>> ^My_design:

Wow, the "free thinkers" lash out.
Not a corporate shill, but work in a corporate environment. Not saying that corporate actions are always right, but you guys only ever want to tear down, and never propose how to fix it. Your own hatred blinds you to reality.
So F_ck Walmart, F_ck Target, F_ck Coke and Pepsi and all the other companies that make "ridiculous" profits at the expense of consumers and employees. Stop buying their crap, form a commune and move to the hills. Consumerism and free market are screwing up the country/planet right? So let's seize corporate profits, block them at every angle and get us back to the good old days, you know before Carnegie, Ford, JP Morgan, and Rockefeller. Hell before Edison while we're at it. Oh wait there has always been corporations doing business in the US. Oh well, enjoy your new life with the Amish.
No options for jobs?
Here's a 160 pages of options just for the 50 miles around Chicago:
http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/JobResults.aspx?lr=cbcb_ct&siteid=cb_ctnpqsb&use=all&s_rawword
s=Chicago&s_freeloc=Il&s_jobtypes=ALL&uJobsF
oundCount2%3Ajlrd=50&Submit=GO
There are always options. We tend to forget that just 50 years ago people were subsistence farming, living with 3 generations in a household, working 2 jobs, and no health insurance. Hell in some places that is still going on. But now we complain and strike because the manager bullies us and causes unnecessary stress (0:22) If that is really the case, then document it. It is called contributing to a hostile work environment and is covered under the sexual harassment laws in the US.
"Because I'm tired of working at a company where workers get cheated and cheaters get rewarded" What? Umm that would be a class action lawsuit like the ones that hit Walmart in the past.


For me it's much simpler. Requires very little thinking through, this hatred for all that Walmmart represents. The worst form of mega-corporate usurping of the individual, of regional infrastructure, local architecture....Walmart has killed the souls of so many small towns and has done it through a systematic cheapening of goods and services. The hydra is self-perpetuating with your help....One of her strongest tentacles is this inbred bitch's legal department working tirelessly to maintain the machine's tactics and contempt for the people who have bought their line and their sub-standard goods from a country that has gone from a fundamentally repressive government with the largest population of any country to one, massive sweatshop PLANETOID of human wage-slaves.

People have been groomed for accepting quantity over quality, convenience over consciousness.
Apologies for the harsh words, glad to hear you have nothing to do with this particular beast-I fucked Coke, Pepsi, Target, etc. years ago...Don't frequent any chain restaurants or purchase new cars either. Shop at thrift stores for clothing and order consumer goods online through "ma and pa" internet businesses.
From America, in America, but not OF America.

Wow, the "free thinkers" lash out.
Not a corporate shill, but work in a corporate environment. Not saying that corporate actions are always right, but you guys only ever want to tear down, and never propose how to fix it. Your own hatred blinds you to reality.
So F_ck Walmart, F_ck Target, F_ck Coke and Pepsi and all the other companies that make "ridiculous" profits at the expense of consumers and employees. Stop buying their crap, form a commune and move to the hills. Consumerism and free market are screwing up the country/planet right? So let's seize corporate profits, block them at every angle and get us back to the good old days, you know before Carnegie, Ford, JP Morgan, and Rockefeller. Hell before Edison while we're at it. Oh wait there has always been corporations doing business in the US. Oh well, enjoy your new life with the Amish.

No options for jobs?
Here's a 160 pages of options just for the 50 miles around Chicago:
http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/JobResults.aspx?lr=cbcb_ct&siteid=cb_ctnpqsb&use=all&s_rawwords=Chicago&s_freeloc=Il&s_jobtypes=ALL&uJobsF
oundCount2%3Ajlrd=50&Submit=GO
There are always options. We tend to forget that just 50 years ago people were subsistence farming, living with 3 generations in a household, working 2 jobs, and no health insurance. Hell in some places that is still going on. But now we complain and strike because the manager bullies us and causes unnecessary stress (0:22) If that is really the case, then document it. It is called contributing to a hostile work environment and is covered under the sexual harassment laws in the US.

"Because I'm tired of working at a company where workers get cheated and cheaters get rewarded" What? Umm that would be a class action lawsuit like the ones that hit Walmart in the past.

Anti-consumerism so rarely has such high production values. Awesome sift.

I'm definitely not a fan of the rampant consumerism and the idiots on both sides who equate their phone with their identity... but it seems to me that the amount of vitriol and anger in this video suggests that TheAmazingAtheist thinks about this specific topic more than most fanboys I know. He probably has to, as he has quite a few more people to hate on.

Me, I dislike Apple's policies towards developers (and, hence, their walled-garden) and like the ability to write little apps for my Android phone without a subscription. (I tried out writing iOS apps, but found myself doing a lot of mundane things that you don't have to worry about with Java) I'd have tried a Palm Pre, but it wasn't available for T-Mobile.

I'm very interested to see if Blackberry can pull out of their 'slump', and I'd like to see MS become a player again... But I imagine that I'll stick with Android for as long as they're the 'least evil' (read: 'most free') option.

I would rather my Identity include "The guy that is a fan of Open Source and dislikes Apple's corporate policies" than "The guy that gets so worked up about what other people think about other people that he yells and spits at a camera until he's red in the face"... but that's just me.

What if I said that much of what we consider advanced human society is simply a network of selfish people individually interested in maximizing pleasure and avoiding displeasure?

What if I said that, other than hugely displeasurable experiences (disease, war, famine, etc., all displeasure) there are few other driving factors to advance modern human society outside of selfish desire for more pleasure?

The success of capitalism is the recognition that a society can be built around this with some rules that keep everyone from trampling everyone else.

We exist in a society built upon selfishness, where products beget products in an endless stream. Have you seen the new 'retina display' ipads? And the new Batman movie? And the new coffee brand that the local store is carrying that you heard is good? And the new treatment for that disorder you have? This is the current state of human society. Bernays and others recognized that tweaking things here and there for their own selfish gain was not only successful, but successful beyond their expectations. Bernays and people like him don't see themselves as 'taking advantage of' or 'cheating' others, though they will readily admit that marketing is manipulation.

Many of us look around now and say, 'this marketing and consumerism has gone to far!'. Why? I suggest this is because aggressive, constant barrages of these marketing tactics is leading your typical person to feel displeasure due to constantly being pitched to, and displeasure at recognizing the unending attempts at manipulation. This displeasure is outweighing the pleasure of participating in some areas of our society.

What will this lead to? Maybe a happy medium, maybe a swing the other direction, maybe an incredible swing to a 'matrix'-like dystopia where we are happily asleep in our minds, maximally pleased with the state of things.

>> ^Dread:

I'm of the opinion that these methods of massive crowd manipulation are unfortunately a blight... I do instead see a few very wealthy individuals throughout society whom most assuredly endorse and utilize these systems... I wonder if they are truly happy?

This video makes some fair points to consider, but it's drowning in baseless assertions (i.e., actors on reality TV shows acting out in psychopathic ways that transform into social norms).

It's stuck up its own ass, failing to take a step back to view consumerism as merely a proxy by which those in power can hold on to it (much like religion, patriotism, etc.). We're not all sheeple, but we are all human and are prey to the natural tendencies that underly tribalism.

Facebook is just a courier (and the video makes mention of that fact, relating it to the argument "guns don't kill people; people kill people"). Which is quite ironic, given that the thesis misses the forest from the trees (sic).

I say just hop on a boat, go to a nice little island and wait them out. Zombies aren't coordinated enough to swim long distances, and even if they commandeered a boat themselves, they wouldn't be able to figure out how to work the GPS. Sure, maybe there are zombies on the islands.. but there will be a limited quantity. A day or two of smashing skulls and you could sit back with a pineapple drink and relax. As Lucky suggests, it's only a matter of time before the mainland threat runs its course, like any explosive plague.
Now, how you seen the Internet recently? There seem to be a whole bunch of people, in the US mostly, who think zombies are real: Anti-zombie bullets, anti-zombie tomahawks, everyone and his mother has a 'bug out bag'. People are buying this shit up like hotcakes. Maybe the real virus is anti-zombie consumerism?

So heres the current list with my own interpretation of the subjects of each.

COFFEE MAKES ME POO = bowel movements
Eddie Izzard - Do you want a cup of coffee? = mating rituals
The Most Expensive Coffee in the World = civet droppings
South Park on Coffee = caffeine's affect on kids
Charlie Brooker vs. Nescafe - (VideoSift Coffee Mug Compo) = commercial/advertising
The latte zoo- (mixed animal latte pours) = drinkable art
Kramer CaffeLatte -- Seinfeld = caffeine's affect on racist comedians
The Office - Coffee and Cocaine = caffeine's affect on business quotas
The Simpsons - Beer Coffee = stereotypes of Aussies
Wish I had this coffee maker! = middle American consumerism
Coffee Snobs - snobby hipsters
This is Coffee (1961) = **coffee**
How to make Iced Coffee = what ice is used for
Six million dollar man coffee commercial = commercial/advertising
The Clover Coffee Machine - Hand Built By Stanford Engineers = Engineering
Denis Leary - Coffee = douchebag
How Sherlock Likes His Coffee (Sherlock BBC) = a fictitious characters taste/preferences
Dr. Cox and the Coffee (Scrubs) = flirting
How to make cold brew coffee the homemade way! = how to throw off the shackles of consumerism
Chad Vader Coffee = Star Wars copy right infringement
Austin Powers' coffee mix-up = the old Switcheroo comedy bit
History of Coffee = average joes bid for youtube attention
Join the Coffee Achievers! (Weird1984 coffee ad with Bowie) = commercial/advertising
Mad TV Coffee Maniac = caffeine's affect on Keanu Reeves
Coffee Panda = drinkable art
Charlie Chaplin Drinking Coffee = bowel movements
La recette des cupcakes jamais vus... au tiramisu = Tiramisu
Vodka & Coffee = alcoholics
Latte Art - Swan Lake = drinkable art
How To Cold Brew (COFFEE) = commercial/advertising
How to Pronounce Cappuccino = Linguistics
Strange To Meet You = caffeine's affect on European Directors/Actors
Columbian Coffee Crystals = commercial/advertising parody
Juan Valdez ~ Colombian Coffee 1982 = commercial/advertising
Coffee and the Brain = health benefits of caffeine
Milk With Your Coffee? = how boobies lactate
"The Coffee Wars" - (Mockumentary) = dangers of caffeine addiction
60 Cups, 1 Bald Head = how German scientists are full of shit!
It puts the coffee on its skin... = dangers of caffeine addiction
The Journey of the Coffee Bean = **coffee**

>> ^criticalthud:

>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^criticalthud:
just out of curiosity, in the midst of global warming doubters promoting the theory that the earth is warming through solar/cosmic/natural means... has there been much consideration into the idea that the earth is currently in a cooling phase -- enormously offset by what we're doing to it?
second,
one large concern i have with global warming is "system adaption" - that being that it generally takes the ecosystem a bit of time to adjust to whatever is happening to it (ie: glaciers don't melt immediately). Meaning that the damage we caused 10 years ago is being felt now. Meaning also that even if we were to cease mucking about right now, we could expect continued and possibly even escalating ecosystem problems in the years to come.
so, is it time to panic? dunno. could be.

Which is why it's so important to understand things better. Rapidly cutting CO2 emissions before we have the replacement technology in place would be costly, not just financially but world history shows big financial impacts generally spill over into violent impacts. Battery technology is getting very close to making electric cars that are superior in every way to their gas guzzling brethren. I truly do believe that the enormous CO2 contribution made by burning gasoline is rapidly on it's way out for purely economic rather than environmental reasons. Another reason I don't feel the need for panic.
As I stated above, I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O dominates the greenhouse effect. It is the uncontested scientific fact.
I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O's role in climate models and forcing/feedbacks is very poorly understood. It is an uncontested scientific fact, some models even disagree on whether to assign it as a positive or negative feedback.
Think about those two for a good long while before thinking everything Al Gore said should trump peer reviewed science.

you seem to mistake me as someone who is arguing with you. i'm really only interested in insights.
I'm certainly not a climatologist. I work with spines. But in answer to your proposition that it would be chaotic if we cut back, I think the strength of the human species is in their ability to adapt, and as far as i'm concerned, the ballooning world population combined with a worldwide contracture in resources makes this inevitable (not to mention the growing climate change issue) - but it's up to us on how painful we want it to be.
Our entire economic system and our culture of consumerism needs to be revised. We are mindless automatons, with little awareness to our impact on the earth as a species. Our daily lives are almost entirely self-centered.
Secondly, as to "the" question of human contribution, I would offer the microcosm of the forest fire, in which carbon is suddenly released into the atmosphere. The overall effect is, clearly, very warming, almost suffocating. On a grander scale, the species is continually burning and releasing carbon into the atmoshphere all over the planet. How that would fail to warm the planet escapes me. but, like i said, it's not my field. peace out.


Sorry if my tone comes off as combative, it's not really my intent so please don't take my vehemence on issues personally. Maybe I'm just getting older but I'm of the mindset that the fastest way to know where I'm right and wrong is to be forward and assertive with how I understand things and allow the opportunity to be corrected where I'm wrong.

My thoughts on the human contribution are tempered by a few things. From the very top, that CO2's contribution is small compared to H2O(I count this an uncontested fact). Annual CO2 emissions are small(5%) compared to natural CO2 emissions(I again count this an uncontested fact). The experts do insist that the human CO2 emissions are building up and still driving the natural CO2 levels significantly higher each year. We don't understand the natural CO2 emission and absorption processes very well, so poorly in fact our margins of error on them are larger than the human contribution. There is evidence that CO2 levels are rising in the last 100 years, and there is a correlation there to human emissions. What we don't have strong evidence for yet is what impact that has on climate. We DO know it is warming effect, but the magnitude of it is still poorly understood. As I've outlined above the understanding of temperature trends over the last 2k years is still a work in progress with large margins of error(even systematic ones that are being worked out). The computer models we have by definition are no more reliable than that data, which places us without a strong correlation or confidence in what magnitude of change the CO2 will have when all other variables are considered.

As a side point, if you look at the IPCC or listen to certain climatologists, you may hear it sounding like they disagree and believe my last statement is disproven. What they have studied is the impact CO2 increases should have overall with the assumption of all other variables being equal. It's a useful figure to have, and the confidence in it is better than my last statement described. That is because I was talking about something different, I stated that CO2's impact, with all other variables being considered NOT equal, is still poorly known and has very low confidence levels. In the real world the impact of one climate variable impacts the role of all the others, and often significantly. The IPCC and a select few climatologists talk about CO2 projections that ignore that interaction as a base assumption and somewhere along the line between them and the public or them and Al Gore, that base assumption gets dropped off. That base assumption is central and vital, and it's why as our climate models improve we will see predictions for CO2 that fall outside the error margins of the IPCC models with that assumption. That doesn't invalidate the IPCC's work, it is an advancement of it and improvement upon it. Remembering the base assumptions is vital for the public to maintain faith in the integrity and reliability of scientific research. People need to know WHY the predictions they were told by the IPCC a few years back have changed so much and yet the IPCC insists they weren't wrong. The truth is simply that they were misunderstood.

As yet another rabbit warren, there is an even smaller set of people within the climate community who actively encourage that misunderstanding. They do it firmly believing that the impact of CO2 with all else ignored is still indicative of CO2 with all else considered. Which is even a reasonable and normal expectation. The trouble is it falsely communicates the level confidence and margin of error of current known facts. I can't abide that kind of thinking, it's what is supposed to differentiate scientists from priests and politicians, they are supposed to refuse to make that kind of compromise when presenting what they do and do not know is demonstrably true.

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^criticalthud:
just out of curiosity, in the midst of global warming doubters promoting the theory that the earth is warming through solar/cosmic/natural means... has there been much consideration into the idea that the earth is currently in a cooling phase -- enormously offset by what we're doing to it?
second,
one large concern i have with global warming is "system adaption" - that being that it generally takes the ecosystem a bit of time to adjust to whatever is happening to it (ie: glaciers don't melt immediately). Meaning that the damage we caused 10 years ago is being felt now. Meaning also that even if we were to cease mucking about right now, we could expect continued and possibly even escalating ecosystem problems in the years to come.
so, is it time to panic? dunno. could be.

Which is why it's so important to understand things better. Rapidly cutting CO2 emissions before we have the replacement technology in place would be costly, not just financially but world history shows big financial impacts generally spill over into violent impacts. Battery technology is getting very close to making electric cars that are superior in every way to their gas guzzling brethren. I truly do believe that the enormous CO2 contribution made by burning gasoline is rapidly on it's way out for purely economic rather than environmental reasons. Another reason I don't feel the need for panic.
As I stated above, I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O dominates the greenhouse effect. It is the uncontested scientific fact.
I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O's role in climate models and forcing/feedbacks is very poorly understood. It is an uncontested scientific fact, some models even disagree on whether to assign it as a positive or negative feedback.
Think about those two for a good long while before thinking everything Al Gore said should trump peer reviewed science.


you seem to mistake me as someone who is arguing with you. i'm really only interested in insights.

I'm certainly not a climatologist. I work with spines. But in answer to your proposition that it would be chaotic if we cut back, I think the strength of the human species is in their ability to adapt, and as far as i'm concerned, the ballooning world population combined with a worldwide contracture in resources makes this inevitable (not to mention the growing climate change issue) - but it's up to us on how painful we want it to be.
Our entire economic system and our culture of consumerism needs to be revised. We are mindless automatons, with little awareness to our impact on the earth as a species. Our daily lives are almost entirely self-centered.

Secondly, as to "the" question of human contribution, I would offer the microcosm of the forest fire, in which carbon is suddenly released into the atmosphere. The overall effect is, clearly, very warming, almost suffocating. On a grander scale, the species is continually burning and releasing carbon into the atmoshphere all over the planet. How that would fail to warm the planet escapes me. but, like i said, it's not my field. peace out.

This is just sickening, I wish that consumerism was how it used to be, you know based on what you functionally needed rather than what a particular item said about you personally. And this only continues in people's lives and gets worse & worse as there is ALWAYS something new to buy & you can never fulfil yourself. with some people it is just a part of their character, constantly purchasing Cars, TV's, Play-station's Etc. by virtue of how cool it makes them appear to others or out-doing the jones's and as a result will likely never be released from the shackles of debt.

Maybe this is the reason why some retirees blow their kids inheritance in their later years, and with kids like these who can really blame them?.

>> ^criticalthud:

we're not special. that's part of the legacy of lies of religion. (we're all god's flowers, lamb of god, god is with you, god's chosen, god looks like us, the planet is OUR domain). self-entitled bullshit. that is not reality.
consumerism also sells to the "specialness".
one of the major problems with the psyche of our species is that we're so focused on pursuing our own special self interests to the detriment of the planet and everyone else. consumerism or religion to the individual isn't a big deal. for the collective it is destroying the planet.
shit i'm starting to sound like a broken record.
but evolution of the species means evolution of the consciousness.
bolivia gets it right:
http://www.pvpulse.com/en/news/world-news/bolivia-set-to-pass-historic-law-of-mother-earth-which-will-grant-nature-equal-rights-to-humans#star
tOfPageI
d776
we are just another species.
i would even go so far to argue that on the whole, we are not an intelligent species. we possess intelligence, and there are those in our species who could be considered intelligent, but most of us just repeat patterns and emotion rules our decisions rather than cognition. Around 80% of humans are virtual automatons.
we celebrate competition and division and feed that to our young, while it is without question that cooperation is how an intelligent species flourishes.
before guilt and shame and expectations that you cannot possibly meet fuck up your life, religion has to first establish that you are something more than a primate, another piece in the collective. it has to first prey upon your ego, your fears, and your self interests. it is an element of control.
Consumerism, before selling you piles of crap, must first convince you that you need to buy that shit, that you deserve it, that you are entitled to it, and that by accumulating more shit to the self, you will fulfill your dreams and your happiness.


Very well said, also the information on Bolivia is really great news, lets hope America doesn't send in troops/arrange assassinations to reverse this fantastic effort.

we're not special. that's part of the legacy of lies of religion. (we're all god's flowers, lamb of god, god is with you, god's chosen, god looks like us, the planet is OUR domain). self-entitled bullshit. that is not reality.
consumerism also sells to the "specialness".

one of the major problems with the psyche of our species is that we're so focused on pursuing our own special self interests to the detriment of the planet and everyone else. consumerism or religion to the individual isn't a big deal. for the collective it is destroying the planet.
shit i'm starting to sound like a broken record.
but evolution of the species means evolution of the consciousness.

bolivia gets it right:
http://www.pvpulse.com/en/news/world-news/bolivia-set-to-pass-historic-law-of-mother-earth-which-will-grant-nature-equal-rights-to-humans#startOfPageI
d776

we are just another species.
i would even go so far to argue that on the whole, we are not an intelligent species. we possess intelligence, and there are those in our species who could be considered intelligent, but most of us just repeat patterns and emotion rules our decisions rather than cognition. Around 80% of humans are virtual automatons.
we celebrate competition and division and feed that to our young, while it is without question that cooperation is how an intelligent species flourishes.

before guilt and shame and expectations that you cannot possibly meet fuck up your life, religion has to first establish that you are something more than a primate, another piece in the collective. it has to first prey upon your ego, your fears, and your self interests. it is an element of control.
Consumerism, before selling you piles of crap, must first convince you that you need to buy that shit, that you deserve it, that you are entitled to it, and that by accumulating more shit to the self, you will fulfill your dreams and your happiness.

This song is fantastic, and probably my all-time favourite christmas song, but this attempt at animating it , while charming, really doesnt do the song justice, in my view. For one, it is full of, or rather, (it is in many ways only), what Dawkins once referred to as "Lord Privy Seals", that movie-making mistake of always showing the words, ie "whenever X is mentioned, there must be an X in the picture at that moment", where X in this video could be replaced with: Christmas, religion, Dawkins, Desmond Tutu, consumerism, ancient religion, selling, playstations, beer, Jesus, dad, brothers, sisters, gran, mum, white wine, sun...

Oh and that baby girl that looks like a tiny bald man.. creepy.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'capitalist, consumerism, pathetic' to 'capitalist, consumerism, pathetic, black friday' - edited by dystopianfuturetoday