The Gargle - Smart doxing | Exoskeleton | Digital divinity

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

John-Luke Roberts and Dee Allum join host Alice Fraser for episode 177 of The Gargle.All of the news, with none of the politics.👓 Smart doxing🐻 Fat Bear week🦿 Obsolete exo...skeleton📱 Digital divinity🚦 ReviewsWatch on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@BuglePodcastSupport Bugle podcasts here https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateWritten by Alice Fraser, John-Luke Roberts and Dee AllumProduced by Ped Hunter, with executive production from Chris SkinnerHOW TO SUPPORT THE GARGLE- Keep The Gargle alive and well by joining Team Bugle with a one-off payment, or become a Team Bugler or Super Bugler to receive extra bonus treats!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donate Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is a podcast from The Bugle. Through the endless flow of time, humanity has endured countless wars and trials, always in pursuit of truth. This journey, shrouded at times in darkness, guided at others by light, has nurtured boundless wisdom and strength. The heroes of old wielded their swords, the poets, their brushes and every act etched a story into the fabric of this world. and every act etched a story into the fabric of this world. Across time, threads of fate have converged here, sealed within the pages of this book. This is the tale of a solitary warrior and the conflict within his soul,
Starting point is 00:00:34 of a fierce battle between pure-hearted innocence and the forces of darkness, and of a journey in search of the light known as hope. Within these pages lies an untold truth, a forgotten history. And the gargle. Welcome to the gargle. This is the Sonic Glossy magazine to the Bugles audio newspaper for Visual World. All of the news, none of the politics. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine are John Luke
Starting point is 00:00:59 Roberts. Hi. Hi, how are you? And Dee Allam. Welcome, welcome. Hello., welcome, welcome. Hello, thank you so much. It's delightful to have you here. Before we reach our hands across the chasm of time and embark on this epic adventure that is The Top Stories, let's have a look at the front cover of the magazine. The front cover of this week's magazine is Matt Damon aging always alongside Ben Affleck in something that isn't, but also isn't necessarily not, something like the picture of Dorian Gray. I don't know what one of them is losing and one of them is gaining, but there's definitely
Starting point is 00:01:36 some sort of symbiosis happening there. We'll find out, I assume, at some point. The satirical cartoon this week is Marjorie Taylor-Green suggesting that the Jews control the weather, again delightful, that is true but only specifically is if you're the Jew called Moses and the weather you're trying to control is frog precipitation to prove a point to a pharaoh who's refusing to let your people go. Does the ocean splitting in two count as weather? Well, depends if you used a laser or not. Right. No, but that's not a space laser, is it? If he's just carrying that around, that's the land laser.
Starting point is 00:02:14 Anyone has access to them. I'm pretty sure God counts as a space laser. He's in the sky. He sees through everything. Our top story today is the news that facial recognition technology, which is available in Metta's smart glasses, can instantly dox strangers you meet on the street. Dee Allam, you've met a stranger on the street before.
Starting point is 00:02:40 Can you unpack this story for us? I can, indeed. So it's a strange story. So it's these sort of Harvard students who've taken sort of just using existing technology. So they've taken like a sort of smart glasses kind of thing, and they just go around the street and they use facial recognition recognition software to identify people's names and addresses and political affiliations, all just from a scan of their face. And they've released it, well, not released the technology, but they've sort of released the story about it. And they've said, hey, look how dangerous
Starting point is 00:03:18 this is. This would be so awful. If this fell into the wrong hands, in some ways it seems the safest thing to do would be to not do it in the first place, rather than to make it and do all the things. They found a woman on the street that they got to trust them because they had all this information about her parents and where she went to school and stuff. And it's like, yeah, imagine if two creeps did that. That would be weird. It feels like a slight lack of self-awareness from Harvard, you know, computer science students of all people.
Starting point is 00:03:53 You know, crazy. We've never had them do anything nefarious before. Yeah. They need to take a long, a long, hard look in the mirror and find out where they live and what the definitions are. Exactly, yeah. It's, you know, who could have seen this coming? Apart from sort of everyone who's ever lived, I think, would be able to see this coming. Eventually it will fall into the wrong hands, you just have to assume. And then we're all just going to have to live indoors and never go outside, which feels like the trajectory anyway, to be honest. So really nothing's changed, nothing new. We're all just, you know, the totalitarian hellscape is creeping ever closer.
Starting point is 00:04:36 I just feel moderately disappointed, I guess, in the way that technology is encroaching on the traditional territory of like hardworking, old-fashioned creeps. You know, it used to be that if you wanted to shove someone in your penis, you'd have to lure them into a set of bushes using, you know, a bit of charm or deception or flim-flammery or a rabbit that you pulled out of a hat and set free or, you know, you used to have to really sort of turn your mind to these things. You had to work for it, you had to have some cardiovascular strength, you had to have a coat. of turn your mind to these things. You had to work for it, you had to have some cardiovascular strength, you had to have a coat. You had to actually follow people home
Starting point is 00:05:09 to find out where they live. Yeah, raincoats don't come cheap, you know? Especially ones that are full of watches. I don't know why I always think those raincoats that they use for flashing are full of watches. Two birds, one stone, I guess. Just trying to sell a few things at the same time. Because it's like, oh no God,
Starting point is 00:05:24 they're not gonna look at the cock, they're gonna, god, they're not going to look at the cock. They're going to look somewhere else. Ah, they're looking at the produce. That's how you lure them in. No, no, I'm just an honest naked watch salesman. Is it funnier to say tick cock or dick tock? I think we're going to have to throw that into some kind of pole somewhere.
Starting point is 00:05:43 Also, I'm now imagining the coast is thrown open. There's watches down all the sides, but there's also one wristwatch around, around the shaft. That's the masterpiece. Yeah. That's what they call it. Not a timepiece, but a masterpiece. And that's where you put the most expensive one. So if anyone tries to steal it, you do at least get look out the window. If so, you might be at risk. From Zeus. Yes, that Zeus. The infamous sky god. Known for more than just thunderstorms.
Starting point is 00:06:29 Yeah, that's right. Being a perv. Fear not, mortals. Introducing Bolt Blocker. The world's first and only contraceptive specially designed to protect against celestial interventions. With our patented Olympian Shield technology, you'll be safeguarded from every Thunderbolt, shape-shifting swan and golden shower the King of Gods can throw at you. Forget Mount Olympus, you hold the power now. Bolt blocker, because when Zeus comes knocking you'll want more than just an umbrella. I've got this image of a swan with a wristwatch on its penis. That's Zeus! That's Zeus if ever I saw him!
Starting point is 00:07:08 penis. That's Zeus. That's Zeus if ever I saw him. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Geese. Yes, Geese, the angriest duck. Geese, nature's chaos-powered alarm system. They honk, they chase, forget dogs. Geese will f*** them up, forget technology. A computer can't chase a robber down the street pecking at his nuts. Geese, the menace you didn't know you needed. I'm terrified of geese. But I'm fine with swans. And I've realised that it's a class issue and I really need to examine myself a bit. Well maybe it's because you feel like, you know, if only the Queen can eat swans, swans
Starting point is 00:07:41 are unthreatened by everyone else. So swans can only express aggression at the Queen. True. The Queen can eat swans, swans are unthreatened by everyone else. So swans can only express aggression at the queen. True. The queen can eat everyone? What? The queen's dead, Alice. Yes. Did you miss this?
Starting point is 00:07:52 But she can still eat swans from beyond the grave. So there's two main sources of stress for swans, which are, which is the undead queen and, you know, Zeus. Oh no, he was the swan. Yeah. He was the swan. But no, no, but he's not above also f**king a swan. Let's be clear.
Starting point is 00:08:12 He disguised himself as a human to f**k a swan. He disguised himself as the queen. So hang on, but presumably actually the swan eating powers were passed on to Charles. See I don't see, I mean Charles might eat a swan but only if it were an ethically sourced organic swan. Yeah, only if it was like roadkill swan or um, do they grow swan meat in labs? Is that one of the things they're working on just for Charles? If they're not, there's a market sector waiting.
Starting point is 00:08:47 Yeah, is that what democracy really is? Everyone being able to eat all the swans they like? That's the future I can get behind, honestly. Impossible swan. Beyond swan. Get me on board. And are you a mad steampunk professor whose brain and magic-powered windmill hat is spinning wildly out of control, sending plumes of steam and smoke out of the top of your head as your eyes go
Starting point is 00:09:07 round and round in whirly circles? Have your eccentric but practical assistant solve the problem by flinging half a glass of water at you. You'll be angry for a moment, but the sharp shock will have given you a new idea for a perpetual emotion machine, and you'll plunge into the new project with the scatterbrained enthusiasm that characterises your every move. Half a glass of water. You can't have steampunk without the steam. And that brings us to Fat Bear Week news now, and this is the news that Fat Bear Week,
Starting point is 00:09:42 a celebration of brown bears' survival instincts at Cadmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska has been called off because of a disqualification, just to say one of the fat bears ate another one of the fat bears. And I'm pretty sure that the humans watching it and cheering on their favorite fat bear had not anticipated this descent into gruesome bear on bear cannibalism. John Luke Roberts, can you unpack this story a little bit for us? Fat bear weak? No! Fat bear strong! So the fat bear week is, it's in Alaska, they do this at the National Park, one of the National Parks in Alaska, it's body positivity I think
Starting point is 00:10:23 for bears. I don't think bears need body positivity. I think they've always been very comfortable in their skins. We don't need to go, you go bear, you get as fat as you like. They're happy being fat. They like to be fat, but you know, that's good. So the article said, one bear, 469, killed another bear, 402. And now I did read that and I first off, I did think that was their ages. And I thought, wow, I did not know that they lasted that long. That's longer than tortoises. But actually, it's their names. They've named them numbers, which I feel like, at the point when you're going down the like fat bear week and you're giving them like, you know, photos of them and letting people vote on who their favorite fat bear is,
Starting point is 00:11:01 just give them names. You're not, we know you're out of the science area now. We know that you've started anthropomorphizing. And that's the other thing. They said, when they did one kid did kill each other, one of the people said, one of the rangers was going, oh, well we can't anthropomorphize them. And they go, what do you think you're doing? You're doing a beauty contest on who's the fattest bear.
Starting point is 00:11:20 You've been anthropomorphizing them. Why can't we? Anyway, one horrible murderous bear killed another and got away with it. That's what went on. Hauled the carcass to the middle of the forest, fed on it a bit until another bear called, I don't know, 12 or something came along and fought that bear off to take the carcass away. Yes, well so this is the thing. Fitz, who's Mike, Mike Fitz is the resident naturalist with the webcam company that has streamed this action live to the Internet of Horrified Office Workers watching from home.
Starting point is 00:11:53 This is a naked man who set up a webcam. Oh, naturalist. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. He's sort of he said, I think we're all in a little bit of a loss for words, calling 402 a beloved bear. And I just think it's not, this is what happens in nature. What did you expect if you set up a live webcam at watching the bears? They're going to, it's not an unexpected, it's not an unheard of thing that a bear should kill another bear. I don't understand. I mean, obviously I've chosen this news story, but part of me doesn't understand why it's a news story.
Starting point is 00:12:27 Like does a bear shit in the woods? Yes. After it's killed and eaten another bear is. Yeah. People have been following these bears for years. Like the, like the fat bear week thing has been going on for a while. Obviously the naturalists, they, you know, we've been following this bear for a long time and, and four Oh two, the one that was killed was, has been, had been a mother of multiple litters. I think it's just like when you're, you know, we've been following these bears for a long time. And 402, the one that was killed, had been a mother of multiple litters. I think it's just like when you're in season five or six of a TV show, and the characters that you've known and loved for all this time, that they come to blows and one of them doesn't make it. I think people have become emotionally invested already in the specific bears, rather than just hearing of these bears for the first time,
Starting point is 00:13:07 and then being like, oh no, you know, like they really wanted these bears to do well together as a team, but they just couldn't make it work. It's like a jumping the shark moment, but a eating the bear. That would have been a very different episode of Happy Days, I think. What if Fonz had just killed and eaten a bear? I think I'd be rooting for the Fonz actually in that. If it was the Fonz versus a bear, I think I'd go for the underdog. Oh, of course.
Starting point is 00:13:32 You couldn't. I'd be good and hope for the other way around. That would be a very different episode. A horrible episode, yeah. The problem is these reality television shows always become self-referential season on season and so they build their kind of their own vocabulary. So next season not only will the apex bear be forced to kill another bear it will then be forced to cook it under time pressure and then have it tasted by a panel of judges.
Starting point is 00:13:58 Who would judge the bear cuisine? Yogi! Yogi knows his food stuff. Yeah, Willy the Pooh, is he a bear? Yes? Yeah, but he's got such a sweet tooth that I'm not sure he's really... Well, same issue, I guess. It's not marmalade. You're fine. Just imagine that if Paddington always kept a little bit of bear meat underneath his hat. Shared it with the Queen! Just, yeah, to round out that swan. I know it's an ugly thought, but I am sort of...
Starting point is 00:14:32 I don't really know why it had to be Bear 402. I know this is ugly, but why couldn't it have been Bear 404? I mean, 404 never does anything, doesn't function, just sits there broken, you know, I don't have no time. You know why it could be 404? Because 404 not found. High five. There we go, all right. Sorry, I took that as a mark of aggression as you tried to high five. It was,
Starting point is 00:15:00 I suddenly thought you'd gone into predator mode. 469 all over again. Is it 469? It is 469, yeah. That's reciprocal oral sex with a four next to it. That's what it started doing afterwards actually. Oh no. Oh no. Oh, they're not being by that point, they're really.
Starting point is 00:15:22 Spits the watch out and then carries on going. Is that a big hand in your mouth? Are you just happy to see me? That brings us to our reviews section. As you know, each week we ask our guest editors to review something out of Five Stars. John Luke Roberts, what have you brought in for us this week? Pedestrian crossings. I used to know where I stood with pedestrian crossings,
Starting point is 00:15:51 patiently next to the road, but now they've got pelican crossings in specific. And I've always been happy with them being named after animals, even though there's no animals involved. Zebra crossings as well. They have at least a nod to the zebra, which I think is rather better than the pelican crossings because the Pelican crossings don't, you know, there's no big like pouch that you get to sit in and then be carried across the road.
Starting point is 00:16:12 And that's actually quite a good idea. I might put that in, but there's no name left for it. Can't be called the Pelican crossing now. It would have to be called a big wet pouch. Is it wet? I guess it's wet, must be. They've got- Marsupial. Marsupial, yeah! Oh, hop me across, hop me across, Kanga. So they've moved in quite a few places, and it's mainly because I went to Bristol yesterday
Starting point is 00:16:37 and they've done it there. They did it in Edinburgh. Instead of putting the green and red figures over the road, they put them next to you, next to the button. So they're not where you're looking, where you want to walk. So which makes perfect sense. It was always that worked. You look at them, you walk towards them. They put it to your side so that you have to look to your side and then walk sideways across the road. Now that's, I don't, I've come to the conclusion that this is a conspiracy and that giant crabs
Starting point is 00:17:09 have been designing our pedestrian crossings and it's a foreshadowing of a takeover. I don't like this. I don't know how they're designing it because I don't know how they hold the pencils with those claws. But the fact remains, I have lost faith in our pedestrian crossings I will
Starting point is 00:17:25 be now crossing the road at unmarked places out of in protest and taking the the danger to my own safety by doing that so I would like to give pedestrian crossings the redesign one star out of five one, one star flashing green out of five. Dean, what have you put in? Well, it's not long before those pictures are pictures of crabs, I tell you. It's not long. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:51 You wake up one morning, you look up, you go, oh, bloody hell. And you'll think of me. You'll think John Luke warned us. Everything evolves crab wood. I don't know what else to tell you. Oh, it is such a pleasure. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:01 You tell me that fact. And it's both delightful and actually, yeah, I look forward to the piece of being a crab. Yeah, I feel like the idea of evolutionary speaking, crabs are downhill and gravity takes us ever towards crab. Dee, what have you brought in for us to review this week? I have brought in my dog. I've got a dog, which is very exciting.
Starting point is 00:18:29 She's a small dog, very portable, which is great. A great companion, which is obviously lovely, but she's incredibly anxious. She's just like a little sort of white ball of fear and misery, which in many ways is not what I was looking for in a dog. She's so anxious that she just makes me anxious. It's really not ideal. She's a Maltese and they were bred as alarm dogs. So these are dogs that are supposed to just sort of roam around some lovely castle somewhere,
Starting point is 00:19:08 presumably in Malta, to just warn of intruders. So they see an intruder or they hear an intruder, and they just start barking uncontrollably to just kind of alert you to the danger. In sort of modern London, what that means is that anytime anything happens within, I want to say a 200 foot radius of our front door, it means that she'll just start barking. And because London sort of just has like a sort of low level of noise, just constantly. It means that she is just sort of like a smoke alarm that's run out of battery. She's just constant, just like a little, just a little, just a bit,
Starting point is 00:19:51 just sort of all the time. Which is torturous and horrible. So for that reason my dog also gets one star out of five. She, she, she sucks and give me a dog please. I'd like to review coming in this direction around the world on an aeroplane because I was led to believe from my experience of travelling around the world with a toddler and a six month old, who's now an eight month old, that it would be okay.
Starting point is 00:20:26 But I failed to realize it's because we were going in that direction, and now coming back in this direction is f***ed, can I say. Zero stars for traveling in this direction. And I would highly recommend doing that thing that Superman does where he flies into space and goes around the world really, really fast and travels back in time in order to
Starting point is 00:20:48 not make this decision again. And that brings us to our dystopian nightmare news, which is the news that a paralyzed man who had powered exoskeleton has been unsubscribed from his own exoskeleton. Uh, in, in just truly new and bad news, uh, D. Alam, you have a skeleton outside your body. Can you unpack this story for us? I, I'm surprised that you introduce this as the dystopian news of the week, cause we already had the, the glasses.
Starting point is 00:21:23 I feel like there's most of it. The Bears, I guess that's the opposite. That's just that's the most pure natural news. It's just topian. It's neither utopian nor dystopian. 100%. So yes, this it's not a fun story. It's this guy who was in a horse riding accident a decade ago, lost the ability to walk, I think has some kind of crowdfunding campaign to buy this exoskeleton that allowed him to walk again, like a sort of powered kind of deal. And then 10 years pass and the exoskeleton fails because a very small battery
Starting point is 00:22:05 has sort of broken or run out or something, and he goes to the company and asks for a replacement battery, and they say, no, we don't make those anymore. You're going to have to buy a new exoskeleton. It's just such an awful thing for a company to do. They have now, after this whole sort of media campaign by this guy, quite rightly, agreed to replace the battery or, you know, fix the suit. But it just seems like such an insane business strategy. Like they thought they could get away with like they thought
Starting point is 00:22:40 they could out PR Robocop, you know, like this is a cyborg man who has done nothing wrong. It's like imagine being a newspaper editor and someone comes to you and says this guy, you know, this local community hero who's also a cyborg, he's got this story for you and be like, no, that doesn't really sound interesting. That doesn't sound like something we'd like to run. You know, obviously, then it's just gonna come back and bite them very, very quickly. And it did, which is great. Though it is now fixed, but yeah, an unfortunate portent of the future.
Starting point is 00:23:15 Times to come. Yeah, inbuilt obsolescence in machinery that's meant to, literally meant to last a lifetime seems like a terrible plan from a company which doesn't have a lot of foresight. John Luke Roberts. to literally meant to last a lifetime seems like a terrible plan from a company, which doesn't have a lot of foresight. John Luke Roberts. Well, he's all very bleak, isn't it?
Starting point is 00:23:30 Yeah. I mean, it's just also I kind of wish that once they had like gone in and fixed the bit finally after his big campaign, he'd immediately beaten them up. That would have been great. That's how the movie would have gone. He gets his strength back and then he's kickboxing and he's doing it all. Yeah, I think maybe the most depressing thing about it is that you read it and you don't go, what?
Starting point is 00:23:51 That can't happen. You go, oh yeah, I guess that was inevitable that that's how, when every business is designed to make money in as quick bursts as possible without any thought of long-term anything, that this would just be something. And then they get to the point where they're going, yeah, that's what we do. And we're fine with that. It's the business.
Starting point is 00:24:07 That's how we do it. Rather than going, oh, God, we really ought to help this man without him going to the newspapers and saying they won't fix this tiny wire, which they've deliberately built to be tricky to fix, so only they can fix it. Yeah, I mean, the next generation of exoskeletons are going to be like the tractors now that John Deere sells where they can take it over from 1000 kilometers away if they feel like it and make it drive itself into a lake if you don't pay a subscription fees on time. I'm sort of surprised that the issue wasn't that he wasn't paying his subscription. Because everything everything is a subscription.
Starting point is 00:24:42 Now I feel like subscribed exoskekeleton is only a short time away. Oh yeah, it'll keep trying to upsell you. Your own legs will just keep trying to upsell you on platinum extra bendy, cushiony knees for going upstairs. Yeah, jumping over buildings an extra $19.99 a month. Oh, I'd do it for that. I'd do it for... Oh, of course. That's how they get you. That a month, you know. Oh, I'd do it for that. I'd do it for...
Starting point is 00:25:05 Oh, of course. That's how they get you. That's how they get you. You go over the buildings and then you... And then actually the normal walking costs a fortune. That's how they... Yeah, and if you don't pay the additional fee, if you're just on the generic, you know, basic model, your toes whisper advertisements to you in the night and
Starting point is 00:25:26 your shins say perverted things to pass us by until you buy your way out of your pain. Whatever I watch. And that brings us to our last news now and this this is the news, that the world is a very strange place, that no matter what technology we have, people will find some way to staple it to their ancient beliefs and religions. Just an extraordinary number of different people are finding a way to channel their spirituality through the online sphere. John Luke Roberts, you talk to gods and monsters.
Starting point is 00:26:06 Can you unpack this story for us? Basically, a bunch of technologies being used in interesting and bizarre ways for religious purposes. There's Muslim 3D, which is a video game designed to fight Islamophobia. There's a virtual hodge simulator to help people prepare for the holy Islamic pilgrimage. Stressed young people in China
Starting point is 00:26:33 are tapping digital wooden fish. Don't need to go into that, that's self explanatory. Um. Um. Things like that. The one which, there's, Peter, you know, the vegan charity which takes something which is's, well, Peter, you know, the vegan charity, which takes something which is really reasonably good, I guess that makes sense, and then gives you enough,
Starting point is 00:26:54 is unpleasant enough to actually make you, push you away from veganism. I think Peter did a wonderful job on that front. They are building robot elephants for Hindu temples, which is sort of fun, until of course a couple of years in a little bit goes wrong with the battery of the elephant and then Peter refused to fix it and you have to buy a whole new robot elephant. The weirdest one I think is an AI platform that will narrate the Bible in your voice. I didn't know that this was something people wanted. Like I can imagine wanting the Bible read in, you know, Morgan Freeman's voice or some sort of God-like actor, but your own voice, that's something you can do.
Starting point is 00:27:42 It becomes very solipsistic, you know, and I think like there's delusions of grandeur there. If God's word is being given to you in God's voice, there's a point, because it's a long old book, the Bible, where you're going to be going, this guy sounds a lot like me. Oh my God, am I God? Oh my me, am I God? I must be, you know, so I think that's a slippery, slippery slope. That's not my first thought about this, this Bible in your own voice. It felt to me like it was like, you know, because you reading the Bible, you know, like God's, God's a fan of that quite famously, but it's like you're sort of outsourcing that sort of goodwill by being like, no, I am reading it, God, actually. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:28 Even though it's sort of a machine, don't know about machines, you know, you're a very sort of, you're a natural guy. You're very big on, you know, stars and plants and such. You don't, don't worry. I'm doing it. I get the credit. Please give me the credit for reading the book. Well, it does lead to the idea that there'd be a, like on on the reckoning day maybe it will just be machines which get into heaven. If we like have given them all the spirituality to do then we get cut out of the picture.
Starting point is 00:28:53 I mean this is a similar thing to the virtual tomb sweeping. There's an app now where people can go in China there's a tradition of sweeping and cleaning the tombs of your ancestors as a way of keeping their memories alive and there's been an app sweeping and cleaning the tombs of your ancestors as a way of keeping their memories alive. And there's been an app designed so that you can do that from home in a sort of a Sims sort of situation, just sort of clean the virtual tomb, thereby fulfilling your need
Starting point is 00:29:17 to pay respect to your ancestors. But I feel like quite importantly for this process, the actual tomb in real life doesn't get swept. So unless your ancestors are aware of the app, they don't know that you're looking after their grave. From their perspective, you might as well be playing Red Dead Redemption. Oh, so you can clean their tomb as a cowboy. That'd be fun. so you can clean their tomb as a cowboy. That would be fun. Holy ffff.
Starting point is 00:29:54 Surely there's a way to connect the virtual reality tomb to a Roomba, which is in the tomb. So that, you know, the little robot who can go around doing the stuff that you're doing out in the real world and you can put a cowboy hat on that. Why not? I've lost the thread, but why not do that? I think we should., but why not do that? I think we should. Cowboy hats and Roombas. Actually, I'd get a Roomba if it looked like a cowboy. I'm glad we've come to that conclusion. Which brings us to the conclusion
Starting point is 00:30:15 of the conclusion of this magazine. I'm flipping through the ads section at the back. Dee, have you got anything to plug? I have, unfortunately. I'm so sorry. I'm doing a show at the Soho Theatre in London, which is the 10th till the 12th this week, so that's Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I believe this goes out on the Friday, so just Friday and Saturday, as far as everyone listening to this is concerned.
Starting point is 00:30:42 I'm doing a show at the Soho Theatre called Dead Name, this Friday and Saturday. So today and tomorrow, if anyone wants to come and see it, it's at least, it's better than my dog, for sure. Do check it out. John Luke Roberts, have you got anything to plug? Yes. Good lord, have I got something to plug. Yes. Good lord have I got something to plug.
Starting point is 00:31:05 And happily, it fits around these shows quite well. On the 13th, which is this Sunday, I'm doing five of my shows, my 2010 show to 2016 as part of my John Luke Blues retrospective at the Pleasance Theatre in London. Then the following Sunday, I'm doing the next five, show six to show ten. You can get tickets to five in a day and get a 25% discount, which actually means if you want
Starting point is 00:31:32 to come to three shows it's cheaper to buy tickets to five, but don't do that, that will be really annoying. No, four shows, I got that wrong, I did the maths wrong. Anyway, please come, it will be a lot of fun and most of them then I won't do for a very long time, if ever again. And also my podcast, Sound Heap is out. Alish, you're on that. And brilliant on it. And I, it's great.
Starting point is 00:31:57 I'm really enjoying it at the moment. I'm really happy with the stuff we're putting out. It's all remember Rama. Don't know what that is. Listen to the podcast, Sound Heap. Sound Heap. Remember Rama. Don't know what that is? Listen to the podcast. Sound heap. Sound heap. Do go see all 10 of John Luke Roberts' shows. If you possibly can, I would be there if I could. But I'm not. I'm in Tokyo and you can come to my Writers' Intensive afternoon
Starting point is 00:32:17 on the 12th of October. Please come along to the Writers' Intensive if you are writing something and would like me to tell you how to do it better or if you're not writing something and would like me to tell you that you should be it's actually quite good I'm feeling very pleased with the writers intensive and the writers retreats that I've been doing so you can get to that at linktree slash Alice Fraser that's just google linktree slash this link it's linktr.ee slash Alice Fraser but just Google Linktree slash, it's Linktr.ee slash Alice Fraser, but just write Linktree Alice Fraser in your little search bar and it'll all pop up and you can get access to all of my stuff as ever on Patreon, patreon.com slash Alice Fraser.
Starting point is 00:32:55 That's one stop shop full of my stand-up specials, podcast blogs, my twice weekly writers meetings and my salons, go see Dee at the Soho Theatre if you're in London and then see John Luke Roberts. This is a Bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. Our editor is Ped Hunter, your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week. You can listen to other programs from the Bugle including The Bugle, Catharsis, Tiny Revolutions, Top Stories and the gargle wherever you find your podcasts.

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