Lassie

3 comments on Hacker News

1. NeutralFalkon1313Aug 21, 2022

   I remember those, and the 'Rural Revolution' that preceded it. Lots of shows in the 1960s like The Real McCoys, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, Andy Griffith, Gomer Pyle, Lassie, and Hee Haw, until the 'Rural Purge' of the early 1970s.

   Then in the mid-late 1970s came those shows and movies you mention, less comedy and more drama, more a sort of glorified frontier days theme. I think some of that might've come out of the 1960s hippie/naturalist trend, although it's a bit different.

   I watched them all in the 80s, in syndication on the local channels, and my parents' VHS tapes had a lot (all recorded from TV). But in retrospect there were at least two related but different trends there.

2. PositiveNoOneNewFeb 15, 2021

   This was really a point of contention? I mean really? Theres nothing else to fix, worry about, solve, cure or anything? How many people truly felt offended? I want to know. And I mean truly offended. I get by just fine getting called a stupid pollock or stupid jew often. So I want to know your scale of offense. Because if that's the case, the word moist is going to be on the chopping block too since some people are all freaked out from that too. Which is dumb too.

   There's an interesting interview of Rod Serling (the Twilight Zone writer and presenter) where he talks about censorship. He brings up an episode of Lassie where they very tastefully (his words) did an episode of Lassie having puppies. He mentions it was done in such a way that made it easy for him to talk to his kids about birth and he had nothing but praise for the show creators for being careful about not being graphic about it, etc. I mean, its Lassie for fucks sake. It was a pretty damn wholesome show.

   Well, the network got hundreds of letters all claiming it was pornographic and the network was sick for showing it. Thus, the network never showed it again. Apparently all of the letters were in the same handwriting and stamped from the same post office.

   At a certain point, we need to realize a very small handful of jackasses are causing a stir. The small secondary group just sees an opportunity to gain some cheap attention. Just like a serial killer with some copy cat killers.

   Next up, since the Brits have some sick and severe speech laws, they're going to make this lunacy punishable. Lost your empire, now you cats are losing your damn minds.

3. NeutralteekertFeb 10, 2021

   Ah, nice short story, similar to mine. I did a lot of XP reinstalling myself. Before that I was a full time autoexe.bat hacker.

   The computers we got were always expensive though, I don't know what our 386 cost, but our pentium mmx 150 MHz was the equivalent of 1500 euro's. I wasn't allowed to open it.

   Imagine how thrilled I am with current day Raspberry Pi's! I tell my kids they can do whatever they want with them! I got a second hand pretty good HP business model laptop, put Ubuntu on it, made accounts for the kids. I tell them they have to figure stuff out themselves. The thing can do so much! But it just isn't the same to them it seems.

   Maybe the magic, the newness, the expensiveness was part of the appeal for me, maybe the kids are just swamped in compute power and touchscreens from birth, it's too normal. Maybe my kids just aren't nerds like me. I don't know. I gave up the pushing, instead I focus on them getting things done and working themselves. They have the time to figure stuff out, even if they are almost dying to see the next (animated) episode of Lassie on Netflix (what a dog, animated or not)...

   I remember a blog being posted here on HN where a fellow hacker did all of the tech for his family (a natural instinct), and he created a bunch of digital illiterates as a results. I'm trying to not fall for that trap at the very least.