Learning from History, YouTube Style!

When times seem uncertain, I think one of the most useful ways to gain a bit of clarity is by studying history. We've now had several millenia of human history and stories from ancient history might seem, not to put too fine a point on it, ancient history. But the fact is, when something happens in the present, chances are a very similar situation happened in the past and usually on several occasions. The tricky part is figuring which example from history the present course of events is most likely to follow. Is the current state of the world most closely mimicking the 1930's, or is it the turn of the last century battle between the robber barons and the progressives? Or can we look to the late Roman Empire for guidance?

For my part, those are rhetorical questions. All I know is that Cars is a prophecy of the future. Yes, I am obsessed with that movie.

Ultimately, the more knowledge the better. And a great place to gain that knowledge in quick and digestible format is YouTube. With some warnings of course. I've written before about my love of finding documentaries on YouTube. There are certainly a lot of great history documentaries available there. But there are also a lot of weird, amateurish consipiracy nutjob docos too, though much of it little distinguishable from the History Channel's current Ancient Aliens lineup.

My advice is to search for and double check that the documentary is produced in association with one of the reputable TV channels, such as BBC, PBS or Channel 4, or even Discovery or History, if it's an older show.

But there's also another weird phenomenon I've noticed with these documentaries. History docs are not necessarily the most sexy material (try as it might), so some uploaders have resorted to using "porny" thumbnails as clickbait.

The Search for Distraction Options

This may put be in the minority of adults, but I like Cars.  The movie.  Yes that one.  I admit I liked the story even when it's world building and internal logic seemed incomprehensible.  I only liked it more when I realized it was really about driverless cars who take on human characteristics and adopt human culture as a way to assuage their guilt and emotionally hollow cores for wiping out their creators in an apocalyptic war.

But mostly these days, I like Cars because it is the one non-terrible, non-grating entertainment I can put on the screen that will keep the kids from destroying the house in their boredom.  Still waiting for dinner to get made?  Put on Cars.  Left bunny behind at school?  Put on Cars.  Kids fighting over toys?  Put on Cars.  Amazingly, they never get sick of it.  As an adult, on the other hand, I was really hoping for another reliable "go to" pick.  Sadly, out of the many, many, many other TV, movie and internet options, none of them could captivate as much as Cars.

Ideas: Artificial Intelligence is Scary

In recent news, computers can now beat us at video games they're not even programmed to play. I think we can now officially begin the countdown to the robot takeover.