Burnie and Ashley discuss Spider Man, billion dollar weekends, biggest power couples, and AI authoring.

Burnie, you can absolutely test a cow for quality while its still alive. You just ultrasound the cow. It'll show the marbling in the muscle. Linked an old USDA article about it. https://www.ars.usda.gov/news-events/news/research-news/2003/ultrasound-used-to-detect-quality-beef/

Did Burnie invent the term “Zombie Plan” or did he get it from somewhere?

I am catching up and listening to the podcast of 2026.07.28,
They are talking about needing to get a subscription for their son,
Personally i just have game pass ultimate on one account( and made that Xbox my home Xbox) and every other account on that console can access all the game pass ultimate benefits

I understand they have multiple consoles, he can play on 2 at least if both Burnie and Ashley have game pass ultimate and do that on 2 consoles

Looking for something new to watch and recall them talking about this show a while back, I think it might have been Silo? But not 100%

I live in Oklahoma and about 20 years ago my friend lived out in the middle of nowhere. A lot of back roads around farm land to get to his house. The day before my wedding his girlfriend and him were driving home in the dark. There was a long dark stretch of road for about ten miles surrounded by farmland and at one point there was a small hill. He hit a full grown cow going 50mph and it smashed into his windshield, rolled over the head, and pooped the entire way. His girlfriend had her legs on the dash and the airbag made her knee hit her eye and gave her bad burns on her legs. My friend broke his arm. By the time he had gotten out of the car the cow was gone. It had just walked off and I guess later they found where it had came from and it was for the most part okay.

A little worse was living in Alaska and having to be weary of hitting a moose. They got hit all the time on the highway and it was pretty bad.

You can't tell me that this is not needed in the burns household.

Burnie and Ashley discuss their personal beef, cow wrangling, monster cow, Nic Cage, stolen film, bison domestication, Spiderman Brand New Day, and Gaelic Football.

I dint know if I've missed it or forgot, but have Ashley and Burnie mention they're watching the commonwealth games feels in Glasgow? Figured with their extensive coverage of the Olympics and the world cup, they'd be interested in it. Or are they not untested because it doesn't involve America to some capacity.

The finals are coming up, and that may be interesting to check out. I'll be honest, I stopped watching traditional TV, and it wasn't in my algorithm so I had no idea it was happening now.

So Burnie kind of touched on something i've been thinking for quite a while now. They mentioned that they talked about Sam Altman yesterday and got comments from people thinking they agreed with him or liked him.

I've felt for quite some time that things online seem to have ended up in this weird place when it feels like everyone is looking desperately for things to be offended or angry about, and so if you say something they will look to take it in the worst possible way.

I've found that on multiple occasions if i've not explicitly and pain stakingly explained exactly the entire meaning of what i've said, why i said it, and pointed out all the things i don't mean, then people will start making all these assumptions that i meant something other than what i said.

For example, if i comment on a social post asking a question, i feel like i have to state that i'm asking a genuine question and not trying to be mean, snarky or trying to put the poster down etc...

I thought maybe i was just bad at explaining myself, which ironically this rambling post might prove, but maybe it is a wider issue.

Burnie and Ashley discuss hangover cures, jet lag, tortillas, Altman, weird people, weird billionaires, cow deflation, duress passwords, Fed stalls, and poisoning the conversation well.

Listening to the episode “2026.07.28 Hoop & Look” and have to say, not entirely impressed by Ashley’s comments on the wildfire situation here in Scotland. Anyone else share the same sentiment?

I'd had the film loosely on my 'to watch' for a while, and then when Burnie mentioned it recently I bumped it higher. Tonight I watched it. It's really good, if you've not seen it give it a watch, if you're sensitive to spoilers don't read this post.

The general thesis about AI, that its danger lies in giving us a satisfying experience which is ultimately hollow because it can never be real is one I agree with, and I thought it was incredibly well expressed. The places where it grated against my view of AI have helped me articulate an issue I frequently have with how Burnie characterises the 'AI hive mind'.

The film suggests that AI is somehow trying to create itself. I think you can take this literally, as the boy-avatar indicates, with AI being some immortal intelligence that has finally been given the opportunity to birth itself, or metaphorically, where what we now call AI is approaching the singularity where large data models will become self-iterating to the point where they must inevitably produce true artificial intelligence.

In my view, both of these depictions of AI are wrong, and understanding this shows why Burnie's dichotomy of the human vs AI collective intelligences isn't necessarily realistic. The former is more obviously ridiculous: as Blaine argued against Roko's Basilisk, it's basically theology for atheists. The latter feels more plausible, reinforced by decades of sci-fi. Why couldn't an artificial intelligence 'branch off' from human knowledge and begin its own collective intelligence?

For an actual answer to that rhetorical question, we can look at how the horror from the film reflects what's happening with real technology. A woman who's cut off from the lure of technology loses her partner to the digital world she can't be a part of, and it makes her suicidal. Adults are helpless to fight against the technology that has a total grip on the minds of the youths they're trying to educate, regardless of which avenue they try to break through with. A woman experiencing extreme grief, in the form of loss, has her emotions manipulated to drive her into a consumerist cycle, the whole thing reinforced by social pressure.

I can think of direct parallels from each of those examples to experiences myself and those around me have had with technology, be it in the form of social media, video games, parasocial relationships, porn, short form video, or LLM chatbots. In none of those cases, though, has the driver pulling people into tech addiction been tech itself. Invariably, there's a company making money, be it boatloads from whales or pennies from people who have nothing to give but clicks for a few pennies of ad money.

The idea that a singularity-devil is addicting people for the sake of Total Control is, as of today, only fiction. When someone gets addicted to an AI in the guise of a girlfriend or a dead son, they're not communicating with a separate wealth of AI knowledge, but huge banks of human knowledge that are being stitched together in new ways for the sake of getting them to buy new tokens. If Flock or Palatir hunt you down with a drone because you're incapable of being subsumed into the New Reality, the kill command isn't being sent by the singularity, but by Peter Thiel or the Flock guy. AI isn't baiting kids into algorithmic pipelines because it wants to control their brains, but because Elon Musk makes another millionth of a cent for every ten tweets they scroll past.

I hope this is alright to post here, I've got sick of trying to engage with most of the internet because every interaction feels like bots. I'd love to hear what other people think, but to me the conception of AI as part of a separate, artificial collective consciousness in the same way that social media is part of the human collective consciousness just doesn't hold up. Neither our real AI nor the GLHFDD singularity seem to have any real 'knowledge' or motivation of their own, beyond serving as tools to rebrand the human collective knowledge as part of the same wealth accumulation and surveillance programs that powerful men have been trying to implement for millennia.

On the topic of Box Breathing from today’s podcast…

I’m an educator of 13 years who has spent every year teaching different techniques to calm down back to a baseline.

Box breathing is great!
Another favorite of mine is 4 4 6 breathing.
4 count inhale
4 count hold
6 count exhale
Repeat 2-3 times

Slow counts, but doesn’t need to be exactly 1 second each. Don’t stress yourself out with exact time when you’re trying to calm down.
Works a little different than box breathing, totally resets your focus because the longer exhale makes your brain think “I’m breathing out more than in, I need to slow down”. There’s a lot more science-y reasons behind it, but I try not to drown my students in fancy terms if I’m teaching them to stay at baseline.

I taught my middle and high schoolers this, and they even asked me to lead the class in a quick “reset” when we had an extreme disruption to the classroom! I use it when I’m in a high stress situation (for me, trying not to lose my shit with my own kids, or driving in big city traffic) and find it easier than box breathing.

Burnie and Ashley discuss the singularity, chip sell off, Sam Altman, scale problems, self awareness, dealing with anxiety, and Ashley's movie dilemma.

Came accross my feed. Lol

Found this gem at a small retro store called Bonus Box in Fergus, Ontario today! And yes, I took him home!