I think the overarching problem is that they probably set an early goal of going for an E10 ESRB rating. That meant a kid-friendly plot, kid-friendly comedy, kid-friendly settings, and even kid-friendly antagonists (who are both sympathetic, and the main one apologizes at the end).

In the first game there was always a sense of foreboding lonliness, and a really creepy sense that whoever built Aperture Science really didn't give a shit about killing their test subjects.

In Portal 2, you've got a joke-cracking sidekick with you every step of the way, and the disregard for human life doesn't seem menacing and ominous, just ridiculous.

I loved playing Portal 2, and I enjoyed it with the new pure-comedy tone, but I did kinda miss that creepy ominous vibe from the first game.

What the fuck's with the ominous tones and background music?

Your own interview likened Anonymous to the same protesting you baby-boomers were doing dressed as hippies, smoking weed and having copious amounts of unprotected sex.

Your talking to the voice of the people who can no longer protest openly without being hit with water canons, dazzlers, tazers, microwave tanks, rubber bullets, and good old batons. So why make it sound like you're talking to terrorist sleeper cell.

Oh that's right - the media is one of the big secret-loving corporates trying to take our freedom.

Yet the hair lives...something ominous about that.

>> ^ulysses1904:

Yeah his voice is obnoxious. And the editing and sound effects are the usual manipulative crap. The only thing missing is the mushroom cloud at the finale. Or was it there, I stopped watching before the end.


However, the message for the cars is completely true. I am not a wealthy person, so fluctuations in used car parts is a real pain for me...and it has been noticeable. Even moreso since many of the components I have needed of late have been engine related.
>> ^handmethekeysyou:

I almost upvoted this video after the beginning sequence.
But after the narrator's obnoxious tone, and then specifically the line, "but this government misallocation of money and resources always[emphasis mine] leads to unintended consequences," I stopped watching.
Always? Now there are a few ways of interpreting this sentences. First would be that when the government misallocates money and resources, there are unintended consequences. I won't disagree with that semantically, but if that's what he's saying, does it really need to be said? When the government screws up, it screws up. The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club.
A second interpretation is that government policy always misallocates money and resources & there are always, without fail, unintended consequences. Well, now I'll disagree semantically. Saying that all policy misallocates $$ & resources is ludicrous. If the video is going to talk about the fact that in all policy, there is always some money misused, that sounds interesting and is a worthwhile, constructive criticism. But something in those ominous clouds composited behind the Capitol Building tells me this isn't going to be an objective, in-depth look at government spending.
I suppose this video is 10 minutes of cherry-picked policies that the government screwed up. I'd love to watch and get worked up about it, but now I know it would just be anti-government propaganda.
...
I decided to watch some of it since maybe it was unfair to rail on it so hard after only a minute. Things that struck me:
- Use of Uncle Sam to suggest overbearing government propaganda. Video then proceeds to lay the propaganda on heavier than a North Korean campaign to get you to trim your hair. People in the streets, in photo negative! Capitol building with dollar signs coming out it, heading right for the lens, in photo negative! How about you composite some more shots over other shots to make this all seem so overwhelming? I think there was a full 5 seconds in there without a single hit or sting. I was bored and not emotionally outraged during those 5 seconds. Please reedit to fix.
- You're going to argue against "regulations" at large? All regulation is hurting me, the consumer, the citizen? [Regulating the amount of lead in my paint ultimately costs me more money, which means I can't provide as well for my children, who are currently eating paint chips.] Strange that he doesn't name a single specific regulation. Though it's actually nice. It saves me from having to think. Now I know, regulation=bad, and I don't need to worry my pretty little head about the whys and hows of it all.
- Nor does he explain the line "We have recently seen that sometimes it's the regulator that keeps bad businesses in business." Ok, sometimes that happens...like, when? Oh, I don't actually know any examples, just sometimes it happens. I can't wait to put on a smug expression of intellectual superiority after I wow the crowd at my next cocktail party when I pull this nugget out.
- During the regulation bit, he does relate that we're paying a "regulation tax" that's priced into my health insurance, shoes, clothing [shoes aren't clothing?], food, cars, homes, and pretty much anything I buy. I hate taxes! I buy at least 3 of those things! [So what?] So...I hate regulations! Which regulations do I hate again? [Not sure.] All of them! [Did I mention this is propaganda?]
I stopped after the regulations part [can you tell I didn't like that bit?]. I have no conclusive paragraph to sum everything up. This video is terrible and offensive.


There are many examples of bad companies staying in power because of using the power of law to enforce their agenda. For instance, the enjoyed legal monopoly of most telco and cable companies. Or, the higher prices Americans pay for sugar because of import tariffs on sugar. And thusly making corn sugar, its unhealthier cousin, the mainstay of American diets. Or, the corn subsidy that makes corn feeding beef more economical, even though it causes ecoli to then be produced by said cattle; this all benefits fast food industries to the defiant of us all. Or minimum wage, it necessarily raises unemployment by denying low skilled workers access to market priced labor; this protects high skilled labor from ever being found wanting for lower priced labor mainly benefiting large union positions, while relegating to perpetual unemployment/illegal employment a low skilled migrant worker.

But I admit, there needed to be more examples and less dogma in the video.

I almost upvoted this video after the beginning sequence.

But after the narrator's obnoxious tone, and then specifically the line, "but this government misallocation of money and resources always[emphasis mine] leads to unintended consequences," I stopped watching.

Always? Now there are a few ways of interpreting this sentences. First would be that when the government misallocates money and resources, there are unintended consequences. I won't disagree with that semantically, but if that's what he's saying, does it really need to be said? When the government screws up, it screws up. The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club.

A second interpretation is that government policy always misallocates money and resources & there are always, without fail, unintended consequences. Well, now I'll disagree semantically. Saying that all policy misallocates $$ & resources is ludicrous. If the video is going to talk about the fact that in all policy, there is always some money misused, that sounds interesting and is a worthwhile, constructive criticism. But something in those ominous clouds composited behind the Capitol Building tells me this isn't going to be an objective, in-depth look at government spending.

I suppose this video is 10 minutes of cherry-picked policies that the government screwed up. I'd love to watch and get worked up about it, but now I know it would just be anti-government propaganda.

...

I decided to watch some of it since maybe it was unfair to rail on it so hard after only a minute. Things that struck me:

- Use of Uncle Sam to suggest overbearing government propaganda. Video then proceeds to lay the propaganda on heavier than a North Korean campaign to get you to trim your hair. People in the streets, in photo negative! Capitol building with dollar signs coming out it, heading right for the lens, in photo negative! How about you composite some more shots over other shots to make this all seem so overwhelming? I think there was a full 5 seconds in there without a single hit or sting. I was bored and not emotionally outraged during those 5 seconds. Please reedit to fix.

- You're going to argue against "regulations" at large? All regulation is hurting me, the consumer, the citizen? [Regulating the amount of lead in my paint ultimately costs me more money, which means I can't provide as well for my children, who are currently eating paint chips.] Strange that he doesn't name a single specific regulation. Though it's actually nice. It saves me from having to think. Now I know, regulation=bad, and I don't need to worry my pretty little head about the whys and hows of it all.

- Nor does he explain the line "We have recently seen that sometimes it's the regulator that keeps bad businesses in business." Ok, sometimes that happens...like, when? Oh, I don't actually know any examples, just sometimes it happens. I can't wait to put on a smug expression of intellectual superiority after I wow the crowd at my next cocktail party when I pull this nugget out.

- During the regulation bit, he does relate that we're paying a "regulation tax" that's priced into my health insurance, shoes, clothing [shoes aren't clothing?], food, cars, homes, and pretty much anything I buy. I hate taxes! I buy at least 3 of those things! [So what?] So...I hate regulations! Which regulations do I hate again? [Not sure.] All of them! [Did I mention this is propaganda?]

I stopped after the regulations part [can you tell I didn't like that bit?]. I have no conclusive paragraph to sum everything up. This video is terrible and offensive.

Nice! It's on Hulu. Wow!

Hey, how are you? I thought you flew away forever!


In reply to this comment by pigeon:
ominous...

http://www.hulu.com/ants-natures-secret-power

p.

FOX is just hilarious to watch any more. They used the same "Fox and Friends" mold for this "newsteam" that they have always used... a too bitchy and angry, yet dumb, blonde female with that ever-present inflection in her delivery that is somehow both conspiratorial and self-assured, yet incredulous at every bit of copy that scrolls in front of that thousand-yard stare, a blondish "open-minded" Steve Doucy guy as her left frame, and a quick-tempered "brown-haired guy who isn't Steve Doucy" as the right. The bit opens as a "FOX News Alert" while ominous bassline hints of dread and foreboding. It reminds me of E1M2 of Doom. And, of course, the crawler. "ALERT" scrolls and flashes the whole time, as if this were NOT a test of the Emergency Broadcast System, but a real, dangerous and imminent threat. FOX certainly knows how to entertain.

Humans love to anthropomorphize everything. My favorite is the Raid bug spray commercial here in the States that show human looking, talking bugs being snubbed out by an ominous floating can of poison.

>> ^dag:

Because he couldn't hear the ominous background music.>> ^NordlichReiter:
Why didn't he just start the car, and drive the fuck away?
Plot hole the size of the damned moon.
He shot that goof what? 3 times? Those pistols have the big round barrel of a .45 cal. Bullet proof vest or not, that guy would have been sucking air after two hits from slugs those size.



I need that so I know when I'm about to get attacked by my cats....

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Because he couldn't hear the ominous background music.>> ^NordlichReiter:

Why didn't he just start the car, and drive the fuck away?
Plot hole the size of the damned moon.
He shot that goof what? 3 times? Those pistols have the big round barrel of a .45 cal. Bullet proof vest or not, that guy would have been sucking air after two hits from slugs those size.

This coming from a guy that sold weapons to Iran, facilitated funding for a Nicaraguan paramilitary regime and refuses to bring to light of day something disturbingly ominous about REX-84 according to the senate hearings. I guess that was more "American" huh?

A Tobin tax is probably not a terrible idea, but why do they have to associate it with Robin Hood? That will just piss off everyone who doesn't have an envy-based view of economy.
And while Bill Nighy is brilliant at squirming awkwardly, why can't we get some real replies from a real banker?

And why do they focus so much on the banker guy squirming? We don't get to see the (also greedy) face of the interviewer, or hear much of an argument besides righteous retribution against the selfish banker class.

How will they use the funds they raise to help 'the poor'? Straight up alms? Hundreds of billions of pounds applied irrationally can be quite destructive.

Jeez, UK policymakers can just make anything feel ominous, clumsy, greedy and obnoxiously P.C.

HA! This video has my current "adult" client in it, starts at around 18:30, I work for "the darkside of porn"!!. Gawd I hate this sort of crap, dramatic cords, ominous voice overs, such bullshit.

Epic metal cheese, mate-Not that I don't love it..."Grant, me, the power of the dragon tower!!"

-"Foreboding sense of impending ominous and overwhelming universal forces at work...grinding, sub-cellular decay." -Ms. Magazine

Ominous tones of Nazism are not helped by the thumbnail.