Everyone's the same. 

Hi, it's Matt. How are you? Welcome to Hobbyhorse today with us is because amy. Hi. Yay. So Darrius you are half of field training. Cooperate, a author of a billion jokey bots. That's true now lately. You've been doing some cool mastodon stuff. Yup. Um, so I guess let's go back in your history. Where did you get started? Um, you know, when did you start falling in love with computers and doing school stuff? What was the first thing? Um, I mean I've been into making computers do stupid shit since I was like a seven, eight, nine. Was it like neo pets or something? I'm, I'm too old for neopets. Uh, that was, that's about 10 years past my prime, but I'm uh, no, I grew up on a, I didn't have Internet until I was in when I was 13. Uh, and uh, I, but I did have access to bbs is when I was in fourth grade, but only at my friend's house where he had a parent who would let him do that. 

So then what did that guy go onto? Found nothing. He became, he's, he's, I mean, he just became a normal person. PBS is so cutting edge and nuts. Most people, you know. Yeah, no, he was terrified of him for like long distance call to. I had an older brother who had like a girlfriend, like one town over and like would rack up four or $500 bill. Right? Yeah. And I would see these pages have called this number and be like, well it's my same area code but I don't want to get busted like my brother. So I was terrified in the DC area. We had the rockies which were compiled by Michael Foggy and that was his like text file of bbs numbers that were in the area and uh, and I'm pretty sure, I mean I'm pretty sure that when we never wrapped up any huge things because as long as we stayed in their area code, it was okay. 

Was bbs stuff back then? Mostly text files? Was it like an Ascii Art? Yeah, it was. Yes, it was Ascii art and text files and like the occasional, I don't even know what image format. Um, but yeah, it could, you could download a binary of like a single jpeg or whatever or a bitmap or whatever they used and uh, uh, and it would take a long, long time. Mills or chat. Yeah, there was chat and emails and that sort of thing too. I mean, you know, Bolton board, right. So, um, but mostly we mostly we would connect to play, um, a connect to the doors so we would play, uh, the various games and things. So like trade wars are like a legend of the red dragon was my favorite. But, um, but yeah, uh, but yeah, before that, I mean, I think I started, um, I started like using computers and enjoying them when I was a kid, like, very little, like maybe five or six. 

We were always lucky to have a computer in the house because my dad had a home business and so there was always like a reason to have a relatively up to date computer. Ibm, PC, IBM pcs. Yeah. He was an accountant, not a, uh, you know, it wasn't, he wasn't in tech, but, uh, but you know, it was enough that he needed like accounting software and stuff like that. So dos machines? Yes. Yeah, yeah. I grew up on, on IBM pcs with Das. Yeah. And uh, and you know, the apple stuff at school because that's what the schools had. But um, uh, but yeah, I think it was in, I think I was in fourth grade, so like nine when I first started, like my very first computer programming type stuff, which was just a friend of mine showing me like what his dad had taught him. 

We had a basic and fourth grade and it was probably like 1983 or whatever. Old Apples. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean any, right. I mean, any apple, if you boot it up without a disk, it would go straight to that basic prompt. So yeah. So, uh, what was the first time you ever saw the web? Um, oh yeah, that was, um, I remember it very clearly, actually it was 1997 and I was at the local mall. Um. Oh, you know, okay. Maybe I saw it once, like in school where we had like one computer hooked up and you could like, you know, look things up online or whatever, but, but I didn't count. It was boring. The cool web. Uh, I was 1997 and I went to a local mall, like the fancy local mall and there was a kiosk in the middle like where they sell sunglasses and stuff. 

There was a kiosk for a local ISP and you could use a dollar a minute or something. No, no, no, it was, they were selling the ISP. It was a demo. Yes. They were selling their internet services and so there was a demo kiosk you could just go and play around. And I remember very distinctly like going up and be like, Oh yeah, I've heard all about this. Like I used to stay on top of computer stuff by going through radio shack and using their demo pcs just to, just to play around. That's how I learned to use windows and stuff. So sweet. Yeah, I remember, I remember the day the College, um, computer labs all got mosaic. Oh yeah, just, Oh my God. And the time, the first time they're free form typing and going somewhere on the Internet. Don't even know where you're going to end up. 

Like that was amazing. Yeah, I, I, uh, yeah, I sort of entered around the time at the beginning of a netscapes dominance. So I think it was netscape two was my first web browser frames, man. No, that was three and they might've been three then I, I definitely remember frames. And then what, when did you finish college? Like, um, I graduated in 2005, so, uh, uh, so for me early Internet was middle school and high school. Um, and uh, and by high school I ran my own, like I had my own little like, like website startup hustle type thing because like making brochure sites. No, no, it was, um, we had a site where we would upload the shareware episodes of Das video games, which is legal and we didn't charge money for them, but we ran banner ads and back then it was like ten cents a click or something. 

So, uh, so, you know, we made like for high schoolers we would pocket an extra, like 50 bucks a month or something and that was pretty significant for us. So it's good fast food money. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, we'd go to Popeye's with that. So what were your first jobs in the industry? Well, um, I went to school for electrical engineering because actually a lot of the weird tech stuff that I started doing was in was with hardware, so I would build like circuits that would detect you were in the room and then use a voice synthesizer to talk to you and say weird poetry at you and that sort of thing. Like looking back now, it's like very clear that it's a clear line I can draw to what I do today, the Internet of art thing. And I did and I did a lot of, um, of like weird programs on like my tit three graphing calculator to that was, I did a lot of programming on that because math class was boring. 

But um, uh, but I, uh, so I went to school for electrical engineering, but while I was there I got sidetracked by a game development club that we had there and I got really into making video games and I went to the game developers conference in San Jose and I was like, oh, this is cool, this is people doing art and tech, I want to do this. And so then my first job out of college was as a Qa tester for an MMO RPG company. Uh, so in Boston. So is it true that like when you get a job in the game industry, it's so crushing and terrible and yeah, it's pretty bad that like, you don't like games after a game. Oh yeah. Well you love playing games, get a job. Qa testing. Yeah. They won't like it anymore. Yeah. I was lucky because I got a job testing the kind of game that I hated to begin with. 

So it was just like, well, whatever. Now I'm getting paid to play this game that I hate, which is actually a, it's actually in an improvement. Yeah. So that's Rad. Yeah. And then, uh, when did you start, um, I guess you must have started on twitter early, right? Uh, yeah, 2007 I think. So there's like a, a year after they started or something very first, like bought thing or what sparked like I should build a bot for a twitter. Um, I mean I had made so like I made the occasional aol instant messenger Bot. Um, yeah, you know, uh, so, uh, and so that was for like, once I found out that aol you could like text a certain number from any phone and then append a username and then it would send an aol. I am to that username. So you could talk to bots over SMS that way. 

So before I had internet and reliable internet on a phone, I made a Bot that would like give me a metacritic score for a video game if I, if I texted it, the name of the game. Uh, so yeah. Um, but also my first phone was web enabled. My first phone was a train of 600. Actually I didn't, I was late on the cell phone thing, but I was like, if I'm going to get on this, I got to get like the most future phone I possibly can. And I loved that phone. Tiny thumb. Yeah, it was so great. I loved it. I still miss, I still Ms. Little clicky keyboards like that. If I could find a pixel with a clicky keyboard, I would buy it. Um, but uh, but yeah. And then using twillio, was that around back then? No, absolutely not. No, no, no, no. 

This was built into aol. So, but what do you use for like mass texting? Like what is there a service or an API to send a bunch of. I know I just did it all. Physics. Yeah. So like, like any person who sent a message to that particular number and pretended it was the name of the Bot, the Bot would talk back to. Okay. That's all. Um, and I was just running that on my little web server that I had. Um, and then um, so I never had to deal with SMS. I just used instant messenger, like Api. And then, uh, uh, and then I made my first twitter bought in 2009, but it wasn't really like the bonds that I make now. It was just, um, I was really into the game, spunky and so, and I was modeling it a bunch and I was like, oh, I could moderate to post a story to twitter of what I'm doing while I'm playing. 

So I wrote a bunch of hooks in the game to detect like if I killed the bat than it had like a bunch of generative phrases about like with like jokes about killing bats and that kind of thing. And then it would post a stream to twitter. So every time I've played spunky, it would post a story that would roughly line up with what my place session was onto twitter. So it's like a always updating change log. But for your current status in the gates? Yeah, essentially, yes. And then, uh, but then, and then I didn't make another Bot until 2012, which was when I made my, first of my current crop, which is metaphor I'm in. It makes one metaphor every two minutes. Because back then it was, that was the rate limit and, and uh, and I, I'm a and I made that actually as a response to a Ian Bogost who's a, um, a video games, a theorist and also philosopher had a philosophy book where he was like, we could, why don't we write essays when we could like make weird things that try to make a point instead. 

And I was like, oh, that sounds really cool. I know how to make bots, I should do that. And so my first thought was actually a Bot that I wrote in response to his article about his chapter in his book about how you should build weird shit that is like the, uh, that is like the, uh, the guiding phrase for all your texts. Yeah. Basically. So did you make that pile of texts, apis like the, it seems like a lot of stuff, a lot of your stuff as like a core engine that's like pulling out nouns and verbs. And for a long time I'd used word neck which is still around and it's just a, it's a great rest Api. That's a, it's an online dictionary, API is this initial paragraph of text and it would send you stuff about it. Um, no, actually I would use it more for like, give me a random adjective of like this level of rarity in the English language. 

Uh, so I could ask for common adjectives are uncommon adjectives and, and that sort of thing. Um, and it could, of course it's a dictionary thing so it can return you definitions of words and parts of speech and stuff like that. Um, later I switched to um, to a library called Rita, which I like because it's totally offline. It just comes with its own sort of built in dictionary and so I don't have to worry about apis and rate limits and things like that. And it's not as good as word nick, but it's good enough for most of what I build. But I'll switch to word nick if I need a wider vocabulary. So no timeouts and stuff. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So then, uh, uh, like what would you, I mean, are they all generative? All of the things I've ever seen your name attached to. 

I mean, sometimes they're so good, you're like, oh human, are you putting your finger on the scale? Yeah, no, no, I don't. It's like I have someone once described me as having like a totally white glove approach to my boss. Like there are a lot of people who have great bots out there and they do occasionally just also posts something manual or they'll or they'll curate. I'm like, yeah, like I've seen that. Yeah. Someone does a Bot. It says it's about. But like you only get eight good things a day instead of the 300. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I actually have friends who have done a thing where they'll have like a cue that just piles up in there on us, on an app somewhere and they're just on their phone once a day, like, like checking, checking a box next to the ones that they want to queue up for further posting to the public. 

So, um, yeah, so like, so how does, like, let's go with one of the recent ones. Roofs, laughing bought me up. So I assume you're maybe plumbing, wikipedia, I'm afraid. And then how do you grab. Is it number of syllables? So roof roof slapping Bot is a play on a twitter joke. And so it does things like slaps roof of Africa. This bad boy can, uh, can fit so many drafts in it. Um, and that's it. That's how it works. And it's. So what it needs is a concept of something being in being commonly found inside something else. Um, and uh, for that kind of thing, I always go to concept net, which is rather old internet project. Um, uh, it goes back to Carnegie Mellon funded I think, and it goes back years, but they have an Api and they also let you just download their entire corpus of relationships of concepts. 

And so it's just a, it is somewhat manual, like where they'll have actual, like Grad students just sitting down there going like, you know, okay, a tomato is found in a salad, right? And then they're just, they're just adding to the mix, but a lot of it is also scraped. So they'll, um, they'll scrape the web for grammatical constructs and then like try to infer things and basically once something tips over a certain threshold and they consider it like common knowledge enough to include in concept yet. And so yeah, I just downloaded the concept net corpus. It has a, um, uh, it has, uh, a relationship type which is, uh, something like is found in or is contained within something like that. Uh, and so I just filtered out, I just said, you know, took the data sets that only plucked out the ones that are about things inside other things. 

Uh, and then I have a whole bunch of lists of words that are, like draft is in Africa, you know, uh, a congressman is in Washington DC, that sort of thing. And there's, and there's 10,000 years to a one, an hour or something. Yeah, there's, there's a, there's 30,000. Oh my God. And I'm not, and I'm not exhausting it though. I'm not like I'm just going one by one through the whole thing. So it'll, it'll repeat and stuff too. But you know, there's 30,000 of them. So it doesn't repeat very often. Do you think that's like your approach? I like you try and find a pattern in something and then try and figure out how would you automate it? Yeah, that's correct. I mean when I was in Qa is actually doing qa automation. So like my entire purpose was to watch people doing things in our game and then figure out how to make an algorithm of it and then implement that algorithm for jokes. 

So Rad. What are some other recent ones? I did? Yeah, I did one that was a, it's not on twitter because I stopped making bots on twitter, but um, uh, there's one that I have on mastodon called Queer I bought and that one is like, there's the twitter joke of like five guys except queer eye, but it's five, you know, mom's telling you that everything's gonna be okay. Right. That's like text and that's another thing I just pulled it from concept net as well, a concept that has an is capable of relation and so like, you know, bird is capable of flying. So I just transformed that into queer eye, but it's five birds flying. I love that you have all these a API connections in your mind you can use as a bridge. This could be totally automated in this joke. I mean I deconstruct jokes when I see. 

Especially. I mean that's all everyone does when they were playing on twitter is like, oh that's very funny. That's funny. In the moment I'll make my own right, I can make it. But then they're like, I'll make $30,000. Right. I love that. Like, you know, the Api hit points there is inside or related to it does help that I just have like a, like a memory full of tons and tons of different apis and data, you know, this thing existed. This concept, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then I run like Core Pura, which is kind of like a place for people to put lists of stuff. And so I often end up going to my own project because it's, even though it's my project, it has like 600 contributions from 300 contributors. So like I don't really know what's in there. You know, I mean I approve everything that goes in there, but it's been years so sometimes I just go back through and I go, oh yeah, wow, there's a list of like pro wrestlers in here. 

Like I should probably, like I could do something with that. So is that the thing you have that doesn't like the word filtering stuff? A world filter is a different project. And so that one's just a, it just comes with a, a word list that I have that black lists, just certain words that I don't ever want my boss to say. Excuse me. The other Bot authors seem to forget from major corporation. Right? Exactly. Yeah. And so, um, and you know, and it's mutable so you can, you can change it. Like if you can add new words or remove words if you don't think the list is appropriate, but um, uh, but yeah, so that's mostly I made it for my own convenience. So like all my bots I generate from a template that I have. Um, so whenever I start a bot it's just like grunting the twitter Bot and then it creates the blank bought template, but then the word filter is already built in there and so forth and the twitter api or the mass done apis are already built in there. 

So I don't have to work on the plumbing. I can just work on the uh, the, the fun part. Can you think of any recent bought generated jokes that were on the borderline with that maybe like recently? Is it still get around your word filter or oh, I'm wrong. Thing inside the wrong thing and you're like, oh that's not. I mean you can't, you can't filter for everything. Um, but usually, I mean when people bring it up I will delete a thing, but mostly I have problems with my image. Bots were all pull, like an orb or I'll be pulling images. I try to pull from like the first five whenever I usually, when I pull random images it's because I'm searching for something on Google images and then pulling an image from there. Usually if I keep safe search on and I only pulled the first five results, it's fine, but every now and then it's not what does a search where it's not like, well, like surgery for example. 

Right. And then you just get this gori mess, right? Like, and so sometimes I used to go in here and not going to be good. Yeah. So I have to, sometimes I have to go in there and you know, did you do a glitch logo? Surgery of surgery? If I could find an Svg of surgery than I would do, it needs to be vector. So, uh, everything's on Massad on now because of twitter is my api stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just, they're a bit invalidating your stuff. Is it breaking? Um, no, so far. No, I mean they even actually like, reached out to me and they were like, oh, we want to work with you to like make it so your bots can stay on twitter. And I was like, yeah, but are you going to do that for everyone? Because if you're not, I'm not interested. 

So, um, so, you know, I'm just on to don now so far, I don't think anything has really broken, but like, you know, occasionally they do sweeps and they'll accidentally suspend a bot or something. And before all I had to do was say, Hey, I'm following your twitter rules, please unsuspend me, but now I would actually have to make like they literally have something in their rules about needing to make a business case for the BOT. And it's like, yeah, I understand if it's like, oh, I'm running a, you know, a hot startup where we have a bot based chat interface or something, I'm sure that's cut and dry, but like none of my bots have business cases. So it's a, yeah, not good. Like twitter is built on like art and art bots and yeah, I think it was, I think it was uh, an overcorrection after all the criticism around like Russian, twitter, bots, like affecting the election, that sort of thing. There are over correcting to make, I probably to make their shareholders feel better. 

So it's. Wait, are they public? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Cool. Just want to make sure. Um, uh, so, uh, Macedonia, you've been playing with that a lot lately. Yes. How is the, uh, are the creators, are communities dealing with. I mean, you have some pretty wild ideas. That sound great to me. Uh, like can you spare 32nd summary like you're imagining mass on sort of like twitter but federated, but that's not even important, but you're right, you know. Well, I mean the follower list, rss feeds, how does that work? Right. Yeah, I mean, the thing about the thing about Mastodon, it's great for what it is, but it's also they're taking something that already exists. Twitter and then just cloning it in an open source and decentralized way, which like obviously has benefits. I love that I can submit a pull request to Mastodon and sometimes it's accepted and I can improve the software for everyone. 

I can't do that with twitter without becoming an employee. Uh, and so, um, so that's, that part's great. But also it shows a lack of imagination. It's just like what we're basically just cloning this other thing on top of web standards. Um, honestly what I want to do is like, you know, well, what if we like resurrected google reader, right? Like, that's my big dream right now. Yeah. But like, but like, but like for real, right? So I'm like, right, like I built a, I have a prototype working right now, have a service where you can plug any rss feed into it and it just turns it into a lightweight activity pub actor that can be followed on mastodon or any other activity, pub compliant socialist pulling the RSS and making it a message, I guess. Yeah, it pulls it. Well, it does, it does a few things. 

It's um, so it's a server it when you drop, when you say convert this rss feed, what it does is it um, uh, it creates an, an actor. So that's like basically the profile data for the social network and then it pulls in the rss feed, keeps the database, takes the diff every so often so that it can find new posts. And then when there is a new post, Oh yeah. And then it, it, listens for, it has an inbox, this is how everything works. It has an inbox and so if you met how we go to, um, to follow it on Mastodon, then you're sending a post request to my server, my server ingests that and then, uh, and then adds you to a list of people who need to be notified when that account makes a new post. So it's a little bit like the old pub sub a thing that was supposed to be world changing back in 2007 or whatever. 

And um, uh, but yeah, it's not the, the thing is it's not like rss where it's like a passive polling type thing. It's active. It has to send a message to your inbox in order for MDM. Yes. Uh, so every, every post, yeah. When you're, when you're looking at your timeline, every single thing that appears in there is an incoming http http message to your inbox. So it's basically like you're getting, you know, five emails a minute, but they're all very short and they appear in this particular user interface. Dmu, it shows up. My timeline was a little weird and that's why, that's, that's one of the reasons why privacy and stuff works that way on NASA, Don, because of the underlying tech of activity pop. Yeah. But, but anyway, uh, so the idea is converting any rss feed you want into, um, an activity pub actor. 

And so right now I'm actually following a bunch of these bots on this test server that I have and I'm, and I'm getting largely formatted a blog posts, like full blog posts in my mastodon fee, which is not great. I don't what I want to do next is changed the mastodon client a little bit so that I can just have all of those in one column and not have them appear in my main timeline. So it's like in my one column is where I follow all my friends who microblog. And then in the other column is where I have podcasts. And then then the other column is where I have blogs or break it down however, but it would be beautiful the. So that's what I mean by. And then you can boost these things. Uh, and you can and you can include them in reply threads and stuff, so, and they won't talk back because at least on my server, they're not in your interactive. 

They're basically read only. But um, but that's what I mean by google reader type social ventures is like, oh, well, okay, now we have these like things floating around, um, that are articles and we can treat them as first class actors and talk about them. And do you need a very large server to support the public? Definitely not a, I mean it's, it's, or do you think it should be a part of mastodons core? I mean, ideally it could be part of mastodons core. I mean, I mean ideally they could just make it so that, I mean, you could make a mastodon client that is also an rss reader and then you wouldn't need this bridge. But mastodon, I mean understandably mastodons here for the social network stuff. They don't want to like write a polling rss caching thing and all that. Um, no, but the way that, the way that mine works, um, I, I engineered it to be extremely lightweight. 

Like, it's really, really, really, I mean, we'll see how it scales on your instance to know, to use it. No, it's just a website that you go to. It's not even on my instance, it's a website that you go to. It's just a database. Yeah. And Yeah. And then you just fill in a little web form and then it creates the actor and it says here, follow this actor and then you do and then you're following it. But then you got to make client changes to get the columns and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. To make it really useful for people. So right now it's a, it's a proof of concept a, but I'm actually, I definitely, I'm going to work on those climate changes that's going to be so. Right. So this is, this is one of the cool things about it being open sourced, right? 

Like I can change the default mastodon client and even if they don't accept it upstream in the main code base, I can still maintain it for me and whoever else wants it. That's right. So, so, uh, you're about to start at Mozilla Foundation. Yeah, that's right. Yes. As a fellow, I am a Mozilla Ford Fellowship, I'm a Mozilla open web fellow and it's funded through the Ford Foundation and um, I am working with code for Science and society who are here in Portland. They, uh, they are the stewards of the Dat dat protocol, which is like a sort of bit torrent, like alternative to http and that sort of thing. Um, if you've heard of beaker browser, it's this peer to peer web browser where it works like a normal web browser, but you can also visit a dat colon slash slash site. Um, and uh, Adat site is basically just like you're pointing it to a torrance seed and then as long as there are people seating that site, then you get access to it. 

And kind of the cool thing is the more people are looking at a site, the more seeds there are. So it's sort of scales in bandwidth. Now. Of course you'll have problems with like databases on the back end for applications and stuff. But in terms of serving static content, it's pretty great. And it was, it was built to serve static content. I'm like, originally it was made for scientists to share extremely large data sets, like petabyte type data sets. Yeah. I was like, wow, what is that design? Was that optimized for a but now, but now what you can do in beaker, which is the only web browser that supports that right now as you can go to file new webpage and then type in your web page and then press publish and then as long as your laptop is open, other people can see that. 

It's like you don't need. It's truly serverless because it's peer to peer. Um, and there are services where you can, where you can be like, oh, you know, host a, you know, sort of keep a live feed from my site so that when I close my laptop it might be slow, but when I'm closing my laptop, you know, at least there's one seat out there so people could still see it. Are you going to, uh, work in that space at Mozilla or just do the things. I'm working for Mozilla, but I'm embedded with the dat team so I'm going to be doing that related stuff. I mean, I will also just generally be doing what I'm doing, but uh, but yeah, so it's a pretty broad, um, uh, a remit that you get as a fellow. So, uh, uh, I invited you talk about anime though. 

I did, yeah. Yeah. So you've got an enemy podcast press. Yes. Called against, called Joe Joe's bizarre explainer. And was, what does this show you? You all watch a. it's called [inaudible] bizarre adventure. Is it a. okay, tell me about that. Yeah. So it's, um, it's a, it's a very popular animate in Japan. Not so much in the west, but it's um, uh, but it's getting more popular now that it's, I guess I should backtrack a little bit. Uh, it's been, uh, a Manga, Japanese comic for 30 years now. So it's been running continuously since 1988 or 1987. So this is like the peanuts. Yes. Yeah. Except it's got hunky vampires with weird powers and body horror and like, and like silly jokes. And also it's a weird, it's called bizarre for a reason. It is truly bizarre. Um, is adult, I guess for adults? No, it was actually, so to give you an example, it was run when it debuted, it essentially debuted alongside dragon ball Z, so in the same magazine. 

So, uh, it was from the start, it was, it was shown in, it was for young boys. Um, but uh, uh, and then kind of overtime as his audience grew up, he did make it more adult, but it's still not like, you know, it's gone from like Pg, pg 13, you know, it's not, it hasn't really like, it's not like it's super, um, adult in like any kind of a censorship sense. How long ago did it crossover and anime? Only like four years ago. I mean there had been, there had been short term adaptations before, like, you know, they'll do a few episodes here and there a particular popular story arc, but it was really only in 2012 that they started to make an animated version that was like, we're going to start at issue one of this 30 year running Monga and just go. 

So, um, so yeah, she's, so they're working through the old eighties. Yeah. Yeah. And it's. And it's really strange because when you watched the first season of the, of the anime, it's only nine episodes long for that first story arc and it's because it was a short, his shortest story arc ever. And um, and also it's the worst. It's really pretty bad because it's, you know, there's not, there's not really any way you can improve like, you know, I don't know, he just, he just has these weird ideas, like there's a scene where jack the ripper, it gets turned into a vampire and then he hides inside a horse to, uh, to, to ambush the heroes. And so there's a scene where a bunch of knives come out of a horse and then jack the ripper also comes out of the horse and then attacks the heroes. 

That's like a standard Joe Joe's situation. How many episodes of the two at this point they've done four seasons. So probably that's a total of about 100 episodes. And that covers the Monga as it ran from 1988 through 1994, I want to say. And then do you guys watch one and then do an episode? Yeah, we watch one then do an episode. We, we haven't caught up to the anime yet because we only started the podcast about a year and a half ago. Uh, so. And we started from the beginning and we did it weekly. So, um, right now we are just about to start season four of the anime, but season five is airing on the day that we start season four. So, uh, so that's, it's a nice, nice little timing. Uh, but um, but yeah, just don't worry about spoilers. Right? Uh, so yeah. So, uh, but yeah, it's a, it's a companion podcast. 

So we go episode by episode and each one that we do corresponds to one episode of the anime or sometimes two if we think we can compress them. Is it hard to find? Where do you find this? Oh No, it's pretty easy to find. Yeah, it's in, it's in English. Yeah, it is. Both is available in English. Both subbed and dubbed a. There are dvds in English of the first two seasons with a third one coming out in English as well. Um, there are blue rays, I guess now, um, there is a on, I think on Hulu actually you can watch the first two seasons for free, um, or whatever Hulu considers free. Uh, and then um, uh, actually, um, adult swim has been dubbing them. So there was also a dub of the show that's been airing on adult swim and you need a cable subscription to watch it. 

So I haven't watched it yet, but um, uh, but yeah, uh, so there's, it's, it's relatively. Oh. And then. And then we primarily watch it on crunchy roll, which is like Netflix for Manga or for, for enemy Netflix for anime. So is that like paid or is it paid? Yeah, it's, no, it's paid. It's like, you know, it's like a 10 bucks a month or something or maybe maybe 15. It's about Netflix prices and uh, and it's cool because they actually, um, like as the shows air in Japan, like the new shows, uh, you get them on a 24 hour delay from their premier in estates, which is pretty great and it's actually, it's an excellent service. Like I really liked crunchy roll actually, so there's a lot of great stuff on there. So they kind of have everything, like it's unlike netflix where it's like, you'll often find like, oh, well yeah, of course that movie's not on Netflix, it's on Amazon or whatever. 

Crunchy roll in. United States has the license for everything. Like nobody wants that life. There's no, it's really rare to look up an enemy that has an official English translation, uh, and not find it on crunchy roll. How many, do you follow any shows? Like, you know, actively I follow like for a, and most of them are on break right now, but uh, but yeah. What was the bike one pedal? Yeah, that was my first love. That was my first anime. I love it. I see it. Oh, is it on Netflix or Hulu? Back also on Hulu, I think maybe. Uh, but yeah, yeah, that one's about a team of, of high high school road racing team. Uh, and uh, so cyclists and they are, uh, it's, it's awesome. It's like very. Courtney was watching it with one of his friends in our living room and I like walked by and it was one of the early episodes and I heard overheard them talking about like gear ratios or something and I was like, what's this? 

Tell me more. And so I got into it for the bike facts and I learned a lot because I didn't, I, you know, I ride a bike a lot but I don't, um, road race, I don't understand it as a sport, right? Didn't until I watched this anime and now I can watch the Tour de France and like understand what I'm seeing and enjoy it because I've learned through this enemy what the rules are and what makes it an interesting sport versus when he turned me onto it, I was watching it right before bed so I kept falling asleep but I caught most of the first few episodes and I was like, wow. They're talking about gear ratios. That was spot on what you would talk about before you go to the race. Like how hill is it? Do you want to run in 28 in the rear? Like 25. Feel strong today. I was like, Oh shit. This is real. Yeah. The, the, the author of the. This is another case of a monitor that was turned into anime and the author of the Manga is like a notorious like bike nuts. So. Awesome. Yeah, that's Rad. Yeah. And what was that Yoshi? A Yellow Mushi pedal. It translates to weakling pedal. 

Uh, is there a. is there a big difference on Sabine and Debbie? Like, like how much drift is there? Um, yeah, there's a fair amount of drift because, uh, I actually talked to, I was on the podcast of the people who are doing the Joe Joe's dub right now. Um, and I talked to him about this and they said that they actually, they referred, they use the technical term called mouth flapping, uh, which is just the lips moving. And they were like, yeah, we use the official de subs as a guideline, but sometimes the words that they choose don't line up with the movement of the mouth. And we have to make sure that the voice actors roughly lineup with the lip movements, otherwise it looks weird even in a cartoon and it can get weird, especially if there's like you want it to be timed like the same amount, uh, at least you want. 

Yeah, you don't want them like talking when their mouth isn't moving. Right. So, so they have to pay attention to that. So they use those as a guideline and sometimes they'll use the official English, a comic Monga translations as a guideline to. But they often take liberties for, um, for synchronization purposes. Wow. So it's like two layers. There's like the Japanese to English and then there's English to just better fitting English. Yes, because I've heard like a total row, you know, classic music. He film if you watch it, I guess in Japanese with English subtitles, there's a whole bunch more jokes. Yes. Like visual jokes. The only make sense in Japan and like, but they're explained them the subtitles, but they're not. That's the thing with subtitles. You can like put a parent that a goal that says like, Oh, and this is funny because this means, you know, bear in this, arrives the Sun. 

It's really funny. Yeah. Yeah. So you can kind of do footnotes on there, but you can't really get away with that. And um, so, uh, how many episodes are you on the podcast? We've done 60 episodes of the podcast, rob, maybe 65. Uh, and some of those are compressed. So those correlate to about 70 episodes of the show. Um, you'll eventually match up to live A. Yeah, I mean we have when season four, season four starts when season five starts. So I think we should and we go weekly, so I'm assuming that we'll wrap season four on the podcast when season five is wrapped, airing a and then we'll start writing on season five and then we'll be caught up and then we'll have to put the show on hiatus until season six or a year. It was a year and a half actually. We were very, uh, the fans were very upset that nothing had been announced officially until it wasn't announced officially. 

It's kind of, it's starting October fifth and the new season wasn't officially confirm until like July fifth or something. So, uh, uh, and it had been a year and a half since the last season ended. So a lot of people were like, oh no, are they going to, you know, make a new one. Uh, and uh, so we were very happy to see like a year plus work to make an enemy. Right. But, but like to even just announce it. Right. So they didn't, I mean it's smart, you know, they don't want to announce it unless they have a bunch of it already ready to go. Probably. So like come back next year is not a fun bit of news to get. Right. So, uh, how would someone get started with anime? What do you think like are some good entry points? Oh Man. Um, I really. So I actually shy away from showing people like stuff like Joe Joe's a because that's like, it's really unlevel. 

I mean it's, it's really weird and there's not a lot of like cultural references you can get. I really like, um, the slice of life Anamae, so there's a lot of like, fun romance stuff. There's one called my love story, which is about like two middle schoolers who have like an awkward relationship with each other and that's just like delightful and universal and uh, and pretty easy to, to get into. Um, I also do strongly recommend, I mean there are a lot of animators that are based on niche interests like road racing. Uh, and so if you find one that matches with your niche interest, that's obviously a great choice. That was my entry point was I liked cycling and the cycling Anamae brought me. And that was the first. I never watched anime as a kid. It wasn't something that I grew up with a but cycling pulled me in and then I found other things that I liked. 

Can you search crunchy roll for like whatever car racing, correct it? Yeah, I think so, yeah. Because, because a lot of the, like there's a lot of the enemies habit in their title or in the description. So it'll pull it up. There's like, Koroko is basketball and there's like two different baseball ones because Japanese people love baseball and uh, uh, so there's, there's a whole sub genre of sports anime. Um, and then, uh, and it's, you know, it's kind of like sports movies here in the states, right? Like, it's got, it's usually got that like underdog team trying to make her happy. Yeah. I'm uh, and then uh, uh, but then there's also like, there's so much weird stuff out there that's kind of amazing. Like there's one, there's one anamae that's like just, it's just these short five minute long episodes and there's like a few dozen of them, but it's just, it. 

All the characters are our anthropomorphized types of rice. No of types of grain. I want to say maybe it's rice, I forget, but it's like, yeah, I'm the white rice boy and I'm the, the French baguette boy and you know, and it's like, and I don't know, I could imagine if you were a baker or something, it'd be Kinda like really sort of at least intellectually interesting to, to, uh, to look at. But um, but yeah, so it's like when people think of animated, they tend to think of like, you know, dudes with cosmic powers, like, you know, you know, fighting dragons or something and uh, and yes, there's plenty of that, but there's also what's great about it is there's tons of different genres. Oh, actually one of my favorite enemies ever is called Shirobako and it's about a group of, of girls who were friends in college and then they graduate and they all go into the anime industry together. 

And so it's an anime about a team of people making an animator and it's, it's really good. And in fact I recommend it to anyone who likes project management in general or has to do it for their job because like it's an anime about project management is what it actually is. Amazing. Yeah. Uh, I mean, I guess it probably follows like Manga, which is like, there's tens of thousands of titles you can find one exactly about, you know, if you're a boring salary man, it just goes to work. Like there's titles for that. I'm sure there's animation for that. Yeah. That. So find something you like crunchy rolls, Rad is a lot of this stuff on Hulu and Netflix. Yeah. A lot of it is on Hulu and stuff. Yeah. And if you're, I mean even some of the less popular stuff is, is on there too. 

I'm often surprised at what I find on a, on the sort of more common streaming services. Uh, and then um, uh, and Amazon video has it too and that kind of stuff. But basically you can find this stuff on, on all sorts of services, but it's hit or miss unless you're on crunchy roll and then they probably have it. Sweet. Thanks for joining me for another question. Um, like since we recorded, I can't get this idea out of my head that like we talked about like pretty gentle anamae subject matter and shows and stuff like, you know, one, one surrealist and one was about a niche sport and I've thought about how like Manga and anime or teach me about another country and culture and in general kind of opened my mind to it. Yeah. But I can't, I can't just contrast that with like, anytime someone said something terrible to me on twitter, they had an anime avatar thinking about like four Chan is kind of spun off from. 

Yeah, it was originally an atom, a forum basically like I guess to Chan was the Japanese version and then they made four Chan in English. But then it also had terrible politics and then eight Chan is even worse. Politics and it's also anime. Um, how does, how does Anna may feel like it opens the world to me and teaches me stuff, but some terrible people also love it. Like how does that, how does that work? Yeah, I mean, I guess part of it is just that like a lot of anime is marketed to and made for teenage boys and teenage boys suck. So especially like a bunch of teenage boys on the Internet together will suck. Um, so there is, there is some of that, there's also animated is like explicitly like, I mean because it's like a whole, it's a whole genre of right. And you can, you know, you can have books that have that touch on that are like really shitty and bad and books that are really great and open your mind to the world and all that. 

So like, um, so there's a whole bunch of of anime that is like, you know, like basically like there's, so there's a whole sub genre of animated. It's basically like a pro fascism more or less. Yeah. Um, there's, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't advertise itself that way, but it's, to me it's like pro fascism in kind of the same way that Fox News is bro Fascism in that it's all plausible deniability. Um, and uh, but like so there. So for example, there's this whole trend of what's known as the modification of the military in Japan is basically like ever since World War II, Japan has not had a real. They have a defense force but not a real army or military. But that's been changing over the course over time as they get more and more of what we would recognize as like an actual military presence. 

And I'm just like, happens here in the United States where we have like video games and TV and stuff that sort of glorifies the military. The Japanese do that too. Uh, but for them, a lot of it is stuff like, um, uh, like you'll have anime series were cute idle girls all represent slash are different kinds of military equipment like tanks or guns or battleships. Um, so like you might have your, you're cute. I don't know any of these characters off top of my head because I don't watch or read any of this stuff. But like, you know, you can have cute penzer chand and she's uh, she's a uh, world war tank, a German tank, you know, it was like a whole series called girls when Panzer. Uh, yeah. And so it's like, and so it's for that like obsessive like person who, who loves the, who wants like cute animals shit, but also wants to like obsess over the aesthetics of war. 

And Fascism is their third name for this, like sort of fascism friendly anime. Um, I don't know off the top of my head that the modification of the military is like one phrase that I do now and that's really about like putting cute mascots on military stuff to kind of like promoted, you know. Um, so uh, which, you know, we do in our own lane, the United States with games. Yeah. Yeah. Or Yeah. Or like if you remember like America's army from the two thousands which was like a video game specifically made for teenagers by the recruiting department of the American military. Right. So plus you have all those rules that the military has were like in the US where like if you want a, you know, a Black Hawk helicopter in your movie, they will lend you one but you have to pass content review where you don't criticize the military in a way that they don't like this. 

Right. That like a memo leak to a couple months ago about like all the US military investment in Hollywood and it was like 150 movies of the last 20 years it was. And they do, and they do the same thing for video games more or less as well, although it's nice, there's less of a, um, uh, an official channel for it in the games industry, but it's still there. And, um, and so, you know, I think it's just, it's happening in Japan, like it happens here. It's just happening in a Japanese type of way where they have like, you know, they have like cute idols for like, you know, large public works structures and towns and all sorts of things. So of course it would just make sense that they would also have cute idols for like their battleships and, or battleships in general. I guess. I don't know if Japan has any battleships because I'm not that kind of a nerd, but, um, but, uh, but, so there's like, because there's something for everyone. 

There's also something for Jerky people. And uh, and I think there's also just a lot of um, uh, yeah, there's, there's, uh, there's uh, yeah. I wish I knew the actual answer to the question about like why so many, like terrible people online have anime avatars. But uh, but it, it tends to be like the sort of hyper cute may aesthetic and it does tend to often be from like, you're not like, I don't think I've ever seen like a random terrible internet person use like a Joe Joe's Avatar because that's not the kind of anime that they are usually watching. Um, or, and I don't even know if they only ironically consume this or say that there are rightly consuming it and then use it as a cover for who knows? I don't know, like I guess it's like sailor Mooney, right? So it's kind of like objectifying women. 

So it gets into like strange pores. So there's some of that or it's like I'm using or they'll use show joe which is like the girl's version of shown in a. So it's like girls Manga and anime instead of boys. And I feel like some of that's just like an ironic cover, you know, like you might use, I don't know, in like an American context, you might put like, I dunno, like Shirley temple or something as your Avatar if you want to like go in and like hardcore, like, you know, go in on some topic or another, right? Like, it's a mockery type thing as well. But also some of it's that they really are into that sort of thing too. So it's, it's this multifaceted thing. I wish I had like a clear answer for it. Uh, I think, I mean, I think about like, uh, you know, um, so I think, I think it's just that there's so much anime and Monga out there that people can latch onto whatever they want. 

And also I think for, I think that for Americans, um, because there's that cultural divide, people can kind of project what they want on, on the media as well in a way that like you can't when it's your own kind of home territory of understanding essentially. Um, but yeah, I don't have a, I don't have a super great answer for it. I think my, my, my closest thing to an answer is like, well, yeah, you know, it is something that teen boys like and teen boys are usually pretty bad and in numbers in large numbers. So yeah, I secretly wondered if there's just so many. There's, you know, hundreds of thousands of different subject matter possibilities that whatever angry people alone in a room can find an outlet or something that speaks to them. I mean, like for example, I spend a lot of time on the, the, the subreddit for Joe Joe's bizarre adventure. 

I'm not, I'm not on Reddit at all, but I specifically have an account and go to reddit to specifically engage with this subreddit because I find it delightful and everybody's very polite and very. It's just a, it's just a really lovely little place. Um, and, and so like, you know, yeah, Hashtag not all anime I guess, but uh, but it's uh, yeah. So, you know, it is this large multifaceted thing and uh, and you can find a. So I do think it's, some of it's just like, well, which anime fans are you talking about? Right? Yeah. I guess I like to get into, I think it's become a meme with a subset of like the, the alt right or, you know, for trans roles and that kind of thing. It's just like a thing that you do, just like putting pepper on your avatar became like a signal of a certain kind of thing. 

Um, so it's, you know, whether or not it makes sense. It's become a signifier for a certain kind of person and behavior. Yeah. It's probably like an American flag pin or something. So like I am good at Internet and I'm also super right wing and I can prove that to my pals here with this animal. I guess I don't like to get into the mind of a racist, but what don't they hate other cultures? Like it's. So it's so strange that I, I mean, I don't, I don't mean. Well that's the thing about racism is always incoherent. That's why every single races can say I have a black friend. 

Oh, okay. Um, uh, I just saw that a Uris Uris on ice. Oh, Uri on ice. Yeah. Yeah. It's coming to like, like stadium theaters around the country on October 13th. There's A. I know because we bought tickets this morning, cory and I, uh, yeah, on October 13th, Uri on ice is airing on, they're doing, you know how sometimes movie theaters will do a thing where they'll like era baseball game or an opera or something like that. Well, they're doing a full Uri on ice is a, is a sports slash romance anamae about ice skaters, about male ice skaters. And um, uh, and it's, it's really great. It's actually one of the best, like just TV shows I've ever seen, period, you know, animated or not a, just a really well told romance, uh, with, in a sports context. And uh, and it was a huge hit like it was. 

People were expecting it to be popular, but it was like an enormous hit beyond what anyone possibly could have imagined both in Japan and abroad. Uh, and there's a lot of like professional figure skaters who like who, who religiously watch it. And it at the last winter Olympics, um, or at the last basically at professional events now you see professional ice skaters with their, like Uri on ice swag or they'll like do a pose from your yard. Nice. And this isn't just Japanese skaters. This is a worldwide phenomenon. Uh, but anyway, yeah, it's a simulcasting October 13th, uh, or not simulcasting, but it's basically showing October 13th in theaters across the country. And uh, it's like, I think it's most AMC theaters are showing it so you can buy special tickets for the one time. It, will it be like three new episodes have never been seen? 

No, it's actually just a, it's just a, it's just a, a, a marathon of all the episodes that have aired a, there's only 12 episodes and they're like 22 minutes long. So it's, it's in theory like a, it's like a six hour thing. So it's like going to a lord of the rings, not even the director's cuts, you know, just seeing the theatrical releases of maybe you know, to Lord of the rings movies in a row. Oh. So these are shows you've seen already is like how long ago did it come out? About two years ago. It would be to go this, this like December. Oh Wow. That's pretty recent. So like in 10 years we're going to have a whole new crop of ice skaters that were children. Yeah, I think so. I think there's going to be a bunch of children's figure skaters who like, got inspired by watching this thing because it's a, it's, it's a cultural phenomenon. 

It's kind of amazing. I think I'm going to try and go do it. That looks really awesome. Yeah, it's uh, yeah, just, just, uh, you know, uh, I can't imagine like, I think watching a movie theater, it'd be great because so many people will have already seen. It'll probably be like rocky horror or something where people are just yelling out their favorite lines. Fit. Yeah. Oh, there's going to be cosplay for sure. Oh my God. There's going to be like sequence. It's going to be around probably to that part. Oh Wow. It just be nice to concentrate. Right? Like when you watch something, you know, you got like notifications and just to be, yeah, to just slowly soak it in. I think I'm going to go for it. Alright, cool. Thanks. Thanks for, uh, a little bit of followup and. Okay, thanks a bunch. 

The show is Samaritan by the long winters on the album, putting the days of the bed, net Kersey and records that John Roderick 

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