Listen to The Geekosystem Podcast Episode 23 “Moonrabelia”

We mix up the format a bit this week due to a scheduling conflict, so we kick things off with Editors’ Picks and then we argue about other stuff. Hear what we have to say about astronaut penis sizes, The Winter Soldier, suspicious Moon cameras, and more topics on this week’s show.

You can listen to the show right here on Geekosystem, or subscribe in iTunes (where you can also rate the show and say nice things about it in a review.)

Since we did things out of order on the show I might as well start the notes with our Editors’ Picks. Dan’s been into the math-based game 2048.

2048 is a math-based puzzle game. The board is a four by four grid with numbered tiles that you slide around to try to make matching pairs. When two of the same number tiles bump into each other, they combine into one tile, and the number doubles.

The game starts off easy, but the goal is to double all the way up until you get the 2048 tile, which is a lot harder than it sounds. It’s completely free to play online or on your phone, and there are a whole bunch of different variations of the app.

For something a little different, there’s also a Doctor Who version that has you combine the Doctors’ faces to get the next Doctor, and a Doge version that’s about as memetastic as you’d expect.

Victoria is excited to check out the movie Fateful Findings:

This week my pick is Fateful Findings, which appears to the most ridiculously awful movie ever made. Judging from the bonkers trailer, we think it’s about a novelist turned hacker with supernatural powers? But the plot doesn’t matter because it’s written, directed by, and starring Neil Breen, whose previous films have been described as “Tommy Wiseau meets David Lynch.” It’s near impossible to find a proper DVD of the thing, but a local theater is putting on a screening this weekend, so you bet your ass Carolyn and I are going. Bad movies are our everything. Hopefully this one will not disappoint.

In the podcast we also mention one of Breen’s previous works, I Am Here…. Now. You need to see that trailer as well. Right now. Stop everything. Stop reading these words. Just do it.

I Am Here….Now (trailer) from Cinefamily on Vimeo.

Carolyn gets nostalgic for Canadian teen melodrama so she’s really into the Kroll Show sketch “Wheels Ontario”

As a Canadian and longtime Degrassi fan, this week I’m recommending The Nick Kroll Show for its incredibly accurate parody of Canadian television programming. Particularly praiseworthy is Episode 2 of the second season, #canadiansafesex, but many of the show’s episodes fulfill my homesick heart’s desire for PSAs, cafetoriums, inoffensive Much Music videos, and lots and lots of Degrassi. The non-Canadian skits are also very silly and funny too, and can be watched on Hulu.

This week is the annual MaxFunDrive for the Maximum Fun podcasting network, and that’s my pick:

I know in the past I’ve recommended a few of the Maximum Fun network’s podcasts as my pick, but this week I’m not necessarily recommending the shows (although they’re great and you should check them out — especially Bullseye.) Instead I’m recommending their business model.

All of Maximum Fun’s content is made available for free, and for two weeks out of the year they ask the people who enjoy it to pony up and support them. It’s a model based on trusting your audience and the quality of your content, and for MaxFun it’s working.

Proprietor Jesse Thorn has grown the network out of one show, and now it includes some of the best podcasts available like Bullseye; Jordan, Jesse, Go!; Sawbones; My Brother, My Brother, and Me; Judge John Hodgman; and a lot more. Through asking their fans to directly support the content they enjoy, Maximum Fun is able to pay its podcasters and editors, and they put on great events like MaxFunCon and the Atlantic Ocean Comedy and Music Festival.

Full disclosure, I’m a donor to Maximum Fun and I genuinely get a lot of satisfaction that I’m supporting content I enjoy.

As for the other topics we discussed, we talked about a questionably authentic moon camera sold at auction for almost $1 million, Astronaut penis sleeves and the naming convention of their sizes, Amazon’s Kindle Worlds program and my plan to write G.I. Joe fan fiction, and why I don’t understand the desire to write fan fiction in the first place.

(Image via Tim Evanson)

Meanwhile in related links

• Last week we talked about the power of friendship
• Get caught up on the patent trolls v. podcasters fight from Adam Carolla and Marc Maron
• MaxFun’s Jesse Thorn had some concerns about the name “Winter Soldier” so I explained the history