world class fiddler

Totally not using a new recording software, why would you ask? Collin dives into the world of car buying once again and he explains why you should never buy a car that used to be a rental. Brandon is in the middle of 5 books he’s not finishing. The boys dive into the topic of AI generated art and literature. There’s just something off about it and you lose the connection to the place and context of the original writing. 

This week’s show art generated by Dalle2

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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE

PROVIDED BY OTTER.AI

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

driving, miles, people, book, read, painting, listeners, write, person, talk, tolkien, ai, car, connect, adds, emotion, big, stories, art, part

SPEAKERS

Collin, Brandon

00:05

Welcome to Oh,

Collin  00:06

brother, a podcast of three brothers trying to figure it all out with your host, Brandon, Colin and Aaron on this week's show world class Fiddler there we go that's exactly what I meant to do so so you will notice up in the upper right hand corner you should see something that says like uploaded to have whatever chunk oh yeah three. Yeah so so right now your end is recording and uploading your recorded end so So technically, it should sound better because you will have a local recording on your end directly from your microphone not impacted by zoom which which is which is good and bad. And I will tell you because zoom actually does a lot to make the sound sound somewhat decent. This software does none of that which is raw it's just one raw audio

Brandon  01:10

of just the unfiltered dulcet tones of my lovely voice

Collin  01:15

and any background noise or echo you have dealt with

Brandon  01:19

yeah but I usually my behind the scenes as I because like I live in the apartment right usually have the gain and the volume pretty far down on my microphone and then I just like sit pretty close to it. So that it cuts down and usually out on a lot of the background noise Sure. Because it's it's not being like hypersensitive, right? Because this sucker if you like really crank it up, I'm sure you could probably hear Susan in the next room. Right? But like if

Collin  01:55

yes, and so yeah, I'm more worried about like me who kind of travels in like, I am always in a random place like it knows where my the cheese office right now. I mean, I'm talking Yeah, at least talking into like, a little bit of like wood. But then around me is nothing but concrete blocks.

02:18

So you should probably

Brandon  02:21

create a little screen out of cardboard macaroni boxes. I shouldn't sort of

Collin  02:28

I should just walk across the street and ask them and say please, sir, may I have a box? Yeah. And they'll say no, thank you go away. So yes, I do have plans to make the office more recording friendly. I will say that because I am finding myself doing a lot more recording here. I mean, I have I have a permanent a permanent but an attached a boom arm for a microphone. So because I kept forgetting it knows I have to like rest the microphone on top of the box. Like I can't do this.

Brandon  03:10

Yeah, that's good planning because also that's not like an easy transportable thing. Like a giant boom arm stuck in the wire. Like,

Collin  03:20

right? Yeah, so anyway, I I'm trying to do that to make this more recording friendly because it would be nice to have to worry about it. But then I also hate having the idea of like, having two sets of things. Like here's where I'm trying to not go too crazy.

Brandon  03:40

Well I mean even if it's just like you get like some little thing to like hang a blanket on the wall.

Collin  03:48

Right yeah. This that would really help me if I could just hang some like a tapestry behind so I need to go tapestry shopping is what I need to do tapestries. Castle, you have tapestries? Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. Okay, that's good. Yeah. So yeah, I think that would be good. They're just simple things that could do to make this more or recording friendly. I am glad that dad helped me source a a desk and it has the flat desk but it also has a piece that sits on top of it that has some cabinets kind of up by your head. Yeah. And it actually has a sound sound deadening board right in front of it. So I try and get as close to the desk as possible so I can kind of tuck into that little cabin.

Brandon  04:52

So it doesn't have too much behind me. But yeah, so that's

Collin  04:59

that's a That's the recording update.

Brandon  05:01

Everybody right? Before you go, I vote you can hear me okay? Yeah, you sound great. Okay, sounds great as you you're coming through like weird. Like, all of a sudden they started making this weird. Like, I don't really know how to describe this noise, but it's like, oh,

Collin  05:17

is it like a buzzing noise? Or? Yeah, we're blinking warbly when you're talking it like, it buzzes. Yeah, like crap. Oh, no. Oh,

Brandon  05:28

I don't know if that is. I don't hear that. Okay, well, that might just be it coming through to me. So we'll just see how it goes.

Collin  05:37

We'll see. To be fun. Yeah. So. So this this recording feature. We have a live chat in here, which is what zoom offers, it also has, you should be able to edit notes. I think like in real time. So like, if we if we did have, if we you know, when we put together the script for the show, we could just add Lolly at it. Yeah, definitely. Which is super important for us, obviously,

Brandon  06:05

obviously, because we definitely script everything.

Collin  06:10

Turn page. But yeah, so that's, uh, that's all that gosh, I can't even remember. What did we what When did what what is time? What is

Brandon  06:24

time? I don't even know. It's ridiculous. I can't

Collin  06:30

did I tell you that I? Okay. I think I don't know if I got this. Did I tell you how many miles I put on the rental car tonight? Did I just did I tell you this? I didn't get

Brandon  06:39

a final tally. Okay. Me. You gave us a number before you turn it in. But I don't think we received a final. A final tally. Oh, okay. Of this rental car edge. Oh, well, so I don't I know that whenever I got this car, it had a 34,000 miles on it. Okay. 34,000 and plus or minus a couple of years. Okay. When I turned it in, it had over 40,000 miles on it, Lee.

Collin  07:17

You know? And here's the thing, the reason, and here's why that caught me off guard. Because every time I could note nowhere in I'm a fiddler. Right. You know, I said,

Brandon  07:30

Oh, you know,

Collin  07:32

I'm aware world class Fiddler here. And I could not for the life of me find a consistent trip calculator. And you may be wondering, I'm sorry, what? Yeah, exactly. There was no place that had a static, not static, but like, you could go to a screen. And you could see how many miles you had driven because it would reset every time you a shut off the car or be refilled the gas. So

Brandon  08:06

that seems not helpful at all.

Collin  08:09

So every time it was just like, every time it would just disappear. And so the trip was wouldn't you turn when you started and stopped the car? Basically, that was a trip and it would be like, Okay, I'm reset, which makes no sense to me at all.

Brandon  08:25

I mean, either that is

Collin  08:27

because I guess I but then again, I don't know how many people use Trip A and Trip B on their cars.

Brandon  08:33

I mean, I've never do. My trip is like, my general generally, I'm not going very far at all. So

Collin  08:47

what I do is I like when I when we go on a big trip, I always use Trip B to log total miles per trip. And Trip A is reset every time you get you fill up with gas. So you can keep log that way. And you can calculate your miles per gallon. And so I I just have that running total of using both of those simultaneously. And otherwise, if I'm not on a big trip, I don't really use Trip B unless I'm trying to log certain things. So like right now, I'm in Springfield, and I'm logging my total mileage for my entire time here in Springfield. I want to know that so that I can keep track of it easier than just watching the big odometer roll around. After right it's just, it's just easier so you could just couldn't do that the curl so whenever I finally looked at the end number, I was like, dear goodness, because I looked at my original paperwork and I was like 6000 miles in a month. That's why so, but then I was like But it's 100 and not to be creepy but it's 127 miles from Springfield to To the home. And

10:02

if you do that,

Brandon  10:04

well that'll do it right there. That's kind of,

Collin  10:06

if I'm doing that, like in the morning, and then I come back at night, and I have to go back down to the next morning, like, and I'm coming up on the weekends, all of a sudden, and then I'm driving maybe 80 miles in a day doing visits, all of a sudden, it's, it's not so you know, a lot. Not all, it adds up real fast. So, I'm sure and I'm pretty sure that most most rental cars get shuffled off the motor court motor coil. Mortal Coil, I said, I said, Yeah, Moto moto coil, which actually makes sense because it says Anyway, well, yeah, it's like, around 40,000 miles. So just in time for them to shuttle it out. And, and remember, listeners never buy cars that were from a rental company, because when I got this, it said, change the oil. And I kept calling them every couple days saying no, really it says change the oil. And they said, that's fine. Don't worry about it. For the entire month in a couple of days a week that I had it it said know how the

Brandon  11:11

valves are melted. In just

Collin  11:17

did not sound healthy, whatever I retarded, but they wouldn't like clicking really loudly. Not real loudly, but it was definitely get to that point. There. It was there. It was definitely audible in but again, like, I was taking pictures and texting them in through emails and be like, hey, what do you want me to do? Because and they're just like, it's fine. Just keep driving. You know, don't worry about changing out. Just keep driving it. Okay, whatever you say. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's

Brandon  11:53

as rough as no good.

Collin  11:54

So I don't recommend don't recommend those. Yeah, that's, that's drive time. So now I've got the Honda back. I'm trying to not drive as much on it because we are trying to sell it. Yeah, eventually, eventually. Yeah.

Brandon  12:12

I like to imagine I like to my listeners, this week on Collin drives every car for sale in his county. I, I I like to imagine what's happening is the people at the dealership that he keeps going to, they just have this big, big dossier folder on him that has like all of his likes and comments and dislikes, and they're just, they're looking, they're going to just nail him with something he just can't say no to. They're just gonna get him. He's gonna hook him good blam. And he's not gonna be able to escape. And he's, he's not gonna be able to say no, and he's just gonna be caught. Oh, my God. Like,

Collin  12:59

I see. I just wanted to drive the full runner. And then we're like, and then I noticed that they were mentioning about other used cars, and they just like they said g x. And

Brandon  13:12

I was like, oh, like, yeah, they just were casually, casually are used cars. Near you the person that comes all the time

Collin  13:19

all the time. Get US Coast Guard. Yeah, no. So I did. I did drive the GX and and then and then they were like, oh, but this one. They said, Oh, here's exactly what he said. That kept me out of Guinea. He just paused a bit. Oh, this one's got more miles that you probably want. And he kept talking. And I was like, No. Tell me more. What is it? And he said, Oh, it's a it's an LX 570. And I wait. I'm driving that right now.

Brandon  13:54

So when they find a lower mileage one, they'll be like, hey,

Collin  13:58

guess what? I mean, low mileage. I mean, it had this one had like, so it was a 2013. So it's older. Yeah. But I bought the Honda. Like, let's remember, I bought the Honda and it was 10 years old. So like, I don't Yeah, not really. And he said more miles on it at 120,000 miles on it. And for that engine and the LX. I was like, it's not even sweating at this point. Like what are you considering how every use one they're like 349,000 miles.

Brandon  14:29

Okay, so that's a good point.

Collin  14:34

I'm not even worried about that. But I saw I did drive. I did drive and I Oh, man. It really, really ruined me. It's bad. I've never driven one of those before. I've always wanted to, which is one of the reasons I wanted to get this. I've always wanted one of these things. So I was like, I'm here. Let's just do this. There's no way I'm actually buying this because a it's it's not as large as a suburban but it's Pretty close to the size of like, the early 90s surburban. So they're pretty big. They're pretty big, but they're not as massive as some of the more modern, full size SUVs and it's actually considered a mid size still are like mid sized to folding. Yeah. Think Yeah, it's because it's not it's not as big as a suburban because I can still a modern suburban,

Brandon  15:26

but I cannot figure the suburban exactly has always been enormous like, hey, what's the most enormous thing we can have ever? Oh, yes, this Yes.

Collin  15:39

I, I've actually never driven a Lexus anything. And so, and both of everything that was driving was used and like 2015 2014 This was a 2013. I was like, just this shouldn't come as a surprise. shocked at the, at the, at the how quiet everything was, like, just utter silence from this massive like, under the hood is a V eight. And you couldn't hear a single thing. Just nothing. There is no sound. And yeah, and yet you're gonna

Brandon  16:15

what they're known for is being sneaky. Sneaky, quiet,

Collin  16:19

very quiet, quiet. And, and especially the GX. It's based on. It's the it's the Landrover Prada overseas. And so it's a smaller body size, but it's based on the Fort Scott shares a lot with the four runner, but the inside the inside of the four runner has a lot more space, because the walls are not as thick in the GX. It has a very small interior compared to the body size. Because they're like No, no, everything quiet lots of padding, no noise

16:54

lots of weight.

Brandon  16:56

Bad gas mileage. Giant engine. Yeah, right. That's that's what you want. When gas Missouri's like $4? Yeah, or 440 a gallon?

Collin  17:05

Yeah. Yes, exactly. See, this is what I'm thinking. So I was just like, okay, whatever, like very nice to drive. Very nice. Like, and then I was like, No, I can't do this. So. So tomorrow, I'm gonna go drive an FJ Cruiser?

Brandon  17:24

Because that's the seventh time.

Collin  17:27

I've never I've never actually driven an FJ Cruiser.

Brandon  17:31

You've been lusting after one for this long and you've never driven one. Exactly. Because

Collin  17:34

I hate talking to car salesmen.

Brandon  17:37

Well, we couldn't your listeners. I think he's over that. I don't know.

Collin  17:43

I try. I'm look, I I'm not there to be their friend. And I know like they're trying to be Buddy, Buddy and have a conversation and they may be trying to help their salesmen.

Brandon  17:53

Yes, that's a sales technique. Yes. Going for

Collin  17:56

Yeah, no, I'm not. I'm I clam up. It's like I'm talking to a police officer, FBI agent. There's like, there's, it's yes or no as far as I can get. And if I have to go on and explain stuff, we'll do that. I hate the like, what do you do question because, you know, they're trying to judge, like, based on what this person responds with? Do I think, what do I think about their stature and like credit and like all this stuff, but this car and can

Brandon  18:19

they afford this? And can I apply? I can't talk to them? Because they say well, what do you do?

Collin  18:24

Teacher? Anyway?

Brandon  18:28

I'm just like, Okay, I'm gonna go help this other customer who actually has money. He's like,

Collin  18:34

No, I just, they're trying to go like, Okay, well how like, cuz I know what they're going to start doing is going okay, how much wiggle room do I think this person has to get the extras and the add ons and the little things and like all this to start building your profile. So that's why I keep them guessing of like, one day, I'm in there to see Toyota Corolla. And the next day, it's a LX 570. And then the next day, it's, you know, the Tesla and then the next day, it's a Mazda Miata, like, must keep them going. Like,

Brandon  19:03

I've always wondered, can I actually fit in one of these? So I'm just here to test it out today.

Collin  19:09

If we're being perfectly honest, most of the things that I'm test driving or like, Well, I've always wanted to and it's sitting over there right now, which is what the LX 570 was, there's no way I could purchase this because yeah, the gas mileage is abysmal. As I was driving it, I'm looking at doubt I'm accelerating and it was like, eight eight. I was like that. Yeah. Oh, thank you.

Brandon  19:33

And just like there is there's there is no circumstance under which like even even in 2015 eight miles to the gallon should be acceptable. That is a 1968 number. Okay, yes, like, that is not not okay. Like what are you doing it exactly, right. Why It failed as an industry that in 2015, you or Q can get eight

Collin  20:07

wild miles. Exactly. This is this is, this is what I'm watching. And I'm going like, there's no like and then and then it's just all the practicality stuff of just like yeah, this is big and what do I spend a lot of my time doing city driving? What do I need to not be driving in city? Most? Like if I was just if all I did was do highway miles and go across fjords and climb mountains, maybe obviously like I would I would need to do this. Maybe. But as it stands, like, okay, sure I have I have two hours in the of a highway drive it but then I'm bobbing and weaving in and out of traffic going into apartment complexes, like winding streets. I don't need that. But with that said,

Brandon  20:56

Yeah, that's the that's the humorous part about this. Like, because Lexus is like, they're, they're not selling that car in Japan. Because it literally can't fit anywhere. Anyway to drive that on some little tiny Japanese street. No. Get out. Like, talk about talking about knowing your market like loser Americans need this big giant car.

21:21

Exactly.

Collin  21:23

Yeah, yeah. It's where they quote unquote, have room. So

Brandon  21:29

have you seen a road in the Midwest? You have room

Collin  21:32

I have room. With that said they absolutely loved driving it. Yes. I loved I loved every second. This is probably mostly because the guy who was doing the test drive has a while I don't like driving with the car salesman in the car. I do appreciate it whenever they have, like a course to go on to showcase different features of the car. This only happened one other time. And this time we got in and the guy said, we're gonna go on this play this way. And just to show you kind of how it feels in different settings, and I was like, Oh, well, that's really nice. Okay, let's do this. Was

Brandon  22:19

it like a field? Like a ditch? Like,

Collin  22:24

unfortunately, it was not showing its off road prowess. But it didn't.

Brandon  22:29

I was hoping he was like, Alright, we're gonna cause a Springfield is like this, right? We're gonna go down here, here. And then there's a field. All

Collin  22:35

right, turn it into the field. No, but we did go off some like very curvy, windy, hilly roads. Which, which was good because I'm used to driving larger vehicles, larger trucks. Suburbans that have what? They have immense body roll, and you feel like you're about to tip over. Oh, yeah. Right. It adds to the excitement makes it lively. We hold on really tight. At no point. Was there any of that? At all, like zero. So that was pretty neat. And it actually didn't feel as big. When you were on the road. It only felt big when you start getting close to other cars. You were like, oh, yeah, that's

23:16

actually huge.

Brandon  23:19

It's like, Okay, now we're gonna drive on the square. Oh, no.

Collin  23:21

Yeah. Backup get away fast.

Brandon  23:26

Can't get it. No.

Collin  23:29

So yeah, it's a it's interesting to borrow. I've lined up my day. So we're gonna

Brandon  23:38

donate me listeners, listeners, we need an intervention has a problem.

Collin  23:43

Megan has, Megan has in fact told me basically like, we have one more week to pick something out or she's going to do it. So the FJ Cruiser as I

Brandon  23:55

want to know what big part of you really wants to make it to just pick something? And I want to know what it is like, we'll be like, she's gonna be like that one. Okay, by

Collin  24:05

how many doors doesn't have sweet let's do it. Yeah, so tomorrow is gonna want to know, I don't tomorrow is gonna be FJ Cruiser. And then I'm going to go in test drive. more sensible, something that actually would probably work for us as a Highlander, Toyota Highlander. It's more to Danny. And then on that lot,

Brandon  24:26

they also 93 Honda Civic Hatchback.

Collin  24:29

No, no, close. They have a 2001 at the Del Sol 2001 2001 Landcruiser. That I am in fact, that does have 258,000 miles.

Brandon  24:46

It's the dream come true, folks. This is it. This is what he's been waiting for. The whole time. It's been building up to this. So I'm just peek right here. This is if I In climbing the proverbial mountain, this is the summit.

Collin  25:02

This is in fact, what all of this has been building to is the culmination. It'll be the last car I drive. And just a roll home. 2022 year old vehicle founded,

Brandon  25:18

it's perfect, I will kill you.

Collin  25:24

But I'm there for the Highlander. And so I might as well you know, it's there. It's in a really ugly, like, Land Cruiser, like gold thing, that they all say that. Oh, you know, it's really disgusting. It's a really crucial color.

Brandon  25:41

But it's there sometimes i I know. But like, sometimes I think about I like look at car companies. And I'm going like, Why? Why would you pick that color? Who's buying this? Because you only see them on the lot. You never see anybody driving them? Oh, you're like it till like two years later. And you know, it was because it was still on the lot and nobody bought it. They're like, alright, we're marking this sucker down. I gotta get this thing out of here. With a gold Landcruiser. And like, Oh, yeah. Yes,

Collin  26:14

I know.

Brandon  26:15

Rose had some garish and disgusting.

Collin  26:18

I know, it's very bad. It's very bad and gross. At least at least it doesn't have the, at least it does. It's not the gold with the Chrome that the LX version has its gold and chrome around like, No, it's not good. So how many likes that doesn't have that at least. But I, again, it's one of those things, it's there to walk on over and say hi. I think it'll be fine. So got my list got my name is people I got to talk to that's the other thing is that everybody's moved to these automated text messages of like, confirming your time talk to Jen. Like, okay, so you walk in, and they say, how can we help you and you like looking at your phone, you're like, ah, the robot said I needed to talk to Jen. Nobody has any idea what you're talking about. And they're like, ghosts come over here. And I realized, Oh, that was just a fake name to get you in the door. So that you could just go talk to somebody because that person doesn't exist.

Brandon  27:20

Robots live what they do. Everybody knows. Everybody knows.

Collin  27:27

Yeah, that's anyway. There. So we'll see what happens with that. Well, all right.

Brandon  27:39

Good luck. Stay tuned listeners with the saga continues.

Collin  27:44

It's gonna be the Land Cruiser.

Brandon  27:47

And, I mean, it's been building to that for over 10 years.

27:52

It has.

Brandon  27:54

So good luck, chess. It's been 10 years listeners of me getting like out of the blue just pictures of Les increases in a text message like 1130 at night, seven o'clock in the morning. You know, 130 in the afternoon, doesn't matter. Just be like edit a lot of times. It's listers, it's just the picture. That's it. There's no praise and they'll just like say the screenshot of like an auto trader listing. No context. No comment. Sometimes it'd be like this one. Like I haven't heard from him in like three days and then I just get a text of a car that says this way. Yeah. I need you to know this news. What I've been dealing with. So bad.

Collin  28:46

So yeah, it's just so pretty. Anyway, enough about that book. Oh, here's another one. Anyway, so. Next, man, about minor overseas. How's your how's your? I don't know if you want to jump right to this or not. But how is I need to touch back on your Old English literature book. Ah,

Brandon  29:35

I've only read a little bit of the introduction, because I still have 12345 books. I'm in the middle of not finishing. So I sort of set a taskmaster myself to whittle this number down. Oh, that's not counting the book. I have it on my desk at work. But that's a book for work. So like, I'm not counting I'm sure I have, I have several that I need to get through. But like this book, I'm like one book on the last chapter. This other book I'm almost done with. So there's three books I have that I'm almost finished with. And so then maybe we'll see where we get to. Okay. That's what we haven't progressed very far, just a little bit in the introduction, some casual perusing of other Old English literature things online, and just sort of seeing what other things I could get to accompany it eventually. But that's just where we're at right now. So not too much progress. Currently, I warned you this happens sometimes. That happens when you have attention problems and love reading. So you kinda you kind of like, I don't want to read this book right now. But so now I have options, right? Like, I don't think this is helping my attention problems, but we're dealing. So this is what we do. Yeah, because sometimes when I read only one book, I like, fall into this thing where like, maybe I kind of lose interest for a while. And then, like, I just stopped reading altogether, because I don't want to finish the book that I have started, like, I have this thing where I like, need to finish it. Like I'm not gonna not finish the book. Sure, it just sometimes takes a long time. So I'll just kind of set it down and pick up something else. So I have Excuse me. So I have like multiple books. So it becomes a exercise of which 1am I going to read today, like, I'll read like, one day, I'll read some of what and then it does really help that a lot of them are sort of nonfiction. So like, the way that most nonfiction books are structured, you can just read like a section. That's fine, right? It's kind of like contained all together like black. You read that part? It's okay. Done. Only one of them

Collin  32:16

is, well, I guess two technically are fiction books. So like,

Brandon  32:23

that's not too bad. And what it was a murder mystery. So like it, reread it really fast. So I'm basically just been reading that. And so it's almost done.

Collin  32:33

So yeah, I have some stuck in

Brandon  32:35

random. And then I have my ongoing talking pile over here. I'm just sort of reading through. Every once in awhile, I'll read a different section of this or that or whatever. Like, that's very nice. You know how it is, it's very, you know, that we're not even counting that pile because that's just an ongoing. Sure. Ongoing Rica, it's almost like a research assignment, right? Like I've just said,

Collin  33:02

Are you taking any notes on them or not?

Brandon  33:06

I probably shouldn't be but no, like, you feel like that sometimes when you're doing it. Especially when you're reading some like these really deep cuts, like the Book of Lost Tales, part two altra nerdy stuff. They're so like, that's for sure. And you really need notes for that, because it's very odd. And it's like, got Christopher tollgates commentary in it. My gosh, she's writing. It's like, Yeah, so like the Book of Lost Tales is the basically a collection of the original draft for the Silmarillion stories that Christopher found in various folders and desk drawers and notebooks and stuff. Because talking very famously, we just write on anything. Yeah, shove it somewhere. And so, a lot of his commentaries are like, this is, you know, blah, blah, blah, but cannot be precisely dated to when he was actually written. You know, all this stuff, like, based on the handwriting, it might be here, but who knows? Like, like we've talked about before, he's right. He's very, like, I feel like his writing process was very chaotic. It's sometimes right, like, he would just be like, just must right now. Right? And just like he was bright on stuff, right? So he had like, little notebooks that he would kind of keep but also they're interspersed with just like, random sheets of paper that are just like jammed in there because he wrote something down one time and was like,

Collin  34:44

yeah. So which one which one are you reading through now? Are you how you have your parsing through? It was the lot the secret sweat

Brandon  34:54

was that Oh, okay. So I it's called the Book of Lost Tales. Okay. It's part of the I am slowly amassing the history of Middle Earth collection. Okay, it's like an anthology in 12 books, of which I have just a couple. I see. And it's a lot of like early draft material for stuff. So like the Book of Lost Tales is like the it's kind of like the earliest collection of things that would later become the Silmarillion. Okay, right. And so it's kind of like the very, very, very early, early draft, it kind of is, like, Tolkien's early idea for Middle Earth in general, was that it was going to be like, a mythology for modern England. So it would actually be connected to the modern day. Sure. Right. So like this history of Middle Earth would actually be the history of English stuff. Oh,

Collin  35:56

he's gonna connect it all the way through.

Brandon  35:59

Yeah. So in this version, basically, what's happening is, there's a guy who has traveled to this island, and he's hearing these stories about the elves in Middle Earth times of the day, the what would later be the summer alien. Right? The legend of the First Age of Middle Earth. He's hearing this from these people in this like Tavern on this island somewhere. Right? Oh, that's cool. He's with he's gonna bring those stories back to England. So this is kind of like the, that was his thought process. Like, how do these Connect? How do I connect this to modern day? Yeah, that's what he wanted to do originally, was like, make it like a mythology for the English teacher, you know, for for the English language. Right, like modern English language, make it be like a mythological origin of England, right? That's what he was doing with his like, weird language like elvish and Dwarvish, language obsession, right of doing all this stuff.

Collin  37:01

But again, getting back to he he firmly believed and wrote as if all this stuff just existed, and he was kind of uncovering it, which very much fits into that mindset of like, I'm sitting, you know, yeah, we're discovering these stories. We're hearing them. And as he's as he's putting that together, yeah. And like

Brandon  37:20

that, you can tell that because it his responses to things like in interviews and letters and stuff that he would write, and people would ask him about, like, Well, what about this Middle Earth? And he would just straight up be like, I don't know. Yeah, you know, that would be his answer. He would go, I have no idea. Like, what about this character? What did they do? And during this time, he'd be like, I don't know. Like that. He would just say that. And so that kind of fits into that motif of like, him. He kind of, it's almost like he's a figure of like, and like you said, uncovering this legendarium of like, Oh, yes, I'm translating this from elvish to eight. You know, that's like, what? He's Bilbo right translating this to the bank. Okay. He would just often say things like, yeah, I don't know. Or sometimes in the book, it'll be like, put up this no tail tail? Because that's his answer. Like, I have no idea. I haven't thought about that yet. To do and that's what, that's what the history of Middle Earth there that yeah, this this series, this history of Middle Earth like, volumes collection. It's basically like, it kind of works through all the drafts, like mold draft materials. So this is like the earliest version. And then the next book in the series is like, you know, it'll be just focused on like, certain early versions of like, parts of a story, right. And then there's some later that I don't have, but they're like, the early version of like, the Lord of the Rings part. Okay. Right. And it's just kind of like early draft material. So I have that that I'm reading through. That's a very slow read, because it's very, it's audio. Oh, my gosh, it's so rough.

Collin  39:04

Now, this, this actually gets the ups to a very interesting aspect in that Tolkien had his son around to piece together his writings and something that is currently very a hot topic right now. Is the generation of content using AI? I'm not sure how. And one of the things that they're doing right now is, I've been following two things. One is called Dali to where you can just give a text prompt for what you want a picture to be, and it will make it for you anything

Brandon  39:42

at all. Oh, yeah. I've seen an article. Yeah.

Collin  39:45

It's fun to play with. There's another one so I forget what it's called. But it's run through discord does the exact same thing. One kind of hitting the big podcasting world right now is aI was trained on all of Joe Rogan's podcast As an AI was trained, oh, wait a minute, I was trained on all of Steve Jobs as interviews and written commentary. And then the AI generated an interview of what would happen if Steve Jobs was interviewed on Joe Rogan's podcast.

40:21

And it's an Intel.

Brandon  40:23

How many times was DMT?

Collin  40:25

I don't know, probably too many times

Brandon  40:28

to search for that. 470. Yes. And,

Collin  40:34

you know, obviously, you can tell that. It's interesting, because Steve Jobs doesn't have as much material out there as Joe Rogan to be trained on so his is actually much smoother than Steve Jobs. But it's content that didn't formerly exist, but now is what how would you feel if, instead of Tolkien's son piecing together these stories and putting together an AI was trained on the writings, and then tool to develop a story in the likeness of this?

Brandon  41:09

Well, I think that's different than what Christopher did, right? Because Christopher just took all so like when when Christopher published The Silmarillion, right, because that was published posthumously from Tolkien. Basically, he dug through this apparent mountain of paperwork, and just picked the best versions of everything, try to make a

Collin  41:35

cohesive thing, right. And he later wrote about, like, yeah, I made

Brandon  41:44

he made the wrong choice here. And I, you know, now that I've found this other stuff, I'm not so confident in including this bit, right. But it's like, you know, he was just kind of going through what he had. So, but it's not necessarily generating new things. It's just correlating a lot of existing material into a cohesive thing. Right. So I feel like that's different than,

Collin  42:19

like, the generation of new material. But on the other hand, like,

Brandon  42:26

I don't, you know, there is like, this weird thing in your brain is like, well, if AI does it, it's weird. Like, if an odd another author does it like it's fine. Right, like, because basically, that's what, you know, happens in other like book universes, you know, like, the old like, Star Wars, expanded universe, like, random people will just write A Star Wars Story that just fit into the overall world of Star Wars. 100 I mean, so like, I don't really have a problem with that. Like, that's a common thing. But like, I don't know, I think there's some hang up on, like, if AI did the same thing. Like, it's just kind of weird. You know, I don't know, I don't really know how I feel about that. Because like, the, the humanist part of my brain goes, well, what are you missing then? If it's just like, generated? Right? Like, are you missing something, if you just get generated lines of, you know, from somewhere, because, like,

Collin  43:38

when you read something,

Brandon  43:39

and kind of, I think this is what people get upset about with the art thing, too, like,

Collin  43:44

art is supposed to express something.

Brandon  43:48

Right? It's, it's not like, done just for. I mean, it can be done just for fun, but like art is supposed to represent something, there's so usually some sort of message or theme or emotion or

Collin  44:07

something in there. Right. And so

Brandon  44:10

I feel like a lot of people, probably myself included, have a hard time like trying to understand like, Well, how did this like computer generate a motion? Right, right. Now, the opposite part of this would be like, well, the argument of like, well, it doesn't necessarily document I've made myself mean numerous times about like, well, the author's intentions don't necessarily matter. It's the viewer slash readers intentions that are the most important because that's what you take away from it. So in that vein, I guess it doesn't necessarily matter who creates the art because it's my responsibility as an art viewer to find meaning or take away something from it right. And if I don't find it in an AI painting, That's fine, because I also don't find it in many, like, human painting. Some human paintings, I just like, this painting kind of sucks. I don't really know why people like this right. But then other ones are like, Yeah, I just really liked this. And this, you know, for no, not even, like, there's all subjective reasons, right. Some of them are just objectively better. You know, like a Vermeer or a Rembrandt, like, it's just objectively better than a lot of other stuff. You know what I mean? Like, it just is. It can make you kind of think about stuff or ponder something, or, you know, just have a feeling, and where other pieces of art, like I just don't connect with at all. And it's not even because of the painter, it's just because I don't like the art. But on the other other hand, a lot of times with art or literature, right? What you're connecting with is the author. Right? So like, if you think in terms of like poetry, right? When you read an Emily Dickinson poem,

Collin  46:17

right? You're not just a fan

Brandon  46:19

of the poem, you also become kind of a fan of Emily. You don't mean? So you have a person to connect with, you have something else to connect with? When you read a Hemingway, right? You become sort of aware of how, what a crazy person Hemingway was, right? Like, just kind of weird. And all these things. And you do the same thing with Emily Dickinson, right? I like her poetry a lot. I find her poetry very fascinating. And part of the reason I find her poetry fascinating is because I think she is just super interesting, right? Like, I don't know, I just think she's really interesting person. And so what you discover that through the poetry, you see the poetry first, and then you find the person when you dig deeper, like, when you read Tolkien, you read the work first, but then you discover who Tolkien is. Right? You get this sense of him. But with an AI, there's nothing to get a sense of. Right, you're not connecting with anything. Because there's nothing there to connect with. You know what I mean? Like it's,

Collin  47:36

it's just generating from

Brandon  47:40

a numerical table. So, you might find like, a false sense of that, maybe on some level, but there's no like, author to connect with Sure. There's no artist on the other end, putting feeling or emotion into the thing. It's a data table. So I feel like I feel like while AI can make ours, I don't think that it's as connectable as, like, other things, because you're also connecting with the person, I think the person is important. Right? And even even if the person is, like, controversial or bad, right, like, there's a lot of authors, you know, like, like, I don't like them as a person. Like, they're jerks. They're terrible. But I liked the work, right? Like, I find it interesting. You get that but you have a feeling you have an opinion about them. There is somebody there to have an opinion about right? You can feel about them, right? I don't like Oscar Wilde. He's annoying. His writing hurts me. But like him as a person. He's, he's a crazy character. Right? He's interesting. Don't want to read anything he wrote. Because I don't like his style. But like, I still have an emotion about him. You'd have to be like I have I have a strong emotion about Oscar Wilde. Well, not necessarily positive, but I have an emotion. Well, right. I just don't care about curtains.

Collin  49:25

And what gets really I get some of his shorter stuff. And

Brandon  49:27

poetry is actually pretty good. I just don't like a Picture of Dorian Gray. That's a big hang up here. But well, and

Collin  49:34

what what gets me is you can actually like right now, like you can go in, it's just painting wise, but you can say such and such a painting, you know, like, cat and dog walking down the beach, in the style of and you can insert an artist and it will write it in or it'll paint it, like that person painted it. And there's lots of things that go into that of like, Well, isn't that just like, you know, how did they know? What that style was, well, obviously, it sucked up all that information from all the photos of all their art and just regenerated something using that style. You know, you could there are these ones that are getting to that point where you go, you know, write a story in the style of insert, author, and I guess part of that is going is that their authentic voice? You know, how is it generated? What is it pulling from? Because if you exclude some material, you know, exclude some Oscar Wilde material, you know, that might generate and say no, kind of like, this is the subset of information I want you to look at. That's what we're going to use to define what it means to be Oscar Wilde. Well, someone else may come along and go, Well, you didn't include these four books, why didn't you know? And so you can get different flavors and takes on the same stuff? Based on it's all based off of what you feed it right. When you especially when you start asking for in the style of?

Brandon  50:51

Ah, yeah. Now, here's the other thing that I think is, that brings up a good point. Because now the system is locked into doing a thing. And it's going to only do like, if you say, give me the style of, you know, whoever, like, it's only going to be searching from that. And it can only reproduce that. Right? Whereas somebody like Tolkien, or like artists, for artists example will take Picasso, right. notorious for doing all kinds of different different styles. Yeah. Right. And different things. So we're like, you know, Hemingway would be another good one for an author, right? Like, if you read

Collin  51:48

Farewell to Arms. But then you read the old man

Brandon  51:53

in the sea. There are some differences. Yeah. Right. We're dealing with some different emotions. I mean, it's still the same, because he wasn't like, you know, he's the happiest guy all the time. But like,

Collin  52:07

there is growth

Brandon  52:10

in authors and artists and singers and painters who grow and change and evolve over time, right. And I think that, like, practice talking, like, that's what this giant pile of books I have on my table, it really shows you that he was just always changing his mind about something. Right? He was changing his mind. He was moving stuff. This is why the summary never got published. Because he'd be like, Actually, hold on wait, and then he would like go and fix something. Right. And in his work, people talk about potholes, like, well, maybe, but it's mostly just because he didn't get around to fixing it, right? It wasn't like, oh, yeah, I got it. I gotta get to that. And it was on the list. And then he just never got around to it. Because he was so like, I have to do this, and I gotta fix that. And I'm gonna blah, right? Oh, I got this new idea. What if this makes it better? Right? Always constantly evolving, changing, doing so if you just feed a set parameter into a thing, it can only give you a set parameter out.

Collin  53:08

Right? Right. This is how it works. You can't I mean,

Brandon  53:12

with current technology, obviously, you know, who knows? Like, that's a whole other conversation for later on the, you know, if it was aware of itself, knows. But right now, right now, it means set criteria in set criteria out. Exam, right? I mean, you probably can open up the parameters, and there's probably some, you can just be like, free rein do whatever, like, whatever. But like, if you're gonna give me the style of a Van Gogh, and then you just spit me out a Van Gogh? Well, like, you know, that's not helpful. But again, that's a guy who had lots of different sketches, and then like the post impressionistic thing, the evolving changing through that, like all that stuff, right? Like, can't you know, when you think of a person like Van Gogh, you have a very specific image comes to mind, right? Post Impressionists started, I write these, the cafe diet, whatever. But like, that's not all he did. Right? There are other things that he did before he got there. Right. Like, that's not that's not, you know, that's not the only thing he's known for. Right? Or you take somebody like, Jackson Pollock, who his art is like memes a lot, because you're like, bro, it's just like splatters on a canvas, like, Yeah, but a Pollock painting isn't necessarily about the end result. It's about

Collin  54:48

the making of the painting. That's the That's the important part. For him.

Brandon  54:54

It wasn't really what it looked like when it was finished. It was the while it was happening. It's Very in the moment, like spontaneous kind of plan, right? So the act of painting was the important part, not the end result necessarily. I mean, so like, there's all these other different ways to express in medium. And like, you try trying to express something, you're trying to think about something. And if you're just generating, you're not expressing anything. Right? Like, even if you tell the AI like, if you just be like, sad, right? It's just gonna look through a list of criteria and give you like, the Cliff Notes version, like, dark colors. Rain, a crow, maybe, like, you know what I mean? Yeah. You know, like, as I feel like, you know, you're not getting the emotion part, you're not understood, like the computer wasn't upset,

Collin  56:04

or sad when it painted it? Because it doesn't have a feeling. Yeah. Again, what was it said to that's going to try it's all about training about

Brandon  56:13

Yeah. And so how can I connect with that emotionally? If I'm sad, right. I think you lose something. If you're like, I know, that like the artist was feeling this way when he painted it. So I can understand the emotion. I can connect with that. Right. But if I know like, the computer was told the word sad. Well, then does the painting lose some of the emotional tie? I think it does a little bit. I think it does.

Collin  56:53

Yeah, I think so too. Because, again, like you said, you're connecting with something. And while I don't think you have to always know the backstory behind what's in front of you, I think it definitely adds in depth and enjoyment to it. When you you can see what what was created at different points in people's lives. And go, man.

57:21

You know, man, you know,

Collin  57:23

writing, Henry David Thoreau, and you know, Walden Pond like that is definitely out and like a very specific time in a moment relating to a way of thinking that he was going through that would never have been written previously, or at or before or after that. It adds a lot more where you go, Okay, I understand fully why this is important. And what this is trying to tell me, given XYZ number going on, which is, which is kind of like, when you look at its, you know, you take a historical approach to looking at, you know, as a literary device, I'm going okay, like, let's look at the context of the where and how and why this was written. That's going to tell us a lot about the structure, the formation, the beginning, middle and end of this, versus just reading it and going, Okay, well, cool. Those are some words on a page. Decent story. Cool. That's awesome. It's adding, it's adding more to it.

Brandon  58:24

Oh, yeah. So I think, you know, the best example of that, that comes to my mind immediately, is like, the last generation writers from in between the world wars. Yeah, that stuff is crazy, like Hemingway Fitzgerald II Cummings, Ford Madox Ford, right? Like Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, all these people like, Ah, I guess Tolkien technically, technically, they were to write like,

Collin  58:52

this, this time, where all this

Brandon  58:57

writing took place. It I, I am completely fascinated by these people. Like, so much. It's my favorite literary stuff to read. Like, one of them, one of them, right? It's so interesting. Because of the historical context, and the personal stories of these people, and like, just how, how the world was changing after the First World War, just like, there was so much just like despair, and uncertainty, and all this stuff, and then, you know, the depression and just just all this, this time in place in history, this snapshot of this time, it's just, it's so interesting, and the writing that these people were doing because of the time and place that they were it I just

Collin  59:52

I just find it really interesting, right? I

Brandon  59:54

just, I just it's so interesting to read that stuff. The poetry and the stories they can For these people experiencing these emotions, and this is just lost feeling of like, what do I do? Right? Especially like Hemingway, right? Like, I'm in the war, I'm doing the stuff. And then the war is over. And oh, my goodness, that was horrible, right? That like, that slow realization will shift from the First World War of like, oh, yeah, the war will be over by Christmas. And four years later, like,

Collin  1:00:23

no, just just the

Brandon  1:00:27

complete loss of faith in like, all the old systems, and like, how could the world become better? Because I have seen things that are absolutely the worst things of all time. And how do I deal with that? Right? Like, that? environment created so much stuff, right? And I, I'm fascinated by it. And so like that, you can, how do you duplicate that? Right? Like, it's a very emotional connection. Like, for me, like I just because there's so much to connect, like, the history and the sociology and the art and these people's personal stories, like, all this stuff, just isn't this big ball in this time. And it's just so interesting. And I like, I like when you take all that into account about what nice people were doing, like all artists, not just like writers, but painters and stuff as well like, dealing with all this stuff. Like how they express themselves and how they dealt with this trauma. Like, that's crazy. You know, like, I can't, I can't imagine AI giving you something that's that timeless and interesting. Right? Because you

Collin  1:01:55

can't exactly say, having experienced the awful world, world war one now, right. A reflection on the more idealized or the the role that decadence plays in people reconnecting with their know that's just like,

Brandon  1:02:13

oh, yeah, right. Yeah, you're gonna miss, you're gonna miss some stuff. And there's just, there's I would also be remiss if I did not mention slightly earlier time period, if we would go back, you know, about 100 years before that. If you want to talk about emotional expression in art, your boy Francisco Goya, right? So, so those paintings are also poof,

Collin  1:02:49

just poof. I'm like, Yeah, but

Brandon  1:02:52

like the circumstances in which they were created listeners if you're not familiar with Goya, basically, during the was it the Spanish Civil War? Right?

Collin  1:03:02

He was going deaf or

Brandon  1:03:06

right. And he was just supremely depressed and dealing with a lot of emotion. And he painted a series of paintings on the walls of his house called the Black Paintings. I think there's 14 of them. Yeah. They're called the Black Paintings, because a lot of them are black. In color and emotional content. This is some there is some heavy stuff in what he painted. Yeah. And it comes from a place of just like, it must just awful.

Collin  1:03:41

He was just huge depression. She was disillusioned he was he was he was seeing a reality anger. He was all alone. He was at the kind of it was towards the later end of his life, completely isolated from everything else, in the reason because he was battling depression and faced with the realities of the society that he was in and going, like, this is not good anymore. The politically socially this is, you know, basically he was as he was at the point of abandoning Spain because he no longer believed in it. And, and was now painting these and yeah, it's, yeah, you talk about some intro. And he was fascinating, too, because he was right there at that transition period, if I remember correctly, of like, he was kind of like, still old style, but also bringing in a lot that would be built off of for later artists. So he, he was he was,

Brandon  1:04:35

he's a hugely important artist out. Yes. Yeah.

Collin  1:04:37

But, but just the black paintings that in and of themselves. If you think about that, yeah, you're right. There were 14 or so but yeah, they're just, they're not.

Brandon  1:04:49

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was he was also going deaf due to an unknown. So he was dealing with the disillusionment of the fall of the Spanish government after the Napoleonic Wars, and the Spanish Civil War, and that he was like just hating the situation in Spain. And he was depressed because he was going deaf and he been sick. And so the

Collin  1:05:11

stuff that he painted is just like,

Brandon  1:05:13

whoa. Right, like, whoa. So when you look at the painting of like, the dog, right, and pero painting, in that context, you just are kind of hit with this wave of like, Oh,

1:05:33

I get it. Like I yeah, I understand.

Brandon  1:05:39

Right, like, yeah, that was like, yeah, so that's, yeah. Like, you can't, I don't think you can talk about an AI painting like that, like, you can't have these emotional connections with people and this sort of, like, background understanding and like, you know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna search up this information on like, every artists thing out here. But you, you know, generally what, like, what happens with me is I will encounter something. And then if it is really interesting, then I want to know about the background. I want to know about where this came from, I want to know these, like, the history behind it. And then the fact that it was painted by a person means there's something there to find, you know. So,

Collin  1:06:28

yeah, okay. But I'm sure we'll have this continue of this discussion as more more things come out and get produced and such. Because I think it'll be interesting to see how all that develops.

Brandon  1:06:42

That's true. We can do more art history later today. When I hear some more art history listeners, I do love them, too. Do that. Good.

Collin  1:06:55

Well, we have in closing, do you want to dive into the question that we posed at the end of last time?

Brandon  1:07:06

Do you want to do it now or do you want to save it for next time? What

Collin  1:07:10

do we can save it for? Let's save it for next time. We're coming up on an hour now and everything so I think I think we'll save it let me add that to our notes

Brandon  1:07:21

Ah, all right went off on a long tirade about going

Collin  1:07:29

next time teaser teaser next time next time we will we'll start off next time I'm going to add it to the top of the notes

Brandon  1:07:35

right now. I don't even know whatever we're going to start off with whatever the current date no we're not going to so listeners part 47 of Collins car

Collin  1:07:44

never ends never ends No no no I promise we won't start with jumping in and we're going to answer

Brandon  1:07:52

I will finish we'll finish with the cargo put the sea Yeah. So they can expect that now they're now there.

Collin  1:08:02

So yeah, we'll we'll start with which holidays are the best candy options and we're going to rank the holidays holidays for their candy. Which

Brandon  1:08:10

I was thinking about this I feel like the best thing to do would be to just go through the holidays talk about the candies that are really just one that we like absolutely don't like and then at the end we'll rank them give them or like rank them

Collin  1:08:26

yes, that's fine.

Brandon  1:08:27

It's the exact Susan was yelling at me the other day about what my ranking should be so we're gonna have many thoughts on this right and again this is because it is official candy season because Reese's pumpkins that's how you know come to my again my my my thoughts on when this time period is this candy holiday season is basically holidays from now until Easter. Okay, because that's when the fairness apps right so basically what Halloween, Christmas Valentine's Day Easter is Thanksgiving doesn't know Right? Can't go well, we will have candy but I need to research Hanukkah candy.

Collin  1:09:18

I think I should do well spend some time with it. That's what a homework.

Brandon  1:09:23

I don't I've never had any. So any listeners you could help us out with that. Tell us your favorite holiday candies as well. There you go.

Collin  1:09:33

That's it. We'll do do next time dive right into that. All right, okay, how do I stop this? Okay. Oh, I'm gonna say okay, yeah, so, all that sounds. That sounds good. Okay. Love you.

1:09:46

Bye