The Century of the Self (Full Adam Curtis Documentary)

Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television link (Mander was himself an ad executive.) Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly link link Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self link this video While we're at it, A Thousand Clowns link link

Warning: rambling comment. A rambling post deserves a rambling answer, particularly if the rambling is in the wrong direction... link > Every morning, I wake up, drink a glass of Soylent and recite the following: “Today, I will solve challenging problems. Tomorrow, I will also solve challenging problems. Every day, I will solve challenging problems, and then the robots will take over, and I will die a fulfilled man, and someone will post my obituary on Hacker News.” That's this guy: link . Pretty sure he occupies a unique niche in the world though. > I am creating This statement is clearly false, as writing blog posts is in no way related to writing a transpiler. Typically all coding posts are post-mortems. > a JavaScript to Rust transpiler in Haskell, I guess this is a takeoff on the C-to-Rust translator ( link )? (and all the compile-to-JS projects such as GWT, emscripten etc.). But those have actual use cases, whereas going from front-end to deep back-end / systems programming seems like a stretch. It's true there are a lot of programming language and toolkit posts / flames on HN, and I admit they're often kind of shallow. But a small discussion is better than none at all, and it occasionally gets someone knowledgeable to contribute. But there's a qualitative difference between lots of people spending a little time on a subject versus a few people spending a lot of time on a subject. The first is often productive in a wisdom-of-the-crowds sort of way, while the secon

Open borders / illegal immigration from poor / brown countries is a Republican position. They've pushed it since before Reagan's amnesty to benefit corporate special interests. [1] Democrats are late to that game, but now both parties agree: more cheap immigrants for their corporate masters. The Republican party vehemently opposed Donald Trump during the elections of 2015/6 and throughout his first year in office in large part due to his ambivalence toward immigration. There are some opposed to mass immigration among the elected officials of both parties (growing among the Republicans, shrinking among the Democrats), but they remain a minority. Never mind that large majorities of both Republican and Democrat electorates want less immigration [2]... the corporate sponsors want more, thus so do the representatives. This is how politics works in the United States. The Parties put on a puff show of differing over hot button social issues that whip the electorate into a frenzy. Meanwhile the elected representatives of both parties go to great lengths to satisfy their corporate and international donors, who are the same for the representatives of both parties. The plebes fight over the kabuki theater of climate change and transsexual bathrooms while the rulers work together on issues of substance without the interference or awareness of the common man. Perhaps it's better that way? Edward Bernays certainly thought so. [3] [1] link [2] link [3] this video

> and will subtly lose free will and never notice they did. Isn't that happening for decades now ? this video > the people not doing it will be more and more excluded from the regular system. Same with cars, phones, internet

Kids overdiagnoses, while both parents work in corporations and stick them in a school to sit down and shut up for 10 hours a day: ADHD - prescribe amphetamines (Ritalin, Adderall) Gender Dysphoria - prescribe hormone blockers Autism spectrum - Abilify and Risperdal link link Teenager and College Student overdiagnoses: Depression - prescribe SSRIs Diabetes - prescribe Meglitinides Obesity - prescribe diets link link link link Adults: Men - Opioid epidemic since 2008 Women - One in four on antidepressants in middle age Internet Addiction - companies need to boost "engagement" ADD - notifications and multitasking 24/7 is normal now link Elderly in nursing homes: Too many to list We need to realize that these "epidemics" and "rises in incidence" have more to do with the capitalist industry and government working together, than individual incidence. They have women vs men, black vs white, so people are distracted from the real causes: link Big Tech is a big part of the problem, and much of the unhealthy habits and emergent depression come from the influencer industry. In other demographics, unhealthy influences were specifically pushed and promoted until they became normalized. It takes hold easier when you are young and impressionable: Gangsta rap, Drill music - music industry, corrupts Black youth Instagram and TikTok - influencer industry, corrupts adolescent girls Most of the cartoons you watched, down to the "programming", was based around merchandising oppor

> you’d have much of your individuality grinded out of you That doesn't seem too bad now that Adam Curtis ruined it for me. [0] [0] this video

There's No Reason to Fear an Invasion of Chinese Electric Vehicles Fear is an emotion. People need not make purchasing decisions based on emotions. See documentary Century of the Self... [1] I consider logic such as who is going to repair my vehicle and where am I going to get parts , how long will parts be available and how safe is this thing . Perhaps these are answered questions for the cheaper EV imports but I have not seen this articulated anywhere in a confidence inspiring level of detail especially given the current tension between China and the US. The common answer I hear is "but EV's are simpler" which tells me these people have not actually tried to work on one. They are not simple at all and the parts are quite unique and have to be ordered from China . Build out factories in the US and stock up on all the parts first. Show me the USA tested crash safety data, remove all the drive-by-wire nonsense, make the battery packs user serviceable, remove all dial-home telemetry and maybe we can talk otherwise I see this as future throw-away toys that will flood the landfills. [1] - this video [video][4 hours][b&w documentary]