I'm Scott, I'm Russell, and I'm Leo.
This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball, where three gaming geeks and a guest empty our heads of startup and
tech product ideas that we have stuck up in there so you can all have them for free.
Anything that we say is yours to keep.
This week, I brought my friend and coworker, Mike.
Mike is a sysadmin in the department where I work.
He's a gaming geek and an enthusiast of nerd culture
in a way that I think he would fit very well
with the rest of us.
Mike, welcome to Spitball.
- Thanks for having me on your show guys.
- This is gonna be really fun.
I'm very excited.
And of all the people in my life that are most involved
in speed running and Twitch stream consumption,
Mike is by far and above the top of that list.
And you kind of introduced me to a lot of that.
So this week to get us started,
I have written a game that I'm going to call Any% Real.
In this game, I'm going to go through and talk
about a feat or a moment in speedrunning history.
And all I need you to do is tell me if I made it up,
or if that's a thing that actually happened.
For example, Hades on a pomegranate.
Modder Rudeism wired slices of a real pomegranate
into a Makey Makey circuit board and escaped the underworld
after 33 fruit-fueled runs.
And that actually happened.
That is a thing that somebody did on Twitch.
They used a pomegranate as a controller.
So I'm just going to go through these things.
That's how abstract these are going to get, right?
So I'm going to go through these
and you just have to tell me
if it's something I made up or not.
Starting of course, as we do every week with our guest, Mike.
Mike, Portal 1, the original Portal on a guitar.
The entire puzzle platformer Portal
was beaten with a guitar hero controller,
strumming to shoot portals
and using the whammy bar to crouch.
- True.
- Did that actually happen?
- True, true.
- That is absolutely
true.
Yes.
I don't have the name
of the streamers
a lot of these to give credit, but there is a litany of bizarre controller things that
have been invented over the years.
Wow.
I know.
People, people love the Guitar Hero hardware and they'll do it for anything.
Breath of the Wild, I think, was beaten with one.
Yeah, that was kind of to get that out of the way early.
There's a lot of Guitar Hero
ones in there.
You could think of it.
They've done it,
right?
I mean, like Mario 64,
I think they did.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mario 64 has been beaten a hundred ways to heaven and back.
got Minecraft Ender Dragon via a telegraph key.
Claims of slaying the Ender Dragon by tapping a Morse code
on brass telegraph key.
Did that
actually happen, true or false?
- Guitar Hero I can believe.
I just, there's no way, there's no way.
- Yeah, I made that one up.
- Okay, I would be
so impressed.
- Russell, Celeste, the Puzzle Platformer on a DDR pad.
A speed runner
cleared every
stage of Celeste
using a Dance Dance Revolution floor mat, true or false?
That sounds real.
That sounds legit.
- Yeah,
I barely beat that on controller.
- It's
such a hard
game.
- It is so hard.
Imagine just hopping across your living room
trying to make that
happen.
- Oh my gosh.
- Mike, "Breath of the Wild" on the Labo piano.
In any run or any percent run,
using nothing but the cardboard Nintendo Labo piano.
True or false?
- I think that's true.
- I made that one up.
- Oh man.
- Not yet, you could be the first.
- Some people have used that for a lot of stuff
I did a lot of searching to try to find any record of it.
I didn't see anything that anyone had done that particular gumbo yet, but the Labo Piano
is the killing.
Scott Russell,
do you guys remember the Labo Piano?
That was
ridiculous.
The cardboard box thing?
Yeah.
When I saw the direct with that, I was like, "What are they doing?"
It's very Nintendo.
Controller anything, right?
It's just...
Scott, Pac-Man on a VR treadmill.
Streamed tournament of pac
-man runs while literally
running on an omni-directional
VR treadmill to input the direction up down left right
if that's not a real thing that absolutely needs to be I
Want this to be real? Yes
Still an opportunity would that be fun?
That's its own idea. That's it
Being
like you're in the VR and you run around the corner is just a massive ghost coming at you. It'd be terrifying
Usually was it the Disney VR tech where you can just run
around yeah
Yeah, that running in any walls or anything that'd be sweet
or even it doesn't have to be first-person
You got the flat original arcade game in front of you
You'd have to like scoot backwards to get it to start going down instead of up. I think that'd be so fun
Yeah, but like ghosts coming it could be a horror game. Oh, yeah, it already is does that not terrify you that game is freaking
spooky
Ghosts and fruit
exactly horrifying dies
and then he comes back
Is it three pac-mans with one life or three different? Whoa anyway?
No,
I
don't know
Just three brothers. Yeah, that's right Russell Skyrim with voice commands only was Skyrim ever completed
Hands-free by mapping keyboard inputs to spoken phrases like move forward and heal.
Oh, no. Oh, no
I hope they this was completed or is it like an idea?
Is it the question?
It was completed.
Skyrim was completed hands-free.
The game beaten any
percent.
- Man, it had to happen.
There's somebody that had no life for that, right?
- Yep, there's a mod for it and everything.
You could play that game today.
- Was
it like M&M?
Like how fast do you have to be talking to get the--
- Left, left, left, left, left, right, I spell.
- Oh my gosh.
- Strafe left, strafe right.
- You know what's crazy?
Somebody probably, a group of people watched that guy,
or I'm guessing guy,
go through
the entire game.
Like it's one thing to
play it.
guy yeah I mean I know is that more compelling more compelling or less than
switch place Pokemon right I mean you're just watching the
inputs
on a screen
like people love that
that
was
a magical couple of days I
was
so
invested that
ESPN ate the ocho but video game version one more time through Mike Elden ring on
a poppet extreme to every mandatory boss and Elden ring falling to a rewired
Bop it toy with five twist and pull actions as the only inputs.
I want it to be true so bad
So I'm gonna say true. Yeah, that was a true one that
actually amazing
No
Yeah, I thought I saw something like, you know those toy saxophones
I thought I saw someone do something with all the ring with
those I had that on my list
I didn't I didn't include it on my final one because I had to narrow it down
But that was one that I cut somebody used a toy saxophone to do Elden Ring and Dark Souls 1 through 3
It was so funny to watch I was losing it
That game is so hard.
That's so hard.
Why?
Bop it. Twist it. Pass it.
Do do do do do do do.
Stab it.
Stab
it!
Yeah.
Roll it. Strafe it.
Oh my gosh. Yup.
Scott, Tetris on a Tesla steering wheel.
An illegal 22-minute game of Tetris played on a Tesla steering wheel in autopilot mode while traveling down a Florida highway.
Oh, that's terrifying.
Uh, no, no way.
Yeah, I made that
one.
Okay.
I included Florida Highway.
I was trying to get you.
It's a Florida man.
You would have got
me, Leo.
I heard Florida
and I was like, sold.
Absolutely.
Yeah, 100%.
Not yet.
I have no idea.
Can you actually interact with the steering wheel when it's in autopilot?
When
it's parked.
Not when it, yeah.
There's a bunch of
games, but it has to be parked first.
I was overthinking it
so hard.
I was like, "I don't think you can move the steering wheel when the autopilot's on."
Well, I mean, you don't have to move
that far and you have three lanes to work with.
You might as well just get a little wiggle going and yeah
and finally Russell a
Portal no portal run a runner finished portal wall without firing a single blue or orange portal navigating purely with glitches and clever
Jumps did this actually happen or not?
Oh, yeah, that's happened. 100% Yeah. Yeah,
absolutely. It did not tool-assisted or anything
Yeah,
it sounds like something. Yep. Somebody would do right?
100% yeah
clipping out of bounds, especially in anything before 2010 very easy in a lot of games
Yep, Super Mario 64 when those guys are when they're exploiting all of the glitches and stuff that there are in that game
It is a different game
I'm not gonna do
it justice
But Super Mario 64 the parallel worlds thing where
it keeps track
of Mario's position on copies of the map out of bounds
So like it's literally parallel maps
So like if
your go so fastly you go exponentially fast as a glitch and fly off the map and then it figures out where you
are on another map in space and then moves you over to that spot once it's
caught up with itself.
Especially when they're tool-assisted you watch
somebody like glitch through a door and then boom and then they're like in the
endgame you're like what the hell is this? This is not the same game that I
grew up with. If I'm keeping track right I think that was a three-way tie but I
could be wrong and I
don't really care. That means you go first Leo.
Yeah!
- It's been a long time since I got first.
- That's how it works.
- Okay,
fine.
Yeah, of course, that's the rules.
We all know this, okay.
All right, guys, so I've got,
you guys are always coming with the naughty stuff
and I haven't bring a naughty idea in a while,
so I'm gonna bring you something
that I experienced recently,
which was that I had an all day event
on my calendar for work called possible vacation,
which meant that nobody scheduled any events with me
like two weeks ago,
and then it ended up not having,
I didn't have to take vacation that day.
The thing fell through.
And I had the whole day.
Oh yes.
I've not had this
in a long time, but it was
bliss.
So I want to make a single little web app.
I don't have a name for it yet, but you go to this web app, you log in with your
Google calendar and you set some parameters.
Like how many meetings a week do you want to have that are just filled with stuff
and how soon before they get canceled?
And what do you want to call them?
Are they urgent?
Are they AI generated?
Are they names that you already know from your contacts, et cetera.
And then one or multiple phantom fake accounts
put stuff on your calendar a week or two or three out.
And then when someone is casually looking
at a moment in time, wow, he's really busy.
He's got four extra events on that day
that aren't actually real.
And then in the days, hours, minutes,
leading up to that day or those days,
this bot cancels the event.
Sorry, we have to reschedule.
Maybe it puts it for a week later on the calendar.
Maybe it deletes it entirely.
could use real names from your directory or contacts.
It could make up stuff, whatever you think makes sense
for how you set the website settings.
But this is a event space reserver
that makes you look busier than you actually are.
End of pitch.
- Amazing, amazing.
Leo, that technique that you went through,
I do regularly.
I just, I put-- - On purpose.
- I put out of office and then I switch it to focus time
after the day's over.
So now people are like, oh, I thought it was out of office.
No, it was focus time, everybody.
If you
were wondering where I was.
You just misread it.
Yeah, that's right.
They don't spam you the day
of.
I just, even if, if I have any opening on there and it could be five minutes
beforehand, I'll still get someone to hop on there.
I want to, I want, I don't want to get rid of the meetings.
I want to keep them there all day.
Maybe 10 minutes in it cancels it.
Oh, they no-showed.
Ooh, there it is.
And that'd be one of the settings.
You just, meetings are slowly disappearing as you go down the day.
You didn't have anything.
Maybe it even leaves the event on there, but you're just
lying about being busy.
Honestly,
that seems even simpler.
So Leo, go have your web app go through your company directory
and pick two or 10 people that you've never talked to.
And then set a meeting with all of them in something,
but not invite that other person.
Right.
Looks real.
So obviously, company cultures all differ, right?
So you'd have to have configurable settings
about are these real, external or internal?
Are these-- is it obvious?
You're in a three-person startup.
I think they're going to know versus I
at a Fortune 500 company, who the heck are any of these people?
And depending on the app, who are you in the event with?
Exactly.
Like, oh, you're in the event with someone, someone@gmail.com?
That's weird.
They're all
gmail
.coms?
Maybe you have a really nosy boss.
Maybe this thing also has access to your inbox and is picking some recent emails from external
contractors or people not in your organization that you've contacted recently and is making
some fan of events for you.
I don't know.
You can pick all that.
That's in the settings.
Make the engineers figure that
out.
That's just in the settings.
You
all saw that for us.
I think you could do this like, as a trial run, just get three people to book calendars
in a loop on one day.
Just with each other?
Yes.
Just you and two
other people.
This is a buddy system.
Yeah.
So you sign into the app and nothing happens, but then when the second person in your company
he
signs up for the app, then you start
putting events on each
other's
calendar without it.
It's like a calendar yikyak almost.
Exactly, right?
Hide some character in the invite, like an asterisk or something.
So you know this isn't a real one.
Yes.
Scheduled via third party.
That would be awesome.
I think I might have to do this.
I like two people in my org that I probably could book meetings with and we just blow
off the meetings.
There's always a Zoom calendar invite on my calendar list
that never actually happens,
but I just leave it on
there.
Because whatever, right?
I could delete it, but after 10 minutes, they don't show up.
You're like, well, I'll delete it tomorrow or whatever, right?
Sure.
I
mean, I could--
Can we do an award show again, Leo?
This is going to be the most wanted idea by me.
Most wanted
or most feasible, right?
We could do a--
I
don't know--
Best bang for your buck.
--10-hour proof
of concept.
Yeah.
Best bang for your buck.
People
would pay a dollar a year for this,
and then you just put it up as a little web app.
Truly have one day off?
If in a month, I'd be ecstatic.
No meetings.
Maybe you
could even have--
it picks one day a month where it goes through and does
this kind of thing.
Or it spreads them out randomly if you
feel like you're overburdened.
And you can kind of pick your duration and frequency
and all that.
OK.
You could fake-- you know how Zoom creates the summary notes,
your app, to get the value?
Just
bullshit
a full on meeting summary.
Only it's all corporate speak.
Synergized the outcomes to better meet client objectives.
But we take it a step further and it attaches a Google doc
that they can't view.
[LAUGHTER]
Oh, OK.
OK.
You don't have permission.
Oh, man.
If someone requests it, you got to quickly generate one.
Meeting agenda transcript.
19 pages, but you can't see them.
That
would look so legit.
I don't even think--
that looks like an important call.
Don't have access to it.
Yeah.
Wow, this has 31 editors on it.
This must have been really important.
Wow, yeah.
And it went over another 30 minutes?
Yikes.
That's even-- oh, wow.
That's really a lot of value.
I think it would be essentially free to build, which is
the best part of this web app.
You could run this on a Raspberry Pi for hundreds
and hundreds of customers.
Just meeting invites.
Google Calendar or Microsoft Calendar, APIs are all free.
Like there's an open standard for this.
This doesn't need any sort of special sauce or whatever.
It's just gonna take a little bit of time
to like figure out how you want to make it
configurable per person and boom, you're off.
- Okay, I think your go-to-market too
would just be like golf clubs or like country clubs.
You go to country clubs and you say--
- Tell me more.
- Hey, you know, if you ever wanna get
an extra day of golfing, there's this app.
(laughing)
Okay?
- Put up
posters.
- Like, where
are you going
with this?
Oh, yep, yep.
- And then now the golf, like,
these country clubs are like booking calendars,
invites or whatever, like from
official,
other corporate, like you could get like
serious other golfing corporation higher ups or whatever
to just schedule over on top of each other.
So it looks really important.
And now, I mean, like you could coordinate even,
I don't know if that's even,
it might turn into a networking thing very quickly.
- We just reinvented the rotary.
(laughing)
- Your local lion's club or whatever.
- I mean, put it on billboards on highways.
It's just this man looking really sad,
head and hands on his chair.
Too
many meetings?
And then you just have
the logo of your app.
- Meetings.ghost.
- They'll find you.
- Ghost
.meet or something.
- Subtly
marketing this is gonna be the hardest part
'cause
like you
can't have,
everyone can't know about this.
- Yeah.
- But I'd wanna tell everyone if I was doing this.
- Then your cover's blown
and they'll
never trust your calendar
again.
- Is there any cute ways to hide QR codes?
- There was a thing where people were using image generators
like stable diffusion to make a QR code look like a city
where the buildings were the black and white spots
and the
windows and stuff,
or like, you know,
a woman's dress with an interesting pattern,
but really the pattern was QR and stuff.
There's, yeah, you can totally hide a QR code nowadays.
- Hide it in the guy's plaid suit.
He's wearing a skateboard. - Scan my
tie.
- Dude, the QR
codes on billboards are
always so funny.
- Yeah, I don't know about this move though.
Quick,
stop what you're
doing on the highway.
Yeah.
- It's like the most dangerous thing
you could possibly imagine.
I can't think of anything more dangerous
than a QR code on a billboard.
- Well, either way, they're gonna be on a medical leave
or they're gonna be having less meetings,
so.
(laughing)
- Win
-win.
Oh man, what if you carted like doctor's offices?
You just get doctor's notes like,
Oh, this sounds like my last site, the bullshit generator.
You know what I mean?
So you sign up for this, and it's
putting events called proctologist on your calendar
or whatever?
Just
colonoscopies.
No one's going to say anything.
No one's going to--
Why are you having
three colonoscopies a month, dude?
What is wrong down there?
Then you just give them a look,
and then they back off
immediately.
You can't ask me that.
MRI, MRI
follow-up, MRI 2.
You
just like some serious--
And it's every week for like three weeks.
- Second opinion.
Angiogram, just like
serious stuff
that you would never touch.
- Dude, I've never heard of a seventh opinion.
Are you sure this is, who are you going to?
- Tell the AI puts mammogram on there and you go, look.
Don't
judge me.
- I'm very hypochondriac.
Denise, you do not need to get your prostate checked.
Don't tell me I live
my life.
(laughing)
- All right, Mike, what have you brought for us this week?
- All
right, here's my pitch.
Y'all ever sick of buying greeting cards?
You gotta do it like, you know,
eight to 15 times a year or more,
depending on how much family and friends you have.
What if there was a service where you could get
a whole box of your greeting cards for the year?
Subscription service, where you go into a portal,
you pick out all the cards you want with your custom,
like, oh, I love you so much.
You're so great.
You can even do custom signatures.
You can put your dog photo in there if you want.
Whatever, just fully customized cards,
dressed up your own way, and then shipped to you.
You can get it for just you.
You can get the family pack so that the whole family
has cards for each other for some low, low price.
I don't know exactly
if this is
going to be
a convenience thing
or a cost savings thing, because I can't really
beat dollar store greeting cards.
But I can save you the time of having to remember, oh, crap.
I gotta buy a card and paying that outrageous.
If you're like me, Oh crap, I'm at Myers.
I forgot.
Now I got to pay $7 for
a piece of paper that says, Hey, I love you.
You know that I love you, but apparently this piece of paper is
the only reason you'll believe me.
So my love is worth 799,
but yeah, thoughts, convenience, a hundred
percent, the
convenience is there.
That's great.
Yeah.
Address is the
meal box.
you're gonna do like a month of factor
or blue apron or whatever meals,
but it's greeting cards for a year.
You're going
in and the service already knows
when Father's Day is this year.
And it already knows when whatever,
it even has got reminders that'll stick like in the thing.
Like don't forget next Tuesday is your anniversary, man.
- Well, the best part is,
is we'll put them pre-sealed in the envelope.
So that like, if you forget day of,
you just go to the box.
- An emergency one.
- We're half
a step away from like,
it just ships them out for you.
(laughing)
In your
handwriting, why not?
Yeah, you just
upload your signature.
Yeah, that's what we're here to do.
We're here to have the convenience
of not having to be thoughtful.
(laughing)
At the very least, shipping them to you
is a massive improvement over what we do now.
100% agreed.
The only thing I can't figure out is,
is so it's gonna be pretty front loaded on profit.
January 1, it's gonna make a crap load of money,
and then it's just gonna be a small drip
for the rest of the year.
So, gotta sustain that website,
Got to budget really smartly.
You could buy in the middle of the year.
Father's Day would be a great time.
Any holiday is going to bring in more people.
Because
then you just re--
you've got to make it so that you can just
use the Christmas cards for the year next
if you forget to send it out.
You know?
It's like--
Oh.
Now there you go.
There you
go.
I love it.
I think the hardest part is the stamp, the address,
and remembering.
If I had a calendar that I would hang on my wall
and like flip it, it's like 12 months,
like literally 12 envelopes I'd take out once a month
and
just at the
start of the month,
I
just gotta
do it, boom.
Like the first thing I do. - Like an advent calendar,
you've got like your little slots that it goes in
and then oh, look at that, we're in June already
and you pull it out and there's your three cards
for the month.
- And you can send it right then and there
and just even more thoughtful.
Wow, you got ahead of the game.
You're like, that's amazing.
I got three of the exact same cards from my other fellow
relatives.
They are identical.
It's incredible.
Yeah, I think there's a mix up.
You have to like--
because if you have five--
if it becomes really popular, you're
going to need like five different variations
or something.
That should
be crowdfunded.
Oh,
yeah.
Different
colors.
I was going to say, you could bootstrap this in your garage
by literally buying dollar store cards
and like boxing them up for people.
You don't even
have to be the designer for the first
phase.
Express like hundreds of greeting cards.
I bet there's like eBay lots of
2000
So
something that I didn't write
a pack
I haven't googled this but I do wonder if there's some weird like copyright trademark thing that Hallmark has on certain phrases
Something like that that seems like something a big corporation like them would do well
I mean just think about it right like where else can you buy cards from as far as like branding goes?
There's a couple different like major chains, but like I mean, I guess nobody wants to get to the market, right?
Hallmark
is American greetings the other one or are they gone
now American greetings?
I still think that was a
thing for a while and then love pop is the like pop-up
$20 folded one
got bought up by
big greeting
card
Do do they like go out like
the outlet store
Like
what if you buy me last year's Father's Day card? I thought you loved me son
Like that would be the ticket Mike you just get like the backlog of all of the Hallmark
like all the nice card companies that like lose
and you just resell them.
Like they're just, they're not the popular ones, right?
And you don't care enough to know which ones you're getting.
So hopefully, and well, me too, right?
I would sign up for this.
Like, it's like, whatever, just
give me whatever you got.
- Outdated culture, like, I love you.
- Whatever you got.
- Game of Thrones character or whatever.
You're like, this is not
relevant anymore.
Well, that's
why I got them on a discount, yeah.
(laughing)
Actually, yeah, so that just gives me,
yeah, so I have a discount box
from the
Russell's of the world.
That's like 20 bucks and it's just a random scattering
of like, thinking of you cards, sorry for your loss.
Oh, and I did actually think of this.
So if at some point, if you bought the year,
let's say somebody like dies,
you can return the card and get a,
I'm sorry for your loss card in exchange for free.
- It's already got a stamp on it.
You just send it back to the factory.
- No card wasted.
Yeah,
it's super easy.
- It's gotta be just pennies
to get the replacement card to the customer.
Just let him keep it, right?
Like you get two free,
didn't expect this is a year that you'd send out
for 50 cents.
- This Leo guy's had a death every single month.
I don't know what's going on.
- The thinking
of your card
is from the company to this customer.
Sorry that you're, everyone is dying so much.
- This would be actually incredible,
like as a software app to just,
I think I should just do this in a spreadsheet
where I take everybody I know
across the board do mother, father, birth dates, you know literally
all the address
home
address right just like setting up that's like the app to just make it
remind me in general it's like you should probably contact these eight
people on Father's Day yes you are also a father so contact yourself but like
other than that like who cares
forget to wish
yourself
a happy Father's Day
Thanks
me. I love the card I got
me.
I mean, you could
kind of do something hokey like that in
the box.
You like have the company sending you a bonus one that's to you. Like how
some...
Happy birthday big guy. Thanks for shopping with us.
Yeah.
How some companies like throw a chocolate in there or something.
It's... these cards are so cheap to get in bulk.
That's gotta be nothing for the company to throw an extra one in there.
Happy birthday big guy.
Here's a coupon, you lazy
moron.
I am a big guy.
Thanks.
Bulk box.
You have a name in mind for this company?
No, help me out here.
Instacard.
That's pretty good.
Instacart, put card.
Plus a lot of people accidentally end up on your website
when they're trying to
get a meal.
Instacard.
One way to get SEO.
Hungry for cards?
There's probably a better name out there.
Forgotten loved ones.
And then you get it for Christmas.
Maybe you can put that on like your Christmas list.
Like, can you imagine that?
Hey, can you buy me this like ball card set for Christmas?
We'll run Christmas specials for sure.
Black Friday for sure.
Right.
I mean, yeah.
Like you said,
the mad dash to get this done is the like last month of the
year and the first month of the year.
Actually, I think I'd rather do it on Cyber Monday.
I don't know why.
Just a vibe.
There we go.
Cyber Monday.
Cyber card.
Bulk box.
Dude, what if you, sorry, I'm like now I have, what if you sold a printer, Mike?
I was thinking if you could have hardware
with this,
where it's either printing the
card or even just printing like the addresses, like a very stupid, simple
dino printer that just spits out a single label, you hit a couple buttons.
It has pre-stamped envelopes, spits out the address you want,
slap it on.
You go to the website and just browse through hundreds of
Father's Day cards and pick one.
StumbleUpon style, you just next, next, next, next,
boom,
print,
and then it's different every time.
You don't have to have 2,000 of the same card.
You could generate all these different versions of it
and change some of the names and themes.
Yeah, StumbleUpon did this.
You could pick your favorite topics.
Oh, man, StumbleUpon.
And then you throw the print button in there.
Why can't
a regular printer do this?
Can you just get card stock that's easy to fold
that's already pre
-printed?
- No!
- Pre something in half.
Like maybe your product is the innovation
of the special paper that it goes on
that makes it seem like a real greeting
card.
- Your family members won't love you
if it's not on cardstock.
- That's what I'm saying.
- That's it.
- You go to bulkcards.biz and then you buy a hundred pack
of your blank cards that go into a special whatever
that are already pre
-creased.
- I'll lobby to Congress to change card paper
and then
maybe
we can start this new industry.
- Let's go Mike,
I got that.
All Hallmark
cards are just the thinnest, like toilet paper, thin stuff by
law.
No, just printer paper.
All cards are on printer
paper now,
so...
It's just the envelope now. You just unwrap the envelope.
Instead of
"right to repair," it's like "right to print card."
"Right to print card
law."
"Normalize it!"
"It's a beautiful card!"
The card lobby, man. They're intense.
We'll bring back the "Burn-In Printer" episode idea.
And all cards are black and white, but beautiful.
- But laser.
- That's right.
Yeah.
Receipt paper.
- All of our cards are on plywood.
(laughing)
- Little expensive to ship.
- Actually, I went to a hotel recently
where all the key cards, they weren't plastic.
They were just made of wood
with like laser etched into them.
- Whoa.
- I mean, maybe we just ship a bunch of those
all the exact same size.
- Was there a chip in them?
- There must have been.
it and it opened the door. I don't know how else this would have worked. How eco-friendly. Why? Was that like a theme of the hotel or just... I don't know. Weird.
It's Millennials. Exactly.
Yeah, it's Millennials. Another thing Millennials
killed is plastic key cards.
I don't know, I like the idea of wooden thank-you cards or whatever. Just cards in
general. Yeah.
Have a pre-built-in magnet on it so you can put it on
the fridge.
Oh, yeah.
I thought you were originally gonna say this is like scraping obituaries and then sending your cards for people.
And then charging you like, "Hey, we
saw someone in your love life die."
But, uh,
here's a card and...
You sent them
a really nice bouquet.
That was really nice of you.
It's $55, please.
Thank you.
I don't have time to care about
my loved ones anymore.
Take the greet out of greeting card.
That's right.
Just want a greeting card.
Nice.
There
it is.
That's your catchphrase.
Greet.
Auto.
Take the greet out of greeting card.
Eaton card.
go that's an
ink card.
That domain is free.
You don't have to pay for that shit.
So what
do you got this week Scott?
Alright so this idea I'm very excited for you guys
opinions as Russell Leal, you're both fathers, but this stems from the idea or
from me hanging out my brother. He is his youngest in daycare right now and I just
learned about daycare notes where you just get like, I don't know, apparently
it's starting to become required but daycares will send you, "Hey here's like a
report of what happened during the
day." In real time and like, "Boom! Your kid just ate
some pears! Boom! They went to the bathroom!" It's crazy. Yeah.
Micromanaging
to the max.
That's...whoa.
So he was getting like an email of these where it's just
like a summary of what's happening at the end of the day and all these things
going through and then he played it he just had some app in his phone where it
read it out loud while he was driving and just like I'm just on my way home on
my commute just go through some certain things and so this got me thinking like
if you emailed a bunch of things to a certain account could you just have a
custom podcast for you on your morning commute every day where it's just going
online here's your pet report here's some packages that are coming in throw
in some, I don't know, fun micro learnings or songs you like, calendar cliff notes.
But I want to, I want to build custom podcasts just for you, tailored to you.
And that's it.
That's
wonderful.
That's really your inbox.
Yeah, exactly.
Just podcast it.
Yeah.
Can we add some other things on there?
Hey, uh, text your partner.
I'm thinking of you.
It's been
42 hours since
you last contacted them and
non-logistically.
It goes
through your emails, "Pick up your child yesterday."
I knew I forgot
something.
I hope you're listening
to this
on February 14th.
So I'm just looking at my email now, I'm like, "What would it say on my email right now?"
Would you imagine this thing being something that you kind of set once and then you forget
and then it's picking for you?
Or are you saying something that you're curating?
"Send this news article I'm interested and this one thing I want to be reminded of tomorrow and whatever by hand."
Probably both, right?
Probably figure it out, too.
See where it cuts you off or where you stop listening to the podcast.
It'll be like, "Oh, he's not interested in this part. We're not going to give him these updates anymore."
I
prefer to learn and consume content via audio whenever I can.
And
NotebookLM's
automatic little podcast generator is something that I've really enjoyed.
I would love to have the I press this button and then every morning my five-minute summary of what I need to remember
today
Is
they're ready to go?
It doesn't all have to be logistics either
Although I would love like a weather report in the morning on days. It knows I'm sailing or
something
Yeah,
but just something where it's I don't know. Here's a fun joke
Here's a random song that we think you'll like it just adds everything you possibly can to get you just up and running in the morning
Oh, you cannot
further
monetize it with voice packs
Samuel
Jackson is
reading my morning weather.
Dude, the morning, like recap, like your morning news, just
in audio
form.
That's amazing.
Everything that I care about.
We're there.
We
can build
all of this.
There's nothing that's
out of reach for
this.
10 years from now.
I would honestly love to go back and listen to like, what
was my day 10 years ago?
You know, what was it telling me to do?
I mean, you could even
construct that on the fly, right?
Or it would include that as
like a time hop type thing
as part of your today one.
Did you know five years ago today,
you were up in Wisconsin doing that whatever?
Like, oh, thanks.
That could be one of the
segments.
- That's awesome.
Throwback Thursday, baby.
Bringing
it back.
- 10 years ago today, you leveled up in Farmville.
(laughing)
- What a waste of a life.
(laughing)
- It would be interesting
though,
what stuff it could scrape, right?
I mean, it could get all kinds of
things.
- I'd love a video version of this.
That'd be awesome.
I think I'd watch a YouTube video
somehow.
If you could, you just want to watch stuff while you're driving.
And you
guys are commuting.
Who
commutes true?
What would be on the video?
Drinking my coffee and looking at my email.
What do you
mean Russell?
Like, what would you even watch?
I would just like me, if it could watch
myself reading my own inbox, but it's AI.
It would be like, uh, like replays of all the, like, so like Google
I/O clips, Microsoft
clips,
AI clip, whatever.
Like if I'm into that right now, right?
If they're not putting video content out there,
then maybe it would just be like
those terrible YouTube videos of, you know,
screenshots of news articles that scroll through slowly
and tell you about it.
Yeah, I don't know, I'm
just--
- I don't know this.
Tell me more about this.
What is this?
- You know,
like, I mean, you watch any vlogger,
they'll just be talking at the screen like this,
and then all of a sudden they'll just take a clip
of a screenshot of some news article
and talk about the news article
while slowly scrolling through it.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Or like a tweet, like, oh, this tweet from this person
said, and they'll read it out loud,
and they'll show you the tweet,
and then you'll be like, oh,
and then here's all the controversy behind it, right?
- It's reactivating, yeah, it's frustrating.
- Yeah, something like that, right?
- So you want a React video, but your calendar and inbox.
- Well, I mean, he probably wants to throw
in some entertainment, right?
like a
fail army
video or something,
like somebody crashing into a fence
or just something a little lighthearted to start the day.
Dude, all my emails,
my morning podcasts would have a lot of coupons.
(laughing)
You'd have a coupon.
You won't
believe this, Kohl's is having a sale.
Heck yeah.
My Meyer recap email, my Slick Deals recap
email,
you're
like, oh shit, gotta unsubscribe to those.
TikTok shop,
Timu.
$5 off a $20 purchase at Jimmy John's.
Yeah.
Kind of want to know that, though.
Yeah, that's true.
That's
a good one.
That's like, well, I know what my lunch is today.
It
could cross-reference with your actual receipts
you've received.
You don't actually spend anything from here.
But you placed three orders in the last three months
from this other place.
So this coupon or sale or something
might be relevant to you.
Oh, it would be good for bill emails, too, right?
I mean, I know we mostly have auto pay in the modern era.
But still, like--
Don't forget, tomorrow your
electric's getting shut off.
- He'll
be able to bid that
bill in four months.
- Thanks, robot.
- All right, Russell, what do you got this week?
- All right, so my idea, it's a little politically charged,
but we'll see how it is.
I'm not gonna go full politics on this,
but I've always been curious about, you know,
power to the people, we the people, right?
And then I'm always hearing about lobbyists,
just big corporations being able to buy politicians, okay?
I don't know much more than that,
but I do know about Kickstarter and crowdfunding, okay?
So my idea is called like buy that,
like vote with your money, we'll say, okay?
And all you do is you put up bounties for politicians
to then write bills and earn the money
when they pass the bill.
So we would just create a lobbying system
crowdfunded by the people.
And you incentivize people to write the bill.
If you write the bill and you push it through the House,
you get 25% of the cut.
And let America lobby the politicians.
I'm sure there's a,
you don't need a dinner with a politician
if you just, there's $2 million on a bank account somewhere.
You know, for on Venmo, right?
Like this is just Kickstarter for lobbying.
Like what's hard about that?
Let's just make it out there.
Like, we
vo - Vosel,
that's brilliant. Like if you, this,
you're literally calling out politicians by name to be like,
Senator such and such, if this
bill passes, we don't care how it happens,
but if it passes, this gets deposited in your account. That's
it.
Good luck. - Or
to, you know,
your donation of
the nonprofit
of choice.
Super PAC blah blah blah. Yeah,
this is the
ultimate giving
up of your
Ideals and say this is how the system works and
we're not gonna pretend embracing it. Yeah, it's embracing the broken shitty system
If you can't beat him join him, you know what I'm saying? Like, holy shit Russell.
Why not by the politicians for the people?
It would be really fun to see what the top like 10 to 20
projects are that are at the top of the leaderboard at any given week. Like, what do
people actually really
want past here? Because I'd bet
you probably would skew to younger, you'd probably skew to
people with more money. Like, the highest pots would be deep pockets,
and then what are the things that would be out in the open for anyone to see? That'd be the key to all this, is that
you have it, like, public, right? You can see what the things are that are the top leaderboard.
Special interest groups that only rich people do I'm trying to think of what that would
be. Oh
It's interesting like
well all of the actual traditional like rich lobbyists would not use this service, right?
This is all the little guys. So what what does average America?
Well together to put the most money toward when they're not privately meeting to get a new airport made or whatever, right?
I say I don't really know how lobbyists themselves work
Like how do we get someone in the door to make that actually happen get that money in there quote-unquote?
legally
Right
form a super
PAC and anything's legal. I think is how the current system works. I don't like that
Yeah,
what the politicians figure there's probably a lobbyist group that would be like chomping at the bit for this like oh, yeah
I mean if you get like 10% of every lobbying dollar like I'm we can make that work, right?
They're just gonna use it to funnel in millions and millions of dollars from like one large donor into one person
Oh, no. No, we did it in lots of small ones into
Russell's program here. Hell
yeah, whatever
Why would the rich person want to do that instead of just doing what they already do today, though?
What's the advantage of putting it on the public leader board and making it look like I guess faking?
I guess I'm going back to
the breaking bad episode where they're like we have to funnel this money somehow
Let's get lots of zombie computers to do small donations to
this instead
of one large one
So we hide it better
makes it look like this is an important issue to the average voter. I guess
yeah
Could
you get like 10,000 credit cards and just put $10 in there?
Like
that would just be like insane, but maybe
Dear politician, we will give you 10 million dollars in Amazon gift cards, but they're all
$10 gift
cards
It's a little inconvenient
to redeem them,
but you have a staff
They'll put it all in your account for you
We'll give you 10 million dollars, but please you have to go to the Bitcoin ATM and
the local
BP
That's right
So I've
been on the verge of pitching an idea every week and I'm like no I don't want to get into politics on here
But I want to make just I want to make a new political party just some scratch
It's not gonna have anyone in it like you don't have the representatives you're voting in like you don't even know their faces or who they
Are blah blah blah just like this is the party a hundred percent based on metrics and nothing else
We have accomplished this we have accomplished this and then if we go forward
These are the things we're gonna do and that's the entire purpose of the party.
I'll tell you more
about this
I don't
understand the anti party
like yeah.
Yeah, it's just it's not a party
It's like a it's an initiative
It's like a movement
like you
just exactly this would
Do any person
could get voted into this position and I'm going to vote on exactly what this website says
going through
It's like a super Democratic Party right where you're basically voting for what the directives are.
Yep, and nothing else
I can't be swayed. I can't be lobbied. I can't do any of this on here
- I'm just describing democracy,
but in a party.
- But actually working on it.
But I
don't know, it's the charismatic
that always get elected and are able to flow through on there.
I want to remove all of that and have it purely on metrics.
And I feel like your system would help
with this.
- They are vessels for the
system
and nothing more.
- I mean, they should be a robot.
- And
you could incentivize people to put money in.
Because then you could--
every dollar you put in, we invest it and make more money.
So like put actual dollars up, not
Kickstarter dollars, right?
Ooh.
While it's sitting in that escrow,
it's just making more money on there for the party.
Dude, you know how many--
all the other parties that your people are donating to all
of a sudden get funneled into this too.
So all
these parties lose
money if this app becomes successful.
Because instead of donating to this representative,
you're donating to the issues and the problem or whatever.
It's like, oh, shoot.
That could-- that could--
I would probably get murdered.
It would look like it wasn't a murder.
You know what I mean?
You would commit suicide.
That's
right.
I would fall asleep at the wheel,
like
not
driving,
up your Tesla while playing
Tetris.
For those House of Cards viewers out there,
stay away from Subways.
Oh, yeah.
That's exactly what would end up happening.
So this is why I can't launch it.
This is free for anybody out there.
Let me know when it's live, right?
So I can put some money in.
Yeah.
I love your idea, Russell.
That's so good.
I think it'd be really easy.
You just get Reddit and Kickstarter combined
and you do something super quick.
And if you put actual--
you could verify with credit cards, basically, too.
So it's actual votes.
They're actually
dollar votes.
It's interesting.
But as long as you can see the public ledger of who
has backed what? Oh boy, we are like teetering on the brink of crypto, aren't we? Shoot.
Blockchain. I
said it.
Once the word ledger comes in.
I'm going to go ahead and just say the word blockchain, then we'll keep walking.
As long
as you have a list of all of the most recent transactions that are coming in, whether they
came from... you want to make sure that they came from some sort of unique individual,
and what project they went to. It doesn't really matter for the rest of the stuff, right?
Yeah. Interesting.
Right.
I was gonna say concerned about foreign affairs meddling, but then again, oh, we're already in that so
We see
perfect a good point
So us I guess my only thing would be how
do you determine the issues as well?
Like how do we know what we're lobbying for? Is it just anyone
can go there and start anyone
can make
anything
Anyone can make I want this law to pass
See, that's a little scary cuz are they writing the law? Cuz like I mean
Hypothetically getting super negative here. So if a foreign entity that wanted to put in like a horrible bill to destabilize some section of the government like
Hit it and like this really long
I mean, I guess you were trusting the people to like self-govern, but be weird
I guess you could go out and be like hey
Then you just shame them afterwards such-and-such senator passed this bill because he took this bounty. What an awful person
We should vote him out
I mean kind of right like I don't see why we can't do it that way
A key part
of this is you watch the posts rise to the top, more and more money flowing
in and then you make it very obvious when the money goes out and
exactly where it went
to.
Yeah, there's no subtlety here, like "Oh my god, look at how much that's dipped!"
Yeah, I like that.
I mean, if I was a foreign actor though, I think that would be pretty smart to
create
a bunch of Reddit bots.
But I think that's already happening, yes.
I mean, that'd be a way to do it.
I'm sure there's probably sneakier ways than some shitty vibe coded website that
There are lots of websites out there that somehow verify your
Citizenship or your billing address or your whatever to make sure that you're here. Social Security number
Yeah, just enter in your social security number on this website. What could
go wrong?
Can you get credit cards? I guess you could get credit cards for other countries, right?
Can I open I guess? Yeah, why not? Are you just by the
prepaid visa cards, right? Yeah prepaid visa
There's probably a way
to
detect that on our website and not allow those huh?
Yeah, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna detect
Freedom Leo, are you trying to restrict?
We'll just make a law that allows it it's fine
I will post it on the website and see who votes you
guys know what happens when stuff like this is on the internet, right?
Like what why is the number one?
Pot for 18 million dollar bounty make turtles illegal
or whatever. It's
gonna be something like
troll posts
It doesn't make any sense.
You know, it's some senators gonna pass it
Yeah, like rename Air Force One to like
plenty McPlane
face or something
Yeah,
making a grilled cheese is a federal
offense
But the internet would like cheer it on, you know, that
would go bad right away.
That's the best for this company because
no senator's ever gonna pass making grilled cheese
is legal.
The pot just keeps growing and then we reap the benefits of the investment of that amount.
Love that idea, Russell.
You get, you know, poly bucks, you know, you can be donated to some other problem, right?
You know, you
can't get it out.
It's
Bodie McBoatface, but it's, uh, it's Congress.
Or you just make the, that's like your profit models.
Every time a bill doesn't pass, it's like, oh, well, we take that.
So oh,
yeah, there's a time limit on it.
Oh, yeah, dude.
The clock will start our own political
party.
Right, Scott?
Like, nameless party, faceless,
make some gambling in there, too, or like you're voting
on whether or
not it'll pass or not.
You put some extra cash
down.
Spin the
wheel 10
free politics.
It's sad how much this fits in America.
Yikes
For every yeah, it's like Robin Hood like right don't they just like give out free stocks or
something
It's all meaningless I guess at that point oh man
That's what happens when we sell to private equity, you know
Well, thank you very much for listening listener, we hope you enjoyed yourself and thank you very much Mike for joining us
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