Important If True 4: A Thousand Dormant Machines

[Jake]

Important If True 4:

A Thousand Dormant Machines
The road to the truth can take you through some dangerous places, so keep the windows up, the doors locked, and never, ever get out of the car. Or ignore that advice, and follow us down the truth’s seedier and long-forgotten offramps, in search of the really important questions. Like: What happens when your smart house gets a little too smart? Where do those creepy Chuck E. Cheese pizza robots come from? And why is the society depicted in Pixar's Cars a mockery of the living and the dead?

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Important Reference Materials: Goldblum noises, Smart House, Alexa, Blank Check, The Rock-Afire Explosion, carbohydrillium, Disney•Pixar Cars, popes, geological butts

Chris' Endorsement: Stayfocusd Chrome browser extension

Jake's Endorsement: Logan

Nick's Endorsement: Calling your aunt back; or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild if you just want to buy something and be a consumer

 

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[jennegatron]

Just opened the Rock-Afire Explosion wikipedia page and it includes this superb quote "Looney Bird shares Billy Bob's stage, as they are supposedly close friends." I love the idea that someone out there doesn't believe that they're actually friends.

[Salacious Snake]

Great episode! I was grinning like an idiot during my commute. 

[Gamebeast23456]

I loved Logan because I grew up a huge X-Men fan, and obviously, a Wolverine fan. However, the real pro-strat I employed in my viewing was taking my mom with me. She ended up liking the film, and I thought that served as a decent testament to how much it got right. I think it is a rare comic book movie that understands a deeper power of comic books- to present strong characters in tons of different situations that can actually inform them as human beings. Though my mom doesn't know about Professor X, or Weapon X, or the specifics of Logan's backstory, the strength of the portrayals and the writing totally brought out everything she needed to know. 

 

I would second his recommendation. 

 

To the point about bathroom signs, I think you guys are at least slightly underestimating the variability in bathroom designs. I think the detail that actually serves to seperate them is more general than a picture of a human on the sign. Rather, it's the fact that a room is labeled pictographically, as opposed to numerically or linguistically. 

[Gormongous]

Aaah, Jake, stop using "high concept" to denote a highly complicated or sophisticated concept when it literally means the opposite of that!

 

That is all.

[Jake]

2 minutes ago, Gormongous said:

Aaah, Jake, stop using "high concept" to denote a highly complicated or sophisticated concept when it literally means the opposite of that!

 

That is all.

 

Sorry. Also whatever. 

[Gormongous]

4 minutes ago, Jake said:

Sorry. Also whatever. 

 

Hey, you guys love to make fun of "literally" being used to mean "figuratively," I figured you'd be receptive to other flip-flops in meaning. Sorry, don't feel bad! The lexical contamination of "high concept" by "high brow" is apparently a pet peeve of mine.

[Chris]

35 minutes ago, Gormongous said:

 

Hey, you guys love to make fun of "literally" being used to mean "figuratively," I figured you'd be receptive to other flip-flops in meaning. Sorry, don't feel bad! The lexical contamination of "high concept" by "high brow" is apparently a pet peeve of mine.

 

What was the context of this? I have a lot of conversations with Jake and conflating "high concept" and "highbrow" doesn't sound like him.

[RubixsQube]

(Nick, Jake, and Chris are explaining to an alien about the oddities of Earth culture)

 

Jake: ...and that's why the film Cars is secretly very weird. 

 

Alien: Actually could you go back to the part that started this whole thing, where your people has gone and built a fictional city from this children's story such that you might...walk around in it, and perhaps enjoy meals?

 

Nick: Also, there are rides.

 

Alien: Rides? 

 

Nick: Yes. You sit down inside some of the characters from the film and you are propelled quickly around. In one case, you kind of go through the story of the film Cars.

 

Alien: Wait, from what you said, the characters from the film Cars are cars.

 

Chis: Yes, which is why it's so weird they decorate their cities with -  

 

Alien: (shaking off Chris) How do you arrive at this place, with the recreation and the rides?

 

Jake: ...we drive. 

 

Alien: In a real car? And not a fictional car, or a character from the film Cars. 

 

Jake: Yes. 

 

Alien: So you get in a car, and are propelled quickly...to a recreation of a fictional city such that you might wander around and then get inside other...(fake?) cars, which are characters from a children's story, to also get pushed around. I would assume that here you are...moving quicker than when you traveled to this place originally? 

 

Jake: No, actually. It's much slower. 

 

Alien: Yeah, see, this is the weird thing, guys. 

[Gormongous]

8 hours ago, Chris said:

 

What was the context of this? I have a lot of conversations with Jake and conflating "high concept" and "highbrow" doesn't sound like him.

 

Not conflation, just contamination that pushes "high concept" to mean something more than a succinct, clear, and engaging premise. In response to a listener writing an email about a dream about writing an email about a dream about evil robots replacing humans and infiltrating their attic, which they knew to be a video game because their three-year-old could read, Jake said, "That is the most high-concept dream of all time!" And then he describes a very convoluted dream of his own where he was snatched into a helicopter by giant claws, which he also begins by describing as "high concept." Also, I'm hugely regretting the teasing of my initial post now.

[Chris]

23 minutes ago, Gormongous said:

 

Not conflation, just contamination that pushes "high concept" to mean something more than a succinct, clear, and engaging premise. In response to a listener writing an email about a dream about writing an email about a dream about evil robots replacing humans and infiltrating their attic, which they knew to be a video game because their three-year-old could read, Jake said, "That is the most high-concept dream of all time!" And then he describes a very convoluted dream of his own where he was snatched into a helicopter by giant claws, which he also begins by describing as "high concept." Also, I'm hugely regretting the teasing of my initial post now.

 

Got it! Thanks for the clarification.

[Jake]

2 hours ago, Gormongous said:

 

Not conflation, just contamination that pushes "high concept" to mean something more than a succinct, clear, and engaging premise. In response to a listener writing an email about a dream about writing an email about a dream about evil robots replacing humans and infiltrating their attic, which they knew to be a video game because their three-year-old could read, Jake said, "That is the most high-concept dream of all time!" And then he describes a very convoluted dream of his own where he was snatched into a helicopter by giant claws, which he also begins by describing as "high concept." Also, I'm hugely regretting the teasing of my initial post now.

 

You're right that I misused that word and that it's become diluted. I definitely meant nothing related to the word "highbrow," though. I didn't know that I had been misusing it so egregiously but I clearly have! I think my brain slid down the same slope as (I am guessing) everyone elses did with that term. My guess at least, is that it got corrupted by becoming shorthand for "that seems like a moment that came out of someones high concept idea" like, "its a very strange and specific idea" but has turned fully into "that's an elaborate pitch."

[Gormongous]

43 minutes ago, Jake said:

 

You're right that I misused that word and that it's become diluted. I definitely meant nothing related to the word "highbrow," though. I didn't know that I had been misusing it so egregiously but I clearly have! I think my brain slid down the same slope as (I am guessing) everyone elses did with that term. My guess at least, is that it got corrupted by becoming shorthand for "that seems like a moment that came out of someones high concept idea" like, "its a very strange and specific idea" but has turned fully into "that's an elaborate pitch."

 

Yeah, I didn't think you were actually confused about the meaning of "high concept," I just think your brain probably got stuck on "high concept" the way that brains often do, where they're looking to describe something and they just pull something from the "already used word" buffer. That said, I do think it's damaged the word's meaning in wider society to coexist in a cultural space with "high art," "high brow," "high class," and so on. It also doesn't help that "high concept" already seems to be DOA for many, judging from the first hundred Google results being mostly pinched-brow corrections from "industry insiders" (and then other "insiders" correcting them with brows even more pinched).

 

To actually say something meaningful, I genuinely think the process by which words or phrases become their own antonyms is interesting (the term for such a thing is apparently "contronym," but that mixes Latin and Greek in a gross way, so nah): sometimes it's social pressure from under- or overuse ("silly" is a classic example), sometimes it's because of other words that look related but are not (poor "bemused" and "nonplussed"), and sometimes the world just changes around the word instead of vice versa (the Italian word "alto" inherited its dual meaning of "high/deep" from classical Latin but now has weird ambiguities like "alta mare" meaning the high seas and not the deep sea). Yep!

[Chris]

This actually reminds me of the way people often erroneously use the phrase "high tea." People say "high tea" when they almost always mean "afternoon tea," because they're thinking "the fancy one," and "high" sounds like "fancy." But "high tea" actually refers to the more utilitarian meal, and "afternoon tea" to the more luxurious indulgence.

[Vasari]

I forgot to post this last week, but the funniest part of the Alexa dollhouse incident was when a news station in San Diego reported the story and activated even more Alexas by repeating the phrase.

 

The same thing happened a few years ago when a TV advert for the Xbox One featured a voice command that would turn on any Xbox Ones that heard it. If voice-activated technology is going to be everywhere in the future then there has to be some sort of safeguard that can't be bypassed by someone shouting the magic word.

[Gamebeast23456]

19 minutes ago, Chris said:

This actually reminds me of the way people often erroneously use the phrase "high tea." People say "high tea" when they almost always mean "afternoon tea," because they're thinking "the fancy one," and "high" sounds like "fancy." But "high tea" actually refers to the more utilitarian meal, and "afternoon tea" to the more luxurious indulgence.

But what if it is high fantas-tea? Would it be high concept, or high brow? Both? 

[Gormongous]

17 minutes ago, Chris said:

This actually reminds me of the way people often erroneously use the phrase "high tea." People say "high tea" when they almost always mean "afternoon tea," because they're thinking "the fancy one," and "high" sounds like "fancy." But "high tea" actually refers to the more utilitarian meal, and "afternoon tea" to the more luxurious indulgence.

 

And that reminds me that English also has "high noon," a leftover from the imprecision of pre-modern timekeeping, where there was a meaningful distinction to be made between "noon" (roughly midday) and "high noon" (the exact moment of midday). Same with "time" and "high time." 

 

And then you've got "high school" shifting from a school for advanced studies to a school for older (and hence taller) kids and "high road" shifting from the popular or more-frequented road to the road you ride on your high horse... I'm beginning to feel that English has a complicated relationship with the word "high"...

[SpectreCollie]

Here's the chandelier from Flo's V8 Diner. Enjoy your food, human friends!

 

I think the tail lights are especially interesting/disturbing if you consider dog anatomy. Maybe I was wrong to assume they're nipples?

[SpectreCollie]

Also! There was the comment on the podcast that Radiator Springs rock formations in Cars Land would be analogous to if Mount Rushmore were naturally occurring.

 

Since the peaks in the Radiator Springs mountain range are modeled and named after subsequent years of Cadillac tail fins (citation: tourist info plaque on the path from Bugs Land), it would be as if Mount Rushmore were naturally occurring and featured the Presidents' butts. 

[Chris]

7 minutes ago, SpectreCollie said:

Also! There was the comment on the podcast that Radiator Springs rock formations in Cars Land would be analogous to if Mount Rushmore were naturally occurring.

 

Since the peaks in the Radiator Springs mountain range are modeled and named after subsequent years of Cadillac tail fins (citation: tourist info plaque on the path from Bugs Land), it would be as if Mount Rushmore were naturally occurring and featured the Presidents' butts. 

 

I made the same point on the podcast! (Also thanks for the email.)

[SpectreCollie]

2 minutes ago, Chris said:

 

I made the same point on the podcast! (Also thanks for the email.)

 

Oops oops. I was distracted because I was simultaneously working and also still desperately trying  to forget the Rock-a-fire "spray this on my face I love it" bit.

[Sullitude]

I have proposed Nyquil Jeff Goldblum as one of the 45 Human Brains and asked the hosts to confirm or reject.

 

https://45brains.online/

 

#8 – Nyquil Jeff Goldblum

The personality of Jeff Goldblum that surfaces when Chris Remo has ingested Nyquil and dozed off.

Status: Proposed

Message: *incoherent chuckle*

More Info

[Jutranjo]

10 hours ago, RubixsQube said:

(Nick, Jake, and Chris are explaining to an alien about the oddities of Earth culture)

 

Jake: ...and that's why the film Cars is secretly very weird. 

 

Alien: Actually could you go back to the part that started this whole thing, where your people has gone and built a fictional city from this children's story such that you might...walk around in it, and perhaps enjoy meals?

 

Nick: Also, there are rides.

 

Alien: Rides? 

 

Nick: Yes. You sit down inside some of the characters from the film and you are propelled quickly around. In one case, you kind of go through the story of the film Cars.

 

Alien: Wait, from what you said, the characters from the film Cars are cars.

 

Chis: Yes, which is why it's so weird they decorate their cities with -  

 

Alien: (shaking off Chris) How do you arrive at this place, with the recreation and the rides?

 

Jake: ...we drive. 

 

Alien: In a real car? And not a fictional car, or a character from the film Cars. 

 

Jake: Yes. 

 

Alien: So you get in a car, and are propelled quickly...to a recreation of a fictional city such that you might wander around and then get inside other...(fake?) cars, which are characters from a children's story, to also get pushed around. I would assume that here you are...moving quicker than when you traveled to this place originally? 

 

Jake: No, actually. It's much slower. 

 

Alien: Yeah, see, this is the weird thing, guys. 

 

This still works if you replace "Earth culture" with "American culture" and "Alien" with "European".

[Jake]

55 minutes ago, Jutranjo said:

 

This still works if you replace "Earth culture" with "American culture" and "Alien" with "European".

 

eh

[Patrick R]

Jake suggesting to use the Rockafire Explosion to scare away burglars reminded me of my favorite SNL sketch ever, Home Security Decoys.