H.I. No. 37: Penguins and Politics

"H.I. #37: Penguins and Politics" is the 37th episode of Hello Internet, released on May 14, 2015.
==Official Description==
Grey and Brady discuss: autoplay on YouTube and Netflix, the Hello Internet / Star Wars / Zoo day, link roulette, death (yet again), the UK general election and the nature of democracy and representation.
==Show Notes==
*H.I. #36 post show
*Computerphile Emoji
*Grey: Primary Elections Explained
*Tom Scott
*How to turn off YouTube autoplay
*Grey's videos on RSS
*Brady on YouTube
*Bristol Zoo
*CGP Grey the penguin
*David Prowse
*Photos from the day at the zoo
*Hello Internet on Patreon
*Star Wars despecialized edition
*Grey signing time lapse
*UK General election 2015
*Grey's GE Pie chart
*Grey's alternatives to First Past the Post voting
 
In the last episode, you put that bit of sort of lag-napped bonus footage at the end. And I think you put that lag-napped footage in because it like justified you. But I think it justified me. Like it vindicated my memory and you think it vindicated your memory. I put that little audio clip at the end in to vindicate me. However, there was a problem when I exported it that it did not include your audio. It only included my audio. And if you only listened to my side of the conversation, it definitely sounded like you were right. But trust me people, I was right. That definitely would not work in court. That wouldn't work in court. I'm presenting this episode to you, and it actually makes my client look guilty. But trust me, it makes him look not guilty. We have very little follow-up before we get to the business of penguins and politics, which I think are going to dominate this podcast. We talked about emoji and my ignorance of emoji. And to sort of set the record straight and help me better understand how emoji works. Rather embarrassingly, everyone has been pointing out a video on the computer file channel, which of course is my channel. But I must hasten to point out, I do not make all the videos. In fact, I make hardly any of the videos on there. And I do not watch all of the videos on there. It's run by my friend Sean. And he made the video with Tom Scott all about emoji, which I had watched some off to be fair, but kind of had forgotten bits of it. So when everyone's saying, Brody, how can you not know this? You've got a whole video that you made about it. I have not made a video about it. A video was made about it on my channel, but not by me. So it is a bit awkward and embarrassing, but it's not like I made the video and then forgot all this stuff. To be fair though, you could not possibly be expected to remember everything that has happened in all of the videos that you have made. How many topics have you covered for which you retained no knowledge now? I mean, it must be hundreds of topics. That is, but I guess we'll have gotten to the point where there are videos I've completely have forgotten making, you know, having made. But I will also say that I am sometimes caught out slightly embarrassed in conversations for the same phenomenon where someone is asking me about a detail of something in my video. And of course, I have made vastly fewer videos than you. And I find that my brain almost just dumps a huge amount of the knowledge that I have acquired once the video of making processes over. And so I am really aware of how if I'm ever thinking about linking back or vaguely referencing one of my videos, I will have to watch that video again because I can't remember all the stuff that I researched about it. Like, I'm just to pull one out of the air. I remember putting together a video about how the primary election system works in the United States. And I remember being very interested in that. And today I could not confidently tell you very much about the details of how that works. I would need to reference my own video even though I made it. So these things can slip through the mind even if you do create them. The thing that's even worse is I actually still haven't gone back and watched it. I was going to say, are you about to enlighten me on the process by which emoji are selected? No, I'm just going to recommend a fantastic computer file video featuring the brilliant Tom Scott. It was a really good video. It has been a good one. It is a good one. Tom is very good. He puts together a lot of good ones. Yeah, but I still haven't gone back and watched it. But speaking of YouTube, we only have one more follow up item here. Yeah, I think this isn't even really a follow up item. We basically have a tiny segment now, which is called YouTube half-assury. We can't have a segment that I can't pronounce, Gray. You just make me look bad every week. Half-assury, half-assury. There you go. It's perfect. It's perfect, Brady. Don't overthink it. You're doing great. This isn't exactly half-assury so much as just a complaint that I want to formally lodge with YouTube. It is there. I'm not exactly sure how new it is, but it is their auto-play feature now. Are you familiar with this new auto-play feature? I thought auto-play was really old. Then it went away and has it come back? Is this different to what I'm thinking of? You're going to have to help me out here. What they have had for a long time and what I believe they used to call auto-play was if you link to a video that is in a playlist, the YouTube will automatically play the next video in that playlist. It feels like within the past six weeks or so, if someone sends you a YouTube video and they say, oh, here, watch this funny cat video and you click on the link and there's a cat doing something funny for 10 seconds. The instant that video is over, YouTube automatically starts playing another video. Don't think if you're like a 10-second countdown or something, but it's really hard to figure out where to click. There's a little dial on the screen that counts down from five or maybe it counts down from one. I don't know. Whatever it is, it seems to go by so fast. It's really hard to figure out what to click to stop it. Yeah. Yeah. I know that I have done it wrong almost every time because I think the center of the circle has a little triangle which says, like, play. Do you want to skip this countdown and just immediately, I know I've messed it up many times trying to not play the next video and always end up playing it anyway. But I find this feature just so anti-user is the best way to put it or it's the user hostile. Nobody would request this and say, oh, you know what I would love. I would love if every time I went to a YouTube video, it also showed me a random YouTube video that I did not request. Nobody would want this. There is one person who may request that. You, because if someone has just watched a CGP gray video, I think it's more likely than not the recommended next video will be another CGP gray video. So actually, if anyone benefits from this, it's you and me. Well, I don't think it is because as far as I can tell, when I have occasionally watched YouTube videos that have been produced by any of the people in our circle who make educational videos, the next video just seems to be random. It's not like if I watch a smarter everyday video, the next one is a smarter everyday video as well. It's bizarre. It's absolutely bizarre. And they're using their, you know, who knows whatever it is, their magic algorithm to select a video out of the ether for you to watch next. It's just such a hostile system. And I know what YouTube is doing. Like the only reason this something like this happens is I have to imagine a bunch of bored members at YouTube sitting around, smoking their cigars in a dimly lit evil looking meeting room saying, we need to inflate view numbers for advertisers so we can make more money. How can we best do this? I know. Let's make sure to randomly start playing videos at every possible opportunity. And oh, well users love it. No, users will hate it, but it'll definitely at least double our view numbers, which will also double our revenue. When I think of this feature, that's how I imagine this went down in a meeting. Like I would love to hear from YouTube. Tell me YouTube, what do you think is the benefit to users of this feature? I can't, I have a very hard time imagining a convincing argument for that. Well, of course, that can imagine what they'd say. They'll say, oh, it's helping them discover new and amazing content they would never have otherwise have found. We are using our clever algorithm to navigate them through the jungle and help them find the best possible content that I can easily imagine what their layman's it will be. Yeah, I'm sure that's what they would say, but their mouth would just be smelling like bulls**t at the whole time we're speaking. That's all it would be. It's like, oh God, can you please turn away? I don't talk to me directly when you're saying this. I must admit, I felt a bit dirty even saying it because it is dirty. It's a lie. It's a lie that you tell yourself and that you tell others. Netflix are the masters of this. I mean, you need a you need a degree in computer science and the reflexes of a jaguar to avoid the next film or the next TV show starting at the end of a Netflix show. Like because the screen shrinks and they say, this is going to start in 10 seconds and you're like, you've got your little like Apple remote or your computer going, oh, where do I watch which button do I click here? Made me. How do I how do I stop it from the rest? Oh, the next one's already started. It's very funny. It's very funny that you mentioned this because I was actually going to use Netflix as the counterfactual to this. We have recently signed up with Netflix and we've been using it a little bit. And I actually really like their auto play feature when you're binge watching television. Of course. Right. I think that like that is nice. That is exactly what I want. I was like, hey, guess what? Netflix, you're right. I do want to watch the next episode of Daredevil. Please just keep it playing on the screen. Like let's let's let's work our way through this. I don't watch movies very often on Netflix though. So I don't know. Do they start playing a random movie when your movie ends? I don't think they do. I'm applying more to TV as well. Like when I'm watching something like at the moment, we're watching the good wife and you always get the next one straight away. And I'm going to quote you back to you. I remember you talking about kindles, I think it was, and finishing a book and saying, can I just have a few seconds to just absorb what happened and think about it and not have another book like recommended to me immediately? I think that's what Netflix do at the end of an episode or a show when something's just happened and you've had a finale. I feel like I want just a few seconds to absorb it or maybe turn to my wife and talk about what just happened. Not be sort of panicking trying to think, oh no, how can I stop the next one starting? I don't want to say, I don't want to catch the first few seconds of the next one because I might spoil something or ruin the moment. Like, and I can't believe you don't think that. I can't believe you don't think, hang on guys, just give me a second. Well, at least let me make a simple command to say, let's have the next episode. Don't just shove it at me. Don't throw it at me before I've had time. Yeah, I'm realizing actually last, yes, last night we did watch in my house a movie on Netflix and it did not auto recommend another movie. And I would completely feel that way of, hey guys, give me a second. I've just watched the Hobbits and I need a little time to just recover, to grave. You can't start playing legally blonde right away because it's just too much of a tone shift. So they don't do it with movies. But with TV, and particularly I feel that a lot of the Netflix TV is designed to be watched right in a row. So I don't have that feeling at the end of an individual television episode. Usually at the end of a TV episode, my exact thought is I need the next one right now. I'm not saying don't make it easy to watch the next one. I'm just saying don't make it almost compulsory and difficult to avoid. Because like I always have like my wife, we say, quick stop it, stop it before I and I'm like, I don't know where to click. I don't know how to stop it. And like the next one has started before I figured it had to work my Apple remote and I went the wrong angle for the infrared and I'm like, oh no, the next one's already started and like, see everything about this to me is really funny because one, I love the notion of the technological problem is being 50% of the problem in your house. TV setups, like actual physical TV setups are always very difficult about which remote and what's the input and how to do this. And I don't live my life like that where I'm almost always watching Netflix just on an iPad with my headphones. And so I can just reach out with my hand and exactly press the button that I want. And there's none of this remote nonsense. Or when my wife and I watch TV, we don't actually watch it on a TV. We just have an iMac that functions as a television. So it's just the big computer. But yeah, once you have remote, yes, there's going to be panic and problems and things are going to go all wrong. And it seems like maybe you are more susceptible than that to most people. But I don't think Netflix are as evil as the way YouTube are doing it. But I still think they haven't nailed it. And I think you're being too kind on them. I would say that the Netflix feature can be genuinely customer-centric. And you know that it is because they don't have ad numbers that they are potentially trying to inflate. And as far as I can tell, they are always showing you the next thing in a sequential series. As opposed to YouTube, which almost certainly is just trying to inflate ad numbers. And as we have discussed many times, has no concept of serial content, no concept at all. There's just two other minor points while we're while we are talking about this that I just wanted to mention, which when I originally set up my RSS subscription so that people could use RSS to get my videos. I had a huge number of people say, oh, but don't you know on your YouTube channel, there's a there's an RSS feed that people can sign up for. So they can be notified of when you have a new video up. And since we know that YouTube seems to be changing the way that their business works, one of the things they have now done is they have taken away the built-in RSS feeds. So I've heard from a lot of people who who used to be tracking all of their videos from various channels in order with RSS that is now not an option YouTube has taken that away. And apparently the subscription section on YouTube that people used to be able to go to to see all of the videos, see all the channels that they have subscribed to. It used to have a feature called collections where you could arrange a bunch of channels together to say, oh, I want to see all the new videos from my favorite educational YouTubers. So here's Crash Course and here's Periodic Videos and here's CGP Gray and I can see new ones from this group. And I got a whole lot of emails from people saying that YouTube has also removed this feature. So it's just it's so clear like piece by piece YouTube is taking away all of these little abilities for the user to control and keep track of their own viewing experience. And they just keep pushing more and more of these features that sort of do it automatically or they want to try to handle it for you. And I don't I don't like that. I don't like that at all. I just want to say do keep watching our videos on YouTube though people. Like I feel like we spend all our love telling people how awful YouTube is and yeah it's like our job. Well you can watch my videos on RSS or on YouTube. I'm perfectly fine either way. Please don't send Brady and I tweets or emails about how you can turn off the YouTube auto play feature. I am very aware that this is a possibility. I'm sure Brady knows that you can turn off the YouTube auto play feature as well. But there are many reasons why it won't work unless you're logged in or it's remembered your preferences or you use a different browser. So we're just complaining about it because we come across it kind of a lot. But yes, I do know that you can turn it off but it is it cannot you'll still run into it even if you try to avoid it. Cool. I'm just trying to avoid a million emails. All right well good luck with that. Yeah, they've already been sent. That's the problem. I didn't say it in the beginning. So we've already gotten them and people never send the oh I'm sorry email which actually I wouldn't want anyway because it would just double the email load. This week's episode of Hello Internet is brought to you by Harries dot com. Harries was started by two guys passionate about creating a better shaving experience for all men. 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What awakened we had I saw a whole lot of you braiding that sounds rude we finally had a long awaited Star Wars penguin Bristol zoo David Browse meet hello internet extravaganza yes it was held on extravaganza is the word it was Saturday May the 9th and only a small number of people were there and at the risk of being a bit mean to the people who wanted to come but didn't get tickets I think we should talk about what a fun day we had and tell people a bit about it the good and the bad the highs and the lows the laughs the tears the good times the bad times any other opposite things I could say I don't know where you're going with this and also it didn't it didn't seem like a small group of people there were like 40 people there all told yeah but a lot more people wanted to come who didn't get tickets okay yes I guess if if we're looking at the set of people who wanted to come versus the set of people who came it was a small number of people but I'm thinking of it from the perspective of oh you and I right we should we show up at the zoo and there's a crowd of 40 people standing around that's a lot of people I guess I live near Bristol you you came up on the train you and your wife you came up and and met with met with us and we we went for lunch and you walked over the the Clifton suspension bridge one of my top five favorite bridges and you you got to say it I was very impressed with the Clifton suspension bridge it looked very nice even though half of it was under renovation at the time you took a photo were you doing that just to sort of to humor me to make me feel good or did you actually want a photo of it I would never humor you in in such a way Brady I thought it was great to get a photo of you and I in front of the bridge yeah I thought that was really good you know I and you have to you have to remember the day this this is this is the thing as you need the photographs otherwise future you will never will never remember what past you did unless you have photographs that's true I'll be saying gray you never came to the bridge and you'd be saying yes I did and I'll be oh no you didn't and then you say well look at this this is why we need proof right do I do this all the time I take pictures of stuff just to remember that it happened at some point right well I want to get us on the bridge and it was it was the world's most lovely day to walk across the bridge and go to the zoo we really lucked out with the weather which was nice we did indeed so we we arrived at the zoo and we met with all the various people who who had come along and the the first part of the day was a zoo expert whose name I believe was Nigel he was like a curator of birds and he gave us all a special little talk about the penguins because this whole day was raising money for African penguins conservation of them which is done at the zoo and down in South Africa and at that point the first surprise of the day was sprung upon you you know I like surprises and I know and I you like surprises and you like being given objects and those two things both happened much much to my surprise you had sneakily arranged for a penguin to be named after me at the zoo is that the best way to describe how this how this came out I was almost overwhelmed and confused when it happened and I was trying to think who did this and I think you did this you arranged this well I suggested it's it's actually very unusual for animals at the zoo to be formally named and I think only one or two penguins of the numerous penguins at the zoo have names but but because we managed to with the help of reviewers raise so much money for the conservation of penguins and because maybe they just thought we were nice guys the zoo said okay we will we want we're going to name a penguin CGP Gray and they had a couple of newborn chicks so I went along on the Thursday before and said all right let's get some photos and video footage of the penguin so when Gray finds out I can put a video on YouTube or a blog and we can you know share everyone what the penguin looks like so I went along to the zoo and they had not yet chosen the penguin and there were there were two chicks so I turned up at the enclosure with the the keepers and they said all right well which one are we going to call CGP Gray and the decision was made so easy by the fact that there was one big fat very gray fluffy penguin called Gray with a gray number tag on its wing just sitting there next to its dad doing nothing and the other one was nowhere to be seen the other one was off having adventures so I said I'm going to choose that one the other penguin having adventures is informally named breeding well that's not the case but the big fat slow one doing nothing procrastinating yes is the same thing for me yeah asking for its father to vomit into its mouth that is CGP Gray so and I will tell you the penguin that is named after Gray always named CGP Gray is the one wearing the wing tag number A20583 you need binoculars are very good vision to see because the tags are very small so that is you and there's a certificate they gave you an official certificate to do it and there's these official database of zoo animals and that's going to be officially amended to have your name on it so it becomes the real deal but the thing I didn't tell you and the thing I need just found out is we don't actually know what gender CGP Gray is and that is not something we'll find out until it has its six monthly health check when they take a sample and send it off they don't like lift up the feathers and have a look they do it with science so in about four months time we will find out if CGP Gray the penguin is a boy or a girl and presumably by that time it'll be more of a black and white penguin not such a gray penguin like it is at the moment when you say they do it with science they do it with a DNA test is that what you mean I think so I think they take a bit of blood and they also take like feather samples and they do it with that so I'm presuming they just yeah they must just do it with DNA you know about chicken sexers yes but what do they do that what's the skill to that the skill to being a chicken sexer is being able to quickly identify the sex of a chicken and there are some very funny videos of chicken sexers at work picking up chickens very quickly pulling up some feathers and then putting them in a pile whether they are the whether they are male chickens or whether they are female chickens yeah so I thought that I thought they'd do that with the penguins but I think they'd like to touch them as little as possible and you know keep it keep it real I'm sure CGP Gray the penguin would also prefer to be touched as little as possible yes so if people go to the show notes but hopefully by the time this goes out we will I'll have got make together properly with Gray and we'll have pictures available and there's a little video of the penguin but the the challenge I want to throw down is I want people to go to Bristol Zoo and take their own pictures or have a selfie with CGP Gray the penguin in the background and if you do that and sort of tweet it or email it or whatever you are going to get the love at least from me maybe even from Gray it's going to be quite a challenge to find that penguin in that enclosure yeah I mean first of all you got to go to Bristol Zoo so but even once you're there this is this is people going to be the hardest where's Waldo ever yeah especially when Gray grows up a bit and looks like all the other penguins at the moment he's quite unique because he's fluffy and gray and all the other penguins are black and white but in a few months when he becomes black and white you're right that's going to be that's going to be hardcore is basically the challenge is on easy mode now but in so if you want to practice while it's easy now is the time to go and then you can go later and show off your amazing penguin identifying skills later on because they did say the zookeeper did say that all of the penguins eventually develop a unique pattern of of black spots on the front of their chest in day so maybe maybe someone when CGB Gray is an adult can find him or her and take a picture and show us the unique pattern of spots on CGB Gray do you feel any kind of attachment or bond like a you know curious about sort of this penguin's future or you just like whatever you stupid Brady or you're going to be like like do you think you'll go to the zoo again to say it or anything this is this is the crazy this is the crazy irrational thing that does work we're thinking oh yes for for non-sensical reasons I do feel like I hope that penguin turns out okay I hope he has a great life in the zoo or in South Africa if they reintroduce him into the wild I don't know if they do that I don't I don't think that will happen to that penguin it could get transferred to another zoo but I don't think they would release that to the wild I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't even know what I'm talking about I feel like CGB Gray the penguin would vastly prefer the easy zoo life then living in in South Africa that might be much harder I have already told them that I want to go along and film the six month health checkup when they do take him in and take laden feathers and stuff and I have also told Gray that I'm gonna I'm gonna take some extra special pictures and do extra updates for the for our Patreon supporters so if you follow hello internet on Patreon you will occasionally get like an extra high res picture and like health updates and stuff mainly because I think only those people are kind of interested enough to be subjected to such minutia of our life I think that is an excellent excellent thing to put on the patreon yeah I was more I was more flattered than I expected to be and I was and it was it was a very nice if quite surprising and and and slightly derailing for for a few moments thing to have done to me so thank you very much for that Brady and of course thank you to the zoo for doing it did you have you told your family about it yet okay so I did tell my my family about it and particularly when I was telling my parents the very first question out of their mouth was why didn't Brady get a penguin that was the the first question well I'll tell you what I am more than happy for you to have the penguin because I find that far more amusing but but I will say something that happened later on and ruin the chronology of the day because later in the day the zoo actually did spring a surprise back on me and it wasn't that they've named a lion or something after me but what but they do do is they do have a very limited number of animals that people can adopt and for example in the penguin enclosure there's one penguin that everyone adopts I think it's called something like poly or something like that poly the penguin but they made a special exception and they have made me the official adopter of CGP grade the penguin and actually look at that I have this in front of me here it's in a box I have to open this box but I've even got I have an adoption certificate which which I'm holding in front of me and we'll we'll put a scan on the you know notes and stuff like that certificate of adoption this is to certify that Brady Heron has adopted CGP grade the penguin and I've got you got parental responsibilities now I've got all these birth certificates and it's really like official looking document it's really nice it's somewhere between a real birth certificate and having a cabbage patch kid but but anyway that's fantastic so I was not left out you may have a penguin but I kind of have I have a dot I have the adoption of you so everyone was a winner and everyone came away with a little certificate I will keep mine and probably display it in some way what Gray will do with his well who knows who knows who knows if he even still has it but I'm sure he does I'm sure I'm sure even Robock Gray couldn't throw that one in the trash it is in my wife's handbag as we speak I was just going to carry everywhere a sheet like maybe that's the plan I don't know maybe I'll figure it out anyway it was it was a really fun little moment it was really good we then all and I cannot tell you how beautiful the weather was we then went into the penguin enclosure and went to like the public talk and like another zookeeper came out and like did the talk to everyone about penguins while they were feeding them fish and stuff like that CGP grade was just hiding in the corner with his mom or dad he or she did not partake of the fish because Gray's too young for that sort of thing but all the other penguins were just freaking out and eating tons and tons of fish I do have to say that is the moment that I felt the closest to CGP grade the penguin was when there was a huge huge amount of activity and hustle and bustle going on in this penguin arena and he or she decided that the corner was the best place to be the corner behind a bush basically by himself well asleep asleep if we're going to be honest that CGP grade was sleeping the whole time and there was a moment when the the zookeeper sort of said oh and by the way thank you to hello internet for coming and your support for the penguins like she'd obviously been told to say this and clearly had no idea what how the internet was and it sounded like the most robotic thank you but it was really funny and yeah I felt strangely like I was like oh wow like we're a real thing now because a zookeeper said it's to a crowd of people and I just said this is this was all this was all you're doing really you know I had nothing to do with it pulled this whole thing together I mean the day you made the day happen and you should you should take pride the zoo mate the zoo did all the organizing I just bought two few instructions and gave a few tips and said who would be funny if you named a penguin after Gray and stuff like that it was Abby from the zoo he did all the actual work so thank you to her so anyway now all of this time by the way not only were we joined by 30 to 40 hello internet listeners we were joined by David Prouds Darth Vader himself he wasn't just going to swan in at the end he actually came and listen to the talks and was I was hanging out with us it was great I got a chance to to shake the hand of a man who has crushed many people's throats through telekinesis it was quite the honor it was good so from the from the penguin enclosure although it was a beautiful day we did what all kind of nerdy people do and went inside to watch videos honestly that did feel like the most perfect moment or I was like look at this beautiful day we're going to go inside and watch a movie yeah so we uh we went into a little nice little sort of education center they have at the zoo where they set up a little uh makeshift cinema we were given some biscuits and some tea and we hung out a bit and then we all took our seats and it was time to watch it was time to watch Star Wars episode four and you hope with Darth Vader in the audience yes it was a special time wasn't it it was a very special time it was a very special time now I want to I want to say something about this little moment we're watching Star Wars we're sitting down the lines are off the movie begins and the way this worked is when we were talking about originally we're we're going to be watching Star Wars one of my initial concerns was which version of Star Wars are we going to watch is the zoo just going to handle this how is this going to work and I wanted to make sure that we watched a version that I may have okay I'm not going to deny it a version that I do have which is the Star Wars D specialized editions so for people who may be unaware the D specialized editions are this kind of amazing amazing piece of work where I think it's a team of people have gone through and done their best to collect as much of the original footage um that has been made available from Lucasfilm from the original Star Wars and kind of correct the colors and clean it up but also take out all of the George Lucas special edition nonsense stuff that was added in what was it the late 90s I think there was a special edition I'm not 100% sure well there are a few different special editions weren't that it was kind of the the meddling was kind of done in stages that was yeah that was one of the things as well there are several versions of this but I don't I don't know exactly who was behind this but I can tell you that if I was if I was in charge of the government I would give the people who have done those D specialized editions a medal of cultural preservation of the highest order it's an amazing it's an amazing piece of work to see the only thing that's a little bit weird about watching them is that the resolution sometimes flips a bit from kind of low resolution footage to high resolution footage if they weren't able to to like get a couple of shots in high resolution because the only high resolution versions available are ones with specialized crap all over them yeah so the way this worked is is we discussed it and we're like okay obviously we have to watch the D special the D specialized editions so in my defense here grey you didn't even have to tell me this I basically came to you and said this is what we're gonna do and you you were like of course you were like you were you I felt like you were a bit proud of me like I said we're gonna we're gonna go for D specialized aren't we I had already thought about this and taken the ball by the horns I had already discussed this with the zoo like I was I was all over this I didn't need to be told this to be fair of the two of us I would probably say that you are the bigger Star Wars fan hmm I think if if you could rank Star Wars you would be higher on this than I am right and we've discussed this many times I think it's because you're like you are slightly older than I am I camera did you did you see them in the theaters or not I don't remember I saw the only one I saw in the theater was return of the Jedi but okay okay that would make sense yeah so yeah I never saw any of them in the theater I only ever saw them on VHS as a kid yeah so but anyway anyway this is this is all to the side so I had given you the D specialized edition and then you gave the D specialized edition to the zoo you'd give you'd actually given it to me quite a long time ago like almost a year ago you right yeah whenever whenever we first started talking about this yeah I gave it to you and then I think the day before the zoo I gave it to you again just to make sure I was like oh god we ought to watch the D specialized edition you sent it to me again but I said don't worry I've already given it to them I I sent it to them I said this is the one to show they said we'll have a DVD is back up and I said don't worry this is the one to show and I had electronically sent it to them I said make sure this works play it up on the big screen first if there's a problem that we know I'll bring it on a USB but yeah this is a there's a very particular version we want to show and they were they were they didn't know you from Adam but they were like all right we'll just we'll display what you said I'm absolutely sure that the zookeepers are like okay nerds like don't know why you're being so picky about this but whatever guys yeah but this this is basically the nerd equivalent of like there can be no green M&Ms in our M&M bowl like it has to be this exact file okay guys yeah but so anyway when we when we start to watch the movie suddenly there is a moment where there are stormtroopers riding dinosaurs basically and I thought oh my god this can't be but I was I was confused because I thought wait it's been a long time since I watched the D specialized edition where there's some shots that they just couldn't get any they couldn't get clear versions of and so were there a couple of shots with specialized stuff in it yeah they had to destroy their arms in the air and say we can't say if that one or something yeah so but and as the movie is going on I'm kind of getting more and more confused and I'm seeing stuff from the specialized edition but there's also a couple of shots where I'm thinking no I know that one Lucas put extra crap in but the extra crap isn't there so do I just badly remember the D specialized edition I basically was having a kind of anxiety attack in the back of the movie theater trying to think about like what what possibly happened and like am I just misremembering I thought the the D specialized edition was the greatest thing that humanity has ever produced you you giving at medals a minute ago I know and then I was like do I just do I just not remember it in particular there's there's a thing like there's one shot where R2D2 is hiding in a cave and I know for a fact CGI rocks were put all in front of him in a way that makes no sense but that wasn't in this version so I was like losing my mind and I thought oh my god I can't I don't know what's happening but as it was going on it became more and more clear it especially when a dinosaur walks in front of the screen and literally blocks out the entire frame for a couple of seconds I was like okay no this is definitely the special edition yeah or a special edition yeah a special edition and I thought I don't know how this happened and I thought I gave I gave Brady the file and I know Brady like Brady passed it on and I thought oh my god I have made a terrible mistake like well you know what did I do and I'm trying to pull out my phone and look on Dropbox to see like which version of the file did I give but you live on like the outer rim planets so you have no cell phone connection anywhere in that whole town as far as I can tell which is a slightly other complaint of mine but so I couldn't get Dropbox and I was freaking out I was I just couldn't believe it and then we get to the scene oh god Rohan Solo is talking to a CGI job of the hut and steps on his tail and there's like a squeaky sound when he steps on his tail and I swear when that came on screen I had to leave I had to step out I couldn't deal with it I pretended like I had to go to the bathroom I really didn't I just had to walk out of the room for a minute and like catch my breath and not also watch that absolutely horrible horrible scene doubting myself and I thought I somehow mess this up and all I was thinking of is is one of our earlier conversations where I talk about how I don't have any regrets this is going to be one of the things that I will regret until the end of time I made people watch the specialized edition not only that I made David Proud's Darth Vader himself watch the specialized edition and if it couldn't be any worse to add one additional dagger into my heart there were three people with us that day who had never seen Star Wars absolute Star Wars virgins and what do they see for the first time the specialized edition and I did not know how this happened yeah so I have to say my hat sank as well and I did have like a bit of a moment not least of all because I told people before the screening that we were going to watch the the despecialized one as well so I'd kind of bragged that don't worry we've got it under control guys and then we show them that some of those nonsense sayings but I have to say after I got over the initial shock I didn't I didn't take it quite as badly as you but it certainly was a a cock up of some scale the thing that is amazing is is the movie from my opinion like it still shines through the special edition right and it is still definitely enjoyable there's one thing that I wonder so I've occasionally heard that that younger people cannot tell the difference between the original Star Wars movies and the prequel Star Wars movies which is always horrifying to me whenever I hear this that there's there's kind of no distinction drawn and I was one as we were watching the specialized edition I thought huh I can kind of understand maybe why that would happen because everything that has been added in the specialized version is like the same kind of just childish or distracting stuff that is all over the screen that just doesn't need to be there that doesn't add anything to the plot yeah he sprites some of that crap all over the good stuff so I matched the bad stuff yeah and I was kind of I was watching and thinking like oh yeah I could see how the tone of these movies is much less different if you're watching the specialized edition at least in the very beginning of Star Wars so when Grace has specialized edition as he keeps saying he means special edition yeah as opposed to D specialized but yeah yeah that's yeah my bad my bad no no we know you mean I would be curious for feedback of people who who've seen that as the first time they do do they notice all of this stuff does this detract like I would want to do like an A B testing on on groups of the population who haven't seen Star Wars and see what you know what do they think of the specialized the special version versus the D specialized edition like does it make as much of a difference as I feel that it makes or what I actually I almost don't want to admit but is possibly quite likely am I just extremely sensitive to the changes because I love the original version so much well I would just I would be really curious to know I'm going to say to my credit first I I knew it was the wrong edition well before you did like I was very attuned to some very subtle differences early on like you I was thinking oh did the special did the D specializers you know have to make some compromises but I knew something was wrong very quickly so I'm going to say that to my credit to big myself up as a Star Wars fan oh well yeah you noticed you noticed a scene difference that I would never have noticed yeah I noticed sort of that the sky was different in a scene and things like that so so I'm thinking I'm I'm Mr Star Wars hero for that but just to bring things back down to earth for everyone and I'm sure people have guessed this by now already it was me who copped up spectacularly I supplied the wrong file because after the film I went up and checked it they put a DVD and I something and not use my file and the DVD they'd bought as a backup was still there in its plastic wrapper so and I'd seen them start a computer file so it could only be the file I supplied and then it occurred to me what I'd done wrong but we were talking about it in the car afterward and you realized that you had done a spotlight search for Star Wars yeah and dragged over a file and apparently you you have a copy of the special edition which is which is amazing to me well this is I don't know what you've watched it enough that spotlight things it's the it's the version you want well no that's not that's not the case but anyway I did have I did have both the D specialized and that special edition I don't want to incriminate myself but I imagine I had the specialized edition once when I very quickly needed a star wars scene for research purposes and right right probably yeah that's the only reason I have the D specialized edition is is as well I need it for research purposes for fair use research yeah so anyway I'm working on something like red letter media it'll never be out but I'm working no but anyway so I took the wrong version just copied it across and didn't check but finally enough as I as I look back over the mistakes I made there was an opportunity to pick this mistake up like an episode of air crash investigation where you look back over the things that went wrong and you find those moments where some engineer could have done something differently or some pilot could have flipped a different switch I did have that moment where I could have saved the day because I did check a few days before just to make sure the file worked like does this video even play in the end credits there is the start there and are there scenes in the middle so I randomly looked at a scene in the middle of the film and by coincidence it was the scene where Han Solo has his little interaction with Greedo in the Cantina of all the scenes that one I know interesting so I watched and thought okay let's watch to see if the shooting see the shooting happen and the shooting happened and I had that you know extra blast that was added where Greedo shot first and I was like oh so in the D specialized edition that's that's what was there that's interesting I never knew that and thought no more of it so after telling everyone beforehand that I got a good addition and telling Gray and that I stuffed up and actually I have not yet apologized to everyone who came for that mistake so this is my public apology it's my me a culper it was entirely my fault it was not my intention I'm embarrassed but I'm not surprised but because I'm rubbish and all this stuff things up but there you go sorry Gray sorry to Zoo sorry everyone I want to be clear I'm not going to let you take 100% of the blame because I was I was thinking later on initially when I found out it was it was you I've had this huge like oh thank God I have relief but later on I decided no no no I should have handled this the same way that I did and a lot of moments when you're teaching where everybody tripled check stuff and so I thought I should have checked the file as well I should have had a backup so this is also partly my fault I will not let you take 100% of the blame that that's kind of you I mean I don't agree but you can have you can you can have 5% you can have 5% of the blame makes you feel better so it'll take 40% afterward the man himself comes up the movie has ended we have we have applauded him I have to say that was one of my favorite moments from the day is the very first scene when Darth Vader steps steps on to the starship and everybody spontaneously just let out a big clap except I think you booed did you someone booed yeah I booed because I thought it's like the villain you've got to boo the villain like I thought that was the thing to do and everyone else was cheering like he was a hero just because he's in the room doesn't mean Darth Vader's not the baddie but he but Darth Vader's awesome I have that but that was my absolute favorite moment of the whole day is Darth Vader coming on screen is like the man himself is sitting here and everybody except Brady cheered and yes you're right you know booing is totally fine yeah but yeah so then then after the movie he went up to the front and he was taking questions and it was great yeah it was near charming man he is he is a very charming man very charming man yeah so he actually said I do not believe this I do not believe this is true but he said it's only like was only like the second time he'd watched the whole film from start to finish yeah I was I was squinting my eyes at that answer I thought I'm not sure I 100 percent believe this I mean you know I can imagine maybe he's just watched it in fractions like a million times but doesn't ever watch it from start to finish but that is quite possible actually that is very possible but anyway that's what he said and oh you know we'll take that as our exclusive our exclusive land our public policy will be we watched Star Wars with David Prouds for the second time he had ever seen the film yeah and he told us some nice lannic dots and bits and pieces and I guess we'll leave those for the people in the room to enjoy and save it because they were the lucky ones to be there and then he posed for a bunch of selfies and signed autographs for people I saw your wife went up and got selfie with with the man I noticed it was it was great you and I got a photo yeah with don't feel as well they definitely wasn't going to miss that opportunity yeah and then and then once once David had done his duty for for the zoo and for us he was able to depart and you'll all go spinning off in his tie fighter however you want to imagine it in fact my favorite part of the day was earlier on when there was a bit of like a traffic jam and we were outside and like I was trying to get out the way and David was following me on like he had like this motorized scooter because he's got a leg injury and he was following me and it was like I was being followed by Darth Vader in a tie fighter stay on target stay on target anyway he and his wife departed we were very grateful to them and then we had a chance to hang out with people and also do some selfies and we did say we were going to do some signatures and I thought we might have to sign a few posters and things like that uh what I did not expect was the incredible amount of technology we were asked to sign by my count I signed two kindles one with a keyboard one the beloved paper white three iPads and five or six phones yeah it was it was very expensive signing I was very nervous for this when someone hands you their phone I remember this in Alabama as like oh you know ha ha ha you know one or two people had assigned sign phones but then to have a line of people who are holding their iPads or phones it's like this is this is a lot of pressure not to mess this up to do a good signature yeah because I don't know I must mess up one in three signatures yeah yeah if if I have a I have a video of me doing a a timelapse of signing stuff of signing posters and you can see on there you know whatever it is one out of ten or so you can see that I have to like bin the poster because I apparently can't sign my own name but but you don't have that option when is that well there you know we have seven i devices that you need to sign in a row you need to get it right it has to be done right it's hugely pressurple I'm I'm happy to do it but boy is it a lot of stress yeah it's a lot of stress so I felt relief every time someone came up with a poster it was a bit like oh thank god I'm not going to accidentally ruin possibly one of the most important technological devices in your life with my terrible signature I felt like bit of a pretender sign in the kindle I think it was clearly okay because you're the you're the famous Kindle Complainer and like they got you to sign and then they're like oh Brady we sign my Kindle two and I'm like okay but clearly you just feel bad because I'm here and you've got to get me to do it too now but anyway you got you got to catch them all you got to catch them all you need both signatures yeah yeah it increases the resell value people came from very far and we appreciate all that Italy someone came from Italy bunch of people from Scotland yeah there was someone from Boston as well it was good I was I was doing my best all day long to try to try and and be able to talk to everybody at least for a little bit and the the group was as always big enough to be slightly intimidating but small enough that I felt like oh yeah I did get a chance to say hello to everybody and and that was as genuinely nice I mean as I kept saying to everybody on the day it is also just a kind of very strange experience from my perspective but it was it was it was really good to be able to meet people and and say hi and I really I really like the whole format of the day of oh we have stuff to do like we're just a group of people and oh we're going to the zoo and we're going to look at penguins and now we're going to watch a movie it had a very very different feeling to something like Alabama which which was an event so I quite enjoyed today and I felt for me anyway I made it much more natural to just kind of talk to people as as we're walking around and doing stuff in the day so I had a I had a pretty good time although I was very exhausted by the time I was over yes and I had an excellent time to thank you everyone one more time thank you people thank you Zoo and we look forward to seeing your pictures with CGP Greigh the penguin thanks everyone now most importantly after this you came back I don't live in Bristol I live outside Bristol you came back to to my place because you decided to spend the night down this part of the world so you stayed at at our house and you got to meet Audrey yes I stayed at Chanto Haran he did and I did get to meet Audrey and Lulu yeah I mean I've met Lulu before yes never touched Lulu because I don't want to make her too nervous or too upset did you touch her this time no no I wasn't going to bother you should you make a sound like some savage based she everyone touches and pets her she's love no no no it is it is it is the exact opposite is the exact opposite she is very calm and she is very sweet but I feel that with dogs I don't want to bother them right if she wants to come up that's perfectly fine but I was very happy to have Lulu around but I was not going to go bother her especially when she's lying on her doggy bed if a dog is lying on their little doggy bed that should be a safe space for them they shouldn't have people coming up and poking them and petting them they should always feel safe in the little doggy beds well you more than made up for it with the amount of touching of Audrey that could Audrey however is a very very friendly super happy little dog that I was very happy to pick up and to give belly rubs and to play with and to throw little toys for and it was very exciting to meet Audrey so that was that was also a high point of the trip I kind of felt like you huged Audrey a bit from your wife like because your wife quite liked Audrey and you yet you always the one holding and petting her I was I was not doing the hugging now that's not that's not true that's not true at all now no if anything I got far too little Audrey time and my wife was constantly holding Audrey as the way it seemed from from my perspective that's how it is with Audrey if you haven't got her like every every second you're not holding her seems like an eternity and yes I graded get to see the room that has antlers in it before you start doing the thing that you always do I want to get it on record that I think your house is extraordinarily well decorated I don't go in there and I'm not like oh repulsed which is what you always seem to think but is in 100% not the keys at all I know and everyone Gray was very nice he wasn't making jokes about the house he was very complimentary and he was a lovely house guest and we had a very nice time this episode of Hello Internet has been brought to you by fracture and if you've not heard of them before you should really check them out basically they're an online service which lets you print a photo or image directly onto glass now to really nifty technique very cool product for your house basically you'll get delivered your picture it can come in all sorts of sizes and it will be already to put on the wall with a screw hanger already included and like a special backing no frames no messing around it's all ready to go really striking if you'd like to see more the website is fracture me dot com you can order them in all sorts of sizes from a small 4.8 to 6.4 inches right up to a big one which is 28.8 by 21.6 now besides your own photos you can also order artworks I think it's a really good idea for a gift because it's a really personal thing when you give a friend or a loved one a picture that shares some kind of memory between the two of you but this has the added bonus of being like a really cool technology so when you give it to them it's a bit of a talking point like oh look at that how does that work oh it's printed on the glass that looks really cool also since learning about fracture I've been thinking about another cool thing you could do because basically I've heard there are lots of business people who order these things and they get like their logos or icons fractured onto glass using this technique so I was thinking imagine getting like a fracture or picture or some kind of graphic for every element on the periodic table and then hanging them on your wall as a giant periodic table like a massive art installation if you're any good at hanging things in straight lines and lining things up which admittedly I'm not I think that would be brilliant and you can still that idea you go ahead and do it now there's a very special offer for you listeners if you order one of these go to fracture me dot com so that's all one word fracture me dot com and then when you check out enter the code hello internet hello internet that means you get 15% off your first order and they'll know you came here from the show this is a really cool product if you actually want to see an action they've got a nice little video on their website too so go and check them out and thank you to fracture for sponsoring our show maybe we should get a fracture of CGP grade the penguin I reckon these fractures are the sort of things gray would hang in his house too because they're kind of minimalistic and cool I have a little paper cut oh you have a paper cut it's Brady's paper cuts yeah oh yeah you kind of sang that so my paper cut is something I occasionally am guilty of too but I but there are times when it's more acceptable than others my paper cut is when people send you a link to something in email but more often on something like twitter or social media and they don't tell you what the link is to so someone might tweet hey Brady you should look at this and there's a link which and you cannot tell from the link what it is or have you seen this or you will love this or I bet you hate this or check it out and you have no idea what you're clicking on and what you're going to go to and it could be something really worthwhile that you're glad you saw or it could be a complete and utter waste of time whatever it is I know less and less now because I have pretty much imposed a blanket ban on clicking on links when I'm given no idea what the link is going to be that's your hard and fast policy now it's well like like all of my policies it's more honored in the breach than the observance but it's porous yeah but but I am I am trying this does not apply to people to trusted sources so if Gray sends me a link and says watch this video and it just says youtube.com slash xyz43789 and I have no idea what the video is going to be I will watch it because Gray is a trusted source but if someone I've never met before emails or tweets and says Brady you have to see this I'm not going to click on that because it could be something awesome or it could be a complete waste of my time or it could be a joke or a prank or and I'm just like no go away if they say check this out Brady it's you know and they tell me what it is I can then make an informed decision mm-hmm so do you have a position on this so I mean this surely this comes under some sort of internet etiquette that you will have a policy on and have read about and know all about because you know everything about the internet I believe that what people are doing when they do this is they are trying to be intriguing and they are hoping that their intriguingness gets you to click on the link right I think that's what's going on in people's head I have filing right if anybody has spent a long time on the internet particularly I feel like the old slash dot days you learn pretty fast you don't just click on a link right just just for fun you don't want to play link roulette with your eyes and with your brain because you never know what you're going to see yeah there are things that once you see them they can never be unseen and so yes you don't play link roulette when someone just sends you a random link there's not going to happen I know tweets have limited characters but give me some context or at least make your case I probably still won't click on it because you may then be lying but but that will help the only thing in my life which is somewhat like this where I do click on the links is again when you say someone you know sends you something yeah and one person in particular who's kind of bad at this but lots of people do this where I will just get the people I know who know me well enough to be sending me eye messages will just send me a URL and so it'll it'll just be like a YouTube URL I cannot stop my brain from always assuming when you when presented with no context that whatever I'm about to click on is going to be horrible or that it's going to be some kind of problem that I have to deal with for the rest of the day someone stolen your video or something yeah yeah exactly like that or you know oh look here you know whatever there's a whole there's a whole universe of things that are sometimes problems that you have to deal with yeah so whenever I receive a context list link from someone I know very well every single time I have a moment of oh god what is this going to be yeah and I click on it and it's just I don't know maybe someone needs a title for their video or it's you know it's just something that they want to show me there's no reason that it's anything bad yeah but I my brain just assumes that it's going to be bad news and that it's a problem and it makes me sad so I do not appreciate the context list links either and I try to do the Ms. Little as possible but every once in a while you do you just send someone a link and then you know for fear of you digging through i message and then incriminating me terribly I do feel like I I try to do that with you if I send you a link I try to put some kind of context on it as in you know I want you to watch this I made it or something like so you so you're not playing that route yeah I feel like you're pretty good with that I feel like you're pretty good with that it's probably because of your of your policy you have not clicking on random links you're much more you're much more aware hmm that's what I think okay anyway that's my paper because I don't want to harp on it I've dealt with it there's something else that uh just came into my head the other day and it's one of those things I wanted to ask you about because you seem to know everything and have an answer to everything so I thought you'd know the answer to this now I'm worried I I noticed it like for a few days in a row that they were I know you don't read news sites so this doesn't actually apply to you but you're aware that news sites exist and you know I am aware of the news hasn't it yes yes and for a few days in a row I saw stories about semi-famous people dying and these were people who I'm going to be honest I probably hadn't heard of like you know this old this old lady has died and she was famous for some hits song she sang in the 1950s or this guy directed some film in the 1970s that was really popular and I don't know it but so we're getting so you quite often see stories about people famous people dying and sometimes you've heard of them and sometimes you haven't but there's always there's always one of them every couple of days so and so old person has died at the age of 83 she was a famous ballet dancer from the 1960s and caused a sensation with some controversy or something and you're thinking oh gosh now as the media becomes more and more saturated and I get older and older is there going to be a time in 20 years or so when there's just going to be so many famous people or so many people that did things that I may know about that the news industry is just going to be like 40 people dying a day because if I was shown a list of all the people who are older than me who I may have heard of that list is going to be massive now like it's going to be full of cricketers and sportsmen and movie stars and politicians and all these people have to die eventually and is there going to be a glut at some point as we all get older and older that every day there's going to be oh no now that cricketer who I liked when I was a teenager has died oh and today that TV star who I used to watch in that soap opera in the 1980s died like are we going to get a sudden like is this death thing going to get crazy eventually all right are you worried that newspapers will be filled with the deaths of notable people and they won't have space for other things no no no but what I'm saying at the moment is when when someone dies it is it's like it's unusual huh so and so died today who would have thought but that's because the people who are dying at the moment are from an era when there weren't as many famous people so they're out okay there are the number of famous people is increased yes so there are at the moment there aren't too many people dying it's kind of manageable there's only one maybe one a day who who who is worthy of a news article but it feels to me that in 30 or 40 years maybe the number of people dying who by the same criteria are worthy of coverage is going to just have increased exponentially and my head's going to explode for the number of people dying that I that I have an interest in isn't this an argument for the role of editors this that the editors just have to be more rigorous in their selection of who is who is worth reporting on no because because say if there is someday in the distant future where three of my boyhood cricket heroes die and one TV actor and one movie star and one politician from my hometown all die on the same day I would be curious to know about all of those things what I'm saying is is there a is the number of noteworthy people going to get so high that it's just going to be hard to comprehend or is there some fact I'm missing about distribution of days or distribution like for example I know I've reached a point in my life now where the number of famous people who are younger than me has become quite significant so for example I will probably die before Taylor Swift so I it's unlikely I will read the new story about this pop star of the you know 2010s who had a whole bunch of hit singles has died at the age of 83 or something I'm not going to read that story am I because I probably already dead but there are a lot of people older than me who are the new stories I probably will read and I'm wondering how many of them there are and how dense that's going to become you know what's happening here Brady I think you're beginning to deal with getting older that's what's happening here because as you grow older yeah the number of people that you are just aware of in the world in any way in any way their notability right increases as a function of time okay the number of people that you could have possibly heard about and have any interest goes up yeah but as as you are getting older you are now more aware of those who you are aware of who have died yeah right and when you're when you're thinking backwards about oh it seemed to be less it's I think it's it's much less that oh they're more famous people now and it is vastly more you knew of fewer people yeah right and so that's true so I can imagine like I can imagine now like some very very old person when that old ballet dancer from the 1950s dies who I've never heard of they probably have heard of them and they're thinking oh my god not another one oh they're dropping like flies I understand that yeah I understand that so it's a bit like I kind of I'm trying to think but there is also this there is also the fact there are more famous people now more media now so there are more it feels like I feel like I will have more targets when I'm older than my grandmother did like you know I agree but I would bet that we're talking about a like an order of magnitude difference in the effect that the the increase in the number of famous people has increased the supply of potential deaths that you are aware of by 10 percent but your aging has increased your knowledge by 300 percent right so that like they are both contributing to this factor but one of your inevitable death and and your inevitable aging is increasing to this vastly more than the fact that there are more famous people on on YouTube now than there were before that's what that's something is happening I like how you described it as my inevitable death like there's not even a slim chance I'm gonna avoid it throw me a bone gray throw me a bone here I was I was trying to talk in your terms I you know I don't actually put the chance of my own death at 100 percent so but I figured you're the kind of guy who would just assume that it's 100 do you not put your chance of death at 100 percent no I don't know I don't think that's what percent do you put it at I'm extremely likely you know it's it's it's it's 99 with a bunch of nines but it's it's not 100 percent no this sounds like a topic for another day with the famous people thing I think I remember when I was younger being confused about why people cared about famous people dying but this was largely a function to the fact that I was a teenager or I was in my early 20s and so I just didn't I didn't have much of a connection with very many notable people because I hadn't been alive long enough to follow their careers or have any kind of level of interest in them now but now that I am much older I'm aware that I can much more sympathize with why people get upset when notable people who they don't know personally die so now I can I can understand in a much more intuitive level when a famous actor dies it is upsetting if you have seen a lot of their movies yeah and you you you you feel like you have much more of a connection to that yeah I wouldn't say I get upset very often when notable people who I don't die but I do get affected so I don't want to I don't want to make it seem like I'm sitting here reading through a news website in tears because some actor has died or something but that was not the thing that I was trying to imply I was I was just trying to say that they I have come to this conclusion as well but oh now as I'm sitting here there are many more people whose whose death I would be aware of than when I was 17 and just an idiot but are you saying you've now come to the realization of this and you understand why silly people like Brady are affected or you say you do get affected as well now yeah I would say I would say I get more affected I mean I almost don't even want to mention this because people will just you know they'll start like a little flame where I was really really sad when I found out that Steve Jobs died yeah and that was the first celebrity death that I can say genuinely affected me and that was partly because it felt like oh this is a person who has affected my life quite directly because I use products that the person has produced a lot and also it was something that my you know my in my family apple is a big topic of conversation and so in many ways it feels like oh I've been talking about this person with people who are close to me for very many years and now that is over right that that that little part of our interaction is done now and so that like that that was the probably the first one that I felt I felt like oh I feel sad in a way that is not rational because I don't know this person but it is a side effect of having been aware of a person in a particular way and when I was much younger you know I would hear about notable celebrities dying and be like why is everybody so sad about this but it's just because I hadn't been old enough to have any kind of connection with another person I know there's a weird thing I think about sometimes which is that there are a large number of internet personalities and people that I have known for a long time people I've been aware of on the internet sometimes going back to college and before people whose careers I have followed and they're not people that I know and sometimes I think huh there are people I've been following for 15 years maybe or 10 years and there are enough of them and none of them have yet died and sooner or later some some person in this little group of people is going to die as well and that's going to be strange I feel like I'm waiting for the first internet person death in a strange way where it's like oh the death of this person would not make the news and they're a person that I don't know but I would certainly find out about their death and that would be strange and affecting even though I've never spoken to this person and I know nothing I don't know them personally in any way whatsoever I don't know this just got more but very fast I've had a few people in my videos dies you know who ate my video still and I'll sometimes go through one of my old videos some reason it's like oh can't believe that person not here anymore yeah it's a it's a numbers game yeah when you start interacting with large number I mean how many people must you have interviewed for various videos yeah I guess I mean you know yeah hundreds and hundreds so yeah and and when once you start talking about hundreds of people it's not even a oh we're just waiting for everybody to die of natural causes there's car crashes and all kinds of accidents and tigers and things and because and because they're sort of you know some of them are a bit older because they're sort of you know learned professors and things like that so of course the yeah anyway there you go famous people died it wouldn't be at Halloween's if we didn't talk about death in some way yeah if we if we didn't suddenly veer into a sad topic yeah what are you up to today internet listening to the show perhaps on a computer you just have a like a casual question but do you have anything important at all on that computer your work files your documents your PhD thesis your photos of your baby your photos of your dog have you backed those things up recently or ever I'm guessing you might not have that situation it makes me nervous do your friend Gray a favor and go to backblaze.com slash hello internet and sign up to protect all of the digital files in your life if you're like me that might represent a pretty significant chunk of your entire life computers they are wonderful but fragile things at any moment a hard drive can go bad and everything on that hard drive is lost forever I actually had this happen to me a long time ago before backblaze existed when I was in college I had a hard drive go bad my senior year and I lost everything I ever made in college it was pretty disastrous all that stuff just gone there was no data recovery place no nothing but if you go sign up at backblaze my fate will not befall you automatically without even having to think about it backblaze will just make a copy of all of your data and keep it safe in the cloud and then if something goes bad you can get it back all is not lost backblaze has over 150 petabytes of data on their services a number so large it's impossible to even begin to understand and they have restored over a billion files for their customers a billion files that might have been lost but then were saved if you use backblaze you can access your data from anywhere you can use your iPhone app you can use your android app and you can see what your files are from anywhere in the world the company was founded by xapple engineers but they are platform agnostic it will work on your mac and it will work on your pc now what does it cost you to preserve all of your digital life it's just five dollars per month per computer for unlimited backup do you have a lot of data I have a lot of data I couldn't possibly pay by the bite five bucks unlimited sold I have backblaze running on my computer right now you should to pause the podcast go to backblaze.com slash hello internet it will make me feel so much better it will allow you to sleep at night please do this backblaze.com slash hello internet let's move to a topic that is much calmer will not incite any emotion people will be totally cool with and that is the UK general election yes let's talk politics now listen this will be the nice way to calm down is let's discuss politics can I do my like big but covering caveat thing at the start before I start poking you with a stick. Disclaim away I am not massively passionate about politics I so don't think like I am putting any sort of positions on the table at any point if that comes about and also I am not as knowledgeable as gray about voting I don't think anyone who is not an expert professional expert on voting is as knowledgeable of this gray about voting but I am happy to talk to him about it because we've just had an election and let's do it I'm just going to do an executive summary and I know this will upset people for being wrong but whatever the UK general election just happened basically the whole parliament which is all the all the members of the parliament that represent the different electorates or constituencies around the country all get thrown out every constituency around the country votes to reelect or elect a new representative that will come together to form the parliament the feeling was that it was all going to be a big tangled mess and we were going to have so many different people from various parties that no one would have much of a majority and we would end up with a big hung parliament and it would be really hard for one to have enough people to form a government as it turned out that the ruling the party that was already in power the Conservative Party which was ruling by our coalition had a very successful election surprised everybody got the majority of seats in the House just and enough to form a government so we now the Conservative Party the sort of the right wing party in the UK won the election and just has a majority from an American perspective there are many parts of that description which will make no sense yeah no no no no TLDR there is a conservative government in the UK yeah right that's that's that's the result of it yeah now can I ask you let's ask one big burning question right from the start uh-huh do you vote like are you like are you allowed to vote first okay so yeah this is gonna be like a whole big story okay I'll just sit back say something really loud when you finish sure up just to wake me up that's right yeah just go yeah go go play with the dogs talk us through up but don't talk us through it in too much detail I will I will I will try to do this as briefly as I possibly all right the short answer is that I can vote in UK national elections yeah there's this whole complication about the European Union existing and people moving all over the place but the bottom line is that if say someone from Italy moves to the UK even though they are allowed to to live here they are not allowed to vote in national elections but the UK has a unique agreement with Ireland of which I am a citizen that iris citizens are allowed to vote in national elections okay so under most normal circumstances a person in my situation would not be allowed to vote but because of some particulars I am allowed to vote okay and just to answer the same question in case it's in people's heads because obviously I have this Australian accent and I also live in the UK I am allowed to vote and that is because I am a UK citizen I have a British I have a British passport due to sort of a birthright involving my father so I am I am a fully fledged UK citizen unlike Gray who is here on an Irish passport right yeah I'm a dirty immigrant basically yeah actually our our regular Australians allowed to vote in the national election I don't think they are do you know what I thought the answer to that was no but I saw a friend write something on Facebook the other day where where he talked about the fact he just realized the whole time he was here he could have voted and he didn't so the answer is I don't know the answer but I wouldn't rule it out we are both eligible to vote Gray and I is the upshot to that so the next question is did you vote okay so the way it works here is that you fill out a little a registration card that comes around in every October or so to basically let the government know hi I'm a person who resides at this address and yes I am legally allowed to vote they put you on the roll basically right and then when when you fill that out that you get added to this big list of people who are allowed to vote and unlike many places in America you cannot turn up on the day and just say oh hey I want to vote can you register me now it's like no no no this has to be done in advance yeah so you need to be on this list and so this this comes around and I always make sure to fill out this little form so that I'm on the list you know so that you you're eligible to vote in various elections now I have to confess something to you Brady because I was entirely unaware that there was an election going on until the last time we were recording this podcast and when it was over you made some casual remark to me about the upcoming election and I just went along with that I went oh yes right I'm the conversation sort of moved along and I was writing down on a piece of paper UK election date question mark right as a thing to look into after the conversation was over so I only I only learned of the election whatever it was two weeks ago when we recorded that's crazy to me like that's just been everywhere it's like everyone else in the country is like for god's sake let it end I'm so sick of it and you're writing down notes going an election is going on question mark the reason I was looking into it is because it's an obvious topic for a video and when we hung up the the phone after that I immediately was oh them we look up when the date is and I saw that it was relatively soon and I ended up doing some initial research to try to make a video for it but then quickly realized I was not going to be able to do it in time and so yes it did come to kind of bite me in the butt because had I known about it ahead of time I would have been able to make the video in advance but I did not have a video this year for that reason oh we have to back up for a second because this is going to sound incredibly confusing to Americans this is not like in America where everybody knows until the end of time when all of the elections are going to take place the the UK elections don't take place every x number of years for various complications that we won't get into you can have an election that happens early they just have to happen once every I think it's five or six years now I forget because it changed recently there has been some changes on that in recent years I think you should read read up a bit more but I looked into it and yes the the way that it can happen has changed and the date the date for this election has been known for a long time like this this is the first time where the election wasn't quite as random as it has been in the past things have firmed up a bit there but anyway it is firmer but you still have uncertainty in when the date is going to be you you still only know when the maximum date is going to be unlike I'm fully aware of when all of the presidential elections for the rest of time will happen because I can count by four yeah and that's so that's not the situation here and that's why in theory for someone it could be a kind of surprise that there's an election going on okay so a couple of weeks out you knew it was coming so getting back to the dig your vote question on election day people who were following me on Twitter knew that I had dedicated a week to administrative tasks to catch up on a whole bunch of stuff and it was during this week that the election day was happening and I have to admit that I had no intentions of going out to vote because I thought I got a whole bunch of other stuff to do but the thing was I had Brady in the back of my mind and I thought oh at some point you would mention that you wanted to talk about the election and upcoming podcast I thought I know Brady's going to give me a hard time about if I don't vote he was like a little angel on my shoulder saying you should probably go out and vote you've got that so wrong but anyway continue this was what was in my mind this is what was in my mind so but I thought you know what I really can't I've got too much to do this there's too much stuff that I'm feeling bad about being way behind on I got to get this stuff done but so during the day at one point I go out to run some errands and as I'm going out to run some errands I literally on the same side of the street walk right by a gigantic sign that says polling station pointing into a library and there are people on the inside clearly welcoming welcoming me in to go vote okay and so I thought now I'm going to feel like a real jerk if it's right here it will take two seconds and I don't actually step into go vote so I step into go vote just before you say what happened next yes if you didn't even know the election was on how on earth can you know who you're going to vote for I was wondering if you were going to pick up on this part because I hadn't seen any of the debates yeah I hadn't been aware of any of the issues being discussed I could not be a more uninformed voter this is you are the advertisement for one of the biggest problems the democracy in my opinion but that's like this like I was keenly aware that this was a very funny moment of every oh you tell people oh everybody should go out and vote I I doubt that there was a person less informed in the nation walking into a polling station at that moment than myself do you know Gray that proves to me that you don't watch the news because despite the fact you didn't even know the election was on I guarantee you were in the upper echelon of people who knew about what to do because I see interviews with people on the street on the news where they go out and do Vox pops and they say who are you going to vote for for Prime Minister and they don't know who the Prime Minister is or they don't know what parties in power or they don't you know people's ignorance never ceases to amaze me so even though you didn't know the election was on I am more comfortable with you voting than the majority of people we voted that day but anyway oh thanks pretty that feels like a condemnation of the masses but I will take it as a compliment of me thank you so you've walked into this library what happens next I go in there to vote but then I discover a thing which I did not know which is that you're not allowed to just vote anywhere you have to vote at a very particular place and say oh what is this nonsense I can't just like you can't take my vote here now no they tell me that they can't take my vote that the vote is based on where you live and they give me the address of this place that I have to go to actually vote and I take a look at it and I know exactly where it is because they're all kind of local spots yeah and I think well this is exactly the opposite direction that I'm going to go in well shrugged my shoulders I tried I tried Brady and so I just kept walking on and doing my errands like a so you didn't but but you do wait wait the story is not over oh wow there is more it gets very exciting it's amazing so I run all of my errands and then I'm thinking I'm going to go back home and the place that I have to vote is past where my home is I just going to go home yeah however as you may be aware I now have an apple watch and on my way home I looked at the apple watch and frowned because I had not gotten in the amount of walking and motion that I needed to for the day and so then I thought well I guess I might as well walk to the voting station okay so entirely to fill a ring on my apple watch I walked past my house and to the polling station and I go into vote I tell the lady my name and I tell her my address and she says you're not listed on this this polling station you can't vote here I know that's the case already and I'll tell you why the fact you didn't know where to vote tells me you didn't get a polling card sent to you and if you didn't have a polling card sent to you it tells me that you weren't on the right name and address on the list well the thing is I know I filled this out like I try to fill out this paperwork all the time and I am terrible with physical mail there is always a huge pile of unopened physical mail in my house because I hate it yeah and so it is very possible that there was a polling card in there somewhere right but I go to this location and they tell me no my name isn't on this list and then they ask if I moved recently which definitely was the case and they tell me oh don't worry about it it's no problem you can go to this third location to vote if that's which happens to be right around the corner because I basically moved right around the corner yeah that's a great okay here we go once again all right go to a third location to vote only to have them tell me that no my name is not listed there either as a person who had no intention to vote I ended up walking to three polling stations to try and vote was not able to vote at any of them but luckily it doesn't matter because my vote would not affect the election anyway and it worked out well because I was able to close all of my Apple Watch activity loops so that's my story of trying to vote democracy in action hey yeah I'm not gonna ask who you would have voted for because that's no one's business and I don't want to start that but you did know who you were gonna vote for if you got in or were you just gonna look at the paper and see who's name you like to look of or have you got leanings that would have just said well I always vote left or right or center and I just would have you just would have ticked whoever represented your party of choice what was what was your plan what the reason why I felt comfortable going in and voting even though I knew literally nothing about any of the politics or any of the people involved in these politics was that I I had a vote that was a kind of strategic vote that was not relevant to the particular policies of any of the parties okay so that's why I could feel like oh I can go votes in good conscience as opposed to just like you know randomly scribbling next to a name right so that that's why I feel like I didn't need to to watch the news to know which way I was gonna do it and that's not something you want to discuss that's kind of a political thing is it or no we'll leave it at that the vote was not relevant to politics cool so did you vote Brady I did vote and I come from Australia where voting is compulsory so it is kind of ingrained to me that on election day you vote and the luxury of having the choice to not vote is quite novel to me so pardon me sometimes thanks oh I think I might not vote today just because I can but that would not go down well in my house my my wife is very thinks it's great that people vote and everyone should vote and if basically any year when I jokingly say I think I'm not gonna vote this year she just looks at me and says you are voting my friend so I have no choice about voting does she tell you who to vote for no she doesn't no she doesn't tell me who to vote for she's like she just thinks people should vote she thinks is important so I kind of I kind of and she is right so but I do it more because of her pressure than then wanting to make a difference I live in quite a safe seat as well so I I feel I can't have a huge effect in what I would do anyway whether I was voting for the person in power or against them but I did have a funny story so to expand on what grade has explained the one thing he didn't include because he doesn't seem to realize this is that if you are on the electoral roll about a day or two before the election you receive a polling card with your name and address details about where to vote and also your voting registration number I think you have some code number associated with you I am aware of that because I've received those before okay I had mine and basically you you don't have to have it with you they can tick you off the list without it but if you have your polling card it makes life really easy because they just take your card off you tick you off the list and your vote so I went along to the local church churches often host the election which I find so funny with a sole separation of church and state one of the three places I went to was a church and the other one wasn't explicitly a church but was officially religiously affiliated yeah I just find that mind blowing as an American every time I've done it today not do that in America or polling booths not held in churches depending on the state there may be states that do do it in churches but at least at least where I grew up it was always schools and we have a much stricter separation of church and state so the walking into a church just feels so weird on election day it's usually like a church hole or a site it's not usually you don't like walk down the aisle and go and they haven't like put things on the altar where you put you no no no you have to vote on the altar and the priest is handing you the ballot so I don't want to be the other one thing it's some crazy religious thing it's just convenient because most towns have a church and they usually have a hole where you can do it makes 100% sense from a logistical perspective yeah so anyway I turned up at this church my wife and I with their voting card just outside the church at the gate to the church there's all the political people hoping to you know give you a piece of paper or just smile you and hope you vote for them I'm used to that that's normal that's fine I walk past them I already know how I'm gonna vote then I walk through the church grounds but in this vestibule area this is guy in a suit and he says may I have you may I say your polling cards please and I'm like oh okay well you know I'm in the polling booth now and here's this official dude this is obviously part of the process so I show him my polling card and my wife shows her polling card and he starts writing down our numbers on this list something okay they you know they're checking off the numbers and stuff this is how it's all working and then suddenly it just it's something struck me as wrong and then I noticed like that he's wearing like a rosette for one of the political parties and I'm like like who are you where are you from and he doesn't answer he's taking all this information and I ask him again like a bit more family and he doesn't tell me and then once he's got the numbers and written them down I ask him a third time like I'm not creating a scene really but by this by this point it's probably noticeable that I'm unhappy I say who are you where are you from and he says he's from this political party and he's just taking information now this is normal they do they do this like the political parties do this for their own research purposes and and that's fine I accept that but I felt like I was a bit tricked because this guy wasn't outside with all the other people he was like in like the the holy of holies he was in the he was in the church he was in he was like really close to the polling booths I don't remember what I said but I did but I was really unhappy there was nothing I could do and I just walked in sort of shaking my head and saying I think this is a bit out of order and I walk in two steps later this official guy because now I'm in the room where all the polling booths are comes up to me and says excuse me sir are you unhappy with what just happened he obviously knew something was wrong and he obviously heard or saw this this incident and I said as a matter of fact yes I'm really displeased I thought that guy was part of the polling process I wouldn't have given him my numbers I'm really displeased he did I don't think he should be there he should be out with all the others and this guy said you're right I'm sorry I think he was allowed there earlier when it was raining and he shouldn't be there and I said well go and make sure he crosses my number off his list because I don't want him having my details and my wife who's like really embarrassed says I don't care he can't you know I'm she just wants me to shut up because I'm because I'm because now she thinks I'm creating a scene right I'm not creating a scene of course not of course not I am being firm right so he then goes off and like deals with this guy obviously so I'm all riled up now and then I and then I go up to the person who is supposed to cross me off the list and they give me my papers and they're like really apologetic they all feel really bad about what's happened I think I think basically the people running the polling station know that they've stuffed up and they're probably worried I'm gonna kick up a huge scene and get them in trouble so they all come up and apologize to me and I sort of smoothed thing over and made some jokes jokes with them and I went and voted and then I went back outside and he was a bit further away from the door about by this point and he said sorry and I said no problems have a nice day but I think he knew I was still a bit unhappy about the whole thing so my voting experience of kind of you know exercising democracy was not like you know the the sunny pleasant thing it could have been it was me being all yeah funny and then my wife's just shaking her head going I can't believe I can't believe you you know I'm being like Abraham Lincoln you know I believe in democracy and I believe in my rights and I'm carrying on like I'm like some win really I was just a bit riled up by some guy getting in McGrew Breedy Herring defender of the sanctity of elections yeah well there are two things that I think are important the sanctity of elections and the privacy of data and this guy was like smashing both of them in my face so it was a perfect storm and I think I kept my cool but I was firm and you know my wife's really lovely and wouldn't wouldn't have you know wouldn't disagree with anyone I have a conflict so I felt a bit sorry for her but I'm like no this is this is wrong and like on the drive I'm saying I'm sorry I just think it's you know I think it's important she goes okay I respect that but whatever I presume you don't want to reveal who you voted for no I just because it just gets people all riled up and it's like it's irrelevant it doesn't it doesn't really matter and I and also I don't care that much I respect everyone's view no matter how extreme or liberal or right or left or center or whatever I just like whatever that's all just vote I think if everyone is votes for what they think is best best for them and their friends and their people and the people they care about and all the people they choose to care about it'll it'll work itself out but that leads to the next thing doesn't it doesn't work itself out yes is the system fair again for people who are British sorry to rake over stuff you already know other than unless you're like gray and don't watch the news sorry to rake over stuff you already know but there have been a few little controversies to do with this election to do with who got in and who got how many votes obviously I don't know anything about any of the controversies that happened during the election yeah but and and I didn't follow it but the morning the morning after basically I thought oh I do want to see the results like I'm just curious to see how this worked out and I was pretty riled by the way things turned out right and I also want to put my own little disclaimer in here which is that when I do my videos I try very hard to never mention particular political parties yeah because people's brains just turn off the instant you mentioned particular political parties and they they stop thinking about it in terms of fairness and they start thinking about it in terms of like their sports team winning yeah and the only thing they care about is their sports team winning yeah so so we are I'm about to talk about particular political parties but I guarantee you dear listener I could barely know less about their particular policies I am not advocating really for or against anybody I just want to talk about it in the abstract but unfortunately since we're talking about a particular election we can't have this conversation in terms of guerrillas and tigers we have to talk about the particular parties and the way things worked out and unfortunately for you also one of the parties you're about to talk about and I suspect almost sound like you're gonna sort of say they got a raw deal is the most controversial party in the election the reason this election is particularly galling is while I still think that America has everything you could want to go wrong with elections America basically does the UK is a particularly interesting example of how first pass the post voting can go wrong because of the ways that this system happens to be set up and because the the UK for various reasons has been able to hang on to having multiple parties in a way that the United States and lots of other places that that use first pass the post don't so in the US you always get it kind of like oh it's Republicans and Democrats and it's about evenly split because that's the stable state of the system but the UK still exists in a kind of unstable state where there are multiple parties and that ends up in just absolutely bizarre results the short thing that I think is really quite appalling is if you take a look at the votes so the party that won were the conservatives yes and I'm looking at some pie charts here I'll put them in the show notes on a nationwide level 37% of people voted for the conservatives yeah now because the UK is is divided into a bunch of constituencies the way this works is the election isn't really taking place on the national level it's 600 some odd local elections for who is going to be the member of parliament of the shyer right so they are going to pick their MP and their MP is then sent off to Westminster to represent the shyer in parliament MP is that member of parliament member of parliament you have this constituency so every every constituency is saying we want to send Billy blogs from the conservative party to be our member of parliament for the next five years or we want to send Jane Smith from the Liberal Democrat party we want to send her to go and be our member of parliament for the next five years and all these people then come together 650 out of however many and it's based on who has the weight of numbers there decide who forms the government the MPs go off to parliament and if one party is able to get a majority of the seats in parliament yeah they have complete control over the government yes they basically get to make laws and the reference here for Americans the reason this is a little tricky to explain is that the UK system does not have the same kind of checks and balances that the US system has and I'm not I'm not saying that to say that it's worse or better but just that it's different so that the thing that blows most Americans minds is that the the prime minister is not the same as the president in Britain you don't vote directly for prime minister you are just voting for your local member of parliament and if your party gets the majority of seats in parliament they basically get to pick who is going to be prime minister who just happens to be one of those members of parliament they decide to make him like them their man or woman their boss who just yeah who just happens to be one of the members of parliament and this is why from an American perspective you can get really bizarre things that happen where no election occurs but the prime minister changes and that's because the party in charge has decided oh we don't like how this guy is doing things we're going to vote him out just amongst ourselves and put somebody else back in place that can happen and I understand that's bizarre to Americans but just because sing sing we're catering to Americans so much here I think we also need to point out during in 99% of cases during the election it's not a mystery who the prime minister will be yeah you know ahead of time in fact the election is quite presidential in that way and although you're voting for your member of parliament your little man or woman to go off and represent you most people don't even know who their representative is and they just go into the polling booth look for the name of the party who is associated with the prime ministerial candidate they prefer and just tick that person's name so it is a battle to be to be two prime ministers but yeah it is it is funnily backwards like the practicalities of it because yes it is almost run as though it is a presidential election but there is the actual mechanics of it kind of have nothing to do with that it's very it's it's a strange and interesting system but but the but so the long and short of it is if you get 51% of the seats in parliament because you also pick the prime minister you don't have any kind of opposition you just get to decide what it is you want to do and you get to pass those laws for the most part please people don't email me with with lots of kind of stuff but like rounding it off 95% of the time that's the case yeah 51% you're in charge fair enough the weird thing is because the of the way first pass the post works because of the way the local constituencies work the end result is that 37% of the voters for the conservative party happen to win 51% of the seats in parliament but then that also means because the 37% of the voters got 51% of the seats they also basically have 100% of the power in the government and this is one of the things that I have a real problem with is allowing a plurality but not a majority of of citizens basically to dictate the direction of the entire country that's that's really what kind of sticks in my crawl most more than some of the other things that we will talk about is is this very notion that the largest group gets to act as though they are a majority even though they are they are by no means a majority that is a frustrating system and I think that that is very undemocratic the thing is like I said I know you're a big expert on this and I don't feel particularly passionately about it and also I don't really like first pass the post voting but that's what we've got but I think the thing here is there are actually two there are two arguments going on here at the same time and I know you're aware of the subtlety but I'll point this out anyway no no please do there is a debate about what voting system should be used in these each of these constituencies to choose our John Doe or our Sally Jones to go off to parliament and that's an argument to have who's going to represent us how are we going to decide our individual representative to represent me here in the hills and you there down in the city and stuff right but then the other argument is the parliamentary system should we have these constituents and and be represented in this geographical way or should we be represented by some you know committee that that represents all their views and how we all want to devote and it seems most people like the constituency model I agree that when you talk to people people value the idea of a local representative yep so if we're going to have that system I think we're always going to have this problem where you can do very well let's just say that this is there's this party they're called the UK Independence Party you keep in the UK and what happened in this election and it's one of the things that's being raised is they got about what do they get 10% they got 13% of the vote they got 13% of the national vote now they're a very controversial party because they're to do with immigration and they're a nationals party but all of that aside they got 13% of the vote and they only got one seat in the parliament right which which turns out to be 0.2% of parliament yep so that that's the that's the direct disparity to compare and everyone thinks that's very unfair and maybe they're right and I think Gray thinks that's unfair and maybe he's right I'm not entirely convinced that it's unfair tell me why well the thing is they spread themselves thin and they make a bit of noise everywhere and they're going to get some votes everywhere but that doesn't mean there's not there is only one constituency in which the majority of the people in that constituency it's the plurality of the people by the way let me tell you a story just to be clear though they didn't win a majority of the seats even there they want a plurality of the seats let me tell you a story you tell me a story in 1974 your one of your most beloved countries Netherlands Holland whatever you want to call them that's called the Netherlands is that going to make you happiest that's perfectly fine the Netherlands whatever you want they like Holland too they had an awesome soccer team in 1974 and at the World Cup of Soccer they set the tournament a light and everyone was really excited by them and it looked like they were going to win it they got to the final and they stumbled at the final hurdle and they lost the final to Germany I think it was held in Germany so they probably gave the Germans an advantage but anyway they lost very sad the next year 1978 they were still very good people thought maybe they'll do it this time again they got to the final they got right to the end and again they were really unlucky and they lost the final they were kind of the bridesmaids again and then in 2010 they finally made it to the final again finally was this going to be their moment made it all the way to the end just lost the final to Spain 1-0 they lost now it feels to me under a grey model we would say you've done so well so many times in so many different countries and so many different tournaments against so many different people let's just give your World Cup trophy I know you've never actually won one you've never actually won at but you've done so well and you've proven yourself to be a good soccer team we're going to give you a trophy anyway I think the same thing applies to the selection if you keep are going to put a candidate and all these 600 odd seats and you know get 10% of the vote in that one and 10% of the vote in that one and 15% of the vote in that one and they keep doing well but they never win they never win the final are we going to say do you know what you did so well again over so many seats even though you're never won let's just give you a whole bunch of seats in the parliament anyway this I think is an interesting argument and this I feel like is the the technicality argument where you're right they basically didn't win any of the elections and again people please don't email us we are very aware of some of the complicating factors like you keep running a candidate in almost every constituency and not every party does it that way so maybe the reasons why their votes are are seem larger than they should be like that we're aware of all but so but so when when you talk about winning a local constituency my view on it is the constituencies are the exact same problem as the national election but just smaller the whole problem in my view is the idea which like seems comical if you think about it that a single person is going to represent in any meaningful way the views of a large group of other people this is no longer about voting then is that this is actually about the whole parliamentary system like who like how are we represented are we represented like because the everything's going to come down to that problem the president of the United States comes down to that problem the president is an interesting case because the president in large extent is a kind of veto like that is the president's primary power absolutely put with put that put that to the side for a moment but if you zoom down to any single constituency like I looked it up the numbers for the constituency in which I live has voted for the same party for as long as it has ever existed and almost always by a 60% margin that right there is the fundamental problem that the idea that that person or whoever that party happens to run every single time for more than half a century for for for more than twice my lifetime that that party completely and utterly represents the interests of this particular section of London that doesn't make sense and it I don't think that it is it is fair and in this case at the very least in this constituency it is a majority it's a majority of the voters who are selecting that candidate but it still means that for all of time the other 40% of people who live in that constituency never have any influence or representation at the national level but they're at they are the only true alternative the only totally fair alternative is that each of the 65 or 70 million or heavy many people live here in the country have one representative for them and we have and we have a parliament that has millions and millions of people in it so that we are all represented on every vote on every law you have to you have to at some point it's well yeah but here's the thing that that argument is the direct democracy argument right is say okay do you want to have a direct democracy where the people vote directly on the laws you know I think you can make pretty convincing arguments that that's not a good idea but but there is an enormous degree of difference or there's a enormous amount of space in which there are options between direct democracy and a single representative per however many tens of thousands of people are in each constituency yeah and this is this is one of the reasons why I like I made those voting videos to show that there are several systems that allow people to still have local representatives which they value I think overvalue but it's what people want and still have national parliamentary results that better reflect the actual will of the people that is my issue is that I think when you when you look at like I'm looking at these pie charts on my screen right now which which show right the 37% blue for the votes which end up with 51% in terms of representation and then I mean it's not even just you Kip it's I mean looking at this looking at this chart right you have you Kip had 13% of the vote they end up with less than 1% of the seats the liberal democrats they got basically 8% of the vote they get 1% of the seats the greens got 4% of the vote they get 0.2% of the seats like it's that to me when you look at that I don't care who the parties are I don't care what they stand for I think this this result where a third of the people end up with 100% of the control and 66% of the people end up with no control and no meaningful representation that de legitimizes the entire process in my mind it makes it hard to say well and why does why does this ruling government have legitimacy when only 37% of the people voted for it I find it very difficult for a government to make a convincing argument why they should have 100% of the control the reason why I don't like local representation so much is because if you control where those borders are drawn you control the entire election you know if someone said to me I get to to redraw these boundaries you know I could I could instead make it a and almost completely different government right I could put together a coalition of any other government that I want and that's one of the reasons why I think the local representation thing is just overvalued people people don't realize how much where those boundaries are drawn will wildly affect the elections before we come on to that all right because that is that again that's a separate issue and I know they're too tired together because having power gives you but let's leave the the issue of boundaries aside and manipulating boundaries let's just stick for what bit longer yeah the UK luckily doesn't really have that problem the boundary commissions are pretty good in the UK okay but but where those boundaries end up still does change the elections yes okay let's put that to one side then let's talk a bit for a bit longer about this whole issue of Tories only the conservative party sorry only got 37% of the vote and they're in power and these other ones you know imagine a parliament that did represent all the voting like you know 37% 30 what a complete and utter quagmire log jammed mess that would be is there not something to be said for the for the argument that you need to engineer the system so that whoever you decide is the winner whoever does win based on whatever voting system you use is then given some power is given some potency because if we had a committee in Westminster in London deciding our laws that was based on this makeup of 37% 30% 30% 13% they would just never get anything done don't you need to say okay for better or worse this party has won the election let's just give them some power for five years because otherwise the come you just can't govern without power you can't have some wishy washy committee to come back to the world cup of soccer can you imagine if they all played all their games for a month and then everyone said well we think we think Spain worth 33% the best team and Netherlands were 28% the best team Australia were 5% England were 2% and they just carved up the gold trophy and gave everyone a piece of the trophy that'd be ridiculous you have to you have to have your competition and then say okay one person gets the trophy one person gets the power and for the next four years or five years or whatever it is you are the champions or you are the government you have the power and let's come back again in five years and do it all again I see what you're saying here however this is a situation the reason why it really bothers me is you're talking about the national level you're talking about rules that absolutely affect everyone and I never understand this argument of we just need to like we just need to just do stuff we need to just be able to get stuff done even if it is very clear that people don't agree with each other and at the at the at the national level when you're talking about things like you're talking about things like national defense you're talking about national infrastructure national health care all of these vastly important issues I don't understand the argument that if we if we can't get people to agree on these very important issues we should just let whoever happens to be the largest group but not a majority just decide everything I don't see why people are so allergic to compromise because sometimes compromise doesn't work like like if you're here let me ask you something Brady right here here's here's the thing here here's the reverse scenario because I think what happens is people look at the current system and then kind of back into reasons why they think it's good but but imagine like I think about it from a classroom scenario and and let's say you have you know 20 kids in a room and you say okay kids here's what we're going to do we're going to let you decide some of the rules for the classroom now the first thing we have to decide though is how how are we going to decide rules that will affect everybody how many votes do you think we need in order to make a rule that is going to affect everybody I think all humans haven't have an innate sense that if you're going to do something that affects everybody you should have at least a majority of people agree I can't imagine you would have anybody in this situation where you haven't set up a system arguing that if six kids can agree together they don't need to compromise with anybody else they can just set rules for the entire classroom of 20 you're talking about a very black and white situation here like a like a guilty or not guilty on a jury or today we're going to go to the zoo or today we're going to go to the museum that I mean the things that are argued in parliament are very nuanced yes but the bottom line is that a law is either passed or a law is not passed well again that's a very that's a very again that's a very simple statement of what happens when laws are created and there's huge amounts of compromise and negotiate no no no stop stop stop stop right there though there is compromise and negotiation if the party is forced to compromise and negotiate right but currently the conservative party does not need to compromise and negotiate with anybody because they have a majority of seats so they have the 100% of the power wow you really don't watch the news much do if you think that that's small majority that the conservative party have and the political situation is going to make it easy for them to push laws through but you know you know what I'm saying here right yeah they they rounding it off yeah they have a huge amount of control yes there are always things around the edges with these systems yeah but it doesn't change the fact that what is being discussed is largely under their control I think if you had a different situation just everything would just become a stick in the mud every every every minor thing would just get held up by the political opportunism and arguments and I mean you know there are many like most countries have some kind of proportional representation and it's not like they're all falling to pieces and they can't get anything done what just needs to happen is at a national level you need to get more people on board and I think that that's totally fine now as you go as in a sense as you go down the power chain as you start talking about more and more local stuff then a then a more okay with kind of giving up on compromise and and and allowing smaller groups maybe to have more power but I just think like the national level is the most important level and if if your party can't get an actual majority of the people supporting you you should have to compromise and work with other parties but I think that if if you were able to actually get a majority of the citizens of a nation to support your political party and elect you into office I like the parliamentary systems then do give you an enormous amount of leeway I think that that like that is a good way that parliamentary systems work and on the flip side with America like the American system people always always complain about how slow and how cumbersome it is and how hard it is to get anything done but that whole system is designed to slow everything down it's designed to have elections at different times you you can't get anybody ever having a majority and I'm not always sure that that's good I feel like if if a majority of people want to vote in a particular party that party should have more leeway so I do like that in a parliamentary system I just don't like it when it is a small number of voters who have ended up basically because of borders and because of an unfair voting system with the majority of the power and then act as though the majority of citizens have actually voted them in which is not at all the case okay now everyone who voted in the UK election well this is not true but I'm going to say anyway everyone who voted in the UK election knows how the political system here works let's use that as an assumption do you think we're into you just telling me that the Vox Pops demonstrate that nobody knows how we know but for the sake of argument we're going to use for the sake of that okay let's pretend we have nothing but informed voters okay I mean if you're going to have an idealized parliament where everyone sits around and compromises and nuts things out no but I'm going to have your arguing that I don't understand what you're I am arguing the exact opposite that they have ended up in a situation where they don't need to compromise no what I'm saying is you're being you're being quite academic about how parliament works so let me be academic about how the voters work for a minute and let's pretend all the voters and you know perfectly understand the system okay could you argue that the reason we have say 13% you keep it's because people vote and don't like kind of feel like well they're not going to get in anyway if they knew that 13% of their vote was going to put 13% you keep candidates in the house they may vote differently this is a demonstrated effect this is called the nursery effect and it is it is without doubt true that people are more likely to vote for candidates and political parties that they don't think are likely to actually win right this is this is true across the board and so it's true for the Greens it's true for the for you Kip that it is likely they have a larger percentage of votes than they would get under an actual pure representative system well this all feels quite self correcting now this to me just even further delegitimizes the whole system because even when you're looking at the votes and trying to figure out how did people want to vote you you don't even or I should say you know for certain that these percentages aren't even necessarily accurate representations of how people would vote if they were dealing under a proportional system the whole thing is just it's just garbage it's absolute garbage I find it so interesting that you are so passionate about this top topic and you're so passionate about the way we're governed and the fairness or the unfairness of it and it you take absolutely no interest in the actual governing and you didn't even know there was an election on because the reason that I don't take any interest in it is precisely because I know that my vote counts for jack it doesn't count for anything and I have absolutely no influence on this whole system you know the constituency in which I live is never going to vote for a different candidate not not not even close not ever you know not until the end of time and so I like living here but as long as I live here you know my vote doesn't count for anything so that's why I can I can be extremely frustrated with this system and be very interested in the mechanics of how better systems work and care nothing at all for how the like the particulates of how the government is working because I have absolutely no influence on those things how do you know it's not working then how do you know it's not working how do I know what's not working like how do you know the system isn't working and we're not being well governed if you don't know how we're governed what I mean is that the system is not representing what I think is the will of the people that you see in the way the votes are distributed that's what I mean I'm not I'm not talking about like oh are the trains running kind of thing I mean that the the national level government is not any kind of reflection of how the people are expressing their vote that's not what but do you know that like the debate or the conversations aren't being shaped by it like obviously the number of people with their bums on the chairs in the in the building don't represent the percentage of the votes but do you know that there aren't more subtle things that play here because everyone knows these numbers right well like everyone knows another election is coming do you not think that the polls and like I know this is a bit wishy washy but I don't think I'm not sure what you're asking here well everyone are you asking do political parties pay attention to these polls you bet they do yeah so like of course the conservatives care a lot about the fact that you keep gets such a big percentage yeah and if I was if I was the political strategist for the conservative party I would be very worried about those high numbers for you Kip and it seems from the little bit that I know that it is very likely that the conservatives have changed some of their policies to try to woo you Kip voters so that is correct you are you are quite I agree with you I don't know if you're correct but I agree with you it does seem that way as well to me I mean that's my guess I don't know but that says to me that says to me look you know I don't care about this and I think the voting systems are rubbish too but this says to me if if the the party that's governing is being shaped by this 13% of the vote that you keep got then even though they haven't got the bums on sites they are shaping the debate and the way we're governed and something's working somehow a bit it happens to be sort of like a compromise but it's like a crappy second order effect you would never design the system intentionally to work this way if the the growing number of green voters slightly influences the labor government to change their policies in particular ways that is a benefit but there are much better ways to design a system to do that on purpose without negative effects that the current system has that's that's my frustration has any country got it right at a national level in your opinion everybody everybody has their problems I don't want to single out anybody in particular but I would say that in the developed world the US and the UK and I would include Canada have particularly interesting combinations of problems that all exacerbate each other in unfortunate ways many of these things it's like the first pass the post system which is common to all three of them is terrible but all three of them also have other things that make it worse and so while many other countries that use different systems or even within the UK parts of the UK use things like single transferable vote which I do quite like it's not exactly proportional but if you have a slightly better voting system it can greatly mitigate other problems that the country has grey you just completely you completely answer that like a politician like when they say to the politician what are your policies and they just then start slacking off the opposition I said I said what's a good one who's doing it right I know you don't want to like get people jumping on your back but could you name a bunch of countries or just like like I'm just kind of feeling like you're just downing the US and the UK and Canada and maybe rightly but I just want to know where to look for someone who's who's doing it right I don't I don't want to name anyone in particular people will just get mad do you like Australia I'm from Australia so I just the only one I'll ask you about specifically is Australia because that's where I'm from yeah it's I was wondering if you're going to ask about Australia because the funny thing about Australia is they have the alternative vote but as we discussed in a previous podcast they do it in the worst possible way but I still think it's better than than the way the the UK system works it's still not very good okay so there are better ones than Australia out there yeah there are definitely better ones than Australia okay will you tell me off air which country does it right so I can go and read about them I won't tell anyone we can we can we can talk some of the particulars off air okay gosh if imagine what will be like off air if this is us being like podcast restrained yeah I still just say that like the first pass the post really really makes things worse and the problem on the national level about misrepresentation is the same problem you have at the local level about misrepresentation when you are only going to select one representative you know if you if you if you look at any of the smaller places it's it's really interesting like if you just look at Scotland the Scottish national party was really helped by the first pass the post system yes because people have been showing it on Twitter this funny little map of the UK that it basically looks like Maggie Simpson because most of the country is blue except for Scotland which is this yellow head but it's a similar thing where the the Scottish national party basically took every single seat in Scotland which makes it look like everybody in Scotland voted for the Scottish national party but like that's not the case you know that's that's not the case but if you if you voted anything except Scottish national party in all of Scotland you basically you basically don't have any representation and first pass the post helped them in that way where they got 5% of the vote but they ended up with 9 almost 10% of the actual seats in in Parliament so it's just like there's a whole system is just weird you know if you can distribute your voters so that you get a plurality of votes you know that's awesome for you as a political party but if you know if you can't do that it's it's terrible for you so I'm I'm just frustrated with the whole thing you make some good points and you know well I mean you do seem like the sort of the wishy washy let's all let's all let's all sit in a circle and H be fairly represented and have a big hug and then we'll all just compromise and I guess I've sounded a bit more I've sounded a bit more ruthless like I'm giving out world cups and dismissing the losers to go and suffer for years and if you don't if you don't win on the day you never win but you seem a bit you seem to want to reward losers look let me ask you something let me ask you something okay do you do you think a third of the people should be able to decide whether or not the whole country goes to war like this is the kind of stuff that happens on a national level yeah that's that's why it matters like you know what I think if you're going to declare war you need to get more than a third of the people to agree with you you shouldn't be able to say oh where the biggest group okay let me let me put the opposite argument let me put the opposite argument to you if some invading forces coming and pointing their nuclear missiles at you and they're just about to blow you off the face of the earth do you think a group of 600 people should sit around and hold hands and think oh what do you think no no what do you think no no what do you think let's put another vote no let's just have someone in charge and buddy press the button let me ask you something don't you think right in an in an existential situation people would agree right people if if the problem is bigger or do you want to give someone power I am I am very happy to lay it on the table and this is this is this always happens in these conversations people act as though humans can never possibly agree on anything and like humans are actually very good at this kind of stuff if you have a big obvious problem yeah where they big obvious solution what do you what do you think you're going to have people not agreeing about that of course people are going to agree I mean it does happen but anyway I mean you're right necessities the mother of invention and I was probably also the mother of compromise but that's exactly right and and and I think we're decorating a house at the moment as you know oh don't before you even start before you even start what this is what I was just about to say this exact thing that you're going to talk about the reason people imagine that committees argue in bicker and and do all of this stuff is because the smaller the stakes the more people can feel free to argue about this kind of stuff and so when there's a huge debate and you can't get anybody to agree usually it's it's like it's not over something that is absolutely vital if it goes one way or the other right this is this is the this is the bike shed effect right everybody wants to argue about what color to paint the bike shed all right and so you'll have a huge argument in a committee about that but when you when you get down to like important stuff and you're bringing experts to the table it's a lot easier to get people to agree on important stuff than it is unimportant well that's not exactly what I was going to say how I was going to say that we're decorating the house at the moment and we don't always agree on what color paint to use but in the end I have given the power to my wife so we don't end up with rooms painted different colors she just I've given her the power to decide and I think there's something to be said forgiving someone power to decide things but you voluntarily you voluntarily gave that power over right you you have implicitly agreed to to go along with what she said this is what a coalition is this is what a coalition government is right where you know you don't always get our way but we're kind of agreeing to go along with you but I can guarantee that if she came back with some kind of fuchsia that she wanted to paint the whole house and the dogs in you would withdraw your consent because that would be stupid it just sounds like you want a big committee of millions of people and I don't I don't want I think the parliament is way too big I think that's actually one of the problems is there's too many seats I think you need to keep you need to keep national parliaments a national governing bodies at something under a done bar number right you need like a hundred people so that the people who are actually working with each other have some notion of who the individuals are I don't know what a done bar number is a done bar number is about 120 it's basically how many humans can a single human meaningfully keep track of like the relationships between them okay and and so like if I was emperor of the UK yeah one of the very first things I would do is I'd like listen we're cutting this parliament down by a divisor of six right and we're going to have bigger constituencies each of which send more representatives so that it is more proportional but you can expect 600 people to meaningfully work with each other in any particular way yeah but that you know like that's a separate issue and I think that the EU suffers from that a little bit with like gigantic parliaments yeah of listening guys like you know you can have proportional representation with a hundred people that's close enough like a hundred people is going to get your error within one percent okay that's fine but but yeah 600 people is a crazy number of people so it definitely needs to be smaller as well but yeah I'm not some I'm not some hippie I just think if it's a big problem people will be able to agree on that or like like the war thing people will either vote yes this is a war to get involved in or no it is not it's not like there's 10,000 options it's an important thing you'll get agreement your faith in humanity restores my faith in you Gray and it's been a pleasure talking about voting with you because you certainly think a lot about it and know a lot about it I have no faith in humans I have faith in the system
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