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As much as this show has exceeded anyone's expectations, I really do miss the foreign policy bent the show initially had. Would've much rather had check-ins or main stories on any other matter of foreign affairs/elections than a riff on sweatshops that I've seen and heard before.
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Apr 27, 2015 17:57
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Narcissus1916 posted:As much as this show has exceeded anyone's expectations, I really do miss the foreign policy bent the show initially had. Would've much rather had check-ins or main stories on any other matter of foreign affairs/elections than a riff on sweatshops that I've seen and heard before. The first half of the show covered the Armenian genocide and the New Zealand prime minister though?
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Apr 27, 2015 18:01
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Having just run 8 dollars through a currency converter, that's about the standard price for a whole chicken over here in the UK. Onto the actual subject of the episode, its unfortunately one of the most damning aspects of an increasingly global economy, particularly one that is heavily disparate in terms of working standards and wages. Unfortunately, trying to solve it runs into all sorts of issues regarding corporate culture, both from the massive companies that ultimately fund (and seek out, whether directly or indirectly) such cheap labour so as to maximise profits, and those countries where having any work is seen as good work, especially for families living in perpetual poverty. So its not just a matter of being more stringent on contractors so that they don't just seek out the lowest bidder, but trying to get global economic standards up to a point, along with cultural standards, that families aren't willing or forced to put up with this crap because they really, really need the money. This is, much as conservatives loath the concept, why particularly rich and powerful nations have a benefits system for those out of work.
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Apr 27, 2015 18:08
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Scorchy posted:The first half of the show covered the Armenian genocide and the New Zealand prime minister though? There's usual a foreign policy bit in the opening section, but I'm getting tired of the topic feeling under-serviced in the Main Story department. poo poo, I'm STILL waiting for the Our Friend Israel episode.
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Apr 27, 2015 18:16
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ACES CURE PLANES posted:John called all of that food disgustingly cheap, but for my budget, most of that seemed really expensive. Almost two bucks for a taquito? Eight bucks for a chicken? That's some pretty pricey stuff, usually if I buy meat, I stick to around 1-2 dollars a pound, assuming boneless. 80 cents per pound for bone-in stuff. Yeah 8 bucks is about right for a grocery store rotisserie chicken. And I really don't know how you fix the problem of the first world not wanting to pay a shitload of money for clothing/electronics and also not wanting to buy clothing/electronics made by child slaves, but sending gas station sushi to CEOs doesn't seem like it. It's kind of an issue that I don't see much solution to.
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Apr 27, 2015 18:33
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I don't care how fancy shrimp and salmon are, $46 for a plate of food is not cheap. The rest of the other foods weren't that cheap either ($7.99 is middle of the road for a rotisserie chicken, and dumplings can go way cheaper than 74￠ a pop), and the hazard of cheap foods isn't that they've had balls on them, it's that they may be rotten or disease infested or use sand as a filler. The whole end of that bit was just shaming people who eat inexpensively. Or maybe New York just has really skewed food prices. Other than that, of course companies aren't going spend a lot of time and money to thoroughly check if their subcontractors aren't taking some sketchy cost-cutting measures. Human rights are for governments to enforce, not corporations.
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Apr 27, 2015 18:50
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IRQ posted:It's kind of an issue that I don't see much solution to. Eat the rich.
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Apr 27, 2015 20:46
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I love the joke about the guy making GBS threads his pants
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Apr 27, 2015 20:56
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Narcissus1916 posted:poo poo, I'm STILL waiting for the Our Friend Israel episode. Do what most anti-semites do and reread Mein Kampf while you wait.
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Apr 27, 2015 21:23
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Why is Irish Joe still allowed to post anywhere?
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Apr 27, 2015 21:25
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Is Our Friend Israel even still in the pipeline?
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Apr 28, 2015 02:12
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Jonas Albrecht posted:Is Our Friend Israel even still in the pipeline? Was it ever in anything but this thread's dreams? (for the record, I loving hate Israel's politics, I just don't think it was ever really a thing)
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Apr 28, 2015 02:18
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SlothfulCobra posted:I don't care how fancy shrimp and salmon are, $46 for a plate of food is not cheap. The rest of the other foods weren't that cheap either ($7.99 is middle of the road for a rotisserie chicken, and dumplings can go way cheaper than 74￠ a pop), and the hazard of cheap foods isn't that they've had balls on them, it's that they may be rotten or disease infested or use sand as a filler. The whole end of that bit was just shaming people who eat inexpensively. Or maybe New York just has really skewed food prices. It was kind of mentioned quickly with the shrimp and salmon, but that was $46 for a dinner for five. So it was actually more like $9 per plate.
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Apr 28, 2015 04:29
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This show strikes me as more influenced by the Colbert Report than the Daily Show.
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Apr 28, 2015 05:35
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They talked about it as a possible episode and mentioned the title in John's RS profile, but I'm not sure it ever got past the planning stages. Here's the passage from the RS articlequote:He's eager to push the show's machinery harder and further and to take more risks: One possible future piece is tentaivle titled "Our Friend Israel". "There is no world in which we do not sail into that territory", Oliver says, grinning with a rare hint of pride. "We're attracted to the difficult at the moment".
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Apr 28, 2015 17:20
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IRQ posted:Yeah 8 bucks is about right for a grocery store rotisserie chicken. It's a problem that will solve itself once we can 3D print clothing
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Apr 28, 2015 19:37
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Remember all those prices are Manhattan prices which are suspiciously cheap. Anyway, I enjoyed that bit immensely and he had some great jokes this episode.
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Apr 28, 2015 19:50
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Yeah the "Kill, Marry gently caress" one was hysterical.
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Apr 29, 2015 07:23
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Hakkesshu posted:It's a problem that will solve itself once we can 3D print clothing Naw, the 3rd world factories will just switch to making cheap 3D printers.
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Apr 29, 2015 09:36
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Everything before the main segment had me in stitches. New Zealand's PM has a thing with hair. Kill, marry and gently caress is hysterical. The main segment is not new to me but the end bit was funny.
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Apr 29, 2015 10:03
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This is, what, the third time New Zealand's been mentioned?  I think he has a thing for us!Although the PM hair thing is pretty hilarious, as soon as I heard about it I was hoping it'd get mentioned on here. They did not disappoint. Laverna fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Apr 29, 2015 |
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Apr 29, 2015 13:18
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New Zealand PM and Joe Biden would get along great
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Apr 29, 2015 14:56
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Afro posted:New Zealand PM and Joe Biden would get along great Nah, Joe Biden's a cool dude.
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Apr 29, 2015 15:35
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MikeJF posted:Nah, Joe Biden's a cool dude. He's pretty handsy with the ladies though.
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Apr 29, 2015 15:40
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IRQ posted:He's pretty handsy with the ladies though. Yeah but somehow he's less creepy than John Key. In lots of ways. John Key is just wrong.
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Apr 29, 2015 15:43
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Laverna posted:This is, what, the third time New Zealand's been mentioned? He just loves doing the New Zealand accent. Him saying "eminem" over and over killed me.
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Apr 30, 2015 06:46
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My reaction to hearing "Our main story tonight is Standardized Testing" was "Holy gently caress, get some, John." I only just got to the part where an entire class boycotted the Common Core tests but there's a lot of bullshit to unpack here.
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May 4, 2015 04:28
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When he asked who benefited I knew it was "Pearson" before he said it. Years of standardized testing and staring at their loving logo has burned them into my brain. And whoever in Florida came up with that formula for how your students should do is a lovely statistician. If something has a maximum value you should cap everything at that. That's just simple checking your work... Which leads me to believe that Pearson doesn't really check it's work. The College Board gets a lot of poo poo for the SAT and AP exams but I think it's way better than most of these state level standardized tests we see. Why didn't we use the AP exam as our template for these things? I thought those were pretty decent as far as standardized tests went. Generous time limits and done at a fairly relaxed pace and they never felt unfair. Although I will say I think the joke about the cow paper was a bit low. I suspect it was used more for statistical research and methodology than anything else. Scientific research in other areas is used a lot of the time if they find some neat statistical way of measuring something. I've cited papers about cancer because of their statistical rigor, the content is immaterial.
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May 4, 2015 05:00
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"This tastes like a raccoon ejaculated carbonated vinegar into an old log." was such an apt description of Bud Light.
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May 4, 2015 05:58
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Anybody have a link to the LWT video that mocked the "May the 4th be with you" thing because... gently caress
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May 4, 2015 06:46
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I absolutely love this show for it's pure entertainment value, but I'm often left troubled at the end of every episode. It seems that some sort of change should spring from these segments. Gasland changed the national conversation about fracking, and that Robert Durst "the Jinx" thing got him put back on trail. Do the HBO execs have to turn some of Oliver's investigations into documentaries for them to be taken seriously? Damnit! I'm still mad about police buying margarita machines with money gained from property seizures. Am I asking too much? Or should I just go back to laughing when he says Eminem with that New Zealand Accent.
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May 4, 2015 09:11
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Solvent posted:I absolutely love this show for it's pure entertainment value, but I'm often left troubled at the end of every episode. Remember, this is an entertainment show that has to keep fueling the outrage machine to keep people watching. In reality, John oversimplifies and glosses over both the nuance and the counterarguments of a lot of the issues he covers. John also fails to propose any alternatives to the "issues" he creates. Its easy to rile people up over the injustice of a single aspect of a particular issue, its much, MUCH harder to come up with a change that doesn't eliminate the injustice without also eliminating the benefit of a thing. Sometimes an imperfect thing is better than no thing at all, which is a nuance that John never delves into (because its not sensational and won't get idiots like you riled up on social media).
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May 4, 2015 09:34
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Irish Joe posted:Remember, this is an entertainment show that has to keep fueling the outrage machine to keep people watching. In reality, John oversimplifies and glosses over both the nuance and the counterarguments of a lot of the issues he covers. John also fails to propose any alternatives to the "issues" he creates. Its easy to rile people up over the injustice of a single aspect of a particular issue, its much, MUCH harder to come up with a change that doesn't eliminate the injustice without also eliminating the benefit of a thing. Sometimes an imperfect thing is better than no thing at all, which is a nuance that John never delves into (because its not sensational and won't get idiots like you riled up on social media). I agree with most of what you said, in particular "Sometimes an imperfect thing is better than no thing at all" which is my justification for government when speaking to an anarchist. I'm not sure that the backbone of the show is outrage, and not that bloody brilliant comedic delivery. I'd really like to hear your take on the benefits of police seizures, or to be even more topical, the obfuscation of the practices of the company that provides standardized tests for a vast majority of America's youth. Here are a couple suggestions for rectification of the problems mentioned. 1. the money from seizures should not go back into local precincts (I think he may have even said this, I must check). 2. the testing process should not be in the hands of a monopoly (this was at very least implied) Ahh yes. I'm an idiot for being morally outraged when cued to. Thank you for adding that insightful bit, I was dangerously close to respecting you. I also scrolled up and saw you also referred to people looking forward to a criticism of Israel as anti-Semites. Classy. I'm pro-Israel too, but I might have said something about how the Palestinians sided with Hitler during WW2, instead of just ad-homing someone who want's to see and intelligent and witty criticism.
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May 4, 2015 09:51
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Solvent posted:I'd really like to hear your take on the benefits of police seizures, or to be even more topical, the obfuscation of the practices of the company that provides standardized tests for a vast majority of America's youth. Civil forfeiture has many benefits, including, as you mentioned, funneling money back into the precinct/local government. It also has the benefit of discouraging criminal activity by taking away some of the financial incentive of crimes (and not allowing criminal to ultimately "profit" from their wrongdoing) and also provides the retribution society demands of people who break the law. I haven't seen the standardized test segment yet, but the very definition of "standardized" implies the existence of a single test/rubric produced by a single company. quote:I also scrolled up and saw you also referred to people looking forward to a criticism of Israel as anti-Semites. Classy.  I was making a joke (this is a thread about a comedy show posted on a comedy forum, after all) about a poster's bizarre eagerness to see John take down Israel. You see, no one in their right mind would call someone an antisemite over such innocuous behavior*, thus doing so is unexpected and therefore "funny" under the Expectation Theory of comedy.*I know tumblr has erased the line between normal behavior and racism to the point where everything is racism, but this isn't tumblr.
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May 4, 2015 10:24
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Pearson tests sounds like a very  initiative to destroy public schools. Like literally everything about it sounds like a deliberate attempt to destroy education.
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May 4, 2015 10:25
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Wow Irish Joe, you're losing your touch. You actually engaged the person who tool your bait. Well done, but can you go back to being sensationalist.
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May 4, 2015 10:40
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axeil posted:And whoever in Florida came up with that formula for how your students should do is a lovely statistician. If something has a maximum value you should cap everything at that. The fact that you had a probable-honors-student crying into a kindle over not being allowed to take a hard enough class should probably be enough to tell you you've gone astray? axeil posted:The College Board gets a lot of poo poo for the SAT and AP exams but I think it's way better than most of these state level standardized tests we see. Why didn't we use the AP exam as our template for these things? I thought those were pretty decent as far as standardized tests went. Generous time limits and done at a fairly relaxed pace and they never felt unfair. AP tests are exactly the same thing, but on a smaller scale. I had high school teachers who had graded AP Tests before, and the history/literature exams were basically described as speed-reading for keywords and determining if the student "coherently" name dropped enough in an "essay". It's a system I'd consider vaguely acceptable for high-achieving people trying to skip college classes, but not for every single student.
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May 4, 2015 10:47
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The "you didn't even notice that's not" running gag is my favourite thing on this show 
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May 4, 2015 10:54
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Irish Joe posted:Civil forfeiture has many benefits, including, as you mentioned, funneling money back into the precinct/local government. It also has the benefit of discouraging criminal activity by taking away some of the financial incentive of crimes (and not allowing criminal to ultimately "profit" from their wrongdoing) and also provides the retribution society demands of people who break the law. Perhaps this is a more common response than I expected, clinging to one's viewpoint without being open to new ideas or arguments. Because I live in the real world, something about your assertion bothered me, so I pulled up the civil forfeiture segment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks "Since 9/11, under just one program, police have taken two and a half BILLION dollars in the course of over 61,000 seizures of cash alone from people who (and this is the mind blowing part) were not charged with a crime." This is a huge sum taken from a gigantic number of people, with no due process to protect the people involved. On top of that, the money goes to the people who seize it. "Knowing that starts to make you wonder about the motivations of officers who ask (montage of officers asking about cash)" If a single company makes a standardized test for an entire nation, that is not able to be discussed, I can see no way that the standard is at all linked to reality. How could anything from police, to the creators of a test that can make or break the lives of innocent children, exist without proper oversight? I'm not sure if you've noticed this everywhere, but people have strong feelings regarding Israel's history of treatment of the people who inhabit the lands surrounding their walled nation. Based on the lack of context I saw, I assumed your "joke" was just you asserting your "lovely, combative, and undeveloped opinion".  Please forgive me
Solvent fucked around with this message at 11:17 on May 4, 2015 |
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May 4, 2015 10:57
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notaspy posted:Wow Irish Joe, you're losing your touch. You actually engaged the person who tool your bait. Well done, but can you go back to being sensationalist. Trolls often seem to feel the need to be able to subtly snark too, and he seems to be someone who placed care in making his response seem like an actual one. "Engage people with the expected; it's what they're able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment - that which they cannot anticipate." I could not anticipate a reply with a logical argument attached, and I await extraordinary moments. "I would have offered him some wine, but it's a bit early in the day for me."
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May 4, 2015 11:06
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