I enjoy your thoughtful, conservative worldview. Thank you for your insights.
Here’s a tip when trolling your library for good movies…assuming your library has DVDs and a decent search app.
Search on “criterion collection”. Criterion is a video distribution company which takes important films and puts together a quality restoration of the film with additional features, commentaries and other goodies.
They’ve been doing this for decades so it’s not all woke crap. I guarantee there are Criterion versions of films you’d like to see and they are well-done.
There’s a Criterion version of Orson Welles’ “F is for Fake.” Welles happened to be hanging out in Ibiza in the 70s when both Clifford Irving, the guy who did the Howard Hughes hoax, and Elmyr de Hory, who was the most famous art forger in the world, were on hand.
As a magician and as the mastermind behind the “War of the Worlds” scare, Welles had a soft spot for fakery so he decided to do a sort of documentary on the subject but from an odd angle — almost everything in the film is faked.
Welles thought he had invented a new film form, but “F” failed at the box office and remains a cult item. I’m in that cult so I like to make shameless plugs for it.
The other day we were conversing about Mondegreens. Joan Baez was probably unaware of Stoneman’s cavalry raids.
I wear hearing aids and even so I have difficulty understanding people when I can’t see their mouth. I always have the captioning on and I am constantly amazed how ignorant are the captioners.
Here are two examples from the movie ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’ These are not reasonable.
“Tower to B-17! There’s a Jap on your tail! Lose your engines and get out of here.”
Actual dialog: Goose your engines…
“Oh, my God! The tank in the ocean’s over there, and it’s full of aviation fuel.”
Actual dialog: The tanker Neosho’s over there…
Hmm…”F” is up on YouTube, the Criterion version no less.
It’s one of those rare films that gets high scores on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and the audience — 88% and 89% respectively.
This is a GREAT forum.
I have no clue as to how many people read it.
As a frequent commentator, I have the sense people of like minds are talking to, informing one another with the comments posted. But they are often amplified echoes of what Neo has previously written, nothing more.
But we are doing nothing and seem unable to do anything about the tens of millions of dullards out there, who will bitch and moan when everyone is equally miserable, but will do nothing to forestall or prevent that outcome.
We have a 78 year-old senile dullard in the White House who just appointed a 78 year-old dullard to head NASA. The worst (least able) federal government in history while China works assiduously to achieve global dominance. Fags and transgenders playing in government!
Democratic communism is wonderful, right, Comrade?
Chases Eagles:
I don’t have hearing aids but I’ve got tinnitus, so I always put the subtitles on too. (Covid masking has made my life more difficult.)
Human captioning certainly can be inept for those paying attention. Computer speech recognition has improved greatly, so now many more videos are subtitled, but still fails similarly when context is key.
Chases Eagles, above @ 1:50 PM, my girlfriend is hard of hearing so we always have the captioning on when we are watching TV. Occasionally I also notice some mistakes in the captioning. On example of this that amused me was on a Canadian TV series, “Murdoch Mysteries”. In one episode the captions repeatedly referred to a “buoy knife”. It was actually a Bowie knife. I don’t know if this was ignorance or a confusion resulting from the differences between American and Canadian accents.
On another TV series we are currently watching, “New Tricks” (a British mystery series), I have noticed that the subtitles often give a simplified version of the spoken dialogue. I am guessing that this is intended to make it easier to read and keep up with the story.
Cicero:
I appreciate the compliment to the blog.
I’m also going to assume that discussing issues on blogs isn’t the only thing people here do about what we’re seeing. For example, I Am Spartacus has mentioned a lot of things to do, and others have as well.
Whether any of this will change anything is another story. I don’t have an answer.
Cicero: The space program is about the last thing I’d worry about with everything else going on. The Biden administration is keeping the four major Trump space initiatives: The Space Force, the Artemis Accords, the National Space Council, and project Artemis. The last I heard is that NASA still intends to award the contract(s) for the manned lunar lander by the end of April. If all of that continues, I don’t think Nelson can screw things up too badly.
From the book of things I never expected to say…
“Wait a moment please, one of my hearing aids is rebooting.”
My Wife and I watch a lot of TV from different countries, all with subtitles (MHZ, IMBD under the Amazon banner). We note that at time the words are close to English but the translations are a bit off. This especially with the French TV show. Still fun to watch.
On the New Tricks, a great show. Sometimes those that write the American English to translate the British English might have a bias against us American English users.
How much of the caption output is auto-generated?
Maybe the incorrect words are a result of no human ever viewing it? Or perhaps they do a quick spot check and thus miss a lot of stuff. Or read the captions without viewing the film at the same time.
mkent:
My comment on Nelson, the 78 year-old now to head NASA instead of playing in sandboxes, is simply to show one dullard is appointed by another.
If you think he is a toothless totem, say so.
If not, he still gets to play with some of our money.
NASA has been a disaster for a long time. Hitching rides on USSR/Russian rockets, for pity’s sake! Oops, we shouldn’t have used that gasket material, but only the seven person crew on Challenger died! Putting a dullard in nominal charge is no fix, unless the people below him on the ladder are doing their jobs dutifully, or not. But isn’t that just what the Deep State is about?
You’ve seen me less here on Neo’s comments because I’m expanding my intellectual horizons. My other favorite blogger, Arnold Kling, has started a 10-team “Fantasy Intellectual” League, and I’m owner #7 (Sam-I-Am). One of my 15 pics was our own New Neo.
Here are the basic rules and a list of all 150 intellectuals chosen by Arnold’s commenters http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/the-top-150-intellectuals-selected-competitively/
Here are my 15 picks
Steve Sailer . Martin Gurri , Glenn Loury . Robin Hanson .
Lee Smith . Bari Weiss . James A Lindsay . Ben Shapiro .
Angelo Codevilla . Marc Andreesson . Rod Dreher . Alister McGrath . Marvin Olasky . New Neo . Robert Barnes
The scoring is: Steel manning arguments which you disagree with – I actually think Neo does this better than anybody on the internet. Better than Arnold’s favorites Tyler Cowan (Marginal Revolution) and Scott Alexander (Suskind of Astral Codex Ten; formerly Slate Star Codes).
Bets: thinking in probabilities, and making bets on your beliefs
Memes: creating catch phrases that “catch on”, and spread virally. Like Nassim Taleb’s “Black Swan”.
It’s comfy here on Neo’s site. I like, we like; Neo likes it.
But we could maybe get some more (with some effort).
I remember a fine poster: A ship in the harbor is safe.
That is not what ships are for.
My mind, now retired, is more interested in who are the best intellectuals on the internet. Why? And how to promote them?
Scoring them and having Teams watch them seems a better way than developing larger substack followings – altho the substack $5/month subscription is likely VERY nice to those who get it.
(Like Greenwald, Sullivan, and Yglesias, all picked by other FI Teams, and called out by Ann Althouse, a bit; she was also chosen. They were all high on my list.) https://althouse.blogspot.com/2021/03/simultaneously-transforming-into.html
But she’s not on my team (tho I like to read her, too). So, off to look at “my guys”.
Cicero: I don’t know yet. It’s too early to tell. But Bridenstine set things up so well that the only way to really derail them is through active sabotage. Benign neglect won’t do it.
Ask me again in a year or so and I’ll have a better answer.
Tom Grey:
Thanks – I’m flattered to be in such company.
How much of the caption output is auto-generated?
Maybe the incorrect words are a result of no human ever viewing it? Or perhaps they do a quick spot check and thus miss a lot of stuff. Or read the captions without viewing the film at the same time.
JimNorCal:
Computer speech recognition is remarkably good these days. Most YouTubes are converted to text automatically and placed in a transcript. (Unless it’s conservative video during an election, as I noticed this past year.)
Human captions have never been checked all that well in my experience.
Words that are heavily context-dependent often fail in both cases.
Tom Grey: Nice work!
neo: Congrats!
Tom Grey,
Too bad the (R) category isn’t in play this season. Neo is very strong in that area.
Best of luck!
Keep reading long enough and you’ll get to a fine explication of how grifter Dinesh D’Souza got his spots 😀
Why are you calling Dinesh D’Souza a grifter?
Tom Gray, a very nice list. Most names I know or have at least vaguely heard of.
But what do you appreciate about Rod Dreher that I must be missing?
@Eva Marie:
Because he’s part of Conservative Inc. What has he helped to conserve?
He didn’t deserve his legal railroading, don’t get me wrong. But he’s a grifter amongst grifters.
Anyway he’s a foreigner of a an alien race and has no business telling Legacy Americans how to live. Neither should we presume to tell Dot Indians what to do. If they want to burn widows, more power to them.
@R2L
That’s Rod (Did I Mention I’m Orthodox?) Dreher to you, Sir.
Kind of like David (Do you know I adopted a Picaninny?) French.
One tires of virtue signalers.
Can’t answer your question though. I’m respectfully not going to comment on the rest of the list in question although have plenty to say about some on it 😛
Everyone deserves a fair hearing, but I think we all need to be very aware not just of the Overton Window but also Gatekeepers whose particular grift/schtick is to guard the margins such that the benighted peasantry don’t stray too far from the reservation.
Note that I’m not saying that we all need to go off and start goose stepping to the Badenweiler Marsch (nice tune tho). What I *am* saying is that we should look to just how much Conservative Inc. has manage to conserve and ask ourselves just what is the utility of these clowns of various stripes.
Should be clear to everyone by this point that you can’t dam or divert the tide of Progressivism. It’s going to take root and branch effort to deal with this cancer. Such an effort will require intellectuals and strategists — in fact the active engagement of deep thinkers with a historical perspective is essential if we’re not to throw the baby out with the bath water.
I always liked Dinesh D’Sousa. Now I like him even more.Your comments have inspired me to buy one of his books with Neo’s link. Win win.
More power to your elbow! 🙂 We’re not here to agree with each other all the time.
Tom Grey:
Thanks!
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Very nice! Places to go, things to see, photos to take!
https://youtu.be/vQLNS3HWfCM
I enjoy your thoughtful, conservative worldview. Thank you for your insights.
Here’s a tip when trolling your library for good movies…assuming your library has DVDs and a decent search app.
Search on “criterion collection”. Criterion is a video distribution company which takes important films and puts together a quality restoration of the film with additional features, commentaries and other goodies.
They’ve been doing this for decades so it’s not all woke crap. I guarantee there are Criterion versions of films you’d like to see and they are well-done.
There’s a Criterion version of Orson Welles’ “F is for Fake.” Welles happened to be hanging out in Ibiza in the 70s when both Clifford Irving, the guy who did the Howard Hughes hoax, and Elmyr de Hory, who was the most famous art forger in the world, were on hand.
As a magician and as the mastermind behind the “War of the Worlds” scare, Welles had a soft spot for fakery so he decided to do a sort of documentary on the subject but from an odd angle — almost everything in the film is faked.
Welles thought he had invented a new film form, but “F” failed at the box office and remains a cult item. I’m in that cult so I like to make shameless plugs for it.
The other day we were conversing about Mondegreens. Joan Baez was probably unaware of Stoneman’s cavalry raids.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoneman%27s_raid
Mondegreens are supposed to be reasonable.
I wear hearing aids and even so I have difficulty understanding people when I can’t see their mouth. I always have the captioning on and I am constantly amazed how ignorant are the captioners.
Here are two examples from the movie ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’ These are not reasonable.
“Tower to B-17! There’s a Jap on your tail! Lose your engines and get out of here.”
Actual dialog: Goose your engines…
“Oh, my God! The tank in the ocean’s over there, and it’s full of aviation fuel.”
Actual dialog: The tanker Neosho’s over there…
Hmm…”F” is up on YouTube, the Criterion version no less.
–“F for Fake 1973 – FULL MOVIE”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIVgUjj6RxU
It’s one of those rare films that gets high scores on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and the audience — 88% and 89% respectively.
This is a GREAT forum.
I have no clue as to how many people read it.
As a frequent commentator, I have the sense people of like minds are talking to, informing one another with the comments posted. But they are often amplified echoes of what Neo has previously written, nothing more.
But we are doing nothing and seem unable to do anything about the tens of millions of dullards out there, who will bitch and moan when everyone is equally miserable, but will do nothing to forestall or prevent that outcome.
We have a 78 year-old senile dullard in the White House who just appointed a 78 year-old dullard to head NASA. The worst (least able) federal government in history while China works assiduously to achieve global dominance. Fags and transgenders playing in government!
Democratic communism is wonderful, right, Comrade?
Chases Eagles:
I don’t have hearing aids but I’ve got tinnitus, so I always put the subtitles on too. (Covid masking has made my life more difficult.)
Human captioning certainly can be inept for those paying attention. Computer speech recognition has improved greatly, so now many more videos are subtitled, but still fails similarly when context is key.
Chases Eagles, above @ 1:50 PM, my girlfriend is hard of hearing so we always have the captioning on when we are watching TV. Occasionally I also notice some mistakes in the captioning. On example of this that amused me was on a Canadian TV series, “Murdoch Mysteries”. In one episode the captions repeatedly referred to a “buoy knife”. It was actually a Bowie knife. I don’t know if this was ignorance or a confusion resulting from the differences between American and Canadian accents.
On another TV series we are currently watching, “New Tricks” (a British mystery series), I have noticed that the subtitles often give a simplified version of the spoken dialogue. I am guessing that this is intended to make it easier to read and keep up with the story.
Cicero:
I appreciate the compliment to the blog.
I’m also going to assume that discussing issues on blogs isn’t the only thing people here do about what we’re seeing. For example, I Am Spartacus has mentioned a lot of things to do, and others have as well.
Whether any of this will change anything is another story. I don’t have an answer.
Cicero: The space program is about the last thing I’d worry about with everything else going on. The Biden administration is keeping the four major Trump space initiatives: The Space Force, the Artemis Accords, the National Space Council, and project Artemis. The last I heard is that NASA still intends to award the contract(s) for the manned lunar lander by the end of April. If all of that continues, I don’t think Nelson can screw things up too badly.
From the book of things I never expected to say…
“Wait a moment please, one of my hearing aids is rebooting.”
My Wife and I watch a lot of TV from different countries, all with subtitles (MHZ, IMBD under the Amazon banner). We note that at time the words are close to English but the translations are a bit off. This especially with the French TV show. Still fun to watch.
On the New Tricks, a great show. Sometimes those that write the American English to translate the British English might have a bias against us American English users.
How much of the caption output is auto-generated?
Maybe the incorrect words are a result of no human ever viewing it? Or perhaps they do a quick spot check and thus miss a lot of stuff. Or read the captions without viewing the film at the same time.
mkent:
My comment on Nelson, the 78 year-old now to head NASA instead of playing in sandboxes, is simply to show one dullard is appointed by another.
If you think he is a toothless totem, say so.
If not, he still gets to play with some of our money.
NASA has been a disaster for a long time. Hitching rides on USSR/Russian rockets, for pity’s sake! Oops, we shouldn’t have used that gasket material, but only the seven person crew on Challenger died! Putting a dullard in nominal charge is no fix, unless the people below him on the ladder are doing their jobs dutifully, or not. But isn’t that just what the Deep State is about?
You’ve seen me less here on Neo’s comments because I’m expanding my intellectual horizons. My other favorite blogger, Arnold Kling, has started a 10-team “Fantasy Intellectual” League, and I’m owner #7 (Sam-I-Am). One of my 15 pics was our own New Neo.
Here are the basic rules and a list of all 150 intellectuals chosen by Arnold’s commenters
http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/the-top-150-intellectuals-selected-competitively/
Here are my 15 picks
Steve Sailer . Martin Gurri , Glenn Loury . Robin Hanson .
Lee Smith . Bari Weiss . James A Lindsay . Ben Shapiro .
Angelo Codevilla . Marc Andreesson . Rod Dreher . Alister McGrath . Marvin Olasky . New Neo . Robert Barnes
The scoring is: Steel manning arguments which you disagree with – I actually think Neo does this better than anybody on the internet. Better than Arnold’s favorites Tyler Cowan (Marginal Revolution) and Scott Alexander (Suskind of Astral Codex Ten; formerly Slate Star Codes).
Bets: thinking in probabilities, and making bets on your beliefs
Memes: creating catch phrases that “catch on”, and spread virally. Like Nassim Taleb’s “Black Swan”.
It’s comfy here on Neo’s site. I like, we like; Neo likes it.
But we could maybe get some more (with some effort).
I remember a fine poster:
A ship in the harbor is safe.
That is not what ships are for.
My mind, now retired, is more interested in who are the best intellectuals on the internet. Why? And how to promote them?
Scoring them and having Teams watch them seems a better way than developing larger substack followings – altho the substack $5/month subscription is likely VERY nice to those who get it.
(Like Greenwald, Sullivan, and Yglesias, all picked by other FI Teams, and called out by Ann Althouse, a bit; she was also chosen. They were all high on my list.)
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2021/03/simultaneously-transforming-into.html
But she’s not on my team (tho I like to read her, too). So, off to look at “my guys”.
Cicero: I don’t know yet. It’s too early to tell. But Bridenstine set things up so well that the only way to really derail them is through active sabotage. Benign neglect won’t do it.
Ask me again in a year or so and I’ll have a better answer.
Tom Grey:
Thanks – I’m flattered to be in such company.
How much of the caption output is auto-generated?
Maybe the incorrect words are a result of no human ever viewing it? Or perhaps they do a quick spot check and thus miss a lot of stuff. Or read the captions without viewing the film at the same time.
JimNorCal:
Computer speech recognition is remarkably good these days. Most YouTubes are converted to text automatically and placed in a transcript. (Unless it’s conservative video during an election, as I noticed this past year.)
Human captions have never been checked all that well in my experience.
Words that are heavily context-dependent often fail in both cases.
Tom Grey: Nice work!
neo: Congrats!
Tom Grey,
Too bad the (R) category isn’t in play this season. Neo is very strong in that area.
Best of luck!
Fascinating.
https://www.unz.com/article/sir-richard-francis-burton-explorer-linguist-race-realist/
Keep reading long enough and you’ll get to a fine explication of how grifter Dinesh D’Souza got his spots 😀
Why are you calling Dinesh D’Souza a grifter?
Tom Gray, a very nice list. Most names I know or have at least vaguely heard of.
But what do you appreciate about Rod Dreher that I must be missing?
@Eva Marie:
Because he’s part of Conservative Inc. What has he helped to conserve?
He didn’t deserve his legal railroading, don’t get me wrong. But he’s a grifter amongst grifters.
Anyway he’s a foreigner of a an alien race and has no business telling Legacy Americans how to live. Neither should we presume to tell Dot Indians what to do. If they want to burn widows, more power to them.
@R2L
That’s Rod (Did I Mention I’m Orthodox?) Dreher to you, Sir.
Kind of like David (Do you know I adopted a Picaninny?) French.
One tires of virtue signalers.
Can’t answer your question though. I’m respectfully not going to comment on the rest of the list in question although have plenty to say about some on it 😛
Everyone deserves a fair hearing, but I think we all need to be very aware not just of the Overton Window but also Gatekeepers whose particular grift/schtick is to guard the margins such that the benighted peasantry don’t stray too far from the reservation.
Note that I’m not saying that we all need to go off and start goose stepping to the Badenweiler Marsch (nice tune tho). What I *am* saying is that we should look to just how much Conservative Inc. has manage to conserve and ask ourselves just what is the utility of these clowns of various stripes.
Should be clear to everyone by this point that you can’t dam or divert the tide of Progressivism. It’s going to take root and branch effort to deal with this cancer. Such an effort will require intellectuals and strategists — in fact the active engagement of deep thinkers with a historical perspective is essential if we’re not to throw the baby out with the bath water.
I always liked Dinesh D’Sousa. Now I like him even more.Your comments have inspired me to buy one of his books with Neo’s link. Win win.
More power to your elbow! 🙂 We’re not here to agree with each other all the time.
Tom Grey:
Thanks!