Can you play to the end?
If you do, do you get the Apple II-esque Kier animation narrated by Ben Stiller?
replies(4):
If you do, do you get the Apple II-esque Kier animation narrated by Ben Stiller?
In refining C3551E:7EAEE (Moonbeam) in 00h 00m 00s 838ms I have brought glory to the company. Praise Kier. 9⃣0⃣4⃣3⃣3⃣ 1⃣5⃣6⃣2⃣1⃣ 3⃣0⃣0⃣2⃣6⃣ 3⃣0⃣1⃣7⃣2⃣ 2⃣5⃣3⃣1⃣0⃣ #mdrlumon #severance lumon-industries.com
Looks like the JS is not obfuscated. Even dev comments are still there, which is v cool. Good idea to download it all before they wise up!
wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites --no-parent -e robots=off -P ./website "https://lumon-industries.com/"
wget -P ./website/images "https://lumon-industries.com/images/lumon.png"
wget -P ./website/images "https://lumon-industries.com/images/nope.png"
wget -P ./website/images "https://lumon-industries.com/images/100.png"
wget -P ./website/images "https://lumon-industries.com/images/clipboard.png"
wget -P ./website/images "https://lumon-industries.com/images/mde.gif"
wget -P ./website/shaders "https://lumon-industries.com/shaders/crt.vert.glsl"
wget -P ./website/shaders "https://lumon-industries.com/shaders/crt.frag.glsl"
wget -P ./website "https://lumon-industries.com/favicon.ico"
<script>
navigator.serviceWorker.register?.('/service-worker.js').catch(() => {})
</script>
Finally, download p5 and replace the cloudflare CDN pointing to your own p5.js installation.
Run it all with
python3 -m http.serverWhen this happens and people switch to Chrome, there's less money/resources for Firefox to continue on and we just keep pushing farther toward a world where developers only need to focus on Chrome. It's a cycle that ends with Google controlling all access to the internet.
The work is mysterious, and important.
Season 2 is going now. It’s one of my top 3 shows of the last decade, highly recommend it.
In refining 9375BA:A9E3A0 (Ocula) in 00h 04m 58s 307ms I have brought glory to the company. Praise Kier. 3⃣4⃣9⃣6⃣5⃣ 7⃣9⃣1⃣4⃣9⃣ 9⃣4⃣0⃣0⃣7⃣ 0⃣4⃣0⃣0⃣6⃣ 2⃣5⃣8⃣7⃣5⃣ #mdrlumon #severance lumon-industries.com
Works great in Firefox for me.
Works on Chrome first time.
I checked the console for errors. There were two warning about deprecated API usage and nothing else.
P.S. The numbers are scary.
She never had to “massage the numbers” to make them less scary to someone in management.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220315000000*/https://lumon-in...
You don’t know why the work is important, but it must be done so we can at least discover whether it was important. You may not get that information, but you can take comfort in assuming someone does have it.
You’re mostly disconnected from your previous life.
There is a guy in the next office feeding baby goats, and your reaction is: “Yes, it makes sense that we’re also exploring feeding baby goats.”
People come in as blank slates and you’re grateful to have their companionship in the shared madness.
Learn more at viridiandynamics.com/apply
True Detective S1 (2014) is perfect television, but is too old for the last-decade list.
The only other definitive Top 3 is Dark (Netflix)
Other candidates:
- Frieren
- Better Call Saul
- Arcane
- Midnight Mass
- Counterpart (underrated)
- Andor
The darkness sneaks up on you. The people who start out seeming like James Bond characters end up carrying the full intolerable weight of their lies and destructive actions. People who looked like side characters are followed up with entire life stories in the shadows.
My other two are:
- Shogun (The depiction of 1600s Japan is so real)
- Resident Alien (Funny and heartwarming to see an Alien getting accustomed to life on Earth dealing with complex human relationships with their flaws)
PS: I am sad to exclude Parks and Recreation which ran from 2009-2015 so probably considered outside of last decade.
Incorporated (Damon & Affleck), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series)
Peripheral (Nolan), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peripheral_(TV_series)
Zoo (James Patterson), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_(American_TV_series)
this felt germane
Criminally underrated. If you enjoy older Guy Ritchie films or In Bruges, do yourself a favor and watch it.
Also thematically similar, re: alienation and disassociation!
Praise Kier.
2⃣2⃣4⃣6⃣8⃣
5⃣3⃣2⃣0⃣3⃣
2⃣9⃣2⃣4⃣8⃣
1⃣1⃣8⃣0⃣9⃣
7⃣6⃣7⃣0⃣9⃣
#mdrlumon #severance
lumon-industries.com
My bet is on lumen “renting” part of their subconscious to train a computer, while their conscious minds see a sort of projection of the training, and the act of selecting the numbers has a mirror effect on the part of the brain they’re renting, affecting the model training. But that may be a little too “current events” focused, and the writers may have something totally different in mind.
I posted a (very slight spoiler) extract in this book review thread on MetaFilter FanFare: https://fanfare.metafilter.com/25459/The-You-You-Are-by-by-D...
I do hope they have a narrative arc planned with a satisfyingly metaphorical conclusion and will not, like certain other shows in a similar genre, meander from one surrealist allegory to another because additional seasons were ordered. The only truly exemplary production I can name in this vein being the sole season of The Prisoner (McGoohan, 1967-68).
Be seeing you
Looks like it's not an official thing, it's a fan project: https://twitter.com/shiffman/status/1512075150857965574 - here's the YouTube video (2h52m from a livestream) where Daniel Shiffman introduces it, at about 34m in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vmcm25cSTU - then talks through how it works.
[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HML8PMPeFkg [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_encabulator
Take O&D for instance, their full time job appears to be to just create art and handbooks used on the severed floor. Perhaps all the departments are like that. MDR could be doing some sort of ongoing maintenance for the severed system itself, like emotion or memory control of the employees on the floor.
I believe the "point" of the severed floor is not the actual work that's being done, but the act of keeping them occupied while they are experimented on. Besides Mark S and Cold Harbor, I believe there are hints of other experiments being run. The dreams Irving B has during work seem unique to him, and it's uniquely affecting his outie as well. I also believe recent events in Season 2 with Dylan G could be the start of another experiment.
This is Hacker news - building this sort of thing is fun!
In refining D4AA9:3ED787 (Narva) in 00h 06m 05s 719ms I have brought glory to the company. Praise Kier. 9⃣5⃣3⃣7⃣4⃣ 9⃣3⃣6⃣7⃣2⃣ 5⃣8⃣6⃣2⃣9⃣ 8⃣1⃣9⃣2⃣9⃣ 3⃣9⃣4⃣6⃣0⃣ #mdrlumon #severance lumon-industries.com
It was really good at building up a mystery over the course of the first season, but I've been a little disappointed in the second so far.
The pacing's become glacial; the first couple of episodes worked mostly to undercut the dramatic significance of the events of last season's finale.
And I feel like the way that the satire is slowly being replaced by self-serious "lore" is hurting the show; it was very funny and disturbing to see the way the innies are "raised" in a cult and view the CEO as a kind of Messiah (and observe the parallels to real-world corporate culture); Lumen really being an evil cult - as opposed to just an evil company - in "reality", feels less satirical and more ham-fisted.
The ending of the most recent episode suggests promising things to come at least.
I also believe the people in R&D help with refinement by inducing objects into the consciousness and testing the output via 3D printing.
Perhaps MDR works on the emotional side, while R&D works on the imagination or construction of thoughts.
"The work" is then not about training a computer model but seeing if they can induce a reaction into a person. That is, they're trying to refine their mind control program.
The characters talk about feeling things when they group numbers for binning. So the task is about refining their projection system, to induce a particular emotion or reaction, in a controlled way, over and over to dial in the technology.
From season 1, there's lore of MDR going crazy and killing a neighboring group. This could be when their experimentation malfunctioned or was too sloppy in some way and induced a killing frenzy.
I have no idea what "cold harbor" is though, or why Mark S. is so special among the other innies.
1. How much of it is nakedly anti-capitalist and many people don't seem to recognize that. Severance is incredibly anti-capitalist and damning of the entire corporate world. It paints the corporate world as soulless and disconnected from reality. The bizarre perks like the wellness sessions, getting to know you, the music dance experience and the waffle party are a searing indictmment on any corporate team-building experience; and
2. How much media is anti-imperialist and we have no problem identifying that the resistance to that are the "good guys" and the authoritarian state are quite clearly the "bad guys" yet, again, people can't seem to see that in real life. The classic example of Star Wars, which George Lucas has explicitly stated that the Rebellion was based on Vietnamese resistance to American imperialist ambitions [1].
Milchick in "Defiant Jazz" lives rent-free in my head. The work is mysterious and important.
[1]: https://www.cbr.com/george-lucas-vietnam-war-star-wars-inspi...
Maybe I watch the wrong stuff, but I’m glad I gave this a chance. It’s so fun.
For anyone who hasn't seen it: you're in for a wild ride. Don't look up spoilers.
Also anything with Esteemed Character Actress Margo Martindale, who was Claudia the KGB handler who liked playing PacMan in The Americans, Mags Bennett the ruthless head of the marijuana and moonshine smuggling clan in Justified, a fictionalized (or was it???) version of herself "Esteemed Character Actress Margo Martindale" in Bojack Horseman, records supervisor Camilla Figg in Dexter, and Ranger Liz in Cocaine Bear ("I'm sorry. Where'd the bear go?"), and a Canadian maple syrup smuggler in The Sticky. Such a wide range and prodigious rap sheet!
The Complete Margo Martindale Timeline | BoJack Horseman
I'm of a firm opinion that there are two very different kinds of Lost viewers -- ones who care about the characters first and plot second vs ones who only care about the plot.
Personally, I took it as 'We're getting to see these things through these characters' eyes and how they react.' And we probably wouldn't have given a shit about the plot, if we hadn't actually cared about the characters first.
Lost did characterization very well. (Helped by an insanely talented cast!)
https://m.soundcloud.com/leslie-claret/chapter-one
Nine episodes were made as part of the show: https://www.lgclaret.com/
I appreciated that it was a tribute to the characters we'd grown to love, and also kind of a middle finger to the plot bits that didn't line up perfectly.
I'd rather watch a show with plot gaps and great characters than a perfectly plotted show with middling characters.
I hate "It works for me" as the end of troubleshooting.
But whether you can replicate the issue on other systems is valid diagnostic information.
It could legitimately still be a firefox bug, one that relates to your system in particular. But I have no way to tell from over here.
Kinda felt like that game from Star Trek TNG that took over the crew.
By contrast, in a corporation you're handed a small piece of the puzzle and you're not sure how it's important or if it's really necessary and you're reliant on others in far flung parts of the company to relay how things are going.
I kind of think that people who haven't worked in a large corporation probably don't get Severance on a visceral level like those of us who have do.
Edit: I forgot "Andor". Easily the best Star Wars thing since the original 3. I like how it shows the hubris and infighting of The Empire and how that leaves openings for the resistance. Feels like a very real look into the workings of an authoritarian regime.
I hated the first few episodes but I think it might now be the finest show I've ever seen (and I've seen all those mentioned here).
I noticed that
https://lumon.industries/intranet/wellness/
Is a sub of just
https://lumon.industries/intranet/
There's some fun stuff to be found there too...
This is how I find many shows made in the last ~20 years, but changing out "from one surrealist allegory to another" for various other things. Heroes, Jericho, Battlestar Galactica, House of Cards, hell even Downton Abbey... I would add the Walking Dead and Game of Thrones but I couldn't get through a season of either. I never saw Lost but I think it's the same kind of thing. I'm going to catch flak for it but I thought the same about Stranger Things.
All of them had a good pilot and/or first season, but then the rest of the seasons.... definitely came afterwards.
And speaking of old goodness, The Wire, possibly the best TV series ever. And with the 1080p re-release, I’m going to claim it’s younger than 10 years old.
Edit: oops. 1080p happened in 2014. https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/28/7457291/the-wire-hd-scre...
https://torontosun.com/entertainment/television/severance-cr...
We'll see how that goes.
I lost interest when they reached back.
Although I definitely like "unexplainable" stories like Twin Peaks.
If we are talking old TV, definitely check out The Wire. It's up there in the classics, but people nowadays don't talk about it much.
I'm almost certain it's going to turn into a love affair with deep questions - is she cheating? Well, on paper, no, but it's obviously more nuanced than that.
The gold standard, IMO is something like the TNG episodes "The Best of Both Worlds" pt 1 and 2 -- an end-of-season cliffhanger that rewards you returning to the show by telling you what happens next!
I think the lacuna here is meant to add to the tension and mystery, but I agree that the new season has started off frustratingly slow. You gotta wrap up stuff to move forward with a plot, otherwise it's all just treading water for the sake of atmosphere.
The plot always thickens, back then there was the promise/hope that “everything will be explained”, but then the show ended with sooo many loose ends and inconsistencies. Utter disappointment, I’d like my time back please.
Honestly, I'm really enjoying that uncertainty and I couldn't image how entertaining it'd be. It certainly has a special place in this current "Zeitgeist" where video games are played by various generations and people calling each other "NPC"s as insult. There's this massive scale of contemporary enterprises, they all would like to retain that image of being young and full of empathy, while also standing above the law. Have you ever talked to some superior at a company and left with this empty feeling that made you recognize all of this unwillingness to change? Severence just hits that spot and frames it nicely into humor, yet still doesn't laugh about it. I question a bit the addition of the latest department in episode 3 and just hope they can stick the landing with such decisions.
> The only truly exemplary production I can name in this vein being the sole season of The Prisoner (McGoohan, 1967-68).
I definitely see Twin Peaks in the same realm.
As a fellow The Shield-lover, I highly recommend you try to finish The Americans.
Btw, funny enough, on rewatches, I actually focus more on the one big Stan question that isn't answered (and, in fact, is actually asked to him for the first time). I'm happy it was never resolved, though I keep wondering if there's some clue that they are hiding in there that will resolve it for real one of these days :)
Interesting. I thought the premise had potential, but found the writing unbearable. There were major plot holes in the universe they created withing the first 10 minutes. It just didn't make sense. The dialogues and acting was bad on top of that. Didn't even finish the first episode. That being said, the series has OK ratings and was renewed several times, so it might be me not giving it a fair chance.
... although by forking their identity and imprisoning one of them, it seems likely to do more harm than good. Freedom from Lumon for the innies would be the death of that identity, unless they could find a way to share the physical host.
Now... What could be a real use case for something like this, I was thinking about it as I watched the series.
It's a bit like the Apple "perform AI operations on encrypted data without the server knowing the contents" I guess? Was it homomorphic encryption?
Got this at the end. Might be part of an AR game.
I will never forgive Lost (which I originally watched in real time) and almost always wait for shows to conclude now before giving them my time.
Nonetheless, I'm enamored by Severance. The attention to detail by the show runners is amazing[1]. It's absolutely gorgeous to look at[2]. It's downright funny at times. I've re-watched the entire first season and there's so many details I missed the first time through. I will likely be satisfied even if it doesn't answer all its questions, but I have a feeling it will.
[1] BTW, the first eight chapters of The You You Are were released on Apple Books yesterday in both eBook and Audiobook form (read by the author).
[2] I watch in a home theater on a 120" 2.39:1 screen. I love that recent shows are being released in scope (see also Silo).
Mrs. Davis from Lost creator Damon Lindelhof was a great recent example of that lesson having been learned.
(Shame about Westworld though)
That last part is the miracle. So many shows start out strong, and are just dogshit for the finale. Does anyone really believe that Severance will manage this trick? Would love to be surprised and mistaken, but they're just throwing crap at the wall to see what will stick, and that only lasts so long.
Both my two favorite shows of the last few years are on it - Severance and Silo
But the rest of Lumen just seems like some bizarro "there's a spaceship hiding in the tail of the comet" cult.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Americans_episodes...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Prison_Break_episodes#...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lost_episodes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Game_of_Thrones_episod...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_Us_(TV_series)#Rat...
^ compare the viewership. The Americans was getting fewer than a million viewers in its final seasons, Lost regularly got over ten million. You can't easily chalk it up to just the fact that Lost was on network; The Last of Us was getting more than 10x the viewership of The Americans and it was on HBO. While The Americans is very critically acclaimed, it is not as widely watched as it really should be.
This series deserved to be 2X longer to cover those imho.
The whole concept of the show is artificial amnesia, so what if the concept is induced amnesia to solve for it?
Oh, probably more prone to messianic cults of personality than large corps. But as you say there are other shows that tackle that angle. I don't think it's a secret that many tech startup founders have sociopathic tendencies and delusions of grandeur. I've certainly seen that close up even in tiny early-stage startups that never ended up going anywhere.
There was a surge in viewership as they tried to tie up the story prompting the renewal of the show. But way too late. That they were able to pull off season 5 with the scraps and missing major cast members is kind of impressive. Perhaps indicative of what it would have been like had it been produced piecemeal
"This website is not affiliated with Apple, Endeavor Content, Red Hour Films, or anything else remotely official. It’s made by a dude in Kentucky."
You still enjoyed thinking of all the plot points after the second to last episode, no?
And after the end of the first season?
Those moments existed independent of how it ended.
Sure, people having an issue with the ending and plot threads is maybe a reason not to start watching it now (I'd say it's still worth it...), but behaving as though somehow the ending invalidated all the realtime enjoyment is weird.
So much so that Star Trek had to pivot TNG and DS9 from problem of the week formulaic writing to something similar.
Agreed. The 'banality of evil' horror of the first season was the show's strongest point.
Sadly, I expect it will eventually suffer from the same thing that torpedoed Lost:
1. Fans are originally attracted by the mystery and unexplained.
2. Those same fans then clamour for explanations.
3. Then when the show explains things, it loses its mystery and/or people complain the explanations aren't good enough.
To me, the only winning plot move is not to play: drip just enough teasy but mysterious stuff that nothing is ever explained, but everyone stays on the edge of their seats.
Then it can be incredibly successful, and people can bitch about the finale 30 years from now.
The SR episode with the moment in the cave wall is the most profound and beautiful animated thing I've seen in awhile.
Amazing how tame everything has gotten by comparison.
Eddie Izzard putting in a serious character acting role as an Irish Traveler ner-do-well who essentially steals a Florida suburban identity. With Minnie Driver as his just out of prison addict wife.
It was really good, even moreso for its time.
(I'm reflecting back now on 15 year old memories. I'm actually surprised to learn it aired from 2004-2010. Gosh, I remember this as being a show from the 90s.)
It's also not like there were a lot of options for other shows to watch at the time. I'd never stay with a show like Lost today. I punted on Yellowjackets as soon as it started bringing fantasy into the story.
You have to know that how a series wraps up is important to its viewers. A great or terrible finale can make or break how a show is later perceived. The Lost finale was the most disappointing of any show I've seen.
Great finales I recall are The Americans and Justified.
A terrible last book chapter or poor movie ending can ruin all that has come before for me. When deciding whether to read a book, I'll read the last chapter first. Spoilers don't ruin good stories for me. But bad conclusions do. And Lost's conclusion was just terrible. I'd rather it have been canceled.
It's not like I need literal answers for everything. I love Mulholland Drive. But I felt like Lost spent six seasons just jerking me around.
$0.02.
Especially when you consider that the real snob format for many is IMAX which is taller anyway.
The enjoyment is capped at the initial run; a better-plotted show rewards you much more over time.
To me, if I enjoy every episode but dislike an ending... I still enjoyed 99% of the series.
Because, as I was watching each of those episodes, I was having fun.
It seems super unhealthy to retroactively go back in time and say 'That expression of glee on my face at the time wasn't actually happiness, because I just didn't know the ending was going to suck.'
I mean, two of the biggest: smoke monster and hatch.
Both get definitive answers.
That's reading a lot into my words. There were no expressions of glee on my face as I watched Lost. I was hanging in there for answers because the mysteries were the only part of the show I found interesting. Conversely, I'm really enjoying Severance as it comes. I'll likely be happy however its finale turns out to be. I really enjoyed the bizarro world of Scavengers Reign and am sad it was canceled after one season. Lost didn't float my boat, and then ended terribly on top of that. Again, $0.02, and I won't make any judgements about your mental health. :-)
p.s. I'm glad you enjoyed Lost and hope I haven't yucked your yum.
They could at least shoot it open matte (maybe not as easy in 2.39 to do) so that those of us who want to mask to 2.39:1 can enjoy it that way w/o losing anything important while most watchers wouldn't notice the difference.
Undergoing the severance procedure and having your "innie" work at Lumon is exactly akin to having your own personal slave. The innie does all the work, the outie collects the paycheck. The outie controls whether the innie lives or dies, since the innie literally does not exist outside of work.
I guess another part of the tradeoff is that you're giving up a significant part of your life time-wise. The number of waking hours experienced by the outie would be substantially reduced (presumably around 40 fewer hours per week). Overtime would really suck, especially if unpaid. From the perspective of the outie, working overtime would be exactly equivalent to the company taking away additional hours of their life.
To tie back to your point. People give so much power to words, and numbers are a bit more abstract but the same can be said of those as well. I care very little that someone else has 250bln USD, however I care very much if they are using that (or have the power) to inordinately effect/shape society.
The same crew made another show and I couldn’t get past 2 episodes.
Patriot was really a celestial event in the world of TV
Oh man, don't remind me.
So glad I stuck it out though, I still think about it.
It becomes much clearer in episodes 2 and especially 3. They strongly and directly start picking up the pieces of the season 1 ending and carrying it through. Without spoiling anything, episode 3 (of season 2) had some massive movements I wasnt expecting to see until later in the season (at soonest).
It is one thing to know “my husband goes to work, but there he simply doesn’t remember anything outside of work, and vice versa at home”, and another to see it for yourself and realizing “holy shit, this is actually just another entirely unrelated brand new person occupying the body of the husband i live and raise children with for half a day.”
Not even mentioning all the potential implications that might have crossed her mind after facing it in reality. That person is nothing like my husband in any way, where did that new person come from, were they just born out of nothing? Could they potentially unknowingly get switched with my husband outside of the workplace and what would that mean? What happens to that person if my husband quits the job?
I hope Sam Esmail is working on something else for us.
Also, one of the rabbit holes for a bunch of the theories is the Lexington Letter, which you can find in Apple Books or wikis/PDFs.
We know that there's a lot of unreliable information because Lumon is actively trying to deceive everyone but my take on that was that there was a significant event that actually did happen, some group going crazy, that Lumon needed to rationalize with some narrative in order to address it.
Just to list some events after re-watching some of season 1:
* s1e3 Dylan talks about O&D staging a coup but Mark assures everyone that there was no killing
* s1e5 Irving intercepts a print job that was sent to their print station "by mistake". The picture shows people with green badges (O&D) attacking people with blue badges (MDR). Immediately revealed to be a subterfuge attempt ("you ran a 266 on Irving B." Cobel to Miltchek)
* s1e5 Dylan finds a painting in O&D depicting the same picture that Irving saw on the printer but with the attackers as blue badges and the victims as green badges ("The Macro Data Refinement Calamity")
So this very well may be subterfuge by Lumon to keep the groups separate.
I read it differently initially, that the printed copy was altered from the original painting and that the original painting was the "true" version, but I think your take is probably more consistent. If Lumon can erase memory then there's no need to keep institutional knowledge about past events that no one remembers.
Some other tidbits of information:
* s1e2 and s1e5 Irving hallucinates black goo while in front of his terminal. I believe as soon as he stands up or backs away from his terminal, the effect goes away.
* s1e3 Natalie is shown on tv talking about a "workie" getting pregnant while severed
* s1e5 Devon goes to a house to give birth and meets someone who's severed. I think the house or property is owned by Lumon (but I'm not sure?)
So, I suspect Mark S.'s sister, Devon, might be the severed employee who got pregnant while severed, though I'm not sure how this fits into the larger narrative if true.
Also, I might be reading too much into it but there's clues sprinkled around about immortality and "Kier speaking through people" that might be support the theory of them trying to resurrect Kier. There's a scene where Cobel gets Petey's chip with a line that says "that's Petey".
So far the series has delivered and I trust the writers, so I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.
I think that's what MDR feels like.