Skip to main content

The new golden age of documentaries - NOT

(Note: this is NOT about development)

Comment from MSNBC:
"We’re living in a golden age of documentary filmmaking.
Again, if you love or hate Moore, put it aside for a moment and realize that while he may be the loudest and most opportunistic of his ilk, a wave of quality documentaries have hit theaters in his wake."

Ok - I will readily admit that documentaries are always going to be subjective because of who comes up with them. BUT the fact that someone is able to make a movie that, withstanding the valid facts in the movie, is essentially a "diatribe" (from the Ebert Review) against another person or company does not deserve the word "Quality".

The writer makes note of "SuperSize Me" , a documentary where a guy basically ate himself sick when other people did exactly what he did but actually lived a normal life and did not get sick. That's quality? No - that's biased reporting, the same kind of junk that got Dateline in serious trouble when they overflated the tires on the Isuzu trucks they were test-driving way back when.

I don't mind someone coming out with a documentary - but calling something quality when it's simply a popular view is going too far.

Someone please - film me standing on a street and getting hit by cars - can i now say that this is because the car manufacturers make bad products? Of course not.

This isn't against Moore who explicitly makes thought-provoking films - it's about not giving too much "godly" praise to someone who is able to get people to fund his (or anyone else's) personal war against someone, right or wrong.

It is propaganda - pure and simple - just like the kind that is used by politicians (both right and left), dictators (both self-appointed and appointed by the population). Let's call a spade a spade.


MSNBC - The new golden age of documentaries

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Elevating Project Specifications with Three Insightful ChatGPT Prompts

For developers and testers, ChatGPT, the freely accessible tool from OpenAI, is game-changing. If you want to learn a new programming language, ask for samples or have it convert your existing code. This can be done in Visual Studio Code (using GitHub CoPilot) or directly in the ChatGPT app or web site.  If you’re a tester, ChatGPT can write a test spec or actual test code (if you use Jest or Cypress) based on existing code, copied and pasted into the input area. But ChatGPT can be of huge value for analysts (whether system or business) who need to validate their needs. There’s often a disconnect between developers and analysts. Analysts complain that developers don’t build what they asked for or ask too many questions. Developers complain that analysts haven’t thought of obvious things. In these situations, ChatGPT can be a great intermediary. At its worst, it forces you to think about and then discount obvious issues. At best, it clarifies the needs into documented requirements. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Respect

Respect is something humans give to each other through personal connection. It’s the bond that forms when we recognize something—or someone—as significant, relatable, or worthy of care. This connection doesn’t have to be limited to people. There was an  article  recently that described the differing attitudes towards AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini (formerly Bard). Some people treat them like a standard search while others form a sort of personal relationship — being courteous, saying “please” and “thank you”. Occasionally, people share extra details unrelated to their question, like, ‘I’m going to a wedding. What flower goes well with a tuxedo?’ Does an AI “care” how you respond to it? Of course not — it reflects the patterns it’s trained on. Yet our interaction shapes how these tools evolve, and that influence is something we should take seriously. Most of us have all expressed frustration when an AI “hallucinates”. Real or not, the larger issue is that we have hi...
Post a Comment
Read more

When A Machine Starts To Care

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke (1962)  I first used that quote when I was starting out in the tech industry. Back then, it was a way to illustrate just how fast and powerful computers had become. Querying large datasets in seconds felt magical—at least to those who didn’t build them.  Today, we’re facing something even more extraordinary. Large Language Models (LLMs) can now carry on conversations that approach human-level fluency. Clarke’s quote applies again. And just as importantly, many researchers argue that LLMs meet—or at least brush up against—the criteria of the Turing Test.  We tend to criticize LLMs for their “hallucinations,” their sometimes-confident inaccuracies. But let’s be honest: we also complain when our friends misremember facts or recount things inaccurately. This doesn’t excuse LLMs—it simply highlights that the behavior isn’t entirely alien. In some ways, it mirrors our own cognitive limits....
Post a Comment
Read more