Feature Creep: Built-in Microwave

What’s your sleep plan? Ned and Meg push their bedtime with a late night podcast recording, just like old times. Today, or rather tonight, well, really the other night, we discussed the definition of the made up phrase Nodus Tollens which sounds a lot like Latin but is in fact a contrived phrase that means you’ve lost the plot of your own life story and it no longer makes sense to you. If you’re n...

Ned and Meg get miffy about myopic design, a phenomenon that occurs when people design things for all the wrong reasons. The dumbest invention, a shining example of myopic design, is perhaps the now-infamous and totally defunct Juicero. If you love a good long justifiable cathartic complainaroo, this one’s for you. Wash your hands, wear a mask, get the shots, don’t be a dick, and thank you as alwa...

Ned and Meg have some book recommendations this week, and also the general recommendation that you do a foot peel, stat. Our book recommendations and discussion today are about *The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions* and *Diary of Edward the Hamster 1990-1990*. Both of these books are formidable in their own right and feature incredible design elements as well as huge doses of imagina...

Ned and Meg and Lauren discuss dystopias again, and this time we fuss over details like the difference between a once-great community after the fall, and dystopias that never reached greatness to begin with. We discuss wretchedness as a function of dystopias, societal trends up and down, victim blaming, participation in your own torure, and how hell is alway personal but dystopias are equal opport...

Ned and Meg investigate the origins of the ubiquitous paper plate. We compare the pros and cons of paper plates. We compare old inventors to new ones. We talk about disposable culture. Join us! Thanks for listening, wash your hands, wear a mask, don't be a dick.

Ned and Meg get together after Ned’s birthday to talk about colors! People use colors for all sorts of stuff and how they combine those colors matters a whole lot. Dive into the human condition with us and also visit Objectcolor.com because it’s amazing. Thanks for listening to us, wash your hands, wear a mask, don’t be a dick, super great!

Ned and Meg have a semi-absurdist conversation about a new thing we invented, sort of. We talk about traditional reliquaries, which are gorgeous mini buildings with gross old bones in them. We revisit the Joy of Melancholy. We discuss the colossal, ubiquitous failure represented by flip flops. Ned expounds on the benefits of a turf lawn, and how regular lawns are just vessels for disappointment, w...

Ned and Meg and Lauren talk about metals, like steel and it’s even cooler friend nitinol. We also talk about how a philosophy is more than an incoherent jumble of opinions, and how Ned’s job is basically just arguing semantics all day (some guys have all the luck). Lauren talks shared meaning, Meg complains a bunch, and we expound on the virtues of the MN State Fair. As forever, thanks for listeni...

Dana and Ned and Meg and Lauren discuss the pain avoidance cycle and adapting to discomfort, patterns of behavior, how kinks are more common than not, how great Ted Lasso is, and how annoying some plot devices are. We ask who among us can stand to rewatch something they’ve seen before, and Dana gives us a plethora of excellent reading suggestions. Thank you for listening to us, and for washing you...

Ned and Meg and Lauren talk about the differences between art and design, both of which we love. We also discuss girding loins, medieval torture devices, Jemaine Clement, whose god is it anyway, American tangents, lexical ambiguity, and the Great Buffalo Sentence which some of us had just talked about the other day and some of us were totally ignorant of! Baader-Meinhof! Thanks as always for joini...

Ned and Meg and Lauren talk about the possibility of Meg having new neighbors to the West and what she’s prepared to do to ensure that only people she likes will buy the house for sale. Ned and Lauren offer moral support. Wash your hands, wear a mask, get yer shots, don’t be a dick! Thanks for listening.

Ned and Meg and Lauren and Ben from Bisexual Orgies listen to Ned recount a harrowing tale of high seas adventure and high drama aboard a dysfunctional vessel and a dysfunctional captain to match. Sail with us and learn about Ned’s indomitable spirit. Wash your hands, wear a mask, get yer shots, don't be a dick, thanks for listening.

Meg tells Ned and Lauren the story of Buyer’s Remorse, which leads to discussion about Lauren’s work as a sexuality educator. Sex ed and sexuality education are different, and we bet you didn’t know that. See? You learn so much with us. Listen to the whole thing! As always, thank you and wash your hands and get the shots and don’t be a dick.

Ned, Meg, and Lauren converse about the relationship between art and money, art successes and failures, creating art with others and making lots of art in lots of ways. Wash your hands, get the shot, don't be a dick, thanks for listening.

Ned and Meg chat on Mother’s Day about how much caffeine makes us psychotic. Meg gets hyperactive depression and Ned has been rabbit-holing an espresso machine and we’re both in a love/hate relationship with coffee beverages. We discuss Ned’s coffee science and dosing schedule. We talk about chasing the high that Ned got at Cafe Madeleine where one may obtain either the best or the worst espresso,...

Ned and Meg discuss more digital gobbledigook and cryptography, but this time it’s in the context of art! Jim Sanborn made a trio of sculptures that utilize cryptographic puzzles, one of which is called Kryptos, and it lives outside the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. Three of the puzzles included in the Kryptos sculpture are solved, but the fourth remains elusive. We also discuss old cars, stega...

Ned and Meg talk about their innate ability to bend and dilate time, Ned's chronostasis affliction, distorted perception, how awe is essentially the experience of perceptual vastness, and how the first and last events in a series of identical temporal events appear to be of different duration even when they are not! Time flies, and does all kinds of other weird business, too. Thanks for listening!...

Ned and Meg talk about the latest hype at the intersection of the art world and block chain, NFTs. We dish on digital assets, block chain public ledgers, the black market, intellectual property rights, and all the major problems with NFTs. This whole topic is both as crazy and not as crazy as you may already think. Watch out! This one’s a trip. Wash your hands, wear a mask, get yer shots, don’t be...

Ned and Meg celebrate May Day by talking all about food. We start with a ranking of passive aggressive foods, which segues into aggressive aggressive foods, peasant foods, and booby trapped foods, with a smattering of English foods just to round it all out. This probably won’t make you hungry but you may want a sweet snack just because this is a long one. Wash your hands, wear a mask, get yer shot...

Ned and Meg discuss the grodiest color in the universe known to humans, Pantone 448 C. We analyze this color through several frameworks, including the ISCC NBS, the urban dictionary, the Munsell color system, RGB, CMYK, and of course our own preferences. This one’s a real treat. Enjoy! Wash your hands, wear a mask, get yer shots, be nice.

Ned and Meg get some stuff off their existential chests in this very existential episode about existential dread and a thing called the self-licking ice cream cone of despair. Dread: where does it come from? We say cops, pain, illness, and other people. Hell is always, always, other people. So what should we do, rob banks and go into existential retirement? It worked for Meg, or the latter half of...

Ned and Meg and Dana go down the rabbit hole of unusual punctuation and before we know it, we embark on an accidental voyage of discovery where we uncover truths about the many contexts and names for the “#” symbol and explore keyboard layouts. We ask wtf is a hexadecimal?! What’s this about Jim Thorpe?! Who is the mystery man, Doug Kerr?! Find out. Wash your hands. Wear a mask. Get yer shots. Sto...

Ned and Meg discuss the dangers of flop sweat, as well as Gio Ponti’s daughter, Lisa Ponti, who made exceptional drawings and watercolor paintings, and who died not long ago at the age of 97. Her work is showing in NYC through the end of May 2021. We also discuss blood draws, cleaning house, the height of Roman plumbing and lead abatement as a means of coping with murder trials.

Ned and Meg discuss their favorite artist, Peter, of Peter Draws on YouTube. We discuss many of his videos and his aesthetic before moving on to aspirational musings around a future Peter Draws fan convention. Beyond that, we rant a while on abortion rights and introduce a new department in the FC:BM empire, the D.E.A.D. Thanks for joining us once again. Wash your hands, wear a mask, get the shot,...

Ned and Meg discuss crappers, commodes, and washlets. Join us on a foray into the world of toilet design and see how many variations there are on fulfilling a universal basic human function. Did you know there are toilets that can scan your poo and give data to your doc? Beware! Even toilets are not safe from the internet of things... Wash your hands, wear a mask, get your shots, don’t be a dick!