Reverse Engineering the Universe
Dr. Aaron Lunatic
I’ve been watching Professor Dave’s content for years – I remember when he only had about 40k subscribers and have watched him churn out (extremely high quality) content consistently for all that time. To date, he’s earned himself over 2.6 million subscribers and I look forward to his channel continuing to grow. The man is a positive force in the Universe, to be sure, so I wanted to give him a shout out.
Death sucks; it’s ugly, smelly, often physically and emotionally painful to ourselves and others, and is just an all around shitty thing we’re all forced to do.
So what’s the deal? Why does all life seem to need to die? Why haven’t any truly immortal organisms evolved by now?
John is famously one of the more influential activists surrounding the (curable!) drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) pandemic. Recently, a cure was scheduled to come off of it’s patent (making it far more affordable for poor people), however Johnson & Johnson was aiming to stop that from happening via a technicality, which is a remarkably evil thing to do, given the fact TB is the leading cause of infectious-disease related deaths worldwide and in the top ten causes of death and suffering overall.
I believe John’s video below played a significant role in bringing much needed scrutiny to Johnson & Johnson, causing them to roll back their (literally) evil plans. Time will tell if these evidently sociopathic corporate executives follow through with letting this cure go generic.
(To be clear, I do support the implementation of patents; they’re critically important in driving medical research. However, this situation is very different, as explained below.)
Strange name, amazing content. Been following them for years and I find myself respecting them particularly for their humility, willingness to constantly fact-check themselves, and admit when they’re wrong. The production values are also very impressive – great job, Kurzgesagt team!
I’ve always been a fan of Jon’s work on The Daily Show and thought he was retired with some genuine permanence, but I’ve seen him recently on various media platforms more frequently, especially his own show on YouTube – “The Problem With Jon Stewart.” Is he returning in a bigger way? I hope so! Just listen to how brilliant he is in these recent interviews…
Enlightened Discussion of Geopolitics w/ Clinton and Rice:
A bit too intense for me, but I couldn’t walk away without being impressed…
Obligatory Times Square
Investigative journalist Robert Evans (a super interesting dude) leads a podcast where he unveils billionaires and many people in power for who they really are – harmful parasites.
Why I like Evans: He doesn’t fabricate and puts serious effort into fact-checking himself. The man (sometimes frustratingly) gives even obviously and heinously evil people the benefit of the doubt and comes at it from multiple viewpoints – his own and the various guests on his show. Once you’ve listened to several of his podcasts, you can’t help but have your eyes opened about how these parasitic fuckers insidiously enrich themselves at our expense.
Here’s a few examples from the podcasts I’ve listened to…
We went to the Japanese Garden in Portland, Oregon this Thanksgiving and it was stunning, as usual. I’ll never get tired of this place – the colors hit you quite hard when you’re there in person.
