Notes From 20 YouTube Videos That I Watched
- Aug 4, 2020
- 11 min read
Floating Cities: The Future of Civilisation
Sample size for running governments is not enough
Everything happens for a reason.
Pre-determinism & freewill can co-exist. You are dealt a pre-determined hand, but it is up to you to decide what to do
How to Force Yourself to Learn Stuff
Excitement + accountability = drive to learn (speed-boost)
What Happens To Unspent Gift Cards? (In US)
Breakage revenue is revenue from unclaimed gift cards. Large portion goes to the state if owner cannot be reached.
We Went to the World's Biggest Party... Before the World Shut Down.
Going to Brazil for carnival would be amazing & time lapses on the phone looks cinematic & epic.
3 Easy Comebacks For Any Insult
1. Answer literally (e.g. with an insult masked as a compliment & you take it literally, it makes them have to insist that they were being rude to you or they are forced to give you that masked compliment)
2. Purposeful misinterpretation
3. If it is a close friend, you can just double down on yourself and join in. Resistance would make you look insecure.
4. Agreeing with the backhand insult and expanding on it: shows that you are unaffected and that you can use others words against them with the witty comeback.
The TRUTH about Bill Gates
Philanthropy can be very profitable. Why build infrastructure with your money when you can do so under the guise of a charitable move and have the government fund it? Additionally, someone as rich as Bill Gates can donate to further his interests & causes without paying taxes. “No one man should have all that power” - Kanye. Also, the threat posed by conspiracy theorists is that they waste powers of skepticism on chasing phantoms rather than recognising the very flawed reality we live in. (Which is not a Orwellian dystopia but just a boring one of that)
WHY Porn Changes the Brain | Science of No Fap [SFW]
Coolidge effect; decline in dopamine & motivation results with the same sexual partner. These spike up when a new (novel) partner is introduced. Modern day pornography capitalises on this by providing a virtually limitless amount of new mates. The brain is able to adapt & change by changing its physical structure. (stroke patients who lost function in limbs continuously attempted to use their dysfunctional limbs. Their brains started to change in response to this behaviour by reconfiguring itself to map different areas of the brain to the task of controlling the limbs.) Behaviour addiction, much like substance addiction is fuelled by dopamine, as it seeks pleasure. How porn decreases self-control: nerve connections between the reward circuit & prefrontal cortex worsens. Note that the prefrontal cortex is the driver for self-control. Real sex won’t do as much for the reward circuit of a brain moulded by porn with the expectation that sex is a rapid cycling of multiple partners that provide no other sensory input than just visual info on a screen. We are a little too smart for our own good: we learned how to exploit our programming that paired survival & reproduction with pleasure. With a few taps on our magic rectangles, we access pure distilled pleasure, completely separated from its original purpose of survival & reproduction.
China’s Master Plan for World Domination (Mini Documentary)
China’s new plan of attack is via cyber & economic fronts. US is too tied up with the military as it is profitable for them. China makes everyone believe they are for free trade & globalisation, only to take advantage of it & make use of protectionism. (Exploit the open-ness of other economies while using its own closed system) They combine authoritarianism to maintain power + capitalism to make money where needed. Private profit is realigned with national interests. State owned companies with communist party cells to keep them in line. Great tactic: FDI comes in, economy grows, business grows, investors cannot take this money out as it is China’s economy. (Companies like Chevron, Exxon, Sony & BMW have billions in earning in China that have not been repatriated to investor funds since 2015) Yuan is not traded so they control it as opposed to letting the market dictate its value. Infrastructure: China’s focus is to not be dependent on imports & exports to prevent fragility of economy based on goodwill of others. This insulated economy calls for extensive infrastructure. Hence, ghost cities, which are filled with infra, but without people. One would assume property prices would fall with this oversupply, but China controls it all, and simply does not put them up for sale yet. BRI: find locations with cheap labour / important locations, then give loans that will be defaulted for sure, and repossess the land. (Modern day colonialism). 5G: control more data.
Roma - Creating a Moment
Bad moments come at us randomly. It may occur at anytime and be gone in a flash. This movie accurately shows this phenomena.
You Were Never Really Here - How to show Trauma
Trauma is a relentless, constant, invisible assailant that can intrude in all aspects of a person’s life. The main character has PTSD & instead of verbally telling you about this like most movies, it has to be inferred over the course of the film. This is representative of real life. People do not just wilfully say that they have a problem. While we see it in movies to advance the plot, in reality, most of us are bad at communicating, especially about things that we are not ready to come to terms with. The narrative is tailor-made to the main character’s psyche: a fractured mind, living in the past & present when trauma sends him back to a helpless child. The soundtrack reflects this. Ultimately, he is still a helpless boy. An exhausted man, trying to find a reason to stay.
The Twilight Zone - What Do We Fear?
1. The Other: social commentary on fears accusations of being a communist. Insecurities as to who is alien ultimately causes everyone to attack each other.
2. The Future: No knowing what comes next eschpeially after WWII, Vietnam War & Cold Wars. Focus is on bleak futures with limitations to free will, creativity & individuality which will erode our humanity, to be replaced with uniformity & blind obedience. Bleak “what if” scenarios asking how bad/far can things go if our negative human behaviours goes unchecked.
3. Futility: Part of the fear of the unknown is that there is little we can do to alter our fate. It is a reminder that there are things in this world we are not meant to surpass, but to reluctantly accept. We can only see through the keyhole, but we were never meant to go through the door.
4. Death: also to do with the unknown
The Fly - How To Make Body Horror
Many filmmakers are too drawn by its morbid aesthetics & forget to explore the existential nature of the sub-genre: the loss of one’s self; the identity crisis that occurs when you lose your body & eventually your mind. At what point do we lose who we are? The movie focuses only on the relationship of the 2 main characters & the effects of the mutation on them. Horror & tension of the movie lies in the character’s reactions to the inhuman transformation, which is a metaphor for disease like cancer/aids & its effects on humans, how it takes hold of one’s body & life. Dramatic tension comes from internal reaction of knowing that you are withering away & your body is becoming your enemy. Breaking your basic functions, consuming your appearance & mentally wearing you down. Making you act in fear / frustration, altering your normal reasoning. Just like in reality, the effects are also felt by those around you. Seeing a loved one go through an illness is a nightmare. Wanting to help, but knowing you are powerless. His 2nd last thing he loses is his voice. It shows that he is still capable of rational human thought (until he is not). Lastly, he loses his eyes. They were there for relatability of his character & for displaying emotion. Horror of the movie is form the inevitable loss of self. “We’ve all got the disease of being finite”. Our body will weaken, our mind will wander, our identity will fade, but that is what makes us human.
Creative Limits In Movies
The shortest short story ever made by Ernest Hemingway “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Interesting how such few words can create context, add a character & evoke an emotion; yet we see stories struggle to do this with unlimited amount of words. Same can be said about movies. Having unlimited resources, locations, talented actors & VFX does not guarantee a good film. How do we say more with less? How do we use unusual restrictions / creative limits to still create a meaningful film?
1. Location: no context given but the whole movie in the same location. It acts as a pressure cooker to show the true colours of the character.
2. Technology: digital behaviours shows the state of mind. The way one crafts a message & does not send it conveys hesitation / doubt. Hiding videos of his dead wife from the search tab shows how he deals with the loss in an effective & original way rather than shedding a tear on camera.
3. Story element: sound is removed. The silence forces us to notice & digest the movie differently. Ultimately, these limits serve to allow audiences to see things from a unique angle; for the audience to look, listen & feel in a new way
What we can learn from Korean movies
Contrast —> subversion of expectations —> intrusion —> offsetting (horror intrudes the comedy) horrific moments strike even harder. Withhold info despair, melodrama & sad endings
Why are Corporations Supporting the George Floyd Protests?
1. PR move
2. Take attention away from threatening issues like worker unions and welfare & corporate power (“one more event that is being talked about in the political zeitgeist by the cultural elite which is not talking about their own power in the marketplace. Capital & class not race is actually controls life in America. Identity politics is being cynically grafted on by billionaires & the corporate class. They want to be super woke so that we don’t talk about their power in our society. Focusing on class issues is the best way to help the disenfranchised, and everyone. ” “The right thinks that Facebook, Twitter & Amazon are on the liberal / progressive. Though they use branding tools like BLM, which pose no threat to them to benefit their bottom line. They reap the benefits of being for progress and the rising coalition in America without actually doing anything.” 3. Increase unemployment to then employ them at their factories at lower cost
The Main Themes of Black Mirror
Technological innovations can be seen as a Trojan horse of comfort. No longer a novel appendix, but an extension of who we are. The show focuses on heightened realities that shows our growing dependence on technology. As far-fetched as some of the stories may seem, we can relate to them because some of the stories could very well happen / are already happening. Recurring themes in Black Mirror on our relationship with tech & our human nature:
1. Individual Flaws: there are many instances of tech being detrimental. These tools were made to facilitate characters’ lives but they also open a door, enabling the worse in people by amplifying their negative behaviours. E.g. impulses of jealously in “The Entire History Of You” OR overprotectiveness of a mother in “Arkangel” causes the daughter to miss out on basic coping skills that hinders her development OR inability to let go in “Be Right Back”. Tech serves as a tempting tool for our insecurities.
2. Social flaws: in “Nosedive” public opinion is used as a currency & to succeed, one must always put on a clean, sterilised & filtered version of himself/herself if not you get downvoted to oblivion. This hive mentality is weaponised in “White Bear” where participants indulge in one’s punishment for their own satisfaction. “We’re all citizen journalists now so we can absolve ourselves of any responsibility / emotional engagement. The focus is on how we bring people to justice & what outrages we can do if we are morally justified” - Annabel Jones Inside Black Mirror. Disconnect & false safety of being behind a computer screen / camera is further explored in “Shut Up & Dance” & “Hated in the Nation”. The impersonal nature of tech makes it easier to hop on a bandwagon as we need not face any immediate accountability.
3. Mutual progression: we start with small tasks for convenience (“White Christmas” basic tasks cookie) & gradually integrate with technology. In “Hang the DJ” we see simulations done to avoid unpleasant moments of dating / relationships. More important tasks handed to devices causes us to be more dependent on them like in “Be Right Back” to deal with grief.
4. Reality: reality is questioned in many episodes.
What Do Aliens Look Like? The Kardashev Scale
Type 1: able to use available energy of their own planet. Type 2: use energy of their star & planetary system. Type 3: use energy of their galaxy. Type 4: use energy of multiple galaxies. We are currently ~ type 0.75 and likely be type 1 in a couple of hundred years. Comparing the types is like comparing an ant colony to a human metropolitan area. Some say that there may be type 5: influence over clusters / superclusters of galaxies. Type Ω: able to manipulate the universe & possibly others
GONE GIRL: Marriage is Creepy
The chill persona comes from her thinking that she is most attractive when she pretends to be someone she is not. So is he. We have 2 people explicitly enamoured with their lover’s acting skills. We have all tried to be a smarter, funnier version of ourselves to impress but are these trivial lies or something more sinister? Film argues that for women, romantic expectations can be very deforming to the human character as Amy describes being forced to contort into the ‘cool girl’ as degrading & exhausting. She looses track of who she is. Later we see that neither of them is able to convincingly perform their ‘role’. Thus, he finds a new ‘romantic lead’ and slips into his role of ‘cool guy’ easily & more naturally than being himself. She finds this out and is more pissed at the fact that she is effectively reduced to the cliché “Average Dumb Woman Married to Average Shitty Man”, a role she never wanted to play. In the early throes of romance, when one forces themselves into an unnatural mould, it all but dooms the relationship. When you are so in tune with the performance & role, you lose touch of yourself hence, losing the relationship = losing yourself. She is unable to simply leave and instead entirely re-writes her marriage & recasts the roles to her liking. This is easy for Amy as she has lost sight of herself years after playing the role of ‘cool girl’. We do this to a degree as well. Recasting the relationship after it fails, painting a self-preserving narrative that we can use as a coping mechanism. Anyway, Nick under some coaching, outperforms Amy as the sad husband longing for his missing wife. She is attracted to him again. An irrational, unhealthy yet understandable performance is to be what our ex wants us to be in hopes of winning them back. Many of us recast ourselves as victims like Amy & perform ourselves to perfection in the fallout of a relationship like Nick. The film suggests that happy relationships are performances where participants tacitly agree to put on a show for the world & each other. It also hints that romantic relationships are bonds of questionable genuineness, a delicate balance between honesty & deceit. We can never fully know if our partner is being genuine or playing a role & maybe we just don’t want to. What if we enjoy the performance?
6 Tricks To Read Anyone’s Body Language
Focus on reading someone’s interest, comfort level & emotions. Interest is shown with one’s gaze. Most do not want to make it obvious that they like someone so they resist that urge as no one consciously monitors their direction of feet it acts as a compass of sorts. Common signs of discomfort are crossed arms, looking down, fidgeting, shifting stance & rigid body. Emotions can be read from the face, throat & chest. Involuntary changes in expression that lasts for a moment: micro expression. Micro expressions shows that an emotion was triggered & the person was trying to hide it. Hard swallows are a sign of nerves (and sometimes dishonesty) Breathing shifts from belly to chest: trying to hold negative emotions like anger.
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