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Topic Lords

Topic Lords

By: Jim Stormdancer
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 Every week, Jim invites different friends to guest on Topic Lords and be excited about whatever they've been fixated on this week.© 2026 Jim Stormdancer Art
Episodes
  • 338. Placebo Yourself into Having a Phenomenal Time

    338. Placebo Yourself into Having a Phenomenal Time
    Apr 13 2026

    Lords:

    • Mark
      • Mark's top albums of 2025: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1InKh07sllCLF6cu9za0yhQvmGVC3ZHvM162XI1u1S9A
    • Shirley

    Topics:

    • If you want to be at the front of the stage at a show, just go there, literally no one is stopping you - or - THE ONLY THING YOU LACK IS WILL
    • Elves and Using Religion to Protect Natural Spaces
    • It's illegal to mod your EV to have custom engine noises
    • Litany Against Fear
      • https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Litany_Against_Fear
    • How to stop drinking coffee

    Microtopics:

    • The Splintered Oar, by Weft.
    • An album about labor rights in Kentucky.
    • Reading aloud to your friends and family.
    • The siren song of sitting on the couch and watching TV.
    • Time as the crow flies.
    • Measuring time as the crow looks at the clock.
    • Wanting to be right in front of the stage and just going there.
    • Paying hundreds of dollars to stand in an extremely loud room.
    • Getting after it with an open heart.
    • Everyone standing at the same height as the musicians playing live music.
    • An active member of a live music community in a major US city.
    • Physically engaging with the music.
    • Letting go of your concern for the eyes upon you.
    • Standing in place for the entire four or five bands playing this show without ever leaving your spot to pee.
    • Working the merch booth.
    • Unloading a truckload of positive energy into the space in front of the stage.
    • Mosh pit comfort.
    • Bands graduating to the next level of popularity.
    • Fighting your way to the front of the stage so you can not look at the band.
    • Luxuriating in the freedom of a shared experience of joy.
    • Giving back to the artists you love by screaming at them while they play music.
    • Becoming part of a local scene.
    • People who believe in elves and people who pretend to believe in elves.
    • Looking forward to when your child might one day bring you boba.
    • Elf kayfabe.
    • Mall Santa breaking kayfabe.
    • Whether the mall Santa has to keep up the act even when he's alone in the shower.
    • Reindeer-powered Yaris.
    • Scandinavian elf lore.
    • Post 9/11 supporting of the troops.
    • Arguments to which there is no possible rebuttal, such as "you can't build a mini mall because the elves live here."
    • Picking a random Wikipedia article about Nordic folklore and finding out how many metal bands are named after it.
    • How few murders there are in the modern black metal scene.
    • A looping sample of Snoop Dogg saying "this Volt is in reverse."
    • Automotive engineers deliberately making the engine noise play a power chord.
    • Instead of banning whistle tips, legislators mandating that they play a 7th chord, and also that the driver must know enough music theory to explain why they chose that chord.
    • Being on the sideshow mailing list so you can attend every sideshow.
    • All the different motions you have to make to wash the entire surface of both hands.
    • A poem about not allowing fear to conquer you while you wash your hands.
    • A poem with a specific utility.
    • The lifelong pursuit of being okay with your own mortality.
    • Trying to learn to be happy with what you have.
    • How I fucked myself up.
    • How many waves coffee has.
    • Genetic sense of thirst.
    • Making up a magic number of ounces of water to drink.
    • Getting a water bottle and putting a cool sticker on it.
    • The lion's share of behavioral addiction.
    • Going downstairs into your morning environment.
    • The ritual pleasure of fidgeting with a cigarette.
    • Quitting smoking and having to find other rituals to fill the space smoking used to fill.
    • Your brain being like "remember cigarettes? That was cool" and you're like "that's a weird thing to bring up right now, brain."
    • Having a puff on a cigarette to find out if that's enough to get you addicted again.
    • What it would take to make smoking look uncool.
    • How much easier it is to quit smoking now that they have fidget spinners.
    • All the little adjustments you make to make your life more tolerable.
    • Embers of the Dawn by Bronze Hall.
    • Pumping your fist while you think about elves.
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • 337. Mars, Technically

    337. Mars, Technically
    Apr 6 2026
    Lords: ChrisFabian https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/ Topics: Oops, my 3D printer became a hobbyGTA's AI is not trying to screw with you with its sudden lane changes and T-boning you at intersections, it's just oblivious. (Probably.) Esper says: "I can confirm the traffic AI in Cyberpunk 2077 is still hilarious. I set my car to 'auto drive' and after maybe 30 seconds it took a hard right into the ocean. Maybe that’s lore accurate, who knows."Alberic Whale and the Enigma Layer https://thespinoff.co.nz/the-best-of/31-12-2018/summer-reissue-the-mystery-of-zach-new-zealands-all-too-miraculous-medical-aihttps://thespinoff.co.nz/society/13-01-2020/rip-zach-probe-finds-serious-wrongdoing-over-miracle-medical-aiBetween What I See and What I Say…, by Octavio Paz https://www.wisdomportal.com/PoetryAnthology/OctavioPaz-Anthology.html Microtopics: A coffee shop that exists here because of the port of Oakland.Popping unroasted coffee beans into your mouth like peanuts. The worst tasting and most caffeinated cup of coffee you've ever had. Your local library. Things that should not be businesses. Three possible purposes of universities. Finding a new hobby (derogatory)3D printing a selection of action figures for your wedding. That one person you know who's really into 3D printers. Why having a broken 3D printer counts as a hobby where having a broken refrigerator is just a situation. Yanking out some gunk with pliers in hopes that that'll fix it. Your 3D printer breaking halfway through your wedding figurine project so you have to make the other other half out of milled aluminum. IBM Selectric Typewriters shipping with a repair guy who lives in your spare bedroom in case it breaks.Amazon sending an Amazon warrior to repair your 3D printer but since you only paid for the cheap extended warranty she's allowed to attack anybody including you. Whether Balatro is trying to deliberately find weaknesses in your build. Higher fidelity graphics coming with expectations of higher fidelity traffic modeling. Car AI in open world games being as dumb as the developers can get away with, except for in Cyberpunk 2077, where they're dumber than the developers can get away with. Whacking at it until it's good enough to ship.Traffic tuning in GTA Vice City. Playing games with really smart, effective AI, like Chessmaster 2000 and X-Com, and realizing that actually having really smart AI is no fun.Skating around with rollerblades on your elbows and knees. Everything's a tuna can. Three car accidents in six weeks. Conscientiously objecting to military service so they insist you get a driver's license instead. Driving through a haunted house to train the braking reflex in response to being startled. Whatever happened to ol' Alby Whale?The AI assistant named Zack turning out to just be a dude named Zack.Adorable tiny food delivery robots who turn out to just be remote controlled by a guy hiding around the corner. Waymo cars blocking major thoroughfares for hours at a time. Multitasking between all the most stressful, confusing driving situations. Self-driving cars (allegedly) turning self-driving off half a second before impact so the impact is blamed on the human operator. Several hundred tons of liquid nitrogen cooled supercomputer.Blaming your spelling errors on The Enigma Layer.Having seen more proof of your AI assistant than you have of god.It's scammers and hucksters all the way down.Whether DLSS is taking away game developer jobs. What happens when you go from a three word Markov model to a five word markov model. A giant prank with no particular end-game in sight. Acts of speech. Poetry as synesthesia. Trying to explain in words why that cat is acting weird when the cat doesn't think in words at all. My Psychosis, my Bicycle and I, by Fritz B. Simon.Trying to figure out how football works when you can't see the players, only the referee. Feeling some type of way.Trying to take musical ideas and apply them outside of the realm of music. Creating words that dance around concepts.Getting stuck forever in your cringe phase. Opportunities to write the same program over and over again. A melancholy linked list implementation.Passive-aggressive C code.Java Enterprise Abstract Singleton Proxy Factory Bean. Remember printed manuals? The international obfuscated C code contest. What made the 3D accelerated demo scene interesting again.How much code you can fit in 64k if you don't link to anything.Secret Topics.
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    1 hr and 22 mins
  • 336. The Four Colonoscopies

    336. The Four Colonoscopies
    Mar 30 2026
    Lords: Jason https://bumpyskies.com/Ben https://www.zerofiftyone.net/ Topics: Prepping for a colonsocopy, the jmac way! https://fogknife.com/2023-12-31-my-colonoscopy-strategies.htmlHow to do things you're bad atThe Trustworthy Shirts Tournament https://eldritch.cafe/@cassolotl/116156921111844432Do not go gentle into that good night, by Dylan Thomas https://poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night Microtopics: The Wordle Puzzmo and Dall-E shitposts channel. Plugging your turbulence forecasting web site at both ends.Kids picking a name for themselves at age 8 and then being stuck with it forever.Going to court and the judge is named "velociraptor#1993" and that's just normal.Trying to pick a baby name and suggesting the name of your great grandmother whom you never met, velociraptor1993.People still being named Baker even though nobody bakes any more. Ripped off vs. stolen.Colonoscopy Strategies. Poorly understood advice from well meaning friends. Drinking squid ink the day before your colonoscopy. A power-blasted clean empty warehouse of a colon. Why are you still listening to these colonoscopy stories? Skip to the end of the episode where I ask you to give money to the patreon.The tattoo on the inside of your colon of an arrow indicating "this polyp right here"Staying up until 3 AM drinking an entire jerry can of mineral wax.Referring to the COVID pandemic as "the pandy"The colonoscopy robot's tattoo gun. Knowing all the names of parts of the intestines because of the difficult boss fight inside an intestine at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Hideo Kojima setting out to design a game to force people to write strategy guides about traversing the human rectum.What Google searches Hideo Kojima was trying to inspire when he designed Snatcher.Writing a strategy guide for drinking a five gallon can of lemon-flavored gym socks. Slightly chewy boiled sweets.Whether Jim should already have had a colonoscopy by now. Getting your colon cancer screening kit in the mail and it swishes when you shake the box.The tattoo scissor robot: it's out there waiting for you.Getting an image of someone else's intestines tattooed on the inside of your intestines. Getting "how's my driving" or "if you can read this you're too close" or "we bought this before we realized Elon was a fascist" tattooed on the inside of your intestines. Striving to be more comfortable with being bad at skills. All the ways you can fail at throwing pottery.Learning to enjoy being bad at the piano. The doodle that Bach drew on the cover of Well Tempered Clavier.Flanderizing yourself because nobody else will.Art forms where you accumulate physical evidence of your skill progression. Recording three audio books and observing yourself getting better at recording audio books.Audible's gig economy thing.Never studying piano because you get too much done when you procrastinate studying piano. Converted telephone microphones.Trying to learn to play piano with a broken digital piano and really getting into electronics repair.Playing live music and being completely at the mercy of time passing. The Moogseum in Asheville, North Carolina.The aspect of human existence that you're most missing out on. Sitting there watching people play music and wishing you could also play music. Learning to play the Final Countdown riff or the Axel F riff and being set for life.Following a tutorial to create a convincing cover of Satisfaction by Benny Benassi.Rip it Up, by Orange Juice. Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat.The Lesser Trolley Problems. Whether viewers of The Good Place are more likely to value moral philosophy.M*A*S*H vs. Moomins.Who would go around wearing a M*A*S*H shirt in 2026?Deciding how much to trust a Moomins aficionado without knowing how old they are.Identifying Moomins on sight.Owl House vs. Owl City.People who go around wearing Owl House shirts without thinking about all the passers by assuming that they mean the Fireflies band.What the characters in Interstellar think of Dylan Thomas.The last wave by soaking in the green bay.Whether you should get mad before you die.Breathing life and fire into those who yet live.Showing people an argument for losing so that they get mad and win instead.Charitable Reads Book Club, LLC.Production values that are way too high for this bit.Soupertasters 15, with guest star Michael Caine.Corn poems vs. carrot poems.
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    1 hr and 7 mins
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