Yeah, it's Cracked.com, but humor me and give these two a read. I think on these quite a bit, even after many years.
Explains much as to how we humans act towards one another:
https://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html
How the hell Trump supporters even exist:
https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about
I read the first one. It was a very interesting read.
The guy who wrote those is very insightful. I also like his writing style. Thanks for sharing!
Huh, these are really good! I admit I definitely didn't see people born into rural poverty the same way I saw people born into urban poverty. That gives me a lot to think about!
Like 75% of my basic training division was either inner city poverty escapism or rural poverty escapism.
Ironically that became the uniting force of those people, something they could understand when everything else about the person is different.
Wow excellent picks. Read both of these and enjoyed the perspective. Thanks for sharing!
It’s too bad they laid off all their good writers about five years ago. At least we got Behind the Bastards out of it!
Unironically Deus Ex, it's full of cookie-cutter crazy conspiracy theories and references, but it introduced me to the literary genre of Cyberpunk and it's surrounding culture back in the day. If it wasn't for it, I probably wouldn't be so critical of modern consumerism and corporate culture. It helps that a lot of the game's social commentary remains very topical twenty years later, they simply don't make games like this anymore.
Just started the Fallout series a few months ago(3, now into 4) less neon but definitely highly critical of corporations' soullessness, consumerism, vanity and all other things that will disappear when important things happen. Incredible consistent aesthetic and feel.
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Blue's Clues. The humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also Blue's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation- his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realise that they're not just funny- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Blue's Clues truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in Blue's existential catchphrase "a clue a clue," which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Traci Paige Johnson's genius wit unfolds itself on their television screens. What fools.. how I pity them. 😂
And yes, by the way, i DO have a Blue's Clues tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid 😎
☝️ This comment changed my life 🙏🙏🙌
Can this comment become a legendary copy pasta of lemmy?
Blues Clues and "Scott's Tots". High IQ required or don't even bother
Nice Rick&Morty copypasta you got there.
Bold of such a casual watcher to opine on her motivations.
If you had actually been paying attention, each clue represents one of the 12 arcana given context by the way it is revealed, each episode being a tarot reading that gives depth and context to her character.
A true fan would watch in order, and would discover each season clearly describes the fools journey with a reading for each step - at that point it just. It then repeats, revealing more of her backstory each season
I'll give the broad strokes, since I'm sure that's all a casual viewer like you is interested in.
Blue was born as the deity of a small tribe on the coast of modern day France. She loved her people and worked for them tirelessly, and they loved her as she lavished them with bountiful harvests and artistic inspiration. Her people were kind and righteous, creating beautiful sculptures and cloth that they traded generously. Then the sea people attacked.
It's unclear who they were, but her people were slaughtered and enslaved, her power slipping away, for she had given back all her people gave her, not considering her own needs. Slowly they died out, and knowledge of her name slowly died out.
Fading and in desperation she bound herself to a place, a cave in modern day Paris. Her heart broken by loss, she changed in those dark centuries. Her presence still brought fortune and so her former people's land was taken by others, but she no longer had love in her heart. She compelled them to bury their dead in the caverns under the city, where she feasted upon souls of the dead for generation after generation. But none knew her name, and so she barely was able to sustain her existence.
At the advent of WWII, knowledge of the occult reached a peak. The Nazi leadership heard of the abnormal luck of the city, and so made a deal with the French - they only wanted access to the city without revealing their goal.
The Nazis took the city, and drove the resistance down into the catacombs, giving them an excuse to seek her out.
They succeeded, and they found her. She was almost feral at this point, but after heavy losses they managed to imprison her in a relic, an urn containing scraps of bones of her people. On this urn, they engraved an inscription, a binding to a single person. That person would gain eternal youth and funnel power to her, but they misunderstood what she was - in effect, those bound to her died quickly.
The relic was captured at the end of the war, and ended up in Hollywood along with many other odds and ends. After several high profile deaths, they discovered that attention from children could sustain the needs of this unnamed being. By destroying their potential, a little at a time, the host would not age or be drained by the relic.
What no one expected was how well this would scale. The fallen deity known as "Blue" has swiftly recovered, and there's many fan theories about what this means.
And just to spell it out for the slower among you, this is a clear metaphor for capitalism, the effects of the industrial revolution, and the how in an effort to make children subservient , we reduce the future prospects of everyone, including those at the top
The Truman Show fucked me up as a child
Yeah, we all saw. Hope you're doing better now though, Mr. Burbank.
One of Jim Carrey's best movies
What’s so fucked up is how well that simulated world thing matches the ideas coming out of my own head
"The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins
Daft Punk's 1997 "Homework" album
"The Atomic Cafe" 1982 documentary film
Edit: Vonnegut, the far side and Calvin and Hobbes for making me feel like I'm not crazy and most people are peddling a tremendous amount of bullshit.
The Selfish Gene changed the way I see life itself. That and The Blind Watchmaker. I also love Unweaving the Rainbow.
Agreed on the Selfish Gene.
I started on Unweaving the Rainbow but didn't make much progress.
Dawkins can be a proper tool, but at least that book was quite interesting.
Midnight Gospel
The Hubble Deep Field image struck the first major blow against my childhood indoctrination in young earth creationism.
I had a similar experience but with a book about Dinosaurs that contained scientifically accurate eons, etc.
I started to piece together that while we might not be 100% correct all the time, YEC doesn't even have an alternative. They just try and debunk evolution but have no scientific method/knowledge that proves they're correct.
Where's all the geological science that shows a 6000 year old earth? None. There should be competing theories, but instead it's just "you're wrong, trust me bro."
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury, it's a collection of short stories with a light meta story connecting them. The man feared technology, thought it would ruin society. It was written in 1951 and some of his thoughts on how technology could ruin people are eerily spot on.
The "smart home" story in particular is oddly prescient.
Heinlein's "The Door Into Summer". Both beacuse it reminds me that I might never find what I'm looking for; and because it taught me to never give up on looking, anyway.
I was bored on an airplane a while back and discovered a Japanese movie adaptation of A Door Into Summer: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_door_into_summer
It'd been 25 years since my mom read the story to me so I can't tell you how accurate the adaptation is but it hit the parts I remembered.
There have been several. I'll pick Eric Berne's book Games People Play.
I immediately recognised a few that I had played and, having been 'called out' on them by the book, it did lead me to stop and behave more constructively.
Can you give an example? Sounds interesting.
The 'original' game: Why Don't You - Yes But was the one that I first recognised in myself. There are plenty of other examples on that website, but as the page says, it doesn't have the full explanation and context.
Thus spoke Zarathustra. I've been thinking about this book pretty much everyday for the past 20 years. It made me want to enjoy life and create great things.
Morrowind because I'm one of those people. But for real, that game in part defined large parts of my life. I got frustrated with the limits of the game so I started making mods, then got frustrated with the limits of the engine so I learned how to make my own. Now I work adjacent to the game industry with plans to get back into the industry proper in a couple years. Making games is all I've ever wanted to do and I owe a big part of that to Morrowind and the construction kit.
Were you involved in making OpenMW? That's so cool
No surprisingly, I haven't managed to contribute to the project. Reminds me I should definitely look into that though
It's a bit early to say if it's life changing, but Hi Ren made me reassess my thought patterns and negative self talk in ways therapy never could, which is pretty damn powerful for a musical performance.
How did it pull that off?
No health care professional ever told me that depression can be something that's just a part of who I am, and that maybe there is no getting rid of it. Rens message in the video feels so genuine and real that instead of passing it over as just another piece of pop culture, I stopped to really listen and think about what he's saying about managing your darker tendencies and learning to live with them. The song has maybe helped me accept myself a bit better, but as I said, it's still a bit too early to call if it's an actually permanent and useful effect.
I myself dont associate with any of the personal struggles discussed in 'Chalk Outlines' but dammit if it doesnt make me feel something, almost tears every time.
Don't laugh but Ariana Grande :)
That's ok u/TacoButtPlug
No shame on that, Taylor Swift for me :)
Oh yes. I too am also a Swiftie.
Drowning in a world of marketing and political slogans, this books helps me them how they attempt to persuade me. It also opened up a whole new interest in rhetoric.
The Selfish Gene, 1976, by Richard Dawkins.
GEB by Douglas Hofstadter
Oh this seems to be forever on my to read list. At some point I need to actually pick it up! But I feel like I might be unable to finish it and... I don't know why I'm hesitant to actually start reading it
It took me a long time. As a kid just read the funny stories that started each chapter, but then got stuck into it while I was in high school. It’s so dense that you can read a chapter and then take weeks to digest it all.
It's an incredibly hard read. It's legitimately a graduate school philosophy class reading level. I would love to take that theoretical class and read along/discuss with a group but it's hard to go through alone.
I read about 10% in college and it’s served me well. That 10% has been valuable on its own.
Maybe instead of trying to determine why you’re avoiding it (a task that suffers from the halting problem), you could just read a few pages and see what happens.
Guitar Hero exposed me to the idea that there was great music that wasn't on the radio and inspired me to pick up an instrument
The ones that affected my life the most are probably Chuck Palahniuk's books. I read them as a teenager.
Hackers as a kid, got me into IT security. Daemon and Darknet by Daniel Suarez, gave me a new perspective on society.
Daemon is a fantastic book. I remember reading it in middle school and a classmate was like oh yeah my dad's friends with him
Nineteen eighty four
The Dune trilogy when I was in something like 6th or 7th degree. It was just such a great piece of fiction to introduce quite a few philosophical thoughts at the time. I still enjoy the books. (and the old film with Sting in it)
I'm not really a fan of the 1984 Dune, but David Lynch is a cinematic genius, and a madman.
Books.
Movie: Interstellar and Inception. Great mind-changing works, and they really influenced (especially Interstellar) how I perceive the world. Very deep, but also very "on-point". Book: The Cloud ("Die Wolke") is a book about the consequences of a radioactive catastrophe. It is written in German and is a young adults novel, and when I read it it really stuck with me. Game: Morrowind - great game, very open to interpretation. It has a lot of very deep sub-tones, but also doesn't go overboard and stays a game. Big recommendation :) Also Locks Quest as a video game - it is kind of a tower defense game, but also with a character ark. I really like it. Music: The OST from Locks Quest. I always listen to it when I'm stressed, and it is really nostalgic to me.
The American-Australian science fiction TV series "Farscape." The themes and characters were all so beautiful, the cast was talented, the writing was great, the season/series long plots were all tight with great pay offs. The story is kind of "Lost in Space" if it was set in a galaxy built out of the cantina scene from "Star Wars: A New Hope." The Jim Henson Workshop built all the creatures for it and the CG effects actually hold up pretty well.
One character, a priestess named Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan (played by Virginia Hey), was the emotional heart of many an episode. One episode in particular, she's literally debating a god who has come to collect the soul of another character. She chides the deity saying something to the effect of "as a priestess I have long ago come to terms with different peoples, different beliefs. But all must recognize that life values life." As a teenager, that really stuck with me. Really shaped how I see the world.
(not an ad, but the whole series is on YouTube, "free with ads" if anyone wants to check it out.)
Books: Plato's Republic (mostly interesting for a deep dive in the Socratic method, but also interesting to see where some modern ethics and philosophy is derived from in western traditions)
Go ask Alice (first real experience with experiencing what it's like to be truly a victim of abuse and addiction)
Flatland (great book about challenging fundamental assumptions!)
Think like a Freak (Really got me wanting to better analyse and thing about the world around me)
Harry Potter and the methods of rationality (great fanfic overall, but what really stuck with me was challenging my own conclusions after new evidence comes in, I really had to take a break and just think about that for a bit while reading this one)
Movies: The Trotsky (sleep on film that really explored being weird and asking the why not give people more control over their lives)
Game: Morrowind (First game that let me just ruin the plot and keep going, as a kid it probably one the most formative moments of really feeling like I had autonomy)
Edit: Spelled the movie wrong!
I can not find that movie. Did you spell it correctly?
No I didn't, good catch! Fixed now.
Steven Universe defined my high school years and made me who I am.
VAST's first self titled album
YES!!!!!! So glad there are VAST fan out there
saw him with orgy, linkin park, and disturbed at lupos heartbreak hotel wbru birthday bash and he was honestly the best part <3
Bridgerton introduced me to the world of romance novels. What a crazy rabbit hole!
"In Search of Schrödinger's Cat" - John Gibbon (1984)
Crash course in quantum physics and reality. Changed my perception of the world in a way that "things could be worse" could never accomplish on its own.Definitely make sure to stay up to date with the subject though. A lot has progressed in the past 40 years, such as the 2020 discovery that different observers of the cat can measure it as both alive and dead
A friend once gave me an ipod mini with Tony Robbins’s Personal Power series on it, and it was one of the best gifts I’ve ever received.
In fact, I’m gonna get in touch with that guy.
Vagabond manga.
Podcasts count? Huberman Lab has been such a life-changing listen! Lots of great information about sleep and how our body functions
The Gospel of Thomas. Before going down that rabbit hole I had no idea that Lucretius had laid out evolution in 50 BCE and would have never thought there was a sect and text claiming Jesus was talking about quantized matter, evolution, and pre-computer simulation theory in an agreement with the Epicurean rejection of intelligent design while rebutting their conclusion that there must not be an afterlife.
Not only did the study of the work itself lead to mind blowing realizations about history and philosophy, but the sheer absurdity of its existence has (for me) led to heavily complementing the physical arguments for simulation theory and pushed it over the edge from something just "interesting to entertain" to something I'm fairly confident in.
If you'd told me 6 years ago a 2,000 year old document would change my perspective of metaphysics and core beliefs, I'd have laughed you out of the room. And yet it today stands as by far the most interesting thing I've ever researched and likely the most influential to date.
there was a sect and text claiming Jesus was talking about quantized matter, evolution, and pre-computer simulation theory
Wut
Yeah, really.
The Naassenes claimed his sower and mustard seed parables were about "indivisible seeds like a point as if from nothing" which "made up all things and were the originating cause of the universe" - language identical to Lucretius who writing in Latin used the term 'seed' in place of the Greek atomos ('indivisible').
The Gospel of Thomas, which they followed, further described concepts from Lucretius, like describing the notion the spirit arose from flesh (i.e. proto-evolutionary thought) as the greater wonder over the flesh arising from spirit (i.e. intelligent design). It describes the human being as an inevitable result and likened it to a large fish selected from many small fish, right before discussing how only what survived to reproduce multipled using specific language found in Lucretius which described failed biological reproduction as "seed falling by the wayside of a path."
Lucretius's view was that the world evolved from randomly scattered seeds which gave rise to humans whose souls depend on bodies and thus there's nothing after death.
The Thomasine tradition claims instead that while there was an original spontaneously existing (i.e. evolved) man, that this man brought forth a new being of light that recreated the universe within itself as a non-physical copy. And that even though the original man died off that this creator of light is still alive and we are the copies in the images of the original man within its copy of the cosmos. And that it's better to be a copy, because the originals really did have souls which depended on bodies and would die, but the copies do not actually have physical bodies.
The idea of a physical spontaneous original man preceding and bringing about a light-based creator which makes a copy of the universe and mankind within itself in order to escape the finality of death for physically based humans is remarkably similar to modern concepts of simulation theory, particularly as we now have trillion dollar companies having patented resurrecting the dead using AI and the data they leave behind, are putting AI agents into virtual worlds, are creating digital twins of the world around us, and are moving towards computing (especially for AI workloads) in light directly.
So yes, there really is a sect of Christianity in the first few centuries talking about quantized matter and evolution (both discussed in length by Lucretius 50 years before a Jesus was even born), and combining those ideas into what is effectively simulation theory millennia before the computer.
In fact, the "Gospel of Thomas" is more literally translated as "the good news of the twin" - which is fitting given its perspective that if one understands its claims about being a non-physical copy/twin of a physical original the reader will not fear death.
Well, there are many interesting things in antique literature in general. This particular text is, I agree, amazing, but it's a piece of religious writing.
Centuries I-IV AD were a more pluralistic time for the Mediterranean.
For me personally reading Lucian of Samosata was such a change.
Lucian saw a ship of men flying up to the moon as beyond possibility.
This tradition thought that mankind would literally create God, and saw some of the specifics of this with uncanny foresight to what's playing out in the present day.
I can think of few futurists more prescient than whoever was behind Thomas and details in the surrounding tradition.
The Illuminatus Trilogy did a lot of heavy lifting in inspiring a sense of meta-skeptical relativism, though largely by offering a central hub for many other rabbit holes.
Gurren Lagann instilled me with a sense of inextinguishable optimistic determination, for myself individually and as a part of the human race
There are plenty of others, but these two had the most profound effects.
Edit: I almost forgot about this webcomic that lived in the back of my brain until I got a bidet.
Reading the parahumans story, "Worm", has changed how I look at people. It is my personal-favorite character study. There are dozens of characters who all have unique world views to explore.
This is social media but I suppose that counts, Livejournal. Made friends there I still have 25 years later I am closer to than anyone else.
Red Dwarf anyone?
HTML 4 for Dummies
I have several!
Disco Elysium: I played Disco Elysium at a dark time in my life and seeing the protagonist hit absolute rock bottom and begin to cope with his myriad problems throughout the story amidst how fucked his situation (and the world's) was resonated with me a lot. I could go on a lot longer about this game, but it definitely changed my perspective on life and the world.
Mr. Robot: What starts out as a story about a hacker and the ethics of technology ends up as a look at personal trauma and coping mechanisms. As someone in tech who's dealt with a lot of mental health issues throughout my life, I (and my sister) saw a lot of me reflected in Elliot as well.
A lot of similarities between those two pieces of media, lol
Story time. I was taking about Christian Slater and how badass an actor he is and we both agreed on that point. Immediately to back up outlr claims I say, "Yeah Mr Robot is one best peices of media because he's in that."
Andy friend looks at me and just says he thought it was so dumb. I was appalled. I should have called him a fucking idiot but im not that type guy. Anyway he lost points in my book.
I agree with everything you just said about Mr Robot.
Disco Elysium:
Ah. I had KotORII:TSL in the same role. While the game you're talking about was apparently that for one girl with which we didn't understand each other. But the game is good and I think it did help me get to the better condition I'm in now.
nice
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/A-Rm1DsV7GM?si=jSkPqYnhMy8NXz7q
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Pinkerton by Weezer. Its my favorite album of all time. It also introduced to a while bunch of other great albums, namely American Football's first album and Kid A by Radiohead. And El Scorcho is an absolute banger.
