Passenger Seat Radio Episode 2021-09-01

Hello everybody, this is Shane R. Monroe and you’re in the passenger seat with me passenger seat radio, hot tub edition. We are back in the tub. Welcome to the show. It’s September 1, yes. Oh my god, I cannot believe it is September already. I turn my back for one second. Next thing you know, it’s frickin September. So September 1 2021. And we are we’re lounging in the hot tub right now. So a little bit earlier, my wife and I will be hot tubbing later. So I thought I would sneak out here while the weather was very, very nice, the sun just went down. And I’m in a nice, I believe it’s 99 degree hot sub right now it feels fantastic. I realized I haven’t done the show in a while I do apologize, especially for those of you who are generously supporting me on Patreon. I do appreciate that. Yeah, it’s just it’s one of those things where first off word has been incredibly busy the last couple of weeks. And so pretty much when I’m when I’m done sitting at my computer for eight hours a day at work. All they want to do is just go sit on the couch and watch TV or go sit in the hot tub. And usually when I’m out in the hot tub, I’m with my wife. And so we don’t, I don’t do a show when of course when she’s out here. So that’s why the show has been a little quiet. But I do have a multitude of topics to talk about. And we’ll get started. I’ve got new games to talk about. I’ve got new new movies to talk about. I got all sorts of stuff to talk about how exciting so you’ve probably if you’re in the same sort of news feeds that I am in. So I’m uh, I kind of I’m a news aggregate guy, right? So I don’t like getting my news from one source. So I’m not despite my political left leanings, I don’t spend all my time on CNN or MSNBC. I like to I like to achieve a homeostasis with my news. And so I use a couple of different news readers. I do use Google News as well. I have like three or four different news consumers I use Feedly for RSS feeds that I’ve had set up for probably 20 years. I use news 360 and there’s a couple of other ones I use too, but those are those are the big ones. And I do like to consume news from a lot of different sources. Oh, hey, turbo, what’s up man? I’ve had the I’ve had the dragon lands the cartoon for about 14 years finally got around to watching it Okay, strange animation. Yeah, you know, the cartoon version of Dragon lands they came out ages ago was actually kind of okay if I remember right, Kiefer Sutherland was a voice in there they got some they got some decent voice actors in there. But you’re right the cartooning was unusual. That’s not always necessarily a bad thing. But yeah, and I think they I think they they kind of they did that on a budget I just don’t think they did it right. It didn’t release right. I think that that show could have done like a billion times better Had it been out now. Because you know, all sorts of animation styles are popular now. I’m not talking just like anime versus Western versus CGI versus You know, I’m just like that new Masters of the Universe right? That’s using a sort of a distinctive animation style I mean, it’s all computer now for the most part. But it uses a distinctive style and then they released like 10 seconds later, they released a Masters of the Universe kids cartoon, which basically it looks like fortnight so it’s kind of interesting and then you still have things like Simpsons or family guy or these other modern modern ish but still seemingly traditionally hand animated. Yeah, yeah, it’s just it was a weird thing. You don’t what reminded me a lot of it didn’t remind me of but in the same sort of style where the the later return to the king cartoon, where they did sort of a zoetrope effect. It was one of those things where you’re watching and going. This is really frickin different and weird, and I don’t know if I like it or not. But yeah, I mean, listen, it wasn’t a dumpster fire, which, unfortunately, like the dungeons and dragons movie was that was a dumpster fire right, the one with Jeremy Irons in it and Damon Wayans and that was just a dumpster fire and you know, there’s no way to there’s no way to rescue that. Right and they just finished up shooting on the new Dungeons and Dragons shows I don’t know, we’ll see. I’m not sure I can deal with Dungeons and Dragons in the new woke society that we live in. I just I feel like there’s a lot of concessions that will be made. I played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons when I was a kid you know, I mean, that’s what you did. If you were a teen in the early 80s Dungeons and Dragons was was part of I mean, you didn’t have to be okay mostly nerds played it I guess I’m trying to think if we had any jobs that played in our game, but let’s be honest, the truth be told, i don’t i don’t i don’t think so. So I guess you still had to be a nerd. A poor night dumpster baby. Exactly. We turn this up. I don’t know why all of a sudden I’m suddenly getting notification after notification the second I get on the show. But yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m with you. It was it’s it’s an interesting it’s an interesting attempt, and I would love I need dragonlance to come back. I need a good quality dragon Lance. Listen, I’m okay with like that new he-man animation. I’m okay with that. If that’s cheaper, and faster and much, much safer, then yeah, let’s get that going on. I’m fine with that. We got to get the casting, right. No, doing any weird substitutions don’t make you know, carom on a disabled Indian woman. You know, don’t don’t don’t mess with it. I mean, if you’re gonna if you’re going to bring the IP to life, let’s we got source material, we’ve got canon, we’ve got 200 books and dragon Lance’s portfolio we can choose from you don’t need to monkey with it. If you’re going to monkey with it, just leave it alone. That’s all I’m saying. If you’re going to monkey with it, leave it alone. So one of the things I had on the back burner, oh, back to the news thing, I know where I was going with that. So I tried to I try to look at news from as many different possible angles as I can. And so you know, I mean, I’ve got in my in my news 360. I’ve got, of course, I’ve got CNN, I’ve got, I’ve got Fox News. I’ve got MSNBC, I’ve got BBC. So I try to I try to get my news from a lot of different sources, just so that I get some sort of an alternative opinion of my own. One of the things that was really going through the news was recently was something called New defy. And I didn’t get a chance to talk about this on the last show. So it was a dangling one, even though the news is a little bit old. Now. New defy is a website that allows you to upload a picture of any female and it will make them naked, using you know, ai blah, blah, blah. So you can take a picture of your neighbor, take a picture of a celebrity, upload it to this website, and it will attempt to match it to a new body. And so there was about 15 different websites or news sources that I saw that was talking about it. And of course, you know, it’s all condemning and yeah, listen, I I am I am, I am completely against this whole revenge porn thing, and I don’t I think that we need, I think we need a digital landscape of common sense stuff. Right? It should be illegal to, to do deep fakes on somebody other than yourself, or somebody who consents to it. Just like that guy. That was the expansion pack that recreated Gerald’s voice, right, instead of letting the original guy do the audio for it. They used AI to replicate this actor’s voice. And I, I believe that we live in a world now, where we need to start looking at digital rights and digital laws in a different sort of way. And I don’t think we’re looking at it right now. Naked news back in the day was cool, real news, but they stripped their clothes off. Yeah, I remember seeing that. That was a real popular thing. But listen, I mean, that’s fine with that. That’s great, what, you know, give them props for coming up with something interesting. But if to have the ability to easily without any barrier of that any barrier of entry, to be able to take a picture of your ex wife, your ex girlfriend, your best friend’s sister that you had a crush on in high school and run them through this tool and create a naked picture of them. Listen, you could do the same thing on your own right? So you could I know what you’re gonna say. You’re gonna say but Shane, with digital fit with digital photography and digital paint tools like Photoshop or PaintShop Pro. Anybody could do that. It’s not a new concept. Right? But what made it What made it something we didn’t need to worry about was that the barrier of entry was very, very high. To create a convincing fake news of your, your ex girlfriend, or the girl next door, or your favorite celebrity, that required a skill set, usually by somebody, a professional in that line of work, that was worried about their livelihood if they got caught making fake nude pictures of their girlfriends or their ex wives, right. So now the problem is anybody with a web browser, and a phone, or a phone, really, any web browser can go to this website and upload a picture of whoever they want, and get a nude picture back of that person to which they there are no moral responsibilities. There’s no legality involved in that. It is a free, it’s a free to go thing. It and I don’t like it. I’m not I’m not in favor of it. And I believe we need regulation to to protect people’s identity. And that listen, and I’m not saying this is just for women. I’m saying this across the board. You know, deep fakes. As I listen, I was ahead of the curve by a good four or five years, I was talking about deep fakes nine years ago, saying that this sort of nonsense was going to be the downfall of our social order. And, you know, I’ve been proven wrong yet. And there is there, it’s getting to the point now where everything can be faked. And, frankly, to quote sneakers, which is a fantastic movie, which I in fact, I just talked to my son, I just had my son and I watch it recently, it’s actually one of my things to talk about. You won’t know who to trust. And it doesn’t matter your political affiliation. It doesn’t matter what your religion is, it doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, white, black, whatever. It is a complete, it is a social issue. And nobody is exempt from it. And we really need to start talking about that as a social order. What are we? What are we willing to allow? What should be illegal? What should carry a heavy penalty? Because there are things I mean, listen, I mean, we talked about this whole deep fake thing prior to that, you know, I hear my dogs are having a good time. What I get to listen to you all the time, you guys wonder how every movie, or every video that I shoot has God’s barking, I can’t even record in the hot sun without the dogs barking. My point is, is the retractions never read. What you see is the headline test. Here is somebody you trust didn’t trust whenever doing something you trust or didn’t trust. The retraction buried on page six is never read. Nobody’s forgiven. And the truth is never seen and a and we really need to we really need to get ahold of that. And video just released a clip yesterday a video clip. And let me give you the name of that. So you can go look it up. New voice AI and videos new voice AI where they have essentially completely perfected Yeah, I don’t want to talk about turbo. I don’t want to talk about politics. I don’t want to talk about Afghanistan. I don’t want to talk about any of that. Because this show is not about political discussion. And I have my own feelings about it. But anyway, listen, I also served did I was I in Afghanistan, though, but I was part of Desert Storm. I have very specific ideas about my country and its service. But I am not going to go into that level of discussion on this show. But let’s talk about this in video voice AI thing. And this is something that’s really gotten a lot of popularity now. It’s got a lot of discussion. And it started off sort of with the whole Witcher three DLC thing, right? Where they faked his voice, no permission, nothing. And now not only can the voice be recreated, but they’ve actually got they’ve actually got the hardest part of speech down pat, which is inflection, speed, emotion, all of the things that voice synthesis was never, it was never possible to do is now possible. AI can be trained to speak like you not just in your voice, but this Speak like you and honestly there’s nothing to protect any of us from this of the abuse of digital AI technology, along with deep fakes and everything else. There’s nothing on the books that really protects us from this stuff. And so the video like I said it was released yesterday should be, it should be relatively easy to find where the guy one of the people that was responsible for this new AI technology from Nvidia actually show they actually show you sort of the progression of digital speech synthesis and how they’ve now managed to recreate the human inflections can they use contractions? Now listen, listen, go up and watch that video. Go up and watch that Nvidia new voice AI video. It’s it’s rather it’s rather disturbing. Not because it’s not cool. Listen, I don’t want to I don’t like coming down on stuff saying it’s not cool. It’s amazing what these people have managed to do. And there are use cases where this is fucking amazing. Val Kilmer is a perfect example of why digital AI speech recreation is a fucking miracle. And it’s a great thing. But like every other tool, it can be used for good or evil. And let’s be honest, technology doesn’t advance in the in the name of good in the name of helping people it’s used in the manner of weaponization. That’s what it’s used for. That’s what makes it popular. So if you go up and you listen to that, that in the in video, audio clip, and in the last week, Val Kilmer has come out Val Kilmer for those of you who are not following along. Val Kilmer has been out of the public Limelight for several years, he had throat cancer, and he is pretty much unable to speak without one of those little voice boxes like from the guy on Southport, one of those little reverberation boxes. Val Kilmer who is an amazing actor has a distinctive amazing speech pattern a beautiful voice is now voiceless. And so with with the digital company with an AI company that’s true sex sex does involve for sex in porn as well which is really what deep fakes is about right? Deep fakes wasn’t around there’s really if you think about it, there’s actually no legitimate good use of deep fakes it’s always no matter how you spin deep fakes it’s really there’s really no good way to spin it. Right the best you can do is use it for D aging celebrities on film, right i mean that’s that’s like one benign use of deep fakes. Everything else is for revenge porn. You know, getting nude nude videos of celebrities having sex whatever. Anyway, let me get back to this Val Kilmer thing because it’s on my list of talking about anyway. So it’s been 20 minutes already have restarted the Jets here. So Bell kimmer lost his voice and he has been quiet in over the last several years he has been digging into his archive of like 40 years of video, so Val Kilmer has been Val Kilmer has been building and creating a documentary about the last 40 years of his life. And it is a great documentary is called Val. The documentary is called Val just now. And as you’re watching this thing, you know when when Christopher Reeve Superman right, the Superman of my era, when he was in a horse riding accident, and he was paralyzed from the neck down. And you see the Man of Steel become the man of a wheelchair. You watched him deteriorate, it was fucking crushing to me to see a huge hero like that, reduced to what he was right. And seeing Val Kilmer being able to speak that to me that kind of crushes Me too. So I sat through this documentary, and I was I felt crushed about it. Now I know a lot of people watch it and think of it is a inspiring tale. It is great to see that Val Kilmer is seeming to be happy, and all that stuff, but it’s like it’s like seeing Christopher even a wheelchair. It’s like Val Kilmer without his voice. It’s crushing to me. But meanwhile, the whole Yeah, see Patrick Swayze, too. So same idea, as well as Andy Whitfield. Right, the original Spartacus guy, that I still have trouble watching Spartacus again. I love that I love that series on stars. And Andy Whitfield made one season and then he died and then you had to replace the guy but we talked about that any of any of these people that have fallen like that it just is crushing the Val camera. So you’re watching this documentary and he’s narrating it. And you’re going, huh? Considering that when you see him on video, he’s knocking through the vice backs like this and you’re sitting going, how is he narrating his own documentary. And we had heard that Val Kilmer was working with a an AI speech group and I can’t remember the name of it off the top of my head. And you’re thinking Wait a minute, is that this is this whole documentary being narrated digitally, like through AI? Wow, it sounds fucking incredible. It sounds like Val Kilmer. Right and so you watch this whole documentary, which by the way is really good. Whether you see it as a tragic tale or a tale of inspiration. It’s well worth your time. If you even are remotely interested in Val Kilmer, if nothing else, seeing some behind the scenes, home shot movies from tombstone are worth the price of admission. But so you get to the end of the documentary and you realize that the documentary has been voiced over by his son and so you’re kind of going wow boy his son sounds just like him. And and so you’re like going okay, so maybe we’re okay about this whole digital speech thing this whole AI speech synthesis thing, maybe we’re okay after all. Well, last week, probably to help promote the documentary and everything Of course, the they released the very first of Val kill MERS digitally recreated voice built by this AI company. And dude, it sounds just like it sounds just like him. It’s got his inflections and his measured tones the way he speaks and it’s like that’s that’s kind of creepy but at the same time you’re thinking well wait a minute. Val Kilmer he’s he could still he could still act but now because you know most film right so for those of you are not like super interested in filmmaking or movie making, what you hear usually from actors on movies is not what was recorded at the time the movie was shot right? So they’ve got you know, you’ve seen these behind the scenes, they’ve got a little boom mic, and they’re recording the two people talking, but when you actually you’re probably hearing is is called looped dialogue or advanced dialogue replacement. So what’ll happen is, is the actors will come in after the movie shot and they’ll rerecord their lines right over top so that the audio doesn’t sound like it was being shot outside. If the okay corral right. Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s how this works. So you’re starting to think about this, you’re going well wait a minute. So Val Kilmer can’t talk anymore. But there’s so much of his voice out there that can be used and harvested to create an AI model of him. Now Kilmer can go back into acting now. And instead of doing ADR, himself, going back into the studio and recording his voice again, which he can’t do, he sends the computer he sends the voice model and the voice model is going to be able to speak for him and do his dialogue replacement. And I was thinking to myself, okay, in this world of disgusting uses of technology, the deep fakes and the the new defy and all this there’s actually something in here that’s that’s actually kind of great. If we can, you know, if we can keep it into the right hands and into the hands of people who are willing to authorize it or allow it. I mean, I can totally see it right? There’s reshoots than the movies all the time. So the actor or actress is done with the movie, they have to go back and do reshoots, the actor or actress is now off on a new on a new project. They can’t come back and rerecord dialogue. This happens all the time. Sometimes they use sound alikes. Sometimes they just they cut that actor out of the reshoots if possible. But now think about it. The actor could sign a waiver and say listen, I authorize you to use my digital AI model to do your reshoots. I need to approve the script. Of course I don’t want to say anything that you know I’m not comfortable saying normally. You know, I want to be inserted into a movie saying the N word or or the F word or whatever, whatever their contract provides for them. And think about it. That could that could allow those reshoots to be done and make the movie better by allowing the director to fulfill his vision and finish his vision by using these voice model trained AI and so you know I’m such I’m so on the fence about what this how bad this can be used what, what this what terrible things that can be used for, but at the same time seeing Val and I know that top guns coming out in November I believe the new Top Gun Maverick. Val Kilmer is in it as Iceman. And how great is that, and you know for a fact, he can’t talk in it. And so either he’s got a silent part, which is not the case. Or he is being dubbed by his son who obviously can do a great job, or this voice AI is going to do it for him. I’m guessing his son did the voice dubbing for since it’s been in the camp for a while, as I understand and this AI thing is only pretty much recently been released. But it’s interesting, you know, it’s interesting that actors almost you know, almost aren’t even needed anymore. You know, you can take Arnold Schwarzenegger, you’ve got plenty of video, you got plenty of audio, and you can make another Terminator movie with him as the Terminator still, but it’s not him. I don’t know. And word F word sing that makes and what does that makes the listener translate and commit that sin? Yeah. Now, listen, I I am not a V i am not of the nature that words hurt people, people let words hurt people. But you know, I will be I will. I understand that there are things that you know, a person would do would not do if they were present, where it could be abused. Right? And that was sort of the argument about the whole Carrollton, the actor that was a Daniel is in Daniel cook. Is that right? Who plays the voice of Gerald in Witcher three, and the Richard Witcher video games. And, you know, he lost a potential source of income and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But in reality, when you’re an actor, you do have certain rights and privileges. You know, a lot of actresses have a no nudity clause. But when they’re in the moment, right, and the director has set the scene and they shot all of this content. Sometimes the actresses will will say Listen, I know I had a no nudity clause. But listen, I believe now being context of the shoe, that this this character needs to be topless, and they do it. And vice versa. There are times when an actress will get nude, but she has very, very specific criteria around the scene that she shoots. So the fact that she appears mute in a scene doesn’t mean when the director goes and does reshoots that they have carte blanche to do whatever they want with that actress from a nudity point of view. So my point is is that actors have rights and when you introduce digital AI like this, you strip away the REITs that they might have been able to do had they been there in person I suppose or been able to record in person or shoot video in person. So anyway, I got a bunch of other crap I want to talk about I really want to sit forever on that but that new defy thing. And of course they’re making money hand over fist on it, right? So this isn’t just a high school prank. These people are actually they’re actually monetizing this. This activity which makes it even worse, in my opinion. Anyway. Let’s see. So I covered the Val Kilmer documentary, which you must see I covered the Nvidia thing I covered new defy Look at that. I got a whole bunch of them knocked off at once. Let’s see, what do I want to do next? What’s my time looking like? I am 28 minutes. Okay. Let’s see. Oh, so let’s talk about kassa binita. Yeah, consent is basically my point. And yeah, and consent isn’t a yes or no, is not a black or white. scenario. Right? That’s my point. All right, enough of that nonsense. Let’s get on. So cassava cassava Nita is a is a rather exotic Mexican restaurant in Colorado. And if you know the name that’s probably either you live in the area that cassava Nina exists in, or you’ve seen South Park, South Park cassava Nita is is is this magical mystical restaurant that Carmen you know went to for his birthday he wanted to go to first birthday. And it was brought up as this amazing you know, restaurant pavilion of wonders right Cliff divers the whole bit. Well, like many other restaurants over the course of the last couple of years, it has been very difficult for them. And they were filing bankruptcy. And cassava needed was going to be no more. And I find it interesting that South Park, the creators of South Park, who just signed this amazing deal, by the way, some unbelievable amount of money to continue the South Park franchise for for their company. They actually went and rescued Castle binita. So they’re, they’re buying it, to keep it alive to preserve it. And I thought that was, I thought that’s pretty cool. You know, I think that’s, I don’t know, I think that’s a really neat thing for them to do. And of course, you know, we’ll see how it all pans out. I mean, this is just the headline version, right? We’ll see, we’ll see what happens when it all shakes out. But how nice it is for them to sort of pay tribute. And I don’t know if they personally had some connection to Castle binita as kids or if it was something they, you know, that meant something to them in their past, or if it’s just something crazy, they heard about in Colorado, and they worked it into the lore of South Park, and now they’re looking to protect it, I don’t know, I thought it was kind of a neat thing. And I wasn’t sure if everybody got to see that. Let’s see. So usually when when when Plex comes out with something new, it is usually to screw over. Those of us who do not use Plex as a advertising based streaming service. So as you know, for those of you who are deep into Plex Plex land, so Plex is a Home media server. So if you want to make up your own Netflix of your own media, that’s what Plex is for. You install Plex on a server at home, you point it to a whole bunch of your media. And you can then watch it like a net like Netflix like you could go on the go. You can go on vacation, you can use whatever device you have, load the Plex app, and you can stream all of your content from home, right, that’s, that’s a plexus. And Plex uses a premium model where you can use it for free. But if you want extra goodies, if you want mobile, offline viewing, if you want some of the perks, you buy a Plex pass. And you can do that monthly, quarterly, yearly or lifetime. And back in the day, lifetime was like 75 bucks, which is that’s a hard pill to swallow. But I’m glad I did, because it’s now double that to get a lifetime pass. But apparently, that model isn’t making them enough money. And in the recent past, Plex has been adding ads sponsored content. And typically speaking, these are channels or services that give you movies and television for free with advertising. Now, if I wanted that I’d have cable TV, which I do not. But you know, listen, people seem to be just fine with advertising. And I don’t I do not understand the draw. But anyway, I guess they would rather have ads and actually pay money, but whatever. Unfortunately, Plex teams seems to lend itself to the opt out process versus the opt in process. So every time they, they, they do something new. They tend to shove it in your face whether you want it or not. And then if you don’t want it, you have to turn it off. And that typically pisses me off because it’s always something advertising based. It’s not. It’s almost never something that’s great for somebody who paid a lifetime pass and it doesn’t like advertising. So when it was recently announced that Plex was creating something called the modern UI, for the Plex server. Your watch I spit on your grave directed by Shane R.. Monroe. Yeah, I can’t I can’t direct a masterpiece like that. Somebody else has to do it. The original I spit on your grave. Of course, not those not those remakes, you know. But anyway, so. So when I heard that this new UI was coming out, we all just got screwed over with the new discover UI that was shoved down all Android TVs throats, including shield TV. By the way, we talked about this at length, when I heard that Plex UI, or Plex was coming out with a modern UI, I just knew they were going to shove it down our throats. And it was going to bring in AD banners just like Google UI. First off, it came out to Roku. And it was the other device that came out for Roku and some other device as a pilot. And I just happen to have a Roku TV here at the hot tub. And so when it came available, it came up as an opt in scenario. And I opted out immediately without even looking at it because I didn’t know much about it and I wasn’t ready to be bombarded with ads. Plus, my wife doesn’t really like change. Oh, Steven Armand row. That’s right. Yeah, sorry. I’ve got my contacts in. And frankly, I see better further away with my contacts than I do close up. I my prescription recently changed. What can I tell you? anyway? Yes, Stephen Armen room. So anyway, so I was doing some reading up on this modern UI. It’s it’s you Just now trickling out to Android TV users, it’s on two of my shield TVs right now. And I got to tell you, you know, this is the one time Plex hit it out of the park, there’s no ads, it’s not there to piss you off. It makes intelligent design decisions. And it’s fully customizable. Whatever you don’t like you can get rid of, or change it to something you do, like. So how great is that? So if you see that pop up, thank you Plex you guys for making an opt in, not opt out. We love it. We love it. That’s all we ask. I mean, listen, we understand if you want to fleece the rubes and show ads sponsored content to people, that’s fine. But most of us aren’t in Plex. If we want that crap, we’ll go to crackle TV, or peacock or one of these other services that have free models that are loaded with advertising. Well, we got apps for that we’re we’re in the Plex world for a completely different use case. So thank you guys for making that opt in. And thank you for actually listening to the community. Apparently, this was a very community driven project. And I was very pleased that, that they did that. So thank you very much. I listened I slap Plex around a lot. And I don’t always want to be the bearer of bad times. Alright, let’s see. So at one point in time, I was talking about the concept of Facebook owning VR and I would rather anybody own VR other than Facebook. And there is a product which is basically the Chinese version of the Oculus quest over it over there. That is, it’s really just a quest to without Facebook, and I’m like you know what, if that ever came over here, I think honestly, I would rather give my personal data to the Chinese than Facebook. It looks like I might have my opportunity to test that theory. tik tok, which is a service which you know, Trump and I completely agree on one thing I don’t want a Chinese social media social networking place application or service going on in the US we have enough digital predators over here we don’t need to import once from abroad. So I’m not I do not appreciate the concept of Tick Tock and honestly I’d be happy if it was canceled and checked out of the country hell along with the rest of the social media networks for that matter. But it seems Tick Tock has purchased Pico which are the manufacturers of the direct quest cousin over there in Asia, so it’s possible that we are going to finally get a standalone VR headset competitor for Facebook. And honestly, I mean I might have to give that some thought. I really dislike tik tok, but I hate Facebook more. And if I had to pledge allegiance to a product I know what Facebook is doing with my data. I don’t know what Tick Tock is doing with it yet, but you can be sure that it’s pretty bad. I don’t know I just I just think it’s kind of funny that at some point I said I’d rather give the Chinese my data than Facebook and now we’re we’re sort of at that decision gate coming up. We’ll have to see how that pans out them. My birthday came and went August 25 of this year and after you cross 14 we pretty much don’t do birthdays anymore. And you know being older and having disposable income it’s not like you have to wait for birthdays or Christmas to buy things that you want. And with the YouTube channel monetized and Amazon monetized and some other things and make a few $100 a month that I could spend on toys or things of that nature. Yeah, fuck all social media Dude, you and I have never been more on the same page and right now send it to Valhalla. Damn was another 20 minutes already. Damn it. I’m gonna have to move this along here. So the only thing really for my birthday that was worth discussing is my son, my son and I play a lot of Overwatch, right? We’re Overwatch fans. And I made a couple of characters. I mean Moira, and I mean diva. And lately I’ve been doing a lot of meaning of sigma and Anna. But let’s be honest, if you pulled my profile up, I have the most time possible playing diva. And so my son bought me a coffee mug because I do I do consume two cups of coffee every morning. And it is a play of the game thing featuring my my my username which is brundlefly right now on on Blizzard and so It says, you know, play the game featuring diva, or brundlefly as diva. It’s pretty cool. I mean, it’s hard to surprise, right? Because it’s hard to buy anything anymore. When you know, when we’re all sort of tied to the same Amazon account, we see the same PayPal stuff. So it’s really hard to make any sort of surprise purchases, but it was really nice to get something I wasn’t expecting for my birthday, especially something that was cool like that. So I released a video recently, in fact yesterday or is it today I lose track of time, I think it was this morning. A steam deck 3d printed model. So I’ve been I’ve been really interested in the steam deck, I’ve talked about it here I’ve shot a couple of videos. But when we have our, we have our promo materials to talk about. So when I saw that there was a 3d model version of exacting specification of the steam deck available for 3d printing, I reached out to a friend Javier friend of the show, and he printed me a a full one to one replica in plastic Of course of the steam deck and send it to me. And so one of the things that I was I’m really concerned about the steam deck are the weight, right because it’s pretty heavy, it’s 669 grams or 1.47 pounds, which is pretty damn heavy, pretty much doubling the weight of a switch along with its rather large size and the very interesting button placement right so you’ve got the two analog sticks that are sort of inset and then you’ve got the D pad and the buttons sort of almost falling off the edge of the steam deck. And so you can look at pictures and you can listen to people talk about it but if you really want to fashion your own opinion you um Yeah, exactly. I blame the second COVID shot honestly but yeah, so so I got a hold on one of these things and I was able to shoot a video that actually shows that I can I can do a comfort test I can do an ergonomic test. How does this feel? How does my hand placement feel? How do the grips feel? And so I released this video in the last 24 hours or so if you’re interested in seeing what that looks like and then I even weighted it down perfectly to 669 grams so that we can kind of get a feeling of what the weight felt like everybody’s all too busy talking about steam o ‘s and talking about 800 P Yeah listen. All we can do is speculate on a lot of this stuff because the only people that have gotten to see this thing and test it have been in a very closed environment. We don’t we’re not going to be able to do anything to speculate but to be able to discuss the ergonomics and the weight and the comfort that’s something we could do right now. And so I wanted to do that I thought that was a cool idea. I played through for a full I don’t know two days or however long it allowed me to play the Diablo two resurrected now I own Diablo three and I’ll be honest with you I’m not a huge Diablo three fan. I was a huge fan of Diablo one and Diablo two however, and they’ve done a complete remastering of Diablo two and it’s going to be available I think a few weeks, but they had an open stress test beta where for a couple of days you could play alone even though it was multiplayer only was still you can play it alone. And it was really neat to feel Diablo two with a controller mapping full controller mapping and they did it right. It was kind of fun to revisit that world. I got really sucked in I played for, I don’t know 14 to the 24 hours or whatever it was that it was available. So I was very I’m very excited about it. I’m going to probably pick it up when it comes out. So if you miss the opportunity, and you were looking for somebody that went back and revisited it and revisited it Yes. I think it was cool and you might want to keep an eye on if you’re Diablo two fan. Labyrinth came out in 4k. Actually this is not the first time it’s come out in 4k. It came out in 4k earlier in the year. But this time it’s come out with the 35th anniversary edition with one full hour of more experts now. Whether you love Labyrinth and you hate Labyrinth It is one of it is one of those movies that I continue to buy over and over again. And it was no exception. I did skip the last 4k version. And I’m glad I did because I picked up the new 4k edition that just came out. I need to understand why. I want to understand why the print looks as bad as it does. This is the I mean this is supposed to be a 4k remaster. It’s supposed to be you were supposed to be this Colossus. You were this great legendary thing and yet gains. So I popped this 4k into my PC. And by the way, new copy protection on that guy, so I had to wait about 24 or 48 hours for DVD fab to unlock it, because the only way I can watch anything in 4k is on my computer. And so once that got unlocked, I started looking at the video, and it’s a mess. I’m gonna be honest with you, it’s a mess. And so I went back and I looked at the blu ray, and I’m realizing, wait a minute, it’s kind of a mess, too. And then I went back to the last copy that I have the DVD and it’s still a mess. And I’m thinking what the hell’s wrong with this movie? It did did is this one of those things where they lost the original print and this is from liking one of those intermediate prints. This is how they made this because it doesn’t look good. It doesn’t look good in 4k. It doesn’t look good in 10 ATP, why doesn’t this movie look better? And I still don’t know. So I was reading some reviews and they said that you should keep the last 4k because it looks better. So naturally, in the interest of owning every single goddamn version of Labyrinth that ever frickin got released. I think I have it on LaserDisc too. Now that I think about it. I went ahead and ordered the old 4k version of it. And it looks like as to I don’t get it. Yeah, I know David Bowie’s codpieces the thing of legend, I’m sure. But yeah, so I don’t understand. If you are. Listen, it’s Labyrinth, and you’re gonna own it. If Labyrinth is your thing, you’re gonna own it anyway. I’m just saying they tend. If you were hoping for this amazing, amazing 4k release, it’s, um, I’m not excited about it. And I wanted to warn my audience that you might want to reconsider. In fact, a lot of people say that the last blu ray version is the best version of the film that’s out there. Honestly, it still has the same crappy looking texture, not green, but there’s a texture to it. We’re literally like, if you’re looking at a white wall, it looks like there’s almost bugs crawling all over it. Because it’s jiggling and jumping all over the place. It’s not green. It’s something else. And I don’t know what it is, but it makes me mentally tired. Am I looking at 47 I should probably wrap this up. I got a couple other topics to talk about, but I think they’re gonna have to wait. I started playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. And I want to talk about that. I started rewriting Desperate Housewives. I know, I know. Remember, I have very low tea. So these sorts of shows attract me. But I got some interesting things to talk about with that. My son and I watch sneakers recently, I want to talk more about sneakers. But I don’t think we’ve got time for any of that. I’m gonna get my butt back in the house. Get a couple things done so I can have a proper hot tub somewhat time with my wife later. I hope you enjoyed the show. This is Shane Arman road patency radio. Thank you for joining me in my hot tub tonight. And as always, thank you so much for watching or listening in this case, take care