Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ted Turner has died

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 255 posts

Re: Ted Turner has died

#171

Post by westurner »

daveslash wrote: post #40
bsimpson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL Turner was a creator of Captain Planet.

I think I heard somewhere (can't find reliable source right now) that he created Captain Planet as a revenge. He had some renewable energy initiative/deal that he was trying to get pushed through that got clobbered by big oil lobbyists. So he created Captain Planet as some revenge scheme.

Hadn't heard that.

Oil price shock and a curiously delayed hostage situation displaced Carter in the 1980 election. And we've debt-financed trillions in oil commodity market manipulating wars since.

From "The surprising story behind the making of 'Captain Planet'" (2021) https://grist.org/culture/captain-planet-planeteers-real-sto... :

> “Our mission was to inspire and to educate the next generation of environmental activists,” Pyle said. She and producer Nicholas Boxer made it a point to slip as much planetary realness into the show’s fantastical plotlines. In fact, Pyle says many ideas were taken directly from the Global 2000 Report to the President, a 1980 paper commissioned by Jimmy Carter that warned of environmental disaster should policies fail to account for the world’s booming population growth.

The Global 2000 Report to the President (aka "The Doomsday Report") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_2000_Report_to_the_...

Looks like it was predictively close on population estimates, but the 100% increase in food price production wasn't accurate (though we do have soil depletion and foreign mineral depletion instead).

FAO Food Price Index: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAO_Food_Price_Index

Unknown how much affect there was on the indicator due to calling attention to the indicator with such report.

/? oil disasters prior to 1980: https://www.google.com/search?q=oil+disasters+prior+to+1980

Ixtoc I oil spill in 1979 (2nd after Deepwater Horizon, which also resulted in dying dolphins and fish and birds on the beach) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I_oil_spill

Earth Day (April 22nd) was created in response to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day#1969_Santa_Barbara_o...

Big oil lobbyists haven't paid their bills for foreign wars.

Over the estimated interval of 1980 through 2000, Gross National Debt to GDP ratio grew from 35% to 59%. GND-to-GDP is approximately 120% in 2026.

The Carter plan for renewables would've saved trillions of dollars and many lives compared to the 1980-1992 Reagan-Bush debt-financed oil wars.

FWIU the Limits to Growth report is more accurate than the Global 2000 report that - TIL - led to Captain Planet and the Planeteers for us kids back then.

Re: Ted Turner has died

#172

Post by mc32 »

e40 wrote: post #107
joecool1029 wrote: post #90

#4 largest private land owner in the US: https://landreport.com/land-report-100#top-100 Wonder what's going to be done with it now that he's dead.

Jane Fonda was his last spouse. I hope he left it to her. She's a very cool lady with a great head on her shoulders. A recent interview (The Interview, NYT) is worth listening to. She talked very positive about Ted in this interview, which made me think they had a good relationship still.

She had a terrible influence against nuclear energy which retarded the industry by five decades!

We would not be in the pickle we are if she didn’t mindlessly scare and misinform people undermining a whole industry based on her misunderstanding.

Re: Ted Turner has died

#173

Post by iberator »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #69
mekdoonggi wrote: post #42

Ted Turner owned the largest American Bison herd (~45k animals), supplying meat for his "Ted's Montana Grill" restaurants. I don't know much else about the man, but as a supporter of Bison I can commend that part of his legacy. An impressive vision and execution.

> but as a supporter of Bison If you support Bison, why commend someone who killed them for a profit?

he also gave LIFE - people need food for survival AND full protein to grow muscles and brain.

Meat is super efficient for protein - thats why every successful Civilization does it

Re: Ted Turner has died

#174

Post by kelnos »

kstrauser wrote: post #162
jst1fthsdys wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about Americans who go serve in the IDF, and avoid serving in the US military, and then come back to the US?

Indifferent. We're not at war against the IDF. Go and join the French Foreign Legion for all I care, so long as they're not fighting American forces.

That's a bit of a weird position to take. You seem to put "American forces" in a special bucket where, even if the actions the US military are taking is wrong, the support and reputation of "American forces" should still be protected at all costs, and the people they're doing wrong things to don't get to have any support.

Let's imagine an alternate universe where Russia didn't invade Ukraine. There were rumors that they were considering it, though, and Europe was not feeling particularly secure, afraid that Russia would not stop with Ukraine. This Ukraine is, like in our universe, nominally an ally of the West, though not the closest of terms. Poland, a US ally and NATO member, afraid that Russia would invade Ukraine and use it as a forward base to attack Poland, decides to preemptively invade Ukraine in order to establish its own forward base, a buffer zone.

I think many people in the US, myself (half Polish from my mom's side) included, would think this was a horrible thing for Poland to do. A bunch of us decide we're going to support Ukraine, protest on their behalf, and donate to their cause. Would you object to that? If not, then that's hypocritical. If so, that's... not a great look for you either.

Re: Ted Turner has died

#175

Post by esafak »

jacksontheel wrote: post #154
asciimov wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those colorized movies were awful, AI would have just made them awful in their own way. Outside of film restoration, old movies should be enjoyed the way they were made.

I would say film restoration is what allows old movies to be enjoyed the way they were made.

Colorization does not count as restoration. That's enhancement, at best.

Re: Ted Turner has died

#176

Post by dhosek »

lotsoweiners wrote: post #67
dhosek wrote: post #14

He’s been pretty quiet in the news for a while so he sort of fell into the category of those famous people who when they died, half your response is a bit of surprise that they were still alive (which is neither a good nor bad thing, just a thing¹). ⸻ 1. I once had an idea for a party game which involved people trying to guess whether a formerly prominent person was alive or dead.

I guess it would need an internet connection to work but sounds fun.

I made a list that I kept on my phone of potential names (Provided below with the answers removed—I made the list three years ago so I know at least one of the living then are alive no more).

Actors: Gary Burghoff Alan Alda Wayne Rogers Jamie Farr Loretta Switt Harry Morgan Mike Farrell David Ogden Stiers McLean Stevenson Lary Linville Cast of Gilligan’s Island Crocodile Dundee

Musicians: Pete Best Stuart Sutcliffe Frankie Avalon Annette Funicello

Politics: Henry Kissinger Geraldine Ferraro Jane Byrne Michael Bilandic Eugene Sawyer Eddie Vrdolyak

Re: Ted Turner has died

#177

Post by ftcHn »

jcgrillo wrote: post #91
paddy_m wrote: post #53

Ted Turner won the America's cup there in 1977. His team named Courageous was legendary. Robbie Doyle was a team member, and got a degree from Harvard in applied physics. In the middle of the trials to see which team would defend the cup for the US, he remade the sails to be more competitive. Doyle went on to found a racing sailmaking company. I used to live in Newport, RI. I love sailing and introducing people to th…

There was recently another good film on Netflix about the Australian victory at the 1983 America's Cup[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSmns9QWPiE

Sounds great. I'll watch it with the kids. We've recently done this podcast about the history of the cup and it was funny and fascinating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUZmk_G6rFE

Re: Ted Turner has died

#178

Post by jdofaz »

watersb wrote: post #146

I remember when Ted Turner bought a scrappy Atlanta TV station, Channel 17. The channels refer to specific radio frequency allocations. Anything below Channel 12 is "Very High Frequency", and anything above that is "Ultra High Frequency". The Channel number was basically arbitrary, but went up in frequency in numerical order, so Channel 5 had a higher frequency than Channel 17. The higher the frequency, the shorter t…

It flipped after the analog shutoff in 2009, most US TV stations are UHF now (even if the tv displays their VHF channel number)

Re: Ted Turner has died

#179

Post by jason_s »

dhosek wrote: post #14

He’s been pretty quiet in the news for a while so he sort of fell into the category of those famous people who when they died, half your response is a bit of surprise that they were still alive (which is neither a good nor bad thing, just a thing¹). ⸻ 1. I once had an idea for a party game which involved people trying to guess whether a formerly prominent person was alive or dead.

I had a similar idea, Who's Still Alive / Who Died First with pairs of people. (Who died first: Johnny Carson or Ed McMahon? John Glenn or Neil Armstrong?)

Re: Ted Turner has died

#180

Post by kstrauser »

kelnos wrote: post #174
kstrauser wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indifferent. We're not at war against the IDF. Go and join the French Foreign Legion for all I care, so long as they're not fighting American forces.

That's a bit of a weird position to take. You seem to put "American forces" in a special bucket where, even if the actions the US military are taking is wrong, the support and reputation of "American forces" should still be protected at all costs, and the people they're doing wrong things to don't get to have any support. Let's imagine an alternate universe where Russia didn't invade Ukraine. There were rumors that t…

> You seem to put "American forces" in a special bucket where,

I'm a vet. My default setting is to support American troops unless they're shown to be acting wrongly.

> even if the actions the US military are taking is wrong,

That's a bizarre little strawman. No. I can support the soldiers, sailors, and airmen while believing their leadership is wrong. By civilian analogy, I support the employees of HHS even if I think their boss is an idiot.

> the support and reputation of "American forces" should still be protected at all costs, and the people they're doing wrong things to don't get to have any support.

Your words, not mine. I don't feel that way. American leadership orders all kinds of jackassery. The people doing their jobs, presuming they're not committing war crimes (sorry if that was going to be your next gotcha), have my support. I've not heard any accusations that the POWs Fonda "visited", as though Hanoi Hilton was a zoo and they were wildlife on display, were legitimately war criminals. If they were, I would not support them. I for damn sure would not have supported the North Vietnamese government against our own solders, though. If our guys were in the wrong, it would be perfectly possible to prosecute both sets of people.

> Let's imagine an alternate universe

Let me stop you right there. We don't have to invent increasingly contrived scenarios to debate the core case: is it OK to provide aid and comfort to the enemy? It's not. It doesn't mean you have to automatically say your own military is flawless, either. But in the common case, I'm vastly more likely to support the general actions of the US military over those of the People's Army of Vietnam. I don't think that's an especially hot take.

Post reply on HN