2025.08.25: G.L.O.P.

It's my birthday!

Hey!

We're recording the podcast!

Guns up!

Good!

Morning to you, wherever you are, because

it is

for August 25th, 2025.

So late up.

My name is Bertie Burns, sitting right over there.

Oh, today she's the mother of a six-year-old.

Finn's birthday name.

Let's say hi hi to Ashley.

I know, little birthday boy doing the shout.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Maybe we should have him record a new one.

Maybe he'll do a new birthday or a new Morning Somewhere shout.

Is his voice going to be deeper now that he's sixth?

Should we get we haven't talked about doing the morning somewhere shouts from the audience because we did those for a while and those came in, but I guess once we stop talking about it, they stopped coming in.

So as a reminder, you can send those to us

at the email address

that I definitely know off the top of my head.

All right.

We'll find it.

I'll be looking here.

We'll talk about it again at some point.

But the first thing that I want to start the week off with, Bernie, is the fact that you said you weren't going to do it and then you did it.

Do you remember?

Do you remember the discussion that we had last week?

The it's good enough discussion where

you were like a hundred megabits in the kitchen.

It's good.

It's fine.

It's good enough.

It's so much better.

Right.

And then somehow that led to me crawling through the outside of our walls.

Yeah.

Like in between wood joists, which frankly are kind of, some of them are kind of concerning when you see them and you go, that's holding the house up.

Old, so old.

So old.

And like crawling through that going, when was asbestos invented?

And like, and fishing.

Places way before asbestos.

And fishing.

She worried about plague up in there.

And fishing cables through behind the walls.

And then we're drilling holes in walls to run this cable so that you could have faster internet in the office i know you said you weren't gonna do it i did and then we did it i did and the same like the same day girl i'm not gonna do it i did it

i did it so i but i posted that on instagram this weekend that it was it was an hour like you could see the time stamps between the two different speed tests that i did

And it was about an hour thanks to you getting some of those little small spaces.

I always heard as a kid that in order to wire,

because there's so much equipment in such a dense space in order to wire parts of the space shuttle they trained ferrets have you ever heard this before i have that they would they would use ferrets basically to um run through some of these small conduits and they would uh pull the cable through i i don't think that's actually

just the ISS either.

I think I've heard of that being a thing down here upon the earth as well.

You're my ferret.

I'm your ferret.

You really helped me.

Also, it helped that somebody else else had run

some kind of electrical cable through there at some point.

Probably not the best place to run a data cable, but it got through and it's fine.

Went from 90 megabits per second to 950 megabits per second.

It was a substantial.

And now, Ashley, you have 120 megabits of upload speed.

You can now be a streamer.

She is one of the streamers.

No, it's not.

I feel like there's a weird disconnect here where you're like, you can stream now.

And I'm like, okay.

I just feel like it's something you would enjoy.

Well, and I know for a fact that I would not enjoy it.

I've done streams with our patrons, with our, I'm going to guess now we'll be doing them with sponsors as well.

And, you know, just doing sort of community-focused nights, like playing Fall Guys as a group or something.

I think one night I played Stardew Valley.

I was like, we'll start a stream-only farm.

And that lasted at the time for one day because, well, the internet was terrible and there was really no point in in streaming.

So that's the kind of thing that we can maybe kick up again a little bit.

The National Guard showed up for some reason.

That was weird.

Super weird.

We were ahead of the curve.

Getting mobilized everywhere.

Everywhere.

You know, and so that's the kind of thing.

But like, as far as being a streamer, no, as far as I'm concerned, that sounds like one of the worst jobs in the world.

You get no, there's no time off.

There's no benefits.

You're an Amazon subcontractor.

All they do is send you a bottle to pee in, right?

You know, it's so weird because I've been doing a lot of writing lately, as you know, and I go back to other like story ideas I have written down.

I have all these shortcuts on my phone as well.

People were saying there was some discussion about the autocomplete that I said for it's it's not auto-complete, it's text replacement.

So it's on an iPhone.

You can find text replacement and when you type in something, it replaces it with something else.

In this case, it was a shortcut for my

email address and then my physical address as well.

What the other thing to do is go and just, if you've never done it before and you have an iPhone, hit the shortcuts button on your home screen, find it, search it, do whatever, hit it, and you'd be shocked at how easy it is to set up some small script for something.

And then you have, you can talk to your little digital assistant who lives in your phone, who I won't say the name of because it'll activate everyone who's listening to this.

And then you can, you can, you could be surprised at what you can set up.

Like I have this thing that actually Carrie showed me, Carrie Shock Cross, where you can make a note in this like text organizer that we have that we use um and mine is i said you hear me say it every now and then like hey so-and-so make a mental note and then she goes what's your text that's that's the best part is every time you do that you're like make a mental note and she goes

what's the text it's like she sounds like she's so over your shit she does well it's not one of their things so it's like you get kind of a generic response yeah it's great though it is great and those shortcuts are interesting i think we found them a couple years ago because uh when Finn was a sweet new baby, not a six-year-old, we had this like baby tracker app so that anyone who's taking care of him could just use this app and see when he pooped last, which, you know, for new parents is shockingly useful.

Not anyone who had the app.

Anyone who had the Avatar account could see that.

We were sharing that.

It wasn't like publicly viewable.

He was a streamer already.

No, but, you know, we could look at it and go, oh, okay, well, we should be on the lookout, right?

Like he's due.

Or we could be like, hey, Mark that he's had a bottle, things like that.

So we could keep track of everything that's happening.

And we set up

shortcuts to do that verbally.

And so if I, but I haven't used them since.

I sort of forgot they existed.

So I went and checked my shortcuts and all of them are baby related.

It's like mark a diaper, mark a bottle, right?

Mark sleep.

You say, by the way, that we used to have this app.

I still have the app.

I can't bring myself to delete it.

I know, I can't either.

Because we had it for Eevee, too.

And she's, you know, she's a year out from diapers and stuff like that.

I've got that problem for a couple of apps is because I had one as well that was like a pregnancy tracker.

And it did the fun things like.

How many pregnancies did you have?

Two.

I have eight pregnancies that I have to manage.

But it did

fun stuff.

Like, this week, your baby's as large as a kumquat.

You know, or like.

Or an almond or whatever.

Yeah, everybody go to yeah, and it's like it's the size of like a bean, and you know, or like, you know, and so it's like it's funny.

It's like shortcuts to use for that.

But then it was also things like

smart volume.

It was like, be on the lookout for this, be on the lookout for that.

Here's what's happening biologically at this point.

Here's like sizes and like, you know, things to like watch for.

Like, so, you know, do like you could keep track of your doctor's appointments.

It was like really valuable.

But I remember one of the things that when when row v wade was uh overturned in the us i saw a lot of women saying everyone you should probably delete god any like any tracker um that has like your period or like ovulation or pregnancy trackers you should probably delete those because if they sell that information you don't know if that could someday be used against you geez right and you like to think that that wouldn't be the case but you don't know

like even if you just didn't track it then like what's this gap right yeah right Right.

Um, like, you, you tracked it, and then you didn't track it, and then you tracked it again.

What happened here?

You know, so you just, you just don't know.

So, I couldn't bring myself to delete the app and the data because I was like, it's like my record of like my babies is on here.

So, what I did instead is I moved out of the U.S.

You moved it.

That's it.

That's the other solution.

No, no, big.

Just, you know, just pick up and, you know, go.

Pull up the tent pegs and off you go.

Yep, yep.

Yeah, make it sound easy, but oh my God, we've got, we've got some stuff coming up this week.

We do.

Maintaining that.

We've got, we've got to go do visa stuff, visa biometrics, I think.

Yeah,

we're subjected to all that stuff like anybody else, and it's not easy to do.

Being immigrants ourselves, one of the things that I often get frustrated by is when you hear people talk about immigration, particularly in the U.S., and they say, just do it legally.

Doing it legally.

Do you know how hard that is?

It's already a filter to get rid of so many people.

It's impossibly hard.

It's impossibly expensive to do it.

It's an incredibly privileged thing to be able to do in this day and age.

And changing countries used to not be that.

Like my parents got to, or my ancestors, I should say, which ancestors in the U.S.

is like four generations back.

Like my grandpa's dad, my grandpa's dad, right?

Is my ancestor.

And, you know, they just came across because there was work available.

And they

took a boat and then they got in and they like signed their name and off they went.

And like, that was really it.

And then someone couldn't read their name.

And so they changed it to Burns, basically.

Yeah.

That's the way that worked.

And, you know, it's just, we're just dealing with all that stuff this week.

So if you can think good thoughts for us, we would appreciate it.

Fingers crossed.

Can I give you a compliment, Ashley?

A kind of a bizarre compliment.

You may.

And we talked about this recently because we were out with friends and one of our friends is very pregnant at the moment and

going to have a baby later this year.

And it made me think about you pregnant.

It is one of the things you never think about.

It's like a genetic roll of the dice.

Some people, when they get pregnant, literally do they just glow.

Like it does something to them.

And being pregnant, like your hair got all like really super thick and all this stuff.

And you were just like, you were, I felt like you were completely in the zone the entire time you were pregnant.

That's very nice of you to say because I felt like a balloon the whole time.

I know, I get that.

You know, and it's, I'm like, oh, my feet are swelly and they need to be, I think part of it is probably like just you as well, being like, you're making a baby.

And And so you thought that I was super cool because like that's the thing you can do is just make a new human.

That's pretty cool.

But the first one felt like that was like pretty easy, pretty straightforward.

Everything was great.

I didn't suffer too many of like the symptoms that everyone, you know, tells stories about.

I was like, this is really great.

And then the second one came along and I just had heartburn for nine months.

Yeah.

You can just, yeah, you just get that and you have it.

Also, by the way, when you are pregnant with a kid for nine months, you can just get diabetes for a little while, like gestational diabetes.

You just get some diabetes.

It's one of those things, like, I don't think people realize the toll really it takes until you have watched someone else go through it or you've gone through it yourself.

Holy cow, you don't realize the toll it takes.

I mean, you also, by the way, pay for the amazing hair, right?

Because while you're pregnant, your hair just stops falling out basically, um, because of like all the

crazy

hormone cocktail that you've got going on.

And you pay pay for that because, like, the second that kid is born, that's done.

You're done.

Welcome to baldity.

And then you have like half the hair that you're used to because all the hair that would have probably fallen out over the period of time you were pregnant.

Oh, yeah.

No, it just all goes at once.

Welcome to like clogged drains.

And then over the next like year, you just have like little sticky things like sticking up from your scalp.

You can't have a hairstyle.

It's awful.

I feel like guys fall into two categories.

Okay.

There's either guys who have never unclogged a drain or guys who have ever lived with a woman.

Because it's insane.

It is insane what you guys do to drains.

And let me ask, can I ask the take, this isn't an aside here.

Okay, so

I'm just tuning out here.

This guy talk you're asking?

No girls allowed.

Does your girlfriend or wife,

lady in your life, does she take her hair and stick it on the shower wall?

What is that?

Okay, first of all,

you're not part of of this conversation actually why do they do that please tell me okay

you're welcome first of all because think about it think about it this way um all of the hair that's on that wall did not go down the drain to need to be fished out

i get the spray handle and spray it right

no you don't what am i gonna do collect it and look yeah it goes in the bin i'm gonna knit a sweater with that that's the like the the one thing we have this lovely shower and it's got this like you know this nice infloor drain it's not like a round grating or anything yeah it's really

it's really nice and it's really beautiful and also god fucking damn it i would love a grate in the floor give me something that i can that i can catch the hair instead it all just goes down and then it gets stuck further down and we have what's called a drain weasel i highly recommend them if you can pick them up uh where it's like this like long stick with a little handle that you can like turn to like twist this thing way down the drain and collect all the stuff

and then yank it back.

It's disgusting.

It's nasty.

It is awful.

It's really, really gross.

So don't eat before you do it or you're vomiting down the drain and you have to block that, okay?

And you got to have a shortcut on your iPhone to mark that.

Good morning, everybody.

So it's super gross, but it works very, very well.

So long story short, we now have 950 megabits per second

in the house.

See, when you said you were going to compliment me, do you know what I thought you were going to compliment me about?

Absolutely, I do, but why don't you say it?

I thought you were going to compliment me that, goddamn, did I call it with the success of K-pop Demon Hunters?

You, boy, did you call it with the success of that.

So, I've also read some more about this.

Apparently, Sony invested in this movie and then abandoned it and it went to Netflix or something?

Not exactly.

So,

the director, basically, like the people who made the movie,

they put the pitch together, pitched it to Sony, who passed, but they managed to sell it to Netflix.

So Sony made the movie, but had it, but like sold it to Netflix.

So Netflix paid for the whole thing.

They basically ended up subcontracting Sony to do it.

So Sony did it for like a, you know, the cost plus like a certain amount of the profit.

Oh, and then Netflix is the.

But Netflix is like, it's Netflix's movie.

They're banking it.

Right.

So they pitched it to Sony.

Sony said no.

They sold it to Netflix.

Netflix went to Sony and said, we'll pay you to make it.

Well, because the people pitching it worked at Sony.

Sure, sure, sure.

All this makes sense to me.

That's really interesting, though.

Yeah.

No, it was, it was like the way it works.

I was like, I don't know.

That's how it worked, but I guess that's I'm just happy it worked out for everyone.

You know, and this was a

very long process to get the whole thing made.

I think they, you know, they were going through like iterations and working on it for like nine years.

So long, long road, but wildly successful.

In addition to all of the success that it's having on Netflix, I'm pretty sure this week it's knocking Red Notice off the number one all-time film on Netflix.

So it's going to take the number one spot.

I just learned two pieces of information.

Red Notice was the biggest movie ever?

Yeah.

Red Notice has like in terms of I think viewing hours, Red Notice is the number one on Netflix or shall we say was.

When Robert was on the podcast, he talked about the thing he made for Netflix that was just constantly in

the charts for Netflix.

Is it we can be heroes?

And then now Finn is watching that movie all the time.

He watches that like daily.

Like, I remember when we were kids, you'd have like that one movie that you watched all the time.

Like, my sister, it was the little mermaid.

My little brother,

it was the Lion King.

For me, it was like labyrinth.

If you want to sell something to millennials, just put it in the

VHS clamshell, this white, that big

clam shell.

The big white Disney clamshell VHS case, we'll buy it.

It doesn't matter what.

Millennials will just be like, oh, see, that doesn't matter what's in it.

You have to have it.

But yeah, for him right now, it turns out it's not that you're, you know, because you're limited by choice, you just like pick the one.

It turns out, even if you have all the choices in the world, you still watch the same one over and over.

And that's for Finn, we can be heroes.

Yeah, and it's funny because we can stream that in the house because we've had decent download speed for a while now.

But I posted on Instagram after I posted like the improvement from 90 to 950,

I posted like, this is what we lived with.

You're like, how do you have 950 megabits per second in rural Scotland?

It's like, because we just got it.

And whoever just gets something has the best version of it.

And because we're close to the prism, whatever that means.

We're close to the prism.

But it is one of those things, like, if you, like, if you, in a market where they give you something right away, sometimes you find out, like, oh, in three years, this kind of sucks.

And we can't get the better version of it because they did us first.

Right.

Like, because they ticked the box and now they've made improvements and

they've refined things.

And now there's like the better version, but they've moved along.

This, this, what we have now will not be updated.

What would you guess?

20

years.

50 years, maybe?

We'll see.

But what I did after I posted that, and people were coming back in the comments saying, that's your speeds.

I go, whoa, hold on a second.

This is what we had for two and a half years.

And it was, I posted one of the worst speed tests ever.

It was like 0.9 down and and then 0.3 up.

You're like, megabits.

How did you?

Someone pointed out it's not even megabits at 0.9.

It's kilobits at that point.

Yeah, we had 900 kilobits.

And they're like, how did you watch stuff?

Here's the thing.

We didn't.

We didn't.

We buffered Kenobi.

Remember buffering that and like letting it run for 10 minutes and then we'd watch 10 minutes?

Yep.

And then we'd stop for a while and watch them.

That's what we did for it.

It was, it was really, really difficult.

We had to like learn all kinds of like actual like and here's the thing too.

It was during the pandemic, right when like you couldn't really go out places you couldn't go to the movie theater as an alternative so we just sort of didn't i read a lot of physical books we played hopscotch we went back to victorian entertainment is what we did but people people then people were crazy about that go what the hell how did you live with that it's like we we talked about this you know downloading Horizon Forbidden West for over the course of

a week and a week and then and then not playing it.

Yeah, so I'm never going to forgive you for that.

Like, I'm never going to stop bringing that up until you actually play it.

You know that, right?

Yeah, I'm not going to play it.

Okay, okay, then I'll talk about it.

I played a little bit of it.

The thing I want to go back and play, if I'm going to play anything on PlayStation, I want to go back and play some of those Spider-Man games because I never played anything after the first one.

The first one was so good.

So good.

So good.

Then they did that first.

Spider-Man 2 and then the Miles Morales one.

Yeah, they did an expansion and then they did Spider-Man 2.

I didn't follow all of it, but they were so good.

This is going to lead me to a discussion about talking about the, what is it, the brand new day?

Is that the new Spider-Man movie?

Yes.

Well, let's not talk about that because we always go down a Marvel rabbit hole.

We are two weeks away.

Two, two, let me check on the count.

Maybe three, just over three weeks away

from a movie that I've wanted to see my entire life coming out in theaters.

Yeah, we're three weeks away.

September 12th, The Long Walk comes out in theaters.

That's soon.

I didn't know it was either.

You know how I knew it was?

I saw Stephen King about to do an AMA on Reddit.

I'm like, wait a minute.

Why is Stephen King doing it in AMA?

And it's sure enough, The Long Walker.

To promote the Long Walk, holy moly.

That's what that stuff is for, by the way.

Stephen King just didn't go, yeah, I feel like doing an AMA on Reddit.

Let's do that.

No, speaking of movies, though, the real thing I wanted to brag about with K-pop demon hunters is besides the number one on Netflix, it went to theaters this last weekend.

It went to theaters?

What is going on with this?

So they went to theaters this last weekend for an event, sing-along screenings, basically.

And it took the number one spot at the box office for sing-along screenings like two and a half months into this movie's life.

Has there not been

a K-pop demon hunters laboo-boo crossover?

Because it feels like that would just like everyone could retire instantly if they did that, right?

It's got to be the exact same market.

Probably.

I think, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of like licensing scrambling.

They didn't expect it to be quite this major.

I did see a teaser for like Funko Pop of like this

blue tiger with orange eyes that's in it.

And so I'm sure that licensing the machine, it's chugging along, right?

It's working on it.

Soon, you're not going to be able to get away from it.

You know, I was just sitting over here thinking that the American Western equivalent of this movie would be like frozen.

Boy band versus vampire.

So like Spice Girls versus Zombies.

I would 100%

absolutely go see those movies.

Spice girls versus Zombies

versus Vampires?

Sure.

Bring it on.

Sign me up.

God, I would do that in a heartbeat.

I have no urge.

Once again, the gravity well of Marvel

rears its head again.

Apparently, there's another Marvel's zombies thing coming out on Disney, like an animated thing.

I got no interest in that.

I like Marvel and I like zombies.

I have no interest in like Marvel zombies, like superhero zombies.

No interest in that.

Yeah, mini-series, it sounds like I haven't been following it closely,

but it is

going, it's basically set in an alternate timeline that was introduced in an episode of What If,

the What If series they did.

And it follows, it says, a group of survivors who fight against former heroes and villains that have been turned into zombies.

You nailed it.

That's what it was.

Fair enough.

Yeah, but it's like, and they did a whole

comic run on it as well, but it's just, I don't know.

You can join two things that you really like together and not be interested in the combined product.

You know what I mean?

Okay, well, then that's how I am about this.

Maybe we try this.

Let's uh, let's ease you in.

You can watch the new Disney zombies musical, right?

Yeah, I'll watch that.

We've got to watch the Alien Earth.

We haven't even touched that one yet.

No, I think we've got this, the, what, second episode is out now.

So we need to just sit down and go through both of them or everything that's available.

Do like a nice little binge and then be all caught up and do weekly, week to week.

By the way, I read a really cool theory.

Go ahead.

I read a cool theory about Hulk and Smart Hulk from Endgame.

Okay.

So apparently there's a deleted scene where Smart Hulk just shows up, walks out of the woods

after the snap and starts talking to Black Widow, and I think

Hawkeye was somebody else.

Maybe it was War Machine.

And it's talking to them, but they cut the scene because it was like, there's so much going on at the end.

Like, you couldn't introduce a new character as well or a variant, or whatever.

I read a theory about Smart Hulk, which is that

Banner and Hulk didn't combine.

The theory is that Hulk got snapped because there's two of them, and so they snapped being two people.

Right.

He got snapped.

The Hulk got snapped and was instantly gone.

And Banner was left with the body.

And so then when Banner or Hulk, Smart Hulk then does the snap later, inadvertently brings Hulk back.

So this could be a whole thread.

I thought that was a really cool theory, actually.

That's a cool theory.

You know what that would be a great premise for?

What's that?

An episode of What If.

Oh, yeah, it would be a great What If.

And then they all turned into zombies.

Except I think they canceled that show, or it was only like a two-season run anyway, whatever it was.

I don't think they're doing it anymore.

Yeah, yeah.

But there's some

other comic series they could do like that, which they're kind of getting close to anyway, which would be like the Marvel team-up one, which was always Spider-Man with somebody else, basically, is what that comic was.

Look, man, I'm just excited because I think Punisher is in.

Fuck off with these casting announcements, man.

I keep seeing the stuff.

Not telling you to fuck off, by the way.

I'm saying.

Just in general.

But I mean, Punisher is at least back in MCU.

He was in Daredevil Born Again, and he's got a Christmas special or

like a special of some type coming up.

What would that be?

Christmas special?

Can't you imagine the Punisher learning the true meaning of Christmas?

I think it's not true.

It's ridiculous.

But he's got a special of some kind coming up anyway.

And it might be at least airing during the holiday, whether it's Christmas-themed or not.

Thumbs down the chimney and say, I said, go to sleep.

Character I'm not interested in.

Punisher.

Couldn't care less.

I'm not interested in the Punisher, but I'm interested in John Berthel as the Punisher.

He's really good in that character.

yeah he's pretty good he's i mean he's he's he's great in everything he's in the odyssey which i think is an interesting choice i want to see him in that but he's been great the first thing i remember seeing john barenthal in was uh walking dead that's the thing the first thing i remember seeing him in and he played a character that i knew was not going to be around for very long as many of the characters in walking dead uh tend to go and uh i was i was disappointed by that but i knew it was going to be good and he killed it and then like exploded exploded after no he's been he's been doing incredible and he's he's great as that character.

So, I'm really glad that that's another of the Netflix characters that they've brought across into main MCU.

Yeah, but

he seems like the kind of guy that I would not want to be in a stunt performance with.

How did we do this?

How did we end up with the marriage?

I know we're in the ravity well.

The full gravity well of Marvel.

It happens.

This is ridiculous.

I just read that Hulk theory, and I thought it was a good Hulk theory.

No, it's a good theory, but knock it off.

So, we'll round it off by talking about kids again, why don't we?

So,

we're off to celebrate Finn's birthday.

We're going to take a little road trip as a family together.

We're going to have some fun and then

celebrate six years on Earth for our We Sun Fin Life.

We love you, Finn.

And I want to say thank you to a couple of other people as well.

Anthony Bowden and Brandon Benzi.

Thank you both so much for sponsoring this episode of our show at patreon.com/slash mornings.

All right.

Well, that does it for us today, August 25th, 2025.

We will be back to talk to you tomorrow.

We hope you will be here as well.

Bye, everybody.