What Enrapturing Magic Lies In That Lustre....
January 11, 2024 1:24 PM Subscribe
Sometime last year, the World Gold Council tapped Idris Elba to host a corporate documentary about the gold industry; it was released in October. Yesterday, Dan Olson of Folding Ideas released his own documentary about that documentary and the gold industry overall.
Some good news first, since Dan Olson's previous work has a reputation for being really long - this video is on the shorter side, clocking in at only 45 minutes. But it's just as exhaustive as his earlier works about the "metaverse", or the Gamestop stock incident, or NFTs. Here, Dan argues that the interesting thing about the Idris Elba doc isn't the documentary itself - in fact, he says it's boring. What's more interesting is the team behind it, the World Gold Council - who they are, what they represent, and what they say (and don't say) about gold itself, the gold industry and gold mining practices.
Some good news first, since Dan Olson's previous work has a reputation for being really long - this video is on the shorter side, clocking in at only 45 minutes. But it's just as exhaustive as his earlier works about the "metaverse", or the Gamestop stock incident, or NFTs. Here, Dan argues that the interesting thing about the Idris Elba doc isn't the documentary itself - in fact, he says it's boring. What's more interesting is the team behind it, the World Gold Council - who they are, what they represent, and what they say (and don't say) about gold itself, the gold industry and gold mining practices.
The absolutely deadpan delivery of “…the forbidden gatorade will spill into the general water supply, which is considered generally undesirable,” was delicious.
posted by ob1quixote at 2:37 PM on January 11 [8 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 2:37 PM on January 11 [8 favorites]
Just watched this earlier today.
I used to work in a jewelry production house shoving diamonds into gold full-time, and later was working with various finishing techniques and finally casting. So I sort of really really love playing with gold even if I can't afford to do it on my own dime.
I really loved how Olson's video really got into how cool gold is. You can take an ounce of it and hamme it out into a sheet of foil large enough to cover a football field, but it would be so thin that if it made contact with any blade of grass it would bond with it a-la gold guilding, and so would disappear immediately if you actually put it on the field. He got into properties of gold that are cool like that.
The entire video dissecting the video was really really fascinating. I hadn't encountered the Elba thing in the wild, but I've seen things similar to it before. And honestly, my involvement with gold was in the weird production art jewelry market, which is entirely divorced from investment gold.
The way jewelry gold and investment gold are separate things is in and of itself worth a longform video, I think.
Anyway, I liked watching this. I'm glad to see it posted here.
posted by hippybear at 4:09 PM on January 11 [5 favorites]
I used to work in a jewelry production house shoving diamonds into gold full-time, and later was working with various finishing techniques and finally casting. So I sort of really really love playing with gold even if I can't afford to do it on my own dime.
I really loved how Olson's video really got into how cool gold is. You can take an ounce of it and hamme it out into a sheet of foil large enough to cover a football field, but it would be so thin that if it made contact with any blade of grass it would bond with it a-la gold guilding, and so would disappear immediately if you actually put it on the field. He got into properties of gold that are cool like that.
The entire video dissecting the video was really really fascinating. I hadn't encountered the Elba thing in the wild, but I've seen things similar to it before. And honestly, my involvement with gold was in the weird production art jewelry market, which is entirely divorced from investment gold.
The way jewelry gold and investment gold are separate things is in and of itself worth a longform video, I think.
Anyway, I liked watching this. I'm glad to see it posted here.
posted by hippybear at 4:09 PM on January 11 [5 favorites]
once again: I want Dan Olson to explain All The Things.
posted by hearthpig at 4:43 AM on January 12 [1 favorite]
posted by hearthpig at 4:43 AM on January 12 [1 favorite]
Honestly I just want audio of Dan Olson summarizing Wikipedia pages with his mellifluous voice, (with soothing snark) that I can fall asleep to.
posted by Faintdreams at 6:00 AM on January 12
posted by Faintdreams at 6:00 AM on January 12
yeah the "I'm basically reading wikipedia to you right now" montage was :chef kiss:
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 9:40 AM on January 12
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 9:40 AM on January 12
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posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 2:07 PM on January 11 [6 favorites]