Jake

Wow good.

Yay thanks for arranging that! It was great.

Important If True 51: Indistinguishable From The Content If a book about procrastination that was never finished or published, gets cited in a book about procrastination that sells a million copies, which author did a better job? When you place the final piece in a blank jigsaw puzzle, have you accomplished anything? If your friend or co-host was replaced with a perfect clone, even if you knew it had happened, could you tell the difference? Find out the answer to these and many more important questions, by listening! Discussed: Getting your hair cut internationally, 1000-piece one-color jigsaw puzzles, encoding a secret conspiracy clue into a blank crossword puzzle, planetwide fractal puzzle solving, Vine, coining a phrase, forming relationships inside The Content, forming a relationship with The Content, convincing Jeff Goldblum he knows Nick Breckon, Jeff Goldcast, 39-year Wax House, Procrastination Through the Ages, the tragedy of self-improving wine, mystery box wine, the Hope/Jobs/Cash tontine Send us your questions at questions@importantiftrue.com. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon. Nick's Endorsement: Appreciating the Olympic sport of Curling Chris' Endorsement: German language Weimer Republic police drama Babylon Berlin (Netflix, original book series Jake's Endorsement: Improving your Google Image Search results by installing the extension View Image (Chrome, Firefox) and adding the text "-site:pinterest.com" to your search query Chris' Potential Future Endorsement: Marmite yeast extract Sponsored By: Quip electric toothbrushes (your first brush head refill free), Edd Miles, Greg Blackburn Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

We talk about this way too much, on this weeks upcoming episode.

Idle Thumbs BONUS: Ruination Online February 2018 Enjoy this bonus episode drawn from the Idle Thumbs Patreon Ruination Online! Each month, we do a livestream where all topics have been posed by high-tier backers of our Patreon campaign: patreon.com/IdleThumbs. Due to popular demand, we're releasing the audio of that stream to the main podcast feed for easier listening. We'll be back with a regular episode of Idle Thumbs soon! Discussed: B. D. Wong, HPB Wong, The Idle Thumbs Patreon, impressing someone with your cooking ability, impressive cooking disasters, roasting tomatoes, roasting your dad's tomato sauce recipe, climate change, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, only playing Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis one more time before you die, Positive and Uplifting Internet Content*, ABBA, My Brother, My Brother, and Me, Content ID, how do podcasts use tons of licensed music and not get destroyed?, This American Life uploading their library to YouTube and being Content ID'd into a crater, which podcasts would we guest on and ruin, being one step closer to the grave, lightly roasted coffee, powerfully roasted coffee, :-), brushing your teeth for a week so you don't have to brush your teeth for a long time, teleporting around, good genies vs bad genies, our favorite tiki drinks, the Winter Olympics, StarCraft 2, QWOP * Positive and Uplifting Internet content: Pepe Silvia w/drums, Nick tries to Ambush Far Cry 2 while Chris Remo plays music, Thru-YOU, Gangnam Style (yeah), Justice DVNO music video, any Vine compilation Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Idle Thumbs 316: In My Head, I Was Degrading You look up from your keyboard and notice something's not right. It looks like the game you were just playing, but something's a little off. Did you fall into a game within a game? "No worries," you think, wiping the gunk from your sunken eyes, "I'll just finish up this little Easter Egg and be moving again in no time," and delve deeper. The police discover your skeleton, still at the keyboard, dead for who knows how long. The officer who found your remains enters them into evidence improperly, is suspended without pay, and must restore from a previous save. You look up from your keyboard and notice something's not right. Discussed: Celeste, PICO-8 fantasy video game console, Celeste for PICO-8, Inside a Star-Filled Sky, The Veldt (Ray Bradbury short story), the game police, Police Quest, Duncan Fyfe's Police Quest article for Waypoint, Duncan Fyfe's podcast Something True, The Pixel Art Progenitors, They Are Billions, billions, Anno: 27 Billion, pinball, Cinco Paus, Flappy Bird, Bay Tek Games, MirraViz Multiview Display, gaslighting by cinema, Far Cry 2, Super Smash Bros., Nintendo LABO, Consumer Game War.Improved, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, hacking Donkey Kong high scores Sponsored By: Squarespace (use offer code "thumbs" for 10% off your website), Casper (use offer code "thumbs" for $50 off select mattresses), MVMT (use offer code "thumbs" for 15% off watches and more) Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

My initial outburst at the very top of the episode was because I suspected (incorrectly) that you were trying a Slyboots with Y’all... and then Nick caught on and did it himself. I realize that by drawing attention to it, I created it. Meanwhile though, that was all a distraction: While we were all y’alling, you sprang your real trap, “clam in the beverage.”

Also re: my blanching at "Y'all" possibly being injected into the podcast by Chris as a deliberate attempt to start some phrase.... he tried to do that with TOO MUCH CLAM IN THE BEVERAGE in this very episode!!

YES I was worried I was being Sly Bootsed.

It’s more specifically that you sometimes try to seed a bit and then troll us with it by revealing far later what you’re up to. It smelled strongly of that!

I think you’re correct, and then he fully took over.

I felt like saying that phrase would make the whole thing collapse so it remained unsaid. I got the feeling everyone felt that way. You don’t want to pull out the keystone.

“Moving on from failure,” is maybe most accurate than those who say it’s explicitly about “failure” itself? Sometimes the way someone moves on is to try and turn failure into whatever victory is possible even if the cost is huge, sometimes it’s to wallow in the failure, sometimes it’s self examination and an attempt at reconciliation, etc. (I think that distinction - that the movie is examining “what to do in the face of your failure” as opposed to “a depiction of acts of failing” - is actually what people have always meant in when saying it’s about “failure,” though, so I’m not saying anything new. Arguing against the latter, which I think is a misread of what people mean, is going to drill into needless semantic holes about what is and isn’t “failure.”)

Idle Weekend December 31, 2017: Homelife, 2017 The Idle Weekenders bid this crappy year adieu with the help of friend and colleague Cameron Kunzelman. They talk home settings in games, from the cozy confines of Stardew Valley’s quaint town, to the too-millennial aspirations of later Sims, to the much wackier ways in which horror games set family life. Then, we talk some serious trash about White Christmas and other fabulous trashcan eclairs. Like Dark Matter. Discussed: Stardew Valley, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Quiet Year, Crusader Kings, Animal Crossing, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, Resident Evil 7, Tacoma, Hyper Light Drifter, Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, White Christmas, Dark Matter Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Important If True 36: Never Say Goodbye Nothing is permanent, especially not these days. You look away for a second and look back, and the world around you has changed, subtly. A TV you swear wasn't there a moment before is yelling at you about something that doesn't exist yet. Your friend turns to you, his shirt changed to a logo you've never seen before, and you think you know what he's going to say - he's going to ask you important questions about the world around him, questions like "How can you best maintain the integrity of your aging brand? What REALLY happened at the end of The Usual Suspects? Is this podcast cursed?" - but as he opens his mouth you hear, in splintering clarity, "SEE THOR RAGNAROK THIS WEEKEND," and know you can't trust him ever again. Discussed: Happy Birthday Jake wooooo Happy Halloween!!!, Jake's curse, corn maze, terrible 20th Television production logo, La Cucaracha horn, SeamBI, SeamBI B2B, How I Met Your Mother, brand integrity, Taxi, definitely Mastercard's favorite play of the game, television without greenscreen, Ex Machina, The Usual Suspects, Beauty and the Beast, believing movies are more magical than they really are, a very gullible friend, running for high school student office, how Americans talk on the phone on TV, everything being terrible forever Send us your questions to questions@importantiftrue.com. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon. Nick's Endorsement: Polar Feet Adults' Non-slip Fleece Socks Chris' Endorsement: Using Instapaper (or a similar read-it-later service) to always have something you've been meaning to read handy Jake's Endorsement: Using 3D face-mapping software Facerig to inject shreds of levity into your soul-sucking mandatory office video chat experience Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Ah there we go this makes perfect sense and is exactly where I've encountered it before but my brain was reeling to put the memory together.

Congrats on your 420th episode.

The Fringe opening! The opening itself is a litttle but too much “the x files but full of curious wonder!” for me but I like a lot of the music in that show, and the variant intros are really fun. It was Michael Giacchino for the first few seasons and then Chris Tilton (who did the fantastic score for the new SimCity a few years back) took over and did great work too.

Important If True 46: Cut Your Hair This week we discover that no matter how far flung life's questions may seem, there may be a universal key that unlocks them all. For instance: How do you completely collapse the degrees of separation between you and viral HQ winners? Do you actually remember anything that happened on the childhood television shows you hold so dear? What do the multiple robocall personalities who continue to call you at home, make demands of you, get noticeably bored and then hang up on you, actually want? The answer to all of them is, inexplicably, that you should cut your hair. At least, that's what we've been led to believe. Discussed: "If You're Going to San Francisco (to Return to Your Old Barber But Want to Really Act Up the Fact That You Were In Canada) (Put Flowers In Your Hair)", unconventional Canadian sex/hair desires, HQtie of the year flipping out after winning $11.30 in HQ Trivia, The Elephant Show, Sesame Street, Nick Breckon wax housing Landis the hairdresser, the long arm of "Wax House, Baby", horror film podcast The Rants Macabre, pointlessly but insidiously altering the apparent history of short-lived children's cartoon Street Sharks, the mutual idiocy that is information aggregation on the internet, Street Sharks vandal copycat killer, ruining our own stupid childhoods, inexplicable robocalls, getting good advice over the phone, getting hung up on by a robot, those gross fungus toe ads for mortgage refinancing and stuff, the marketing matrix, The Marketing Matrix, I literally can't even explain the dumb internet shit we made up on this part of the podcast, Mellotron keyboard but instead of violin samples it has a bro telling you to cut your hair, Being John Malkovich but instead of being John Malkovich it has a bro telling you to cut your hair, "laff box" for creating televised laugh tracks live, our fractal gaslight reality, inappropriate diluting and genericizing of the phrase "Wax House, Baby" Send us your questions at questions@importantiftrue.com. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon. Jake's Endorsement: The Director's Cut podcast from the Director's Guild of America Chris' Endorsement: Collecting all your paper-based ephemera and, amidst a nostalgia explosion, organizing it (for instance, into a file box like this with file folders like this) Nick's Endorsement: Reverse-searing your cheeseburger Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Twin Peaks Rewatch 52: The Return, Part 17 It's time for the first half of the end. Twin Peaks' final curtain call aired as a two-part double-long event, and we ended up with so much to say about these final episodes, we followed suit and split our podcast into two parts as well. In this episode, almost every major plot thread we've seen this season culminates in an epic showdown at the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department—a showdown that resolves itself so neatly it's unsettling, before everything starts to change, to slip, and fall apart. Join us as we discuss Part 17 of Twin Peaks, The Return, and do our best to unpack our own reactions, what the events of the finale might mean, and what they mean to us. If you have a question for us or thoughts to share on the new season of Twin Peaks, write us at twinpeaks@idlethumbs.net. Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes Twin Peaks Rewatch 53: The Return, Part 18 Twin Peaks has ended, it was confusing, upsetting, and we have a lot of questions, but we loved it. Wait, what year is this? Join us for a discussion of the series finale of Twin Peaks, as we walk through Part 18 piece by piece, with many stops along the way to ruminate on everything that's come before, what it all means and feels like now that we're at the end. Next week we'll be back with an episode full of reader mail and some final decompression of the season as a whole, but before we go: Thank you so much for sharing the last 16 weeks of Twin Peaks with us. It's been a one of a kind experience and we've loved spending the time with you. If you have a question for us or thoughts to share on the new season of Twin Peaks, write us at twinpeaks@idlethumbs.net. Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Wow ok haha. In a desperate hope of ever learning what it was I tweeted a link to this week’s episode to the hosts of Reply All. Crazy (if unsurprising) that they may have already come across it.

This guy gets it.

That’s just the official term I think. It’s always been called that.

I’m with you, but the people demanded this. Ever since nick went remote, people have asked why he doesn’t have a microphone and “it’s on the screen!” didn’t satisfy them. Maybe this abomination will.