They Live (1988) inspired Adblocker
github.com
github.com
[0] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/10/they-live-and-the-secret-hi...
And interestingly, the WayBackMachine snapshots are similarly boobytrapped: https://web.archive.org/web/20260115112314/https://www.jwz.o...
So I guess google "They Live Mozilla Logo" if you want to see the article. Sorry about that!
To quote the late, great, Ray Arnold...
"I hate this Hacker crap!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidan...
this kind of adversarial 'defence' (attack) is new to me, maybe i'm naive but i didn't like it.
We are encouraged to sleep around, and both workplaces and pop culture discourage having a family by differing means.
no reproduction was indeed part of general transhumanism left (individuality doesn't work with parenthood obligations)
but now with Europe and US economies on slowdown and with possibility of war looming, "your life for the country, your labor for the economy" starts to get steered/pushed towards by the elites (edit: pun not intended)
https://cottagelife.com/general/this-toronto-professor-took-...
We'd get amusing banner ads for things like cocaine-based nasal spray, renting pigs, and other vaguely off-color things in place of real ads. It was very, very amusing. I didn't tell anybody I was doing it and got some real laughs when people submitted helldesk tickets asking about the ads.
It got the axe when a technician printed some Mapquest directions that included off-color ads and left them laying around at a Customer site.
Aside: The fake ads came from a website called "Bannertown", (if memory serves). I believe it's long-since defunct. I'd love to find the ads today. They were very amusing.
I think it was a healthy formative influence for me and primed me for rejecting fads / peer pressure, distrusting authority, etc. Probably also helped me to resist the more unhealthy aspects of a religious time/place, and I was even doing light reading on Cartesian skepticism a few years later, which got me into math. Didn't figure out the name of the movie until years later when it was a big meme.
This is not advice but I definitely advise you to show your small children this movie before they are old enough to think it's corny. They may have a schizophrenic episode or descend into solipsism sure, but they may also get scared as hell by monsters and learn some mental judo, and thank you for it later.
I've been watching Andor as a instructional manual recently and this seems like a good addition to the reality based manuals out there.
Idiocracy, War INC etc.
Beyond the somewhat "obvious" message (for a grown up) it's just an eminently entertaining movie.
Basically skeptical of common forms in modernity, that is very clearly the intention. However, I have also seen that in extreme far-right communities this film represents how Jewish people control the world... somehow I don't think that is what Carpenter was going for.
Alas, once your works are in the wild it is out of the creators control in how they end up being used.
Avoiding groupthink is another slightly different positive spin on (my read of) the underlying message. There's such a thing as toxic individualism too, but if there's a "bad" way to be a free-thinker then you could say it usually has a pretty limited blast radius for society in general and it isn't a contagious kind of madness either
Do you know the difference between a conspiracy "nut", and a rational person?
For a "conspiracy nut", understanding that there is sufficient incentive (also implies a lack of deterrent) for X to do Y is proof enough that X is doing Y.
For a "mainstream" person, that is not enough. They require real, solid proof to consider that X is doing Y.
Note that this is about deciding their own behavior, and not about handing capital punishment for X.
I ll let you decide who is smarter...
The former is trivially manipulated, can be made to believe anything by appealing to their inherent obvious biases, and will double down on their beliefs even when presented with irrefutable proof to the contrary. The latter can detect false dichotomies, understands answers are often nuanced instead of black and white, and is capable of changing their mind when new evidence comes to light.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Experiment_(expediti...
In particular the “Reactions” section.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Experiment_(expediti...
You’ll find this bit:
> Alabama pastor Dean Odle suggested that Satan created a fireball to act as a false Sun.
That is cuckoo cuckoo bananas to a point only “conspiracy nut” applies.
So no, Descartes doesn’t apply. Unless I were the one being tested (seeing as I’m thinking, and therefore am). In which case that particular lie would be especially hilariously stupid.
"Everyone knows" is the greatest conspiracy of all. Its quite possible to be a 'nut' simply by referring to what "everyone knows" ... this is a thought-stopping meme designed to end challenge to authority, since "everyone" is the ultimate authority.
The problem comes in this causing people to do one or both of:
- immediately flip to believing the direct opposite, without evidence that's true either (most things are not excluded-middle)
- immediately imprint on the first non-mainstream source they find and start treating it as gospel
> but if there's a "bad" way to be a free-thinker then you could say it usually has a pretty limited blast radius for society in general and it isn't a contagious kind of madness either
It absolutely can be contagious. Sometimes that's for the good, sometimes bad, quite often the mixed result of getting to the right place only after a fraught disruptive time. Martin Luther, originator of the listicle, was correct in a lot of the theses but also started the domino chain for some of the most lethal wars in Europe. VI Lenin was right about the problems and wrong about the solutions. And so on.
Extreme libertarian seems a more apt description for those groups since they severely distrust government often also criticizing Trump and Netanyahu for example.
This stereotyping you're doing is itself a manifestation of the very problem you're attempting to describe, which is that authorities murder with impunity, while we individuals can only organize among ourselves to address their crimes if - you know - we kind of get along.
Which is less likely to occur if you label everyone who has a concern for human rights violations, an "extreme libertarian" or "far-right". Maybe you're right that 'only extreme libertarians question the actions of Trump and Netanyahu', but then again, maybe you don't care about human rights as much as you should - quickly - before your own human rights (to live) are put in peril by the war criminals you allow to rule you ..
The corollary to your position is akin to this: "if you don't resist the war crimes and crimes against humanity that Trump and Netanyahu are committing - perhaps you agree with those crimes, and, therefore stereotyping you as a 'Trump'- or 'Netanyahu'-aligned type of person allows your position and indeed entire identity to be rejected, outright..."
So, what'll it be? Shall we, human rights-concerned individuals, stereotype you? What are your political afflictions, just so .. you know .. they can be instantly rejected or discounted as invalid since you are a member of 'that filthy group over there', who seem to think that authorities should have impunity to murder ... ?
I recognize that this is certainly a minority view given how influential the film is. But I just plain cannot unsee it, like a Lovecraftian revelation and that ruins it for me from the start. Short of thinking Jodie Foster is talking to you through screens, it is very hard to look like an outright unhinged anti-Reaganist given the many legitimate things to object to about the man and his policies. Even if you agree with some of it, you can easily see where others would reasonably disagree. But this 'basic urges are part of a sinister conspiracy' sort of message? This managed to do it.
That you reject the entire premise of the movie because you can't "get over" this particular aspect, just means you've got your own loaded revolver in your pocket.
I left that out deliberately, as I think they are a good thing
Yes, I am aware of the irony of trying to manipulate people via messages
I thought the billboards and other displays were not subliminal but only viewed by the aliens and the sunglasses could see through that.
But don't mind me, I'm here to chew bubblegum and comment, and I'm all out of bubblegum.
Say what you will about claiming that the Jews secretly control the world like the aliens in the 1988 John Carpenter movie They Live, the people making this claim are certainly not obeying, conforming, or refraining from questioning authority.
And indeed apparently the line was in fact "say what you want about the tenets of national socialism", not "say what you will about the tenets of national socialism" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_29yvYpf4w).
From there it spread to Henry Ford, Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler amongst others.
In my experience racists tend to just latch on to different authorities to blindly follow and obedience and conformity are even more strongly enforced. I've had long discussions with racists over the "rebel" identity they see in the confederate flag who shortly after demonstrated incredible amounts of boot-licking when it came to police. Most of the racists I've meet were very dedicated to hierarchies, a select set of social norms, old-fashioned gender roles, etc. and conformance was absolutely seen as mandatory.
Are you conforming/obeying when you believe the Earth is round? That the sky is blue? Perhaps a bunch of people picking "the same bundle of labels and beliefs" is… simply them recognizing/accepting reality?
I like to think of these supremacist/racist conspiracy theories as another form of control: in many cases these people are right to be upset, since they see things in the world that are truly unfair, but their anger gets redirected to bizarre beliefs and racism. So it's a way of controlling and channeling their anger to a place where real change becomes impossible, just anger and venting and weird beliefs in secret Jewish/Muslim/Woke/Illuminati cabals running the world.
Real change is hard, and involves compromise and dealing with people with different ideas and goals. Anger against immigrants, or some ethnic or religious group, is easier.
Compromising and dealing with people is what life's all about, but it's easier to hate than to build consensus and harmony.
And of course, some people exploit these misguided tendencies because they want people not to focus on systemic inequalities that are the root of their problems, and instead blame everything on some other group of people that's different from them. Or because fanning the flames works as a ladder for them.
No, I am incorporating multiple different lines of evidence from multiple sources, including my eyes, into a framework of knowledge that I am constantly challenging and questioning, and "the Earth is round" and "the sky is blue" have survived those challenges as good first approximations to the truth. Whereas "Jews control the world" has extremely flimsy evidence, strong counter-evidence, doesn't fit with my understanding of the world, and can be traced as a myth/meme to known bad-faith actors. Which, by the way, is all also true for "vaccines cause autism" and "the earth is flat".
Not everything is the same.
If you believe the Earth is round because someone you view as an authority told you, and you never asked for any reasons or evidence, then yes, you're conforming/obeying.
If you believe the Earth is round because you understand the extremely strong evidence we have for that, then no, you're not conforming/obeying.
> Perhaps a bunch of people picking "the same bundle of labels and beliefs" is… simply them recognizing/accepting reality?
For something like "the sky is blue", sure--we can confirm it by our own observations and us all using the same word to describe the color we see the sky as being.
For something like "the Earth is round", it's more complicated, because it's not obvious just from observation, at least not the kind of observation that ordinary people today are going to be making in their daily lives. But if, for example, you have enough experience on oceangoing ships, you're likely to have made observations that were part of what convinced certain ancient Greeks that the Earth was round. Or if you've observed enough lunar eclipses to see how the shape of the Earth's shadow appears on the Moon. Or if you've observed the Sun's angle above the horizon in the sky at enough different latitudes on the summer or winter solstice. But how many people have made those observations? Or understand what they tell us about the shape of the Earth?
And of course people, even very large numbers of people, can also pick "the same bundle of labels and beliefs" about things that aren't reality. So no, you can't rely on that as an indicator.
Same deal with the Starship Troopers movie. When Helldivers first came out, it was really incredible to see how many people truly didn't get the irony.
This movie is so misunderstood. It's basically disliked by Heinlein fans who took offense, and by people unfamiliar with both Heinlein and Verhoeven who thought it was actually Beverly Hills + Space Fascism without irony.
I like it for what it does, but I'm more of a fan of Robocop.
Edit: unless you're referring to an icky age-related situation, but that could be fixed in the movie adaptation to make it less icky.
Edit 2: wow, and it was made into a movie... by the Japanese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Door_into_Summer_(film)
The movie was disliked by:
- Fans of Heinlein, who took offense at what they thought was a mocking and misunderstanding of the source material.
- People unfamiliar with Heinlein, and also with Verhoeven, who failed to understand the movie was satirical and thought it was actually endorsing a weird mix of Beverly Hills 9210 and fascism.
In case you wonder, I have read Heinlein (not just Starship Troopers) and know what he meant. I also appreciate Verhoeven!
Other entertaining films =3
"The Great Dictator" (Charlie Chaplin, 1940)
https://archive.org/details/the-great-dictator-disc-01-title...
"Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951)
https://archive.org/details/day-the-earth-stood-still-1951
"Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" (1956)
https://archive.org/details/invasionofthebodysnatchers1956_2...
"The Man in the White Suit" (1951)
https://archive.org/details/the-man-in-the-white-suit_202105
"The Twilight Zone" (1959)
https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-01-e-00...
https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-01-e-00...
https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-03-e-15...
https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-03-e-15...
That's a bad comparison. You have to compare crafting a table manually to doing it via CNC.
(Genuine question as we're all trying to figure this shit out)
And I think the same will apply here, with GenAI.
(Also interdimensional shapeshifting reptilians.)
If you listen to what effects the companies building this claim their products will have, you conclude that either they're going much farther than burning a few houses, or they're lying through their teeth. Neither of which lead me to thinking that the harm of empowering them is outweighed by having more low-effort software.
So, yes. As someone that has to live in the world those assholes are building, they can go fuck themselves. I want nothing to do with their creepy, infantilizing, bleak, dystopian future.
Maybe that's an extreme position, but I'm very glad I don't have children; I don't think I could look them in the eyes and tell them they had a bright future.
AI is amazing at jumping into an unfamiliar codebase, it was probably 20 mins total work
Why should anybody be interested in using software nobody was interested in...
Writing their own assembly for? manually allocating their own memory for?
Back when The Matrix first opened, it was still possible to go to the cinema without knowing anything about a movie. I watched it like this and my mind was blown. I thought I was about to watch a techno thriller about a hacker who resisted authority!
I don't think I would have enjoyed the movie in today's hyperconnected internet culture, where we know what every movie will be about months and sometimes years before release.
Wait, I'll make an exception: say what you will about The Force Awakens, but I totally thought -- based on the trailers -- that it was going to be about Han Solo and Chewie. When it turned out to be about a new character, Rey, I was completely and pleasantly surprised. Well done, trailer editors!
Yeah, that's what I mean. I went in not knowing anything, never having seen any trailers. And halfway through I went, "oh this is They Live, but the skeletons wear sunglasses."
It is far from a perfect or even very good movie, but the key messages are great and simple and the "chew bubblegem" scene is one very actionable scene. Long live Roddy.
In fact the whole movie is almost a parody of itself now due to how many scenes have since become a meme.
I can't offhand thing of a worse idea in the context.
There's some irony in here somewhere...
In short, aliens have invaded earth, but wear a special skin to appear human. To average people, they appear and sound identical to real humans. The lead character discovers that special sunglasses can show the aliens without their human-like skin. (They look a bit like the aliens from "Mars Attacks".) When wearing the sunglasses, most outdoor adverts are replaced with bland single-party-state-style propaganda encouraging people to consume, work hard, and follow the rules.
I can honestly say that the trailer does no justice for the film. It is much better than the trailer. When I saw first saw this, I was genuinedly spooked. One half of the film is good fun 1980s alien invasion beat 'em up, and the other half is a thoughtful commentary on the age of consumerism.
Edit: Slavoj Žižek. As always, phenomenal and humble take.
"I’m already eating from the trashcan all the time, the name of this trashcan is... ideology"
Slavoj Žižek on "They Live" (The Pervert's Guide to Ideology) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVwKjGbz60k
"I’m already eating from the trashcan all the time, the name of this trashcan is... ideology"
Slavoj Žižek on "They Live" (The Pervert's Guide to Ideology) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVwKjGbz60k
(like a very poorly maintained easter egg, not a problem if is broken by something else)
I had a similar problem with Nate when he abused all KDE users with his "donate-now-or-else" daemon (https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1f42sew/kde_is_asking_...).
I never ever want KDE widgets to pop up and pester me (that does not mean I have anything against donations; I have a lot against people who abuse the user base though, such as pestering them via unwanted pester-widgets. Sadly when you point this out on reddit, you get banned from #kde, same as when you critisize systemd on #linux - reddit censorship is out of hands).
Love the idea
"Learn more about Imgur access in the United Kingdom"
The irony!
https://proceduralgraphics.blogspot.com/2015/04/they-live-ad...
The least it could do was classify images to some categories with a small vision model smh. They stopped using AI too soon.
So is this "slop" simply because it's written by an LLM, even if the output is solid? Would it NOT be slop if it was worse code, but written fully manually? Honestly, I'm not sure I know the answer.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/artificial-cl...
it replaces terms used to exalt Artificial Intelligence to what they really mean, and some tongue in cheek jokes against things that are used to pass billionaires/tech as friendly (e.g. replacing bill gates with his actual name)