2025.07.03: Everything Is Cylons

I don't wanna be crying if you can't visit Brivadventha Dad.

Hey!

We're recording the podcast!

As good as it gets today.

Good!

Morning to you, wherever you are, because it is

for July 3rd, 2025.

My name is Bernie Burns.

I turned up the music a little bit there, but now it's going down.

How do you like that?

Say hi to Ashley Burns, everybody.

She's sitting right over there.

Look, I hope you enjoyed that drop because that's probably the most cheerful, highest part of the episode.

Lots of bummer news coming out today.

Well, and we got to start with like trigger warnings of domestic violence and sex trafficking.

So that just shows

you an idea of where we're headed today.

So we're going to be talking, you know what?

If you don't want to hear about this, we're going to talk about layoffs and we're going to be talking about people leaving.

beloved creative projects and we're going to be talking about the verdicts in the Sean Combs trial.

So that's what we're talking about today.

If you don't want to hear about those things, just go have a good Thursday.

Just head on out.

You know, we'll see you tomorrow.

Just practice some self-care.

But let's talk about the Sean Combs trial first.

We'll try to get through some of this stuff as quickly as we possibly can.

So the verdicts are in.

I have a quick recap here, Ashley, if you'd like to hear it of the verdicts in that case.

Combs was found not guilty on count one, racketeering conspiracy.

Not guilty on count two, the sex trafficking of Cassandra Ventura.

Not guilty on count four, the sex trafficking of former girlfriend Jane, and then was found guilty on count three, the man-act transportation of Cassandra Ventura, and found guilty of the man-act transportation of former girlfriend Jane.

Yeah, so it's it's kind of

an interesting mix of the guilty, not guilty.

So he was found not guilty of the racketeering, which is basically like, you know, profiting from these schemes, right?

And found not guilty of the trafficking, but was found guilty of transporting someone across state lines for nefarious purposes, which is usually for trafficking.

So it's kind of weird that it's guilty on those two, but not more of them.

There's been some speculation that maybe the jury couldn't come to an agreement on some of the greater charges.

And so they got what they could, right?

Otherwise, they might have lost all the charges.

And so they got what they could.

He is still looking at 10 years in prison, potentially, although Although there's, I don't know,

there's also been a lot of talk about it could be reduced because, of course, of time already served.

But then also there was the, remember the weird thing?

Like his defense only went for 20 minutes.

I remember.

They didn't really call anyone to the stands.

They just talked for 20 minutes and then said.

No one proved anything and then arrested.

And so there was, I know there was a lot of chatter at the time.

Like,

is he pushing for a pardon?

Or what, how do you, how's it, how does a defense only go 20 minutes?

The prosecution went for like two months.

Yeah.

You know, and so they, they got up for 20 minutes and just said, they didn't prove nothing and then arrested what's going on there.

Uh, but I mean, clearly they were onto something because he was only found guilty on two charges.

You know what it reminds me of in a weird way?

The other day when we were talking about the Hyundai plant in Alabama that only exported 14 cars and I said, what's the difference between 14 and zero?

Just do zero.

20 minutes for a defense.

It's like, what is that?

Like, you can just get up and vamp for a little while, and that's it.

You know,

make one point.

You know, get Richard Gere up there to do a little razzle-dazzle dance, and then you're done.

Yeah.

And so, like you said, he's facing 10 years.

The other weird part about that is, even with 10 years on the line, and everyone I think who's been following the case seems pretty disappointed in the verdict.

But even with 10 years on the line, it's crazy to me that the only thing that I heard coming out of the defensive side of the courtroom was this complaint that the court artist was making him look strange in the renderings of the day.

And it's like, of all the things, it's just everyone's got their priorities.

Some people have, I guess, very strange priorities.

Well, and I'm reading just once again, I think the top comment on Reddit for it was, I'll read it to you here.

This is from a user named Sasquatch.

Said, well, this is perfectly in line with all the other news that we've received this year.

And the general consensus from people, at least in the Reddit thread where the verdict was announced, is that there just is two systems of justice in this world.

There's justice for the haves and justice for the have-nots.

And you can guess which side of the line he falls on.

Right.

You know, and then continuing in the sort of bummer news category, Microsoft is laying off 9,000 people.

We have violin music on everything today.

I know, I know.

It's like we warned you at the top of this, kind of a bummer episode, but Microsoft laying off 9,000 people.

That's roughly 4% of its global workforce.

That's actually in addition to the other cuts that they've made earlier this year.

I think so far they're 2025 layoffs or topping 15,000 people globally.

And so a lot of this is hitting

in the games division as well as, of course, many others.

So we're losing some game projects.

They're canceling Everwild, which is a project that Rare was working on.

They're canceling Perfect Dark and they're closing the Perfect Dark studio, I believe, the initiative as a result of that game's cancellation.

They're also canceling a project that I don't think we knew really much about.

We didn't know it was in development that was from Zenimax Online, the studio that does Elder Scrolls Online.

They were working on something else and now that project is also canceled.

So likely with the cancellation of those various projects, a lot of the teams working on them are being hit pretty hard.

And then there's a bunch of other sort of gaming layoffs as well.

Like, you know, King,

the developer of like Candy Crush, is losing a bunch of people and things like that.

So we'll probably be seeing over the next few days quite a few more

harsh cuts.

I actually have actually from,

this is from Wesley Yin Poole.

at this company, I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly.

It's IGN.com.

Anyone familiar with them at all?

I I think I've heard of it.

In a memo sent to all Microsoft gaming staff and viewed by IGN, Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, confirmed Everwild and Perfect Dark's cancellation and said the company was winding down several unannounced projects.

When do they announce Everwild?

Before the pandemic, right?

Yeah, yeah.

There's an announcement trailer from 2019.

2019.

Yeah, which could be part of the problem, right?

Is that this was announced six years ago.

And if they haven't made um significant progress or if they haven't got the game to where they needed to be in the last six years and they don't feel like they could be getting this game out soon and making money off it, that was one of the projects that had that they had to drop.

But it sucks because the even the announce trailer was gorgeous, it looked like it married uh kind of the art styles of like Sea of Thieves and Viva Piñata, and then it was going to be this RPG.

So it's sound like all those things sound fantastic, um, you know, and it could have been a great game, um, but we just we just don't know.

We don't know where this game has gone in the six years since its announcement.

Well, the crazy thing is, too, because like I said, I'm a huge fantasy of thieves.

I remember, I want to say it was about four years before the game released.

They showed gameplay footage where they brought in four fans and they got on a galleon and they ran some quests or some missions.

Um, and four years before the game came out, it looked exactly like the game that was released.

And at the time, I was like, what, what, what were the last four years spent doing?

Because I can go back in time and see this game that I'm playing it release.

And there were some, I feel comfortable saying this years later, there were some complaints at the time that when the game came out, there wasn't a lot of content within the game, that it was really pretty.

The water was amazing.

The mechanics were there, but there wasn't a lot of like content to support all of that.

I was one of those people.

I mean,

I was excited for the game.

It came out.

I played it a bit and went, oh, is that it?

But, you know, looking back now, it almost doesn't matter because the game has gone through so many iterations.

It has grown so much over time.

I know people aren't a huge fan of that release strategy, but going back four years prior to release, the game looking exactly the same.

It's just, it shows a really strong vision that Rare has, and they've had it for a long time.

And so I can't help but wonder.

Maybe they should have just like put Everwild out and then developed it kind of in public.

Kept it going.

Yeah, yeah.

Like early access, but not.

I like to think that

no one wants to make these cuts, right?

No one wants to cancel these games if they think there's promise to them, right?

This came up as well when Scalebound, you remember the Scalebound, the dragon game, got canceled?

And I always wondered, because we all felt sad that this game was canceled and the promise of what this game could have been, we were never never going to see.

But I also do tend to think that if they thought the game was in a good place, or if it was heading in a good direction, or they found the fun in it, that they wouldn't cancel it.

That said, when your company is cutting 9,000 jobs, you're going to be making some pretty harsh cuts.

And it could be promising and it could be amazing, but it wasn't ready for release right now.

So they had to axe.

And that sucks.

Well,

while we're continuing the trend of bummer news, this, you know,

I'm not sure how I feel about this yet.

This might be bummer news.

It's kind of bummer news, but maybe not all the way bummer news.

And that is that Neil Druckman is exiting The Last of Us for HBO.

So he is no longer working on the show, The Last of Us.

He is focusing entirely on Naughty Dog.

So that's kind of

maybe some good stuff, maybe some bad stuff in that one, mixed bag,

because I think that a lot of the reason the adaptation was as faithful as it was was probably due to his involvement.

And so I suspect that what we'll see moving forward with season three and potentially season four, whatever they have to, you know, finish out the current material,

we'll probably see more deviation.

than we saw in the first two seasons.

I love the series, the gaming series, Last of Us.

I've only seen the first season of the show.

Love that as well.

Is there a Last of Us part three, the game, in development?

I mean, I don't know.

I think that he said he didn't want to rush it and he had like ideas, but maybe wanted to let them cook a little bit.

Maybe the process of working on the show as he had has helped.

percolate those ideas and he wants to work more on that now.

Maybe he's working more on some of their other IPs.

I'm not really sure, but it does sound like he's going back into full naughty dog mode.

So, for gamers, that could be good news, right?

That he's working on those projects and putting the focus there instead.

Um, you know, so we don't end up in like a George R.R.

Martin

where

he's focused so heavily on the shows and he's, you know, not writing them the material that everyone like loves and wants more of.

And so

that's good, but I think as a result, it's possible that the show

could suffer for it.

It looked to me like

just the difference in development cycles that it was a given that the show was going to start to outpace the gaming franchise, which still might be the case.

It could be.

I mean, I know

they've already announced that, of course, they're working on season three.

They've said that they could potentially even need a season four to finish out the

part two material.

Really?

Yeah, I don't know.

Well, that kind of matched the experience of the game.

The game just kept going.

It was a long game.

How they're going to break that up exactly, but that's, you know, even with that,

it still will probably finish before a part three game would come out.

I really did feel like Last of Us Part II, the game, I felt like it was a second and third one in one gigantic game.

It was massive.

It was.

And there was a lot to it.

Like even I feel like some of the major beats in that story took place in what felt like an epilogue to the whole thing, you know, and that epilogue was still a massive, completely new environment that I think a lot of gamers didn't like.

Some of the narrative elements in that, I fucking loved it.

I love some of that stuff.

It seems like that one is very much love it or hate it.

Well, you know, I could talk about them too, but then that would be massive spoilers even to use like the words and the themes that took place there.

You know what I mean?

Because it's just, if you've never played Last of Us Us Part 2, I recommend it.

Just set aside like nine and a half months and

make your way through it.

Or wait for the next remake.

But I say, so if with the show outpacing it, I wonder then if like, you know, the

ultimate tale of the Last of Us universe, for lack of a better term, would be told by the show and not by the games.

Maybe also.

Because the risk you run, right?

Although, with how long some shows now go between seasons, they might be able to just wait until

the third game comes out and then pick it up again, right?

It's not the same as, you know, there was the expectation that you had to have a new season every year, and that's no longer a thing.

I would say that's not HBO, but I think HBO was one of the first people to start that with Sopranos had long gaps between the seasons.

What do you associate as the one who started the long gaps between seasons?

Well, I'm going to say Severance because I know that was a really long one.

Oh, God.

No, I go all the way back to like Battlestar Galactica.

Oh, yeah, that had a gap, didn't it?

Well, they did the weird thing.

They did the half-season, which we were just talking about with something else something else um hold on half season oh uh squid game squid game yeah squid game um they uh they did the half season i i credit battlestar galatica with doing that half season garbage it's all the silence default why just call it a short season and do another season you know what i mean half season's weird weird also you get another dvd out of it

you want to do it that way if i recall i think they actually released the half season dvd and then released a box set later i had the box set did you release the whole thing it's a great show i did i love that show.

I mean, I know it.

I know it kind of went off the rails.

Still loved it.

What was the moment when Battlestar Galactica went off the rails for you?

Everyone's a Cylon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was it.

Everyone's had the same thing.

There were a couple before

they were starting to get a little bit out there and I think stretching for some ideas.

But then everyone's a Cylon.

I was like,

well, okay, then it was, it was

weirdly paced because the whole show, it started to develop that mystery box thing where it was like anyone could be a Cylon because they looked just like the humans.

That was one of the big developments between the early series and then the rebooted version of it in the 2000s.

Anyone could be a Cylon.

And then there was speculation.

They knew how many there were, but they didn't know who was who.

And you had speculation.

Look at what they're doing over there.

They could be it.

And I think they were down to like four or five left, but they were had like half a season left in the show.

And then just one of the things that was.

So just suddenly everyone's a Cylon.

Everyone, all at once.

It was just like, it was the weirdest paced thing, and it was a weird scene in which they revealed it to you.

It was, it was a choice.

It was a choice they made.

And, you know, so, but that's, that's neither here nor there.

Speaking of final season, so it was like the definition of very slowly, then all at once.

Yeah, that was definitely like four and a half seasons.

That is it.

Oh,

do a really weird, like, uh, lip sync thing, too.

Like,

it was strange.

Still a great show.

Amazing show.

I love the like the look of the show.

Like, that sort of like very worn sci-fi is a lot of fun.

But yeah,

the final stretch there was

interesting.

You know what I haven't seen in a long time?

The guy who played

Baltar, Gaius Baltar in that.

Right.

Because he was phenomenal in that series, but I feel like I haven't seen him in much since then.

He might just not be in media that I watch.

James Callis.

Let me see what he's up to.

He was fantastic in that show.

You know what else I saw just recently?

I went back and watched it for some unknown reason.

What I find to be the most brutal scene in Game of Thrones was when Jamie Lannister gets his hand cut off.

That, to me, something about that scene is so incredibly brutal.

And the guy who cuts off his hand is the like weird, goofy scientist from Edge of Tomorrow.

What?

From Live, Die, Repeat.

Yeah.

That's the same guy.

I was like, that's him.

Okay, well, you're going to love this.

So, James Callis, who played Guy's Beltar, he is now in Slow Horses, which is, I believe, on Apple.

That is media that I don't watch.

The prediction was correct.

It is a, it's a, I think a.

Can I guess?

I think it's, yeah, go ahead.

It's about people who are on a horse ranch

and they're raising horses that are slower.

And instead of putting the horses down,

they learn.

about life through the slow horses.

Nailed it.

Nailed it.

And you don't know which horse is the fast horse, and then all of a sudden, they're all fast horses.

Turns out they're all fast the whole time.

No, so the

log line from IMDb says, a dysfunctional team of MI5 agents navigate the espionage world's smoke and mirrors to defend England from sinister forces.

So you were very close.

I got close.

I got nailed it.

So close.

But I've heard amazing things about that series

and been told just over and over because I love spy stuff that I need to watch slow horses.

So if I had gotten through my two watch list, I could have recommended it firsthand, but instead I'm going to recommend it secondhand.

These horses can't read.

Reading below level.

All right.

Well,

I'm glad to hear he's, I had a feeling he's such a great actor.

I had a feeling he was in a lot of things that just I hadn't watched them.

Yeah, I feel that way about like a lot of the Battlestar cast.

That was a great cast.

It was very well acted.

But while we're talking about it, I thought it ended well too.

Should point that out.

It did have like pacing towards the the end got weird, but I thought the ending was satisfying.

So that were you not satisfied?

I didn't see it.

You didn't see it?

No, I fell off it.

Everyone's a silent.

And went.

You're saying, she's saying everyone's a silent.

Not everyone's a silent.

No, but there's, I think, they revealed all the silence.

I was, I was like, I think I'm done.

I think I'm thinking, I just think I'm done.

And so I think that was like, I fell off the show like two episodes from the end of the entire thing.

Oh, yeah, really.

Okay.

Okay.

I get it.

Well, now you can go back and watch it and be like, oh, that satisfying.

Okay, I will.

But speaking of the final season of TV shows, Bernie,

the boys creator has said the final season has wrapped filming.

So it sounds like aside from any minor reshoots they have, the boys is headed to screens.

And that means it's done, too.

Yes.

So

that's it.

This is the final season of the boys.

I don't know.

You know, I don't know if they're continuing.

I think they've got a couple of other spin-offs.

Like they've got some like...

earlier like flash forward stuff um with uh who's the one hold on The guy who was in Supernatural

plays Soldier Boy.

Soldier Boy.

I think they're doing a spin-off with him.

Oh, really?

And then, of course, we've got Gen V season two coming.

And I don't, I think they might have some even some of the gameplays.

They haven't done season two of Gen V yet.

Are you sure?

Nope.

So they already had the guy who died, but they haven't dealt with that yet?

No,

they haven't dealt with that on screen.

Or the actor died, not a character.

Yes, they haven't dealt with that on screen.

A trailer has come out for season two of Gen Gen V, which gives you some indication how they're dealing with that.

I thought that was years in the series.

It was years ago.

Did he die before the first season came out?

Like when it was in post-production?

I'm not sure.

It was around that time, though.

Yeah, it was an unfortunate, I think, a motorcycle accident.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Young guy, too.

Just terrible.

Really terrible.

Sorry, I got us back to a down note again.

But

I am looking forward to the boys.

It's season five is the final one, right?

Season five.

I am looking forward to it.

I also think it's going out at, I think they chose their exit well.

Yeah, if anything, like in terms of like overall, like I've like timing and climate and interest in this specific type of thing.

Yes.

Even maybe season four

could have been a good jump off point, but I feel like I think they're, I'm happy that they are wrapping it up and going out sort of like.

on their terms having told their story.

Yeah.

Because it would be so easy to just keep, because it's been such a successful show, it would be easy to just keep doing it, you know, until everyone hates it.

In this week, we've been talking a lot about

popular things adapted from source material and how sometimes, a lot of times with a book, you're disappointed by whatever.

This would be an instance where I'd say the adaptation in a lot of ways surpasses the original source material.

Like if people who go back and read the original graphic novels for the boys are kind of shocked sometimes at the difference in the two pieces of media.

Well, in a lot of ways, it's even like.

That's why I'm saying that.

It's like more violent and more edgy.

Edgy's a good word.

Edgy's a good word.

I think you chose a good one.

Edgy's a good word.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Also, I got to say, speaking of edginess, in my own Edge Lord status yesterday, as I yucked a lot of people's yum about the laboo boo craze and said I just didn't get it.

Apparently I found my people because everyone in our subreddit was like, I guess they were waiting for someone to say that they're not on board with this laboo boo stuff.

And they were all like, hey, this is laboo.

It's fine.

We can be a counter culture culture.

Right, right, right.

Yeah, I know, I do notice it.

It is interesting when gaming slash tech slash nerds,

when they decry the manufacturing of plastic stuff that other people buy,

we only pure plastic stuff's not crap.

Look, no, no, no.

We only collect cardboard stuff, paper stuff, cards.

Pokemon cards, you got it.

Magic cards, you got it.

Apparently, I've been cagey about what I collect, and I don't mean to be cagey about what I collect.

It's really specific.

We moved to Scotland and I wasn't much of a whiskey drinker, but I collect whiskey.

Like I just like, there's a lot of distilleries around here.

I like the bottles and I like the art and the presentation of it.

And so they do like yearly releases every year.

And so I just have, I have my little whiskey collection that I have.

You got like a little, like a little shelf shelf that's got like your little local stuff.

I like it.

It's nice.

Yeah.

I never really collected anything else before.

I did do a thing for a while, which nobody bought into, which was people would always tell me, especially people in the family, would say, you're really hard to buy things for, like at Christmas or Father's.

You're hard to shop for.

You are.

And so I literally said, all right, I'm going to start.

This was deliberate effort.

I'm going to start collecting something so that.

If you have to wonder what to buy me, just buy me something that would go in the collection.

And it was playing cards because I like the mixture of art and commerce and packaging and material and all that.

And a deck of playing cards is five bucks.

You know what I mean?

Just give me a deck of playing cards I've never seen before and I'll be happy with that.

Easy P, I buy you a couple decks.

Every now and then I get a deck of playing cards still and I like that.

Yeah,

we've got a small collection.

I guess technically I collect that, but not really.

I mean, it's like, I just, I gave people an out from this.

You're hard to buy for.

You collect it, but more specifically, other people collect it for you.

There you go, sister.

That's it.

Somebody gave me something really cool, and I was like, this is amazing.

I don't know if I should say this because I might hear it.

I got a deck of

people who might know this.

Nintendo started as a playing card company.

And somebody gave me a Nintendo deck of playing cards.

I was like, that's fucking amazing.

This is an incredible gift because that goes back to the 1800s when they would do it.

I found out you can just buy Nintendo.

It wasn't that crazy of a gift after all.

You mean it wasn't like a 200-year-old deck of cards?

No, I thought it was.

I was gushing over this thing.

Well, I would like to tell you who I'm gushing over today, Bernie, and that's John Luna and Nat Crum.

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

The next set of playing cards are from you.

Also, I should point out, too, I'm glad you said that, actually.

One of the reasons, I guess, why I didn't say what I collect, that is not in any way, I want to be perfectly clear about this, that is not in any way a call for people who listen to the podcast to send me stuff.

Please don't do that.

Don't do it for a lot of reasons.

The big reason is because

you need to leave those things for us to buy so that we can give him gifts.

Right, there you go.

That's a good reason.

I'm not soliciting gifts.

It's hard enough to shop for.

People are very kind to do that, but you don't need to do that.

We're fine.

Everybody's supported the podcast has been more than enough.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Well, that does it for us today.

Joy,

2025.

We will be back to talk to you tomorrow, Freedom Day.

We hope you'll be here as well.

Bye, everybody.