201–210 of 279 posts
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Modern "journalism" is mostly copy pasting content from Reddit. BuzzFeed turns AskReddits into listicles, higher quality publications turn Reddit posts into long form content.
I was bitching in another thread about IBM Watson and had a Reuters journalist email my HN-only address who said he was working on a story about it.
They're 99.9% freelancers.
For a more modern yet still dystopian talking-train kids program, check out Chuggington. It's also British, but instead of the Fat Controller, there's "Vee", a disembodied GlaDOS-like female voice who orders the trains around via loudspeaker and chastises them when they're naughty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuggington
One thing that I think is true of most current children’s TV, but which struck me particularly during Chuggington is how consistently anti-individualistic it all is: teamwork is always the right answer, and doing something on your own is a recipe for trouble. I don’t remember this being quite so emphatic in the past (but it does align with, e.g., the current crop of “how to be a good software engineer” posts.)
> In 2009, the show went completely C.G.I. As much as I love the New Yorker, my fondest hope is that one day the N.Y.C. media will free themselves from whatever repressive authoritarian soul compels them to put those dots in every single acronym and initialism, when the rest of the country abandoned the dots long ago. They even put them in names that once were initialisms but now are genuine names on their own: they…
("S" is dit dit dit in Morse, and "O" is "dah dah dah".) Some old Nokia phone used to have a single-pitched ringtone for text messages that sounded ". . . _ _ . . .", which is Morse code for SMS.
The 1100, the most popular phone ever made.
Thomas & Friends is gold. The show is dignified and wholesome. It is always about respect, diligence, and humility. It isn't there for stupid antics and wacky laughs. It doesn't blast color explosions and ADHD-fueled off-the-charts mind-numbing exuburance to capture kids attention. And it's been doing that for decades (pretty much eternity, as far as kids TV goes). Not since Mr. Rogers has there been a better kids TV…
I'd rather let my daughter watch SpongeBob or Octonauts or Ghibli movies rather than shows that tell her that every aspect of her self worth should be defined by how useful she is to the rich people in town. And that's the underlying justification for a lot of the episodes: Thomas has an obligation to be grateful for his work and to do as he's told. Even when he doesn't like the job. Even if there are better things f…
Now, is the message of the series that Man enslaves machines, or that Man Enslaved becomes a machine?
And should you aspire to become master of the machines, or slave to the Man?
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> we live in a corporate-totalitarian > dystopia Right. This year is the worst . Except for all the preceeding ones.
We have always lived in a corporate-totalitarian dystopia, though it has been called different names in the past, such as colonial rule, monarchy, feudalism, samsara and Babylon.
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I don't show Thomas to my kids for that reason (and because of the show's racism)[1], but I can totally see where your mother came from. I avoid showing Fireman Sam to my 4yo son because otherwise he channels Nicholas—the self-centered, boastful troublemaker—so much that he's not manageable. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15363728
> Nicholas—the self-centered, boastful troublemaker Norman Price? He always gets his comeuppance + a fire safety tip. Maybe have a chat after an episode to talk about what happened to Norman & what about his behaviour got him in trouble.
I used to watch episodes with my son (and comment immediately when Norman behaves like an idiot), but I can't watch every episode with him, and the fact that Norman gets comeuppance doesn't prevent my son from adopting his worse traits.
Also, IIRC even if the situation doesn't turn right for him, the chraracter rarely regrets anything beside getting caught.
Beside specific stories, there are two things in the general set up of Thomas that makes it IMO a toxic show. - The trains, who have children's minds, are unquestionably servile. They obey a pompous and capricious elite (humans) and the narrator goes along for the ride. Obeying is very important for Thomas (who's physically constrained to spend his life on rails). He'll do whatever is needed to stay in his master's g…
> The trains, who have children's minds, are unquestionably servile The trains, who have children's minds, are constantly breaking rules, forming petty cliques, tormenting each other, and ultimately getting some comeuppance. How could they be used to teach obedience if they never showed the folly of not following instructions??
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This analysis, while novel and interesting to me, is not supported by the bulk of events in the early Old Testament. I will name some examples of God personally meting out the death sentence en masse as punishment for sin in various books of the Old Testament. 1. The Great Flood (Genesis), 2. Sodom (Genesis), 3. The Plagues of Egypt (Exodus), 4. The Exile of the Israelites from the Promised Land (Exodus). Redemption,…
> This analysis, while novel and interesting to me, is not supported by the bulk of events in the early Old Testament. Fair enough. But my point was that the analysis was the analysis of the New Testament authors. People are free to provide their own critical analysis, but they're disagreeing with Peter, Paul, and the Jesus of the Gospels even. I think people that hold this viewpoint and care to be rigorous about it…
Man, I really wish hn had a follow button so I could read more of your level headed and insightful responses :)
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There is a risk of setting up a situation where "useful" is determined by presumed authority rather than any objective sense of utility. There's also the problem of how to deal with things that are not useful now , but presumably will be (in an emergency, for example.) There's also the problem of usefulness that is not communicated effectively; maybe we don't know how to express the usefulness of some activity. This…
I see what you mean. But what else can we do other than prepare children to be assessed in terms of now-usefulness? When they come into contact with team activities ( sports etc ), the world of work or even just small social groups they will be graded implicitly and explicitly by the value they contribute. Should we not prepare them for that? Even here on HN those who are lauded as heroic engineers are those seen as…
The question is: Prepare them to be graded, or prepare them to grade? Both of those are a result of their education.
> Even here on HN those who are lauded as heroic engineers are those seen as Really Useful ( started a space company, have a lot of github contributions, maintain an OS kernel etc ), not the quiet cogs who churn-out CRUD apps in Fortune 100s.
Do you think those "Really Useful" people got where they are now by following what was "now-usefulness" at the time? I would argue they got there precisely because they challenged the status quo, and made a bet on what would be valued down the line, a risky bet at that (you just don't hear about those who made bets that didn't work out).
Those quiet cogs are actually precisely the ones who are "useful" in the authoritarian sense: They contribute to what the powers that be want to use them for.