The time has come, I think, to purge some podcasts off my list.  I have more podcasts than I have time, and some of them have ceased providing utility for my current situation... which happens a few times a year.  Usually, when this time comes, I share on facebook the ones that I am abandoning and why.  Now that I have a platform on which I talk about podcasts incessantly, I figure this may be a better place to do so.

Podcasts I continue to listen to (in order of priority):

1. Superego:  Short and rarely updated, Superego is the funniest thing I have ever heard on the internet.  That is all.
   
2. Robot or Not: Five minute episodes in which the hosts determine whether or not a specific piece of technology is a robot.  Fun, short, funny.  I disagree with their conditions for being a robot, but that doesn't take away from the fun.
   
3. Tom Woods Show:  Updated every weekday, I make it a point to keep up-to-date with this show.  Tom is the most respectable and most influential anarchist alive today.  Every day he has something new and important to share with the world.  Everyone, regardless of what they believe, must listen to his show, if they are going to say they are a critical thinker.
   
4. Mad Philosopher Podcast: Yeah, yeah... I know... I listen to my own show, I'm such a dork and a narcissist.  I listen to it the day I upload in order to catch major issues with the show.  I've already caught and re-uploaded two shows, so the process works.  I recommend everyone listen to what I have to say, too (as any narcissist would).
   
5. Sovryn Tech:  A tech and culture podcast with another paradigm anarchist.  A little think/left sometimes, but always well-reasoned and intellectual, Brian Sovryn has done more for liberty than any politician, ever.
   
6. History of Philosophy Without any Gaps: A weekly podcast that has been methodically plodding through the history of philosophy from the pre-socratics through today.  Each episode is short, easy to understand, and like the name says, has no gaps.  Excellent for both beginners and people who know it all.
   
7. The Cracked Podcast:  Just like the Cracked website, but in audio format.  Hilarious, informative and a little too left to be taken seriously.  I have fun and learn a lot of trivia.
   
8. DH Unplugged: A weekly discussion of the financial markets by Dvorak and Horowitz.  Very informative about what's going on in the world, even if one has no skin in investments.
   
9. Christopher Cantwell Essays:  With more passion and rage than even I can muster, the well-read and ever-grounded Cantwell will occasionally record a stand-alone rant which always has something important to tell someone.
   
10. Very Bad Wizards:  My favorite Philosophy podcast, these two guys are hilarious and relaxed.  Their content is always fresh and informative.
    
11. Philosophize This:  A fun exploration of concepts in philosophy, seemingly chosen at random.  The host has a cleverness about him and a solid grasp of the concepts and contexts he covers.
    
12. Catholic Stuff you Should Know:  A podcast currently hosted by my assistant pastor and my (likely) future pastor, they cover a wide variety of subjects, all of which are important to living a full faith life.  Lots of fun banter and jokes, lots of educational stuff.
    
13. Partially Examined Life:  My first and still one of my favorites podcasts, the Partially Examined life is a monthly exploration of a small group of texts in philosophy.  With a healthy balance of irreverence, humor, and knowledgeably, this show is usually a lot of fun, and teaches me stuff I didn't know in a field in which I'm generally very knowledgeable.
    
14. Radical Agenda:  Christopher Cantwell again, hosting a live show in his living room.  Every so often, he goes a little too conservative (being against immigration, for example), but he is usually 100% on top of what it means to be an anarchist in an unfree world.
    
15. School Sucks Show:  Usually randomly updated, but with long episodes, School Sucks is a show devoted to education and intellectual self-defense.  Parents and educators ought to listen to this show, as well as anyone who wishes to be intellectually literate.
    
16. The Ex-Worker:  An AnCom production about AnComs, this is a useful resource in encouraging me that at least some anarchists are actually doing something besides sitting around and praying for the second coming of John Galt.
    
17. Rationally Speaking:  An atheist podcast that focuses primarily on cognitive biases, science, and ethics.  On rare occasion they'll bring Neil DeGrasse Tyson (or some other popular "scientist") on to shit all over philosophy and religion, but they are usually very ice and even-handed.  One of the main hosts just left, but the remaining host has carried along nicely.
    
18. Anime World Order:The snobby older brother to Anime Pulse, AWO updates rarely and sporadically, but I very much enjoy their discussions of older anime, especially since they tend to share similar opinions to my own and expose me to things I've missed.
    
19. History on Fire:  A new podcast from Daniele Bolelli (of Drunken Taoist fame).  He recounts interesting and often-ignored chunks of history from an amusing angle.  The history lessons being my favorite part of the Drunken Taoist, this podcast is awesome.
    
20. Atlas MD: A recent discovery of mine (I shared it on the daily resource suggestions).  It helps me keep tabs on an amazing agorist project that may save the medical industry from itself.
    
21. Personal Profitability Podcast:  Another recent find, this is a podcast put on by a former co-worker of mine from Summer Camp.  It reminds me a lot of "The Art of Manliness" but with more useful ideas about money and less soldier worshiping.
    
22. Samurai Archives Podcast: Exactly what it sounds like.  A historical survey of Japanese culture, samurai, bushido, etc.  A must-listen for samurai fans.
    
23. The Drunken Taoist:  A show that talks about lefty subjects more than anything else, funny and informative, if a little too statist for me to really recommend it.  My favorite parts are the history, drugs, and stories about the host's daughter, Isabella.
    
24. Powerful Parenting:  I found this show just last week.  It was features on School Sucks, and it seems to be a good show along the lines of peaceful parenting and the other parenting "styles" that I'm interested in.
    
25. Rebel Love Show:  The host of this show recently reached out out me on facebook, so I thought I'd give his show a listen.  Turns out it's pretty good.  I've only heard a few episodes, but I plan on listening to more.
    
26. Lets Talk Bitcoin:  A huge network of blockchain-related shows, I listen to the actual "Let's Talk Bitcoin" show and the MaidSafe show.  Both of them keep me up-to-date on what I believe to be the most important areas of the Bitcoin world.
    
27. East Meets West:  A show that I'm not really sure why I listen to... It's a discussion between two fairly well-to-do people in the hollywood circuit.  They usually talk a little bit about movies and a lot about current events.  They update rarely, but their conversations are fun.
    
28. The Art of Manliness:  A former favorite of mine, the Art of Manliness explores manliness and male culture.  Of late, there has been too much president and soldier worship for me to get all that excited about the show.
    
29. Radiolab:  This show keeps just barely making the cut.  Overproduced, frenetic, and excessively liberal, the only thing that keeps me coming back is the fact that every three episodes or so presents me with something I hadn't known about previously.
    
30. Matt Walsh:  The only reason he's still on my list is because his episodes are short and it reminds me of how a lot of my Catholic friends see the world still.  When talking about social issues (like whether someone becomes a woman because they chopped off their balls), he's usually spot-on, but his politics are decidedly neocon bullshit.
    
31. Anime Pulse:The show is on a temporary hiatus while management gets all their ducks in a row.  Until recently, it has been a fun and quality production (mostly Manga Pulse and Anime Pulse... VG pulse sucks).  After a host change at Anime Pulse, I've been losing interest in the show, but this hiatus makes me feel that if it gets off the ground again, it will be a quality show again.
    
32. Freedom Feens:  This show was one of my favorites for a good while.  A group of people just talking about freedom and stuff on the radio for a few hours every day.  The only reasons I don't listen to them too much anymore is because they put out so much material that if they had priority, I would wind up listening to nothing else, and for a while now they've been spending more time shitting on Chris Cantwell than doing anything fun or productive (and MK Lords posses me off a lot of times).
    
33. Anarchast:  I rarely listen to this podcast anymore, as Jeff Burwick is a very sketchy guy and the show tends to host respectable people alongside total nutjobs and it isn't really worth my time.  However, There is an occasional guest that I hadn't heard of before who actually has something worthwhile to say, and I use this podcast to find these people.
    

Podcasts I no longer listen to:

• ArchDen.org: The official podcast of the Archdiocese of Denver.  It used to be a campy but fun and informative podcast by a couple people from teh Chancery... but that was discontinued in favor for random instances of the Archbishop's homilies.  All of which are identical: "God loves you, we are unworthy, abortion is bad, vote republican, give us money."
  
• The Nerdist:  Funny, but updates something like every day, and I just don't have time for it.  Cantwell, Superego, and Cracked make up for it in the funny department.
  
• The Voluntary Life:  I originally started listening to this show because Stephanie Murphy voiced the intro and outro.  It's an interesting show, with good tips and tricks for living more freely in an un-free world, but they rarely present anything I don't already know.
  

Podcasts that have been discontinued:

• Enchanted Grounds: Technically, not discontinued, but their podcast feed has been broken and they haven't fixed it for over a year.
  
• Into The Deep: Also technically not discontinued, but the last time it updated was June of last year...
  
• Z-Talk:
  
• Zelda Working Title Podcast:
  
• FTL Weekly Digest:Philosophize This:
  
• Saint Cast:
  

Today's resource suggestion is another book.  This one is available on amazon for purchase or, for free, in unabridged installments at The Daily Bell.  It is a fun novel which explores real technology, real cultures, and provides the reader with a new way of looking at the world and a set of actionable options for improving one's quality of life.

To call Thieve's Emporium a work of science fiction would be unfair.  While it somewhat defies genre, I guess it could be considered an educational drama?  The characters are largely fictional, but what they face and what they do are largely non-fiction.

I don't want to spoil too much of the plot, and I have not quite finished the book yet, but I strongly recommend people read this book.  With unlikely sympathetic characters in a world that is designed to marginalize them, and a slew of philosophical, moral, and ethical discussions that can and should be sparked by this work, It's certainly a good way to spend a lazy weekend.

Following closely on the heels of the first widely-known anarchist video game Zomia Offline Games has done it again.  Brian Sovryn of Sovryn Tech fame (or infamy), having set a challenging standard for what "anarchist game" means, has managed to meet this standard while releasing a more mainstream product.

Ninja Trek is a more mainstream-style RPG than Hypercronius.  What I mean by that is that it is a little longer, has more combat, and less dialogue.  It also has a slightly smaller price tag (It's hard to get smaller than that of Hypercronius), at a mere .012 BTC.  I'm going to try and review Ninja Trek by it's own merits, rather than comparing it to Hypercronius, but we'll see how successful I am in that regard.

Gameplay/Story: The gameplay and story are pretty direct and intuitive.  If anyone has played Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest/Warrior, or any other classic J-RPG, you'll know how to play Ninja Trek.  Even as a short game, there are exciting story elements, fun puzzles, and a decent variety of baddies to clobber.  Most notable of the story elements are the handful of connections made to Hypercronius, implying that this game takes place thousands or hundreds of thousands of years after the events in Hypercronius; I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll leave it at that.  There's one main puzzle in the game which is simple but fun enough (I, in my sleep-deprived and mensa-puzzle mindset overlooked the solution and spent hours trying to figure it out). but general gameplay presents it's own puzzle-like atmosphere; grinding would undoubtedly make the game easier than avoiding combat at every possible chance, but how will that pay off in the long run?  I've only played as a straight-up magic user thus far, but may play through again using the fighter class and see how that changes gameplay for combat.  It is possible to beat the game without grinding if one is smart about equipment, items, and party composition, but I'm sure it would be easier to just grind along the way, killing everything in sight.  But that isn't the gameplay that I was looking for, given the subtext of the game's relationship to Hypercronius.
There are, like in Hypercronius, a lot of obvious and not-so-obvious references to esoteric ideologies, which add to the richness and apparent depth of the environments in the game.  One can't miss the use of the Ankh and the Garden of E.DIN, for example.
The Message:  Where Hypercronius is very, very story-heavy, Ninja Trek is a little more gameplay-driven.  As such the message is mostly contained in they payout at the end of the game ("Kami do not kill!").  The protagonist/player is faced with what could be called a moral dilemma which has profound implications in the world laid out by the game's plot.  If one is inclined to meditate on the story and the ending, they can easily tease out different implications concerning the nature of power, domination structures, and even the NAP.  
A little bit of meta-game message is bundled in as well: the game's EULA is actually the BipCot license.  It is pretty much the only EULA that I recommend anyone read, as it's the first ever license that I know of which is valid under the rubric of the NAP.
The Rub:  If one is expecting the level of text, story, character development, and drama experienced in Hypercronius, they will likely be disappointed.  In addition to being less dialogue-driven, there was a noticeable absence of voice acting and sexy sprite-humping.  However, the game stands very well on it's own as a classic RPG-style hack-and-slash.  I encountered one bug towards the end of the game that led to the game crashing, but I was unable to recreate the bug (it's just as likely my antivirus breaking things as it is a flaw in the actual game).  Fortunately, the age-old "RPG best practices" of saving constantly meant that I only lost about 5 minutes of gameplay to the crash.
The Verdict:  For just a few dollars, it's hard to go wrong.  Again, Zomia Offline Games successfully delivers on the stated goals of their project.  Ninja Trek is an excellent companion piece to Hypercronius in that they compliment each other's absences.  Where Hypercronius lacks the more traditional hack-and-slash RPG elements, Ninja Trek has it in spades; where Ninja Trek lacks full-motion video, voice acting, and visual-novel levels of dialogue, Hypercronius has more than enough.  Seeing as how one could get both for under $10, one can get the full anarchist 16-bit experience for the cost of a cheeseburger.
In it's own right, though, Ninja Trek is well worth the couple dollars for a couple hours of nostalgic adventure true to the medium which simply doesn't exist in the modern gaming landscape.  The anarchy just makes it that much more fun.
Oh, and you can buy it with Bitcoin in addition to the usual PayPal et al.

https://zomiaofflinegames.com/product/ninjatrek/

TL;DR:  4 out of 5 stars, fun game, good combat engine, fun environments, yay anarchy.  I'm certainly looking forward to Hypercronius II as I've come to expect great things from Zomia Offline Games.

I promise, after posting Cantwell two times in as many days, I'm going to go easy on Cantwell posts for a while (Hey, I kept my promise concerning Tom Woods, right?).  Despite what leftist "libertarians" will tell you, he actually walks the walk.  Supporting the Bitcoin economy is a big part of walking the walk (Bitcoin use is not required, but avoiding state fiat is.  Bitcoin is one such option for doing so.)  Between making compelling sales pitches to "the man on the street", convincing business owners to accept bitcoin, and using Bitcoin at every opportunity to procure his livelihood, Cantwell is growing the strength of the Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency at large) network, driving up the value of the currency itself, and letting New Hampshire natives into liberty through the back door.
Today's post is Cantwell's new Sales Pitch for Bitcoin.  It's a handy resource for people who are already "Bitcoin evangelists" and it's a good starting place for those that have no idea what Bitcoin is about or what it's good for.

Bitcoin, as both a technology and as a currency, is an invaluable tool for the rise of freedom and decentralization.  There are those in governments (especially the US government) who understand this and are doing their best to smother it in its crib.  The remainder are ignorant and happen to be blundering their way into attempting the very same sort of abortion.

Fortunately, the government cannot regulate Bitcoin, they can only regulate the points of contact between Bitcoin and the legacy systems that the government controls.  This, of course, has made access through exchanges and more traditional methods of exchanging one form of money for another quite difficult and somewhat risky.  Fortunately, where there is a market demand, the market provides:

Purse.io is a simple solution to a ridiculous problem.  Much like Brawker, a previous endorsement of mine that has since gone out of business, Purse.io allows one to essentially use their credit/debit card to buy Bitcoins.

Basically, someone makes a wishlist entry on a site like Amazon and places an appropriate amount of bitcoin into an escrow wallet to purchase that item.  You then order that item form their wishlist.  When they receive the item, the bitcoin is released from escrow and sent to your account.  Congratulations! You've just got yourself some invaluable magic internet money.
The process works in reverse, as well.  If you want to spend your newly-acquired Bitcoin to buy something from Amazon (say the price jumps in value 600% again and your $50 in BTC becomes $300 in BTC overnight), You need only to make an Amazon wishlist entry and to place enough bitcoin to make the purchase worthwhile to another Purse.io user (people frequently get amazon products at a 5-25% discount buying in BTC) and just wait for someone to fulfill that wish.

I've only used the service once, but the UI was seamless and easy to use, the instructions were clear and simple, and I managed to get my Bitcoin right away, courtesy of same-day shipping on Amazon.  This is a great starting place for people who are bit-curious but intimidated by all the paperwork and regulatory bullshit associated with using fiat to buy crypto-assets on exchanges.

While some of this discussion my be a little outside the comprehension of someone who hasn't been involved or interested in the cryptocurrency space, I think Episode 211 of Let's Talk Bitcoin has something to offer even the people outside the space with regards to the ideals of DAPS and how they apply to economics and technology.