So did anyone complain about having 10 vids promoted on the front page? It certainly never bothered me.

Is this a fix for a problem that only dag and lucky had?

I'd like to hear if others were bothered by 10 or so promotes. Anybody?

As for how effective promotes are.... there was a vid in "featured" mode for ELEVEN HOURS and still hadn't gotten 10 votes.

As for wanting us to police it ourselves -- we have to click into the vid to see how long it had been there. We have to decide if 2 hours or 3 hours or 4 hours is enough. If we promote a vid, we have to worry if it will fall off in 5 minutes if someone else isn't being attentive or if it is a high traffic time and 5 people promote in quick succession.

I just don't see that the promote as it is currently designed is effective or workable or anything other than anxiety producing (for us badge whores and cheapskates who want our power points to have a return on our "investment".)

I love you guys, dag and lucky. I love the look of the site now (except PLEASE use black for text and get rid of/tone down the crosshatch background to the right -- there just isn't enough contrast. The sizing up helped, thanks for that.) I suspect that some of the design elements are necessitated by having to service mobile devices and regular computers, but I don't know enough to know if that is true or not.

Overall, the design is clean and pretty. There are pangs as certain things have gone away and some fumblings as we learn new things.

But I haven't seen a single positive comment about the way promotes are now working. As near as I can tell, there was a single goal -- keep the number down -- which is fine. I think the Sifters would be better served if:
1. the time limit was brought back
2. the promote area was treated like a pqueue, and if three were already there, no more could be added.
3. the old Promote presentation be brought back, so they looked like regular vids instead of like ads. (I did find myself squinting at them, with the eye slide that someone else commented on.)

So I asked a question way up in this post -- did anyone have a problem with 10 promoted vids on the front page? Any sifter?

Thanks for all the good work, guys. Really.

>> ^Aniatario:

Actually, after looking into a few pages it's far more likely that little dot is just a dead pixel. A real bullet would've done alot more damage.


I'm squinting as hard as I can. I checked out www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqQCl0XTZyM and didnt see it on that footage, though the resolution on that one is even worse so who knows. I always consider youtube comments pretty suspect, but it seemed to hold water on viewing! It also looks like a projection screen type set material from what I can tell, so I doubt there would be much for a bullet to do but pass through.

>> ^Duckman33:

Love the hair Wanda!


If you squint, she sort of resembles the FSM in your avatar. Just sayin'.

I think the way I'd put it is that I disagree that "Hegelian dialectic" is being appropriately used in the video. Here is a nice concise introduction to the concept. It's an alternative method for reasoning, and therefore is about trying to reach a better understanding of truth -- it has nothing to do with psychology, politics, or trying to control people.

The triadic structure of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis can, if you squint a bit, be re-purposed as a general theory about how political and scientific progress happens. First you have a thesis (e.g. "property is the only right"), then you have an antithesis ("property is theft"), and once people realize that while both positions contain insights, neither absolute position is fully correct, and so we generate a new thesis that combines the valid insights of each -- a synthesis ("a right to property is one of many rights, and without limits can and will infringe on those other rights"). But that's not a Hegelian Dialectic, that's just a slightly stilted way at looking at how "classical" reasoning sometimes plays out in the real world.

All that said, none of this serves to support the thesis that modern conceptions of the political left and right have been invented in order to achieve some sort of nefarious synthesis. Worse, if you think it's a Hegelian Dialectical synthesis we're heading for, then not only is it not a Reichstag fire, it's a giant leap forward in humanity's understanding of itself, because we will have figured out how to simultaneously resolve the left's criticisms of society (not enough equality in wealth and power), and the right's (too many people disputing the rightful distribution of wealth and power that arises from market action), though personally I don't think the resolution of that thesis/antithesis conflict will result in synthesis, just in the right's thesis being discarded. Again.

Long story short, if this is the foundation for a conspiracy theory, it's already gone way out into left field before it's even gotten started.

In reply to this comment by enoch:
In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
The Shock Doctrine and disaster capitalism are a lot more precise concepts than this. The idea behind the Shock Doctrine isn't that all conceptions of left and right are a distraction from the so-called "real" issues, it's where you foment a series of national crises in order to subvert the mechanisms of democracy in order to implement radical policies that would only be acquiesced to when people were in a state of shock.

In the case of disaster capitalism, you actually get a nice feedback loop. Deregulate markets, newly deregulated markets crash and create an economic crisis, and new "reforms" which further deregulate markets are proposed as the solution to the crisis created by the last round of deregulation. See all economic policy proposed by Republicans since the 1980's for examples.

There's also a burden of proof fallacy at work here. 3 cherry-picked quotes from Bush and Kerry on Iraq does not a conspiracy make. The political divide in the country in 2004 over Iraq clearly had the "stay forever" and "get out now" poles to it. That the Democratic candidate was moderate and said merely "don't stay forever", is more a sign of there being a right-wing conspiracy rigging elections and corrupting the Democratic party, not that the very idea of left and right having policy disagreements is some sort of elaborate distraction.

The thing I'm sensing in a lot of liberals these days is the sense that even when we win elections, we're still pretty much getting Republican policies rammed down our throats. We're even doing this thing where we Occupy places in protest of the 1% corrupting our political process and subverting the will of the people...


hey man,
i cant tell if you are agreeing with the video or not.
i am going to guess on the negative.
which kind of confuses me because the video is really just laying out what the hegelian dialectic is and how it can be used to be a lever of control.(sans the ron paul filler at the end).
i found it a pretty short but succinct in its intended goal to educate.

your descriptions of "shock doctrine" and "disaster capitalism" are correct but your premise seems to ignore that both utilize the hegelian dialectic to execute properly in to a society.

example:
problem (thesis)<------------------> reaction (antithesis)

but what if the institution meant to execute the reaction is the very same institution which created the problem,and hence is in the position to offer a solution? a solution which may have been the very thing they were after in the first place?

see where i am going with this?
so while in one scenario the problem is a creation,a facade, (shock doctrine) and the other (disaster capitalism) is an opportunistic leap for control,BOTH utilize the hegelian dialectic to accomplish their goals.

i am not a huge admirer of hegel (ok,i think he is a cunt) but he did understand human beings and the societies they live in because his predictions have played out quite accurately,when placed in the right context.

my thinking behind posting that video was to help people become aware of those levers of control.the philosophy behind those who wish to dominate and control the masses.
the more you know and all that jazz.

once you understand the hegelian dialectic and HOW it is used,you will see it in places and used in ways that prior you would have thought impossible.
it is used by those in power often and extremely well.

anyways.i just wanted to drop a note to you because either i misunderstood your comment or i am just a tad retarded.
in either case my friend,know that i love your commentary and i especially love your optimism.
really..keep up the optimism.my cynicism needs a dose every now and then.
peace brother.

@Darkhand Cheers, after reading what you observed and squinting a bit closer at the first few seconds I think you've spotted what I failed to see

>> ^Peroxide:

hard to keep track of the 16 pixel ball.


if you squint your eyes like the chinese, the picture becomes high def.

it's clearly a parody of turkish star trek. you didn't put emoticons, so i can't tell if you're ribbing me or not. There is no arabic(squint your eyes) or hindi in the video. neither is there anything explicitly turkish. (but i guess they might be speaking turkish words with an english pronunciation. Any turks on the sift? Just do a asterix +discuss) It's not the Australian comedian that did this and this

instead some guy on b3ta.com is taking credit for it
clearly the same guy does a dr. who parody
http://www.b3ta.com/links/Doctor_Hooey

feel free to sift dr hooey, i will upvote

>> ^cracanata:

How in the name of all it's good you didn't smell the Arabic/Hindu nature of everything in this video is beyond me.
Shame for the lack of basic language skills. Shame!

Not squinting, just Korean! Awesome! That's my new work shirt.

Coil did it in 1998 with their album Time Machines. I'm guessing it's like those magic 3d images from the mid-90s where you had to squint at a pattern until your eyes watered and then maybe something popped out at you - it only works for some people. This never worked for me either in the sense of getting "high". Getting a headache - yes.

squint

squinted the eyes a lot... and could see the grays being the same shade

>> ^mizila:

>> ^ant:
>> ^mizila:
Hey! I was in this...

Could you guys breath? That's insane. I'd probably die!

Yeah, actually breathing wasn't really an issue, but you could definitely taste the dust and feel little crunchy bits in your mouth if you left it open too long. It's really rough on the eyes as you can imagine, you've gotta do the whole squint-really-tight-so-your-eyelashes-catch-it thing. I wouldn't suggest running a marathon in it, but it's decidedly survivable.


Heh, I would probably suffer since I have a tracheostomy and very sensitive with allergies.

>> ^ant:

>> ^mizila:
Hey! I was in this...

Could you guys breath? That's insane. I'd probably die!


Yeah, actually breathing wasn't really an issue, but you could definitely taste the dust and feel little crunchy bits in your mouth if you left it open too long. It's really rough on the eyes as you can imagine, you've gotta do the whole squint-really-tight-so-your-eyelashes-catch-it thing. I wouldn't suggest running a marathon in it, but it's decidedly survivable.

Geek Talk is not a place I ever go to -- I am woefully out of touch.

I am the person using Tubechop. I use it because it is easier for me.

Ant has kindly sent me a link to an article that shows how to avoid tubechop, but my eyes immediately glazed over. It's not that I can't understand it, I just don't want to.

UNLESS there is a compelling reason.

Is there a compelling reason?

As a non-geek, here are some possible compelling reasons. I don't know if any of them are true, I am pulling them out of my ass:

1. Unnecessarily ties up bandwidth (is that even a "thing"? I am pulling that phrase out of my ass too)
2. It costs the Sift money somehow
3. Slows things down (what are "things"? I don't know)

That's all I can make up.

There is one non-compelling reason.... by going through TubeChop, siftbot will never be able to tell if it is a duplicate based on the embed code alone (I think? Maybe it can? I don't know.) But since that "looking for dupe" function fails more often than not, that isn't a good enough reason for me to plow through that (simple) article and squint my eyes to figure out how to read and parse out the embed code.

Anyway. I am willing to do it. I just don't want to.

One compelling argument, and I'll read the damn article. I swear.

If you squint and look at it the right way it kinda looks like a stingray.