id software

Tantacrul dissects the UX and UI of Avid's Sibelius music notation software, going through a long list of bad design choices. The review is both a comic rant and a practical lesson in interface design.

Folding Ideas examines weird, algorithm-gamed children's content on YouTube, from automated toddler videos and educational spam to exploitative prank channels. It looks at how autoplay and recommendation systems reward this material.

A Last Week Tonight segment on the US opioid epidemic, tracing how prescription painkillers fed addiction and heroin use. It is the first of three episodes the show devoted to the crisis.

John Oliver's second Last Week Tonight segment on the opioid epidemic, covering the role of large companies in driving it. It touches on Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family.

A short excerpt from The Pervert's Guide to Ideology in which Slavoj Zizek analyzes John Carpenter's They Live. He uses the film's fight scene and sunglasses to explain how ideology works.

Thunderf00t goes through the three UFO videos released by the Pentagon and offers mundane explanations for each. He treats the footage as sensor artifacts, parallax and camera effects rather than alien craft.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on the state of the US power grid, why it needs fixing, and the risks of aging infrastructure.

A video debunking popular primitive-building YouTube channels, arguing that their digging, concrete and construction are staged. It uses the Primitive Technology channel as a baseline for what is plausible in a natural setting.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on the Sackler family and how they have handled opioid lawsuits. It covers how hard they fought to defend their name and is the third of three segments on the opioid crisis.

Folding Ideas uses the rise and fall of the YouTube competitor VidMe to examine why platforms are not friends to creators. It argues that alternatives to big platforms tend to attract the users banned from the original and lack a core vision.

Tantacrul critiques the UX and UI of Steinberg's Dorico music notation software, comparing it with Sibelius and user testing it with real musicians alongside his own attempt to compose in it.

A short clip, from 2003, of Noam Chomsky going through crimes of post-WW2 US presidents. He argues that they would be indictable under the Nuremberg principles.

A commentary video by YouTuber PaymoneyWubby reacting to children's content on the Musical.ly app, which became TikTok. It highlights the child-safety concerns of young kids dancing on a public social platform.

Adam Something argues in four minutes that gravity batteries like Energy Vault, which lift concrete blocks with cranes, are a poor energy storage idea. He draws on a longer Thunderf00t debunk.

Internet of Bugs analyzes Cognition's Devin demo frame by frame, arguing the video did not show Devin completing paid Upwork jobs as claimed, and showing what the task required versus what Devin produced.

Kurzgesagt argues that Facebook's claimed 8 billion daily video views are inflated by freebooting, meaning re-uploads of creators' videos. It describes how this harms independent creators.

A Jimquisition episode examining the human cost of predatory videogame monetization, focusing on loot boxes and microtransactions. It features testimonials from people harmed by gambling-style game mechanics.

Anders Puck Nielsen analyzes the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage using Kilcullen's theory of liminal warfare and prospect theory. He argues from the operational design that Russia is the most likely culprit, then discusses how hybrid warfare might be used against Europe.

William Osman describes helping build parts of the MrBeast Squid Game event, including hacking together hundreds of wifi-controlled blood packs in about three weeks. He covers the chaos and near-failures along the way.

A Jimquisition episode by Jim Sterling demonstrating the Copyright Deadlock, where a video includes footage owned by several companies so that competing YouTube Content ID claims cancel each other out. It highlights how absurd the system is.

A two-minute remix-style video set to Hall of the Mountain King that mocks Anthony Fauci's Covid pandemic statements. It circulated widely among vaccine and mandate skeptics.

Internet Historian's comedic retelling of how internet users located and captured the flag from Shia LaBeouf's He Will Not Divide Us installation, framed with Metal Gear Solid parodies. It covers the trolling campaign and the geolocation of the flag.

A Fox News segment in which Ami Horowitz interviews people at UC Berkeley and in Harlem about whether voter ID laws are racist.

A long Techlore video documenting what it presents as hostile conduct by GrapheneOS leadership and community members, including lead developer Daniel Micay, toward CalyxOS and others.

Adam Neely explains that Warner Music claimed his video, which defended their copyright in a lawsuit, over a work whose copyright they had lost. He calls it an ironic and absurd claim, and the claim was later released.

A short clip of Joe Biden speaking about leveraging loan guarantees to get Ukraine's prosecutor general fired, with a partisan description framing it as corruption.

Thunderf00t argues that the Pentagon's officially released 'UFO' videos have mundane explanations such as birds, parallax and sensor artifacts.

Musician TheFatRat describes how his video with 47 million views was claimed by another party through YouTube's copyright system and how he got it back.

A short supercut showing many Sinclair-owned local news anchors reading the same scripted warning about biased news, word for word.

Innuendo Studios' Alt-Right Playbook episode, drawing on Corey Robin's The Reactionary Mind, argues that conservatism defends hierarchy and a shrinking in-group.

Jon Stewart appears on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and discusses the pandemic, vaccine science and the Wuhan lab origin theory. He jokes that the disease shares its name with the lab.

CGP Grey argues that a classroom works well only for the one student pitched at the average level, and sketches a future of personalized instruction. It introduces the idea of a Digital Aristotle, a tutor for every learner.

Casey Muratori responds on-stream to a dismissive Twitter post by demonstrating how slow Visual Studio's startup and debugger watch window are, comparing it to much older software and machines. It is a long rant about software performance and bloat.

Angela Collier, a physicist, revisits her earlier dark matter video, explaining dark matter as a set of observations rather than a theory and discussing MOND comments.

A short clip of Casey Muratori from Handmade Hero explaining why he rejects the object-oriented mindset and how to move away from it. It is part rant, part programming philosophy.

Jacob Geller's video essay on empty cities and what they say about our relationship to places, using games, literature and aerial imagery. It touches on works such as Invisible Cities.

Sabine Hossenfelder reads a confidential email and uses it to explain her worries about academia and incentives in theoretical physics research. She ties it to her earlier Nature Physics comment on research quality.

AdoredTV relays leaks and insider accounts of what it is like inside Intel, including staffing changes and morale. It is a commentary video from 2020.

A John Oliver Last Week Tonight segment on voting access in the US, covering how some states are making voting less equal. It is a comedic news commentary piece.

A 'leaked' Microsoft video shown at its 2011 MGX conference that mocks Google's Gmail and Apps to promote Office 365. It attacks Google over email scanning and privacy.