To pick a decade, the 1930's surprised me with a number of good films that I had not seen. It's also the first "modern" decade in a sense — the films are starting to have the kind of narrative you expect from a film (and have sound).
"Love Me Tonight" (1932), "Stella Dallas" (1937) were new to me and enjoyable.
It was the era of the classic big-spectacle Hollywood dance numbers that I knew of but had not seen. These greats from 1933 alone: "42nd Street", "Footlight Parade", "Gold Diggers of 1933".
Fritz Lang's "M" (1931) if you have not seen it. The infamous "Freaks" (1932) that, by its reputation, I thought would disturb me more than it did. "Captain Blood" and the "The Adventures of Robin Hood" are Errol Flynn in his prime…
Bonus link: Ginger Rogers in the classic opening to "Gold Diggers" — and her impromptu Pig Latin verse: https://youtu.be/UJOjTNuuEVw
The 30's is where it really got kicked up a notch. amazing stage performers, state-of-the-art film tech, and a world full of life. "Captains Courageous" shows how incredible many fish were in the water. "You Can't Take it with You" is an homage to the artists soul. "Tonight or Never"'s perfectly balanced pre-code saucy love story. The effects in "Ssh, the octopus" and "the old dark house" still stand up
Honestly there are just too many good ones, I could give a list of at least 50 films I'd recommend without any hesitation at all. But I try to watch as little Hollywood as possible, mostly asian and european cinema.
Right now I'd say Tokyo Story (1953) is the best film I've ever seen.
I watched it because it's on every list of best films, so expectations going in were high. It's not overrated. I don't cry from movies but I did when watching this one. Very subtle and relatable.
Edit: Since we're here, "The Fall" (2006) and "City of God" (2002) are some of my other favorites.
The logo has an old, southern white man, which some would call a "cracker" as a sort of white slur. That term originally comes from someone being a "whip-cracker." I'll let you fill in the blanks.
Cracker Barrel is a nostalgic homage to the old country store, which often featured a barrel of crackers as in actual crackers and sometimes a block of cheese. You could cut a piece of cheese and put it on a cracker. Cue “people don’t know this but you can just take the crackers! I have one thousand crackers!” meme.
This was also a feature in some bars in the Midwest and South. I doubt the idea of a communal cheese block has survived into modern times, certainly not post pandemic, but I remember stopping into a pub as a kid in Ohio and seeing one and yes I did help myself and am still alive. That block of cheese had to have been one foot by one foot at least.
But they kept the word "Cracker" in the logo! That's why it was so confusing. Was the outrage about them keeping the word? But then they changed the logo back to its original that also had the word? It just makes zero sense. That's why it seems plausible that it might have been inauthentic, even right-wing people are still capable of basic logical reasoning.
Perhaps it was literally the result of an algorithm, pattern matching the word "cracker"? Like there was a idiotic controversy of Hasan saying the word awhile back, so the algorithms may have learned that. Perhaps a bunch of right-wing people all of a sudden got the name change announcement recommended in their feeds because of the keyword and it just spread from there. I think that is the most likely actually.
I also don't tell CC to think like expert engineer, but I do tell it to think like a marketer when it's helping me build out things like landing pages that should be optimized for conversions, not beauty. It'll throw in some good ideas I may miss. Also when I'm hesitant to give something complex to CC, I tell that silly SOB to ultrathink.
It was the tallest freestanding structure in France from 1889 to 2004 (when it was surpassed by one of the pillars of the Millau Viaduct; it's still the second-tallest). Must have been absolutely mind blowing at ~312m when it was new - the record was around 150m for centuries before it.
Honestly, retargeting/personalized ads have never bothered me. If I'm gonna see ads anyway, I'd much rather get ads that might actually interest me, versus wildly irrelevant pharmaceutical drugs and other nonsense.
The ads won't be for the product which will bring you maximum value. They will be for the product that will bring the advertiser maximum profit (for example, by manipulating you into buying something overpriced). The products which are really good and cheap, giving all their surplus value to you and just a little bit to the maker, will lose the bidding for the ad slot.
Not necessary. If economies of scale exist, that means that a popular product is going to be inherently superior in terms of price or quality than an unpopular one. Companies that advertise effectively can offer a better product precisely because they advertise and have large market share. (Whether they do it or not is a question of market conditions, business strategy, public policy and ultimately their own decisions.)
Surplus value isn't really that useful of a concept when it comes to understanding the world.
Really? Because the most common place I've seen this logic break down, is the bizarre habit of people to derive some sort of status and self-worth from using an unpopular product. And to then to vehemently defend that choice in the face of all evidence to the contrary.
No "artisanal" product, from food to cosmetics to clothing and furniture is ever worth it unless value-for-money (and money in general) is of no significance to you. But people buy them.
I really can't go trough every product class, but take furniture as a painfully obvious example. The amount of money you'd have to spend to get furniture of a similar quality to IKEA is mind-boggling. Trust me, I've done it. Yet I know of people in Sweden who put considerable effort in acquiring second-hand furniture because IKEA is somehow beneath them.
Again, there situations where economies of scale don't exist and situations where a business may not be interested in selling a cheaper or superior product. But they are rarer than we'd like to admit.
Right. I think ai on the user's side is going to be necessary soon. Then they can negotiate with the advertiser's AI to determine what to show. This will need to be on the platform level or the hardware level.
This solves the problem of seeing ads that are not best for the user.
You are talking about running ads auctions locally. This is never going to happen because if the company was inclined to rank ads by relevance they could already do so at their end. Just use an ad blocker.
Then why in twenty years of personalization am I still seeing junk ads? I don't want to hear about your drop-shipping or LLM wrapping business. The overwhelming majority of ads are junk. Yes, they bother me.
Because they are selling to the advertisers and their own imagination of their 'brand'. If the advertising customer base weren't stupid then 'advertiser friendly' wouldn't exist as they would be smart enough to realize that you won't offend people by advertising to content that they are watching for entertainment, or from people saying 'die'.
I wish I could fund an as campaign to free people from the perception that ads are to sell you products
Ads are there to change your behavior to make you more likely to buy products, e.g., put downward pressure on your self esteem to make you feel "less than" unless you live a lifestyle that happens to involve buying X product
They are not made in your best interest, they are adverserial psycho-tech that have a side effect of building a economic and political profile on you for whoever needs to know what messaging might resonate with you
This, yes, thank you. Advertising is behavioral modification. They even talk about it out in the open, and if you are unconvinced, hear it from the horse's mouth:
This is not how personal targeting works. Here's how:
> Each Shiftkey nurse is offered a different pay-scale for each shift. Apps use commercially available financial data – purchased on the cheap from the chaotic, unregulated data broker sector – to predict how desperate each nurse is. The less money you have in your bank accounts and the more you owe on your credit cards, the lower the wage the app will offer you.
I'm the complete opposite and don't really understand your position.
I'd rather see totally irrelevant ads because they're easy to ignore or dismiss. Targeted ads distract your thought processes explicitly because they know what will distract you; make you want something where there was previously no wanting. Targeted advertising is productised ADHD; it is anti-productive.
Like the start of Madness' One Step Beyond: "Hey you! Don't watch that, watch this!"
Part of the issue is that this enables companies to give smaller discounts to people they identify as more likely to want a product. The net effect of understanding much more about every person on earth is that people will increasingly find the price of goods to be just about the max they would be willing to pay. This shifts more profit to companies, and ultimately to the AI companies that enable this type of personalization.
You get ads that actually interest you with targeted ads? You might be one of the only people with that experience. The whole meme with targeted ads is “I looked up toilet paper on Amazon once now I get ads for charmin all over the web”
I stopped using TikTok and Instagram because I was impulse purchasing too much stupid crap from their advertisement. So there are at least two of us out there.
I got toys for my nephews, things for my insecurities, things I think are neat. socks with pockets on them! Compelled, I mean, now that I know $thing-that-will-fix-my-problem exists, how could I not? Worst part of it is, I didn't even know I had that problem before watching the ad!
I'm not a full-time coder, it's maybe 25% of my job. And am not one of those people that have conversations with LLMs. But I gotta say I actually like the occasional banter, it makes coding fun again for me. Like sometimes after Claude or whatever fixes a frustrating bug that took ages to figure out, I'll be like "You son of a bitch you fixed it! Ok, now do..."
I've been learning a hell of a lot from LLMs, and am doing way more coding these days for fun, even if they are doing most of the heavy lifting.
I agree I feel like it’s just blatantly funneling me into those dubious buy this font sites. I have somewhat better success with http://www.identifont.com/ usually
I don’t think the proposed font is correct either, I’m not even sure the concept of font works for that example though. Mainly the arches on the m are wrong, too arch like and whereas the example is more teardrop.
I'm in the US and have never had a bad experience with Amazon. I signed up for Prime in like 2010 and even got their prime store credit card to get 5% cash back. No issues with returns, same-day shipping, prime video, etc. I don't know much about Bezos' business practices/morals, but gosh dang Amazon is a good bang for the buck.
