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They mentioned Sarah Silverman's TED talk deflating the pomposity of TED, but it is unbelievable that they didn't mention the TEDx talk "2070 Paradigm Shift". A guy made up a completely false story about himself to get on a TEDx roster, then for 20 minutes made up complete nonsense like going to Rwanda with Elon Musk to give African villages ipads so they could learn javascript.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yFhR1fKWG0




TEDx conferences are run by people peripherally related to TED, if at all, and they have a long and unfortunate history of giving a platform to frauds, hoaxes, and charlatans. I think it's gotten a bit better after some particularly bad talks came to light in late 2012, but quality control is still frequently lacking.

A starting point for further reading: http://tedx.tumblr.com/post/37405280671/a-letter-to-the-tedx...


TEDx might be largely garbage, but it has this talk which actually changed my life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0

Strangely, this guy does not even promote his book. His book completely changed my mental approach to language learning. I highly recommend it to anyone who is learning a language.


That video is amazing. Thank you.


I cried.




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