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YouTube has rolled out unskippable 60-minute long ads. This was probably just an oversight and does not mean anything. In order to cater to hardcore ad-lovers, they have even prepared a stash of lovingly curated ads that are as long as Hollywood movies.
It keeps getting worse. Remember when YouTube was the greatest thing since sliced bread? They are killing their reputation. I guess that’s what greed does.
I do not understand how the decision to allow such long ads even got made. Perhaps there is data showing that some people just keep a YouTube window open on their desktop computer even as they leave their desk. I noticed that the default is to autoplay videos and if you accidentally forget to close the window, YouTube just keeps playing videos and ads in the background. When I listen to a video, I sometimes just mute it, in particular if it s longer, somewhat waffly podcast or a music stream, and unmute it once I can again pay more attention. If this is a common pattern, then I can see how the analysts at YouTube could have either drawn the wrong conclusion from it or ended up rubbing their hands, realizing that this is an ideal window to get view counts and ad revenue up.
According to Wikipedia, Elon Musk is trying to take over US federal agencies. It is quite like another January 6 insurrection, apparently:
https://archive.ph/kUWX4
Scrolling though the few tweets by Musk’s DOGE was one of the highlights of my day. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but you can already tell that the level of systemic corruption in the US is off the charts:
https://x.com/DOGE
It’d be nice to think these developments are organic, but I suspect you’re right and Trump/Elon are backed by a previously dormant/suppressed faction of elites equal to or greater than Clown World, with who knows what goals in mind. Taking on this level of corruption is as unsafe as it gets.
As you also suggested, it could be the same elites realizing that (a) the course we were on was unsustainable and (b) unlike the early United States, China knows better than to let these parasites infest it. Still, it’s hard to picture Clown World suddenly acting as if its IQ had tripled. Without DEI, endless financial bubbles, and the countless other cancers they’ve introduced, they’d likely be even better off like everyone else.
I think that there were fights between the elites behind the curtain. What we now see is the equivalent of the rich father discovering that his son has not actually attended law school, and instead blown multiple six-figures on cocaine and hookers, and daddy is now very upset. USAID is a great example: The grift has taken such an extent that only drastic measures help. Five across the face no longer help in such as situation. Instead, this is the time when the spoiled rich kid gets pulled out of his fancy school, removed from his obviously very harmful circle of friends, and put into a military academy.
Regarding the elites being better off in an alternative universe without DEI and all their nonsense, you are obviously right. However, the problem is that these people are so out of touch with reality that they do not understand the consequences of their actions, or just not care about negative consequences at all because they think that they can do whatever they want. The example of the spoiled rich kid is quite apt. For some reason, I am now thinking of a good friend of mine who spent a few years partying. His parents are very well off, and very conservative, based on what he told me. At the peak of his partying career, he kept a big bag of cocaine at home, probably the equivalent of $1000 or so. We hung out at his place sometimes, even in bigger crowds, and this included him pulling out his coke bag and a group of eight or nine people doing lines. Interestingly, the woman who trapped him with a baby helped him get his life back on track, so there was a positive aspect to that for him.
True, and after I wrote that I realized it’s silly to ask why Clown World isn’t more rational. It’s like the survey that showed people would rather make $60K and have their neighbors make $50K than make $100K and have their neighbors make $120K. To take it farther, if people like Torba are right, Clown World elites are demonic and prefer to reign (or so they imagine) in hell than serve in heaven.
Trump has started deportation flights to India:
https://archive.ph/3Dzka
Here is a great overview of the Democrat meltdown over USAID:
https://archive.ph/RnRXz
Before Trump’s second term there was a period of about two years during which I barely read ZeroHedge but with the current changes on the world stage it is once again fun to read the news.
Chuck Schumer is upset that there is now another small, unelected group that is calling the shots:
https://x.com/unlimited_ls/status/1886829458327290091
Independent (radical left) media organizations around the globe are whining because their recurring financial support of over a quarter billion a year via USAID has disappeared. The swamp is getting drained:
https://archive.ph/hO6GL
The power dynamics between the US and Israel, expressed in a short video:
https://x.com/DravenNoctis/status/1886924936373035427
Why do people believe that Anne Frank’s diary is a fake?
I have no idea. There are some lunatic right-wing conspiracy theories about her having used a kind of pen that was only made commercially available years after she had written her diary and even crazier conspiracy theories about her father or uncle editing her diary prior to publication. All of this is surely complete nonsense. There is also the hyper-intelligent counter-argument that even if Anne Frank traveled to the future and back to get a ballpoint pen it does not mean that everything in her diary is made up. As far as I am concerned, everything in her diary is 100% true.
Here’s my issue with the way WWII is presented to us. Wasn’t there enough factual evidence of mass suffering without adding fiction to it? All focused on one tribe? What about all of the other tens of millions who perished worldwide?
@GLAS:
While the Holocaust has always been recognized by the mainstream, it didn’t get its “special status” until the early 1960s when Raul Hilberg released his book The Destruction of the European Jews.
This is how Wikipedia describes the situation:
“According to Holocaust historian, Michael R. Marrus (The Holocaust in History), until the book appeared, little information about the genocide of the Jews by Nazi Germany had “reached the wider public” in both the West and the East, and even in pertinent scholarly studies it was “scarcely mentioned or only mentioned in passing as one more atrocity in a particularly cruel war”.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Destruction_of_the_European_Jews
I read recently that this is the scene that Martin Scorsese is most proud of in his career:
https://youtu.be/XPiSB8fSviE?si=gwLyF2A-3CPDubXA
This is not a bad scene as it shows how powerful and influential this “wise guy” has become, but it is not the most memorable scene in Goodfellas. Did Scorsese elaborate on why he likes this scene so much?
I think it reminded him of his youth when mobsters were treated like celebrities. Also, one thing I learned about film making is the length of the scene with no cuts, no edits. This is a good example. But I agree there are better scenes in the movie.
“What do you mean I’m funny?”
I can appreciate that a long scene, shot in one take, is a testament to the skill of the director and his crew. However, using it as a metric for or even a clear marker of a high-quality movie is misguided at best. In fact, I find it masturbatory to wax lyrical about such scenes. What would have changed if this scene had been shot as sequence of two or three takes? It just shows that the producer had time and money to spare because such a scene either needs to be shot a few times before the director deems it a success, and even if everything went perfectly during the first take, it shows that time and money were considered secondary. In an action movie, long single-take scenes are also masturbatory. However, they are much more impressive as the choreography is significantly more demanding. My favorite example is the long stair-case fight in The Protector, featuring Tony Yaa.
@Aaron
That scene has excellent choreography, the Jackie Chan fight scenes look silly in comparison (I am aware Rush Hour movies are supposed to be comedy).
In real life however you would need the mobsters bodyguards to have unbelievably poor situational awareness in order for this guy to progress beyond the first 2 or 3 guys… not to mention he would most likely be gunned down instead of having guys lining up to meet him. For a moment I thought perhaps Thailand is so stringent with guns that even mob guys realistically have to avoid carrying them unless absolutely necessary, but a quick google search suggests otherwise. Real thugs use guns, or at least knives.
One of my favorite, and more realistic fight scenes, is found Tom Cruise´s film Collateral (2004), the Club Fever shootout scene:
The chaotic nature of a club with crowds, loud music, and three different factions looking for each other, makes the situational awareness a mess (for those who dont know the plot, theres the hitman (Cruise) with his hostage, the korean mob boss (his target) and his men, and the cops tryting to stop the hit.).
The choreography in Tony Yaa movies seems to take cues from video games, with goons conveniently lining up to get knocked down and politely waiting for their turn. The camera in this scene also reminds me a lot of a typical third-person camera in an action game. Speaking of good fighting choreography, I also really enjoyed Drunken Master (1978) with Jackie Chan.
Collateral is one of my favorite movies, apart from the incredibly far-fetched climax and the incongruous ending. I wrote an article that was inspired by this movie a few months ago.
@Aaron
Yeah it’s surprising that it’s Scorsese’s favorite. I think it’s just nostalgic for him. But I do have a greater appreciation for it learning the difficulty and logistics. I mean,
we’re talking about a guy who has filmed in a casino.
Aaron, have you seen this movie?
https://youtu.be/2cGat1xI8G8?si=nkBelbH8xI4l1e0j
This is a pretty good scene. Sean Connery won for best supporting actor that year:
https://youtu.be/zzRzxducCbs?si=1sbObEw7WESAIkcv
Sean Connery is an excellent actor. As we discussed before, modern actors normally cannot even act. They play the same person every time and some are so bad that they cannot even be bothered to learn a different accent for a role. The drop in quality in Western movies in the 1990s and 2000s is remarkable.
I have not watched The Untouchables yet, but it is on my list. I intend to watch it soon. Some of the better movies I have watched in the last few weeks are Barry Lyndon, Jarhead, Gone Girl, Thoroughbreds, and Pain & Gain. Pain & Gain was excellent. It is a wonderfully dark comedy, featuring the uber-meatheads Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson. I was really surprised by it. Some of the humor is quite edgy for Hollywood standards, so much so that I wonder how the script made it past the censors.
Sleazy, what’s your take on Christoph Waltz?
What are you referring to? I am only familiar with him due to his role in Inglourious Basterds.