Beanie level: Entertainer-in-training

2024 Round-Up, day 23 – The oldie (not 2024) you loved the best:
– Bring It On Ghost, not because it was an all-time favorite, but it was my 2024 rewatch.
– Family Matters — it may not be an “oldie”, but according to DB’s year-end rules it’s not 2024 🙂 And it’s my other rewatch this year.
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Do NOT tempt fate like that!!!!!

(Who Is She, ep 2)
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Wild Life in America

Australians may like to frighten non-ozzies with tales of their drop bears, but Virginia just had a bear kill a man by dropping on him.

And California has killer squirrels 🙂 If you have played the right computer games you may think of Snathi

Go ahead. Google things like \”squirrels kill voles\” and \”bear drops on man\”.

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    I read it too and it wasn’t even the first American man to be killed by a bear that dropped out of a tree. Crazy. Really gotta think twice about shooting a bear that’s in a tree, fellas.

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    ‘ Aussie’ thank-you.

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    Imagine what Alfred Hitchcock could do with the killer squirrels.

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    I just saw a modern family vid where the girl said she had to fight off a squirrel and i thought girlll, how scary can a squirrel be??

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2024 Roundup
14 Best cameo: A cat. Any cat.

15 Name the plot hole: Sorry. All the holes in the plots are no match for the holes in my memory.

16 Oh, that tall guy: Uh, tall or not, it\’s not the guys I\’m paying attention to.

17 Non K-drama recommendation: Several Youtube channels:
For cats: Claire Luvcat (@claire_luvcat)
For Ukraine news: Perun (@PerunAU) & BigMacs BattleBlog (@BigMakBattleBlog)

18 That awful parenting: There are so many, but I mostly blot them out of my memory.

19 Child actor you know will become a star: Kim So-hyun. Park Shin-hye. Oh, wait. Does Lee Re still qualify?

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How to tell someone hasn’t watched enough kdramas.

(Tale of Lady Ok)
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2024 Roundup:
11- Funniest scene: Seoul Busters’ Nigerian Prince bit 🙂 Close 2nd was Doctor Slump’s shower battle, but I have better memories of the scene from the show I liked more.

12- Your favorite mess: “mess” & “favorite” mix like oil and water. Worst mess I actually finished was Queen Woo, but once again reality takes the cake with everyone’s favorite martial law declaration.

13- The meta you loved: Marry You – “love” would be another overstatement, but I noticed and remembered this bit
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When will characters in kdramas learn to go next to the wall when fleeing down some stairs, not the handrail?

(Face Me, ep 11)

Also, walk/run softly and carry a big stick if you can find one.
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    Hey, drama rules! If not, they would have no other choice than to write properly a scene…

    Also, you forgot: carry your phone with you. Go to a public place where there are lots of people and lulling you is a bit more complicated (go to the hall, not the garage).

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2024 Roundup:
6- This was definitely a case of miscasting: Nope, kdramas hardly ever miss-cast as badly as reality especially at election time.

7- The OST you are obsessed with: \”Obsessed\” is an overstatement, it\’s not kdrama-related and I guess not really an OST, but if you haven\’t seen the Ukrainian Bayraktar song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=890z0skXQzI&rco=1
It came out very soon after the war started, and it helps if you remember the news from then.

8- The childhood connection that actually makes sense: Well, I guess it makes sense that the twins in Marry You have a connection.

9- Most stylish drama (whether it was the cinematography or the costumes, it was a work of art!): Judge From Hell.

10- The real villain: Reality, again.

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    Thank you for Bayraktar.
    As a side note, I’ve been wondering for several years why there aren’t protest and political songs around these parts 🤔

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At least something is available this weekend.

Royal commands for everyone who is anyone to marry. That should raise the birth rate… too bad modern S. K. doesn’t have a king to order that.

Also, who are you and what have you done with the Kdrama character.

(Tale of Lady Ok, ep 3)
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Day 4- Your 2024 crush: Park Se-wan in Seoul Busters, with close competition from Chae Soo-bin, Han Ji-hyun, and (if she’d put that knife away) Park Shin-hye.

Day 5- Drama / scene stealer: Sophie. And various cats.
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Quick! What web site is that?

(Marry YOU, ep 6)

And where is it safe to emigrate to?
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Tip of the day:
Read this
https://www.wired.com/story/website-google-ai-photos-ente/
or just go to
https://theyseeyourphotos.com/
Feed it one or two of your photos (ones that don’t reveal anything special)
Recoil in horror at how much Google can learn from your pics
Then turn off backup to their cloud, arrange to back up your pics to some sunny (meaning non-cloud, or at least non-Google) location.
Then wipe your photos from Google’s servers.

I fed it a pic from an old company x-mas party and it identified the restaurant from the scenery visible thru the window. 😨😨😨 And showed it on a map.

Then I showed it this pic and it correctly identified the location and showed it on a map, but got the city wrong in the text description.
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    I have stubbornly refused from backing up my photos to Google cloud since the very beginning. You made me feel very relieved right now. I wish my family listened to me. They just tell me this is now the world, get used to it…

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      THIS. 💯 THIS.

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        Silly me. I originally had it off, but today I double-checked and it had somehow gotten turned on. It’s off now, and all wiped. Google used to often prompt me to turn it on and I must have mis-tapped sometime.

        I’m not sure what’s scarier: that it gets so much right or that it gets other things wrong, like the city above. And in the x-mas party pic it guessed the ethnicity of my co-workers and got 60% wrong. This mix of accuracy-to-give-credibility and errors seems like the worst combination possible.

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          There used to be a lot more things that it would get wrong or would glitch out on, but it’s improved quite a bit in recent years, but in an uncanny and borderline scary way, imho. I’d rather give as little of myself to it that I can, I have nothing of personal saved on my own personal account, and my work account is my work account, which thankfully, is managed by my workplace, so I don’t even wanna put anything more to it other than work

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          Yes the mix, combined with what was written in the article you linked, about assuming beliefs and tendencies, can get very scary.

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    This gave me war flashbacks of my oppa calling me dumb for saving our Disney+ password on Google. He made me get a password manager.

    Anyway, 99% of my pics are screenshots. I bet google could write my End Year Round Up based on them.

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    This is interesting.

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    Thank you for the PSA My Lord. A much needed reminder to take care in the world we live in. As you rightly pointed out the sheer amount of misinformation that can be disseminated is a true horror.

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So, the other version of Prison Playbook / Wise Prison Life?

(Parole Examiner Lee, ep 6)
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When The Phone Rings and the distorted voice declares martial law. Now is going to be an awkward time to air a show with a presidential spokesperson as a lead.
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What all those phone messages have really meant all along?

(The Trunk, ep 1)
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Because kdrama

(Tale of Lady Ok, ep 2)

Experimenting with screenshots of streaming sites. This one was made with win-print-screen off drama fire. On my disk it is takes several times as much space as equivalent 1080p screenies made by VLC.

And of course, when I tell VLC to take a screenie, it knows to just include the frame from the video without the UI. That’s how all my past screenies were done. But with most streaming sites when you pause them the UI shows on screen (as above) so to get a clean screenie you have to split-second time it while it is playing — you can’t just pause and jump around to get the exact shot you want.

Sob.

And note that drama 🔥 still shows the name of the site that must not be named in the upper right, even though that site shut down before this episode came out. Huh?
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    Dramabeans shrinks files I upload by reducing the resolution, but when I check (by downloading the above screenie from DB) it is still bigger than the files I used to upload. That’s one of the things I wanted to test.

    Windows wants to make png files when you take screenies like I did above, and DB kept it as png, and png is a space hog compared to jpg. So if I want to be kind to DB’s storage needs I would have to separately load each screenie and save it as jpg, which isn’t exactly hard but it’s a pain-in-the-rear extra step.

    I still want to find a way to download shows and use VLC. Sob.

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    The Voldemort/Schrödinger site – must not be named and nobody knows whether it’s dead or alive it the big web box.

    The statement I found from Voldi site was about shutting down some domains. They never mentioned this specific domain as part of the list. However, they do have fewer server options now.

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    I try to pause and lock screen to get a screenshot without the UI. Of course it needs to be timed well. 🙄 I then try to decrease the size of the picture on my computer before posting it. Then of course it is the process of uploading the pictures one by one to post on DB. No wonder at times it takes up to an hour to post with the five screenshots.

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      Cropping the black edges and (if possible) the name of the website also helps to reduce the size of the screenshot.

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Sob.

Words cannot express how much I hate streaming, although they will have to try. Stutters, drops, losing its place when I pause over night… In the good old days, a couple weeks ago, I could download whatever I wanted to watch and then play them with VLC, which is a much, MUCH better player than streaming sites I have seen. I could keep any show I might want to rewatch and never have to worry about it not being available later. It was easier to take lots of screenshots. No lag skipping forward or back. Easier to FF thru closing credits to check for Easter Eggs… Etc, etc.

The net effects of recent changes are likely to be:
1: Shows are more likely to get dropped or not even started, as streaming less-than-brilliant kdramas is less fun compared to other ways I can spend time.
2: Far fewer posts from me with screenies (except old screenies).
3: I spend time (unsuccessfully so far) looking for safe tools to let me get unlimited DRM-free downloads.
4: Future computer purchasing plans might not include a much storage space for downloads (??).

My choices of where to get my kdramas are not just a matter of money. I’m quite willing to spend big on things that I think are worth it — not to put them in the same league, but I spend far more per year supporting Dramabeans and Ukraine than it would take to subscribe to every kdrama pay sight I know of. But most of those sites are not very good. Cost, malware frequency and legal status being equal, I would much rather spend money on a certain late, lamented 🏴‍☠️ site than any remaining site I know of. Because that one was better.

To rate as really good a site must offer good downloads and should carry every kdrama I want to watch, so that I don’t have to sign up for zillions of sites with each one increasing the risk of credit card breaches and information they gather about me being sold to anyone and everyone. I bitched about this on one of my very first posts on the new site back in 2017.
https://www.dramabeans.com/members/lordcobol/activity/184080/
Rant #4 is mostly no longer operative, but otherwise my opinions haven’t changed much.

—–

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, lucky you, but check Wikipedia for Drama cool.
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    *Joins the rant*
    I know what you mean. I’ve never paid (and probably never will pay) for these streaming platforms. We got Disney because it comes with my oppa’s internet or something. And I got Viki because of volunteering. But what we always say as a family is that it makes no sense to pay for bad services.
    Especially for streaming platforms that are expensive compared to how bad and limited they are.
    Disney doesn’t even put all its content in freaking Disney. They divide it with Hulu and other bs. Netflix has so little dramas, and the ones on air don’t even air in the right schedule in my region. And not to even start about the platforms themselves or the crappy subtitles… Or the low quality original content… Yeah, nope. I’m not here to feed hungry capitalist monsters while getting insulted in return.
    The only service I think it’s worth having is Mubi, tbh.

    Anyway, kiss_Asia_n could help? Or my_asia_n…? There’s also an app that rhymes with stream-yo, and it has almost everything. I don’t want to lose your screenshots. 😢

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      Yes, I’m Kissing As… now.
      I know of 4 “unofficial” sites that are still working and there are probably many more, so the anti-piracy crusaders won’t be helping their cause as much as they probably hoped.
      None of the working sites I’ve checked offer downloads for new episodes (at least not that work with my security settings). Asian c . co still offers downloads for episodes that came out before the cool site closed.

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        I think stream-yo with an I is the safest place. But tbh I only use it for western shows or movies. I don’t know if there are torrents available for all recent kdramas. But I think there should be.

        I’m downloading from kiss (because I also prefer VLC) since Cool died. Thankfully, my Asian still works for the old ones.

        I do it from Brave and haven’t had any problem these past two days, but I confess my security isn’t all that high level.

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          I don’t see an option to download on Kiss. Does it appear by magic if you set up an account??? Or are my tight security settings a problem?

          And good luck with that crosswalk 🙂

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            Oops, my mistake. According to my history, it was a my asia I found, not kiss. Sorry. 😔

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            For anybody who has read this far, two sites that seem to have new shows are:
            kiss asian dot com lv
            drama fire dot ink

            Kiss seems to hang and stutter slightly less.
            Fire sometimes has subs when Kiss doesn’t (yet?).

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            And my asia n tv dot rest

            my asia n tv dot ac still has all the old shows, btw.

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            Have you tried kisskh dot co? They do have an option to download but I haven’t tried it out so can’t vouch for quality/security.

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            Yes, I tried kiss kh co a day or two ago. They seem to not have anything new — perhaps like some other sites since d cool went away (?)

            Their download option requires a login. I hate setting up accounts giving away personal info and agreeing to terms and conditions that give away all my rights to everything, so I haven’t set one up with them and won’t unless I hear lots of REALLY good things about them, AND they start carrying new shows.

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        Hey just saw your reply. Wanted to say I see new shows on kisskh every day? Their search function is bad but basically all new k-dramas and c-dramas do show up there.

        Also not specific to that website but I’m like you in not wanting to share personal details/ email accounts. You can create fake temporary email accounts for situations like these though. For example, you can generate one at https://temp-mail.org/en/. Some sites might send a verification mail to the faux email id so just click on that and you’re pretty much set!

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    Joining in your struggle. I am already rather strapped for money and what little I have leftover after bills and living expenses go towards Palestine fundraisers, which will always be a bigger priority for me than mediocre streaming sites with questionable subs and barely any dramas I actually want to watch. I pay for Mubi and can access Criterion through my university, along with a few smaller sites via my local library (with no Asian media) but that’s it. I don’t see the point in paying for all these services with little return. I have no interest in Hulu or Amazon or whatever else is around and I’m not letting corporations run me even dryer than they already do. I sorely miss the days of individual subbers and waiting patiently for their detailed, careful work. You could feel the love and passion behind every translation and every cross-cultural nuance.

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    For downloads, please try mkv drama dot org. I came across it from drama go dot in.

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      And yes please use Brave browser. I’ve been using it for years for the Cool and Kiss sites and have never been subjected to the crazy ads.

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        So many suggestions here that are so close but not close enough.

        For example, drama go . in has working downloads of current shows, but the ones I have tried don’t have subs although they claim to (I’ll keep checking that from time to time). And their stream option doesn’t even work with my security settings.

        FWIW, I’m running Firefox with uBlock Origin + the ad-blocking browser add-on that comes with my paid security suite. I don’t get adds with that combination.

        So far I haven’t found anything better than streaming with kiss or fire. Then I can take screenies with the Windows & PrtScn keys, without pausing so the UI doesn’t clutter up the shot. And if I feel ambitious I load the resulting PNG files into something like Irfanview and save them as JPG to save space.

        @seeker @ladynightshade @miso2019 @enriquequierecagar

        And did anybody go check out my 2017 rants?

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          Yes My Lord I read your 2017 post. Absolutely eye opening.

          There are a few good suggestions here. Kind Beanies are updating the sites as and when they see this article. 🙏🏻

          They have mentioned –

          drama go in

          drama hood

          But as you said the search for the perfect replacement is still on.

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          Basically these suggested sites are apt for streaming. Downloading is another thing altogether.

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          I don’t know any other options, sorry:(

          PS. I read the 2017 rant #4 and I can relate to that annoying feeling of watching how Viki gets like 2 kdramas a year these days (exaggeration but wtv).

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    Andwae!! *screams in drama cool* We need out screenies My Lord. DB Is not DB without them. 🙏🏻

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Day 1-Your favorite drama. Shop For Killers, Spice Up Our Love and Judge From Hell are in a near tie. Family Matters seems promising.

Day 2- Choose a Female lead. Another near tie:
Han Ji-hyun (Spice Up Our Love, Face Me)
Chae Soo-bin (When the Phone Rings)
Park Shin-hye (Judge)
Kim Hye-jun (Shop For Killers)

Day 3- Choose a Male lead. Sophie in Dog Knows

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    I love ALL your recommendations My Lord.
    I was eagerly waiting for A Shop For Killers to be mentioned by someone. 😅🥂

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1 / 4: Our ML shows his teeth so much now I’m seeing teeth everywhere.

5: No reason.

(Marry YOU, ep 4)
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Then what were all those prophecies, fanfics??

(Fiery Priest, ep 6)
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Currently RecapPing

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