Celebrating the luminous, quiet and noisy joys of the season, Quentin Tarantino has phasers set to kill for Captain Picard, and AlphaZero ushers in a new era of mostly fear for Ped and Tom as they ponder the perils of the new AI. Happy Holidays, humans!

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Yay, snow; nay, leaf blowers [00:27]

• Annual Average Snowfall for New England
• Your average American household at Christmas
• Cats in Christmas Trees
• It’s simple and quiet when it snows
• At least Jean-Luc is on board
• First world problems: noisy machines

Tarantino + Trek: A match made in … ? [14:00]

• Patrick Stewart is all-in
• Tarantino: Remix Artist

AlphaZero and the new AI [26:49]

• Long ago, Deep Blue beat Kasparov with brute force
• In Just 4 Hours, Google’s AI Mastered All the Chess Knowledge in History
• AI’s Hype cycle has now circled back, and this time it means business
• Quickly drawing neural networks back in Episode 04
• Machine Learning neatly explained by CGP Grey
• AlphaZero is AI’s Trinity Test moment
• Minority Report’s PreCogs
• Mutual assured destruction
• The Only Winning Move
• Universal Paperclips
• Final thought to ponder: Eponymous Link

Music by Lee Rosevere (CC by 4.0)