19. A Pickled Egg Christmas

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Lords:
* Jeff is an event planner at https://www.acesup.com/ and blogged at https://80isenough.wordpress.com/ back when he was unemployed.
* Joe is.
Topics:
* 0:52 Not having time to be a geek.
* 10:21 Pickled egg ordering paranoia.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickledegg
* 20:04 This topic is mostly an excuse to ask Joe how he raised such good kids.
* The Blank Slate, by Steven Pinker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheBlankSlate
* 33:05 Quill asks: "What sort of art did you make when you were younger?"
* Double reed instruments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublereed
* 45:44 Augmented reality killer app: the etymology explorer
* The Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/
* 49:46 80% is enough.
Microtopics:
* Having nothing to plug.
* Consuming all the media available because you're in high school and it's the 80s.
* Not being sure if the media you're consuming, or about to consume, is worth your time.
* Forgetting everything else as a prerequisite for getting anything done.
* Humans figuring out what to do with their drive to make art once computers are better at making art.
* Collectively choosing to limit the art you consume to create an artificial culture in your collective.
* A fake band invented by the internet come alive.
* Computers taking over art curation, too.
* Making a statement in a specific context that can't be as easily transplanted into another context and that making you a luddite weirdo.
* Cultivating a healthy creative space being super weird now, but will make more sense in the future when the creative.
* Liking pickled eggs but not being able to find them in any local store.
* The hypothetical fraughtness of purchasing pickled eggs online.
* Buying a bunch of gross stuff and being disappointed.
* Hating the pickled eggs you bulk-purchased and feeding them all to your dogs.
* Pickled sausages -- a southern specialty.
* Selling your pickled products at a discount because they're past their sell-by date.
* Pickled Thai eggplant about the size of marbles.
* Not being diligent enough to look up how to include Pickled Banana Blossoms in a prepared dish and just eating them like popcorn and being disappointed.
* The entire egg pickling community thinking your egg pickling method is heretical.
* Asking everybody in your family for pickled eggs for Christmas and throwing a pickled egg party to get rid of all your danged pickled eggs.
* Consuming twenty pounds of pickled eggs on a Topic Lords live show.
* Being really impressed by somebody's child-rearing technique.
* The "blank slate" theory -- that children are born with no personality -- being total bullshit.
* A sample size of three technically counting as a pattern.
* Having a dialog with your children rather than just telling them what to do.
* Growing up hating authority and how that informs parenting strategy.
* Doing the bare minimum and getting great results because everyone else just sucks.
* Parents who are basically still children themselves.
* Not having any parenting books to read because you are the first person who has ever been a parent.
* Doing everything being indistinguishable from doing nothing.
* Not having any good way to choose between all the available child-rearing options.
* Not knowing why you read a particular parenting book twenty years ago and also not being sure if it shaped your parenting strategy.
* Making bad decisions because we're all human and we all make bad decisions.
* Being well-equipped to adapt to a changing world.
* Not making a lot of art because your penmanship is terrible and it would just be a blob of nothing.
* Your parents forcing you to take guitar lessons because it would help you get into a good school and it actually getting you into a good school.
* Kids rarely being good at anything.
* The amazing child drummer who amazingly turns into a commensurately even more amazing adult drummer.
* Noodling around with a keyboard as an adult being informed by a decade of rigorous piano lessons as a child.
* Loving Mechwarrior and spending all of grade school drawing spaceships and giant robots.
* Growing up a Scream Tracker kid.
* Loading up a song you like into a tracker and digging deep into its technical details.
* Explaining that this song is only four channels and 200 kilobytes and your mom remaining unimpressed.
* An incredible technical feat that is entirely meaningless to anybody not embedded in its context.
* Coming from a position of empathy and charity by default.
* Two wooden reeds tied together like a duckbill creating a much smoother sound than a wooden reed resting against a hard surface.
* Your band teacher not knowing enough about the bassoon to critique your bassoon playing and your next band teacher switching you to piano.
* Trying to remember all the words you want to look up the etymology of next time you're at a computer.
* Conjectural etymology that seems sensible but isn't actually backed up by evidence.
* Reading ahead because you are bored in class, but that just meaning you'll be even more bored later.
* Getting to 80th percentile of a skill or subject and then moving on to another skill or subject.
* Accidentally hiring someone pretty good at both social work and IT work but it being ridiculous to try to hire someone like that on purpose.
* The multivarious sub-skills required to run a UPS store.
* Not recommending anybody follow your career path because your resume looks like you have some kind of personality disorder.
* Nobody wanting to hire a generalist.
* Just shipping at 90% done because most likely that's good enough.
* Making the news one day but in a year a kid breaking your record.
* Everybody being sad because they're not the best in the world and the best in the world being sad because they're not even better.
* Getting really good at a skill and then computers taking your job anyway.
* Enjoying learning for the intrinsic value of learning.

Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Jeff is an event planner at https://www.acesup.com/ and blogged at https://80isenough.wordpress.com/ back when he was unemployed.
Joe is.

Topics:

0:52 Not having time to be a geek.
10:21 Pickled egg ordering paranoia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickled_egg

20:04 This topic is mostly an excuse to ask Joe how he raised such good kids.

The Blank Slate, by Steven Pinker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate

33:05 Quill asks: "What sort of art did you make when you were younger?"

Double reed instruments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_reed

45:44 Augmented reality killer app: the etymology explorer

The Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/

49:46 80% is enough.

Microtopics:

Having nothing to plug.
Consuming all the media available because you're in high school and it's the 80s.
Not being sure if the media you're consuming, or about to consume, is worth your time.
Forgetting everything else as a prerequisite for getting anything done.
Humans figuring out what to do with their drive to make art once computers are better at making art.
Collectively choosing to limit the art you consume to create an artificial culture in your collective.
A fake band invented by the internet come alive.
Computers taking over art curation, too.
Making a statement in a specific context that can't be as easily transplanted into another context and that making you a luddite weirdo.
Cultivating a healthy creative space being super weird now, but will make more sense in the future when the creative.
Liking pickled eggs but not being able to find them in any local store.
The hypothetical fraughtness of purchasing pickled eggs online.
Buying a bunch of gross stuff and being disappointed.
Hating the pickled eggs you bulk-purchased and feeding them all to your dogs.
Pickled sausages -- a southern specialty.
Selling your pickled products at a discount because they're past their sell-by date.
Pickled Thai eggplant about the size of marbles.
Not being diligent enough to look up how to include Pickled Banana Blossoms in a prepared dish and just eating them like popcorn and being disappointed.
The entire egg pickling community thinking your egg pickling method is heretical.
Asking everybody in your family for pickled eggs for Christmas and throwing a pickled egg party to get rid of all your danged pickled eggs.
Consuming twenty pounds of pickled eggs on a Topic Lords live show.
Being really impressed by somebody's child-rearing technique.
The "blank slate" theory -- that children are born with no personality -- being total bullshit.
A sample size of three technically counting as a pattern.
Having a dialog with your children rather than just telling them what to do.
Growing up hating authority and how that informs parenting strategy.
Doing the bare minimum and getting great results because everyone else just sucks.
Parents who are basically still children themselves.
Not having any parenting books to read because you are the first person who has ever been a parent.
Doing everything being indistinguishable from doing nothing.
Not having any good way to choose between all the available child-rearing options.
Not knowing why you read a particular parenting book twenty years ago and also not being sure if it shaped your parenting strategy.
Making bad decisions because we're all human and we all make bad decisions.
Being well-equipped to adapt to a changing world.
Not making a lot of art because your penmanship is terrible and it would just be a blob of nothing.
Your parents forcing you to take guitar lessons because it would help you get into a good school and it actually getting you into a good school.
Kids rarely being good at anything.
The amazing child drummer who amazingly turns into a commensurately even more amazing adult drummer.
Noodling around with a keyboard as an adult being informed by a decade of rigorous piano lessons as a child.
Loving Mechwarrior and spending all of grade school drawing spaceships and giant robots.
Growing up a Scream Tracker kid.
Loading up a song you like into a tracker and digging deep into its technical details.
Explaining that this song is only four channels and 200 kilobytes and your mom remaining unimpressed.
An incredible technical feat that is entirely meaningless to anybody not embedded in its context.
Coming from a position of empathy and charity by default.
Two wooden reeds tied together like a duckbill creating a much smoother sound than a wooden reed resting against a hard surface.
Your band teacher not knowing enough about the bassoon to critique your bassoon playing and your next band teacher switching you to piano.
Trying to remember all the words you want to look up the etymology of next time you're at a computer.
Conjectural etymology that seems sensible but isn't actually backed up by evidence.
Reading ahead because you are bored in class, but that just meaning you'll be even more bored later.
Getting to 80th percentile of a skill or subject and then moving on to another skill or subject.
Accidentally hiring someone pretty good at both social work and IT work but it being ridiculous to try to hire someone like that on purpose.
The multivarious sub-skills required to run a UPS store.
Not recommending anybody follow your career path because your resume looks like you have some kind of personality disorder.
Nobody wanting to hire a generalist.
Just shipping at 90% done because most likely that's good enough.
Making the news one day but in a year a kid breaking your record.
Everybody being sad because they're not the best in the world and the best in the world being sad because they're not even better.
Getting really good at a skill and then computers taking your job anyway.
Enjoying learning for the intrinsic value of learning.

Support Topic Lords