H.I. No. 135: Place Your Bets

"H.I. #135: Place Your Bets" is the 135th episode of Hello Internet, released on January 23, 2020.
== Website synopsis ==
Brady and Grey discuss: weak sauce water, the uncertainty of the hotstopper pilgrimage, reliving Dinosaurs Attack! through the eyes of the young, should people be able to write, sportsball corner, placing bets, Réunion, and the night sky.
== Release ==
"Place Your Bets" was released to podcast clients on January 23, 2020. The corresponding video was published on the Hello Internet YouTube channel on the same day. Its visual consists of slot machine reels being repeatedly spun.
You're like that guy that, you know, from the company that owns the Titanic, getting on the raft when you shouldn't. You're like, stuff this lady's first sort of, you know, women and children first, convention. I'm looking after number one. I only got one life to live, you know? Yeah. Every death is the death of a whole universe. This universe isn't going anywhere. I have some follow up for you Brady. There are. And I don't know any nice way to say it. So I'm just gonna come out and say it. Yeah. Your home brood sparkling water. Yep, the arc. It's weak sauce. Really? Interesting. My wife and I, we were recently over there at your house and we got to try the arc in person. And it looks great. You're totally right aesthetically. It's right in the crosshairs for both my tastes and my wife's tastes on like, what would be cool to have in the kitchen? Yep. And you were a real man of the evening showing off the arc, pulling the lever, showing off the fancy glass bottle, all of this. But on the way home, my wife and I both agreed. We were like, that's sparkling water. Let's be honest with each other, right? That was weak. That was barely sparkly, wasn't it? So you were just basing it on that experience. I'm assuming you bought one, tried it, and like, you tried all the different strengths and you lived it, but you're just basing it on like, farting around at a party for it. Yeah, I'm basing it on all the sparkling water I drank at your house and on the factory. So listeners, the way this thing works is you pump it right by pulling this handle, which is fun, although I imagine not so fun when you're doing it dozens of times a day. But you pull this handle and Brady, you were very concerned about doing more than four pulls of the handle. I just don't know what happens if you like to keep going. I've pushed the limit more since that night, but you're... Okay, so you, how many pulls of the handle are you doing now? I know, happily would you six or seven. Oh, okay, I can see already we're progressing up the scale of how much sparkle you need. No, no, it's not that. I thought you were gonna say, when you said I've got bad news here, and I was about that. I thought, okay, he bought it and he didn't like it, and I just just cop it. If you're basing it just on that visit, to be fair, I haven't really got that much time for what you've got to say about it, because I'll listen because I'm polite, but I'm not gonna put much stock in it, but I will say I thought the novelty would wear off, and it wouldn't do me much good for my water consumption, my water consumption, thanks to this device, is through the roof. I like it more every day. I'm always refilling my bottles, go through a couple of leaders a day now. It's not as hardcore sparkling as what you would buy from the shops, but I like that. I like it toned down, you know, 20%. Also, I love the bottles. I find them way more satisfying to hold and drink than the bottles you buy, like, you know, from the shops as well. I've got a real sturdiness to them. I've got a good drinking girth, which you know I like. I love the metal lids and the metal base. I'm like, last time I spoke on the podcast about it, I would have given this device an eight out of 10. I've gone up to a nine and a half. Oh, wow, okay. Totally recommend, and you can give me all your weak source stories till the cows come home. If you haven't tried it, I don't know exactly where you're coming from, but also, maybe it's just not for you. I'm loving it. Is the sparkle relationship to pull a linear one? Would you say with your seven pulls, you're getting basically twice as many sparkles as you were at four? I don't know. That's not that important to me, because if sparkling water's too sparkling, I find it like a bit off-putting, like I find it hard to drink a lot. You know, I find it hard to sit there and have a big glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, if it's like super sparkling. Right. I'm like at toned down a little bit, but I've sparkled it up a bit more since probably when you were here. Yeah, but see, this is also where I wonder, like, again, the drug addiction factor here, that like even you have like doubled your daily take of sparkles since the time that I last saw you. And if it's under your control, like how many pulls of the lever are you going to be doing a year from now? I don't know. I still will stick with four or five. I've just occasionally done six or seven. Right, okay. But also, you don't store these for as long. I don't know. I say don't knock it until you've tried it properly, but it's an expensive thing to try properly. Hmm. Okay. Maybe you've walked me back a little bit into having to consider it again. Look, I know you're a fussy guy and both of you in your house have exacting standards. Maybe it's not for you, but you cannot base any judgment on us faffin' around after a few cocktails at a party. Right. So I can't base it on the breed you in person demo. That's a terrible way to base a product. Right. I was more just trying to make you fall and love with a look of it that I... Okay. I'm not saying that, but I'll have to see about the sparkles then. But your problem was you feel like it didn't put enough bubbles. Like it wasn't enough bubble power, right? Yeah, it was, like the dosage wasn't high enough. I wasn't getting anything out of those sparkles. Do you as a fine though, your sparkling water can be too sparkling? No. I haven't met a sparkling water that's too sparkling yet. I sometimes will find that. I sometimes find it's like, I can't down it quick enough if it's too sparkling. Well, so this again though, I'm not trying to optimize for velocity of intake though. So maybe this is where our drinking preferences are different. You know that feeling sometimes where you're like really thirsting, you want something really cold just to smack the back of your throat and you want to like have a good half later in a one big go. Not really. If it's too bubbly, you get, you get all burpy and it gets all like bubbly. And you've got to have, I want just enough sparkle that it feels lovely going, going in, but not so much that it like... But it inhibits the velocity. And I understand. I think for me, I've never had that feeling of, I need to maximize the intake of liquid. And so I agree that if I was trying to drink my maximum sparkles quickly, you'd quickly run into some logistical problems. Like that just wouldn't work out very well. So I think perhaps this is just an intake difference for us. And it's also how you really like those girthy bottles. Speaking of drinks and things, got a really, really quick piece of news because this is something that haunts me now. Okay. The mighty black stump cafe, black stump espresso, which has been out of stock of hotstoppers for a while now. Yeah. And a lot of people have been telling me about it. Yeah. It feels like people are going to Adelaide just for this reason. I assume they're not. But I wouldn't assume that Brady. It's crossed my radar as well. I don't know, like probably on the Reddit of people going and then they're not being hot stoppers there and it's crushing every time to see. I would hate to think people aren't going to the mighty black stump just because of a lack of hotstoppers, though. Just visiting the building is a Hello Internet pilgrimage. I'm sure I've said this before, but I think it's more of a pilgrimage because of the uncertainty. Oh. It's a Hello Internet lesson that sometimes life is crushing and it cares not about the effort that you've exerted. No, but the site of the building is what it's about. It's not about the piece of plastic. It's like looking up at that building and imagining. Okay. Oh, yeah. It's about the building. Anyway, for what I swear, I've sent a restock in the place yesterday. So there will be hotstoppers again for some finite period of time. Starting at some point in the future. I get the impression that you imagined people would be traveling from all over the world to go see the mighty black stump. Were it not for this podcast? That in an alternate universe, it would still be a world renowned tourist destination for Adelaide in Australia. No, obviously not. But I do like to think, though, that people when they finally see it, go, do you know what? It has got a certain something. Because I think it has got a certain something. Like when I go to it, I've been to it a few times. Since it's rose to fame here on how they're internet. And every time I've gone back, I have looked at that building and thought, it's blackness and it's a look has a certain coolness about it. Obviously, it's not a hugely tall building. I get the joke that I used to think it was big because I'm from Adelaide. But it's still, despite that, it's got this kind of design and blackness to it that I think is amazing. And I hope some of the people who go there have looked at it and thought, actually, that's pretty cool. They should paint it vented black. I think it almost is. That's what I like about it. I think it's got a blackness that is beyond normal blackness. But that would be cool if it was like a cut out from the sky. Just that void. Well, that's kind of how I see it already. Anyway, hot stoppers. Go people, go visit to take in the mighty black stump. Not the journey at all and the possible crushing defeat at the end and the excitement of uncertainty. No, no, those aren't the reasons you go. You go to see the mighty black stump. And by drink, you only get a hot stopper if you buy a drink. Yes. If you're having words with a guy that runs the place like, because I'm worried he's just, my concern is what's happening is people who aren't tims are arriving and saying, have you got something I can put in my drink like a stopper? I can put in my drink and he's like, oh, yeah, I do, actually. I'm just pulling them out from under because I can't believe all those hot stoppers have gone to tims. I cannot believe that many people who listen to our podcast have been there to get them. So I think he's been naughty and just giving them out willy-nilly. So I'm having really harsh words with him saying, do not give them to people if they're not listening to the podcast. Right. You know, one per person. Right. And he also says he'll only give them if people buy a drink. Right. Which is totally fair. But there's also to me, it really encapsulates a Brady here. And it's like, I love that you do your projects, but this is also why I always feel like I'm keeping myself one arm's length away from getting too involved with any of them. Because there's always these unexpected problems that you bring upon yourself. And now it's like, oh, we need to send hello internet secret shoppers to the mighty black stump to have quality control about how they're being handled. Oh, that's a no idea. Some might just turn off and let not ask for one specifically. Have you got something I can. Yeah. But like this path doesn't lead anywhere fruitful. And this, this is why it's like, oh, Brady's still dealing with returns from the record read from years ago, right? Like there's still shoes of different sizes around, you know, like all of this kind of stuff. It's like these projects, they are delightful. They are charming, but they have long half-lifes of minor problems. I would take them to the grave. By the way, speaking of project revolution, yeah, there could be some news coming there very soon. Oh, really? Watch this space, make sure you're on, you know, following us on Twitter and stuff as well and on the, you know, and especially Patreon people as well, you'll get the news first, but watch this space. I'm intrigued. Interesting development. I have no idea what Brady's talking about. No, no, I think you'll quite like it, but I haven't got all my ducks in a row yet, but there's something going on. Yeah, as always, Brady always thinks I'll quite like it. And I immediately get a sense of dread in my stomach. I'm like, oh, God, what is this? I've got some dinosaurs attack news. OK. So over the Christmas period, I was entertaining some family members, including a little nephew who is, he's either five or six years old. Is this the normal nephew that you talk about or is this a different nephew? This is a different one. OK. This isn't the one that listens to Hello Internet. This is a different one on the other side of the family. Right. So he was over and he is like properly into dinosaurs. But aggressively so. So you know, he'll you'll pull out pictures and models and things of a dinosaur. And then he'll say, oh, that's a, you know, Ali do wacky sores or something I've never heard of. And then I'll like look at the caption underneath or something written on the back. And I'll be like, he's right. It is like he knows that he knows all these names, not just, you know, Tyranosaurus, Rex and Brontosaurus. Like he knows like all the proper names. Right. He's really into it. So he was over. He's only a little guy. But he's, you know, he's he's learned to read and stuff. Well, kids can read it five. OK. He's not a bad little reader, actually. He might be six. Anyway, I was trying to be cool Uncle Brady, right? Right. And I suddenly remembered I had all these packs of dinosaurs attack cards upstairs. OK. But he's five or six. Someone. That's fine. It's fine. Just don't tell his mom. It's fine. Well, no, I went in the opposite way. I basically sneaked his mom upstairs and said, look, I've got these cards. But you know, it's not for me to decide whether or not these are appropriate for your son. So I showed her a few to give her like a taste for it, you know, with a few pictures of dinosaurs biting humans in half and stuff. And she had a look and she said, ah, that'll be fine. Oh, OK. Yeah. So I got the OK. So I went downstairs and I said, look what I've got, I've got a present for you. Do you want to open some cards? And he's like, they're all about dinosaurs. And he was well into it. And I was like, I was the man then. So I was able to give him like pack after pack like a magician pulling because I bought like boxes of them. So I said, here's a pack. And this was the first time, I mean, we've joked about how horrific these cards are. But this was the seeing it through the eyes of a five and six year old, especially with mum watching, was a whole new experience because he's just learning to read. But he's pretty good. And seeing a little kid like, you know, the mouths of babes, this five, six year old boy, open a card, look at the caption and grapple with a word like holocaust. The massacre. Uh-huh. And all these new, and he's like, and like his mum can't see the card. And she's just watching him go, what's a holocaust? I was something like, wow, these cards are full on. I didn't realize. The best thing was afterwards though, after I gave him all these cards, he put them all on a order, number order, which was satisfying to watch, watch a little boy learn how to put his collector cards in order. Wow, you really opened a lot of packs with him then. Yeah, probably five or six. But like, I thought, no, I'm going to do a bit of a fairly work. I thought now just to relive the experience, I'm going to open a pack here. Okay. Here and that. Yeah, I'm always hearing your excellent, fully worked. Alright. Let's see, if this was the pack here, I was living in absolute fear he would open the one with the dog being squashed by the dinosaur. Yeah, the unacceptable card. He didn't open that one. He had opened this one. Oh my goodness. I'm glad he didn't open this pack because the first one I've opened is, you know that one, it's card 31 for the Efficient Arrows out there. What's the name? Our forces flattened. Oh, okay. Yeah. Alright, I'm like, I'm sure I can get it just from the name. They're all burned into my brain. And you know which one that is? What's that one? Yeah, that's the one with the general in the footprints and there's the rat seeding his smushed body. And he has the top secret file is in his hands. Oh my God. Grah, you're amazing. So that one would have been like a real horror for him to open. So I'm glad he didn't open that one. The next one's pretty generic. That was fast food frenzy. Yeah. Brontosaurus at the fake McDonald's with the guy screaming in the foreground. Brilliant. For five extra points, do you remember the name of the fake McDonald's? Is it, it's not burger barn, is it? Yes. Wow, okay. You're amazing. Also in this pack, 39, Trilabite Terra. Oh, yeah. I think that's one of the bad ones. That's like, isn't it just a guy screaming in his Trilabites on his face? Yep. Exactly right. That's one of the weak sauce dinosaurs attack cards that had a lazy day that day. But the next one is probably for mine, one of the iconic cards in the series. I mean, I don't pretend to have your knowledge of these series, but this is a classic. And that is card number five. Do you remember what it is? Is five, I don't know if this is five, I just know it's early in the series. Is five home room horror? Yes. Yes. Oh, fantastic. It's so satisfying, I got that right. Home room horror. Yeah. There we go. Classic. Classic card. I don't know if my little nephew got that one on the day. Classic wish fulfillment card. Last in the pack is number 29, a monster in the museum. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Does what it says on the tin there. Yeah, exactly. So there you go. Dinosaurs attack. Christmas fun for all your five and six year old nephews. So question though, did he find them gruesome? Like what was his emotional response to the cards? At one point he did say, I don't like that all the people are dying. But as it went along, I think he started taking some satisfaction from the cards in which humans were fighting back. Hmm. I was also interesting. He had no interest in the back of the cards. He wasn't interested in all the news reports on the back, the little newspaper headlines. Yeah, or the other novelty stuff they had on the back. Yeah, he wasn't too into that. But to be fair, it's also pretty small writing. I think if you're just getting into reading, that might be a challenge too far for, oh, I've got to read this boring newspaper article in tiny, tiny font. And also the stickers, all he wanted to do was try to take the sticker off and stick it on something. That's what stickers are for. No, that's not what collecting is about. I didn't say collecting, but what stickers are for is for sticking. How old were you when you got into these cards? I don't know, but what I was just thinking about in general is, in some ways, this is a dumb question, but I also think it's an interesting question, which is, why is it that little kids and particularly little boys get so obsessed with dinosaurs, like not even, oh, they're interesting, but the phenomenon that your nephew was having of, oh, I can name all the obscure ones. It's such an interesting and unusual behavior. Why is this thing so particularly fixating in a way that the details are all consumed and able to be recalled? It seems like a real outlier for universality and detailness among kids. I know, I think certain children, I like that. I always like that in terms of, I can't speak to why they like dinosaurs over butterflies or birds. I could make some obvious guesses. They're awesome. They don't exist anymore. They're huge. They've got big teeth and stuff. Once you decide you're really into something, I think you do get really into naming them and classifying them. I was obsessed with cricket as a boy. I was completely obsessed with cricket. I could tell you all the players, statistics and how many runs they got and what their averages were and how many catches they took and what their middle names were, because you just look at it so much. You look at the back of these cricket cards all the time. It's a sign with a dinosaur. Is he just like massive exposure? Yeah. I don't know. I just think that dinosaur one comes very young. I don't know a nice way to say this, but I think pre-teen and teen obsessiveness over a topic strikes me as very natural, because it's almost like you see kids sort of defining themselves relative to the outside world. I don't know. At that age, it seems sure, whatever. But there's something about the dinosaurs which just comes so soon, so strong and so universally that I find it a bit striking. I was actually thinking about it because this may seem like a bit of a derailment, but I was reading this article about how the experience of being a garbage man and that one of the facts of being a garbage man is that you know on your route every day, there's going to be like a parade of little boys who are watching you everywhere you go all across the city. There's little boys looking out the window or sitting on the front stoop where they just want to see the garbage truck come by. Yeah, I've had that. I always love that. As every street they go down, they're just used to this fact that there's all these saluting young lads who just want to see the garbage truck. And as crazy as this sounds, I wonder almost if this is like an evolutionary part of the brain that just doesn't know where to direct itself in the modern world of like, hey, you know what you should pay attention to large animals. And like you should pay them way more attention way sooner than anything else. Is the garbage truck not like a big dinosaur that comes down your street with a big mouth that eats stuff and like, but this is what I mean. Like, I don't think it's crazy to suggest that maybe these two things are connected that like if you're a little boy and you have a brain that's worried about elephants and lions on the savannah. What is the closest thing in your world to a somewhat rare, dangerous, seeming animal? It has to be a garbage truck. It literally comes along and eats things on your street. And but also it has these like death-defying heroes that like jump on the back of it and ride on it while it's moving in a way that you're banned from doing. Like if you even go near a car, you'd alone sit on stand on a car that was moving. Your parents would freak out. And here are men who for their job jump onto a moving vehicle and just hang off the back of it. They were heroes. It's the swinging off the back that's the coolest part. Oh, yeah. Look at how jaunty he is in the face of danger. Yeah. Yeah, but you haven't learned how to catch and ride the back of a sandworm yet. So you like you have to stay far, far away and stay still. But just like I found something really charming about this idea of like the young boy salute watching the garbage truck as it comes by that this is just like part of the experience of being a garbage man that you don't think of as an outsider. And yeah, I don't know. I can think like maybe there's just something built into the brains of children that large animals are things you should really pay attention to. And having an obsessive catalog and collection of knowledge of all the dinosaurs at the age where you have just learned to read is like par for the course. Like this is where you should devote all your attention, kid. That's what their brain is saying. I still do that salute of watching the garbage truck go past but it's completely different reasons now. I think there's this conspiracy theory against me where our garbage collectors don't pick up our recycling on purpose. Okay. Or really fussy about touching it. So I sometimes spy through the curtains to see if they're going to pick up my garbage on up. I do not have the same affection for garbage collectors that I did when I was a boy. This is one of these moments from the he like, do I want to go down this path? Or do we just want to leave it here? But I have to know. Then why do you think this and two, have you observed any evidence to back up your theory? There have been times where they'll leave the recycling because they think it's been sorted wrongly. Okay. Isn't that what they're supposed to do? Yeah, but they can be a bit too fussy about it. Okay. You know, oops, there's a can in that one that's only supposed to have bottles and paper and like they went through a phase where they were being really fussy and they got over that. But the other day they'd picked up recycling from every box on the street except mine and it wasn't sorted incorrectly. So you have one data point to support your theory here? Oh, no. I've got years of incompetence to point to. But also they picked up all the Christmas trees on the street and not my Christmas tree. Like there was a day where you can leave your Christmas tree out the front and they took every Christmas tree but mine. You have a specific day that you have to leave out the Christmas tree. You have an interesting relationship with the garbage. I do. I have an unhealthy relationship with the garbage collection. You literally do. I feel myself tensing up because I remember like the last times we had these conversations like it went terribly wrong and I'm thinking of my neighborhood like overflowing with garbage because we got it got funny because we both got very heated in that conversation and honest to God every time I go to throw out the garbage and I get to like the last few surviving garbage cans in my neighborhood as they've like slowly decreased the number. And I get to what is an Everest of overflowing garbage around like the one remaining can. I think of you every time Brady and I'm like like how does he not think more garbage can's the answer what are we supposed to keep this garbage in our house. I don't understand. I can't even remember what we targeted about now but I'm sure I was right. This episode has been supported by Hover and today well let's do a little bit of roleplay domain registration. Let's say hypothetically I'm a big fan of dinosaurs attack collector cards and I want to create like a wiki site dedicated to them. Now I haven't made the site yet but I'm aware these cards are red hot right now and the best domain names are probably already being taken. Well within just a few seconds on Hover I can see what's available and for how much I see I can still get dinosaurs attack dot org or dinosaurs attack dot site. But here's one that caught my eye dinosaurs attack dot wiki. It's not only available it's on sale at the moment for only one dollar to register it for a whole year. So let's get that one in the basket in the bank. Dinosaur attack dot earth is also a good one but I'll leave that for someone else. Now after I've registered the domain with all my privacy settings already set to the maximum as standard on Hover they're really good with that. I now have it sitting in my watchest for when that page is designed when I make my dinosaurs attack wiki. When the time comes I can easily attach the domain to that site. It's just a few clicks but it's not just that. Maybe in the meantime I want that domain doing some heavy lifting for me. No problems. Hover makes that easy too. I can divert the domain elsewhere. So for now dinosaurs attack dot wiki is going to divert to my new Twitter account dedicated to showcasing dinosaurs attack cards one at a time. There's a project I'm going to regret. Anyway if you haven't used Hover yet I really suggest just go and have a look at how clean, simple and intuitive the site is. They really change the way I look at domain registration and they've left the competitors for dead. Also if you use our code you're going to get 10% of your first purchase. So go to hover.com slash hi again people hover.com slash hi it also means they'll know you came from here. I recommend them all the time not just because they're sponsoring this episode. Check out hover folks and check out my dinosaurs attack dot wiki. What a sort of related topic. I just thought you would be amused to hear this. Okay. But last week I took the plan and I have upgraded my off-side storage unit to a bigger unit. That was inevitable. So this day has come to pass. Can you remind listeners because I feel like this is from a long time ago that this Indiana Jones archive got set up of your things. But for anybody who's new here what's the deal with your storage unit? Well I just felt like I needed more space to store stuff. Right. What kind of stuff really? Like stuff that I don't want to throw away but I don't really need very often. Like your mountains of space stuff. Some of it is like memorabilia or like old merch and stuff. Some of it's work related like I store all the brown papers from number file. So over 10 years or something I've collected quite a lot of them. I can't really bear to throw them away. Yeah. And I give you a pass on those. I think that yeah you should totally keep those. So anyway because there are some changes happening in the house I sort of have two offices in the house and one of them is more of a storage and filming area. And I have finally surrendered that to the niceness of things my wife wants rather than what I want. I was wondering what verb was going to be used in this sentence. So I do have to get more stuff out of the house and I'm just accumulating stuff and my unit was filling up. And I need more space. So I went in the other day and said I think I was 30 square feet does that sound right? And I've gone up to a 75. Oh wow. That's a big upgrade. So it's the size of a small bedroom now. And I am finding it hard packing stuff up and getting it out of the office. But I still really really enjoy going to the storage unit and filling it up. And I think I figured out why. Okay why more strongly than last time or maybe this is what I said last time. But when I go there, there's this big like freight lift. So I put all my stuff on a big like trolley and I roll it into the freight lift. But humans aren't allowed in the freight lift. So I have to like pull these big doors shut and then press a button and send it up to the floor where my unit is and then I walk up the stairs and made it up there and then roll it out and take it to my unit and unlock it. And like it's this really kind of menial mechanical job. But I can't do anything else at the time. You know. I'm doing Twitter and doing a quick edit and seeing what's happening in Photoshop and checking my email and like I'm just completely lost in this moment of menial work. And I think that's really good for my brain. Like the only other times that happens is at the gym, which I don't always love, but I have to do. And my other favorite past time going to the tip, you know, going back and forward to the car. Okay. Boxes out and walk over to the big cardboard skip. Now take out the metal and put the metal and then now the bits of wood. Like I think I really enjoy those moments of banality. It's so different from my normal job where there are 17 different tabs open and I'm always doing eight things at once. Yeah. Well, like one of the things that is nice about something like that is the clarity of the task of like, oh, the door needs to close and the latch needs to go. When you press the button and you do the reverse on the other side, it's not something that you would probably want to do all the time, but it can parason to your regular work where like when we make videos, the whole nature of that work is uncertain. Like how many cuts does this need is this part interesting or not interesting or like should this be moved to the front or should stay where it is or like, it's just uncertain. You can have like clarity with the idea of like, oh, I'm sitting down to do an edit. But the next steps aren't necessarily obvious. And so I think that's what can make switching to that kind of work sort of nice and satisfying. And if you are at the dump like throwing out garbage, it's satisfying when it makes a big clang. Like you feel like you've done something right? Like, whoa, like you've thrown in the metal and it's like, pow. Yeah. And it's like that at the storage unit, the fray elevators like that, those big doors that you got a pull shut bang and they make a huge big noise. That's like a certain kind of base satisfaction. Like, look at this stuff moving, right? Look at this garbage truck smashing up the garbage in the back. It's so satisfying. Everybody wants to watch it. So I've parked food at my car tonight with another load to take and then my car wouldn't star. My car's breaking down. Do you think the garbage man sabotaged your car? Is that where this is going? I haven't rode to that. So last time on the show, my poor, poor father got dragged into it. And he listened to that episode. He did listen to the episode. Did he like it? Oh, he mad at me. Well, be honest. Here's the thing. You're asking the wrong question. What's the right question? Well, so I spoke with my father since he heard the episode where you had a million questions. Did he bring it up or did you bring it up? Did you say dad just so you know, Brady talked about it or did he ring you up and say, oh my god, I just heard it. No, no, no, he listens to the show. He heard it. Very high likelihood he was either going to the dump or at the gym when he heard it. Right. Perhaps putting something in a giant freight elevator. So yeah, I wanted to collect the reaction from my dad about being brought up on the show for what he seems to be increasingly viewing as like his cognitive impairment of inability to visualize things in his head. Before you do that, because this is really, I'm really excited about this. Can I just quickly say there was an incredible amount of feedback both on the redder and in emails from people who would put themselves in the same category as your father. Yeah. And can I just say, I read a lot of it and it was really, really interesting and I appreciate how much time people put into writing those things for us because it was really interesting to read from someone who is completely far into. But I cannot wait to hear what you're dead. The source of it all has to say. So it was very satisfying to me because my father's reaction was the exact same reaction that I was having while recording the show, which was Brady's questions don't make any sense. I had one person that went through each one of the questions and just answered it for me. Like, here's what the answer is. It was brilliant. So my dad and I had a little conversation about your interview style. It was how it started off with my dad being interviewed remotely. And I will forever agree that I think, and I know you always talk yourself down with this, but I think this is actually part of what makes you a fantastic interviewer, is you are able to ask the most annoying questions. They're like, these splinters and it causes this frustration because you feel like as the person trying to explain something, you've got to back up three levels to even try to start addressing what it is. And I was really thrown during the recording and I couldn't figure out what it was live in the conversation. Why are Brady's questions annoying me so much? And my father, he said something like, well, obviously none of Brady's questions make any sense. For his subjective experience and what we narrowed it down talking was many of your questions could be described as conflating two different things, conflating the act of visualization with the act of recognition. Yeah, fair enough. And before we go further, can I just say, like, and I think you're saying this anyway, but when you're interviewing someone or asking questions, it's not always about getting the answer to the question that you're asking. Oh, yeah, yeah. If you ask a question, people may take it this way, but I don't necessarily take it as it's a betrayal of your misunderstanding. Sometimes it's actually deliberately making it sound like you don't understand because it makes people think about the information in a new way and say something that they wouldn't have otherwise said. This is exactly what I'm trying to say, right? It's this is like, I'm sort of phrasing it in a funny way, but I really do think that you have a real knack for asking these sorts of questions. Anytime, you know, like we were recently together, you know, the four of us and my wife will always comment on like, are you just asked great questions? And she'll point out some of the questions that you just asked just regularly during conversation. Like it is a really interesting skill. And I think your questions about like you had a question about like, oh, if you asked your father how to draw a Mount Everest, but he can't visualize Mount Everest. How does he draw it? Like this one particularly hit on like a certain annoyance of like, I don't know how to explain this. And my dad was having the same thing of like just expressing this idea that recognition is not visualization and it's harder to explain it on any more of a fundamental level than that. And so like the question back to you, Brady, it's like, if I asked you, Brady, draw a tulip, like draw a picture of a tulip. Do you need to visualize that in order to be able to do it? Like are you tracing on the paper something that you're visualizing in your mind? In the case of a tulip, I'm actually saying a picture of a tulip because it's something I've seen draw in so many times. Right. And I would just try to replicate that. Right. But you're like seeing that picture of a picture in your head. Yes. Hmm. Interesting. Okay. And that's what's amazing to me that someone that hasn't got that can even know where to start. What's the first line you draw if you can't even see a tulip in your head? Yeah. So when my dad was talking about the mountain question, like draw Mount Everest or like or draw anything, he and I were both in agreement that like there's no visualization in this process that like you don't need to imagine the thing and then kind of draw it. That the drawing happens without visualization. That's like a foundational process that's difficult to describe any further. What does your dad want me to know? There's nothing in particular that he wants you to know. He's just that my questions were unfair. He thought your questions were ridiculous and betrayed a complete lack of understanding of the situation. I think that is that is like the main thing that he was. Let me read a few comments that came in an email from a Tim called Kendra who rather than just saying those questions are ridiculous and refusing to answer them. Yes. That's exactly what I decided to actually answer some of them. Okay. Because Kendra also has a phantasia, which apparently you say incorrectly and drives everybody crazy. Oh, yeah. I've said anaphanasia because that's what the narrator in my head said when I read it and then I've never heard it set out loud. And I have to say I think that's kind of stuck. Like I think it sounds better as anaphanasia anyway, but anyway, please continue. Kendra wrote a very long email. So I won't read all the answers but I read parts of some of them. Does Gray's dad have visual memories? Kendra can't answer for your dad but Kendra answers. No, I can conjure emotions, feelings, sounds but not visuals. I do have strong place-based memories. If I don't go somewhere often I can remember what was happening in the conversation, the company from last time I was there. What are dreams like? Do you see things in your dreams? Kendra says, My dreams are darkness with random colourful swirls like when you close your eyes after staring at a light. They are like a podcast or audio drama. I hear them. I feel them. I smell them. Rarely, a picture kind of forms out of the swirl of colours like a dinosaur in the clouds. You have to squint and be willing to see the dinosaur. In the highlight state of dreaming, this seems perfectly normal but when I try to describe a dream when I'm awake, it's more like an incoherent audiobook. What do you think when you see someone draw a picture? Do you think, That's amazing, how could they do that? Just out of their head. Kendra says, I love watching people draw. I think it's magical how an idea in their brain comes out by rubbing a stick against a process dead tree. They are on paper. I also sometimes get distracted by my own drawing and writing and even typing. It blows my mind that things stored in my head come out of my hand and is there for all to see. Our photographs and photography is something that's really precious and miraculous. Kendra says, I'm a photography bug. My parents finally bought a digital camera so I could take as many photos as I wanted without having to pay to develop them. I really love taking pictures of my friends and family when we're all together so I can see them when they're not around. Well, yeah, yeah. The reason you take photos is because future you will totally lose the memory if you don't have a picture. I think that's a universal dream. Would your dad be able to help an identicate sketch artist? Kendra says, for me, no, I couldn't pick a criminal out of a line up. That's also because Kendra also has a bit of face blindness. If I only have a brief interaction with someone, it's really hard for me to commit visuals to memory and there's something distinctive about them like a purple Mohawk. If I was held hostage for a long time, like half an hour, I'd probably be trying to commit visuals to mine, but it would just be facts like Caucasian, Sandy Hair, taller than the shelf male, etc. So couldn't help with the identicate. I think once again, we have seen like this is a topic that generates a tremendous amount of feedback from people about their subjective experiences. What is this or what is this not? And I am just increasingly convinced that I am right that brains do very different things and that we have very different experiences. Just have a little bit of feedback on the meditation topic from last time and then close that forever. Yes. Yes. We just sort of mentioned that at the end of the show and I wasn't necessarily planning to talk about it and I was like, sort of frustrated in all over the place. But then feedback from listeners came in two very distinct categories. And it was like category one, obviously, Gray should have never wasted his time trying meditation in the first place. Like if there's anybody who doesn't need to increase the dial of metacognition, it's him. Like obviously this is not an experience that would be valuable to him. And then the other set of feedback is the feedback that I find incredibly frustrating. And it's like it was like the Kafka trap sort of feedback. Like well, obviously if you are unable to meditate properly, you will get nothing out of that experience. And so unless you've meditated properly, you won't be getting something out of it. And so your descriptions of not getting anything out of meditation are evidence of the fact that you're not doing it properly. Which is just very hard to deal with as a piece of feedback because it's like, what is the action that's supposed to happen here? Or since meditation is supposed to be about the state of mindfulness of letting, letting thoughts pass through your head, like clouds passing over the top of a mountain or whatever metaphor that when you're talking in a conversation about what the experience is like, you have to use words and thoughts to describe that experience. But people take that as evidence of like, oh, you weren't really meditating because you're expressing this thought in words. And like, that shouldn't be what this is. So anyway, I got one very long and very useful piece of feedback from someone who like worked in a lab with what I always want actual brain scanners doing meditation research. And their conclusion is like, yes, there is a state that you can actually see with a brain scanner when someone does meditation that like the brain waves change in a measurable way. And then like the person who is doing meditation or mindfulness will be able to say like, this is the point at which I felt like I was quote, doing meditation. But that this is a thing that takes a really long time to be able to do. And their feedback was like, don't be meditating for 10 minutes a day. Like that's amateur hour stuff. You need to meditate for an hour a day. Like this is how you'll be able to reach this other state. And at that point, this is where it's like, okay, this project is now well outside the realms of like how much time am I willing to dedicate in my life for this thing, which may or may not be accomplishable at all. So I have decided like, I am officially closing the meditation project until or unless a minute situation where I can get actual bio feedback about are you or are you not making progress towards this very particular thing. Otherwise this project will be forever mired in this subjective self reporting land where it's just impossible to know if you're making progress. So meditation, mindfulness, project closed, gone until a minute brain scanner. Then maybe you don't make new years resolutions do I do not I do not make news resolutions. Did you make a news resolution breeding not really over that sounds like you kind of did. Well, that's not why I'm here to talk about that. That's all I want to know. What's going to use resolution? My wife made a new years resolution that I found very interesting and I thought you would find interesting. Okay. Her new years resolution is to have a new signature. Okay. She is sick of her signature. Doesn't like that much and said this year starting from January one new signature. Did she pre design the new signature? I don't know. I only remembered five minutes before we started recording. So I texted and said, have you changed your signature? And she's like, yeah, I've been trying. She said it's been hard. Sometimes the muscle memory takes over. But when she remembers, she's changing it. Have you ever changed your signature? Yeah. Like a hard change, not a vol. Just said, you know what? Time for a new look. I'm sure I've just guys before. If you sign a lot of things like I did when I was a teacher, your signature does simplify over time to just make the process of doing signatures better. But I do remember at one point just like, oh, I give up on this and just doing like a G in a line with the slightest hint of a Y. And it's like congratulations. That's the signature now. Like the sort of signature you give the delivery person at the door, which is like a cursory move of the finger on a. No, that's a totally different level. When someone shows up with those touch screens and they're like, you need to sign for this. Yeah. I am now like a medieval literate and I'm making a mark on a piece of paper. Yeah. You're getting like an X or a line and like, I'm not even attempting to try to form legible letters. Not to say a montage of people's signatures on those things. It'd be fascinating. Oh, yeah. Well, it's like, I don't know what to deal with those screens, but the custom built ones, like the, where's the hardware that's designed to capture your signature. That stuff, it feels like it's 1970s technology. It's like a resolution of eight pixels per square feet. Yeah. And also, it's always like a problem at the border like it. You can't go too close to the edge. So don't even try. So that stuff is always terrible. And if it's someone who's using something like an iPhone, if they're a professional delivery person, usually that iPhone is in some kind of like protective case or it has something across the screen. I don't even try with those things. That's why I said, I just do like an X or a line and I don't care and you don't care, buddy. So like we are, we are a simpatico in what's going on here. You need to see me make a mark on a piece of paper and I have made that mark and now now we will both go our separate ways. So yeah. Chopped down there. I mean, you must have done the same thing like both with the signature, but also just with writing. Like I remember experimenting with different letters of like, Oh, how do I want to do the letter H? You know, what is an H feel like in my handwriting? Like, I think you spend some time trying to figure that out when you're younger and you're in a school system that makes you write everything by hand. Like it's still the barbarous age. Do you think learning to write should not be taught in schools anymore? Yeah. I think I would probably pass on that for the most part. Should people be able to write? Like, this is like a different, I don't know what you're asking me now. Now, I feel like we've immediately slid. Should people be able to write? Okay. So, like should they be able to write words? Is being able to type enough now? I think whatever level of handwritten literacy is required to learn to read is probably fine. Do you need to learn to write to be able to read? I don't know. I would guess you'd do. Like I think that those two things have to be connected or at the very least, I would bet it's a lot easier to learn to read if you're also practicing making the letters. When I was in year five, one of my best mates, his handwriting was all capital letters. And I thought his handwriting looked cool. So I decided to make my handwriting all capital letters in year five. And from that time on, I've always written all capital letters. That's just my handwriting. I did. That's just how I always write. And if someone ever says to me, I write cursive or right lowercase, like don't use your handwriting capital letters because that's silly to show me what your normal handwriting looks like. And I do it. It looks like a year five boys handwriting. Really? It's like frozen in time. I write like a little boy in year five. I would like to get for the show notes. Handwriting sample. I don't know. I'm not sure about that. Here's the thing. Can I change my opinion on do people only in year five, like can we stop with the handwriting knowledge at that point? Maybe that would change it. I'm just going to do it now for my own personal interest. What do I, you're writing like in lowercase? I want you to write like a normal person would write with occasional uppercase but mostly lowercase letters. Oh, actually, that's not too bad. That's not bad. But let me write in cursive. That's worse than I'm laying on. Are you going to send me a photograph of what you've done, Brady? I think you'd be disappointed because I think it's actually pretty good. I'm pretty proud of it, actually. I would say that's not bad. It does have a little bit of charmingness, a little bit of youthful charm about it. I don't think anybody would look at that and go, ah, did a child write this? But okay, so I think we can both agree that cursive or script is just write out. We don't need to have a conversation about should people learn cursive. That's like teaching someone more's code. This is just like long gone. That's where points go. Okay. You do know cursive, right? I mean, you said you do or you learned it? Yeah, I learned this like Australian modern cursive thing. That was a trendy thing when I was at scope. Australian modern. What was it like the Palmer method? You know, there's like Spence Syrian, which is the really old kind. Then there's the Palmer method, which is like modern cursive, which I think does lose all of the charm of cursive. This was definitely like that. It was like one that lost all the charm. But yeah. Then there's a few variations on the Palmer method that are like this similar kind of thing. Here it is, South Australian modern cursive. That's what I would have learned. Yeah, but this is a lot closer to like what in British schools they called joined up writing. Yeah. So like so far from cursive that it's basically regular print letters. If you just didn't lift up the pen and they joined them in weird places sometimes too. I feel like. Joined up writing to me always seems like the worst of everything. Yeah. It's like, maximally ugly. You get none of the benefits of cursive and it's like, I don't know why they do that. But because of South Australian, it's still awesome. I'm sorry. Yes. No, South Australian cursive is still amazing. Yeah. That's right. Every young boy learns, you know, oh, you got to write out the sentences. The quick brown fox jumped over the mighty black stump. You have to have waited a hundred times. And yeah, I'm sure that's that's that's what you guys have to do. Like, I know, cursive, I find cursive interesting. But it's like, I think people just don't realize how much it's a byproduct of fountain pens and technology of like, there's not design for modern pens. And that's why these like modern cursives were the idea of like, oh, when we have ballpoint pens, this is the kind of cursive. We'll use it like, yeah, but you actually don't need it anymore. Once you have ballpoint pens, like we can just ditch this whole thing. Yeah. I do still write in cursive, but there is now only one poor person in the world who has to deal with my cursive writing. And that is my assistant who sometimes has to take my notes on scripts that I still write in cursive and work with them and like, I feel very sorry for her when she has to do that because my cursive is appalling. But the fact that even used to a hand right shows that being able to write by hand is important, you know? No, no, a million times no. Like, I am a person who literally writes for a living. Like, I am not a person to pick as an example of, oh, it's important that you need to know how to write by hand. Like if I exclude the times that I go over scripts to edit them, if you take out that experience of my handwriting, the number of times I write anything by hand is rapidly approaching zero. You know? Like, yeah. You know, this is now like, I go to the eye doctor and they have some form that they want me to fill out. Like, this is like the frequency of how often do I need to write something out by hand? It's very rare. I mean, like, you must have the same experience, right? Yeah, I do write things a lot. Like if I'm working, I'll write things on notes next to me for some reason. Like, it's always work related. But yeah, I might have to like say there's a, someone says something in the video and I write it down to piece of paper because I've got to then take that to Photoshop and turn it into text or something. It's easy just to write it down then to type it. Okay. Like say there's a moment in the video where someone says, I love hot dogs and I decide I want to make a graphic of that with a stick figure saying, I love hot dogs with a speech bubble, but I'm scared I'm going to forget what the line is. I'll scribble down, I love hot dogs on a post at night and then start a document in Photoshop or something and go, what was the, what was the, what was the stick figure have to say again? Oh, that's right. I love hot dogs. It's written down. Okay. So that you just happened to find that easier to do. I could also do that in short hand sometimes too if it's a lot of words because I still know short hand. Yeah. Yeah. You know how to do the order sign in short hand very successfully. So like I think yeah, there's going to be a long tail on the usefulness of writing things by hand. And I was being a little bit glib and a little bit fast. It's like, I don't think we need it. Like the more I'm sitting here thinking about like, do I really mean that? You know, in the way that like you say things and then you think, do I agree with that? I kind of think I do. You know, I mean, there's also has to do with my very strong feelings that the decreasing marginal value of each additional year of school really drops off after grade school is like, maybe I can put handwriting in that bucket too. I've never really thought about it. But like, you know, when you finish grade school or primary school, whatever level of handwriting you have then, it's totally fine for signing packages when the guy comes to the door, you know, or filling in the form at your dentists. Like, yeah, I think we could ditch this. I think we don't need to do it anymore after kids are 10 years old. Okay. We can just stop making them write things by hand. Hello, Internet. You need Hello, fresh America's number one meal kit seasonal recipes and pre-measured ingredients delivered right to your door. Now, you might be saying to yourself, I can't cook. Don't worry. 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One was at 150 to one and one was at 66 to one that my grandson will one day play cricket for England. And a week or two ago, he played his first game of cricket for England. So the bet paid out and this grandfather, who actually is dead now, but the family still had the betting slips. So they cashed out the bet, won 21,000 pounds. So even more dollars. That's like $300,000. And I'm like, as you've probably figured out in recent times, I'm pretty like down on sports betting. I think it's pretty insidious thing. But I do find this quite interesting. And it's not the first story like this I've read. There was a guy who bet on his son playing soccer for England as well and that happened at some ridiculous odds. I do find it funny that the notion of betting on your children's future, getting payouts. It made me wonder if you were going to bet on something to happen in the next 10 years or bet on something happening to someone you know, like having some level of success that puts them into the late level. Is there anything you could think you'd bet on? As a website, I always found charming. It's called Long Betts. And it's this idea. It's people making public bets. Okay. It's one by this interesting foundation called the Long Now Foundation where their goal is to encourage long term thinking. So they've done, I think we even mentioned it, some of these weird projects. Like they had this Rosetta Stone, this like modern Rosetta Stone with hundreds of languages on it that they've distributed across the world. They've probably by now built like this clock that exists out in the desert in America, somewhere which is supposed to last for 10,000 years. And people can put a bet down, yeah, and some people will then match and say, I'll pay out on that if it happens. I think they needed to be, I think it's supposed to be like longer than two years where you are allowed to like make a public bet against someone else. Here's one, Gray. Bet number 712. This was an A.E. period bet. Nevertheless, cars will be commercially available in Las Vegas, Nevada by May 27, 2024. Trips may be point to point outside of the city center with no requirement for any passenger to take over manual control of the vehicle. Jeff McColley and Stephen Zoff are the two people that have got money riding on this 500 dollar bet. I still think like I think of my humans need not apply video, which I think you're mad in God, I don't know now, 2014 or 15. I don't know. But like, I've always had like a 10 year horizon on that one. Like, if I don't have what I think of as a true self driving ride 10 years from the publication of that video, like I will be surprised. I'll be like, oh, wow. I was wrong about my expected closeness of this technology. Listen to this one, Gray. The 601 is the original URL for this prediction, www.longbets.org slash 601. No longer be available in 11 years. Right. There's someone playing the meta game of, right? Someone put large headroom collateral to destroy earth within 10 years. I like that bet 601 though about the URL because that's like, yeah, this is how you start to get a derivatives market built up, right? Or you're not betting on the thing, like you're betting on the meta levels of the things. So I like that. I was going to say, like, what I love about this and I love about this question is, I just think, I think that's such a great way to sharpen the mind when thinking about it, a particular question. So I think that's why I kind of backed off when you said, like, oh, what would you bet on in 10 years? Because like, when you're just talking in a conversation, you can say, like, oh, I think this or I think that. But when there's something, I don't know if it's, if you have the same thing, but there's something about like formulating it as a bet that I feel like really sharpens the mind and like brings you to the forefront of like, okay, how many years, like what odds are you willing to give this? And how are we defining success? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, let's get out of conversation mode and then let's like buckle down into serious mode and the amount doesn't matter. Like, oh, bet a dollar. Like something about it still just really focuses the brain into, okay, like, let's be serious about this now. And I feel like I've gotten more sensitized to that idea over time of like, bets are a really useful way to try to think about the future. Like what will or what won't change, you know, like, like in terms of elections, like it's very different to say like, who do you think will win election X versus like, what are the odds that you would be willing to bet on of like this person or that person? Like it just, it really focuses the brain. So some are put here slaughterhouses will be banned in the United Kingdom by 2050. That's an interesting bet, isn't it? My initial response was I would take that bet, but I'd immediately start putting an asterisk on it. I think it might not happen because of like religious exemptions. That's the only thing I could see as like, oh, there still might be slaughterhouses for religious exemptions. But otherwise I'd be like, oh, I'd take that bet. I'd totally take even odds on that bet. What about you? Yeah, I think that might be gone by then. The whole vegetarian vaguism things had a real foot on the accelerator in the last two or three months. It's really, it's been really interesting. I just laugh because when you said two or three, I was expecting the word years, which I would have grouped with. No, no, no. There's been a real acceleration. Mainly because of, do you know the company Greggs that do like, yeah, they sell donuts and stuff, right? Yeah, and they also do like pastries and lots of meat, steak bakes and chicken bakes and that they launched this vegan sausage roll last year that took the world by storm. And it's like the company's profits have gone through the roof because of it. And now they're doing all these other vegan products and their chief executives got on vegan and they're everywhere, Greggs. So the fact that they're going all vegan crazy has been quite a catalyst. And now it's like vegan year area at the moment apparently. Oh, that's a brutal one. Movinbo is better. Veganuary, that's rough. I don't know, man. I don't know. I think me placing a bit on me playing international sport for any countries probably, that window's probably gone. Unfortunately, I think I've let go of that in recent months. You're not going to bet on any of your friends achieving greatness. I don't know. I think someone I know, I don't know who, but I think because of the people I know, I think someone I know will probably go into space like a physics scale or a destined or a jerk or someone will, you know, end up doing some space thing before I die. Yeah, I mean, but that's just good hashtag content. Like someone's going to do that for sure. Like someone's going to make that happen. How do you think will be the first YouTuber in space? This is where I feel like I'm not up to date with who the big YouTubers are. If I had to pick an industry, like for sure, it'll be a beauty vlogger. I will be the first YouTuber in space. Like I wouldn't know who to pick in that industry, but I'm pretty serious if we limit this conversation to who are full time YouTubers that like a beauty vlogger has pretty good odds of being the first one who's actually in space. I don't know who they'll be, but they'll be under the age of 25. Yeah, yeah. Like those people are the ones really running the show. They've got the money, they've got the poll, they've got the audience, they could make it work. All right. If you had to put a year down for the first human footstep on Mars, like I'm just going to give you a thousand pounds and you can place the belt on here. What year are you going to put it on? That's an interesting one. I don't know because that's such a high variance option. I'll put something on the table and I'll say 2032 if I'm picking a year. That's the year I'm picking. Yeah, that was my second choice. Oh, wow. Okay. What was your first choice? I was going to say 2035. Okay. And then I thought, no, maybe 2032, but I'll stick with 2035. Okay. What's your reasoning for 2035? I don't know. I just feel like I reckon we need about 15 years. There's no pressure that means we must do it by the end of the decade type thing. And it just feels like about the right pace. But if I'm wrong, I used to think it would take longer, but now if I'm wrong, I think I'm probably wrong this side. It would probably be sooner. Oh, okay. Interesting. Because the commercial people are really upping their game now, aren't they? So, I've picked a number that I think is almost certainly the wrong number, but is in the middle of what strike me as two probability curves. And so I think of it in the same way that you do. There's not an unreasonable chance that it's actually much sooner than we would expect. Yeah. But I also feel like maybe if it's not much sooner than we expect, it's going to be a really long time. Like the actual answer is like 2060, 2070. Yeah. Really because there's like very little actual motivation to go. Like the problem that I see is I think it's very difficult to imagine in a period of decades how Mars could be commercially viable to anyone. You kind of need like explorers and zealots to do that. And that's what makes it a really high variance situation. Yeah. I think the other thing you're not taking into account though is the business advantage of doing it for PR purposes. It would be such a PR win. Oh yeah, SpaceX, they're the ones that cracked Mars. I want to associate with them for all my space needs. Actually going to Mars might not be commercially like they might not, you know, you're not going to go there and mine or anything, but it might be such a big PR boom that you will become the go to company for all things space because you're the ones that got to Mars. I don't know. I find that less convincing, but maybe maybe I'm wrong there just because I feel like space by its very nature has to be a really like it's such a specialized area of human exploration. I'm not necessarily convinced that accomplishing the problem of landing a man on Mars and returning him safely before the decade is out would be generally applicable to all sorts of other space travel. I just think it's a very particular problem. So if I was betting, like I wouldn't put a lot of value on the, like just the pure PR value of being the company that got someone to Mars first. Like in terms of actual value, but if you're talking about like putting a man on Mars is awesome. Like that's a whole different thing and like getting a bunch of people to work on that is a very different sort of human endeavor. That's just why I think it's so highly variant is it's like it depends a lot on excitement maybe in the shorter term and if it doesn't happen out of sheer excitement, I don't know if it's just commercially viable for a really long time. But that's sort of why I went like 2032 is I was trying to pick a number that's like in between my two actual predictions, but who knows, I don't know. That's a really interesting question though, right? I'm so pleased that this long bets websites still exists. So I'd be just curious to see if people can pull out some of the particularly interesting bets that are on the on the site in the discussion. One more sports ball corner. I just felt like this should be mentioned. I don't know. I've told you many times how soccer leagues work in Europe, but you've probably forgotten every time. So just to remind you, in a soccer league in Europe, like in England or France as I'm about to talk about, all the teams play each other twice. And at the end, whoever has accumulated the most points wins the league. There's no play offs. There's no knockout component. It's just whoever accumulates the most wins and things like that wins the league. But in addition to a league, they will have a knockout cup. And this is like playoffs, all of the teams from all of the leagues, they're not divided up now into the good teams and the bad teams. Just all of them are all thrown into a hat. And they play each other in this sort of knockout competition until just two teams remain and they play one game to decide who wins the cup that year. That's a whole separate tournament, right? That makes sense? Yeah. Okay. So in France, it's a little bit different because in addition to all the teams in France playing, they also invite teams from like all like the regions and territories around the world to send teams in. Like I don't know what all the French territories are, French Garene and places like that. And normally these teams are cannon fodder and they send some team to get demolished by the professionals because they're all like amateur teams. Okay. But this year, one of the French colonies sent their team over and they flew 9,000 kilometres to France to presumably get spanked. But amazingly, they won. They had a two won win and that means they move into the last 32. They're in the final 32 teams. This is only the second time ever that one of these French teams from the far flung provinces has made it into the final 32. Okay. The reason I wanted to bring it up on the show at all was because the amateur side that did it this year, they flew 9,000 kilometres to win two won is called JS St. Pierre. It is St. St. St. St. Pierre. They're from St. Pierre, but they're called St. Pierre O.E. That hails from our favourite island, Reunion. I don't know if they're called the Reunion Swamp Pans. One of their logos did have a bird on it, but the logo I'm looking at now doesn't. But anyway, a bunch of people got in touch with me because they were so excited to read about Reunion in the news because this was like, you know, a big story for 12 hours in the world. And it was a soccer team from Reunion flying 9,000 kilometres to have a big famous victory. And everyone's like, go, you swamp pens. But here's the thing, Brady, can you even remind me how and why did we even get the Reunion Swamp pen and the Jamaica Fragrous Rat as the unofficial animals of Hello Internet? Like, do you know what? I can't. Here's my best guess is I think. I was trying to show you a Wikipedia page and you got distracted by like the link at the top, which was something about the swamp hen or the rice rat. That's my guess as to where this came from. But I'm kind of relieved that you two cannot remember exactly the details of how this came to pass. The reason I thought you might find it mildly diggerting is because it involves like territories of a country and you always used to make videos about that kind of stuff. So in this French version of the FA Cup, they allow teams from Guadalupe and French Guadalu and Martinique, New Caledonia, Tahiti, St. Martin, all these exotic places all flying into France to play in their cup competition. I like the way you phrase that. You used to always. Right. You sound just like YouTube comments where people are like, oh, you do two things in a row and someone says like, oh, this is always right or like the videos that someone remembers is like, they used to just make those videos. I'm going to go out and I'll leave here and say you've made more than two videos about like regions and countries and geography and like borders. I'm not saying that I only made two. I just I think it's just the like you used to always is a very like YouTube comment way to phrase how a channel has to be in the past. Yeah. Back when you used to actually make videos. Right. Yes. That's right. I don't make videos anymore. Well, congratulations to reunion. Obviously they should be called the swamp hands. Yeah, they should be. They're Wikipedia articles really disappointing. Well, I think they must have a Twitter account. I think the team should go congratulate their Twitter account with congratulations, swamp hands and there are French football club from St. Pierre on reunion. St. Pierre I believe is the third largest. Conurbation on the island. Oh, okay. White and black. I know you know, oh, hang on. He's the club website. I'm just trying to find out what they're called, what their animal is or something. They're in the. Brady, see, they're they're just called the reunion swamp hands and the teams will go congratulate them and we'll let the team figure that out. Hello, Internet. It's a new year and you probably have new goals. Whether it's getting physically fit financially fit, being a better parent or a better person, audible is here to help you. Their unmatched catalog of audiobooks will have the answers you need and to help motivate you with whatever you're trying to achieve, audible is issuing a challenge to current and new members, finish three audiobooks by March 3rd and get a $20 Amazon credit. It's that simple finish three by three three and get 20 bucks. How easy is that? There's nothing to enter. Audible will keep track of your progress for you. If you're looking for a recommendation that's on theme, I just finished range. How Generalist Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein, which is all about the different kinds of backgrounds that successful people have. Is it better to be broad and shallow or narrow but deep? If that sounds interesting to you, audible members can choose three titles every month, one audiobook and two exclusive audible originals you can't hear anywhere else. Also audible members get access to exclusive guided fitness programs to help start the new year off right and you can listen at any device at any time to start listening with a 30 day audible trial. Visit audible.com slash hello internet or text hello internet to 500-500 that will get you started with one audiobook and two audible originals absolutely free. So again, to start listening with a 30 day audible trial, visit audible.com that's a UD I B L E dot com slash hello internet all one word or text hello internet all one word to 500-500. Thanks to audible for helping people learn what they need to know to achieve their goals and thanks to audible for supporting the show. Okay, Gray, it's time. Okay. Starlink. Okay. Should we explain what it is? Everyone knows because they've all been asking us to talk about it. Okay, well you need to when you say starlink, you need to explain starlink to me because I need to explain it. Yeah, you sent me an article which is about satellites in the night sky with this headline that I adore. The night sky is increasingly dystopian. Right. Oh, good job there. Article author. But I'm actually like I so I know about SpaceX. Obviously we've talked about it on the show before, but I'm totally unfamiliar with starlink. I'm not aware of this. It sounds like it's a project of SpaceX. I'm presuming. Starlink entails launching up to 40,000 spacecraft into orbit in order to create a network that will enhance global broadband communication. Awesome. Other companies such as Amazon say they have similar plans. So there's this plan to put loads and loads and loads of spacecraft to create a big network in specs to give better network connectivity and stuff like that. Is the idea like it's consumer facing internet? Is that like is that the idea? I believe so. Yeah, well the Amazon are doing it as well and stuff here. Ping time to space. So brutal. Yeah. The problem is this is like this is going to be like an exponential increase in the number of gizmos and gadgets up in space. The people that are making the most noise about astronomers because these things actually are quite visible. Satellites are surprisingly visible in space. I think because we live in cities a lot of us, we don't really see them because we don't see stars much at all. But if you go somewhere really dark and just lie down and watch space for a while, you see a surprising number of satellites now and this is just going to go through the roof. And also they follow each other in these like trains so they're even more noticeable. So astronomers are up in arms because at the moment they can still do astronomy with the existing satellites that are up there but these things are really going to start getting in the way of all their attempts at imaging things. They're probably not the most sympathetic group but there are other deeper concerns about this practice which seems to be going on pretty much unchecked. Okay wait, I have to know why are they not the most sympathetic group? Well because they're such a minority. Like most people would rather have better access to Facebook than care about imaging and drometer. Oh god, what a brutal way to say it. Oh god, Brady, that's a terrible way to say it. Sorry. Okay, so you're saying they're not sympathetic because there aren't very many of them so people don't care. That's. People don't care about space that much. I thought you meant like, oh astronomers, we all know what they're like. They're real bastards and so people wouldn't care. It's just they don't have a lot of sway. Okay, all right. That's what people don't care about. They're output that much. Yeah, that makes more sense. Yeah, the article that you sent me was, it was an interesting read with a ridiculously overblown title. I don't know how the word dystopian is supposed to describe streaks in the sky but okay, whatever. Okay, the headline is on the one I'm looking at. He says, be wary of Elon Musk, dispoiling the vault of heaven, which is even more dramatic. Wow. Okay. Then we're caught in the crossfire of generating clicks across the internet, right? Yes. You can describe this in the most dramatic way. Dispoiling is great. Actually, there's like a little minor note, a thing that I've noticed. I made this video ages ago about how I'm like, oh, things that make you angry, like this research, like things that make you angry are the most charitable on the internet. And it seems like this has evolved slightly both with the research and what happens on the internet that the subcategory of anger that really works is anger that hits on the concept of disgust. And like when you tune into this, you can start noticing it everywhere. Like this is the hammer that people really hit on is like disgust. So that's why I was looking at like dispoiling, right? Like that's a sort of disgust word to try to crank up the clicks. It's good. Anyway, yeah. This image, which is a little brutal of like this hexagon that's been put together of the observations from the telescope at night trying to take pictures of the night sky, does have these, I don't know, just 20 or so horizontal streaks across the image. That is pretty bad. Like if you're trying to do astronomy, that would be hugely frustrating to have to throw away big portions of your image or to just have like little strips of your image that you can use that would be super frustrating. And reading through the article, what made me laugh is this image is the result of 19 satellites. But as you keep going through the article, the numbers just keep getting larger and larger of like, oh, yes, these were 19. But there's another 60 being launched on Monday. And the FCC has approved the launch of 12,000 more. And there's 30,000 applications in progress. And like, I can easily imagine that this in a relatively short period of time could basically render ground-based astronomy ridiculously impractical. And that sucks for astronomers. But you know, you're not wrong when you say that people want their Facebook and deep space astronomy, what have you done for me lately? That's not what I'm worried about though. I mean, I love astronomy more than most people. Right. So obviously I feel sad for astronomers not being able to take pretty pictures and learn about, you know, galaxy evolution. But I do realize that's not super important for people's day to day lives. But I am worried about, well, I'm worried about a few things. I'm mildly worried about what it will mean for things like asteroid observation, which is important. You mean as in trying to spot our planet, it's a global killer. Right there. Great. Perfect. I'd also, you know, makes me a bit worried about trapping ourselves on Earth as we put more and more debris up in space. That I would list as my one concern. Yeah. Because like these things eventually are going to start smashing into each other and things are going to go wrong and we're going to get more and more cluttered up there and eventually we're going to trap ourselves on Earth. Yeah. I know we need more stuff up there, but it just feels like we haven't really thought about it. We're just doing it and not thinking about it. Yeah. But when it comes to like the wholesome argument, which I'm sure you're expecting from me, which is when you laugh at. That's what I'm waiting for. Yeah. I do think it's a bit like short-sighted to fill up the only thing that no one owns with debris, visual clutter. It could be advertising next, but for people in 100, 200 years to be denied a view of space, which is the only thing which like no one owns and no one can ruin. Like, you know, you can ruin your own country, but no one's supposed to be able to ruin space. To do that just seems like thoughtless and a wonder if it's necessary, especially the way technology is changing, like for say in 100 years, everyone in the world will be able to have perfect internet on their phone because of some new technology that doesn't require something as crude as satellites. We will have for this brief period filled space up with tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of objects, which will ruin everyone's view of space for hundreds of years and have possible other repercussions without having everybody thought it through. And for a very short term benefit. To address those two points, the thing about getting trapped on Earth, that strikes me as the immediate concern. I used to do a lesson on this forever ago. I don't know if it still exists, but there at one time was in Google Earth, you could subscribe to like NASA's public data of all of the objects in space orbiting the Earth. And it was always a great lesson demo to be able to pull out and show, oh, here are all of the objects orbiting the Earth right now. And it always got a bit of like a dramatic gas from students. Partly because the icon size wasn't like, it's not possible to have it be too scale. So it just looks terrible. It looks like there's a bunch of garbage just flying all around the Earth, which is kind of great. Like, oh, yes, the satellite icon they use is like a thousand times larger than the actual satellite can be. They do think it is a civilization worrying problem, the problem of space junk. And inadvertently trapping people on Earth. And for those not aware, it's not just about the stuff that's orbiting up in space. It's the concern of starting a cascade of failures that if like a couple of objects collapse, they break into lots of pieces. And then you start to get a cascade effect of like more stuff breaks. And a single screw orbiting around Earth is a deadly projectile for anything trying to get into orbit. That strikes me as like the main concern here. The visual one, I don't know how to rate that. I love at least in the article that I'm looking at. They have this sentence which you'll enjoy where there's a demo video of what might the night sky look like with all of these satellites. This is in the Vaux-Autico, yeah. Yeah. And it says, keep in mind, this is a YouTube video and may not look all that impressive. Which I just kind of love. Like, what do you mean it's a YouTube video? Like, I don't like the way you phrase that Vaux. And their time lapse is deeply unimpressive for, oh, this is what the night sky would look like, sped up with 12,000 satellites. So like, I'll agree with you that if someone is putting a bunch of satellites up in outer space and then drone like having them fly in synchrony to spell out Pepsi across the night sky, I will be severely irritated. Like, that's bad. But if we just have a bunch of dots that move across the sky at night, I don't know, I have a hard time reading that as like, dispoiling the sky. Surely this is just like seeing airplanes at night as well, flying across the night sky. Yeah, but they're not permanent. You can stop them with a slash of a signature. Like would you accept dots going all over the Mona Lisa? Well, if it meant that we could get internet all across Earth, I would say for sure. Right. Obviously. I'm not going to be able to overrate it. That's part of the calculus here is it's not just a question. If you're asking in the abstract, is the night sky improved by putting a bunch of dots on it? The answer is no. But if you're weighing it against the practicalities of increased communications technology, it's like, well, maybe I'm willing to make this depending on what we're talking about here. Yeah, I just hope it's not like short term fixed. But coming back to what you said before though, I mean, you said it almost casually where you said that you only have one concern like for civilization. Like sure, if something is a concern for civilization, like that sounds like a pretty big deal. So if there's even a chance, we're going to trap our souls on Earth because of our desire for better Instagram. Right. Then we're going to look pretty stupid one day, aren't we? As we're all dying here on this planet, you know, from global warming or getting hit by asteroid or whatever finishes us off. And people go, oh, gee, why didn't they leave? Oh, they couldn't. They were trapped. They were trapped on their planet by all this stuff. Oh, that's so sad. How did all that stuff get there? Oh, they put it there themselves. They put it there themselves. How come? Oh, because of Twitter. All right. Okay. Maybe they should be dead. They were really frustrated that the uploads took so long from Instagram Island. Yeah, exactly. So I'm aware there are, you know, I live in a part of the world where I have really good internet access. Yeah. And I know there are people that have no internet access. I'm not blind to that. And if everyone in the world, including people who have no internet, could have good internet, you know, and the only price was it's harder to do imaging from ground-based telescopes. And astronomers have got to find more tricks and fixers to get looks at things. I would say, yeah, I'm sad about that, but yeah, of course, we've got to do it. There are all these other implications. And it just happened as well. Like it wasn't until the first styling satellites were launched that even astronomers started talking about it. I can't believe how under the radar this was. Yeah. This is a bit like when a tech company descends on your city and drops a bunch of electronic scooters from an airplane and they just like run away and leave the scooters there. Like, you know, nobody was expecting them to just show up. It does feel like the satellites were a bit like that of getting launched quite suddenly. Yeah. I like, yes, I did say the existential threat to humanity quite casually. Yeah. But there's something very interesting about existential threats, Brady. And it's that when I find myself thinking about them, you know, everything in life is a trade-off. Like, there are no solutions. There are only trade-offs. You can have more of this, but it'll get you less of that or whatever. That's everything in life. Yeah. But existential threats are very hard to square with where does this go in your mental model? Because the downside is, oh, everything you and anyone has ever or can ever love is gone forever. It's like, wow, that's terrible. You know, if the word bad means anything, that's bad. I know that's really bad. Yeah. And so I always found myself kind of thrown in trying to think about this stuff because you're trying to balance an equation, but one of the terms is negative infinity. And it just makes it hard. Like, if you sat down and you thought, okay, let's list out a bunch of existential threats. And we've talked about AI on the show a while back, which I was convinced I changed my mind on of like, oh, this is an actual threat that's really worth considering. And you just mentioned planet killer asteroids coming for the earth. And then there's the super volcano under Yellowstone National Park and like, is all of these possible things? And it's just, it's hard to know how to like, do the math on, well, what's the probability of these events? So that's why I think you can, I can kind of like casually make reference to civilization being trapped on earth and inevitably dying here because it's just, it's hard to know how to square this against the benefit of, oh, but my internet's a little faster. Or I have internet when I'm like, lost on a lifeboat somewhere in the middle of the ocean. That kind of thing. It's just hard, it's hard to know how to think about that in relation when doing a trade off calculation. I just, I just don't know how to think about it.
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