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Lords:
* Erica talks about birds and plants on Twitter at @YerrikTRB and wants you to listen to the Frog Fractions 2 soundtrack. https://ryanike.bandcamp.com/album/frog-fractions-2-original-soundtrack
* Justin talks about puzzles on Twitter at @firetrucknpl
Topics:
* 2:34 Children are terrifying.
* 8:41 The Frog Fractions ARG, culminating in its Christmas release
* The FF2 ARG on the Game Detectives wiki. https://wiki.gamedetectives.net/index.php?title=FrogFractions2
* Befunge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befunge
* 22:02 Bringing interesting puzzles to people with boring jobs.
* Reading with Rover. https://www.readingwithrover.org/
* 28:00 Paraphrased asks: "What were you doing before you're doing what you are now?"
* 41:38 Weird Christmas / holiday foods.
* Traditional Lithualian Christmas Eve dinner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%AB%C4%8Dios
* Lithuanian Christmas Eve recipes. http://www.maskoliunasfamilyproject.com/christmas-eve-recipes-and-others/
* Vinegretas. https://www.receptai.lt/receptas/burokeliu-salotos-su-pupelemis-1455
* Yule Sandwich Log. http://www.midcenturymenu.com/2011/01/the-mid-century-menuyule-sandwich-log/
* 52:37 Weird Christmas / holiday birds.
* Passenger Pigeon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengerpigeon
* 54:12 Incorrect plant genera in video games.
* Plants of Star Trek. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23plantsofstartrek
* Birds of Google Maps. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23birdsofgooglemaps
* Columnar cacti. https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=%23columnarcacti&src=typd
* Flora of the Colorado Plateau. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FloraoftheColoradoPlateauandCanyonlandsregion
* Hecho cactus. https://imgur.com/gallery/kVXqnhR
* Organ pipe cactus. https://www.nps.gov/articles/organ-pipe-cactus.htm
* Cardon, the world's largest cactus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnWeiSi9s2w
* The black bars on the left of the screen in Atari 2600 games ("hmove lines") are caused by repositioning sprites in the middle of drawing the frame. http://www.ataricompendium.com/faq/faq.html#general18
* Extrasolar. https://extrasolar.com/
Microtopics:
* People who celebrate Christmas on January 6th.
* Addressing the least-served Christmas demographic.
* Muting your mutuals because it turns out you have no common interests.
* Not being sure if the Frog Fractions 2 Soundtrack liner notes exist any more.
* Your three year old opening all the Advent Calendar doors and hiding the chocolates in his Halloween bag.
* Your three year old pushing chairs from the kitchen to climb on top of the refrigerator because that's where you keep the cookies.
* Developing problem-solving skills long before you develop a sense of ethics or self-preservation.
* Your two year old deciding it's time to be a cool pirate and picking the biggest sword possible out of the kitchen knives.
* Taking comfort in only half of prehistoric children dying before the age of five, so with modern medicine and safety advances your child has a pretty decent shot.
* Half of all children dying before the age of five so they never amass the numbers needed to overthrow the adults.
* Your one year old overcoming the child safety lock by ripping the entire door off.
* Half your age plus seven being your personal cutoff for when someone stops being a child.
* 18 year olds being allowed to vote and drive and get married.
* Teenagers having infinite energy to learn and get things done, but no judgement for what are good things to learn or do.
* Describing your relationship with your high school student as a jockey/horse scenario but not being sure if he's the horse and you're the jockey, or vice-versa.
* Placing bets on the three-legged toddler races.
* Taking bets on high school track events being illegal, so that's why a Silicon Valley startup has to do it.
* Cleverly tying your collective bragging to the holiday season.
* Writing a book about the Frog Fractions 2 ARG and hiding it inside of another book.
* Making a GameFAQs-style guide to document how the game works while it's still in your head.
* Your Skype work partner probably not looking at the screen, but maybe they are, maybe they know you're not working.
* Teaching people to read by having them read to dogs because dogs are uncritical and just love the attention.
* Skyping with a dog all day to motivate you to write your book.
* Having a friend come onto the show and do a dog voice because real dogs pick terrible topics.
* GameFAQs turning out to actually have standards.
* GameFAQs rejecting your submission with the rejection note just saying "Boxing."
* GameFAQs rejecting your submission with a subtle joke about the previous game in the series.
* Actual FAQs being pretty rare on GameFAQs.
* Writing an angry letter to the New York Times about your walkthrough being rejected from GameFAQs.
* Programming languages that are deliberately constructed to be difficult to think about and work in.
* The Museum of Artifacts From Collapsed Timelines.
* Leaving your release date in the hands of the players and players deciding you should release on Christmas.
* Letting ARG audience members take over your ARG design because you're busy making an executable.
* Wanting something to be a commercial success and so hiding it as well as possible.
* Reneging on your vow of obscurity at the last second and raking in the dough.
* Not being able to put your game on sale because it would violate truth in advertising laws around the world.
* Pricing your game high because games should cost money -- but that also meaning people have to pay that money.
* Trying to convince the IRS that they've already deposited the check for the amount they're sending you a due notice for.
* Enabling your bank teller to feel like a private investigator.
* Adding quest flavor text when you ask things of retail workers so they feel like they'll get XP by helping you.
* Asking the restaurant pianist to play Happy Birthday in a minor key and the pianist just being grateful that you didn't ask him to play Billy Joel's "Piano Man" for the fortieth time today.
* Hearing somebody playing Gershwin in the next practice room over and playing Gershwin with them and them fleeing because the conservatory is haunted.
* Asking the librarian to research paranormal activity on your property.
* Tracking down the records of everyone who died in a house but entirely ignoring the fractals that may have died in the house.
* Not accepting that although some things are known, you'll never know how they're known.
* Realizing that economics and economists are dreadful.
* Luminary physicists all having killed themselves because nobody took their theories seriously in their lifetimes.
* Hiding behind freelance work because you're terrified try to to follow up your accidental success.
* Not knowing what you're going to make, but definitely knowing how to sell it.
* Bacteria just hanging out and waiting for you to succumb.
* The bacteria in your jaw being the true legacy of your life's work.
* Taking until your mid-30s to figure out how to work on purpose and not just when you're excited about something.
* Sleeping when you want to sleep and getting up after you're not tired anymore.
* Meeting a wife and coming to a sleep schedule compromise.
* Having more dictionaries than you've ever had in your life.
* Thinking your traditional holiday foods are weird until you hear about the other guy's holiday foods.
* Pagan traditions intersecting with Christmas in ways that lead to incredibly weird food.
* Thinking of whales as fish because you're allowed to eat them on Christmas Eve.
* The food you like being impossible to find in a store or restaurant because it's horrifying.
* A beet salad made with sour cream and beans and vinegar and peas and carrots and onions and a huge amount of pickles and nobody wanting to try it because it's the color of Pepto Bismol.
* Eating poppy seed soup and failing every drug test for the rest of your life.
* A puce soy milk served cold.
* Skimming off the thick layer of poppy seed fat so your soup won't poison people.
* Tiny dumplings representing food for the dead, because the dead don't need to eat a lot.
* Pirate Santa, Santa's evil brother who likes puzzles and hiding presents.
* Pirate Santa running the Christmas Puzzle Hunt to find all the ingredients for the Christmas appetizer log sandwich.
* A Yule Sandwich Log, made from hard-boiled eggs, crumbled bacon, bread, avocado, pineapple, pimento cheese, shrimp, chili sauce, cranberry sauce, deviled ham, peanut butter and a dill pickle, all dipped in cream cheese and decorated with canned pears and maraschino cherries.
* A combination of savory, sweet and salty that is pleasing even if you've read the recipe.
* A garden gnome except it's a duck.
* Decorating a duck for holidays rather than a tree.
* Two ninja turtle doves.
* Being disappointed with depictions of columnar cacti in popular media.
* Being disappointed with depictions of Atari 2600 games in popular media.
* Being subpoenaed to the Supreme Court to testify about whether an Atari 2600 video capture is a forgery.
* Star Trek either being filmed in California, or every planet in the universe having a mediterranean-style biome.
* Plants on Earth being way weirder than alien plants depicted in sci-fi.
