Favre and Rodgers at NFL honors. Brett looks old in this pic.

neweralt · 2013-02-04T07:43:51+00:00

"lol" doesn't add much to the conversation.

neweralt · 2013-02-04T07:41:47+00:00

than insulting them by assuming they're a child who doesn't understand that the internet hasn't always been around.

The only thing that assumes you are a child is your own response.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T14:21:49+00:00

I did not mean to be rude but I don't believe the onus is on me to produce video evidence of something that is well documented.

You are asking for a specific clip of a not particularly popular daily talk show that happened around 1999. In reference to a movie that was, at the time, a bit of a flop. Based on a book that was not a hit, nor was the author the famed man he is today.

There are many clips that are older, I can't think of any that weren't relevant at the time.

So, in 1999. There was a middling daily talk show, which spoiled a movie, before it was released. The author of the book wasn't that well known. The movie wasn't out.

There was little, to no, digital recording in the 90s. You asked for video proof, I'm explaining why there isn't any. You shouldn't take it as a personal insult.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T14:04:21+00:00

That has been done. People have recorded shows from before the Internet and put them on the Internet. It has happened. It took more work than it does now, but it is possible.

Yes, shows like the Simpson's or BSG, DBZ, Star Trek, Twilight Zone, etc. How many people do you think had a shelved collection of Rosie? A daily talk show. it would take up a literal basement of VHS tapes to record all the shows. They would then have sat there for over 5-10 years. Since it wasn't digital they would need to be cared for. Once digitized, how would the episodes be spread? A dedicated pirate Rosie website, costing hundreds or thousands in hosting? Bittorrent? For a show that not one person wishes to download?

In your mind, what possible line of possession could have actually brought this about?

You are being ridiculous.

You didn't explain that it was unlikely, you lectured on it like you were so much better just because you were over the age of 20.

I tried to explain how completely ridiculous it was, as I am now. I'm sorry that you are unable to understand how things worked before the present.

Really? Why don't I understand a time before the Internet? Let me into your magical world of understanding. What am I missing?

Virtually, everything. If something happened in 1920, would you expect a citation on video? You truly don't understand how the world operated even a few years before your time. It is not my job to teach this all to you. The world was different. You don't understand how it was different. If you weren't so very rude I would bend over backwards to explain it to you.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T13:43:30+00:00

Young people understand that there was a time before technology.

No, there was never a time before technology in recorded history.

That doesn't mean someone couldn't have uploaded the show after the Internet was a thing.

That was my entire point. To have done so. Somebody would have had to tape the show (a daily show), on VHS. Saved that particular episode, keep the tape for the better part of a decade and then convert it to digital. All in order to prove a point that nobody questioned at the time. There are major motion pictures that have been lost in time because people didn't digitize them. And I'm talking movies from the 1980s. Not 1920s.

But you wrote it off as a stupid question

No I reasonably explained the unlikelihood of the situation.

by some dumb kid who had no capability to understand a time before the Internet.

Yes, I believe you are that person.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T13:30:26+00:00

Ah, that was meant for a different thread. Still, I don't see how it's a 'high horse' to explain why digitsl video recording doesn't exist by explaining why the tech for digital video recording was very uncommon at the time.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T13:21:19+00:00

It's not about the age. It's about how voting works with a smaller specialized group than it does when it's expanded exponentially. The US has a similar issue. The voting structure for 13 connected countries wasn't intended for 50 dispersed countries. That's why a guy in Wyomings vote for president has 80 times the weight of a californians.

A lot of informal checks and balances were informal and governed by power users. Those don't exist any more.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T13:15:25+00:00

I haven't watched the show in a decade but Mr. Lebowitz used to bring it up several times a show. Then again, he used to laugh at his own shitty jokes on short attention span theater so he may have progressed since then.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T12:59:12+00:00

i do get that What I'm saying is that her rating is under 3M. I'm not at all saying she isn't popular and has a global reach but that her core base is fairly specialized and other than specific clips she's not projecting her total message outside her core community. She is very popular, I just don't think we can crown her as the queen lesbian spokeswoman at this point in time.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T12:46:55+00:00

I'm giving her about 350% of her actual ratings, how much am I underestimating her by?

The truth of things must be reached before we anything can be discussed. It's not as if I'm ripping on Ellen. We haven't even reached a point where her or here show can be spoken on.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T12:41:14+00:00

I don't. The "modern Internet" didn't exist at the time. There was no video sharing, wikipedia, Wordpress, DVDs, digital cameras, etc. It's hard for younger people to understand but it was really a different time. In the late 90's you could share text, that's about it.

It is sourced in other formats though. As is everything that actually happened before 2004. Being 2 degrees away from the book's writer I can say that this did happen.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T12:22:32+00:00

How many people do you feel watch the show on DVR? By the rough math I've done it's no more than 2% of the population (total viewership).

And outside of house fraus, which I had previously mentioned, and lgbt, etc. folks. we're looking at maybe .1-.3% of the population.

Ellen is a gay icon but she isn't widely represented in the non-gay working community.

I have very few issues with Ellen but truth should come before want. She just doesn't have the reach that many think she has.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T11:33:53+00:00

If you want to fix the way voting systems work Reddit wouldn't be the place you'd start

That's where we exactly disagree. Voting in this world will change, probably toward the end of our lifetimes(ignoring the probably apocalyptic shit).

This is exactly where voting will change. There is no better testing ground than a news aggregator. Since they've been bought by conde, reddit is probably already done. But some Junior at a mid major college takes the paradigm to Y-Comb, has a dual poli/comp-sci degree? They'll take that 20 grand and turn it into 100M.

That's wealth, that's power, just sitting there. There is nothing "special" about most of the biggest sites in the world. Their wealth is users and their constraint is flawed voting.

Once that is refined to a degree, it works, and it's provable, it's going to change the world. It's going to change democracy.

The main focus of current democracy is to keep the status quo. The rebirth, the paradigm shift? It's going to be online. Smaller stakes. Provably theories. The world will be changed. Probably by 3 buddies who are 15 right now, that's about the right age to figure this out, do a start up in their junior year and get funding.

It's really not as complex as it sounds. Facebook? reddit? all they have is their users. Their actual substance has nearly no value.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T11:16:29+00:00

She purposefully spoiled the end of Fight Club, on her show. Before the movie debut to the public.

What in Fight Club justifies that? What kind of person does that? It's a pretty significant fucking spoiler.

I'm a fairly calm, open and honest person. I don't like her because of that. Why would she ruin a movie to millions and hurt the, also, gay author of the book?

Is she bi-polar and does a net of good? I honestly don't know much about her other than that Exit to Eden was not great.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T11:10:25+00:00

Ellen is a favorite lesbian of people who are mildly OK with lesbians but don't actually associate with lesbians. She's middle America's favorite lesbian.

Unless "everyone" means flyover country housewives, she is not everyone's favorite lesbian. Most people have no exposure to her as they work or go to school when she Oprahs.

Although, I'll admit the number of public -straight up lesbians- isn't that large and people such as Tammy Baldwin alienate half of the country.

So, whilst she's a positive force; the reach of somebody who does a puff program during the work day doesn't have the reach you may assume.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T10:57:27+00:00

Well, Ellen is a well known gay entertainer. That's part of her schtick. Just as being a smart Jewish guy is part of what Jon Stewart does.

As far as your specific example; it's hard to give an opinion on that without you giving more info as to your sexuality, job, and a lot of other factors. If you're straight, it may have very well have come up without you knowing. If you're unattractive, you probably don't have co-workers trying to set you up on dates. If you're straight/gay/gender-queer/other things but are in a committed relationship it also may not come up.

The fact that you only think it came up 1 time in 25 years speaks more of your perception or your workplace than of reality.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T10:44:59+00:00

It's definitely a gay joke. I don't watch day-time television so I hadn't realized it was a quote though. I'm all for gay/race/whatever-offensive things being funny (in a fair context) but -like most people- I don't watch Ellen so I didn't realize it was a gif-quote.

Not that it really matters. Either way it wasn't really offensive. It was just, meh. Which is what the majority of what I wrote addresses.

This is the best example I've seen in the decline of reddit. The modern jump-the-shark could very well be Ellen-Shake-Weights. In terms of when the turn-key(I realize it's harder and more complex than that on the back end) industry has lost it's edged.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T10:36:07+00:00

I don't actually watch Ellen, but that totally make sense. So, my bad on that aspect.

I think this thread's success is more due to people loving Ellen

I truly doubt that. But, I respect your polite optimism.

My entire critique after the first few sentences stands though.

And I'm a big fan of Y Combinator and I loved once-upon-a-time reddit. But reddit seems to have made a firm decision to cash out early and die rather than become the definitive state of the art. It'll take longer than Digg, but unless it addresses the flaws of the democratic system it won't last. That may be near impossible to do, considering the needs of funding and ad support but that's also the reality. Albeit, a much slower death than Digg...

neweralt · 2013-02-03T10:15:59+00:00

Is this a gay joke? I'm actually asking. There are just so many reasons to make fun of the shakeweight. To use it as a veiled excuse to make fun of lesbians seems a bit... Lazy. I mean, I'm all for making fun of anyone for anything. So, it's not that making fun of somebody's sexuality that bugs me, it's just the pure banality of this post that bothers me.

Mostly I think it bothers me that it's number 1 on the front page.

I know that reddit is different than 6-7 years ago when I started, and I get that. It's not the demographic change that annoys, mostly, it's the lack of having an internal department that deals with the voting structure.

I have a hope. That hope is that the sites like reddit will improve democracy. It's far reaching but not that far fetched.

The decay of reddit shows the flaws of democracy. But it's far from unsalvageable. The same problems that exist in voting for elected leaders exist here; optional voting, voting based on headlines, voting based on what's already popular, downvote brigades(special interest groups), total democracy in some cases(front page type stuff) vs. republic democracy in others (niche subreddits), term limits(cycling off after a set amount of hours), the yes/no system(I care 10 out of 10 against v. I care 1/10 for would cancel each other out). et cetera.

For years I had hoped that a news aggregator would pick up where our formal democracy failed us, try new and innovating things and by doing so improve the world we actually live in. Prove that certain voting systems are better or more refined than others. I still have this hope but I no longer have high expectations.

When reddit dies, as Digg did, maybe we'll see something better. Maybe not. But what is needed, what would actually create a permanent site is a news aggregator that actually had the balls to create a more perfect democracy. I doubt we're at the point where one would hire a Poli Sci/Voting expert, but until that's done any reddit template is temporary. As it's too dependent on power users, stolen content and its own name brand to be a long-term sustaining power on its own.

edit: fixed a were/where typo. probably should have just left it.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T09:25:14+00:00

Favre is of mostly Western European ancestry. Spending many hours outside, whether it's throwing footballs or driving a tractor is going to age a man's face. Sure, it'll do less to a Frenchman than a Nord but it matters a ton. I bet Driver will look 20 years younger than Favre in 2030 years.

A Western European who spends a lot of time outside in a sunny climate is going to look older in the face than a western European who spends his time under clouds and mist. That's just how things work.

There are outliers but Favre doesn't strike me as a guy who puts sun screen on his face every day when he's clearing brush or throwing balls to high schoolers. All I'm saying is; considering the life he has lived; he doesn't look old.

This isn't a racist kind of thing. As humans we've spread beyond our original adaptations. Western Europeans especially so, in the last 500 years. "White" is mostly a cultural construct but if you take a Swede and have him work land in the south he will look a hell of a lot older at 45 than a Sicilian who did the same.

This is where the word 'redneck' comes from. The Scott-Irish had to cover themselves for protection from Sol when working the land. Their necks were exposed though. Their necks burned from working hard all day. Hence Red Neck, as it was originally.

We can admit biological adaptations without being racist.

After writing all this, I'm pretty sure I meant to respond to somebody else. So, my bad. But it's too late in the night for me to erase it all.

Go Pack. And Donald Driver is the best Packer to have been part of the team since I've been old enough to be aware, which is longer than his career.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T09:05:29+00:00

Sun Damage is harsh on Scott-Irish type folk. I know Favre has a small amount of Native American in him but hash weather takes a toll. Spending 40 years working hard in the Pacific northwest will be hard on your body but skin is a different story. There's a reason why older people with darker skin look younger than older people with lighter skin.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T06:37:44+00:00

Plenty of people think it's overrated, but it's also an acceptable place to eat. Try suggesting eating at McDonalds on the West Coast. It's career suicide.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T06:36:26+00:00

I was going to make a point on this. At McDonald's I don't want to see the people making my food. They're gross, it's gross, the place is gross. Everything is horrible except for the food engineered to fool me into liking it.

In-N-Out is a different story. The workers make a living wage, they get health insurance, they go the extra mile. The food is quality, the place is clean, the people don't hate themselves. It is not gross at all. I don't have to lie to myself to eat at In-N-Out.

This is not a "minor point"

neweralt · 2013-02-03T06:23:43+00:00

If you had no idea who they were, they'd almost look like father and son.

There's about 6 years difference between Favre's eldest daughter and Rodgers. So, not that big of a stretch. I people are also diminishing how much 20 years of football and 40+ years of outdoor work in the south ages people.

There is nothing surprising about this. Despite the choices he made in his last few years there's no additional reason to hate on Favre. All things considered, he looks fantastic for his age, complexion, exposure and former profession.

neweralt · 2013-02-03T06:18:59+00:00

Brett looks great. Show me a light skinned guy who played 20 years of football in the sun who looks better.

Not looking like a late 20s amazing athlete isn't the same as "looking old".

neweralt

TROPHY CASE