Some substances help me ask that all important question in the first place. Waking up, brushing teeth, going to work, doing chores, raising kids, family time, rollerblading, gardening, studying... These activities don't help me ponder my existence with the same efficiency as some substances can offer. I mean, who has the time to ask these questions in the first place?!
I'm reminded of a quote from the TV series "Weeds". A bit on the nose, I know, but when discussing peyote in the show, one character said, "It's like 30 years of psychotherapy in one night".
In the real world, the scientific community's recent renaissance around the use of psychoactive drugs like psilocybin or MDMA in therapeutic settings is further proof that "substances" can be good.
I think Showtime should have followed this. Usually the first season is spectacular, and it's almost as if the writers are surprised it is renewed, but they wasted their best material on season 1.
Weeds Season 1 was amazing, the rest not so much. Dexter, season 1 should have just been a single season, sooo good, after a while you wonder how many serial killers reside in Florida. Billions, season 1 amazing, it hasn't been too bad after, but after a while it just starts to seem forced.
I think they covered this in an episode of Weeds. Rich people love to pay extremely inflated prices for "exclusive" products that they think nobody else can get, and don't realize are exactly the same as the normal stuff.
Just in case anyone else is wondering, this is indeed the same wheel that Andy promoted throughout season 7 of Showtime's "Weeds". I had no idea it was a real thing, so I assumed this was a joke at first.
> This is a nice take on the reality of the middle to upper middle class drug economy. It's not all episodes of the Wire.
It may still be there, just slightly beyond the frame of this picture. The article doesn't go into how the drugs actually get across the Canadian border, for example.
The show Weeds was unrealistic in some ways, but one thing that the first couple of seasons did reasonably well was to depict Nancy's descent into progressively more dangerous situations and the beginning of her relationship with organized crime.
At any appreciable scale, the drug trade[0] gets messy very quickly - not always to the end user, but certainly one or two degrees removed. If it looks clean, either it's because it's a very small scale and vertically integrated (eg, the marijuana equivalent of "microbrew"), or you're just not looking far enough down the supply chain.
[0] Of course, this is not a comment on the inherent nature of the drug trade, but on the inherent nature of any illicit trade; legal (or "less illegal") supply and distribution channels will have far less crime associated with them.
I really hope this doesn't mean that they're going to kill the all-at-once "binge" releases for new shows.
I've been doing this for TV shows since long before Netflix streaming existed - I would wait until a season (or show) ended, and then rent the entire series from Blockbuster, one disk at a time.
I don't always have time to watch shows regularly, and it's great being able to do it at my own pace. Plus, I'm impatient when it comes to cliffhangers[0]
[0] This sort of behavior can be very lucrative for Netflix. Many episodes of Weeds ended with cliffhangers or twists that caused me to watch an episode or two more at a time than I'd originally planned. To a lesser extent, Orange is the New Black (also created by Jenji Kohan) used the same technique as well.
I'd have to do some more math since my cable, internet and phone are all on the same bill. I don't recall what the exact break down is. With all the channels I get and the HD and the DVRs (plus the internet and phone) my "cable" bill is like $200/month
Is AppleTV ala cart or buffet? Meaning if I want to watch all season of Game of Thrones (and Shameless and Weeds and whatever) am I paying per episode or is it a monthly fee? (I assume Apple != free content)
How is buying a house and working a job a safe thing?
I'm Canadian. We Canadians grow up extremely aware of our behemoth neighbour. We watch your TV, your news, your movies. Your culture permeates our culture.
And your culture celebrates home ownership and working a job as the American dream. From Leave it to Beaver to Desperate Housewives and Weeds, your culture (and ours) is all about having a job and owning a home. It's part of the American dream.
How many people pursuing that dream lost their job and their homes? If you're unemployed and homeless through no fault of your own, how do you feel when you see bankers, who are at fault, getting bailed out by the government?
The Occupy Wall Street movement is about pointing out how unfair it is to bailout the rich without doing a thing for the middle class.
As for health insurance, does the author sound like he has a few extra thousand dollars kicking around to pay the deductible?
Television shows on HBO and Showtime (Weeds from your list) are usually not available in the US until the DVDs come out, which is usually shortly before the next seasons starts.
I am aware of HBO Go, but it is not available unless one already has cable and HBO.
What I love about Netflix streaming is that it completely severs the old TV-viewer relationship of having to worry about "what's on now" and "when does my program start". Since we started using Netflix streaming, we spend a lot more time watching what we want to watch when we want to watch it. Instead of having to worry about having dinner done in time for your favorite program, your favorite program now starts whenever the hell you're ready for it. :-)
I also like that I can start watching a series from the beginning, no matter how long its been on. As an example, my wife and I are currently hooked on the show "Weeds". It's been on for 6 seasons already, so trying to get into it now on cable would be...difficult. But with Netflix we've been able to start watching from the first episode with no problems.
You mean except for The Sopranos, The Wire, The Shield, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The West Wing, Six Feet Under, Dexter, BSG (gak), Friday Night Lights, Lost, Sons of Anarchy, Deadwood, Extras, Damages, Weeds (gak), House...
What's tricky about this comparison is that there's so much North American TV. A lot of it is ABC sitcoms, yes.
Those of us who really don't watch TV don't generally feel inclined to write our accounts down.
Take me for example. After my son was born 5 years ago we got busy and decided that we were going to not be connected. My wife connected the TV for a few days to watch Obama win. Then disconnected it since.
My wife rents movies from Netflix. We get movies from the library for my son. (He probably watches about 6-8 hours a week.) We bought a handful of DVDs. But on the average day the (disconnected) TV doesn't even get turned on for that. And the last made for TV show I'm aware of in the house was when my wife decided to watch Weeds.
But to me it is a non-story. I simply don't feel the need to turn the TV on and I don't seek the content out in any other media. I simply have a full life and TV isn't part of it. To such an extent that the non-presence of TV isn't a story for me, it is simply a fact of life.
I haven't had a TV for three years. The hardest part was giving up Lost in Season Two. I feel lost when friends talk about "The Wire", "Weeds", "24" but I'd rather live vicariously through my own life. I don't even Hulu. I almost feel like TV is a treadmill - just keeping up with show plot trajectories.
Getting rid of a TV isn't a magic solution for life's problems. It doesn't make you more social. It doesn't make you focus on your big projects though. You can easily whittle away free time surfing on your iPhone on your couch (as I do).
I recently saw a two-year old boy whose parents had been raising without TV. They've succumbed. Thomas the Train. Previously, without TV, he would literally cry on the floor for 20 min. straight - because what the heck do small kids do if the parents can't distract them with the real opiate of the masses, in Karl Marx parlance.
I haven't had Cable/Satellite since 2002. I started watching all my TV on DVDs that I bought from Amazon, but then switched to iTunes around 2006.
Now it's mostly a combination of iTunes/DVD - I'm pretty certain it's less expensive than subscribing to TV.
The good part of this (and it should be emphasized) - is that you now watch for a _purpose_ - Latest episode of Lost, BSG, Dexter, Weeds, South Park, Doll House, BtVS, Angel, The Wire, DeadWood, Heroes, The Office, Dr. Horrible, Mad Men, Parks and Recreation, Castle, Californication, Dr. Who, Kings, Sarah Connor Chronicles, True Blood, Torchwood.
Any time that might have been lost to just passively watching television, news, is now, of course, lost to passively reading ycombinator, nyt, wsj, groklaw... :-)
Having a database and quotas will encourage illegality only a little bit less than it being illegal. Some people will sell their quote to others with larger intake, some will be encouraged to buy dope illegally just to avoid being in the database (how long would it be before the government used that db for employment screening, followed by the obvious next step - selling the db to private companies for the same reason?).
As a total aside, this came up in an episode of Weeds - our hero Nancy Botwin managed to discourage her clients from purchasing medicinal marijuana just by suggesting that there was such a central db.
Hacker Cinema
19 comments on Hacker News
The video is unavailable, but it's the intro song for the tv show Weeds, isn't it?
Some substances help me ask that all important question in the first place. Waking up, brushing teeth, going to work, doing chores, raising kids, family time, rollerblading, gardening, studying... These activities don't help me ponder my existence with the same efficiency as some substances can offer. I mean, who has the time to ask these questions in the first place?!
I'm reminded of a quote from the TV series "Weeds". A bit on the nose, I know, but when discussing peyote in the show, one character said, "It's like 30 years of psychotherapy in one night".
In the real world, the scientific community's recent renaissance around the use of psychoactive drugs like psilocybin or MDMA in therapeutic settings is further proof that "substances" can be good.
I love this song.
It's also the theme tune for the series "Weeds" (TV series).
I think Showtime should have followed this. Usually the first season is spectacular, and it's almost as if the writers are surprised it is renewed, but they wasted their best material on season 1.
Weeds Season 1 was amazing, the rest not so much. Dexter, season 1 should have just been a single season, sooo good, after a while you wonder how many serial killers reside in Florida. Billions, season 1 amazing, it hasn't been too bad after, but after a while it just starts to seem forced.
I think they covered this in an episode of Weeds. Rich people love to pay extremely inflated prices for "exclusive" products that they think nobody else can get, and don't realize are exactly the same as the normal stuff.
Just in case anyone else is wondering, this is indeed the same wheel that Andy promoted throughout season 7 of Showtime's "Weeds". I had no idea it was a real thing, so I assumed this was a joke at first.
> This is a nice take on the reality of the middle to upper middle class drug economy. It's not all episodes of the Wire.
It may still be there, just slightly beyond the frame of this picture. The article doesn't go into how the drugs actually get across the Canadian border, for example.
The show Weeds was unrealistic in some ways, but one thing that the first couple of seasons did reasonably well was to depict Nancy's descent into progressively more dangerous situations and the beginning of her relationship with organized crime.
At any appreciable scale, the drug trade[0] gets messy very quickly - not always to the end user, but certainly one or two degrees removed. If it looks clean, either it's because it's a very small scale and vertically integrated (eg, the marijuana equivalent of "microbrew"), or you're just not looking far enough down the supply chain.
[0] Of course, this is not a comment on the inherent nature of the drug trade, but on the inherent nature of any illicit trade; legal (or "less illegal") supply and distribution channels will have far less crime associated with them.
I really hope this doesn't mean that they're going to kill the all-at-once "binge" releases for new shows.
I've been doing this for TV shows since long before Netflix streaming existed - I would wait until a season (or show) ended, and then rent the entire series from Blockbuster, one disk at a time.
I don't always have time to watch shows regularly, and it's great being able to do it at my own pace. Plus, I'm impatient when it comes to cliffhangers[0]
[0] This sort of behavior can be very lucrative for Netflix. Many episodes of Weeds ended with cliffhangers or twists that caused me to watch an episode or two more at a time than I'd originally planned. To a lesser extent, Orange is the New Black (also created by Jenji Kohan) used the same technique as well.
I'd have to do some more math since my cable, internet and phone are all on the same bill. I don't recall what the exact break down is. With all the channels I get and the HD and the DVRs (plus the internet and phone) my "cable" bill is like $200/month
Is AppleTV ala cart or buffet? Meaning if I want to watch all season of Game of Thrones (and Shameless and Weeds and whatever) am I paying per episode or is it a monthly fee? (I assume Apple != free content)
How is buying a house and working a job a safe thing?
I'm Canadian. We Canadians grow up extremely aware of our behemoth neighbour. We watch your TV, your news, your movies. Your culture permeates our culture.
And your culture celebrates home ownership and working a job as the American dream. From Leave it to Beaver to Desperate Housewives and Weeds, your culture (and ours) is all about having a job and owning a home. It's part of the American dream.
How many people pursuing that dream lost their job and their homes? If you're unemployed and homeless through no fault of your own, how do you feel when you see bankers, who are at fault, getting bailed out by the government?
The Occupy Wall Street movement is about pointing out how unfair it is to bailout the rich without doing a thing for the middle class.
As for health insurance, does the author sound like he has a few extra thousand dollars kicking around to pay the deductible?
Television shows on HBO and Showtime (Weeds from your list) are usually not available in the US until the DVDs come out, which is usually shortly before the next seasons starts.
I am aware of HBO Go, but it is not available unless one already has cable and HBO.
What I love about Netflix streaming is that it completely severs the old TV-viewer relationship of having to worry about "what's on now" and "when does my program start". Since we started using Netflix streaming, we spend a lot more time watching what we want to watch when we want to watch it. Instead of having to worry about having dinner done in time for your favorite program, your favorite program now starts whenever the hell you're ready for it. :-)
I also like that I can start watching a series from the beginning, no matter how long its been on. As an example, my wife and I are currently hooked on the show "Weeds". It's been on for 6 seasons already, so trying to get into it now on cable would be...difficult. But with Netflix we've been able to start watching from the first episode with no problems.
You mean except for The Sopranos, The Wire, The Shield, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The West Wing, Six Feet Under, Dexter, BSG (gak), Friday Night Lights, Lost, Sons of Anarchy, Deadwood, Extras, Damages, Weeds (gak), House...
What's tricky about this comparison is that there's so much North American TV. A lot of it is ABC sitcoms, yes.
This isn't particularly germane or relevant, but this reminded me of that episode of Weeds...
Nancy: The kids go to my sister, Jill. Not to Andy. Ok? Jill. Her number's in my book. Jill Price-Grey with a fucking hyphen.
Lupita: (Writing this down) Fucking hyphen...
Those of us who really don't watch TV don't generally feel inclined to write our accounts down.
Take me for example. After my son was born 5 years ago we got busy and decided that we were going to not be connected. My wife connected the TV for a few days to watch Obama win. Then disconnected it since.
My wife rents movies from Netflix. We get movies from the library for my son. (He probably watches about 6-8 hours a week.) We bought a handful of DVDs. But on the average day the (disconnected) TV doesn't even get turned on for that. And the last made for TV show I'm aware of in the house was when my wife decided to watch Weeds.
But to me it is a non-story. I simply don't feel the need to turn the TV on and I don't seek the content out in any other media. I simply have a full life and TV isn't part of it. To such an extent that the non-presence of TV isn't a story for me, it is simply a fact of life.
I haven't had a TV for three years. The hardest part was giving up Lost in Season Two. I feel lost when friends talk about "The Wire", "Weeds", "24" but I'd rather live vicariously through my own life. I don't even Hulu. I almost feel like TV is a treadmill - just keeping up with show plot trajectories.
Getting rid of a TV isn't a magic solution for life's problems. It doesn't make you more social. It doesn't make you focus on your big projects though. You can easily whittle away free time surfing on your iPhone on your couch (as I do).
I recently saw a two-year old boy whose parents had been raising without TV. They've succumbed. Thomas the Train. Previously, without TV, he would literally cry on the floor for 20 min. straight - because what the heck do small kids do if the parents can't distract them with the real opiate of the masses, in Karl Marx parlance.
I haven't had Cable/Satellite since 2002. I started watching all my TV on DVDs that I bought from Amazon, but then switched to iTunes around 2006.
Now it's mostly a combination of iTunes/DVD - I'm pretty certain it's less expensive than subscribing to TV.
The good part of this (and it should be emphasized) - is that you now watch for a _purpose_ - Latest episode of Lost, BSG, Dexter, Weeds, South Park, Doll House, BtVS, Angel, The Wire, DeadWood, Heroes, The Office, Dr. Horrible, Mad Men, Parks and Recreation, Castle, Californication, Dr. Who, Kings, Sarah Connor Chronicles, True Blood, Torchwood.
Any time that might have been lost to just passively watching television, news, is now, of course, lost to passively reading ycombinator, nyt, wsj, groklaw... :-)
Having a database and quotas will encourage illegality only a little bit less than it being illegal. Some people will sell their quote to others with larger intake, some will be encouraged to buy dope illegally just to avoid being in the database (how long would it be before the government used that db for employment screening, followed by the obvious next step - selling the db to private companies for the same reason?).
As a total aside, this came up in an episode of Weeds - our hero Nancy Botwin managed to discourage her clients from purchasing medicinal marijuana just by suggesting that there was such a central db.
Out of things currently airing -- Battlestar Galactica, Weeds, Heroes, in that order.
The greatest TV show of all time is Six Feet Under. If you've never watched it, you're in for the best 64 hours of visual media of your life.
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3420704/Six_Feet_Under_season_1