Show HN: Taxi Wars – False Prophesy

I submitted a Show HN for my website in 2016 [0]. tl/dr: I started blogging about my taxi fares at kuro5hin.org [RIP]. After commenting on K5’s death notice here, I bought taxiwars.org to repost my diaries thanks to the upvotes and a positive comment about my k5 writings [1]. I added a few posts in the years since the ShowHN, but nothing substantial.

This Show HN is my first animated episode from my adventures as a taxi driver. I’d forgotten about this until years later, when I observed another lunar eclipse [2]. To quote the video: “While watching the progression of that eclipse, I remembered the time I’d amused myself by becoming a false prophet.” To better convey the story, I commissioned a friend’s help for this animation.

This episode tells the of the time I used my passenger’s ignorance of celestial mechanics to convince her of an imminent calamity. Her companions and I amused ourselves at her expense; hopefully she learned to not freak out so easily.

Discussion: To misquote The Refreshments, ‘Everybody knows that the world’s full of simple people’ [3]. We’re all prone to freak out about something, and even smart people can be taken advantage of by jerks like me, who know just a little bit more about how specific aspects of the Machine work.

What can be done to help people be less vulnerable to all types of trickery?

Blog Post (transcript): https://www.taxiwars.org/2020/10/false-prophesy.html

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TaxiCabJesus/status/1315004358887501824

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TaxiCabJesus/posts/1433881090136669

The Show HN rules - https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html - say "For books, a sample chapter is ok." When I have funds I intend to commission more animations, so this is basically a sample chapter. Apologies if this is not appropriate as a 'Show HN' submission.

My idea of the Taxi Wars is that they are anecdotes are of my passengers’ (and, by extension, Humanity’s) struggle against the machine we’ve created for ourselves. In the earlier episodes I’m an observer of someone else's predicament, sometimes offering help in some way (free rides, bail money, etc).

I’d also appreciate your feedback on presentation. My next video might be on "the predicaments of old people" (based on an unpublished anecdote from the time my passenger referred to himself as an old person), or some of the other stories I’ve drafted/posted.

p.s. Seinfeld fans, which Kramer [4] compilation on youtube would you recommend for people who aren't familiar with the reference? Wikipedia says Kramer was the stock character of the "Lovable Rogue" [5].

[0] Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12193273

[1] “RIP Kuro5hin”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11609802

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2019_lunar_eclipse - I think it would’ve been this one

[3] The Refreshments / Banditos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfZbFh7qlCQ (The actual quote is "Everybody knows that the world's full of stupid people, so meet at the mission at midnight, we'll divvy up there...", but I think 'simple people' is fairer to the mass of humanity.)

[4] Kramer (Seinfeld character [TV]): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmo_Kramer

[5] Lovable Rogue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovable_rogue