Live data from Hacker News

Harold and George Destroy the World

tomclancy.info

91–100 of 322 posts

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#91
post #16

The effects of Idiocracy are much worse than we appreciate. I believe it's hidden in part by technology (as a cognitive crutch) and part by top skilled immigration (people previously suppressed in their undeveloped countries). And education is much, much worse almost everywhere by leaning more to memorization and catering to the lowest common denominator. Student A is bad at math and good at language, student B is th…

Idiocracy really seems to appeal to eugenicists. Is “stupid people breed too much” really an issue we think is worth propagating?

Singapore seems to have done quite well operating on that notion

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#92

The "silver dollar" change isn't -- it's the dime. The design was in the works before the current administration [1], and is only intended to be for the 250th anniversary [2]. The Dept of Defense was only created in the late 1940s. Before that the US had the Dept of War, the Dept of the Navy, and other organizations. The point of calling it "defense" was not because "everyone has the right to defense", but because th…

> the US was promoting the United Nations and waging a Cold War, and wanted to pretend that it would never do anything proactive or aggressive. That is, it was propaganda

Many other countries similarly changed the name of their respective ministries, reflecting the ideal (if not the fact) that war should not be pursued for gain or used to resolve international controversies.

Actions trail behind ideals; ideals are set to remind us of how things should be even if we don't live up to them. Renaming the DoD to DoW reflects an aggressive, violent and ultimately predatory posturing that the West had chosen to abandon after WW2 and many millions of deaths.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird analogy, but it feels similar to the way old music differed to new music. Old music had more variation in volume - volume rises and falls to add nuance to the piece. New music is produced differently and has a more “flat” sound due to everything being louder and variation being reduced by compression. Seems like some parallels to other forms of media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Is the loudness war still going on? I kind of assumed it died out with streaming. Music apps are smart enough nowadays to normalize loudness anyway, and there are better ways of getting attention, right?

I’m not quite sure, tbh.

I mostly listen to pop music or pop-adjacent, which is like the ultra-processed food of music. Highly compressed and generally lacking much dynamism.

I assume there is plenty of interesting dynamism outside of the pop charts and Spotify mixes, but unless I’m listening to live versions or really raw artists, I generally don’t experience them.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#94

No need to do a drive by on Predator Badlands like that, it's a perfectly enjoyable film in its own right. I agree with the author though, there's nothing nearly as emotionally deep or socio-politically engaging as One Battle After Another, and so it would make for poor choice as a double feature to run second in the pairing.

If you read a bit further he does say that the reviews are good and he should give it a proper go

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#95
post #16

The effects of Idiocracy are much worse than we appreciate. I believe it's hidden in part by technology (as a cognitive crutch) and part by top skilled immigration (people previously suppressed in their undeveloped countries). And education is much, much worse almost everywhere by leaning more to memorization and catering to the lowest common denominator. Student A is bad at math and good at language, student B is th…

> And education is much, much worse almost everywhere by leaning more to memorization

The idea that (correct) answers are something that can and may be known is all over the place, lately also in technology (LLMs, curve fitting, etc). Notably, answers must be able to validate themselves, every time. (Western) education used to be about this, before it reoriented towards instruction.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#96
post #70

The author framed this as if "One Battle After Another" was some adult work and they couldn't watch "Predator" afterwards because it was so childish. I had the opposite reaction and could barely make it through 15m of One Battle. The movie opens with women in skin tight dresses and mini skirts with automatic weapons robbing banks and breaking into migrant detention centers while yelling "this is what real power looks…

> That feels like childish nonsense to me but then it is wrapped in this "radical chic" that is supposed to force me to take it seriously. We aren't supposed to take it seriously; it's meant to be "childish nonsense". We can easily see that these women are getting off, sexually and by exercising power over others. A woman in a short dress struts around on a counter and introduces herself as "jungle pussy" to captives…

>But I do feel that people who eat this stuff up have failed to grow up in some fundamental way.

For many people this is just a way to turn their brain off. My wife (backend engineer too) describes it as something similar to cannabis intake as described by other people. Or alchohol.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#97
post #13

I have genuinely put a lot of thought into this lately. I have the sensation like older media was more expressive and thoughtful, there's at least more... interesting flavors there generally... I am happy to ponder and willingly accept this is probably just my perception. I have a couple of theories. The creators of the media are becoming more and more my age. Do they have nothing interesting to say to me as our expe…

I remember reading the letters of Cicero about Gaias Julius (Later known as Cesar) how he complains how the he and his gang is acting all amoral and wearing ridiculous scandalous clothes, waring the togas in provocative feminine fashion.

There are accounts from all over history of how "the times were more thoughtful and moral in the good old days" But here we are, thousands of years later, still complaining about the younger members of our species and how they will bring ruin to us all. Perhaps they will, but it all seems so human to complain about that.

I remember the art of the 90s - when my part of the world got access to marvelous pieces like Thunder in Paradise, Barbed Wire, American Ninja, Bay Watch ... at the time it was considered the pinnacle of art by teenagers like me, and despised by my parents. But at the same time we had things like The Matrix, The Shawshank Redemption, Leon ... We remember the good stuff and the forget the fluff.

There are some real gems being created all the time, maybe not always from Hollywood but human creativity soldiers on.

The Good Place, The Expanse, 3 Body Problem, Horizon Zero Dawn, Expedition 33, Project Hail Marry. There is a constant stream of incredible thoughtful stuff being produced - books, games, movies, essays, videos, podcasts - the medium might change but humans always try to find ways to discover, understand and express the world around us in novel ways, one just needs to listen/watch.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#98
post #55
post #35

What’s childish is thinking that calling the Department of War by a euphemism changes what it is and always has been. The Department of “Defense” killed a bunch of people Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and countless minor actions. These bubbles of civilization we enjoy are built on adults killing a bunch of people, as necessary, to establish the order that allows more childish people to build social media…

Are you saying there is no difference between the aggressiveness shown by the Department of War since it was renamed vs the years prior to the renaming? Because it sure looked to me like they renamed the department and immediately started bombing fishing boats, then affirmatively decided to start a war with Iran, all while the guy who came up with the new name goes on TV and screams about how we're free to kill more…

Let’s not forget the kidnapping of Maduro, where we killed another ~80 people.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird analogy, but it feels similar to the way old music differed to new music. Old music had more variation in volume - volume rises and falls to add nuance to the piece. New music is produced differently and has a more “flat” sound due to everything being louder and variation being reduced by compression. Seems like some parallels to other forms of media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

I strongly disagree. Just because compression is common in pop music (and perhaps overused in some genres) doesn't mean new music isn't innovative and dynamic. When I listen to music say from 1920 to 1950, it is so often so incredibly lame (not always). It's basic ideas and chord progressions and simple melodies with lyrics that don't say much. Music is a way for people to express themselves and relate about how they…

That could be true - but this was specifically referring to the volume levels in recorded music, rather than variability in melody or composition.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find a lot of ancient people saying it was happening. They were obviously wrong, right? Things are better now than then, so they were wrong. Nevermind that many of them were speaking of real social decline, not of humanity altogether in the long run but of their own society in a less global sense. When Socrates was bitching about "kids these days", Athens was peaking and a long period of uneven decline was st…

Plato, and Heraclitus before him, both thought that society would eventually collapse. They sounded smart but would’ve been quite surprised to see what we’ve done with the world.

Their societies arguably were doomed. I'm sure they'd be impressed by much we have today, but after the shock wore off are you sure they would change their minds concerning humanity's long term fate? Between climate change, the nukes and dark forest aliens, a lot of people today think we're doomed in the long run. (For what its worth, I don't.)
Post reply on HN