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Notes for Podcast:

• Website
• Contact me
• Please donate if you’re feeling generous

• Libsyn 
• Google removes ICE-spotting app following Apple’s ICEBlock crackdown | The Verge
• Talent Agents Circle AI Actress Tilly Norwood As Studios Quietly Embrace AI Technology – Zurich Summit
• Ironmouse Wiki
• Connor Dared me to beat PVZ - ironmouse voice sample
• Why Ironmouse is the Queen of Vtubers
• Ironmouse - Music Box of Fate
• Ironmouse - La Camisa Negra Cover Choir
• Juanes - La Camisa Negra

This is Julio's Corner, my corner of the internet, where I talk about whatever is on my mind.

I'll mostly talk about stuff I've watched, read or listened to, but sometimes I may ramble on about the news or politics or in society at large.

This episode is being recorded on Sunday, October 5th, 2025.

Welcome back to the show.

Once again, I am your host, Julio from New York, and you may be wondering where is the video?

Why do you not see me?

Why are you just seeing a cheap animation?

Those of you in the YouTube verse.

Well, the reason for that is that I am, I've decided since the last episode when I was talking about that I was rethinking the whole video and audio thing, I decided that what got me into podcasts back in 2007 was an audio, at the time it was just an audio format and that is what drove my passion and interest in podcasting because it was radio on demand essentially because there was morning shows and for instance, as you remember, I watched or listened to Air America back in those days.

And unfortunately, if I didn't catch the show at the time that it was on the air, I would miss it.

And I already had VCR technology for TV shows.

I could always record a TV show or a movie on TV with a VHS tape and then watch it on demand.

And so podcasting was a revelation that, oh wow, we can do this with audio too now.

There's this new medium, this new format.

And since 07, I've been into audio podcasts.

And as I mentioned, the only reason I was really doing the whole YouTube thing was to see if it would help garner an audience with the algorithm that is YouTube.

I started this new version of my podcast back in May.

I was doing YouTube, I mean, and I was posting it on YouTube, but with the animation you see before you.

And then around June, I decided, well, let me just use my iPhone or webcam from my computer to just record myself live and whatnot.

So I had a nice three month sample window, and there's not much change in terms of getting numbers with the YouTube algorithm.

So with all that extra work and no return on investment, so to speak, investment being my time, because obviously there's no money uploading to YouTube, it's a free option.

But with all that said and done, I decided, you know what, I prefer to do audio, because that is my main passion, podcasting wise.

And so if anyone wants to listen to it on YouTube, feel free to listen to it.

You're not going to see me, you're just going to see this animation before you.

But yeah, I want to focus more on the audio.

It gives me one last thing to worry about.

As I'm doing it, I can just focus on how I sound and really hone in on my fillers, my ums, my you knows, my sows and so on.

And it'll just be better editing wise.

I can really dig in there in the audio and edit myself to make it just a better listening experience, because I have caught myself, especially with the last episode, cringing upon hearing myself.

And I know you can be your own worst critic, and I definitely am.

But for my standard and preference, I want to focus on the audio.

And with that being said, I've also am now using a hosting site.

I know I said in the last episode that I was just using a free website and archive.org to upload my audio and, you know, the free option, so to speak.

But, you know, it's extra work.

And I noticed that the downloads of the episodes of the MP3 is a lot slower because archive obviously is a free site and they make no money, essentially.

It's a free site that anyone can use.

So I guess it's supported by contributions, you know, donations and what have you.

So naturally their servers aren't going to be as fast as a hosting site that you pay money for because that is their business.

And on top of that, I kind of do want to see some statistics.

So, and I use Libsyn way back with my first podcast back in, I don't know, 2010 maybe, maybe 2009 or 2000.

Well, no, in 2009, I came back to New York.

So, maybe 2008 was my first podcast.

So anyways, so I'm back on Libsyn.

It's the most affordable option out of the ones that I've used in the past.

Because the one that I used to use that I'm a big fan of, or I was an advocate of Buzzsprout, they've has since increased their prices way beyond my means.

I used to just pay $7 a month.

It would come out to like $12 a month with a couple of add-ons that I would get from them.

But now they've made their standard price $19 a month, which is like a $12 pay increase.

Yeah, they give you an extra hour of uploading, which definitely would help, but not for that $12 price increase.

That's out of my price range.

So I'm using Libsyn, it's $7 a month, which is what I can afford, and go from there.

Another advantage of using a podcast host is I can add transcripts to my podcast.

So this, I mean, supposedly, they say it would help with SEO, with search optimization, in terms of like garnering an audience.

If people try to Google some search terms or whatever, and one of those keywords might be in all the words that I ramble, in text form, it would get a hit, so to speak.

But I don't actually see a visible version of it on the site.

So at the very least, it will give more accessibility for the hearing impaired.

So anyone that reads transcripts when they're downloading a podcast, they have that option.

So that is why the podcast is going to be like this from now on.

It's just audio is my thing.

I feel like I would be able to make a better product because it's just audio I need to focus on, and I don't have to worry about where to look at the camera or other variables like a green screen or lack of green screen or just the aesthetics.

Because with video, you definitely want to do aesthetics, and my situation is too tight for a really good camera angle.

Unfortunately, the way my room is set up, the camera is a little too close for a good visual because it's just basically my face superimposed.

So I do try to shrink myself in the image.

But still, there's not much, like you don't even really see my t-shirt.

Like all you see is my neck up because of the close up, because of the distance of me from the camera, because that's the only available space available.

So yeah, I don't have to worry about that anymore.

And I can just focus on audio and go from there.

So that's that.

So on to some news items.

So, lately, I have not been listening to the news or watching the news.

I've been avoiding The Majority Report and Hassan Piker and other news sources that I normally would listen to.

And the reason for that is the world is just, it's just too dystopic for me.

It's not a happy place.

So, instead, I've been escaping with football and shows and YouTube, other YouTube content.

Because I'm not, I'm not listening, I'm not watching clips of Hassan Piker or The Majority Report or other progressive-minded content creators.

And actually, I've been going back to one of my previous loves when I had money, which is tech news.

And the reason for that is I'm looking, because I'm a fan of, well, I'll get into it later down in the episode.

But before that, point is, I've been reading more tech blogs and listening to some tech podcasts.

And sadly, even there in that niche area of the news, dystopia crept its way in and yeah, there's no escaping the bleakness that is America right now, even in tech news.

So there's two items that I want to bring up because again, it somehow got through the cracks.

And so I figured, let me bring it up here because I find them quite telling in different ways.

So the first news item, Apple has already removed IceBlock from their app store.

And copying Apple, Google has done the same.

And they've also removed IceBlock from the Google Play Store, which is the Android platform.

So now both Android and iOS devices will no longer have access to IceBlock.

Now, what is IceBlock, you ask?

Well, let me tell you.

As the beginning of it, as the name pretty much explains, it kind of explains itself if you try to think of the context of today, what's happening today, you know, with ICE, the Department of...

I forget what ICE stands for, but you know, that federal agency that now has a bigger budget than the FBI, and their sole job, the Gestapo of Trump, known as ICE, their sole job is to disappear people that are not white.

So they go after Hispanics.

If you speak with a Spanish accent or you speak Spanish, God forbid you speak anything other than English with an American accent, you will be disappeared.

If you look Iranian or just Arab, you might disappear.

You know, things like that.

That's what ICE is known for.

So as the name suggests, ICE Block, this is sort of like Waze, the map social, the social map app that tells you where people can report like the traffic in the roads and whatnot to help steer, what's the word I'm looking for?

Customers that use the, or yeah, customers that use the Waze app.

It helps you steer away from the traffic congested roads, things like that, because it's community reported.

You know, it collects all that information from people that freely report to the Waze app.

So, in the same manner, IceBlock does that for ICE.

People can use that app to let others know, hey, if you're in this vicinity, you might want to clear out now, because ICE is headed that way, and so on.

And avoid downtown USA, because ICE is going to be going there in the next few hours, you know, things like that.

So that's what the IceBlock app is for.

So, for immigrants, it's a good call to leave the premises.

For protesters, it gives them the call to arms, I guess, to do a peaceful protest, and they would go there and harass ICE for being ICE, you know, Gestapo, because they deserve it.

I mean, wearing masks, trying to disappear people without due process, they're doing illegal acts, but apparently that doesn't matter, because our current regime allows those folk to do illegal acts, because no one is stopping them.

So ICE Block was a way to help level the playing field, so to speak, to a certain extent.

However, the administration has claimed that ICE Block was a terrorist app, and it was causing harm to government workers, i.e.

ICE.

And so it was an act of terror, because what they're doing is not terror.

Regardless, as been the case in multiple other venues, like Paramount or ABC, these corporations are bowing down, they're bending the knee to the current regime.

And so Apple and Google have both removed ICE block from their apps, from the app store, I should say, to mollify the regime, placate their desires, and screw the rest of us.

In other news, there's this company, let me just go to the website itself.

Okay, so there's this news article about this actor slash comedian technologist, whatever the hell that means, I've never heard of a comedian technologist before.

Aline Vander Velden.

She has recently launched an AI talent studio called Shikoai, I guess it's spelled X-I-C-O-I-A.

And their first creation is an AI actress known as Tilly Norwood.

And everyone, well, not everyone, but the powers that be in Hollywood are kind of salivating at the prospect.

And there have been some, well, let me not go there.

But so yeah, there's this now, there's now this AI actress, if you can call her an actress, because she's not really, she's not acting, she's just programmed to emote whatever script they download into her or whatever.

But this avatar, this AI avatar, will now be, it's just one step further to take jobs away from the working people, to make corporations richer without having to pay for labor.

This was already, I mean, this is always what happens with capitalism, exploitation is king.

And so companies always try to cut corners and find ways to undercut wages.

When the writers had their strike back in, I wanna say the 90s, or it was either late 80s, early 90s, those were around that time, those were writer's strike, because they demanded more pay for script writing.

That was the beginning of reality TV, that time period.

So I forget what year the first reality TV show came out, but it was around that time.

You had Real World, you had The Apprentice, you had The Surreal Life, The Bachelor, I think was around that time, Survivor, Big Brother.

All those reality shows came about as an answer to writers, so that's why you have, now they call it non-scripted television, even though, because it's cheap to make, because you don't have to pay for writing, you don't have to pay for actors, because it's just a bunch of people that you just grabbed off the street or wherever you get them from, but they're not actors, so they're not union, you don't have to worry about the union fees and none of that stuff, you don't have to worry about paying them residuals after the show is done, because again, they're not actors, it's not a script, you're just being yourself, quote unquote, obviously, they're edited for entertainment value.

And there's no writers to pay.

So yeah, so that's why reality TV became what it is.

And the audience, sadly, sadly to me, they ate it up.

That's why we have so many reality shows nowadays, and so much and so fewer scripted programs.

So anyway, so now you have this new option, because last year, I believe it was last year or the year before recently, we'll say, the actors had a strike.

The writers also had a strike, another strike, along with the actors.

So they wanted to renegotiate their contract, because now a lot of programs are not made by network television or cable, it's by streaming services.

And the streaming services were outside of the contracts, that all the networks and cable channels had made with the Actors Union and the Writers Union.

And so they had, they were able to underpay a lot of talent, because they were outside of that, those original agreements, because streaming services did not exist.

So that's why they had that strike not too long ago, and they renegotiated contracts with streaming services as well, in terms of paying them up to Hollywood standards for other entertainment.

But I also think they also helped with residuals, because those shows are owned by the streaming services, so they can always air them whenever they want.

So they should get a cut of the pie, because if you're making money off of them, off of that, which is their work, they should get paid in turn, a cut of the profits, the earnings.

But also on top of that, they wanted to fight against AI, because they know that these companies, they wanted to create, they wanted to use AI to cover script writing, because, you know, Chat GPT came about, and all these other things.

And a lot of college kids are using them, using AI to write their papers for them.

And Hollywood said, hey, maybe we can use them to write scripts.

We'll just upload a bunch of scripts into whatever AI program they use, so they can learn, machine learning, how to write a standard script, and then they can produce a bunch of AI scripts.

And naturally, the writers balked at that.

Recently, you had OpenAI also create artificial voices.

I know Apple right now is using AI for some audio books.

They currently do not have any audio, any voice actors.

So yeah, the talent was trying to create roadblocks for this new AI technology from subverting their work.

Because, I mean, that's just another way that corporations and those in power are just trying to further limit what little money working people can make.

So now you have the next stage of this situation.

You have Tilly Norwood, our first AI actress.

And of course, they made her young.

And some people are calling her a virgin, which is kind of disgusting.

Like, why are you sexualizing a computer being, not even a being, a computer program.

But anyways, so this is just another stage in this battle of capitalism and exploitation.

And so I just wanted to bring it to your attention that, yeah, just when you think there's at least this one venue that's safe, nope, another place of industry is still fighting the good fight to try to maintain some semblance of equality.

So enough of the news.

Let's get into the thing I really wanna talk about.

And that is this VTuber that came to my attention.

So as I mentioned, I've been watching a lot of YouTube, so I haven't been watching a lot of shows.

It's just been mostly NFL games and YouTube content, not progressive political content, but other things like sports, technology stuff, reaction videos, and so on.

Most recently, I've been watching reaction videos to K-pop Demon Hunters.

The music, the movie, and so forth.

And so the algorithm does what it does to promote other content to you.

That's what YouTube does.

And so this VTuber Ironmouse has started showing up more and more on my feed.

Now I have been a little familiar with her because, again, I would listen to, I would watch Asan Piker and other Twitch streamers.

And so there would be clips of these other Twitch streamers interacting with her, this VTuber known as Ironmouse.

But anyways, I think because I've been watching more music content, she started popping more.

There was a video of her covering one of the K-Pop Demon Hunter songs free with some other person.

But then there have been reaction videos of her to this opera song, which I will get into later.

And so that really, that song was amazing.

It popped up a bunch of times, but I just kept ignoring it until until this week because of the K-Pop Demon Hunter video cover, I should say, which is okay, wasn't wasn't up to my standards, it wasn't, I prefer the original, I should say, versus her cover.

But then the other song really won me over, and I just started getting more into her.

And so let me just give you some information about this person, this VTuber named Ironmouse.

She's a Puerto Rican in somewhere USA, don't know where she is.

I don't think she's in New York for the same, for the fact that she mentioned she wishes she could be in New York because she wanted to be an opera singer.

And New York has a lot of theaters and music institutes and so on for opera.

So she always wanted to come here because that's where she wanted to be.

You know, the industry she wanted to be in, opera singer, it would have benefited her to come to New York.

But sadly, she's been afflicted with CVID, which is an immune disorder.

And that immune disorder, CVID, has made her bedridden for a good amount of her adult life.

Because basically she can't go anywhere without getting sick and then possibly dying from contracted illness.

So she started streaming in 2017 because of the loneliness, the isolation of being bedridden in her room.

And so this was a way for her to make friends, so to speak.

And of course, she didn't want to show herself being an introvert and whatnot.

So she created her persona, her animated avatar, you know, the character name Ironmouse.

And I think it's based on Sailor Moon.

There's a, I guess there might be a character named Sailor Moon in, in, sorry, there might be a character named Ironmouse in Sailor Moon.

So, so her character name is, comes from, from Sailor Moon, but she has since, she has made the, her storyline and everything her own.

So now she's not bedridden anymore.

She can walk around the house, but she's, she's still house ridden.

Yeah, she can't, she can't leave her house.

So it's great that she can at least move around.

But since 2017, she started streaming and little by little, she's been getting better to the point that now she can, she can sing somewhat.

Her lungs are mostly destroyed.

She has something called, and I'm not sure if I'm going to pronounce it correctly, but it's mycobacterium avium complex.

You know, she has to live with a lung machine, not a lung machine, she has to live with a oxygen machine.

She has to get plasma transfers, plasma fusions every month to help with her antibodies and to give her, produce antibodies to help with her immune deficiency.

And she made some good friends and so forth.

So, this woman, this Puerto Rican, sassy Latina with a, oh yeah, she has a high-pitched voice.

Her voice is naturally high-pitched now because of what happened with the CVID causing that issue with her lungs.

And I guess it also affected her throat to the point that now she talks with this very cartoonish high-pitched voice.

So, despite that though, she marches on and she made this amazing opera song which I want to share with you guys.

It's copyright free.

She allows everyone to share it, which is great.

So, I don't have to worry about getting a copyright strike or anything like that.

But before I do that, before I play that song, I just want to play a sample of her talking, so you can get an idea of how she sounds.

And then you'll be able to contrast that or compare it with her opera song.

All right, so here I am.

I'm going to play her talking right now.

All right, for those of you that came in late that don't know, I have been challenged to play Plants vs.

Zombies.

Connor beat the whole game and he's like, you can't beat the game.

And I was like, yes, I can.

Would you guys want to play Plants vs.

Zombies?

Plants vs.

Zombies, what is this, 2005?

Do you have a problem with my choice?

I got challenged.

So, yeah, that's how she sounds.

And Connor is a British guy who, long story short, they became best friends.

And he's been helping her in a lot of ways.

He's helped her with her subathons to help raise money for CVID awareness and for the CVID foundation.

He's helped her see the world through his eyes, so to speak.

Like he would bring like an iPad or something with a camera attached, so that way he could show her like Japan, the Sailor Moon Museum or whatever.

Different things like that.

So they're really good friends.

And they do a lot of collaborations together.

She actually convinced him to become a VTuber, a part-time VTuber, and created a character called Booby, who shows up in a lot of her music videos and other cartoon renditions of her character.

The storyline is that Booby is the fateful eternal servant of Queen Ironmouse, who is the Queen of Hell.

She's Satan, so to speak.

That's part of her persona lore.

But anyways, let me go and, now knowing how she sounds, let me play this song.

So the song is an opera song called Music Box of Fate, and of course the links will be in the show notes.

And it's live orchestra.

So, oh yeah, let me give you some context for how this was recorded.

So you have the Budapest Orchestra, they played all the instruments, live instrumentation.

And then I guess the score was sent to her, because she can't leave her house.

And then she recorded her singing of the song.

Now, as I mentioned, she has CVID, so she has an immune disorder.

So she's always, even though she's isolating herself from the world, that doesn't stop her from getting sick and so on.

And now she can at least move around her house, but for really, so when she, when this song was made, which was I think last year or a few months ago, you know, she's now better, but there was a time when she couldn't even leave her bed.

But now she can move around.

However, when making this song, she caught a serious sinus infection.

So she has a serious sinus infection.

Her ear got stuffed.

And if you know how hard it is to like talk with a sinus infection or an ear, imagine, and a stuffed ear, imagine trying to sing.

Like a singer needs to be able to listen, needs to be able to hear the ambiance and acoustics of their surroundings so they can sing on pitch and sing the tone properly and be able to do all the different notes.

But if one of your ears is gone and you have your nose stuffed up because of your sinus infection, which also messes up the sound and quality of your voice, imagine trying to make a professional recording of this song.

But despite all that, she still muscled her way through this.

Again, she's in her house, so she doesn't have a fancy sound studio.

She had to do it on her bed.

I'm guessing she was sitting on her bed because she can move around, but in this case, to sing, you can't be laying on your back.

So she's sitting on her bed with a blanket fort.

She had to put a blanket over her and everything to a fleece blanket she specified to drown out any ambient noise to help with the quality of the recording.

And she has a Shure SM7B microphone, which is the microphone I have.

And yeah, so she had to sing this from her bed and then send the recording to them with the sinus infection and the stuffed ear to boot.

Like all of that.

And she still made this song possible.

So here we go.

Wow, even, I don't even know how many times I've listened to this song already, and it amazes me every time.

It's just insane.

So, now let's, I mean, what can you say after that?

So I just wanna play another song that she covered, and I'm only gonna play a part of it.

And it's just to showcase how incredible she is.

So someone actually clipped 16 different instances when she covered this song.

And this song is called La Camisa Negra by Juanes, who's a Colombian rock singer who I'm a fan of.

So naturally this cover of a song that I'm a fan of just gave me, just further pushed me into my newfound fandom of Ironmouse.

Because on top of all the things that I learned about her and that song we just played, but then you have her covering Juanes, a Colombian artist, La Camisa Negra, I mean, it's like Kismet.

So as I was saying, somebody, a fan of hers, I'm assuming grabbed the 16 different instances of when she sang this song.

She covered it on her stream.

And because she is such a trained, you know, she, because like I said, she was, she was opera trained.

She trained to be an opera singer.

So because of that training, little to no editing was done, except putting all these 16 instances together.

And you're going to see how in sync all of these 16 versions of her sing the song.

Like none of them are ever singing it a second earlier or a second later.

So it sounds all in harmony.

And even Ironmouse herself, when she, she reacted to this video and she herself was freaked out by it.

Like how the hell did, did I or you do this?

And obviously, the person who clipped all these versions of her together didn't do anything except put them all together and probably just aligned the time that they started singing.

So other than that, everything else is on its own, on its own merits.

So because of that, when she starts singing this song, she just naturally, her training and whatnot, she immediately attunes herself to start on beat exactly when she's supposed to start the song.

And so because of that, all 16 of these different times that she sings the song, it comes together, which is amazing because, and again, I've seen other reactors, music trainers and whatnot, even they were surprised by that because they know when an artist does a song and they sing, there's all these different tracks to a song.

And sometimes you wanna, you multitrack a chorus or a melody or a verse of a song, but you wanna do it in different pitches because it adds to the song, to the effect.

And a lot of singers struggle to be able to time themselves perfectly to their own tracks.

And yeah, here's this Twitch streamer, this VTuber at home, just happened to sing the song 16 different times, never once heard her previous version to sing it.

She just was listening to the actual song, La Camisa Negra, by Juanes.

And just naturally, because of her training and her attuneness to it, was able to do it on pitch together.

All 16 of her were able to sing it in sync.

And it's funny, because it begins with all 16 of these streams saying different things right before the song, which just further, it just amazes me.

But anyways, here we go.

Ah!

Oh my god, that scared me.

I feel so insecure on the internet, if only there was someone that could look out for me.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, you're in luck.

NorVPN can be.

What am I doing?

So that was La Camisa Negra Cover by Ironmouse.

I will have a link in the show notes to both videos if you're interested, as well as the original song by Juanes himself.

And yeah, that is everything I had to say in this episode.

And that wraps up the show.

If you are watching this on YouTube, don't forget to like, comment and subscribe.

If you have any questions, comments, or any thoughts you'd like to share, you can reach me by clicking on the contact me link in the show notes.

If you're feeling extra generous, you can click the donate link in the show notes and send some money my way.

This show is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This means you can share this episode, remix it, do whatever you want, just say where you got it from.

And as always, thank you for listening.