Little Gems for the People #4, Busy Beavers

Ned and Meg discuss the long history of the concept of hedonism and how it gets sort of a bad rap. For four thousand years, give or take, people have been arguing, sometimes strenuously, over the concept of pleasure and how to measure, maximize, and promote it. We talk about the philosophy of hedonism as well as the neurology and biological basis for it. Are you a doomer who thinks you can only experience a certain amount of happiness no matter what you do? Are you locked into a hedonic treadmill or can you alter your experiences enough to remain happy? Check it out and see what you think after this utterly riveting episode. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg generally don't find reaction videos entertaining, until the personal strife of the reactors becomes apparent, in which case Meg thinks they're riveting. We talk about consuming other people's misery, getting rated for inland water sailing, and the dangers of ingesting household chemicals. This one's a shorty! Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

In today's episode, two pseudoscientists tell you how to live, and it all starts with woke butter and homeschooling. We talk about alternatives to dairy milk and how non-diary stuff has gotten so much better than what was available only a few years ago. We consider whether milk leaches calcium from your bones and whether you ought to eat fruit before noon. We discuss kitchen gadgetry, ice cream vs gelato, the school to prison pipeline, the rights of nature (finally!!), colors of the day, and a fabulous book recommendation at the end. Thanks for listening, do as we say, wash your hands, don't be dick.

Have you heard the Good News? Ned and Meg are starting a cult! Which cult will it be? That is still up for debate. We haven't really settled into anything yet. Gravity, books, and white noise are all in the running for the focus of our hypothetical cult. What cult will you start and what are we gonna do with all the cash? As always, thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Meg and Ned decide to design a cult, but first we need some background. You would think years of Catholic 'education' would prepare Meg for this but whatever they said in CCD classes never stuck and Ned was raised without religion, so we need to do some research. We also forgot to get into the shit with Janja Lalich but more on that in #2. For now, join us on our preliminary endeavor into designing a cult. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Poison! Poi-poi-poison! In a serendipitous moment of uncertainty, a fascinating email arrived in Meg's inbox and graced us all with the topic of today's episode: intentional food poisonings. When we were little, this included urban legends around sabotaged Halloween candy meant to force children to behave (ok, boomers), but in real life there have been many, many intentional and very real food poisonings. We explore a selection here. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, fund the FDA, don't be a dick!

Ned and Meg chat about the Simming Problem, which is a concept from Iain Banks, a sci-fi writer, about the ethics of simulating entities or individuals or whatever. The *whatever* bit is because how we define all these things gets real dicey and yet makes all the difference. What is an agent, or an intelligence, or a substrate or authenticity and is consciousness an emergent property of sufficiently complex systems? Who fucking knows! Hard question! How do you get ChatGPT to say fuck fifteen times? Turns out that's easy. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick.

Ned and Meg admire the magnificent Dieter Rams, who pointed and shrugged his way into our hearts, and we discuss his legendary ten principles of good design.

Ned and Meg celebrate the near-anniversary of the Titan Sub Failure with a couple updates about the ongoing situation, lawsuits, obituaries, and so on. We also learn a couple things about the Gay Agenda, no relation to the Titan Sub Failure. Thanks for listening to our schadenfreude. Wash your hands, don’t be a dick!

Ned and Meg recorded this so long ago that they don't even remember what it's about! It's like looking for a pine needle in a haystack, or some other bad analogy. We are apt to surprise and delight (maybe) everyone, even us (probably). I mean delighting ourselves is basically the whole point of this thing. Thanks for listening, wash your hands, don't be a dick!