In This Week’s Show, episode 2-fucking-hundred, we celebrate another amazing milestone by drinking too much and telling terrible jokes!

Now, grab a beer and help us test the god hypothesis — because, while The Stormfather, a Splinter of the Almighty, hasn’t struck us down yet, we are trying his patience!

Jenn’s Actual Lesson

In honor of our 200th episode, did you know that Bacchanals (the form of worship to celebrate the Roman god Bacchus and known for turning into occasions for licentiousness and intoxication), became popular in Rome around 200 BCE?

Jim’s Good Gay News

I wanted to be here so much today that I brought along a studio gremlin. And, in honor of episode 200 we’re giving this one to everyone! Enjoy the Patreon cut and thank you for listening!

But before we get to all that, let’s have a beer!

This Week’s Beer

Portersfield Dry Cider

From: James and Susan

http://bit.ly/2o2mX8a

Untappd Rating: 3.7

Style: Cider

ABV: 6.8%

Aaron: 10

Jenn: 8

Jim: 6

Steve: 9

Blood Orange IPA | TommyKnocker

From: Our Steve

BA Link: http://bit.ly/2BCWIi8

BA Rating: 3.73/5

Style: American IPA

ABV: 6%

Aaron: 7

Jenn: 2

Jim: 4

Steve: 8

This Week’s Show

Round Table Discussion

Patrons!

We don’t have any new patrons but hopefully, we’ve got some patrons in Discord! If you wish you were in Discord you should join patreon.com/w4w and you too can join us when we do these crazy live events!

Voicemails

We’ve played a few throughout the show, and have a few more on the way, but what’s a roundtable without at least a little listener content?

Bryce!

Jessie from Jersey!

No worries Jessie, this show is going out to everyone in full!

No worries Jessie, this show is going out to everyone in full! David the Ox

Mr. Bible Pants

Charles!

TXTs and other

From Cthulhu

Happy birthday from Cthulhu the Octopus God and his colony (family) to the Wrathful Jenn.

From mystery texter:

See if this works.

Congratulations on 200. Love you guys.

It did indeed work!

Thank you to mystery texter #2 and Wyoming local. Yeah, you know who you are. Thanks for listening and reaching out!

iTunes Reviews!

Happy 200 episodes!

From James2529

The only podcast that’s made me fall off a treadmill from laughing. Totally worth it. Here’s to another 200!

Love beer? You’ll love this!!

From Mississippi Nate

Started listening after hearing them on Cognitive Dissonance and I LOVE IT!!! My favorite Friday tradition is sitting down with my morning coffee every Friday and wishing it was the beer they’re drinking. Commentary is always hilarious and their banter is phenomenal. As an atheist in the heart of a red state, this has been very helpful

A fine podcast tasting

From 1dmarkiii

Upon first opening, this podcast one is immediately struck by the bouquet of slightly sour, but refreshing notes, like a perfectly done shandy. As you drink in the podcast your brain is awash in heady notes of sarcasm, and sacrilege, which are slowly and pleasantly replaced with strong comedy and hints of profanity. Pairs well with meat products, beer, and anything containing Eli Bosnick. This is truly a fine podcast and will be a regular in my podcast consumption. I highly recommend it. -a tetchy bugger

Hot Shots

DRUGS! http://bit.ly/2wPtsPT

I think I’ve finally figured out how to get some street cred thanks to the guidance of a true master. A driver in northeastern Spain was arrested for drinking under the influence… of everything. According to the police report he was on “every possible kind of drug” when he was pulled over on Saturday. Apparently, he was drunk, stoned, smoking meth, eating amphetamines with cocaine, and topping it all of with opiate chasers. Luckily it was Spain so this was just an “administrative” offense and he won’t appear before a judge. His car and license have been taken from him along with a 2K euro fine. The name of the driver hasn’t been released, much to the dismay of frat-bros everywhere hoping to send him their gilded beer-bongs of approval.

And to Steve’s question, I have no idea how he did this drugs (or how some of them even are used apparently) I just thought topping stuff with coke was funny.

~ Aaron

That’s A Paddl’n – http://bit.ly/2Nut3wF

What do we think the penalty should be for assaulting a student? How about if it was by a teacher? How about if it was over the student refusing to stand for the pledge of allegiance? We now know what it is for Karen Smith, who used to be a phys ed teacher at Angevine Middle school in Lafayette, CO. In February, she forced a student to his feet by his jacket and removed him from the classroom for exercising his right to remain seated during the pledge. She was charged with child abuse, recklessly and with injury, and third-degree assault. As a result, she was put on paid administrative leave during the investigation. Now, we know that she pleaded guilty to a count of child abuse and received an 18-month deferred sentence. She got off too easy.

Truths. http://bit.ly/2wPozWY

Some truths we hold to be self-evident. Like if you start the night with Redbull and Vodka, you’re going to end up in a fight.

Best of all, we now have the science to prove it! A new study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research says drinking the vile concoction increases the “risk of fighting, violence, and participation in risky behaviors” like being around people who offer you Redbull and Vodka like they’re doing you a favor. Co-author Dr. Matt Parker of the University of Portsmouth, said, “This study is the first to show that the two together may be exacerbating some of the negative effects of binge drinking.” His degree was awarded from Captain Obvious University of Things That Are Obvious. Of course, we need to dive into the study… but not too deeply because the zebra and cuddle fish pond Dr. Parker was pouring Redbull and vodka into isn’t that big. Yep, it’s a fish study… Turns out that, like dude-bros, when you give fish alcohol and taurine they get twitchy, then horny, then into fights, and then die. Ah, science.

Welcome Back! – https://bbc.in/2M5KSgz

I know we have some real cultural differences between our country and China, but this is a bit extreme. This season parents and children were welcomed to their preschool’s opening ceremony by pole dancers. HooYa! It seems that the cultures aren’t that different, in this area anyway, since many of the parents did go online to complain about the display. Footage of the pole dancer has been widely circulated online, with thousands of people commenting. Some parents, apparently afraid that the experience will cause lasting damage to their young-uns, withdrew their children from the school. One commenter said, “Nursery children should learn knowledge, but not too much knowledge!”

This Week’s Stories

Jim’s Story – http://bit.ly/2NlWpNs

A judge shut down a frivolous ‘Christian flag’ lawsuit & gave the plaintiffs hell

The group complained that black, gay, and trans people could raise flags, but they couldn’t raise a Christian flag on government property.1

A federal judge denied a Christian conservative organization’s request for an injunction to fly the Christian flag at Boston’s city hall.

3 flagpoles In front of City Hall in Boston, one is for the American flag, another flies the Massachusetts flag, and the third usually has the Boston flag on it but sometimes flies a flag associated with an event in the city.

like the flags of “Communist China and Cuba” (yes, their lawsuit really refers to China and Cuba in that way).

Even worse for them, the Juneteenth flag, the rainbow flag, and the transgender flag have flown from that flagpole. Or, in their wording, it was the “homosexual rainbow flag” and both “Juneteenth” and “transgender” got scared quotes because that’s how serious about equal rights Liberty Counsel is.

Boston group – Camp Constitution – hosted an event honoring Christians, and wanted to fly their own flag.

The article got snarky – “which they claim is something they earnestly want and is totally not just something they made up so they could whine about how other people got to raise flags but they can’t.”

All religious flags are banned from that pole, so the city said “not gonna do it” because, well separation of church and state and stuff.

Jenn’s Story

I’m bringing you some information today that you may not care about. Sorry. But I’ve been reading up on and lightly researching the latest crazy-craze: following and attempting to decrypt the mainly ludicrous postings of the online entity known as QAnon.

Now, before anyone panics, I’m not here to talk about Q or what (s)he (I’m putting all my money on Q being a “he” and probably 20yrs old in his mom’s house) promotes on Twitter. Instead, I’m going to bring you some rather amusing information on probably Q’s biggest celebrity fan and follower: Roseanne Barr.

I told you, you may not care. But it’s amusing and sheds a little light on what is going on at the SCROTUS’ insane rallies with the lumps wearing Q shirts and what is happening on prime time TV.

Most of you are probably at least tangentially aware that ABC resurrected the 80s sitcom ‘Roseanne’ in the last couple of years. It filled the conservative TV family void, as Roseanne herself was and is an unapologetic Trump supporter. The show pretty quickly became number bc there is no fucking accounting for taste. Anyway, it chugged along merrily for a while until this past May when ABC was shocked to discover that Barr was a raging racist in real life, too. It also turns out she was getting a lot of her domestic and global political news from QAnon. Sprinkled around the Tweet that got her fired (to recap: it was a pic of former Obama advisor Valerie Jerret, an African American woman, with the caption: “Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes had a baby = VJ”) were many retweets and responses to QAnon and conspiracy theory linked groups.

So, it pretty much undermines her “but the Ambien made me do it!” less than half-assed apology as she continued the ‘Soros, Obama and the Clintons have a child sex ring with ISIS but Trump is freeing the children by the hundreds’ type of retweets.

Now, why have I brought this up in September? Turns out she ready to stick it to the libs and is fleeing the country as a martyr. ABC has announced a reboot of the reboot or whatever, called The Connors, in which Roseanne’s character is to be killed off at the start. insert evil snicker here

Well, Barr went on her close friend Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s podcast this weekend to announce that she’d be temporarily fleeing to Israel when her former castmates finally reunite without her. (This is linked to the QAnon thing thru the idea that Obama and comrades are anti-Zionists, whereas Trumpster is a hero bc of his moving the embassy and all that).

Per Deadline.com: When it comes to The Conners she talks about how the end of Roseanne is the death of a character. She said that she will not “curse it or bless” the show and plans on “staying neutral.” She joked during the interview and said that she is leaving California because “it’s going to fall into the sea soon” and also laughed that she was “going to move to Russian and make a sitcom there.” “Barr also talked about her “friend” Donald Trump and said that she is praying for him. “He has done some great things — some things he needs to fix up a little and I am available to tell him what that is.”

TL/DR: Not content to merely be a disagreeable, racist human, Roseanne Barr is helping to ‘legitimize’ far right wing wacky, but at least is going to stop doing it here in America.

Patreon Story – http://bit.ly/2wRTX72

Finally, someone is fighting sky net on our terms!

Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona is worried about Skynet getting drunk and murdering us all… at least getting drunk anyway.

He recently added an amendment to the U.S. Department of Defense appropriations bill currently in Congress that reads:

None of the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be obligated or expended for the development of a beerbot or other robot bartender.

This sounds like a joke… and frankly it and its sponsor are, but for totes real guys, serious faces.

Of course, all of this is based entirely on a complete lack of understanding about how robots, marketing, or beer work. But if we give Representative killjoy the benefit of the doubt, it could also be a deliberate decision to misrepresent the research because of politicking.

In 2015, MIT researchers presented a paper at the Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) conference on “Policy Search for Multi-Robot Coordination under Uncertainty” [PDF]. It’s interesting research, but if you’ve heard of it, it’s likely due to the way MIT students chose to display the robots improvements. See, they set up a beer delivery task to show how multiple robots could work together efficiently, even if they weren’t able to communicate with each other all the time. It was a cool demo and did a good job of showing how effective MIT’s new algorithms were. Of course, it also caught the eye of reports everywhere including us. Marketing achieved.

Or so they thought.

The MIT work was funded in part by both the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force. This is not unusual: The Department of Defense (DoD) funds a lot of robotics research for obvious reasons. From an earlier article on the research “in a warehouse or disaster environment, you probably have a bunch of robots all trying to coordinate to complete well-defined tasks, probably without nearly as much information as they would like, and this kind of planner allows them to be consistent and efficient in their actions.” This also extends to other logistics tasks, the researchers said, like delivering medical supplies in hospitals.

But the demo used beer so Representative Hates-Fun is calling it an example of governmental misuse of money. Because analogies are lost on him.

Here is a quote from Senator Flake’s presentation to the U.S. Senate introducing his amendment:

Mr. President, did you hear the one about three robots that walk into a bar? No, you haven’t. It’s not a joke, but rather a project paid for in part by the Department of Defense. These robots, called “beerbots” (you can see a depiction here), were programmed to serve cold beers to graduate students. Researchers say that programming methods used for beerbots can be applied to other multi-robot systems in restaurants and bars, but as you can see the private sector has already developed robot bartenders or robartenders. They’ve been mixing drinks in bars and even on cruise ships for years now. And with our national debt exceeding $21 trillion, taxpayers should not have to pick up the Pentagon’s tab for beerbots and many other unnecessary spending items which are in the bill we’re considering right now.

This amendment was adopted by the Senate by unanimous consent.

Of course, the presentation, bill, and discussion included no mention of the project’s actual aims. Talk of real-world logistics challenges was tabled in favor of what he seems to think was MIT and DoD planning commercial robo-beer bars… as is their true interest of course. In his discussion of the topic Senator Flaked-out-of-science-class showed a video of the robot serving beer, but of course, cut before the same video explained the purpose of teaching a robot to do complex tasks.

What tasks might you ask? Well, lead author Chris Amato, who is now an assistant professor at Northeastern University says

Our research was on very general algorithms for multi-robot coordination. Our target application domains were logistics problems such as delivering medical supplies. As a fun substitute, we used beer in the demo. The research really doesn’t have anything to do with beer and wasn’t about beer delivery.

Dave Levitan, journalist and author of the book Not A Scientist: How politicians mistake, misrepresent and utterly mangle science says, Senator Flake is most likely using this research opportunistically because it can “be made to sound ridiculous when put a certain way. He almost certainly does it on purpose, ignoring the true value of the research and counting on the public to not be well enough informed to push back. And no fact-checking happened because that would have ruined the bit.”

Of course the effects of the bill won’t hinder research as MIT spokesperson pointed out “to demonstrate the system, the students thought it would be fun to use cans of beer, but obviously any item could have been used to illustrate the sophisticated algorithms that were developed to enable the robots to complete the task.”

But what the bill will do is effectively murder MIT’s ability to generate public interest and support for their projects. After all, if you’re even remotely capable of understanding analogies or comparisons the purpose of using beer was entirely promotional. Fortunately for us, Senator Flake has no known sense of humor and boldly refuses to see shades of grey, nuance, or deeper meaning in anything, making him the perfect stalwart protector of our precious, precious gubment dollars.

More Beer!

Mango Kettle Sour – Eddyline Brewing, Buena Vista, CO

From: Shea

BA Link: https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/46749/359516/

BA Rating: 3.75/5

Style: American Wild Ale

ABV: 4.6%

Aaron: 1

Jenn: 5

Jim: 2

Steve: 8

Next Week’s Beer:

Traditional Ale | Big Rock Brewery

From: Dodsnow

BA Link: http://bit.ly/2BCWJmc

BA Rating: 3.58/5

Style: English Brown Ale

ABV: 5%

Faith In Humanity Restored

Craft and homemade beer bash raises scholarship money for children attending Elgin park programs – https://trib.in/2Nmch2G

The annual Illinois Brews @ Bowes will be held Sept. 8 outside Porter’s Pub at the Bowes Creek Country Club. The event is a benefit for the Elgin Parks and Recreation Foundation’s Youth Scholarship Fund.

Acting Parks and Recreation Director Maria Cumpata said the event has brought in almost $109,000 since its first inception in 2011, $21,510 of that just from last year’s fest… then she fell into the piiiiit!

With the money raised, income-qualifying children can receive up to $100 in credit for parks and recreation department programs, Cumpata said. It’s estimated that anywhere from 1,085 to 1,670 children have benefited from the money the beer bash has generated, she said.

“This is a great event for people to just come out, enjoy the weather — we have never had bad weather, knock on wood — enjoy beautiful Bowes Creek and sample some craft beers that they may not have tried in the past,” Cumpata said. “It’s a great mix of ages that attend. It’s lowkey but everyone has a great time, and we have a great variety of raffle items.”

This year about 10 craft breweries will provide the beer and homebrewers will continue to be an integral part of the fundraiser offering their own concoctions. Nine Silverado Homebrew Club members will be offering samples of their creations, spokesman Rich Placko said.

“We’re planning on bringing 11 different beers with the possibility of another four or five special beers making an appearance. In all, we will have close to 60 gallons of beer that we’re serving,”

Apparently, the will also have a fuck load of great BBQ!

Illinois Brews @ Bowes runs from 4 to 8 p.m. Sept. 8., with a special VIP session from 3 to 4 p.m. Ticket prices and other information is available at ilbrewsatbowes.com or by calling 847-931-6127.

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