The Core: Flying bricks, pacemakers, and quantum avian eyeballs

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

#Entertainment #Science #Cinema #Streaming Movies #Decipher Media #Sci-Fi

34:01

I think you could probably go back and track the stages of grief, probably that is what I went through. But I think if you do it right, you end up at acceptance. And that's where I ended up. And that's not to say that I've fully accepted the idea that the golden toad is extinct. Personally, I do still hold out hope that it could still be out there in those forests." - Trevor Ritland This conversation is with Trevor Ritland, who—along with his twin brother Kyle—authored The Golden Toad . The book chronicles their remarkable journey into Costa Rica’s cloud forest, once home to hundreds of brilliant golden toads that would emerge for just a few weeks each year—until, one day, they vanished without a trace. What began as a search for a lost species soon became something much more profound: a confrontation with ecological grief, a meditation on hope, and a powerful call to protect the natural world while we still can. Links: SpeciesUnite.com Kyle and Trevor: https://kyleandtrevor.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adventureterm/ Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222249677-the-golden-toad Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Toad-Ecological-Mystery-Species/dp/163576996…

5 years ago 23:56

MP3•Episode home

The valley of forgetability (The Core) between science-respecting sci-fi (e.g. Arrival) and totally bonkers nonsense (e.g. Jupiter Ascending).

Space shuttle

Landing the “flying brick.”

Bird navigation

Magnetite beaks. The possibility of quantum eyeball magnetic navigation HUDs. Corvid appreciation. Why birds don’t all fly into our windows and our eyeballs.

Pacemakers

Keeping your heart on-rhythm. Not as immediate a death sentence as portrayed.

Earth’s outer core

The absurd energies in the spinning of Earth’s core - a ball of iron the size of Mars, spinning a thousand miles an hour

That’s a whole lot of energy. If it doesn’t sound like much, let’s convert it to megatons: it’s the equivalent energy of five trillion one megaton bombs going off. Phil Plait on the spinning outer core

Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy Review of The Core: BadAstronomy.com

Support the show!

281 episodes

The Core: Flying bricks, pacemakers, and quantum avian eyeballs

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

44 subscribers

published 5 years ago

MP3•Episode home

Forgetability

The valley of forgetability (The Core) between science-respecting sci-fi (e.g. Arrival) and totally bonkers nonsense (e.g. Jupiter Ascending).

Space shuttle

Landing the “flying brick.”

Bird navigation

Magnetite beaks. The possibility of quantum eyeball magnetic navigation HUDs. Corvid appreciation. Why birds don’t all fly into our windows and our eyeballs.

Pacemakers

Keeping your heart on-rhythm. Not as immediate a death sentence as portrayed.

Earth’s outer core

The absurd energies in the spinning of Earth’s core - a ball of iron the size of Mars, spinning a thousand miles an hour

Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy Review of The Core: BadAstronomy.com

Support the show!

281 episodes

#Entertainment #Science #Cinema #Streaming Movies #Decipher Media #Sci-Fi

All episodes

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Isolated BS: VR breakthroughs, space clouds, and earthworm jerky 31:28

5 years ago31:28

31:28

Spaaaaace Clouds in space…? Microsoft Azure Space and Azure Orbital. Making space cheaper and more accessible with satcomm as a service. VR The new Oculus Quest. Past predictions . Pulling the VR market in the direction of affordability? Pandemic winter VR. Hating Facebook while embracing their VR product. Getting better at not getting sick. Experiences of unreality. Conferencing Virtual chewing noises. Missing irl conference-going. It’s like a vacation for adult nerds! Food Food preservation. Preserved dairy variations by latitude. Jerky! Appreciating controlled rot. Earthworm jerky. Roasted grasshoppers ! About Chapulines: Wikipedia Zebra vs Horses: Animal Domestication by CGP Grey: YouTube Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Her: sad foreheads, augmented audio presence, and friendly AI takeoff scenarios 37:29

5 years ago37:29

37:29

AI everything Creating a thinking, feeling artificial intelligence to do really important things for humanity like… sorting through your e-mail. N-dimensional AI chess. Rapid takeoff scenarios. Personal Assistants Natural language processing developments. The rise of proactive digital personal assistants. Predictive local, personal information. Digital relationship Virtual aural closeness. Presence and audio AR. Developments in form factor, interface, and functionality. Understanding the acoustics of spaces, materials, and your biology. Room mapping. Love, infinite attention, and generosity. The Forehead Feeling the heartbreak, right in the forehead. Her forehead scene: YouTube Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
An unexplained absence 5:43

5 years ago5:43

5:43

You may be wondering where we went for a minute there 😬 Support the show!

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
The Core: Flying bricks, pacemakers, and quantum avian eyeballs 23:56

5 years ago23:56

23:56

Forgetability The valley of forgetability (The Core) between science-respecting sci-fi (e.g. Arrival) and totally bonkers nonsense (e.g. Jupiter Ascending). Space shuttle Landing the “flying brick.” Bird navigation Magnetite beaks. The possibility of quantum eyeball magnetic navigation HUDs. Corvid appreciation. Why birds don’t all fly into our windows and our eyeballs. Pacemakers Keeping your heart on-rhythm. Not as immediate a death sentence as portrayed. Earth’s outer core The absurd energies in the spinning of Earth’s core - a ball of iron the size of Mars, spinning a thousand miles an hour That’s a whole lot of energy. If it doesn’t sound like much, let’s convert it to megatons: it’s the equivalent energy of five trillion one megaton bombs going off. Phil Plait on the spinning outer core Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy Review of The Core: BadAstronomy.com Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Stank waffles, VR development, and Venusian cloud datacenters 38:33

5 years ago38:33

38:33

Clouds in episode image from “Storm Clouds” by Albert Bierstadt/The White House Historical Association CC-O @ Wikipedia Waffles Belgian Waffle formula Tasty waffles! Stank waffles! With lots of syrup! Solving food problems with casseroles. Gravy! VR Marveling at the Oculus Quest two 25% price drop from the last generation. Hating Facebook. Realizing the separateness of AR and VR development, even within companies working on both at the same time (Facebook). Can/will AR and VR converge and become ubiquitous? WFH Working from home. Surprisingly long hikes and arachnid attacks. Tiny child legs and tiny child wills. Venus Life on venus? The dense, deep, permanent nature of the Venusian cloud layer. The possible effect on drake equation. Looking forward to balloon probes in the Venusian atmosphere. Ocean data Ocean-floor data centers. The cost of infrastructure and cooling vs the cost of real estate. The value of removing humans from the environment because we’re so loud and clumsy and moist. Review: We do not recommend the $299 Oculus Quest 2 as your next VR system: Ars Technica Oculus Quest 2: Oculus.com Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus: Nature Astronomy Chemical that shouldn’t be there spotted in Venus’ atmosphere: Ars Technica Microsoft declares its underwater data center test was a success: Ars Technica Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Raised by Wolves: exoplanets, eating rats, and fake-karate floaty physics 47:01

5 years ago47:01

47:01

Happy 5-year anniversary whoooooo 🥳🎉 Subluminal interstellar travel Accelerating for half of the ride, and braking for the other half. The advantage of avoiding squishy human cargo for high acceleration. The difference between the Alucard and the Alcubierre drive technologies (hint: a miserable pile of secrets). Special floaty physics, magnets on your feet, and fake karate. Exoplanets Exploring the growing options for Earth-like life in the solar-system. Kepler 22b. Where did the megafauna go? Exogestation - growing babies on alien soil. Meat stuff Sourcing and preparing rat meat. Snails. Face/Off and changing your identity. Exoplanet Exploration - Planets Beyond our Solar System: NASA Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Isolated BS: nuclear bananas, unreal simulations, and buttplug archaeology w/ Josh 50:56

5 years ago50:56

50:56

“Banana” image used in featured image with our brains by nicubunu CC-0 Josh, recently Made a strong showing on the recent Saving Private Ryan episode over at LSG Media. Real human stuff in between the dick and fart jokes. Teledildonics Tales of coupled internet-connected sex toys are way up ! Hooray for free and open source teledildonics at buttplug.io . Nuclear things Making long-lived diamond nuclear batteries from spent nuclear fuel. The banana equivalent dose of radiation. The trouble with battery-tech press releases. Eating enough grapes to give you superpowers. Buttplug archaeology. Tongue twisters. Forever-vibrating mummies and the Silurian hypothesis . Simulations The major leap in tech in the new MS Flight Simulator . Taking the fun out of games by making them rigorous simulations. The value of process simulations when the real thing is expensive or dangerous. Going all Ender’s Game on actual military simulations with Close Combat . Buying military might with lots of money. Tabletop RPGs Missing the humans-at-a-table element during the pandemic. Appreciating how much fun we had with Liam in our Mirror RPG playthrough (parts I , II , and III ). And catching Josh 100% on the hook to GM for the podcast again in the future! Hooray! Saving Private Ryan w/ Josh: LSG Media The X-Files Podcast /w Josh: LSG Media Buttplug: an open-source standards and software project for controlling intimate hardware: Buttplug.io Strapped Into A Sinking Helicopter (with U.S. Marines) by Smarter Every Day: YouTube Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
On Decipher History - Titanic! rich people, bad luck, and ever-increasing hugeness w/ Joe 1:40:04

5 years ago1:40:04

1:40:04

Production Costly! The costs of vising the wreck twelve times for research and footage, not to mention the cost of the film production overall. The extreme profitability of this film and James Cameron in general. Classism First, second, and third class on the same ship. Titans of industry. Runaway capitalism. The class divide and point of view before The Great War. The modern “royalty” by virtue of their wealth. Technology The pace of technological development in industries, especially intercontinental travel by steamship. Comparing the early 1900s to other periods of technological progress like the 1980s and 1990. Noting the nature of the automobiles in the film: literally the design of a “horseless carriage.” The cutting-edge wireless technology aboard the ship. The ship Three engines! Of two varieties. Steam-driven piston engines and steam-driven a turbine. Note: you cannot reverse a turbine. Peak power: 46,000 horsepower. 600 tons of coal daily. An anecdote about Mr. Diesel. A collection of small problems The nature of many disasters, probably including Titanic: a series of small problems, adding up to a catastrophic failure under the rigt (wrong) circumstances. Rich people hogging the Marconi wireless. Out of date lifeboat regulations. Loading lifeboats (badly). The reality of “women and children first.” Avoiding chaos until it’s too late. Judgements The inquiries from shortly after the event, and the great surprise you may experience when realizing that the company men consistently pushed blame back up the chain of command. Modern evidence changing our conception over time. Actually ultimately coming to the consensus that this particular ship on this particular voyage was mostly operated in a way that was totally normal in almost all respects and simply got very unlucky. All told, it does seem that Titanic was really really well-engineered and did remarkably well under the circumstances. [4K,60Fps,Colorized] Titanic, First and Last Voyage, April 1912 AI Recovery, added sound: YouTube RMS Titanic Survivors True Accounts of The Sinking: YouTube RMS Titanic: Fascinating Engineering Facts by the Engingeering Guy: YouTube Titanic - Alternate Ending: YouTube Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Proactive prostheses, facial recognition, and correlating diarrhea 24:31

5 years ago24:31

24:31

Fawkes mask in post image Multipainkiller Studio CC-BY Prosthetics Proactive prostheses in our future? Recognizing that we routinely do this with major joints, and with for a full cyberpunk limb-improvement future. Big brother etc Machine learning facial recognition. Fawkes machine learning facial image “cloaking.” The possible value of poisoned data sets. Placing individual bricks in the wall that is our ability be private and protect our data. Google correlating diarrhea. Emulation Finding a use for an old PlayStation Portable . RetroArch . The difficulty of old games and the power of limiting your options. Our website Our first outside code contribution ! And just thanks to Elad Avron and Hugh Fisher 😄! Fawkes Image 'Cloaking' for Personal Privacy: Chicago.edu Fawkes: Protecting Personal Privacy against Unauthorized Deep Learning Models (USENIX Security 2020): YouTube Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
X-Men First Class: nuclear panic, destructive resonance, and woolly mammoth piñatas 39:59

5 years ago39:59

39:59

Fear of mutation Our recent X-Men . Irl post-war nuclear anxieties . More mutant panic and more mutant supremacy bad guys. Irradiating Earth Not enough to make superpowers, but we sure did irradiate a lot. The clear mark of human civilization in the geological record. Past discussions of the Silurian Hypothesis. Neanderthal interactions 2010 Neanderthal DNA news and the possibility of this informing the film. Extincting things more by accident than on purpose in pre-agricultural times. Consistent neanderthal pronunciation consistency issues. The plan(s) Causing global nuclear war so you can… rule over the ashes? At least the Magneto version of the plan didn’t destroy infrastructure. Powers The energy levels required for useful destructive resonance as a superpower. Brown-noting your enemies in combat. Once more determining that functional immortality is the best power that w actually want. Submarining Fitting nuclear submarines in your megayacht. Ice floes vs icebergs vs glaciers. Where to get the best ice for your drinks. How I Boarded a US NAVY NUCLEAR SUBMARINE in the Arctic (ICEX 2020) by Smarter Every Day: YouTube Boarding a US NAVY NUCLEAR SUBMARINE in the Arctic by Smarter Every Day: YouTube What if We Nuke a City? by Kurtzgesagt: YouTube Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Isolated BS: 3D tracking, Doom on EVERYTHING, and game juice 54:30

5 years ago54:30

54:30

3D tracking Removing the manual work of 3d tracking in video production. CamTrackAR . Smartphone camera software processing innovations. Making creative tools more widely available. Grousing about Adobe’s overwhelming market-share and user-hostile subscription model. Hoping for a shift. Weather AI Dark Sky, the honestly best of all weather apps, was bought by Apple and have shut down their Android app. It is a sad day. Open government weather data APIs enabling innovation. Machine learning weather models. Hyper-local extrapolation and push notifications. Weather forecasting/reporting as a demonstration of probabilities. Website search We took the bullet for our website visitors and implemented a site search on DecipherMedia.tv in JavaScript! The result: we still do not enjoy JavaScript. But we do have search! Future functionality improvements. Here is our internal documentation . And a reminder that our whole site is open source and available on GitLab ! Doom on everything Our continuing fascination in seeing Doom on more things. And the less it makes sense, the better! Doom on Windows 95 in Minecraft , because why not. Game feel Game feel the book . Creating a satisfying input/response loop when all you’re really doing is mashing buttons. Vlambeer on mobile game “juice.” The relative difficulty of providing good “feel” on mobile games with a uniformly smooth display as an input device. Putting overtime into the design of basic repetitive game mechanics, e.g. Mario or God of War. New frontiers in game feel. Game programming for kids A wonderful, simple, directly productive introduction to core concepts: Scratch ! Proud parent moments. Jesus news Apparently The Passion is getting a sequel? The wackiness of ecclesiastical minutiae. Discovering more schisms in Christianity. CamTrackAR: Apple App Store DecipherMedia Site Search: DecipherMedia.tv You Can Now Play DOOM on a Windows 95 PC Inside Minecraft: InterestingEngineering.com Game Feel: GameFeel.com Vlambeer - 'The art of screenshake': YouTube Game Feel: Why Your Death Animation Sucks: YouTube Scratch - Imagine, Program, Share: MIT.edu Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
X-Men: superhero evolution, wolverines, and what lightning does to everything else 40:28

5 years ago40:28

40:28

Comic book movies X-Men as the dawn of comic book blockbuster cinema. The un-comicbook-ness of previous Marvel adaptations like Blade and Punisher. X-Men as the gateway drug to the language of comic book storytelling. Perfect casting Patrick Steward and Huge Jackedman. Superhero physique Belgian Blue musclecow Roby GFDL Blockbuster budgets and making getting swole your full-time job. Kumail Nanjiani and Rob Mcelhenney being honest. Muscle cows and muscle dogs Look, it’s not that hard. All you need to do is lift weights six days a week, stop drinking alcohol, don’t eat anything after 7pm, don’t eat any carbs or sugar at all, in fact just don’t eat anything you like, get the personal trainer from Magic Mike, sleep nine hours a night, run three miles a day, and have a studio pay for the whole thing over a six to seven month span. I don’t know why everyone’s not doing this. It’s a super realistic lifestyle and an appropriate body image to compare oneself to. #hollywood - @robmcelhenney Mutation Mutations: usually do nothing or are bad. But also sometimes are good! Exploring the high variance in mutations in the world of X-Men. Picking the best X-Men power: raw force production vs longevity. Wolverines The honey badger of the north! What happens when everything else gets his by lightning Lichtenberg figures . Making puberty even more awkward. New-mutant death rates. Norwegian reindeer mass lightning death . How Lightning Can Kill 300 Reindeer With One Strike: Wired The Ultimate Warrior Being Crazy: YouTube Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Isolated BS: social engineering, spotted dick, and proper beaver representation 52:25

5 years ago52:25

52:25

Hacking The reality of most hacking: social engineering . Hackers vs Sneakers . The 90s as the best period for hacking in fiction, back when people understood even less how computers worked. A review of Hacking in media. Free Software Free as in speech, free as in beer, etc. Freedom-respecting social network alternatives and the dream of critical mass. Mastodon . How the USGS uses Twitter data to track earthquakes . The impossibility of competing with YouTube. Appreciating Free software and open source and collaboration. Unicode things hooray Ranting about a user experience failure with Instacart. Text encoding, Unicode, emoji, and non-Latin writing systems. Emoji standardization. Lesbian emoji activism and the new beaver emoji ! Tattoos Stephen Wolfram and Arrival Heptapod logogram creation. Ravens. Figuring out how to spell “Bomberman” in Heptatpod. RPGs Dungeons and Dragons is fun! The positives and negatives of play-by-post. A review of our (Chris’) failure with Decipher RPG. A desire to try again! Liam Ginty . Monster Care Squad: A Ghibli-inspired tabletop adventure of healing Monsters and solving local problems in the gentle world of Ald-Amura Percent! “Percent” is literally just latin for “per hundred” and Christopher was this many years old when he realized this! And then we learn about per mille and per myriad and have to promise not to start using them. Spotted dick A rewarding pun-tastic etymological romp. Also it was really tasty! Attribution “ Six dice of various colours ” used in episode image - by Diacritica CC-BY-SA-3.0 Decipher RPG Mirror illustration commissioned for Decipher Media by Amber Lee Jones Monster Care Squad: A Ghibli-inspired tabletop adventure of healing Monsters and solving local problems in the gentle world of Ald-Amura: Kickstarter Hackers: social engineering, Kevin Mitnick, and hacking before the internet w/ Brian Epstein: Decipher SciFi Splatmoji - Quickly look up and input emoji and/or emoticons/kaomoji on your GNU/Linux desktop via pop-up menu.: GitHub.com Decipher RPG - Mirror Pilot #1: Decipher SciFi Decipher RPG - Mirror Pilot #2: Decipher SciFi Decipher RPG - Mirror Pilot #3 (the finale!): Decipher SciFi The hilarious, extremely convincing proposal to make a beaver emoji.: Slate Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Sonic: the console wars, allocoprophagy, and tiny blue Godzilla 47:59

5 years ago47:59

47:59

Cashing in Sanic . 8-bit nostalgia. Remember the Mario movie ? Imagining other possible Genesis-era ports. Chris is eagerly awaiting the film adaptation of Pigskin Footbrawl . Console wars Sega licensing sports for title recognizability. Sega finding a mascot in Sonic and dominating the console space, momentarily. Sega does what Nintendon’t Sega, an intellectual Sonic Unused Sega mascot candidates , including extra-mustachey Teddy Roosevelt! Sonic character design history. Consistency in appearance and attitude over decades and how to undo it all in your first draft of your movie. Don’t forget creepy-ass original movie sonic with his creepy human teeth. VFX responsibilities and character re-renderings. Tiny blue Godzilla. Release the butthole cut! - Christopher Speed Sonic’s smagic speed powers. Comic book power levels where they expand to fit the plot. The speed of sound and relationship with atmospheric density. Creating “frozen time” action scenes. Setting the bar at Quicksilver. Sometimes, you can only care about the science as much as the movie does. Supersonic vs hypersonic vs ultrasonic and the mixing of and Latin. Running loops. Hedgehogs A long-term human domestication collaborator. The lovable version of a porcupine. Spikey defense mechanisms. Covering yourself in other animals’ poop for fun and profit. Allocoprophagy. Sonic the Hedgehog: The Animated Series Theme Song: YouTube Human Loop the Loop with Damien Walters: YouTube Console Wars by Blake J. Harris: Amazon iTunes SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE ™: SONIC THE HEDGEHOG: YouTube Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Isolated BS: art restoration, ahistorical viking grooming, and preposterone 47:59

5 years ago47:59

47:59

Millhouse isolation Enabled introversion. Social anxiety and human avoidance: online ordering abd contactless food delivery. Masks Hoping for normalization of mask-wearing to confine your illness ot yourself. The popularization of medical masks for the lay population in China around the “ Manchurian plague .” Masks failing to combat person-recognition (or probably even facial recognition 😥). Viking grooming That one time we did a viking episode with The other Lee . Our best historical understanding of Viking grooming standards, and how that very much differs from out contemporary depictions. BUT! The contemporary depictions are really fun so it’s ok. 👌 Corvids The problem-solvingest birds . Ravens and other corvids and their respective quality as tattoo-subject candidates. Planning ravens on the chest/shoulders. Maybe a jackdaw sleeve? Nazis For real, fuck those guys. Cultural appropriation. Butt stuff Welcome to the Decipher Media colorectal new update. Christopher’s incoming bidet. Fiber supplmentation and chasing the ghost poop dragon. Young men living on Mountain Dew and waffles. Demodex never poop and then explode with poop and die Christopher Fitness Testosterone levels over time. Testosterone replacement therapy. Dancing - fun for the whole family! Strength nostalgia. VR Gaming Again with the motion sickness. Our website The site is now open source ! Go take a look if you’re into Jekyll or Ruby or Gitlab or generally just podcasting the hard way. Art restoration The unqalified Spanish art resotrers are at it again ! And don’t forget the OG: [Monkey Jesus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_%28Mart%C3%ADnez_and_Gim%C3%A9nez,_Borja%29). Hanlon’s razor . Upcoming As per our Colossus Roundtable : watch Person of Interest ! Masking For a Friend: 99pi.org Our open source website code: Gitlab.com The Life and Times of Mr C by Andy P and Emily RG: Batch25Comics Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Watchmen - Tulsa, nostalgia, and victorian spacesuits 35:13

5 years ago35:13

35:13

Tulsa Massacre The Black Wall Street Massacre . Detecting buried remains with ground-penetrating radar . Ozymandias Doing splodey blue-balls on a city vs dropping a squid. “Saving” humanity. Narcissism. Super-genius space-prison escape plans. Spaceships vs submarines. Catapults, trebuchets, and escape velocity. Dr Manhattan Ol’ bluey. Creating life. Exploring the universe when you can be everywhere and everywhen at once. How and why would anyone want to blue themselves this way? The Dr Manhattan formula from human to complete lack of concern for humanity. Nostalgia Chemical VR. An alternative route to Alzheimer’s treatment. Watchmen - Adapting The Unadaptable by kaptainkristian: YouTube Watchmen (2009 Film): iTunes Prime Video Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Isolated BS: tasty Pi, robot vacuums, and our saddest failure 37:43

5 years ago37:43

37:43

Computing Not the sweet and sour delicious dessert, but the computing devices. Kodi , Smart Mirrors , retro arcade machines , and low-power cheap servers in the closet. Apple moving to ARM . The next generation of game consoles. SSDs. Raspberry Pi4 model B Michael Henzler / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 4.0 YouTube Chapter-markers. Auto-generated subtitles and “free” transcription. Memeseeks The sad story of The Memeseeks Box . Learning how to frame what may be your “failures.” The original Memeseeks Box logo art Nicholas Lowe, used with permission Robot vacuums Both a cleaning tool and a defense against madness in the presence of eldritch horrors. “ Because they’re made of metal, and robots are strong .” Using the Roomba as a parenting tool. Deebot Ozmo . Plastic Rain It’s everywhere . Referring to our Wall-E episode with heaping portions of appreciation and concern for plastics. Big tech Withholding the sale of facial recognition tech from police. Bezos the nigh-trillionaire being able to afford his own ISS. “Cartoon Room House” used in episode image background, by mixrobastudio/pixabay/CC-0 Old Glory Robot Insurance by SNL: YouTube Frinkiac - The Simpsons Meme Engine: Frinkiac.com Master of All Science - The Rick and Morty Meme Engine: MasterOfAllScience.com Plastic Rain Is the New Acid Rain: Wired Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Upload: living forever, digital personhood, and hacking your own reality 45:44

5 years ago45:44

45:44

Self-driving cars Garbage in/garbage out with ML training. Whether or not you allow the user to protect the driver at the expense of the pedestrian, those deicisions are still being made. The advantage of rolling blacked-out rooms on the commute. Hacking autonomous vehicles. Economics Job competition in “knowledge work” when people live functionally infinitely and tirelessly on electricity. Loopholes for the wealthy. Brain scanning Electrical mapping of the brain. Desctructive neural scanning. Do we even have any other options for mapping our brain structure? Brain damage and resuscitation. Digital personhood Creating immortal and infinite digital slaves. Multiple instantiation of persons. Hormonal simulation. Physical, mental, and emotional growth when your life is “virtual.” Living longer and learning not to be the horrible old racist grandpa. Sense of self over time when uploaded. What virtual conditions could be so bad that it’s not worth “living” anymore? Waiting for democratized afforable versions of necessary technologies. “ ROM hacking ” your reality. VR Sharding (not sharting) your virtual worlds. Manipulating and filtering memories into re-experience. VR suit options: piezoelectric, pneumatic, and TENS . The Teslasuit literally shocked me by CNET: YouTube Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Isolated BS: hip thrusts, Dragons, and linguistic POV 41:04

5 years ago41:04

41:04

Fitness Standing desks are great and all, but the real flexibility innovation is not sitting in a car for hours every day. Inventing the “standing car.” Hip adductors like steel bands. Gaming Just Dance.Video game bodily control abstractions. DDR. GTA V. Video game scale and budget madness . GTA 2 demo nostalgia with co-bff Joe . John Carmack Polymath went from game engines to cars to actual rockets to VR to AGI, and we wish him great luck on that last one. Doom nostalgia. Dragon mission Yay! Space! Dramatically lowering the cost of space travel. Fancy new flight suits. Are touch screens a good idea? Space travel automation expectations. Language and POV Enjoying the early fight and chase scenes in Extraction . The use of language and subtitles for storytelling. Video . The Hunt For Red October - Learning to Love the Soviets by Patrick Willems: YouTube Masters of Doom by David Kushner: Amazon iTunes Upload - for the next episode!: Prime Video Weekly Free Games: Epic Games Store Starting Strength by Makr Rippetoe: Amazon Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Underwater: deep drilling, nitrogen narcosis, and astronaut helium voice 41:23

5 years ago41:23

41:23

Deep water drilling It’s expensive! And if oil is ever expensive enough to justify the cost of drilling in Challenger Deep then by golly you start investing in alternative power instead. Semi-submersible deep-water drilling platforms. Drillships. We drill kinda deep in the ocean but like, not actually deep. Record drill depths and the vast gulf from there to the Mariana Trench. The ocean: scarier than space Gravity meets Aliens. Pressures and temperatures that are more deadly than getting spaced out of an airlock. The deepest hole humans have ever drilled was barely deeper than Challenger Deep is under the surface of the ocean. Living deep undersea Nitrogen narcosis: it’s bad for you! Atmospheric mixture issues under pressure. Sealab I, II, and III . Aquanatical research. Sperm whales get the bends . Oh no your suit some kind of exploded . Monsters of the deep. Deep sea gigantism . Construction Engineering against 16,000 psi and freezing temperatures. Concrete strengths and saltwater issues. Misc Exothermic implosions - they’re like explosions, but backwards! Pistol shrimp. Long-range radio communications through water. ELF . Past discussions on the matter. Dumb infrared. Astronaut Scott Carpenter Speaks to President Johnson from a Helium-Atmosphere Decompression Chamber: YouTube Mom's Spaghetti by Eminem: YouTube Underwater Alternate Ending: YouTube Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Isolated BS part 3: ancient tattoos, zombie satellites, and running sandals 31:00

5 years ago31:00

31:00

Prank’d! Kids and aliens and not understanding how pranks work. Losing your arm to a racoon attack, but then turning into a cyborg so maybe it’s okay. Zombie satellites! Joe shared with us this recent development in zombie satellite communications. The long-term orbital stability og geosynchronous orbit, and ssedpace “ruins” as the longest landing mark of an expired humanity. Joy items Huaraches! Coffe tools and supplies. Colbert’s long lost dinosaur mug. Running Sandals! CC-0 Ancient tattoos Ancient tatoo princess a rt reconstruction . Mummification and skin art preservation. Long-Lost U.S. Military Satellite Found By Amateur Radio Operator: NPR The Wolrd Above Us - every active satellite orbiting Earth: QZ Siberian Princess reveals her 2,500 year old tattoos: The Siberian Times Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Picard Season 1: mortality, great filters, and synthetic life w/ Jolene Creighton 46:30

5 years ago46:30

46:30

Nostalgia Like all the things with Star Trek in them - feeling nostalgia for good Trek. Prophecy/Not Prophecy Conquering the Three Body Problem and moving on to the… eight body problem? Breaking your brain. Tidal forces and planetary ejection. Game theory: secret society, or open discussion? Great filters The great synthetic filter from beyond space and time. If that’s the words, then that’s the words Christopher Peterson Synthetic life Classifying the artificial intelligence of Trek’s synthetic life. Issues with anthropocentric terminology. Backing up synthetic “minds.” Finding out you’re a robot and also, somehow, simulation hypothesis. Mortality “To die is to be human” and other stupid nonsense. YOLO. “I’m gonna live forever ha-haaa . Wasting deaths in Star Trek. Borg Small-scale good-guy Borg. Dunbar limits and smaller collectives. The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant: YouTube Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Isolated BS part two, the mayonnaisening - volcano edition 44:46

5 years ago44:46

44:46

Not just bread anymore.. But also mayonnaise! Definitively “The Best Sauce.” Coolio’s Ghettalian Garlic Bread . Japanese mayonnaise appreciation. Miscellany Dune set photos! . Sting’s codpiece. Manly housework. NVidia RTX Real-Time Noise-Reduction Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA6R9NmZO80 Gaming and computing Magic Leap disappointment and waiting for trickle-down from Enterprise. AR vs VR and chaning expectations. Oculus Quest sold-outness. Half-Life Alyx: game changer? Splatmoji . Programming your way into a Bash-hole. Volcanoes Volcanoes! Krakatoa exploded while we were all over here trying to figure out face masks. Remebering our Dracula episode w/ Joe Ruppel where Krakatoa brought on the “year without a summer.” Rom Decomps Super Mario 64 Decompilation . Decades later, the smoke fix . Figuring out why game decompilation is interesting. Appreciating harcore nerds. Splatmoji by Christopher Peterson: GitHub NVidia RTX Real-Time Noise-Reduction Demo: YouTube Avatarify: GitHub Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
The Three Body Problem: mathy math math and first contact game theory w/ Adrian 59:26

5 years ago59:26

59:26

Books! A larger time investment, generally… but high idea-load! That one time we did a book in the past. And that next one we’ll probably do in the future. Context Chinese science fiction. This book as the first Asian Hugo Award-winner. The difficulty of translating highly technical, crunchy hard scifi. Translation footnotes or the lack thereof in the audiobook. Prior movie adaptation from the same author on Decipher SciFi: The Wandering Earth . Adaptions, failed or otherwise. Minecraft engine magic. Alien Communications Inverse square law and power and focus difficulties. Reaching out way above our stellar paygrade and reaping the consequences. Scale-accurate “first contact” scenarios. DO NOT REPLY DO NOT REPLY DO NOT REPLY -An alien The Three Body Problem The frustation of having no closed-form solution to your planet’s gravitational situtation. The value of the scientific method. Recognizing that there is always a model. The complexity of a model may not be veyr connected with the complexity of the results it yields. Civilizational advancement Targeting the loci of technological advancement. Figuring out how to prevent that advancement in opposing far-away civilizations. Math! What if math… didn’t work anymore ? Adrian’s initial frustration with this book. How totally exciting it is to discover math is broken when you’re not being tortured by aliens. I am the best mathematician that has ever existed. There is no one better. Put my name on a mountain! I did it. Adrian Falcone The Wandering Earth: altered goldilocks zones, Earth's heat budget, and smuggling pickles in your pants: Decipher SciFi Three Body Problem the Minecraft animated series: Season 2 @ YouTube Season 3 @ YouTube Division by Zero by Ted Chiang: Fantastic Metropolis Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Bloodshot: overdoing nanotech, comics bubbles, and flour bombs 30:02

5 years ago30:02

30:02

What if Memento, but with nanites? Movies post pandemic Everything is either postponed or straight-to-streaming now. What do we expect the film industry to do after this debacle? Comics! The 1990s comics bubble . Chromium gimmick covers (Bloodshot was the first?). Nano! The difference between the magic of “nanotechnology” in 1993 and now. Being spoiled by Hollywood nanotech superpowers. Being impressed by self-mending t-shirts. Brute force superhero combat - no tactics whatsoever! Flour Just a heads-up, flour burns when spear in the air: Exploding Flour @ YouTube . Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Isolated BS: coping with copious amounts of bread 34:27

5 years ago34:27

34:27

Just a conversation in isolation! Things “Free time” for parents working from home with children. Catching up on movies and video games. Stress. Running marathons with bikes. Remote learning, remote work, and video meetings. Bunnies and allergies in springtime. Skyrim! And immunotherapy and poisons. Bread Making bread while locked down! Peanut butter and jelly (jam!). Sourdough cultures. Making bread from actual ancient Egyptian yeast! Seamus Blackley bakes actual Ancient Egyptian bread: Twitter Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Another Life: visible rogue planets, visible dark matter, and other smart stuff 30:14

5 years ago30:14

30:14

First contact Aliens. Alien intelligence. Alien vessel shapes and what it says about the show you are about to watch. Moebius ships? CETI Crystalline FTL space antennae. The realities of lightspeed communication and why The SETI Institute doesn’t do “ Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence .” Unexplained FTL comms. Fumbling about space When your crew is this good, you really should just send a ship without the humans on it instead. MapQuest in spaaaaaace being confounded by gravitational lensing. Dark matter… blocks your view sometimes? Rogue planets and how very very very dark it is in between star systems. Robinson Crusoe oxygen rocks (or crystals). Battlestar Galactica: iTunes Amazon Battlestar Galactica: curse words linguistics, formal code verification, and robo Jesus: Decipher SciFi Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
On Decipher History: 1917 w/ Josh! 0:53

5 years ago0:53

0:53

The taste of another episode of Decipher History! Featuring Josh 💪😉 1917: trenches, trench rats, and modern war w/ Josh Support the show!

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
Contagion: epidemiology, snake oil, and curve-flattening 1:02:30

5 years ago1:02:30

1:02:30

Current events Our world is on the brink of some possibly extreme unpleasantness. Known unknowns threats to civilization. Humanity is bad at planning for statistically-likely-but-not-definite disaster. Bullshit The anti-scientific garbage that starts to overflow in the face of a public health crisis. Goop. Alex Jones. Snake oil. Homeopathy. Price gouging. Levels of understanding and respect for the severity of the current pandemic across age groups. Epidemiology R0, or basic reproduction number. Vulnerable sub-populations. Prisons. Social distancing. Hoarding toilet paper and… meat? The nipah virus. Human behaviour Social distancing. Hoarding steak and toilet paper. Epidemiology Historical pandemics. Rate of spead and pandemic reach in the premodern and modern worlds. Propaganda and the “Spanish Flu” of 1918. Wildlife as natural disease reservoirs. Wildlife farming and infectious disease overflow. Disease-spread mitigation. Getting germs in your holes Wash your hands! Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center: JHU.edu Why new diseases keep appearing in China by Vox: YouTube Medlife Crisis: YouTube Planet Money Podcast: NPR.org The Indicator from Planet Money: NPR.org Self-experimentation in medicine: Wikipedia Support the show!…

Decipher SciFi: the show about how and why

1
On Decipher History: Alexander 0:31

5 years ago0:31