My buddy Mike Garfield, over at globalish says about this video:

"t’s that time of the year again: since 2008 (a million years ago!), DJ Earworm’s mashup mania crescendos once a year to form an epic audio collage that features Billboard’s favorite 25, all woven into one symphonic DJ mix. It’s like a Google Earth view of the musical identity of young Americans – by zooming out until a year of singles happens in four minutes, culture seems like nature, and the spirit of the times shines through the often-mediocre music Earworm brings together. Seeing Earth from space, we found a new identity beyond the nation states; a similar escape into low orbit around Pop reveals the flavor of the age with more appeal and sentiment than year-end news reviews.
It isn’t merely that “United States of Pop” resamples factory-assembled dross to offer tunes more interesting than their gathered parts. “Do What You Wanna Do” sings volumes about how and who we are right now, the character of mainstream culture we can’t see until it’s past, the air that we’ve been breathing without paying much attention. The cynical might say it demonstrates how all this music sounds the same, how easily it’s recombined – and while that’s definitely true, it’s also and more deeply true that we’re in this together, and will be remembered sharing space on stage as actors in a common play of history. Here is a window into how this moment will be seen, in digest form, the way we now look back on 1969. But go back and look at the mixes from 2008 – 2013, and a trend is obvious: even lousy music’s getting better. It’s an optimistic sign that we are getting deeper as a culture. Let’s hope.
Earworm’s genius lies not only in up-cycling tracks I’d rather never hear again as standalone recordings, but also in transforming the familiar and mundane into a damn-near magical homage to each year’s zeitgeist. This must be what an end-of-life review feels like: everything remembered and forgotten rushes back for one last joyous and nostalgic celebration.
Here’s to the change we all seek in 2015."

When I first started volunteering to serve at a homeless shelter, many years ago, I didn't know exactly why I was doing it. Certainly it felt like the "right" thing to do. I was at least confident that I wasn't doing it for personal gain because I didn't wear it on my sleave, didn't brag about it or hang my ego on my personal identity of being a good person. When dissillusionment set in, when I realized just how many of the people I was serving were homeless by choice, I pushed through and carried on...and I still didn't know why. I just trusted that I would get it one day.

Eventually I made a connection to the time I spent living in Sweden. In the town I lived in, every night a group of vagrants assembled in the market square. Every bit as dirty and drunken as the worst homeless person that most people imagine them all to be. Fighting, having sex in the public restroom, vomiting and carrying on loudly all night. But this was socialism, so they went home every night to their government payed for apartments. I realized that no matter what you do, there will always be a segment of society that just doesn't give a Fuck and is happy to take and never give back. We've all known these people. Family members, friends, acquaintances, who use up the good will of everyone they meet until they've got no one left to use and it falls to the larger community to support them. No economy, government or community planning will ever compell them to support themselves. We loathe them and shun them. Politicians with ulterior motives tell us that ALL homeless and disadvantaged ARE them. But it's a lie. There are the mentally and physically ill who have no support structure, who NEED their communities to help them. Most of these people were once functioning members of their communities who no longer have the ability to survive on their own.
And so I came to understand that it's better to feed a hundred leaches to serve a single helpless individual.

Boy was I proud of myself for realizing that.

And then I was layed off and my job shipped to India, followed closely by my wife spending a year in and out of the hospital, with no insurance. A careers worth of hard work, reduced to a data point on a corporate profit sheet. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, when the medical debt comes for me and everything I've built in my life is taken, to become a line in someone else's ledger. Betrayed by the greed in the system. Because I upheld my end of the social contract. I worked hard in school, excelled in my career, had two kids and bought a house in a neighborhood with good schools. But the system is run by the greediest and most power hungry. Politics and business is the domain of the high functioning sociopath. And to a sociopath, you're not a real person like them. You're a data point, a line in the ledger.

Then I came to respect the other segment of the homeless. The ones who rejected the social contract, who don't feel societal pressure to give more than they take. Because they got it right. It's all a lie. You don't earn anything in America. You don't deserve the fruits of your labor. You subsist at the whim of the people with money and power. And when it serves them, you get nothing.

We are all standing in line for food, hoping there's a room for the night.

Um. I think the use of *Timeshift (fuck you siftbot) invalidates their suggested time for assembly.
Even if it's fact that they can assemble an entire Fiesta in 86 seconds, it completely sidesteps the more important question of: Why would you want to?

The Gist:

Guy in business suit looking thoughtfully out of window.
(Doubtful anyone who designs fine consumer goods, *actually designs consumer goods*, wears a suit). Maybe its supposed to be you! You avant-garde millionaire, you!

Person sketching watch designs. This is probably semi-close to reality, though they don’t show the hundreds of designs the visual designer creates that are dismissed at whim by the aforementioned, assumed (but inevitable even if not shown) suits.

People fiddling with plastic representations of what one would assume as the model for said watch design. Maybe realistic, though with the caveat that two people are sitting there going over said physical design, in any serious discussion concerning the actual physics of the end product. I can *not* imagine that nearly the entirety of this process today, both visual and mechanical design, are not done digitally.

Okay, there’s some CG. Because CG is the next step, rather than the first, least expensive step in any design process today. Who wants to quickly model everything in a matter of hours when you can fabricate expensive, physical material for iterative testing?

Holy shit, was that guy just looking at a wood cutout? I can’t even think of a shitty, sarcastic/realistic remark about that one. I might have misunderstood that shot.

Alright, now we’re machining shit. You can’t really fake that with a few grand for marketing. That’s the real stuff. (1.5m in)

No, they don’t sand/polish things by hand during the fabrication phase. That’s entirely too inaccurate and subjective to the assembler to leave up to human hands. (But hey: it’s a 2.5 million dollar piece of metal, so lets make those buyers feel good about their money spent).

Oh look: gemstones! (???) That's kingly.

More faux machining that is veritably inferior to quality mechanical assembly.

Oh shit, someone just turned a nob!

3.5 minutes in, and we see some actual hand-polished work that is legitimately viable to perform by hand.

Hey lets sand those nodules off the finished pieces, and micro-inspect those printed markings, because nothing about us says “accuracy” without a fallible human to do it. Also: what are they printing shit on there for? Was it pushing the price to $3mil to engrave the timestamps on the faces? That better be the highest quality electroplated coating, but even then I can't imagine that's superior than a tactile, physical representation.

Now they’re hand-engraving the sculpted ornamentation, but it’s one more point I can gladly give them because those kinds of human touches let you know at least some sort of artisan was involved. I can appreciate that, though realizing what I just said causes me to reflect on the inaccuracies of mass-production, and why we would take one over the other…

More microscopes. (Because if one notch is off, it’s back to the furnace for you!)

Awe shit, payday. A guy in a suit looking confident is walking towards your building!

Finally, the gear assembly. It certainly looks fantastic, photographically speaking. I can’t help but notice that all that detail is lost to hundreds of textural indentations or are due to stylized alternating polish/grinding. However, I’m confident that spending $2.5mil on this product would get me the absolute, most accurate, unnoticeable details (hand-made!) within a micro-millimeter of accuracy. Those indentations are like chrome on a street-racer in the 90’s: the more you have, the greater they perform.

@~8min, I’m pretty sure no one works like that at their desk. That posture would kill you in a month.

They know you can’t spin the head of a watch while it’s on your wrist, right?

Awe! It’s got 5 ringtones! That’s way more than any other watch I’ve even heard of! Except everything that doesn’t cost $2.5mil.


If I can take anything away from this that’s even remotely positive, it’s that at least millionaire shitheads are now being just as suckered as the rest of the consumer base. Let me sell ONE of those watches, and I would have enough money to overtake their business within a year, except for that I don't have the greed, dishonesty, and overall lack of morals that it would take to set up a quality factory, and trick such dickheads into buying (even superior BS) products.

I agree. You can have your Burger King your way and if any man in God's Great 'Murica tries to tell you how to eat it then they can go straight to Commie/Socialist Europe, where there's no Constitution that guarantees Freedom!

On the other hand, some things I cook take multiple days to prepare. Sometimes I may not have slept more than a couple hours overnight, tending to the food I just served you. The rubs, marinades, bastes, brines and such may represent years of experimentation. It often requires multiple different cooking methods to prepare one single item.

When I share that food with you, you can smother it in ketchup and salt before you taste it...that's your right. You can also take that food and eat it in the fucking street. I will, in fact, help you to the street. No...really...I insist.

There's assembly line food and there's unique, carefully prepared, food that sometimes represents a lifetime of care and effort. You can show some appreciation for the work that went into the food you're eating or you can be a self centered dick. That's what Freedom is all about.

Not directed at you personally DannyM...just the concept in general.

5 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

I for one would like to welcome our new Self-Assembling Robotic Overlords, but it seems we can defeat them by going upstairs...

Your video, Swarm of One Thousand Robots Self-Assembling Into Any Shape, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

There is a pretty large worldwide anti-nuclear movement out there, particularly in Japan, but it apparently doesn't have much traction in the U.S. In fact in 2013 the UN General Assembly 125 countries issued a joint statement calling the use of nuclear weapons inhuman and for total disarmament.

I think people in the U.S. have kind of forgotten about them since the cold war ended. I don't think anyone seriously believes we'll use them. "Deterrence" is really the only reason we still stockpile them, but it's a ludicrous notion. If someone is crazy enough to intentionally use nukes, they're crazy enough not to care what the repercussions to their own country will be both politically or militarily.

Thanks, but even so, I'm impressed with how long the whole assembly walked around by itself at the end

And how is it, everyone can come up with a DeLorean for these sketches? Aren't these things rare and expensive?

"Only 6,000 cars came off the assembly line at the DeLorean Motor Company factory in 1981, nearly 2,000 each year in 1982 and 1983. Sales were strong for the 1981 models, but sales dwindled in early 1982 and cars were stockpiled until DeLorean Motor Company went out of business later that year."

Is this an attempt to remove the jeep from a concrete-like substance? I note nobody is even remotely sinking into the "mud" on foot anywhere near it. Looks like they came back after the ground dried out.

I saw this wicked rescue setup once. It basically was a crane they assembled on site, using those three-sided trusses people use for radio towers, and would lift the vehicle mostly up out of the mud instead of just drag it sideways.

so sad that this is brilliantly assembled digital fake 30 years after the fact...For phone campaign...Nokia no less.

Guillotine: (per wiki) "...as the French Revolution progressed, the National Assembly researched a new method to be used on all condemned people regardless of class. Their concerns contributed to the idea that the purpose of capital punishment was simply to end life rather than to inflict pain."

"The machine was successful as it was considered a humane form of execution,"

...and all these years later and all the current methods (chair,shots, etc) are still no better than the Guillotine. Zero progress