https://cottagelife.com/general/this-toronto-professor-took-...

A fork of uBlock Origin Lite that, instead of hiding cosmetically-blocked ads, replaces them with white tiles bearing slogans from John Carpenter's 1988 film They Live: OBEY, CONSUME, WATCH TV, SLEEP, SUBMIT, CONFORM, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WORK, NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.
Each blocked ad gets a single phrase, picked at random from the list.
The idea is from a blog post I wrote in 2015 (and never got around to building): They Live adblock mode.
Download the latest uBOLite_theylive.chromium.zip from the Releases page, extract it, then in Chromium / Chrome / Brave / Edge:
chrome://extensionsKeep the folder around — the extension is loaded from that path.
By default uBO Lite uses Basic filtering mode, which blocks ads at the network layer. Network-blocked ads never produce a DOM element, so there's nothing to "they-live-ify" — you just get empty space, as with normal uBO Lite. To see the OBEY tiles:
Requires Node 22.
git clone --recursive https://github.com/davmlaw/they_live_adblocker
cd they_live_adblocker/uBlock
nvm use 22 # or otherwise ensure Node >= 22
tools/make-mv3.sh chromium # or: firefox | edge | safari
The packaged extension lands in uBlock/dist/build/uBOLite.chromium/ — load it as an unpacked extension.
uBO Lite's cosmetic filtering normally injects CSS like selector { display: none !important } to hide matched ad elements. This fork patches those injection sites to instead apply a white-box mask with a ::after overlay whose content is read from a data-ubol-they-live attribute, then walks the DOM (with a MutationObserver for late-loaded ads) to tag each matched element with a random phrase from the list.
Touched files in the davmlaw/uBlock submodule:
platform/mv3/extension/js/scripting/they-live.js (new) — phrase list, CSS generator, DOM taggingplatform/mv3/extension/js/scripting/css-{specific,generic,procedural-api}.js — call sitesplatform/mv3/extension/js/scripting-manager.js — registers they-live.js ahead of consumersGPL-3.0, same as upstream uBlock Origin / uBO Lite.
I think it was a healthy formative influence for me and primed me for rejecting fads / peer pressure, distrusting authority, etc. Probably also helped me to resist the more unhealthy aspects of a religious time/place, and I was even doing light reading on Cartesian skepticism a few years later, which got me into math. Didn't figure out the name of the movie until years later when it was a big meme.
This is not advice but I definitely advise you to show your small children this movie before they are old enough to think it's corny. They may have a schizophrenic episode or descend into solipsism sure, but they may also get scared as hell by monsters and learn some mental judo, and thank you for it later.
In short, aliens have invaded earth, but wear a special skin to appear human. To average people, they appear and sound identical to real humans. The lead character discovers that special sunglasses can show the aliens without their human-like skin. (They look a bit like the aliens from "Mars Attacks".) When wearing the sunglasses, most outdoor adverts are replaced with bland single-party-state-style propaganda encouraging people to consume, work hard, and follow the rules.
I can honestly say that the trailer does no justice for the film. It is much better than the trailer. When I saw first saw this, I was genuinedly spooked. One half of the film is good fun 1980s alien invasion beat 'em up, and the other half is a thoughtful commentary on the age of consumerism.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/artificial-cl...
it replaces terms used to exalt Artificial Intelligence to what they really mean, and some tongue in cheek jokes against things that are used to pass billionaires/tech as friendly (e.g. replacing bill gates with his actual name)
Basically skeptical of common forms in modernity, that is very clearly the intention. However, I have also seen that in extreme far-right communities this film represents how Jewish people control the world... somehow I don't think that is what Carpenter was going for.
Alas, once your works are in the wild it is out of the creators control in how they end up being used.
Beyond the somewhat "obvious" message (for a grown up) it's just an eminently entertaining movie.
Other entertaining films =3
"The Great Dictator" (Charlie Chaplin, 1940)
https://archive.org/details/the-great-dictator-disc-01-title...
"Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951)
https://archive.org/details/day-the-earth-stood-still-1951
"Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" (1956)
https://archive.org/details/invasionofthebodysnatchers1956_2...
"The Man in the White Suit" (1951)
https://archive.org/details/the-man-in-the-white-suit_202105
"The Twilight Zone" (1959)
https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-01-e-00...
https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-01-e-00...
https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-03-e-15...
https://archive.org/details/the-twilight-zone-1959-s-03-e-15...
The least it could do was classify images to some categories with a small vision model smh. They stopped using AI too soon.
There's some irony in here somewhere...
I can't offhand thing of a worse idea in the context.
https://proceduralgraphics.blogspot.com/2015/04/they-live-ad...
I've been watching Andor as a instructional manual recently and this seems like a good addition to the reality based manuals out there.
Idiocracy, War INC etc.
Extreme libertarian seems a more apt description for those groups since they severely distrust government often also criticizing Trump and Netanyahu for example.
(Genuine question as we're all trying to figure this shit out)
Edit: Slavoj Žižek. As always, phenomenal and humble take.
"I’m already eating from the trashcan all the time, the name of this trashcan is... ideology"
Slavoj Žižek on "They Live" (The Pervert's Guide to Ideology) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVwKjGbz60k
"Learn more about Imgur access in the United Kingdom"
The irony!
In fact the whole movie is almost a parody of itself now due to how many scenes have since become a meme.
I recognize that this is certainly a minority view given how influential the film is. But I just plain cannot unsee it, like a Lovecraftian revelation and that ruins it for me from the start. Short of thinking Jodie Foster is talking to you through screens, it is very hard to look like an outright unhinged anti-Reaganist given the many legitimate things to object to about the man and his policies. Even if you agree with some of it, you can easily see where others would reasonably disagree. But this 'basic urges are part of a sinister conspiracy' sort of message? This managed to do it.
Avoiding groupthink is another slightly different positive spin on (my read of) the underlying message. There's such a thing as toxic individualism too, but if there's a "bad" way to be a free-thinker then you could say it usually has a pretty limited blast radius for society in general and it isn't a contagious kind of madness either
Same deal with the Starship Troopers movie. When Helldivers first came out, it was really incredible to see how many people truly didn't get the irony.
AI is amazing at jumping into an unfamiliar codebase, it was probably 20 mins total work
Say what you will about claiming that the Jews secretly control the world like the aliens in the 1988 John Carpenter movie They Live, the people making this claim are certainly not obeying, conforming, or refraining from questioning authority.
That you reject the entire premise of the movie because you can't "get over" this particular aspect, just means you've got your own loaded revolver in your pocket.
I left that out deliberately, as I think they are a good thing
Yes, I am aware of the irony of trying to manipulate people via messages
The problem comes in this causing people to do one or both of:
- immediately flip to believing the direct opposite, without evidence that's true either (most things are not excluded-middle)
- immediately imprint on the first non-mainstream source they find and start treating it as gospel
> but if there's a "bad" way to be a free-thinker then you could say it usually has a pretty limited blast radius for society in general and it isn't a contagious kind of madness either
It absolutely can be contagious. Sometimes that's for the good, sometimes bad, quite often the mixed result of getting to the right place only after a fraught disruptive time. Martin Luther, originator of the listicle, was correct in a lot of the theses but also started the domino chain for some of the most lethal wars in Europe. VI Lenin was right about the problems and wrong about the solutions. And so on.
Do you know the difference between a conspiracy "nut", and a rational person?
For a "conspiracy nut", understanding that there is sufficient incentive (also implies a lack of deterrent) for X to do Y is proof enough that X is doing Y.
For a "mainstream" person, that is not enough. They require real, solid proof to consider that X is doing Y.
Note that this is about deciding their own behavior, and not about handing capital punishment for X.
I ll let you decide who is smarter...
(Also interdimensional shapeshifting reptilians.)
In my experience racists tend to just latch on to different authorities to blindly follow and obedience and conformity are even more strongly enforced. I've had long discussions with racists over the "rebel" identity they see in the confederate flag who shortly after demonstrated incredible amounts of boot-licking when it came to police. Most of the racists I've meet were very dedicated to hierarchies, a select set of social norms, old-fashioned gender roles, etc. and conformance was absolutely seen as mandatory.
That's a bad comparison. You have to compare crafting a table manually to doing it via CNC.
"Everyone knows" is the greatest conspiracy of all. Its quite possible to be a 'nut' simply by referring to what "everyone knows" ... this is a thought-stopping meme designed to end challenge to authority, since "everyone" is the ultimate authority.
The former is trivially manipulated, can be made to believe anything by appealing to their inherent obvious biases, and will double down on their beliefs even when presented with irrefutable proof to the contrary. The latter can detect false dichotomies, understands answers are often nuanced instead of black and white, and is capable of changing their mind when new evidence comes to light.
And indeed apparently the line was in fact "say what you want about the tenets of national socialism", not "say what you will about the tenets of national socialism" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_29yvYpf4w).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Experiment_(expediti...
In particular the “Reactions” section.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Experiment_(expediti...
You’ll find this bit:
> Alabama pastor Dean Odle suggested that Satan created a fireball to act as a false Sun.
That is cuckoo cuckoo bananas to a point only “conspiracy nut” applies.
And I think the same will apply here, with GenAI.