2025.09.08: Two Degrees To Boiling

You guys, the network's down.

Hey!

We're recording the podcast!

Gut up!

Good morning to you, wherever you are, because it is

Monday!

Somewhere!

My name is Bernie Burns, sitting right over there on the 8th of September, 2025.

Say hi to Ashley Burns, everybody.

Tasha.

Good Monday.

See what I did there, Ashley?

That was a long, the morning summer shot was a little bit longer.

That's Lance Plummer, by the way.

Thank you, Lance, for submitting that.

I see you pulled an Audible.

I did.

I didn't have to ask anyone's permission for that, Ashley.

I did it all myself.

I was like, you know what?

I'm going to run with this, and I'm going to change.

That's what we get on a Monday morning.

This morning somewhere.

Fresh, right out of the gate.

Fresh, nimble.

Look, it's been a busy weekend.

There's so much.

There's the lady that we've been talking about all weekend at the beginning.

Thursday is when I start phoning it in, everybody.

That's mark your calendars.

Not until Thursday.

We got nerds taking Steam Down.

Oh, okay.

We got adults apparently using pacifiers.

Brittany, this is a smorgasborg of stuff to talk about.

Schmorgisborg?

Smorgesborg.

Do you want to talk about

the video game stuff first so we can knock it out?

Yeah, so I mean, it's, I don't know how much there is to talk about.

So Hollow Knight Silk Song came out, and I've never heard of this happening before, but it took down steam.

That's not

possible.

That's not

for a game like that.

That would be everywhere.

This would be the best-selling media product in history it is absolutely mental i've never heard has have you ever heard of steam going down no i've never heard of that and it's weird i would think it would be weird that steam would go along with saying that like this game brought them to the game well and the thing is it wasn't just steam the nintendo eShop the playstation store they all crashed what is this when this game came out even what this game is is it related to shovel night

i've been calling it shovel night all weekend no no no it's uh it's a sequel to hollow night right so uh get that is hollow Knight not the sequel to Shovel Knight?

No, no.

Think of them as knights that are friends, right?

But they're not family.

But

they all follow a code, right, as knights.

But so Hollow Knight came out several years ago.

It was a huge hit.

They did, I believe this one was.

crowdfunded via Kickstarter, has been long in development, has been very highly anticipated.

Everyone who likes Metroidvania games that are mean to them has been super excited about this, which you think would sound like a very niche sort of genre, but apparently it's mainstream enough to take down Steam once again.

Should I try this game?

I do.

That depends.

Do you like games that are mean to you?

No, I really don't.

Do you like Metroidvania games?

No, even when we played Grounded with Finn, there were parts way to like jump like parkour up through a tree.

Gus ruined it for me.

Gus said, I won't play platforming games.

I hate platforming.

And I thought, what's the big deal about that?

Yeah, it's kind kind of tough sometimes.

But now every time I run into a platforming game, is he there in the back of your mind going, I hate platforming?

It's like, why am I doing this?

Yeah, why do I have to make like this pixel perfect jump and like I'm bumping my head on other branches and it's pushing me down?

It's just like, make it easy.

It's a fucking game.

There's, there's some people.

I get paid to do this.

There's some people who really enjoy the demanding, like pixel perfect.

platforming games like the super meat boys of the world right and for them the the challenge and and the i guess the rage is the fun part.

I guess so.

That's, that's not me at all.

So I don't think this is a game for me because not only is it mean, it is also a Metroid Venez game, which I am very, I have a limited tolerance for.

Yeah, I think the key word in the word entertainment is entertainment.

It should be entertaining in order to be entertainment.

I don't want to get harassed by this goddamn thing.

No, thanks.

You know, but like it is still really impressive when you think about the scale of games that are available on these major storefronts.

You know, you get the Call of Duties that are like, what is it?

Like they're hundreds of

gigabytes now for a download, you know, that are these very demanding resource-intensive games.

And when they come out, you know, the downloads are maybe a little bit slow, but they're probably not taking the storefront down.

Also got to point out, for some reason, of all the platforms where I ever download stuff from, regardless of what it is, The Microsoft Xbox platform just feels slower.

Using the same network and everything, it just feels slower than everything else.

Like 80 gigabytes coming down for a game on the Microsoft network takes easily twice as long as 80 gigs in any other format.

I feel like one of the one of the things that I've never been able to solve with Xbox,

I've known about it since like Xbox Online was a thing, and I've never been able to really wrap my head around to understand it or most importantly, fix it, is the NAT issue.

Oh, yeah, I forget about it.

When you're like, oh, you're like NAT 2, and I'm like, okay, first of all, I'm not 100% sure what that means, but that doesn't sound like a good thing.

But it like restricts, you know, you get in a lobby and you can't hear everyone or everyone can't hear you.

Yeah, yeah, it's like it's stricter.

It's moderate, whatever.

And I'm like, how do I fix that?

And there's all these instructions.

And I'm like, you already lost.

Also, we're so far into it at this point.

It should be just a toggle that you can just turn off or whatever.

Like, this thing is.

Unnet me.

I don't know what it does to begin with.

Like, what does it protect you from, this Nat?

We've been deep into network architecture in our house lately because we're building out a musician.

Can you hear the frustration?

We're like knee-deep at this point.

But while we're talking about games, Ashley, I made a

connection this weekend, a revelation that I had unto myself, which is if you want to topple a dictatorship or you know, one of these late-stage capitalism countries where everything is falling apart, if you want to take down a leader, just have them go to a baseball game and catch a ball and take it away from somebody else.

Because apparently that's the most important thing to get people mad these days.

Once again, once again, it's a thing.

The kid gets the ball.

That's all there is to it.

So we're talking specifically about the lady.

And if you've been on the internet at all this weekend, you know the lady we're talking about at the Marlins game.

Who

I want to make sure I get this.

It's a Marlins game?

It was a Marlins game.

I thought it was two Phillies fans.

Maybe

are these Philly fans who went on the road to embarrass the organization?

I love it.

You guys travel so well.

I love it.

Where there was a home run ball.

It was hit into the stands and no one caught the ball, right?

It landed in the stands.

You're getting in a contentious area here, but go ahead.

And then

this guy picked it up and ran it back over a couple of seats and gave it to his kid, who apparently, it was little Timmy's birthday or something.

His birthday was in a few days.

Unfortunately, I've absorbed so much of the story just by existing in the world.

Yeah, apparently this kid's birthday was in a couple days, but it was like a birthday trip kind of a thing.

Right.

But this lady, I guess the ball landed near her and she decided that that was enough to qualify it as her ball.

And so she went over to this dude and got in his face until he was like, look, this is not worth it.

Take the goddamn ball.

Stiffened up.

It's because who does this?

Like, and you can see there's there, everyone now has a phone camera.

So there is, there are photos of this incident.

Yeah, that's true too.

From like every single angle imaginable.

And he didn't like grab it from her.

He picked it up from the stands, but it was near enough.

She decided, that's my area of the stands.

That makes it mine.

Okay, let me ask you this.

Okay.

Can I make an assumption here?

You may.

As someone who's been to a baseball game with me, are the baseball games that you have been to with me the only baseball games that you have ever been to?

Pretty sure.

So fair to say that you're a layman in the field of baseball.

Yeah, I'm a layman.

Okay, so at what point a ball is hit into the stands?

At what point does that ball become the possession of someone who is there in the stands?

What has to happen?

Okay, it needs to be a home run,

as it was in this case, or it needs to be a foul ball,

and you catch it in the glove.

Go ahead.

No, let's assume they don't have a glove.

Okay, sorry, you catch it with your hands.

Right.

Right.

Or if it...

If no one catches it, then it's whoever picks it up first.

So if it hits the ground, it's whoever picks it up first.

Yes.

But a catch means what?

That you catch it with your hands, unless you are that dude who had like the baby in one hand and he had like the baby and the beer.

And he still caught the ball without dropping the baby or the beer, basically making him like the god of baseball.

He actually dropped the baby and then caught the baby.

It was fast.

All right.

So as soon as they catch the ball and they take possession of the ball, then it's their ball, period.

Right.

So there is speculation.

I was reading a lot of comments from a lot of people who I feel like have never been to a baseball game ever.

They were saying things like, well, it was hit right next to her and it was in her section.

Nope, not how that works at a baseball game.

You don't think that's how that works?

I don't think that's how it works at a baseball game.

If you don't catch it and you don't pick it up first, it's not your ball.

Right.

Also, it's like, whoever it seems like has the ball, then that's it.

And there was a speculation or accusation, probably better word to use, that she took it from his, or he took it from her hands.

Once again, a lot of phone cameras, that's not what happened.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It did go below the level of the seats.

But then also she was captured later, like screaming at a lot of people and flipping people off.

It's like getting in people's face just seems to be the way this

you're gonna lose a lot of sympathy that way.

Like any possible sympathy, you're gonna lose.

But one of the smartest people I've ever seen with this whole like ball catching saga, I think about her all the time.

There was this is in the post-Steve Bartman era.

Do you know who Steve Bartman is?

Is it Simpsons?

He, no, he interfered with a play

during like a Cubs championship series and he became a national pariah because he affected his own team by committing fan interference and trying to catch a ball that the fielder had a shot at.

There is a Wikipedia entry about

the quote Steve Bartman incident.

It's his own entire entry.

I remember we talked about him in real time when it happened on the RT podcast.

And in the post-Bartman era, you know, these things come up all the time with like, it seems to be a national outrage.

national outrage when something like this takes place.

There was a girl who she was with a guy who had a glove.

He was on the third baseline.

The ball came rolling up.

It was in foul territory.

It came rolling up to him.

He leaned over the railing to get it.

And it was at that moment that he realized it went into foul territory after third base and the ball was still in play.

And he affected his home teams.

So

it was not a, it was a, it was not a foul ball because it didn't cross the line until after the base.

Yeah, if it goes towards the stands or goes into foul territory, but after third base, it's still in play and it's a fair ball.

But he just saw the ball and grabbed it because he could.

And he really, you can see him realize it when he's like, oh shit, I just messed up.

And everyone's looking at him.

His girlfriend, I've never seen anyone think so quickly.

Did she like drop a smoke bomb?

Did she like backflip out of the stadium?

You nailed it.

She had a hoodie.

She was a zoop with the strings like Kenny from South Park.

She just disappeared and

she sat perfectly still like Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy.

You cannot see me.

You cannot see me.

She immediately hid her identity.

I'm like, that's a smart lady.

She gets it, man.

But it's like, I wonder too, it's like this outrage.

Everyone is so outraged about this.

I was thinking this weekend, you know what we need?

We need something that is like, you know, the doomsday clock for atomic weapons?

Like, we're two minutes to midnight and they make a big deal about moving it like one minute closer to midnight.

Right.

There's not a lot of minutes left to go, right?

They haven't left themselves a lot of runway to doomsday here.

Well, they started a quarter till midnight.

If they started like 2.45 p.m.,

that would be a much bigger after.

That wouldn't have as big an impact, guys.

it's 5 38 p.m

that's bedtime you know

but uh i think we need something similar for what's going on in the world right now which is basically

like the doomsday clock how close are we to midnight As the frogs in the pot, how close are we to boiling?

Like, how close to 100 degrees Celsius are we?

We need somebody working on that.

Like all these different factors that happen this weekend, you know, not like people catching baseballs in stands, but like, you know, the president tweeting about war in regards to one of the major cities in his own country.

It's like, that just knocked us up a degree.

Like we're at like 97 degrees right now.

Right.

You mean like when the government publicly talks about invading Chicago?

Yeah, that kind of thing.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, I know they're mad about Steve Bartman.

I get it.

I get it.

But we got to let things go after a while.

Hey, has that lady, has the baseball lady been doxxed yet?

I'm just waiting for her to turn out to be CEO because that just seems like that's where things are headed.

Maybe you all just need to take a pacifier break.

This article you sent is ridiculous.

Okay, so this is a pacifier.

I initially found it via Vice, which,

so I'm, I'm going to just couch this with a bit of skepticism up front.

It's one of those things that like,

this can't be like a thing that's happening at scale, right?

This has to be based off like a single tweet somewhere.

When I say people are doing this thing, and it means like a person here did this thing somewhere.

But there's an article on Vice, but it was quoting the South China Post or South China Morning Post that

adult pacifiers are now trending in China.

This kiddie realizes

adults using pacifiers for anxiety relief and self-soothing.

No.

You know what this reminds me of?

It reminds me of the whole fake story about kiddie litter boxes in classrooms and everybody ran with that.

This has to be that same thing.

I mean, I'm certainly going to hope so.

But I'm also going to put on my little conspiracy hat and say, I think this is all a push by big pacifier, right?

We have declining birth rates.

There aren't enough babies for the pacifier market to support anymore.

So now the pacifier market is saying, hey, we need to find a new market for our pacifiers.

Quick, pull out the playbook that Deodorant used and that women's razors used and that what diamonds used and convince adults that they need our product and that they they that they're the new valid audience for this i always like those weird indicators or like knock-on effects that happen with things somebody who grew up in the uk

we got on the topic of cigarette smoking and how it's completely fallen out of vogue everywhere especially in the uk and they were like bans and everything in public places he said that was one of the weirdest things ever was he was like a nightclub guy when the cigarette ban came through and the moment you could no longer smoke in nightclubs he went to a nightclub like the next week and he goes everybody in here fucking stinks.

Like, because there was no, you could smell people.

Literal smoke screen.

Yeah.

He said, deodorant became popular after cigarette smoke went away.

That's kind of funny to me.

Like

that one industry would benefit from the downturn of another.

But it makes total sense.

Makes total sense.

Makes total sense.

I'm just going to say that I'm calling it now that this is either

like one person on Twitter posted a picture of themselves with a pacifier, or

this is all a construct by big pacifier.

You sent out, when you sent this article out to read over it for the podcast, I saw one of the things you linked was JD.com.

And I thought JD was like the sports apparel company here in the UK.

It's not.

It stands for jingdong.com.

It looks like a Chinese, I can't read it because it's all in Chinese, but it looks like one of these Chinese dropship suppliers.

Oh, like an AliExpress or something where you just like order stuff and you can order like 3,000 pacifiers.

I'm risking a lot here by showing this to you.

Look at this website here.

When it pops up.

It literally pops up.

I've never seen this before on an iPhone.

It's got pop-ups that are popping up, and it's trying to open other applications on my phone.

Oh, oh, so this story is hurting me in a lot of different ways.

So you just burn that phone.

Hey, can we add on a positive thing about fan interaction?

Because we're talking about like all the baseball stuff and everything like that.

Okay, go ahead.

There's a good version of this.

We talked about the kid, and you found the clip last week of the kid who did the switcheroo with the ball.

Oh, yeah, my new favorite kid.

Yeah.

I love that.

I love that kid so much.

So quick thinking.

There was also a thing, too.

I was talking about this with Jordan.

There was like a, I don't want to say it was like an insane clown posse concert or something like that, where somebody threw a hat out into the crowd and it's a shot of the crowd.

You can see this lady who's way too short to have a shot at getting that hat.

And the guy next to her catches the hat.

And she's really upset by it.

He hands her the hat.

And it's such a wholesome moment.

Like you can see her attitude completely change.

And she becomes so happy when he hands her the hat.

Like no one's ever done something that nice for her before it's so cool yeah i have seen this video i don't think i'm not sure how old it is i have seen that video before where it's got this lady and she's like she reaches for it she doesn't have a hope in the world no way right um and it's this this he's like he's one of those like the the the type of dude who's like built for height right like he's all length right he put all his points into length

and uh and he just like reaches up and boop grabs it and then he just hands it to her and she just lights up yeah just lights up and like everyone around them is like happy about it.

I don't think they knew each other or anything like that, but it is just like this beautiful, lovely moment.

It's nice when you catch people being good.

You know what I was thinking about this weekend, too?

Because it might be a kind of a Venn diagram crossover with these people.

Not to stereotype.

In Sane Clown Pilacy fans, but I feel like a lot of those people would be buying Powerball tickets this last week.

So

one of them is that they're a big crossover.

Billionaire.

I heard so many times this last week, I'm so tired, so so fucking tired of people making the point of what a lottery is after taxes.

Who gives a shit?

Who gives a shit what it is after taxes?

Oh, you only want a billion dollars and you're only going to get 500 million after the taxes.

Why do people feel compelled to say that everybody's

limited?

Yeah.

So, but it is interesting to me that

it doesn't matter.

Once again, it doesn't matter.

But there is always a point in time where somebody wins $1.4 billion or whatever it it was.

If you're not aware, in the U.S., there's some lottery that got to the level, the Powerball, where it was worth $1.4 billion.

One of the tickets was sold in Fredericksburg, Texas, Ashley.

Did you not?

I did.

Yeah.

And so two people won.

That to me is a bigger deal than the whole tax discussion because you don't know how many other people have won.

And when it gets this high, there is a higher probability, even though it still stays like incredibly small, that somebody else is going to win.

Like there's a lot more tickets being sold.

So you don't know until they renounce it how much you've actually won.

And this person, like, because somebody else won,

they went down by $700 million.

That's pretty significant.

At the end of the day, they still have 700 million, but it's still interesting that like you can get knocked down by half.

Or if other people had won, maybe you could lose 75%.

It's going to be like that, like that lady that's going to be like, but that was my 700 million.

It landed near me.

It was in my section.

You ran over here with your Powerball ticket.

Well, um, I want to say a big thank you to our personal Powerball winners for today, A.

Roddy and Kevin Croa.

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

That thank you so much has to be split evenly between the two of you.

Sorry about that.

All right, well, that does it for us today.

Monday, September 8th, 2025.

We will be back to talk to you tomorrow.

We hope you will be here as well.

Bye, everybody.