really not saying anything particularly exciting. It's like, we've got a big water park and we make a lot of cheese it's like wow you're right i've completely revisited my opinion of wisconsin as potentially a fairly regular boring place anyway this is this is bizarre this is from benji i work in a lab at a major university in the u.s doing academic research

in the field of cellular agriculture my work is specifically focused on how to grow meat in a lab. We call meat grown this way, cultivated meat. I'm wondering if you guys would ever try or be interested in eating cultivated meat. Do you want to hear how they make it first? Sure. The goal is to get muscle and fat cells from animals and grow the population of cells, hopefully forever so we don't have to get more from an animal, and then figure out how to grow them in 3D in the shape shape of meat. There are huge humanitarian, ethical, and environmental benefits to growing meat in this way, but you guys can read about

that yourselves. There are also a lot of companies that have started working on this problem, in addition to academia. And Upside Foods was recently the first company in the world to receive US FDA green light for cultivated meat uh after they concluded that their cultivated chicken is safe to eat would you eat lab meat as a vegan lewis i'll ask you first um hmm i gotta say i feel like it's a no okay um partly because i just it just makes me feel a bit queasy me now i've really not really not eaten and even lab grown meat i think it's just a personal thing i i think even if it's like solves the problems of cruelty and climate change and all these issues with with meat production it's amazing how fascinated we are i think something also about the idea of it being made in a lab that whole description was very

unpalatable yeah but but then again like you know it's best to not think too close too closely about where your food comes from unless you'd end up eating fuck all do you know i mean like you end up not eating you know it's all the chocolates made in some terrible you know abusive um situations you know modern slavery and you know despite you know tony's chocolone doing their best, even then the milk's coming from cows that are being injected with hormones. It's pretty miserable stuff, generally the food situation. So would I eat it? I mean, I guess I don't miss meat. I guess when I say meat, I mean, this is what I mean when I say meat. I mean,

chicken, which has a very good texture, but I think you can get very close to that with other things anyway. I like spicy food generally. And so when I eat meat, I tend to have it with some spicy sauce. And as a result, chicken to me is like not that crucial. I know some people swear by it, but I don't miss it. I certainly don't miss the saltiness of fried chicken or bacon. I think they are very overly salty in the same way I don't like overly sweet things either. I think my palate is like, I've tried to be a little bit less on the extremes. So I don't really love the gristliness of sausages and lamb and some of these other meats too and i don't think pork's really very good

i miss ham i think ham maybe if there was a lab grown like a salty one thing you can get uh corn ham corn ham i grew up with a with a with with a nice butcher opposite, and they always did this very nice, thick slices of ham that I very much enjoyed in a sandwich. And I think I miss a ham and mustard and, you know, I miss a really nice ham and mustard sandwich. I mean, honestly, if you look at Spam, that could be lab-grown meat. Yeah. It doesn't look like it came off an animal.

Well, I mean, I used to, I didn't hate corned beef either. Like, that was, like, growing up, I ate a lot of this. That looks like lab meat, like just a slab. Which is pretty grim. Yeah. I mean, corned beef, God. And some people really, the thing is, it's about what you grew up with, right? Like, too.

Like, if you were a kid and you grew up eating these pretty awful sounding foods, like tongue or, you know, haggis, which is basically, or you know haggis which is basically i found that haggis is just lungs basically some other bits and bobs in there but yeah more or less well it's like it's like something like 50 or 60 percent lungs yeah um delicious just what you need for your health for your health i don't know. So would I eat lab-grown meat? No. Sips? Would you?

I don't know if I would, actually. It just sounds kind of gross, you know? It does. It does sound a little bit gross. Do you guys ever- Do you possess anything that is made of silk? No. Silk.

That's too fancy for me. Do you know how they make it? Because it comes out of a bug, right? A worm? No. So everybody- My vision of where silk comes from is that they had like racks of these little bugs and some kind of spool that just pulled the silk out of them.

They grow the silkworms. And as soon as they start to go into cocoon form, they boil them and chuck them all in a big thing and boil them. And then you pull the silk out as you're boiling them sort of thing. So I think that kind of changed my idea of where silk comes from. I had a vision. I think I saw this on Twitter and I was like, what? I looked it up.

Everyone that was posting was like, I thought that all the worms just sat all there cozy and little thing. And the silk came out and they just carefully wound it onto things. But of course, they just fucking boil them. So, yeah, there we go. Sorry, I don't know. I don't know what I expected. No, why did we expect

it to be in any way nice but yeah like any of our things that are far from nature we just find a really cruel way to do it just fucking boil them along much quicker all right this is from uh gear um dip hearing you asked about what baby's first words are in other countries this is on another episode we did where we were saying that dada and mama seem like the most common. Yeah. My baby is four months younger than Sipsy's youngest, and she's half Norwegian and half Vietnamese.

That's quite an unusual mix. Wow, yeah. It's a combo, yeah. We spent a few months in Vietnam last year, and her first word was a Vietnamese word, nian, which means hurry. Oh, there you go. It means hurry up. And she would yell out,yan nyan nyan whenever her

grandparent just took too long to dress her or change her nappy so it turns out not all kids say dada or mama some jump right into yelling at old people for being slow my daughter is now saying dib a lot she says dib yeah she goes dib dib dib dib dib dib dib that's that's the uh the mainstay and she's trying to she's now trying to say words. Like she knows, she knows like the sounds of the words that she needs to say in certain situations. So like she's got a lot of lift the flap books. She's got lots of spot books, you know, with lift the flap. And if you've ever read one of those books before, you'll know that 90% of the book is no like you you open a flap and

somebody is saying no on the other side because they're always looking for spot or they're looking for his bone or they're looking for a school bag is his bone under the table yes and then you open the flap no so every time you open the flat she goes oh oh oh it's like she knows like what roughly she needs to say but she's like not quite there yet so funny yeah i wonder whether that's just like a more complicated sound to make in your mouth i don't know so many of these sounds like just everything like babies they just just develop slowly learn they're constantly developing so there's just always and and a lot of different cultures use different um or don't have specific vowel sounds in their

language naturally. So, or like, a great example would be the clicking, right, in African, some of the African languages where they, where we never even, or even like, just like the Welsh, you know, or the sort of Dutch hacking and stuff, you know, or fanning it up. That stuff is so natural to people in certain languages. The chipped the babba hoolen. The hoolen in the baham to chib and hulagoon.

Yes. Oh, you're a natural. I speak fluent Dutch. Nice. This is from Yu Chen. Hi, Perion. Chinese babies do indeed babble mama, but the phrase for dad is baba rather than the Western dada. Yeah.

Source, I'm Chinese. Nice. Yeah. Okay. So, they say baba instead of dada. Baba. Baba. That's cool.

Yeah, they say baba a little. I think anything that goes like, ah, ah. Like, I think like, ma, da, and b are like the kind of go-to they're the easier ones yeah but like you trying to get them to say like tata or something like that is important like they can't they can't do they can't roll their r's and then if you couldn't say no they can say like romage so you're saying they can't do Lady Gaga's hits. No, they can't say Roma, Roma Ma. What's the other one?

La, la, la. No, they can't say la, la either, so it's tough. Okay. Well, useless. This one's from Ed. This is about something that you said recently, Lewis. Being called out. I think we may all have commented on this,

but I seem to remember it being Lulu. My name is Ed, and I live in Melbourne, Australia. On a recent Triforce episode, you guys spent some time questioning the legitimacy of the humble kazoo in a non-novelty setting. I couldn't be more offended by this if I tried. Okay, here we go. As my own band's debut single features a four-part harmonized kazoo break

in what is undoubtedly not a gimmicky musical climax at all. Right. Okay, no. Of course. Lewis also talked about anyone being able to play a kazoo. As someone who hands out about 50 kazoos to the audience whenever we do this song live, I can assure you this is not the bloody case. People just blow into the thing and expect magic notes to come out the other end.

We had to incorporate a kazoo lesson into our shows to address such stupidity. Maybe it's something in the water down here. Anyway, love you lads, keep up the good work. Thank you, Ed. Maybe it is something in the water down there. Send me some tickets. I'll come to one of your shows. I'll send you lads the song.

They're called Tracksuit Larry, and the song is Gimme the Bats, if you want to look it up. Okay. That is a listing for a three bedroom flat in Houston Road for 10 million pounds. Nice. That was something I sent. I love how that is on your clipboard. That's because my mate sent that to me.

There is a three bedroom flat for sale in Houston Road. It is above the St. Panc Road it is above the St Pancras Kings Cross St Pancras station it is a 10 million pound flat three bedroom but it looks pretty amazing anyway there's the track if you guys want to give that a listen if you guys want to that reminds me did I tell you why

I was in a group chat the other day on WhatsApp and I wanted to share a YouTube tutorial video for a board game and so I clicked share on the app and posted day on WhatsApp and I wanted to share a YouTube tutorial video for a board game. And so I clicked share on the app and posted it in WhatsApp and it shared the advert that was playing at the start of the video instead of the fucking YouTube. And I didn't even know it could do that, but I just felt like the biggest boomer in the world because I posted this advert to the group channel. It looked like I'd been hacked or something it was like a super scam it was like you know it was like you

get free robots androids on your um you know some real scammy looking ad so everyone was like in the group chat was like what the fuck and i was like oh shit i better delete this quickly because it's embarrassing and i pressed delete for myself instead of delete for everyone so so you couldn't see it anymore and everyone so i couldn't see anyone everyone else could um and i just felt like the dumbest guy ever oh my god so that happened this week i've i mean that's been taking up all my headspace that's been just living rent free in my living rent free very very zoom Very Zuma phrase. I can't unthink it now. So I just wanted to share that with you and that's out now.

God, that's out of my head. Do you guys want a poem? Yeah. Fuck me. This is from Greg. Hi, Pyrian. Long time listener. Sips doesn't sound excited. Well, he will be. I have been playing around with OpenAI's chat GPT and thought the following would be good to share. I have been playing around with OpenAI's chat GPT

and thought the following would be good to share. I entered the following prompt. Write a poem about three friends, Sips, Lewis and P-Flax, and their podcast, the Triforce podcast. Sips has another issue with his bath plug. Lewis struggling to get another personal trainer. Empyrean is busy answering the bloody door. Chat GPT came up with the following.

Three friends, Sips, Lewis and P-Flax, come together to bring us the Triforce podcast. Sips, with his bath plug, causing distress. Lewis, struggling to find a personal trainer, no less. P-Flax, busy answering the bleeding door. Together, they bring us laughter and more. Their podcast, a treasure to explore. From gaming news and all in between,

the Triforce podcast is a joy to be seen. So tune in, give it a podcast is a joy to be seen. So tune in, give it a listen. You won't be disappointed. We're sure you'll glisten. With witty banter and hilarious jokes, the Triforce podcast will have you in fits of giggles and strokes. So join Suits, Lewis, and Peefax for a podcast that will surely relax.

That's the fucking poem. Oh my god. AI's come so far, hasn't it? The tone of that is very weird isn't it dog shit with the real with the strokes and the relapse i it's it's kind of quite dark i quite like it it's the glistening it says the glisten i know like what does that mean it's glistening and stroking slightly gross very sexual i'd say so yeah it's kind of disgusting um this uh there is one more email i don't know if you guys want to hear it it is yeah fuck it let's do it quite a long one so i think we could finish on that uh it is a guy ranting about the game of checkers okay and how

people don't take it seriously i think we may have chucked in some jokes about checkers in in episodes from the past. But anyway, I have a period Lewis and Sips. This is a question I've had a lot because a lot of nerds who love chess find it easy to shit on checkers claiming it's an easier game. And they end up rubbing their noses at it. This pisses me off because the reasons they give are, to be frank, not good reason and betrays their perceived higher intelligence for their chess playing. This lad is off on one on a group of people who i don't think exist i don't think anybody hates checkers it just exists nobody cares one of the reasons for saying that checkers is a far simpler

and easier game is because unlike chess checkers is a solved game which means the outcome of the game can be guaranteed from any position on the board assuming both sides make perfect plays yeah so checkers is like connect four or noughts and crosses it's it's computers you can play perfectly and force a draw so you basically it's a game where you cannot lose right basically the arduous path to solving checkers is a story unto itself but suffice it to say it took a lot of very powerful computers almost 20 years to solve it as the possibilities in checkers are five times ten to the power of 20 from a computer's perspective chess is a far more complicated game to solve yeah oh yeah yeah yeah but hang on a second though he's saying it was difficult to solve 20 years ago right it was it was easy you could probably solve it on your phone

right exactly so carry on chess is a far more complicated game to solve but people are not computers having two people play checkers against each other can require an incredible amount of skill in reading the other's moves and seeing potential plans. Yeah, he's not wrong.

As much as even like tic-tac-toe is solved, right? Right. And I am... Even, you know, even nowadays, even... It's probably like...

It would probably take me five minutes to learn optimal tic-tac-toe strategy and never lose a game again. But I'm gonna bother do you mean um even if the game is yeah even if the game is solved by a computer it does not mean the human can ever learn every single play in checkers no one is saying that aj no one is saying that human beings because checkers has been solved that that means it's redundant okay no one is saying that from a functional standpoint there isn't much difference unless we get people shoving cheating devices up

their ass during tournaments i can't believe there are checkers tournaments first of all the most famous and well-regarded checkers player and mathematician marion tinsley famously played a match and after seeing the opponent play a piece said you're going to regret that and of course won they later found out the only way tinsley would be able to know his win was guaranteed at that point was to see roughly 64 moves ahead in the game. Another reason some people give to say that Checkers is more of a kids game is that the rules are simple. I don't see how that has anything to do with the difficulty of a game, as there are plenty of games with simple rules that are incredibly challenging, such as Go. A big problem with Checkers perception is that people don't have the highest opinion

of it, there aren't as many people playing it, and really not many people playing it at a high level. But I'm just ranting, because I feel like a lot of chess people are super pretentious, and it's just a little annoying to interact with them, to be honest, and I don't know how to reach them. What's his name, this guy? AJ. I'm actually converted. AJ, I'm converted. Your message made me realise that we shouldn't be judgmental about checkers

i definitely look down at it i've looked down at it before as like i think it's because it's played on the same board right that's why i think you're right i was just thinking but i think also like you've got to understand a lot of these very high level chess players even like throughout history like especially um bobby bobby what's his face um fisher you know fisher he bob Bobby what's-his-face... Fischer. You know, Fischer. He kind of wanted to play different versions of chess, right? He would modify chess to be different pieces, different spaces, different things, different ways of playing. Different starting pieces, yeah. Yeah, and so, I mean, checkers is really only a modification, I guess, of that. You know,

checkers, you could imagine it as a series of sort of semi bishops right like kind of do you know i mean like that can you know so it's i guess you could you should look at checkers as a version of chess that is simplified but um but it is played by humans and i guess like any game if you're willing to any board game i wonder whether sir i think a lot of the board games that we play are also probably solved i wonder if monopoly and risk and you know a lot of these other games are inverted commas like solved i don't think they are because there's elements of chance in those games oh right which is going to be hard isn't it i mean there is certainly an optimal strategy for Monopoly, but it's entirely

dependent on dice rolls, essentially. But what you're doing is playing the odds. But I wonder whether, even given the chance element, is that simpler to learn than Chequers' strategy, right? Well, it's very simple rules. There are certain bands of property that are the best to get on a Monopoly board. There are YouTube videos I've watched on this. You can just look them up. First of all, every time you land on something, buy it. And secondly, you really want to get certain sets. But the issue with monopoly is it kind of requires your opponents to play suboptimally for your optimal strategy to work. Because unless you get very lucky, you're not going to get a full set. You're going

to have to trade with people. And if they trade sub optimally, then that's not a strategy to rely on. No. Because if you had the best Monopoly players in the world playing, none of them would trade. No, but you got to get- Why would you ever trade? You got to make them desperate though, right?

Yeah. But then, I mean, it literally would take like 12 hours of just going around and somehow hoping people go broke enough that that you can buy their shit because i know that what's meant to happen is when um when you have to mortgage a property uh are there are certain house rules you can have where at that point it goes up for auction and shit like that if you can't pay your debts yeah you gotta mortgage everything and then when you do fully run out of money and you have no other options you're out of the game and then all of your cards are returned, right? It goes up for auction, I think.

Yeah, either way, it's pretty nuts. But yeah, I think because of the element of risk and playing against multiple other opponents, it's not possible to solve it so much as it is to have an optimal strategy and then you have to hope you get a little bit of luck. Whereas with chess, there are computers out there that are unbeatable because they see till the end of time. The tree for all the possible moves is so huge that they see. But they make these moves that are impossible. The accuracy of them is so high.

That's why people were suspicious of Neiman because he made six or seven, not just good moves in a row, but the perfect move multiple times in a row far outside what he normally achieves yeah that i think you can look at these things mathematically it's like the same way we knew that dream was cheating in minecraft or using a mod that he didn't realize was right whatever the excuse he gave at the end but i mean like like it's the thing with um i guess my my my thing play a lot of board games, right? I play a lot of random board games with friends. And cheaters as well.

I also play a lot of strategy games with friends. You're familiar with cheating. Famous cheater. Well, yeah, I don't, I'm not like a big cheater. I suppose I used to cheat in things like Minecraft or Fallout or games where you are like something, single player. I don't mind cheating in single play if I could justify the karma in my mind, right? Like if the game's broken or something's not working or I have to grind up 2000 wood or something incredibly tedious, I'd rather just cheat that in and be like, yeah, okay, just pretend I did this.

You know, if I'm like basically just having to do some tedious job, like when I was a kid, when I had a newspaper round, I would have to pack the newspapers full of the fucking leaflets. And I'd like to do that in front of telly for like three hours, you know, doing that sort of stuff in video games. If I can avoid it by cheating, I usually will do, or I'll make a macro or something. And a lot of people would consider that cheating as well. Anything repetitive, I almost will refuse. I find it fun, though, to find a way to cheat, right?

To find a way to macro tedious tasks. But that's by the by. I think I play a lot of boys. I can play a game of Twilight Imperium tomorrow, which is this huge day long. The one that you said you didn't want to play with me when I was coming down. You don't want to play games with me. I couldn't get.

That's what it is. You don't want to play games with me. Also, you didn't come down in the end. I didn't. You were glad that you didn't, because you didn't want to play Twilight Imperium with you anyway. Exactly. Yeah.

Well, you're welcome to join us for the next one. But yeah, it's a long day and it's, I'm sure... That didn't seem sincere. I wonder how complicated a game needs, you know, I just wonder where Checkers sits on the actual level of complexity, right? It's very low. Very low. But I think it's about perspective though too, right?

Like Checkers, I think you sit there and you think, fuck, this is actually very, very complicated very, very quickly. At least with chess, I do. Whereas with a board game, your board games are designed, and video games too, for simple decisions that don't feel overwhelming because otherwise they're not really very fun, right? So humans are quite good at picking between two options or three options options but as soon as they're given like eight options or nine options like in chess you're like very overwhelmed suddenly on like what what you can keep in your

mind right right i think oftentimes most board games provide um at least try and keep good ones that i keep coming back to keep having simple choices that have sure they have maybe as much complexity as the other games but they don't feel like they do so it feels like the choices you're making are more fun than serious like i think checkers playing checkers can very quickly go quite serious right um and also like that's an element of playing with one person and playing with four people when i'm playing with one person i definitely feel very competitive whereas as soon as i've got four people around the table i'm just playing for fun right um and it's weird that that that that you that that strategy and competitiveness sort of

changes based on that sort of stuff right like like our perception of it anyway sorry i've ranted and i've gone down a weird path um as usual um please write me a letter that's what we love about board games and design i want to hear what people yeah any checker haters out there let us know what you think any pro tic-tac-toe is out there toe lads any tiddly winkers out there oh man uh yeah um this this this last bit will definitely bring some emails. I can guarantee it. It's the exact sort of subject people email in about is, actually, Checkers is incredibly high level,

and you're a fool for not understanding it. I challenge you to a Checkers off. Well, I'm sure you'd win, but it still doesn't mean it's a good game. I think it's a dog shit game. Sorry, Checkers guy. Yeah, I think you should try a june imperium yeah that sounds like a good one check that out there's like a whole thing is that game that board game has become so popular in the the tabletop sim discord that they've had to make their own section for it because it was just it was just only june imperium games in the looking for group i i i

haven't got a physical copy but i played it about 20 times well we should get it and play it i love june i'll teach you it's a great game obviously i don't want to play on ttt it's so fucking tedious tts no we'll play it on um we'll play it physically all right i'll get a copy all right fine it's a date fine another good one that we played one time was that terraforming mars was pretty fun oh yeah that's a fun game that's a fun i've played a good one that we played one time was that Terraforming Mars was pretty fun. Oh, yeah, that's a fun game. I like that, yeah. That's a fun game. I've played a lot of that now. I'm still terrible at it, but I have played a lot of it. I play against the computer a lot,

and it always beats me by, like, four or five points. It's very frustrating. Anyway, shall we call it a day there on Mailbag episode number 578? This was a cracker. I can see why people prefer the Mailbag. That was a really good one. That was nice. This was a great one. I only got called people prefer the mailbag. That was a really good one. That was nice. This was a great one.

I only got called out about Wisconsin one time. Just one time this week. Keep sending in your interesting stuff that you're up to in your life. If you're from Wisconsin and you have a bone to pick, pick away. Let's hear some nice things about Wisconsin. Let's turn the negative into a positive. Let's turn the frown upside down. Let's turn the negative into a positive. Let's turn the frown upside down. Let's see if we can get in touch with the tourism.

I want the tourism board of Wisconsin to get in touch. Oh, right. And defend their state. Let's hear it. Let's hear it from Wisconsin officials, not just plebs that live in Wisconsin. I want the king of Wisconsin to come at us. Official. The king.

Yeah. That's right. I don't know what they do over there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds right. He'll be like the dairy king or something. come at us. Official. The king. Yeah. That's right. I don't know what they do over there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds right. He'll be like the dairy king or something. Yeah, exactly. Dairy king.

Queen. All right. All right. Take it easy. Love you. We shall see you next time. Keep the mails coming. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.