Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Sneaky Dragon – the daily podcast released nightly.
This week: mask appeal; accent grave; kool kommandos; they’re no angels; over Cher; Cage match; Downey a peg; (un)funny people; Kentertainment; top movies of 2023; Flower power; web singing; living dolls; Wick-ed game; Margaret’s hope; Holdover joyed; major Payne; turtle wax; Megan it work; pop art pop tart; from Heron out; rolling Stone; praising Godzilla; death throes; trailer tears; minutiae men; overheards; adorabled to death; Bottoms up; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; downtown train; Yoda-lay-he-who; watt’s for snackin’; memo to memoriam; Skink facts; the Photoshop of horrors; and, finally, the viral countdown.
Question of the Week: What does your spouse/significant other think of the show?
Sub-question of the Week: When you’ve been broke, what were your survival strategies?
Thanks for listening.
The Sonny and Cher Show gets animated about Bad, Bad Leroy Brown:
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I am so sorry for anyone who’s stressed out by the current rise of what is considered to be AI (neural network) image generation, and you are clearly not alone, as a trip to any post of an image made with such tools or even appears that it may be made with such tools on social media. People are making their voices heard loud and clear, and I do think that’s one reason that this tech won’t necessarily lead to the dystopia that everyone seems to assume it will. AI images are not tolerated in most artistic spaces, and they won’t be anytime soon.
Having said that, neural filters in Photoshop are AI. AI doesn’t just mean a tool that allowed users to type in a prompt and get an image. The definition is complex, and some people would say that nothing currently available is AI, it’s mostly machine learning. Anyway, neural filters and other Adobe AI tools such as generative fill are AI, in the most commonly used sense of the term. These tools were trained on image sets just like Midjourney, etc. Adobe owns the rights to the images they use for training, and I believe this will be the way of the future for other companies now, largely thanks to the outrage from artists and others concerned about intellectual property. There has never been a tool that just goes online and takes images during the generation process. During training, very little information is taken from any single image. I’m not trying to justify the current AI image tools, but I would like to try and provide some perspective and maybe help ease some of the more intense levels of fear that are out there right now. Love the show, I hope I did not upset anyone by broaching this subject.
Lee
I tell many of my family and friends about the show and have for many years…but the question brings up an interesting situation, nobody close to me even listens to podcasts. None whatsoever. When I offer to share any podcast, Sneaky Dragon included, those closest to me seem to act technically baffled or just stop me with a “Oh, I don’t understand podcasts, never mind” and just move on. The two guys I do a podcast with from time to time listen to a range of things, but my inner circle won’t have any of it. I do share some show content with Susan and in answering your question, she does gravitate towards some of the topics of food and food preparation but nothing about movies and comics pop culture. If you guys ever do a show on Korean Dramas or K-Pop, you might win her over but she still acts like listening to a podcast takes some sort of P.H.D. in order to enjoy it. Believe me, I’ve tried.
I think back to college when the meal card in the dorm just wasn’t enough because the cafeteria closed at 7:00 pm. We had a little pot that boiled water in the dorm room that we’d cook ramen noodles during the after hours or on weekends when the cafeteria was closed. There was a really cheap Mexican all-you-can-eat place off campus called Pancho’s. You went through a cafeteria line and ordered your meal then paid a one-time price. Then if you wanted more from the table, there was a little Mexico flag you raised up a pole that let your server know you were ready for seconds…and thirds…or even fourths. They brought you whatever you wanted on these little blue plates until you’d had enough. I swear, we were like Hobbits in there all day eating, my roommate once ate 22 plates of food on a Sunday afternoon with zero regrets.
Currently, we try not to eat out but maybe once or twice a week since it’s become so expensive. The alternative has been to buy food in bulk and cook it ourselves to save money…so far it’s worked well enough. Susan keeps a tight budget on groceries and will let me know when it’s time to cut corners a bit. She’s the daughter of an accountant so I’ve put all my trust in her. So far it’s worked very well and we’re not starving.
I’m writing from work, so it’s time to get back to the grind now.
Everyone have a happy and safe week, weekend and beyond!!
Hey fellas – and Happy Iranian New Year!
Iranians celebrate new year at the exact moment of Equinox, no matter where on the planet they’re celebrating: I love this, so indulge me:
– Imagine the Earth’s equator as a circle in space
– This circle could be drawn on an imaginary plane surface
– The tilt of the globe means that we in the Northern hemisphere spend winter with the sun on the south side of this surface.
– At 3:06am UK time on Wednesday, the centre of the sun crossed over to the north side of this surface. Hooray!
David – you asked for me to clarify what I meant by ‘The Unholy Trinity’. I have to admit that I’m not sure who coined the phrase, but I may have heard it first on Mark Gatiss’ excellent History of Horror series for the BBC. I remember him using it to describe the trio of very unusual British films which came to define ‘Folk Horror’ – namely ‘Witchfinder General’, ‘Blood on Satan’s Claw’ and ‘The Wicker Man’. There’s an argument to be made that this series (plus Gatiss’ comedy work with the League of Gentlemen) did much to cement the genre in the popular imagination, and led to it becoming the defining horror genre of recent years. [Discuss!]
The three part series is available on YouTube and is well worth a watch, although I won’t link to it here as my post will be quarantined again. Incidentally, when I finally got round to watching ‘Blood on Satan’s Claw’ a few years ago, I was delighted that the principal ‘ooh squire’ corseted village girl was played by my Mum’s friend Tammy – that is, Tamara Ustinov, daughter of Peter. I’d always known she was an actor, but had never seen her in anything. Looking her up on IMDB she gets a credit in ‘Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb’ alongside the highly distracting Valerie Leon.
Sneaky Dragon is one of my solitary listening pleasures: whilst I love picking over the bones of pop culture, my partner has a very different set of references and interests – vive la difference, says I. Several years ago I spent a very happy week redecorating my old apartment with an old partner and listening to ‘Totally Tintin’ together. Your recent trip to Belgium really brought this back: It’s striking how a re-listen to a podcast can trigger very exact memories of what you were doing the first time you heard it.
My frugal eating go to has always been soup – 25p instant noodle and frozen peas in my student days, Miso soup or Caldo Verde with egg and garlic as an older man. Budget culinary revelation of the year: the five minute baguette from ‘Voila Voila’ on Youtube. Top notch French bread at home? Yum! And now I’m hungry. Off to raid the fridge.
Happy sneakin’ and peekin’,
Peter
Since I’m sure you’re wondering, we celebrated Iranian New Year by rolling over in bed and grunting Happy New Year at one another.
Then today I made pan fried trout with garlic and spring onions, served with French beans and Sabzi Polo. That last thing is Iranian style rice, prepared in a rice cooker with salt and oil. You let the water steam off, and let the outer layer form a crust, allowing you to turn the whole thing out onto a plate like a cake. Break open the crust and there’s the soft pillowy rice inside. This time I lined the cooker with thinly sliced potato and added tons of dill, parsley and coriander leaf. I really need to raid that fridge now.
Peter