About That Idris Elba Gold Documentary
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Published 2024-01-10
This was a lot of fun to work on because I got to spend a lot of time learning THE TRUTH ABOUT GOLD and by that I mean actually interesting facts about how humans use gold. The mythology of gold actually makes a lot of sense through the lens of its physical properties, the fact that ancient humans could make things out of it and those things would outlive generations. It's just rare enough that societal elites can monopolize it, but common enough you can gather enough to actually make stuff with it. So these things, namely jewellery for the leaders, are so resistant to the elements that you can see how the gold itself became representative of the power of the kings, of their claimed immortality.
Written and performed by Dan Olson
Crowdfunding: www.patreon.com/foldablehuman
Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman
00:00:00 - Gold Open
00:00:53 - Ads for gold
00:03:05 - Gold is interesting
00:07:17 - Not everything is rosy for gold
00:11:45 - Enter the World Gold Council
00:14:56 - A journey with Idris Elba
00:20:02 - It's boring
00:22:22 - Colonialism
00:24:50 - The environment
00:33:52 - The rest of the doc
00:36:03 - Reception
00:37:47 - The Golden Thread
00:39:53 - Selling shovels in a gold rush
All Comments (21)
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Elba’s performance was praised as “Contractually Obligated”
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"These people didn't have any money, but they could sell their family heirlooms for money to rebuild their lives" is not the selling point they seem to think it is...
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"We did it once before, CHARLES, we can do it again" I can't believe Dan threatened King Charles so harshly it actually gave him cancer.
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Came for the film criticism, stayed for the thinly veiled threats against the British monarchy.
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"this is not a minor problem, this is one of the fundamental by-products of the mining process" sounds very much like a miner problem
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“hey, these guys have almost cracked the toxic pit problem” “wait what toxic pit problem” just fantastic
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I am a Ghanaian, and pollution from gold mining is a horrible plague on the country
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This is a very vintage slice of Folding Ideas. Less "Documentary on social phenomena" and more "Dan watched a thing that annoyed him". I'm here for it.
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Idris Elba has a vested interest in gold. Not because he wants it, but if everyone else is busy with that he can focus on hunting Chaos Emeralds.
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" For every one job created directly, 6 jobs are indirectly created" In Cajamarca Peru, a Canadian company mined for years. They brought in workers from the capital, Lima, because the locals were allegedly not skilled enough. When the company left, they took the gold, the profits, and the wages went back to their home cities while leaving behind contaminated drinking water which have caused skyrocketing cancer rates for over a decade.
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How long until YouTube offers advertisers a specific upgrade package titled 'Don't show this video to Dan Olsen'
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"But with gold comes power, and those miners knew that." That sentence is so charged you could run Las Vegas off it for millennia.
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"St. Edward's crown could easily be reduced back to a 2.23-kilo ingot of gold for a second time in history, after English Parliament melted the original medieval crown in 1649. We did it once before, Charles. We can do it again ."
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I feel an urge to invent some sort of weird grift so I can end up on a Dan Olsen documentary
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Avoiding talking about the environmental issue so hard that you result in skipping over the actual good the company ends up doing is impressive in itself.
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I'm going to apply the "the gold council exists so there'll never be a REAL gold council" logic to every organisation from now on.
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Dan's willingness to make video essays about ads that annoy him is and remains fascinating.
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Imagine buying gold instead of just stealing it from the dragons horde like a real man
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I will forever despise that "mining companies always clean up after themselves" claim. There have been entire civil wars started by mining companies simply not wanting to pay to clean up a decommissioned mine. In Australia, where I live, Rio Tinto left a uranium mine completely abandoned and unprocessed literally because one of their hedge funds didn't want to pay to clean it up.
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I know it is dystopian, but for once i find it relieving the big bad guy is just plainly stating their plan.
