Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Episode 583 of the podcast that advertisers are paying not to advertise on!
This week: back off; paper tigers; love isn’t; untitled video game; flailing arms; defending grave robbing; body snatching iterations; dino-ghosts; unimpressive T. Rex; daddy snatchers; top pops; gulping gourmet; meow for Christ; dead parents; Ian and David howl for ; Tolstoy’s gun; speed writing; o solo mio; lucky breaks; the Steve Smith mystery; Red Green blues; the fishing Fisher; monster Hunter; bizarre Canadian broadcasting; cinematic desert fare; in praise of Dick and Beaver; automatic food; crawfish fiesta; Top 5 Songs – Laughter; loving Poker Face tangent; Little Lord Fauntlecroz; anxiety pen; the college age; boning up; shit-coms; Wordle world; wacky White Spot; nothing TV; on Chesterton; dance on, dance off, streaming life; and, finally, madness.
Top 5 Songs – Laughter
- The Merry-Go-Round – “She Laughed Loud” – A&M Records single b/w “Had to Run”, 1967 – 1:38:15
- Simon Dupree & the Big Sound – “The Laughing Boy from Nowhere” – Part of My Past – The Simon Dupree and the Big Sound Anthology, 2004 – 1:44:06
- The Myddle Class – “Wind Chime Laughter” – Tomorrow Records single (b-side to “Don’t Look Back”), 1067 – 1:57:08
- She – “Lonely Boy of Laughter” – She Wants a Piece of You, 1999 – 2:01:04
- David Crosby – “Laughing” – If Only I Could Remember My Name, 1971 – 2:10:41
Question of the Week: What is your Jeopardy weak spot?
Sub-question of the Week: What’s your complaint?
Let us know your complaints, folks! Write, tweet, or phone and we’ll read it or play it on next week’s show.
(If you plan to call, Dave’s country code is 1, and it will be long distance calling from other countries!)
Thanks for listening.
Dept. of Corections:
David, of course, meant “Eight Miles High”, not five miles high, the dum-dum.
The theme song to Steve and Morag Smith’s sitcom Me and Max, which we didn’t realize also featured their two sons!
God help us, there is a complete episode of Smith & Smith on the YouTube! Watch out here! (I mean, watch it here.)
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I saw “Laughing” by David Crosby on your list of Top 5 Songs about laughter and I was a little confused. I asked myself didn’t Burton Cummings also sing a song called “Laughing?” And Guess Who was right? It’s worth a listen for a little classic Canadian content from 1969. It’s quite upbeat for a song about someone who is bitter about being laughed at.
My complaint is about people who want better access to publicly-funded health care, but are against socialism and the higher taxes that go with it. I’ll also complain about provincial political parties who aren’t willing to campaign on raising taxes, but are willing to get a bigger share of federal taxes. So either the feds would have to raise their rate or they’d have to divert spending from other areas.
My office manager is always joking that she’d like to get me on “Jeopardy” because of all the trivial knowledge I know, but if any sports, politics or geography questions show up, I’m screwed. Maybe some baseball and top tier politics but geography…I’m in real trouble.
I swear and so many think I’m making this up, we had little to no geography in my school growing up. The focus was on a new math called Chisenbop and SRA reading modules, so most of the other subjects took a back seat to them. When I was in college, I bought a huge world map for my room so I could study it and learn where everything was located, I’d stare at it all the time. Too bad I didn’t retain what I was looking at, I was in college so I only kept the info I needed inside my noggin.
You asked where I stayed when I was in Seattle, we were at the Hyatt Regency on Howell Street and Olive, right across the street from the Convention Center. I’ve heard of The Emerald City Comicon for years but I’ve never had the pleasure of attending.
Complaints? I won’t get started on social media etiquette and its effects on modern communication, that’s like beating a dead horse and I think we all share that one.
How about a new one for a change? How about the onslaught of A.I. technology in the world of illustration and design? Have you seen the results of what a few minutes of prompts into a ChatGPT A.I. engine can do? I was first introduced to all this by a co-worker, who did his best to explain how he can go into Discord and write prompts into the Midjourney app and generate some amazing art…in minutes. It sounded cool at the time but cumbersome and dense, I didn’t bite and I’m glad I didn’t. In what seemed like overnight, I started seeing these strangely rendered images appear on social media, mostly on the Midjourney pages. They’re A.I. generated images of anything you ask it to create, like “The Avengers directed by Stanley Kubrick” or “Angry sandwiches with 1000 eyes”, the most unbeleivable rendered art I’ve ever seen but all the same in texture and tone. Then I learned very quickly from designers online that the A.I. takes (steals) imagery it doesn’t own and there’s really no safeguards in place yet.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, I read this tweet from James L. Cook:
[I was watching an interview with Noam Chomsky and he was asked about AI software, specifically ChatGPT and its impact on education. He replied that GhatGPT isn’t about learning, it’s about avoiding learning.
And then the light went on.
Recently I was in a discussion with a peer group about an article written by James Marriot for the Times. He’s basically an art school drop out that never spent any real time developing his skill to become an artist. And now he’s bitter that he’s not successful and that artists with real skill are “Gatekeepers” to his success.
To be honest it was a very entitled rant that demonized people who have worked very hard to hone their craft as elitists and prestige squatters. In his article he welcomes AI image generators because he thinks it levels the playing field between his mediocre efforts and those snobby, gatekeeping artists.
And that’s where the connection hit…. (channels Chomsky) AI Image generating isn’t about making art. It’s about AVOIDING making art. Let the computer do it. I’m too lazy to log the long emotionally wearing hours. I’m too impatient and entitled to listen to masters. I’m too self-absorbed to spend my time laboring over a work that requires me to use sophisticated critical thinking. Let the machine do it.
AI Image generation isn’t about making art. It’s about AVOIDING MAKING art.]
This both scared and angered me at the same time, my complaint is that there are those who look to profit from learning A.I. in mere hours and selling the renders as their own. A.I. ads started popping up on Facebook with headlines like, “I can create stunning works of art in seconds!” from one new A.I. app after another. I won’t go into the details, but these renders are only fantastical imagery that lack any grasp of typography and have no practical way of being produced, you’ll still need a designer for the production. And the hand renders are all fucked up.
The tweet above mentioned “leveling the playing field between the gatekeeping art snobs and the AI generators.” I’ll take my 33 years experience and meet you on that playing field, then we’ll see who’s work can be produced correctly.
Sincerely,
The Snobby Gatekeeper from The Complaint Dept.
(I hope all this made sense, go look at Bill Sienkiewicz’s Facebook page for more info)
Thoughts?
That was a long one, but you guys asked…
Be beautiful and awesome to one another out there Sneakers, until next time.