H.I. No. 73: Unofficial Official

"H.I. #73: Unofficial Official" is the 73rd episode of Hello Internet, released on November 22, 2016.
==Official Description==
Grey and Brady discuss: garbage collection, watermark follow-up, emoji, Brady's election night, and, inevitably, the electoral college.
==Show Notes==
*Brady's Garbage Video
*Australian News
*Wolf Emoji
*iOS 10 Wolf Face
*2016 World Series
*Brady and Lady Brady
*Grey's original electoral college videos
*Re: The Electoral College
*United Kingdom Alternative Vote referendum, 2011
I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but as we're recording right now, like right now, at night, it is the super moon night. It's a super moon. I'm looking at my window. No, no, no, great, don't. Oh, don't look. That's what I wanted to tell you not to do. Oh, terribly sorry. Because during a super moon, not only is the moon a little bit closer than usual, but because it's a full moon, it appears brighter than usual. And this is the biggest the moon will have appeared for like 70 odd years. And just looking at it, if you are to believe the media could burn out your retinas, or the tidal forces from the super moon could rip your head from your body. So whatever you do, don't look at the super moon, don't even get near it, man. This is massive. Is that what journalists think a super man is? You'd think so. You'd think it's going to like take up half the sky the way they're carrying on. And I've also seen actual depictions of what it will look like compared to what it normally looks like. And it's like 8% or something, not even that. It's like crazy. Like how little the difference is. But it's super moon, super moon, everything's super moon. Facebook's even saying, look at the super moon tonight. Well, I'm looking out the window. No, great. I see nothing. All right. I hope you're wearing sunglasses and had your special tidal vest on when you did it. I'm woefully under prepared for the super moon. But you're feeling all right for the podcast. You're in the zone. You feeling happy? Can I cheer you up somehow? No, you can't cheer me up, Brady, because I am absolutely furious about a thing. It's going to take a while to explain. But I have to get this off my chest right at the start. I already know what it is. What is it, Brady? Your Starbucks is unstuck to the hot stoppers. Oh, no, no, it's not that. It's not that. No, I have, I have what I guess could be classified as like a political problem, I guess. Let me explain this thing. This makes me absolutely furious. All right. So I live in a city. Now, there are lots of people in a city. And one of the things you need when there are lots of people is an effective system to take the garbage away and dump it wherever. Right. Wherever it goes, not here. Yeah. So in the little area that I live, there are supposed to be four garbage pickups, each one on a parallel street. There are four parallel streets. There's a garbage can at each end of the street, opposite ends. So it's nice and convenient, nice and close for everybody. Now, where I happen to live is one of those areas of London that clearly a long time ago, a bunch of rich people lived in this area in single, enormous homes and has since been converted into apartments in which there are maybe 10, 15 families. Like, there's a lot of people here and a lot more people over time. And one of the problems that happens is that the garbage cans overflow. Now, let me ask you, Brady, if you had a problem where there were garbage cans overflowing, what do you think would be the solutions if you wanted to alleviate this problem of overflowing garbage cans? Well, two things spring to mind. Okay. One would be more regular pickups and the other would be bigger garbage bins. Yes. Congratulations. You get a gold star. But no, you know what my local council thinks is the appropriate solution to overflowing garbage bins? It is to take away street by street the actual garbage pickups and to replace the space where the garbage cans used to be a passive aggressive sign telling people we have removed the garbage cans and please don't dump any garbage here. And so now in like a four block radius of where I am, there is four garbage cans in one location for what I'm mentally emcalculating is something like probably a thousand or 1500 people who need to use these garbage cans. And as a nice bonus, everybody is now way further away from a garbage can. And I feel like this is one of these things that like if you ever go to Disney, Disney in America has this just nailed down. You know how they solve the garbage problem in Disney? Garbage cans everywhere, right? You can't swing a child in Disney without hitting a garbage can. Right? Like they're all over the place because you know what they want. They want nice happy clean streets. And so if there's garbage cans immediately visible, people throw stuff away. But now where I live, people are just dumping garbage on the streets. It's gone from people who are for a little while. They were trying like, oh, we'll just pile up the garbage where the garbage cans used to be here. Let me send you a photo of what this looks like. Greg, wouldn't the straight look ugly if you had garbage cans everywhere? Don't you want your London streets to look pretty and look like they looked in like the 1700s and stuff? Okay, yes. In theory, you would. But here's one of these things. Like we have this in life where there have to be trade-offs. And I think once you reach a certain density of population, the trade-off has to be there are garbage cans and regular locations for people to dump their garbage. Now where I live, like there are so many people, there's already garbage pick up three times a week. You can leave garbage in front of your house once a week and they have all of these garbage cans. And it still wasn't enough for all of the people. I don't understand how they think the solution is. We're just going to remove all of the garbage cans and then tell people not to dump their garbage there. And now there is garbage absolutely everywhere. I have sent you a photo of where the garbage cans used to be, but like all of the streets just look like this. And you know what? You know what really bothers me? I feel like I try to be a good person at least when it's easy. And now I'm having to just like dump garbage places as well because like there's nowhere to put it. If I walk the three blocks necessary to the actual garbage can with the garbage that I take out, it's a mountain of trash, right? Like it's an Everest of trash. And if I throw my garbage on the top of it, it just rolls down into the street. And so I figure, fuck it. Like I might as well just leave the garbage in the street along with all of these other bags of garbage in the street. This is just like, I don't understand Brady. I don't understand how people think the opposite solution is the solution. I mean, that picture's pretty horrendous. I'll give you that. You're going to have to back up for me here. The sustain's not coming out of your ears and can I just get a little bit of context here? I'm like literally sweating with anger, but yes, go ahead. Just so I understand. Before this debacle, how did the system work? Were they like communal garbage cans that were permanently in the street 24, 7? Or like, do you have like a hidden garbage area? I don't understand what the situation was before. For example, I have a big wheelie bin that is in a little shed in my front yard and we fill up our own bin. And then one day a week we roll it out onto the footpath and the people will come and empty it and then we'll roll it back onto our property. You obviously don't have that. How does it work normally? Yes, you have the nice suburban solution to garbage, which is that you have your own bins and since property is bigger in suburbia, you have an actual place to store the bins. This is the problem of being in a very dense area. That is just not a practical solution. Because again, most people's flats are very small. Even if my wife and I wanted to, we couldn't actually store very much garbage in the flat. So you have to end up taking it out all the time. Yeah. And so the solution here is that on each of the streets, they have tried to find a relatively out-of-the-way spot where they would just leave two garbage cans and a recycling bin. This is on public land and always visible. This is on public land and always visible. And as far as it can go, like it's fine. I don't think it's too much of an eye sore and the trade-off of you have a place to put garbage is perfectly acceptable. And there used to be garbage pick up three times a week. And on top of that, one or two days a week, I can never quite remember, you're allowed to leave garbage outside your house at night and truck comes by first thing in the morning to pick it up. They're trying to take away garbage all the time. But that seems extravagant to me, right? That's like garbage paradise having someone pick up the rubbish every day. Well, you have a place to put it every day and someone comes and pick it up twice a week from your house and three times a week from the bins. I think you've been spoiled for too long. No, but this is just a fundamental sanitation problem. Like this is what government is supposed to do. It's supposed to keep pestilence out of the streets. This is like the basics. It's garbage collection, right? Like you have to take it away. If you don't take it away, we will have cholera. This is not a good thing. So it's like, yes, I understand that there is a lot of garbage pick up. But the reason that there is a lot of garbage pick up is because in this area, there must be four or five, six times as many people living here as there were 20 years ago at the most. It's become a very dense area, even though if you just like looked at a street, you might not think that there's a ton of people here. But it's like every building has 10, 12 apartments in it. There's a gigantic apartment complex that's hidden around the corner. There's just like a ton of people here and they generate a lot of garbage and they have nowhere to store it. And my council thinks the appropriate solution is reduce garbage service because too many people were leaving garbage on the street. I can't do it. I think you should be able to hold onto your garbage for a bit longer. You should be able to hold onto your garbage for a week and have it picked up once a week and just put the oil out on the path on that one knot. I don't think you understand. I've lived in city apartments many times. I know you live in a, in a police old mansion far up north wherever it is. No, Brighton Binghamton. I always forget. You have no idea. You have seven story eight story building entirely yours. My wife and I, it's but a cardboard box and we have not room to store but a single fish skeleton after we've eaten our meager dinners. There's nowhere to put anything. It has to go somewhere and it's going on the streets. Where do the servants take it? Exactly. Exactly, Brady. I'll tell you what, Gray. I mean, it all seriousness. You know you've got a friend and me when it comes to complaining about garbage. You're talking to the man who has made a YouTube video that he has used on multiple occasions to shame his council when they do bad job with the garbage collection. That's your ringing of the bell one that I don't understand, right? Yeah. It's based on a very famous scene in Game of Thrones but I filmed it out in my street. I watched it. The reference goes by me. But it does feel like this is an ominous passive aggressive thing. That's a big deal. Have a look in the show notes people and you can watch the video that I tweet every time my council takes too long to pick up the recycling. Oh, too long. I like that. Too long to pick up the recycling. The first time I made this, the recycling had been out in the street for over a week. So the video got made. Let me ask you, has it been effective? They know about it. It was effective actually. They started contacting me asking for my details. But as soon as I started asking me for personal details, I'm like, go away. Just pick up the rubbish. This sounds like a no. What I'm hearing ultimately is no. Your video has not been... No, I would go so far as to say it has been effective. Oh, okay. Maybe I need to make a passive aggressive viral video about my garbage. Do it. I'm not entirely convinced, but I think you're in the right. Wait, what is there not to be convinced by? I haven't heard both sides of the story. Oh, okay. I'll be sure to phone up my local councilman and let him know. But basically what I think's happening is you guys have had it too good for too long. And as soon as they tried to like change anything, you're all like, oh, I'm not changing my habits. I'm just going to chuck everything in the street. What habits? There's nowhere to store the stuff. I don't even understand what it is you want me to do. You don't just throw it out the minute you've got it. You throw it out on garbage day. So it's not the sitting there all week. You don't just, oh, I finished with that. I'll throw it out the window. There's probably a garbage collector out there right now. They come 19 times a day. No, they don't come 19 times a day. Like we have a garbage can. It gets full. It gets really stinky. And when you live in a very small apartment all on one level, you can't keep stinky garbage in your house for a week. We physically don't have enough space to store all of our garbage unless we're just like leaving garbage bags in the main room. There should be some garbage communal area then in the basement or something. It shouldn't just all go straight to the straight the minute you finish with it. Okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, like, and again, if wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak. But there is no communal area in the house to put garbage. There's no space because it's all been turned into apartments, apartments full of people generating garbage. Yeah, because you're a bunch of greedy Londoners that, oh, wait, greedy Londoners, who's the greedy Londoner here? I don't understand like I'm either landlord in this scenario. No, I am the tenants. I do not have the adequate infrastructure where I am living. I don't understand what you want Brady. Well, that's not the council's fault. It doesn't mean you should be allowed to throw everything out in the street. I know he doesn't mean that I should be allowed to throw everything out in the street. I don't want to throw everything out into the street. Do you understand Brady? I want the opposite of that. I want a place to put the garbage. You want like thousands of your personal garbage cans out on the footpath that should be public property where people might get to walk. No, I would like an adequate amount of garbage pick up in an adequate number of places so that people don't leave garbage on the street. That's all I want. I don't think this is crazy. I think this is totally reasonable. All right. Are you going to give this to me? No, no. Not yet. Not yet. Clearly that picture you sent me is an ISO and that cannot be tolerated, but I'm yet to decide whether that is the fault of the council or the fault of the tenants. There's the least of it though. That thing that I sent you is where the garbage cans used to be. It's not just the garbage that's on the street. People are just giving up. This is a perfect example of there's this dichotomy between how should people behave and how do people behave? The truth is when people start leaving garbage on the street, people are more likely to just leave garbage on the street because then everybody thinks why bother? Now we have a tragedy of the common situation here. It's like, no, this is why you just have to have it convenient for people to do the right thing and just simply sitting around and wishing that everybody was better or wishing that one of the people in the building just disappeared and we turn their entire apartment into just the place where we dump all of the garbage and it fasters in the building. I mean, like yes, we could wish for these things, but it can't change like that. I just want garbage picked up. That's all I want. I think it's very reasonable. One little piece of garbage related follow-up by the way and I wanted to kick this quick, but enough people contacted me that I feel like I have to mention it. In the last show, I mentioned that I was throwing away two huge garbage bags full of my old clothes. Congratulations. Thank you. I used the term throwing away very loosely. I did not in fact put it in the bin or throw it in a London street as Greg probably would have. What I in fact did and I have to point this out because so many people have admonished me, I did give the clothing to a local charity. I did not throw it into like landfill. Whatever other was considered good enough, hopefully will be sold and is raising money for St. Peter's hospice in Bristol. So please stop contacting me and telling me I'm bad for throwing away lots and lots of clothes. I did give it to charity. Did the charity shop wanted? Did they take it? Well, they didn't really have much of a choice because I had to let double park when I gave it to them. So I just went in and said I've got some clothes for you and I said that's great. And then I went and ran to my car and came back with two massive garbage bags. There was some good stuff in there amongst the dross. It's some good stuff. Let me rate my internal mental meter for how much do I trust Brady's statement that there was some good stuff right in the bag of garbage that he's bringing to the charity shop. There was good stuff. I give that a one out of ten. No, I promise you, there was good stuff if you happen to be a little bit thinner than me. I'm just suspicious because my local charity shop has a big sign about all the things that they please don't want you to give them and I'm pretty sure clothing is at the top of that list. Oh no, this is a clothing shop. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, I did feel a little bit weird because I'm worried that like I might start saying people walking around the streets wearing my clothes. Are they that recognizable? I don't know. I did give them a smarter everyday t-shirt. Yeah, I was going to say like an Alabama elephant. Yeah, that's what you're going to see seeing someone walking around the streets of Bradford with. A destined gave me two smarter everyday t-shirts. And I did keep one of them destined just to guess you're listening. I didn't give them both away. But one the color just didn't suit me so I gave it to the charity store. I think there's two smarter everyday t-shirts in that charity store. No, I've kept the other one. I'm going to be keeping my eye out for it on objectivity, Brady. That's what I'm going to be looking for. I want to see an objectivity video with your shirt on sometime. I'll take a picture of me wearing it with tomorrow's newspaper. Totally photoshopped. I can tell by the pixels. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you by Fracture. Fracture is a photo company that turns your digital images into thoughtful gifts or keepsakes by printing them directly onto glass. Shipped complete with a backing wall and anchor or stand they're ready to display right out of the box. Just upload your digital photo and pick your size. It's that simple. And with Holidays right around the corner now is a great time to check a bunch of names off your list with a personalized gift they'll treasure. I know the Holidays sneak up on all of us and fractures really are fantastic gifts to give. I've given fractures as gifts and they have always been received really well. They look great. They're super lightweight. They're really easy to mount. And they show that you are actually giving some thought about the gift that you are giving to your recipient. So I can highly recommend using Fracture for the upcoming holidays. The Fracture process makes the color and contrast of your photo really pop and the sleek, frameless design lets your photos stand out while still matching any decorating style. And fractures come with a 60 day happiness guarantee. So you'll be sure to love your order. Each fracture is handmade in Gainesville, Florida from US source materials in their carbon neutral factory. They're a fantastic gift. They look great. You should get your orders in for the holidays right now. For more information and 10% off your first order, visit FractureMe.com slash podcast. Don't forget to mention Hello Internet in their survey question to let Fracture know that you came from this show to that URL. Once again, that's FractureMe.com slash podcast and select Hello Internet. Thank you to Fracture for supporting the show. And now another thing I wanted to follow up on was you know how you have your Siri thing where you're angry where Siri says hang on, I'll tell you when I'm ready or I yeah, I realized that I have one of those as well. I'll do you. Yeah. I didn't realize how much I had annoyed me and then a day or two afterwards happened to me again and I thought this is making me feel how gray felt. It's not quite as overtly hostile, but I'll tell you what it is. And you may not recognize it because you are like a email ninja who gets around these problems in other ways. But quite often I find myself on mailing lists I don't want to be on. And sometimes I click that button that says unsubscribe me from this list. And you always get met with a response that I find wholly inappropriate. And that is your request is being processed. And that bothers me in two ways. I've been put on your email list that I didn't want to be on which I consider a hostile act already. And then you have the audacity to treat my demand to have my privacy back as a mere request. Oh, your request. Oh, let me consider your request. This is not a request. This is a demand to be removed from your list. And then also being processed. Like I could take us a few weeks and we've got to talk to Bill from accounting. No, no, no, no. Take me off the list that I've been wrongly put on immediately and stop sending me spam. Your request is being processed is unsatisfactory to me. I have in the past I have seen that it may take up to 24 to 48 hours to remove you from this list. I feel like I don't believe you. I don't believe that that's actually true. I think you want to get in one or two more mailings while you still can. I think this is part of your automated system that you want to try to catch me before I go. And you're like, oh, it might take two days. If it even if it is true that it takes one or two days for some silly reason, just keep that to yourself. Like just say, sorry about that. You're off the list. Is that what you want as the unsubscribe message? Sorry about that. You're off the list. Your request is being processed. Of course, I'm now more totally scared that that is the message people get when they unsubscribe from my honest I must check that. I have no idea that. But we're full of one of Brady's things. Oh, look, it takes up to 72 hours to process your request. Wow. What a jerk. Yeah. Your play is being considered. I do have to say I'm a little bit pleased by the fact that you noticed the thing and you are now annoyed by it because my only consolidation to my Siri rant from last time was hearing from a number of people who I had implanted this mind virus into that are now aware of their rude supposedly but not actually subservience digital devices in one form or another. So I feel like great. Like my annoyance allow it to spread outward like from my mind to your mind. So I've got another little bit of follow-up, Greg. Mm-hmm. You may remember, and I think it was the previous episode we talked about in Australia, the channel channel seven had this obscene watermark on their news coverage whenever they have exclusive footage of something that they want to have to themselves on the news like the fire or a car crash. They were putting this watermark that covered half the screen saying channel seven news. It was ridiculous. Mm-hmm. So since then, someone has shown me sort of a promotional advertisement that was made by channel nine. And before I get you to watch it, Greg, just so you've got the context in your head. Mm-hmm. Channel seven and channel nine when it comes to news coverage and their nightly news programs are mortal enemies. Oh, mortal enemies. And it is highly highly competitive. I've not known a TV news market as competitive. And channel nine and channel seven who are the two top dogs are just always at each other's throat. They always want the exclusive and that. So channel nine made a video that they thought needed to be shown to the world. And I would like you to watch this video now. It takes about 30 seconds. Okay. See what you think. I'm imagining that whatever I'm going to see, it's going to have a watermark that's like from channel nine news. Screw you channel seven news. This is way more meta than that. Channel nine would like to apologize to all viewers who find the watermark we put in the middle of the screen annoying and distracting. Unfortunately, even a big watermark like this isn't enough to stop channel seven from stealing our footage. They even have the audacity to call it an exclusive. I was a little bit amazed by it. I've never seen a more petty juvenile. It's like kids fighting in the backseat of a car. Even I wouldn't do that. And I'm petty sometimes. You are incredibly petty sometimes, but that is amazing. Do you want to explain to the people what you just watched? Okay. Of course, it's in the show notes for the people. Okay, as well. I love this. If you channel nine news, we're sorry for some viewers, finding our gigantic watermark annoying. But even our gigantic watermark didn't stop those jerks to channel seven news from airing our footage as an exclusive. Which they then show they then show look what channel seven did. Look how they blurred out our watermark and claimed it was their own footage. They're basically telling tales, aren't they? They're like them having flashbacks to kids tattling on each other at school. And me just not caring at all. They've couched it as like a public service message. It starts off all apologetic and explanatory. And then it goes, but look what channel seven did. Look what they did. I can just hear myself like listen, Susie. Listen, Cindy. I don't care what happens. Like just sit down. Just sit down and be quiet. I don't care. Yeah. Basically, it's like a YouTube war. Yeah. Except it's like grown up TV channels that should know better. Like it's the sort of juvenile thing that vloggers do when they just not mature. They're just bitching about each other. I feel like if we ever return to the topic of the news and why you think I should watch it because people are very professional and it's how you're informed about the world. I'm just going to remember this moment. This is going to come into my head of like, oh yes, those news channels. I never met Australian news. Right. Those sandwiches don't know what they're doing. Is that what you're saying, Brady? I'll tell you what, it's competitive down there. Oh, it's competitive. Well done, guys. Nobody cares. They're right. So I'm just back from a couple of weeks, spiritual home. And I've been doing a lot of Ubering. Yes. I guess not surprisingly, spending a lot of time in Uber's always makes me think more and more about Uber. And I've had two thoughts I wanted to share. One is I know we've kind of discussed this before and it's not like a new discovery, but it was kind of like a real discovery for me because I spent a lot more time talking to the drivers and understanding things. And it made me realize why I would probably find driving Uber's quite addictive. And it's how successfully they like have gamified the experience. What do you mean? Like being an Uber driver to me is like playing a video game. It's like you've got like a screen, like an interface and you never know where your next adventure is going to come from and where it's going to be to and who it's going to be with. And it suddenly pops up and you do it, you collect rewards for doing it. And the more you do it, the more rewards you get. And you're following a map to find the person and they've got to follow a map to take them to their place. And if you do that, you get the treasure. And also Uber have lots of like incentives that they build into it that I'm a bit ignorant of. Like if you do 50 rides before Monday, you get an extra $190. And if you do 20 of these before 2pm tomorrow, there's always like bonuses and things coming up all the time for the drivers. And they're always really aware of these things. And they'll work the extra two hours because they're four rides short of their $200 bonus. But will my next one take me far enough to know what will I get next? And it's all very gamified. I found it really appealing talking to them about it. And I can imagine how much fun that would be. Yeah, the first time I came across this was actually talking about this with a newbie driver in San Francisco. I forget exactly what it was, but he had some kind of incentive to stay in the center of the city. Like and he could specify that on his app. He like if he hit a certain number of short haul drives, they would pay him enough to make up for the fact that he was doing like a very large number of very short drives. I learned so much great. It's so complicated too. Because I was saying, what if you want to go somewhere and like Uber is taking you somewhere else? But you can tell Uber I want to get to this place. And it will give you rides to get you there. But you can only do two of them a day. And also they don't count towards your bonuses. So if you're trying to collect 50 bonuses, your destination choices don't count. If you're within like a two mile radius of the airport, you go into a special airport queue. But if you're just dropping someone off straight away, you can potentially jump that queue and go to the front because they want to encourage people to take people to the airport. Ah, interesting. It's so complicated. There's so many cool little rules and complications. It's amazing. Do you want to be an Uber driver? Do you know what I do want to do? Oh, no. I want to work on a train. Okay. That's a bit out of left field. Yeah. I must tell you about it sometime. I just think working on the train line would be so much fun. Like trains are the opposite of Uber, but okay. Yes. I was buying a sandwich on the train the other day. And I just said to the guy I said, do you like working on the train? And he said, Oh, I love it. I get up in the morning and I'm in London in the afternoon from my lunch break and then I'm back home and I think working on the trains would be great. So the other thing though that happened was and friendly enough, it was the guy who told me the most about how Uber works because he was drove me to the airport. So we had a really long drive. But when we got near the airport and I must point out I get Uber's tour from San Francisco Airport quite a lot. I'm quite familiar with how it all works. And he was driving me there and he says, I can't drop you at the international terminal. And I've been dropped at the international terminal many times and I get picked up from the international terminal. And I know there's a place at the international terminal. It's at the departure section where the Uber's go because whenever I arrive I have to go up to departures to get my Uber because the Uber's aren't allowed down our rivals. I know this. So he's saying, I can't drop you there. I've got to drop you at domestic and then you've got to walk along a bridge or catch a train or something. Oh, no, no, not acceptable. And I was like, this is crazy. Like I get dropped there all the time. You're wrong. And he's like, I can get a hundred dollar fine and I can lose my permit. And he was very insistent. And I'm like, I just didn't believe it. I said, you're wrong. This is incorrect. You can do it. And then I said, how long have you been a new driver for? And he said, I've been a new driver for about two months. And I hadn't been to San Francisco in the last two months. So I was thinking has some new rule come in at the last two months, stopping them dropping people off. Right. Oh, no. Here's this grain of doubt in your mind. He was very sure himself. And I was Googling it and I couldn't find anything about it. And I was mad. And I knew it was wrong. And then he said, he drops me at the domestic terminal. And by this time that dark cloud has come over me. And I said, you are wrong about this. I refuse to believe in the city of San Francisco. You human beings can't be dropped by and over at the international terminal. I know some cities have roles, but I just didn't believe this. I'm just thinking of this poor guy picks up this affable Australian. But little does he know that the dark cloud is coming on this ride. I was still like civil. And he dropped me off. And I said, I believe you're wrong. And he said, you're going to walk up there and go there or whatever. I said, have a nice day. Thank you very much. Thank you. Goodbye. And he drove away. And then I gave him one star. Because he has two jobs to pick me up and to drop me where I want to go. He did the first part. Well, but he completely failed to do the second part. But I did not give him one star until I went inside and said to the woman at the information desk, can Uber's dropped me at the international terminal? And she said, yes, yes, they can, but they can only drop you at departure. They can't drop you at arrivals. And I said, thank you. Okay. Good. That's what I wanted to check. No, I did ask. But then I tried to contact him like I wanted to send him a message or like phone him or something just so he knew for next time. And if I had been able to do that, I probably would have upped his star rating. I even Googled, how do I change the rating I gave him? Because I felt so guilty. But I couldn't contact him. I couldn't just send him like a text message like to say, Hey, man, just so you know, you've misunderstood the rule. Because he says, sorry, I always have to do this. He even told me he always drops people at the domestic terminal when they're flying international. So he's doing this all the time to people. I had to then like go up to escalators and catch a train and all sorts of things to get where I wanted to go. You're just trying to be a hero for the next guy who steps in this guy's Uber, huh? I wanted to help him. But I still feel guilty about it. I don't know where to tell you. What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to do? Give him five stars. So I'm dropping me so far away. I had to catch a train to my destination. You can't give someone five stars for that. No, you can't give someone five stars for that. I'm going to back you on this one, Brady. Thank you. You seem surprisingly relieved by that. I didn't realize my verdict on whether or not the one star rating was okay. It was really weighing on you here. I felt like I had no other toes in my toe belt. What else could I do? Did you leave a comment when you left the one star review? No, it didn't give me the option to. Normally it doesn't. It says, you know, why one star? Because that's all I wanted to do. I wanted to get the information to the guy. Right. So the reason I put one star was because I know if I put three or higher, I don't get to leave a comment. So I pressed one knowing it would say, why? What's your comment? And then the comment thing didn't come up. These are the tragedies in our modern world. Poor guy. Anyway, one star from Brady. I'll tell you what, though, you want tragedies? You ready for the next topic? Okay. You always have this way of starting a topic that sets me on edge every time almost every topic. I don't always leave it in the show because sometimes I'm just so thrown out of sorts. Like the most innocuous topics, somehow you always put me on edge. And then every once in a while, there is a real reason to be on edge. Like Apple feed back last time. So I always feel like we're rolling this dice every time Brady brings up a topic in this way. So I thought you were about to praise me then for my good segways because almost every segment so far has seg weighed into the one before. And I thought that was a brilliant segway. And I thought, well, Grace, taking the time to just give me a pat on the back. No, I'm not taking the time to give you a pat on the back. In fact, I'm always annoyed by your segways because they make it harder for me to edit the show later. I always feel like, oh, Brady did a segway here. You couldn't just start the topic. Now I have to cut around this because I'm chopping out the boring bits. I already thought about that. And I thought that segway, you could put one there because I said you went to the next subject. And then you can go, do you really don't? And everyone's like going, oh, I can't wait to find out what the next subject is. It's going to be awesome. That's what I'm supposed to put the cut. Okay, I didn't realize that. It's different every time. Okay, my anxiety is ramping up here. What is the thing that you want to talk about? Well, I want to talk about what could be Apple's greatest blender. Okay. Now I'm not talking about the watch. Okay. Because I can avoid the watch. I don't have to wear the Apple watch. So even though I think it's not their greatest moment, whatever. And it'll get you eventually. It just a matter of not it'll get me eventually, maybe. Whenever you bring that up and you're like, oh, it's Apple watch. I always feel like I'm just going to sit back, right? Maybe it's a year. Maybe it's five years, but it says inevitable as a smartphone. So yeah, okay, Brady, you're avoiding the Apple watch. Not sure. I'm secretly thinking one day, Gray is going to go, you know what? I think I'm just going to get a classy mechanical watch. Yeah, you know what? We need one of those websites that allows you to place bets like five, 10 years out. I would happily take that bet of which is going to happen first. Does Gray switch to a mechanical watch or does Brady switch to an Apple watch? I will happily take that bet. You think I'm going to bin like either my Omega or my Rolex for an Apple watch? I think it will eventually happen because the value add of a computer on your wrist will eventually beat the value of your nice watch. I'm not saying soon, right? I'm not saying next year or two years. I love for those two watches is high. I know it's very high, Brady. I feel like this is almost certainly like this smartphone version of this, like eventually it'll lose. But anyway, there is a chance, but I also think there's a chance that there's some sophistication switch will turn and you'll suddenly just mature ever so slightly and become like a little bit class here. Right. That's always what it's about. I'm just unsophisticated, unclassy and immature because I don't decorate my house like it's from the 1910s. I understand that my love of a modern sleekest that I could just so childish. It's obviously a thing all children are born with and real men grow out of and will just wait. Not childish. Of course not. Just less sophisticated. Yes. I will grant you that there is a non-zero chance that I would switch to a mechanical watch, but it is very close to zero. I would happily take that bet. Yeah. So what is Apple's greatest blender? Well, it's not even the massive, massive blender that they've made with this new MacBook Pro, which for the first time, I'm seriously, seriously in danger of being knocked off using Apple. Really? Because this new MacBook Pro is bordering on unusable for me with the lack of ports. It's crazy. Okay. So I'm going to ask what it is because I'm not really in the market for a laptop. I didn't follow this very closely at all. I know people have been complaining about it, but I haven't followed it or figured out why. Well, it has these new USB ports, whatever they're called. Is this the USB-C? Yeah. Okay. And it's just got two of them and nothing else. And this is the Pro. I can't put my SD cards into it with all my video footage. I can't put all my draws and draws full of hard drives that have all my rushes and things that I edit with. Hmm. Anyway, that's not, I don't even want to talk about that at the moment. Okay. That's not the disaster. I'm sorry. No. No. Man, I can't imagine what that is. The true disaster. Is there in the upcoming update to the iOS emojis, the wolf face, which I have been using for Lulu and Audrey for quite some time now, has been changed to a crappy gray wolf and it's no longer the Audrey Lulu lookalike. My favorite emoji has been retired. I should have known it was going to be simple. Let's not look. I'm going to talk about serious stuff. I feel like I just walked right into that. I'm waiting for some serious conversation and thinking, oh, wow, it's really going to switch computing systems. What could it possibly be? I'm trying to run through my mental rolodex. Of course, it's emoji related. I should have known. Should have known. We can have a boring talk about changing computer systems another day. Let's talk about emoji and wolf face. Okay. But so just to be clear, they're making the wolf face actually look like a wolf instead of looking like a two hour. That's what you're upset about. Yes. Most other applications and operating systems have made the wolf face a gray looking wolf. Right. Like a wolf. Yeah. Apple had this glitch with it for some reason they were using this kind of doggie type yellowy foxy thing that looked just like Lulu and Audrey. So that was what I used. And everyone knows that was my favorite emoji. Even this is like when you say it looked just like Lulu and Audrey. I think that is quite a stretch to say it looks just like them, but it looked more like them. It was certainly a suitable replacement for them in like text messages and stuff like that. See, you're already way walking that back, right? We started with looks just like them. And now we've gone to suitable replacement for the new emoji form. I would say if you were going to design quite a simple emoji to look like Audrey and Lulu, that's pretty much what you do. It's got a yellow head, it's got a little bit of white on the face, a little bit of white on the neck, just like those dogs. In fact, I will walk back that walk back and say it does look just like them. We'll let the people decide. Okay. There'll be links in the show notes and I'm sure fury is argument in the reddit. We'll let the people decide on this one. So anyway, I've sent you a picture of what the current Lulu, Audrey look like and the new wolf looks like. New wolf is better, but it looks kind of like a squirrel. Does that bother you that I think it looks better? Yes. But it does look like a squirrel. It has a very squirrely eye. Oh, it's feel like you're really loyal to Audrey and Lulu and I thought you'd kind of go into bat for them a bit. Wait, I'll notice. I get loyal to your dogs in emoji form. I think you're misunderstanding that I like your dogs. I have an incredible indifference to emoji faces. Well, I'll tell you what, the only person who's showing less sensitivity than you is my contact at a moja pedia who I contacted just before the show to ask for confirmation of what was happening. And he says bad news, Bradley. I'm sorry to break this tube. And he said the new one that looks nothing like Audrey or Lulu. But then he had the audacity in my wounded emotional state. He said to me, this is a great win for cross platform consistency. But perhaps a loss for you. A new fox face emoji exists, which some could see as a replacement for the old image. So he's kicked me while I'm down and said that basically the emoji community is celebrating this as they should. Yeah. Well, okay. I'll rhythm on that one. As if that's not bad enough. He then says, because you know how last time we talked about this, we caused this huge surge in emoji pedia searches on this thing. Right. And like there was a graph that showed it like spiked and that. So it's like a thank you. He has this fundraising thing where you can adopt an emoji. And he made Audrey the like the adopter of that emoji. He then has the audacity to say to me in this email where he's just kicked me. He's put PS, Audrey's one year complimentary adoption of this emoji has just expired too. Was this not the respect that you deserve ready? I said to him, how can you not give Audrey like lifetime adoption as tribute, especially now that it's being retired? Oh, yes. He's something. How can you demand lifetime adoption on the way the person makes the living off of the emoji pedia? I don't think it's how he makes these living. Even if he doesn't make his living, like it's clear like a for-profit organization, I presume. I guess like they're making money on the emoji pedia. And here you are wanting to lock down forever a little piece of real estate. It was quite happy to put Audrey's name on it without my permission to start with. That was a generous gift for a limited period of time. I think he was trading off Audrey's fame. Oh, is that what you think? Okay. Well, then you were the sucker for talking about it this much. He said to me when I said that he said, I'm sorry, 2016 continues to disappoint. I said, oh, well, you can kiss another promotion of emoji pedia, goodbye. But he's got one. Right, yeah. And yet here we are. Here we are. Oh, you're not going to like this. Well, I was thinking, you know how like the Jamaican rice wrap and the reunion swamp pen are like extinct? And you know how like the black stump was once a told, the building and is not anymore. Right. I think there seems to be a theme of our official things being like things that have kind of failed or no longer exist. So I was wondering if the yellow version of the wolf emoji could be the official emoji of Hello Internet. No, no, of course not. Why not? I don't know why you do this, Freddie. Because you know what? I feel like I've already lost before any of these conversations even start because you have this ability to rally the people around these unofficial official things for Hello Internet. It's like quick sound, right? The more I resist, the more people are like, oh, what a great idea that is, right? So I have to ask you great because the reason I want to know your thoughts on it is because when I make the t-shirt, I want to know if it has to say official or unofficial emoji of Hello Internet. I think all the Brady things have to be the unofficial whatever. So that's the unofficial emoji of Hello Internet. I've all conceded on unofficial official emoji of Hello Internet, right? Is that making you happy? So I can put unofficial official. Yeah, I think that's the compromise that we're reaching. I think that's an upgrade from just unofficial. Take it however you want as long as the unofficial is first. Does that mean we have to decide on an official emoji at some point? No, we're not doing this. We're not doing this. We don't need an official emoji. But if we were going to have an official emoji, what would it be? We don't need an official rice hen, like any of these things that we don't need. I don't understand them. I know you love them and I'm very happy for you, but I don't know what the official emoji would be. All right. I don't even know what all the emojis are. Well, we know what the unofficial official one is. It's the yellow version of the wolf that will be phased out on iOS 10.2. Right. So yeah, our official emoji is the extinct one from 10.1 and earlier. Yeah, it's like retro, man. It's cool. I bet you it'll come back in again, Santa. Oh, Apple will be like, why is everyone wearing these t-shirts? Who are their old wolf emoji on it? I'm sure that that is exactly what Apple will be thinking. Why is this happening? This episode of the podcast has been brought to you by our favorite razor company, Harries. Regular listeners will be familiar with Harries by now. Great shaving kits and products, inexpensive but high quality blades all delivered to your door without fuss. But you don't have to just be buying for yourself. Harries kits also make great gifts. They're classy enough to feel like a special present, but also useful enough to not end up throwing in the drawer and forgotten. I have bought quite a few presents in my time that I've ended up in that drawer. Now, Harries have some special offers at the moment to make it even more enticing. This includes a limited edition set with a midnight blue colored razor handle. It's really nice looking. Makes me feel a little bit inadequate with my own traditional silver handled, Harries. This handle is called the Winter Winston. You can also have the handle engraved with yours or someone else's initials for that personal touch. I can just imagine one with a nice little CGP on the handle wrapped up and popped under the Christmas tree. I think we know what I'm going to get gray this year, don't we? Now, in a gift set, you'll get one of these handles, three, five blade cartridges and shaved gel all for $30. It comes in a really nicely designed gift box. Harries are top-notch when it comes to their packaging. And of course, Hello Internet listeners are also eligible for $5 off their order by going to Harries.com slash Hello Internet and using the code H-I when they check out. Up until 8th of December 2016, Harries are doing free shipping. So that address again, Harries H-A-R-R-Y-S.com slash Hello Internet and remember that code H-I. There's all sorts of other good stuff on their website. They've got a really good website, actually, really well-designed good pictures. They're things like razor stands, travel bags, various lotions and potions. So go check them out and thanks to Harries for supporting our podcast. I bumped into someone in Berkeley wearing a reunion swamp entisha. Oh yeah. It was the first time I've ever seen someone wearing something Hello Internet who didn't know they were going to make me. Oh really? Okay, he just walked up to me and said, oh wow, Brady, what are you doing here? And then I looked and he was wearing the reunion swamp entisha. Huh, it was brilliant. That is kind of brilliant. Yeah. I had a similar experience, but ever so slightly different. And that I got on an elevator with someone who I saw was listening to the Hello Internet podcast on the elevator. Yeah. Did you say something? Of course not. I stayed behind him and kept quiet. That is a crime that you did not announce. That is not a crime. Oh, that is not a crime. That is a totally reasonable response. That would have been the most awesome thing ever. No, it would not be the most awesome thing ever. Because this guy is in a building that I'm in a whole bunch, then he would know who I am. And then forever we might have to say hello if we see each other now. There's no way this is going to happen. Just he worked in your building. Yeah, he works in my building. So that's not what I want. Not ever. Now everyone in London, here listens to Hello Internet is thinking, just gray work in my building. The answer is no people. No, I work in none of your buildings. Except you, Tim. I still think it's a little bit criminal that you didn't. That was just such a perfect moment. I can't believe you would even think that I would say something. It's like you don't even know me. Of course, I'm not surprised you didn't do it because you'd be ever weird. But that would have been an awesome opportunity. That's like the kind of dream moment that like some people wait their whole life for. To be able to just say, just tap him on the shoulder. Oh, you could have had so much fun. I would not have had fun. That would have been fun. That's why I didn't do it. I swear, Gray, like I know most Hello Internet listeners have a real appreciation for your mindset and many of them are like you. But there must be Hello Internet listeners out there right now who are like screaming at your missed opportunity. It's not a missed opportunity. It was an opportunity taken an opportunity to have normal elevator rides for the rest of my time at that building. It was super weird though. It would have been pretty cool. Just a tapping on the shoulder and it's winked. And then got out. He'd be like, wow. Yeah, that's a plus way to handle that situation. Just tap a strange man on the shoulder, wink and say nothing. Perfect. Yeah, that's exactly what I do. Because obviously he probably doesn't know what you look like. So I know you wouldn't do it and you didn't do it. And I get that. But if you were going to do it and try and make it a cool moment, what could you have said that would have made him go? It's CGP Gray. Are you enjoying the show? I think that's what I would say. That would have worked. It would have worked. But it's not going to work. Not now, not ever. It would have been cool. So Gray, I did mention that I am just back from America. I was there for two weeks. And obviously it's been a big two weeks in the United States. And I have to say how glad I am that I got to be there. No, yeah. Because seriously, like super historic, one of the great contests of all time. Now, no, not everybody is happy with how it finished and not it wasn't won by who everyone wanted to win. But Game 7 of the World Series was absolutely incredible. Did you follow at all? Chicago Cubs Cleveland Indians. It was amazing. No, I don't even know what you're talking about. You know what the World Series is? Beastball, right? Yeah. It's like the final of the baseball. Okay. It's the Super Bowl of Beastball. Yeah. And it was between the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago Cubs. Okay. But the two teams that had been the longest time since they won it. I think Cleveland was like 60 or 70 years. And the Chicago Cubs hadn't won it for over 100 years. And there's lots of back stories to it. And this is great curse that was stopping them winning it. They looked like they'd blown this one as well. They were three one down in the series. They came back to make it three all. So I went to Game 7. And then they went up in Game 7 and had it absolutely in the bag. And somehow they managed to completely blow it and completely lost their lead. So I went to extra innings. And then they finally won it in extra innings in the 10th innings. Like this Game 7 of the World Series, I think was a great advertisement for baseball. Like if you didn't enjoy that game, then you are incapable of enjoying baseball because it was such a great game. It was so thrilling. It had stories within stories. There was so much going on. I loved it. Seriously, I was on such a high at the end of that game. And I felt so good about the world. And like I had the biggest smile on my face watching it at the end. And were you in the actual stadium for the Super Bowl? Not the Super Bowl. Sorry, the World Cup. No, no. No, no, no, no, no. I was not. No, I was not. I was not. It was in Cleveland. I was in California. You were describing it as though you were there. Well, I felt like I was there. But like you're saying you were so glad that you were in America. I guess I've mentally presumed that you were at this place, but you were watching it on TV. So you could have just as well been in the UK. Yeah, but it's different when you're watching it in America. Is it different? It's a bit different. It's a bit different. Well, I was in America for the election and that felt different too. And I could have been watching that from anywhere. And I did mention to you in the last episode, like I didn't know what I was going to do for the election day and the election night. So I thought I'd share a bit of my election experience with you. Yeah, what does it like? I have no idea. Well, can I just make a couple of observations about election time in America? Please go ahead. You have the floor. I was in Berkeley. I was in California the whole time. So I know it's different everywhere you go. But there's a couple of things that struck me as strange. One of them was obviously concurrent with all the elections that are going on for president and Senate and all this sort of stuff. They have these propositions, you know, changes to local laws in the state and stuff like that. You know, prop 53 or prop 28, you know, we're going to legalize mowing your lawn on a Thursday or whatever it is. But the thing is, obviously they have at some point and obviously it's on the ballot side, I presume. But the way it's advertised on TV and there's like saturation advertising for or against these propositions, the ads never tell you what the propositions are. And you get these really emotive ads saying vote yes to prop 43. Otherwise, all your kids are going to die and the world's going to be terrible. Right. Or vote no to prop 33 because everyone who's right thinking would, you know, and they really hammer you hard on voting yes, I know to these propositions and they tell you the numbers and they never tell you what they are. So if you weren't like really into politics or into the news or you're a visitor like me, you'd have no idea what they're telling you to do. And I found it a really confusing experience. This is one of these moments where I find you very charming, Brady, because I feel like you're coming at this from the angle that the purpose of these things is to inform you as opposed to their real purpose, which is simply to just plant an association in your mind. I would almost guarantee that an advertisement that doesn't tell you the details of the proposition, it just simply tells you vote yes or vote no is more effective than an advertisement that explains to you what the proposition is and then why you should vote yes or vote no. I feel like I'd be shocked if that isn't true if they just like vote no on 47. I bet that's hugely effective. And whoever is funding the campaigns behind the propositions wants to win. I feel like I wouldn't remember whether it was good or bad though, because of I have no context. I'd walk into the booth and I'd be oh 47. I've seen lots of ads about that. Is that the one I'm supposed to vote yes to or no? I don't even know. Is that the good one or the bad one? And I wouldn't recognize it from the ads because I don't associate the ads with the content of the proposition because I don't know what the proposition says. I am supposed to vote against the medicine one or I'm supposed to vote for the death penalty. I'd get that, but just calling them by their numbers is just baffling. But have you ever seen the way these things are actually worded? Like people sometimes post images of the propositions and there are almost always these crazy triple negative sentences. Even if you're trying to read it. And again, I don't think it's an accident. You can write it clear sentence, but these things are written in intentionally opaque and difficult to understand ways. Yeah. And then I think combine that with an enormous amount of advertising usually on one side. That's like great. Most people if they try to read it, they're confused and then they don't vote. And enough people just have them like an association of like, oh, this is bad. It's written in an ambiguous way so that however they read it, they feel like, oh, yes, the bad outcome is the one that I don't want. And then they just vote yes or no because they were told to do that. And then the thing passes. All right. That's American democracy. Another thing that I found very strange about election day in the US. I can't remember what the proper name for it is in the UK. But on election day in the UK, the media is not allowed to talk about the election pretty much. There are really strict rules. Yeah. All they're allowed to say is that the election is happening. And they're allowed to show footage of the leaders of the party casting their vote. But there's not allowed to be political coverage. So the point where it's strange, like you'll watch the news or listen to the radio in the UK on election day. And it's like the most boring news day of all time. And then as soon as the polls close across the country, the gloves are off and the exit polls come out. And it's like the usual wall to wall blanket coverage. But this is not the case in the US, which in itself is strange. Yes. But the thing that makes it doubly strange is if you're in California, the polls have closed across the east coast. And we're already seeing results. And like I was watching CNN and I was starting to see results coming through. And then I went off walking some of which I'll talk about in a second. And I was walking past polling booths in California where people were walking in and casting their votes. I was watching them vote. And yet they like me must have been knowing half the results were coming out. I was already clear which way things were starting to lean. Like I know in the case of California, it doesn't make a big difference because of the nature of politics in California. But still, I still find it strange that I can be listening and watching people basically saying this is looking like who's going to win. And there are other people who still walking into the booth to cast their votes. It was like, again, it seemed crazy to me. I just because I'm not used to I guess. This is the point at which I will remind you about the existence of Hawaii. Poor Hawaii being out there in the Pacific Ocean in the middle of nowhere. Not many electoral votes to begin with. But also because of this time zone thing, it's like, well, I mean, like obviously there are not a huge number of people living in Hawaii compared to the rest of America. So statistically, the election should essentially be decided by the time Hawaii rolls around and also Hawaii votes in a particular way almost all the time. So it's like, I understand conceptually why this would happen. But I think this whole system is crazy. Like I really feel like there's this weird rush. Like people want the news right now. And since America is so big, you can have the news start to roll out over time. Like if I was emperor here, I would make it the rule like, hey, no reporting until the polls close in Hawaii. I don't care. You got to keep a lid on it people. Yeah, good luck with that. Like if it's a weird news day, I think that's a small price to pay for everybody feeling more like their vote matters. Right. Yeah. But I found that strange. So I ended up because I didn't want to sit in and watch CNN or not because I thought that would be a bit sad. And I thought, I mean, America, I'm, you know, for an election that might never happen again. Let's make something other. A lot of Tim's actually invited me to parties. Oh, yeah. Sorry if I didn't reply people, I was a bit busy, but I appreciated the invites. But what I did do was I went, I did accept an invitation from a friend to go to like an election watching party at a local theater in Berkeley. It's like, you know, an amateur theater company. They had MSNBC on a big screen and where people normally sit to watch the play. Everyone was just sitting watching and they was like selling drinks and pizza and stuff like that. And it was like a big get together. And it was actually quite a nice thing. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. And I was told it would be quite nice and it had been nice in other years. I guess the only problem is I don't want to get all political. But obviously an amateur theater group in Berkeley is going to be quite left leaning. Quite a Democrat supporting. And it seems very unlikely to me. And obviously as it became clear that the Republican candidate was going to be the one to win, there was actually quite a lot of emotion and there were lots of crying people. And it actually got a bit messy at one point. So I kind of left eventually. I like the idea of you slowly walking to the door as the evening for Crescent. It was a bit of a mess. But amongst all the sadness there, amongst all the supporters of the Democrat candidate, there was one funny moment. And that was I was nearly out of phone charge. So I borrowed someone's charger and I went out to the foyer of the theater and found a plug and I plugged in. And next to me was another PowerPoint with a phone charger already there. And this guy walked up to her and said, oh, does anyone mind here if I use this charger? And one of the people in the lobby said, oh, I think you can. I think that's Brady's. And I'm like, no, no, I'm here with this one. And then I realized they were talking about another Brady. And I said, is there another Brady here? And they said, yeah, yeah. And I said, where, where? And they said, oh, she's just over there. It was a lady Brady. A lady Brady? A lady Brady. They said, oh, it's that woman over there in the jacket. And she came over and I said, is your name Brady? She said, yes. Huh. Took pictures with her and everything. It was great. I so rarely have a people called Brady. And I've definitely never met a lady Brady before. Wow. So that was brilliant. I feel like she has to always be called Lady Brady. Like that's fantastic. Yeah. A Lady Brady. I tweeted a picture with her. I think I missed it. I didn't expect you to say, yeah, the alert came up like I get all my alerts when you send a tweet Brady. I've got notifications on all my devices for your tweets. Yeah. And I certainly don't go through the equivalent of manic depressive faces on Twitter. Or it's like desert incredible over abundance desert. The picture made with the swamp pen guy, but I think I'd already sent you that. He is Lady Brady. Hang on. Look at that. A Lady Brady. And in trademark Brady style, you're pointing at her. Of course I am. There you go. How do you feel about there being a lady Brady? I think it's brilliant. I loved it. It made my night. I think this has the possibility to catch on. I think any tims out there expecting a girl, you know, but Brady on the list. Or a boy. Yes. Or a boy. I'm sorry. I'm cool with both. Didn't mean to raise your hackles there. I don't mind that it's like both, but I don't want it to become just a woman's name. I'd like it to remain both. You know this is how this goes though. Right. There's actual demographic information on this. So this woman is the tipping point. If not the tipping point, she's the tip of the iceberg, I guess. Maybe that's the thing. She's the progenitor. Yeah. I've read in a couple places that there's real demographic data to support this. That this is a really common phenomenon that essentially the names only ever go one way. That a male name will become a gender ambiguous name, like Leslie. Right. And then it transitions over time to end up being an almost exclusively female name. Famously like Jane. Well, I know it will never come back. It will never come back to the man's eye. Yeah, that essentially this is a one way street only for whatever reason. Right? That oh, right. Yeah. Lady Brady somehow seems a little bit more sinister now. This is why I was asking, right? It's like you're going to be in the retirement home and people are going to be, they'll be like, oh, a man Brady. I mentioned Leslie because one of the places where I grew up, we had a neighbor who was an old guy called Leslie. And I was just always where like, oh, he was on the end of that demographic shift. That Leslie Nelson. Like, yeah, it seemed totally fine to have an older guy with the name Leslie, but it would seem very strange to have like a little kid with the name Leslie. And so this is where you're going to be Brady in the retirement home. Oh, yes. Look at this charming man from another time with the name Brady. That's you. That's your future. Oh, I hadn't thought about that. That's changed everything. She seems a little bit evil now. No. Name Stealer. No. If that's what happens, that's what happens. You can't control it, Brady. It's going to happen. I never liked my name anyway, so I have no great attachment to it. I told you I always wanted to change my name and I was growing up. Do you want to tell the people what you wanted to change your name to? Yeah, I wanted to be called Jason. Jason. Oh, I said when I'm old enough, I'm going to change my name to Jason because I thought it was such a cool name. But by the time I turned 18, it was like on my driver's license and stuff, so I thought I was. Yeah, I'll stick with Brady. Fudge of paperwork, Fudge of Haslone. Yeah. Who wants to do that? And I hate to say it, but like, you seem like Brady to me. I can't imagine you as Jason. I will always say it. If you ever want to change your name to Jason or Leslie or whatever, I will support you 100% of the time. And I will call you Jason Leslie from now on. But you seem like Brady to me. Yeah. I think that's pretty much who I am now. I think I've imprinted on the name. So I quite enjoyed that aspect of the not. But then that was it. That was my election not. This podcast is brought to you in part by Squarespace. The simplest way to create a beautiful online presence. Squarespace is the simplest way to create a beautiful website or online store. With Squarespace, you can create a beautiful website to showcase your work, publish a blog, sell your products, promote your physical business, announce an upcoming event. There are so many things that you can do with Squarespace. It's everything you need right away. Super simple. Their ability to customize the look and feel of your website. Settings and products is just unparalleled. Super easy to do. They have analytics that will help you grow in real time. They will automatically optimize your website for search engines. The hosting is secure and incredibly reliable. I'm speaking from experience here. There's nothing to patch or upgrade ever. And they have 24-7 award-winning customer support. If you do anything in the world, you need a website to show it off. Whether you're a writer or a blogger or you are a store or you're running any kind of company that you want to promote or you're just promoting your own services like your personal trainer or you're running a gym or anything at all, Squarespace is what you want to use. So simple. Looks great. Looks great on a desktop. Looks great on a mobile device. It's really simple. So right now, check out Squarespace at squarespace.com. Go there and you can register a domain name to get the exact URL that you want. And you can begin your free website or online store trial. And when you're ready to sign up for the full service, don't forget to use the offer code H.I. to save 10% off. Squarespace, make it beautiful. What did you do for the election? Did you sleep through it or did you wake up to the news? How did your election night play out? I just went to bed. You seem surprised. No. I don't like to stay up late. I'm not going to stay up for new years if I can possibly avoid it, but sometimes social engagements require me to stay up to new years. Sorry. It's looking at you. So I just went to bed. And then I usually have offline mornings. Like I try very hard never to go on the internet until at least lunchtime, which is very effective for me. But I figured like, oh, when I wake up in the morning, this will just be perfect because every time I've woken up in the morning when there's an American election in the UK, it's like, oh, great. It's all done. I just went to bed. There was nothing to even look at. There was no news. I wake up and now I just get to find out the answer. And so that was my experience this time around. All right. Now, since the election, anyone who follows you on Twitter can't help but have noticed. And I certainly noticed that you've been a right grumpy ass. You haven't been yourself. Do you want to talk about this? What's been up, man? But see, I think I have been entirely myself. But I think this behavior is not surprising. No, you're such an emotional reaction to an issue. Like too much emotion. So be typical. Okay. So I guess the thing that I found just incredibly unbelievable as the morning went on is like, I woke up and I was like, okay, that's the news. But then it became clear that the thing that I thought would never happen again in my lifetime was going to happen. Which was that. The winner of the popular vote was going to lose the electoral college. And I just thought, yeah, I cannot, I cannot believe that this is going to happen again in my lifetime. If you look at the actual dates, it's like a couple of times in the 1800s and then 2000. In the 2000 cases, even like a complicated case with the Supreme Court gets involved. Like, you know, it's not like a standard case. And so I thought like, oh, I'll live the rest of my life where whoever wins the popular vote almost certainly will win the presidency as well. Like we won't end up in this bizzaro situation that the electoral college can bring about. But no, here we are again. By my count, it's the fourth time this has happened. And I was just like, I could not deal with that. I just, the thing is Brady, it's like, I don't know if you're aware. But I have a thing about elections. I know you do like them. I know you're interested in them. Okay, but again, I don't find elections interesting. I don't find election campaigns interesting for the most part. I don't find the particulars of politics interesting for the most part. I always have this feeling like if we can't even get the most basic parts right-ish, I feel like I don't even understand what we're all talking about here. And so this was just a case of like, I cannot believe I am facing another one of these situations in the electoral college in my life. So that threw me quite off-kilter as I was like a crazy person refreshing the votes on the New York Times page for watching the count for the popular vote come in. Like I'm totally fine with understanding like the way the elections run. Like and people run because the electoral college is set up the way it is. Like I understand all of this. I'm totally fine with this. But it's just like, oh my god, here we go again. I can't believe it's happening. So I remember your original electoral college video. I haven't watched it for a long time. But I remember you made one. I haven't watched it for a long time. Five years ago. I did watch your new one that you made. Yeah. Like a Tharsis video. I have watched it. It was a wrap. It was a wrap. Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. Like people should understand like, I did not think that that was necessarily a good video. That was just one of these things of like, this thing is on my mind. And I will go totally insane if I don't just write something and produce it. And I mean it and put it up. Right. It was like, I will go crazy if I don't do this. So great. All of that aside though, I do want to just get a little bit of a electoral college views from you here. And I know I'm kind of the guy who's brought enough to a gunfight here because you are quite knowledgeable on the issue of the electoral college. I would say I am not. But I kind of know how it works. And I am yet to be persuaded that it's the worst thing in the world. I would say that I am persuadable both ways because I do not believe at the moment that it is necessarily the case that the person who wins the popular vote who is voted for by the most people should necessarily win the presidency. Okay, so lay out your reasoning for that. Okay. It's going to come out a bit muddled. And it may involve analogy. It may not. It may involve things that are wrong. It may not. And it may involve ignorance or it may not. But can I start with an analogy? Please go ahead and have. Let's go back to the World Series of baseball. Okay. Which is a best of seven competition. Now you can win the World Series by winning four games of baseball by one run to zero. Right. And the other three games you could lose 100 runs to zero. So overall you could concede 300 runs and score four and still be the legitimate winner of the World Series. Mm-hmm. And some people might say, gosh, if you concede 300 runs in three games of baseball, you're probably not a very good baseball team. But I can make the argument that in fact that could be quite a legitimate thing. And if you're good enough to win four games and the other team was only good enough to win three games, there could have been different conditions that favored the other team, but could have been home games and away games. I can make an argument, although I've used such an exaggerated case, you can win the World Series quite legitimately and by far and away not score the most runs, and I'll be very comfortable with who won. Mm-hmm. I think the same could be true of elections. I think if you have decided for whatever reasons and we can get into federal stuff and state stuff if you want, but for whatever reasons, you have a portioned waiting to different people's votes. I can think of quite the legitimate reasons to apportion more votes to certain groups than others. Mm-hmm. You could also argue against it, and I could be persuaded otherwise. But I could say, you know, the president is not just the president of like people. They're also president of vast tracts of land and they are responsible for animals and mountains and rivers and small villages and things like that. And you could say, well, hang on, maybe we need to do something to protect certain groups or empower certain groups more and not give all the power to the dense, huge cities full of people. Mm-hmm. I can come up with good arguments for it. So I can easily envisage a system whereby you're apportioning waiting to votes. Mm-hmm. In fact, I saw a lot of people make an argument during Brexit, and I'm not saying I necessarily support this argument, but I saw the argument made that how come someone who's 90 years old and about to die had their Brexit vote count for the same amount of someone who was 18 and passed a live with the repercussions for, you know, 60 years? You can argue that both ways, but it's still there is an argument for apportioning wait, and it feels to me like for whatever reasons the Electoral College has apportioned wait to votes. And we can have a discussion about whether or not they should have done that or not, but at the moment they have done it. Mm-hmm. And if that's the system that everyone has got, I'm cool with it. Mm-hmm. It just works that way. The system doesn't give every one person the vote the same pair as the others. And just like in the World Series, some runs count for more than others. Those one runs scored in those one-neil victories, counted for a lot more than all that that face of runs that were scored in the three games you lost. Mm-hmm. So I can kind of be persuaded of it. The other argument you made about the Electoral College in your most recent video was to do with the actual voters and faithless voters and things like that. That's a kind of another argument. I think that's been of a red herring myself. That never has been an issue, even in the four cases where things have gone against the popular vote. The faithless voters has never been a problem, and I can't imagine the country ever letting it be a problem. I think it would get slapped down if someone changed the result of the election by being a faithless voter in the Electoral College. And they should probably fix the rule because it's just a bit messy and antiquated. But I think it's a red herring in the debate about yes or no to the Electoral College. I think the real discussion to be had is whether everyone's votes should count the same. That's where I'm coming from. Okay. Are you sitting down, Bernie? Yep. I agree with everything that you've said. I even think that's a perfectly good analogy. The thing about the Electoral College that is very hard to convey even in the longer older videos that I've done is like I will agree that the Electoral College in isolation is not necessarily a problem. The thing that I originally was planning to do this year for the election instead of doing the rules for rulers video, which took it over was I kind of wanted to do a here are all of the particular problems in American democracy video because my feeling is really like none of them on their own are really deal breakers. But it's everything put together ends up becoming a real problem. And I think the Electoral College is a fantastic example of an interesting different thing that the United States does. That's a layer on top of all of these other layers that exist. And that I think ends up making things worse. Like I mean, it's almost like you could have a very parliamentary system where everybody elects their local representatives and then the members of parliament elect the prime minister stroke president. And that's a very different kind of system. And the idea of the Electoral College is almost that that people are sending electors to go represent them and elect who the leader of the executive is going to be. It's actually not that far off of a parliamentary system sort of. But I don't have necessarily have problems with parliamentary systems. But I think it's it's a question of the way all of these various things interlock with each other, which is part of what always makes it a very difficult thing to talk about. I think you're going down the red herring route again though Gray when you start talking like that. Like this antiquated extra layer of abstraction where these faceless people have to like rubber stamp who the people chose. I admit is weird and unnecessary. But like saying how like you know this is almost like a parliament. Maybe it was once like that. But that's clearly not what it has been for a very long time. Oh yeah. Yeah. I think when you start couching up like that again, I think you're like stirring up the wrong debate. You know, this is just some and that cronism some weird system that they use to transfer what happens in the election to some kind of formal process for the president being appointed, which is stupid. But when you rile people up with it, I think it's a red herring. Yeah. So again, I agree. I'm not actually saying that it's like a parliamentary system. I'm just saying like the structure is vaguely like the same idea. Right? And there's nothing necessarily wrong with a parliamentary system. So there could be a version of the electoral college that's just totally fine and unremarkable and boring. But I'm just saying like some of the particulars of it are frustrating. And I mean, I guess the thing that we should get out of the way of like very clearly is, you know, it's so funny. Like you make a video and it's always interesting to see how people react to the things that you say. And like part of my frustration, which I thought I made really clear was actually with some friends I had some personal conversations with who were wanting me to make a video about how the election result can be overturned with faithless electors. You know, I ended up getting a kind of inundation from a lot of people that I know personally about this. I kind of feel you did make that video, great. I feel that there was a very strong element of I won't say scare mungering, but sowing the seed into people's brain that legitimate elections could be overturned by renegades. And you sort of said that should never happen. But I think you definitely so decide that it was a possibility. But maybe I watched it through the wrong prism. And I know you made other points in the video, but I came away from that video thinking that you were sowing that seed. What I was trying to say there is like the electoral college has the option of this totally crazy function. Now, I agree with you that it is incredibly unlikely that it is going to occur. And there's also believe it or not, there is a whole other extra crazy layer on top of this, which is that just to walk through the shockingly unlikely scenario. Electoral College vote happens in December. Let's say faithless electors swing it and they choose a different candidate. When that happens in January, there is also an official part of the process where Congress actually certifies and counts the balance from the electoral college. But during that stage, any senator or representative is allowed to object to the result. And if that occurs, it starts getting really foggy here because it hasn't happened before. And there's a little bit of like what exactly is the process. But the probable outcome is that the newly incoming Congress then votes and decides on who the president is going to be. But all of this I completely agree is very unlikely to happen. There's two things here. This to me seems like an obvious thing. You shouldn't have systems where there's even a small probability of a ridiculous thing happening. And I think if you can't close these loopholes, you are intentionally just waiting for trouble. And I think this election is a perfect storm of potential trouble. Like if anything crazy is ever going to happen, it's this election. You're saying because like such an unusual candidate, I want to, that if any people are ever going to try to invoke some of these weird loopholes, it might be this one. Exactly. This is the time. If there's any chance, it's this time. Now, as every single day that goes on, I think that chance decreases. I would say like it's the highest it's ever been in American history. And I feel like I'm so against this idea. I'm against this even being a thing that's possible. And I find it furious that people seem to be okay with systems where it's like, ah, there's a crazy thing that can happen, but it'll never happen. But if you wait long enough, crazy things do happen. And so you should try to simplify and clarify the system. And so like I was just seeing a lot of people like calling for faithless electors. And it's like, yes, this is technically within the rules. It's kind of like in the Brexit video where I said like, you know, if the government doesn't do Brexit, it's kind of going against the idea of democracy. Like I was trying to say this similar thing in this video of like this has never happened. And it totally shouldn't happen. And I think my exact words were then like, but it's crazy to leave in place for future elections, a system that benefits nobody, right? Something like that. Okay, Gray, I'm with you. This is kind of a possible way that that could have been perceived, though. And maybe I perceive it depending on what you tell me later on. Is using this Doomsday scenario, the red herring as I call it, but you know, something that is possible. I feel like maybe some people think you're using this Doomsday scenario to change the other aspect of the electoral college is like using that as the back door to change the other component that gives certain states more influence than other states. It's like you're saying, I can't win that argument. So let me scare the bejesus out of people with this other argument of faithless electors and results being overturned. And then once everyone says, oh, you're right, the electoral college is terrible, then you'll change the other stuff. And that's what I want to talk to you about. Like the million dollar question silver bullet thing that I want to know from you. Is do you think everyone's vote should count the same for president? Let's get to that in just one second, but I do just want to address your previous point, because in a sense, you're right. Because so here's the thing. The electoral college has this function where the person who wins the popular vote can lose the election. Yeah, right. And now when that happens, it ends up being the case that the people whose candidate has just won are like the electoral college is amazing. Yeah. I think this ends up becoming like a moderate reading of the actual rules. And I feel like if rules mean anything, you have to have a kind of fundamentalist reading of the rules. And so if the rules say that faithless electors can overturn the results, if you're a okay with the first half of the list of rules that forms what the electoral college is, you have to be a okay with the second half of what the electoral college says is possible. And so I think each of those two halves end up creating a whole that is theoretically objectionable to everybody. And that's why I'm trying to discuss it. Some people will be on the side of the popular winner should win the election. And some people will say the election should never be overturned by these electors. It's like, okay, but that's what it is. And the relative arguments about how likely one or the other are to occur. I feel like all those are is discussions of what happens to be the current political system. They're not discussions of the system in general in the abstract. How does it actually work when you don't have a team to be rooting for? That's the question that's like, it's so impossible to separate in people's minds. Think about how this system works in general. If you didn't have a side, would you be okay with a system that allows the person who gets fewer votes to win? And there are totally scenarios where that would be acceptable. But are you also okay with a system that allows an unknown counsel to people to overturn that result? Like I just don't think anybody can agree to both halves of those. All right. I just think you're sort of doing the same thing over and over again. So there are two things going on here. And I don't think the two are particularly related. Other than being able to say there are two things that might be wrong with it. I think the faithless electors and the nature of the strangest forming the college and that is a whole separate argument and is muddying the waters. And the more you clarify it, the more I feel like you're muddying it. I hear you. I understand what you said. But I just don't understand how it's arguing though, because then it just seems to me like you're picking the parts that you like and ignoring the parts that you don't. And so then all I hear is I like the system when it works in my favor. I don't like the system when it couldn't possibly work in my favor. And then it's like, oh, okay, well now we're not discussing what a fair system is. Now we're just discussing how you personally benefit this time around. And like that is actually the reason that I was so infuriated because I felt like a man alone in the world on Wednesday. Keep saying all this time around. Who's benefiting this time around? No one has ever benefited from faithless electors. People have benefited from the confusion between winning the electoral college and winning the popular vote. Like that is an elephant in the room that needs to be discussed. But this possibility of faithless electors, yes, it's an issue. Yes, it's there. But it's not the core of the argument. It's like a plane is crashing because the engines have stopped working. And you're also saying there's a little crack in the tip of the wing that could also make the plane crash. I'm saying let's do with the fact the engines aren't working. Can we learn this thing with or without engines? Is there a way around this? What kind of engines do we need? How do we save the plane? And you're here saying, oh yes, but also there's a crack in the end of the wing. Okay, once the engine situation is dealt with, let's have a look at the crack in the wing because that's also a problem. But at the moment, we should be talking about the engines. And I feel like the disparity between the electoral college numbers and the popular vote is the engines of the plane. And you're spending way too much time on the little crack in the wing. I mean, we're going to have to disagree on this point. I just think it really does matter. And that otherwise you are only wanting to accept the rules when they work in your favor and you don't want to accept the rules when they don't work in your favor. And that's why I was really frustrated with everybody on Wednesday or whatever it was that the election results came out. Because I felt like everybody just wanted things to go their way and nobody cared about the rules. Right? If you were happy that the candidate won, you were totally happy with the way the rules worked. If you didn't like the candidate who won, then you were calling for faithless electors to overthrow the result. That's why I was so upset. I felt like I was just alone in the world and like, nobody cares if this is fair in the abstract. Everybody only cares that they win, that their team wins. And that's the thing that I hate the most about politics. Is it becomes sports, right? And everybody's just pulling for their team and they want to win no matter what it is. I say the problem now. What's the problem? I think you are overhearing. The people calling for faithless electors. There's a call for everything out there. But I think the people complaining about the disparity between the popular vote is way more the argument and the thing people are talking about than the faithless voters. And if you think both things like have equal weighting and the people who lost trying to use the faithless voters as the back door, I think you've got that wrong. But you understand I'm trying to tell the winning team they have a reason to be concerned too, even though it benefited them this time. I think you're trying to trick the winning team there. Again, I think you're trying to use it as a back door to get a wider issue. We will have to agree to disagree on this. Look, I agree with you that both things are flawed. I agree with you that both need discussing. But I think one is more important than the other. And I think you're placing undue importance on the faithless voters problem when the thing that American society needs to decide is whether or not they're happy with the situation of popular vote when there's not becoming president. That's what America really needs to decide. And I wonder what you think about that. Okay, so I'm going to try to describe the situation in a little bit of the abstract. So we don't get caught up in the details of the electoral colleges who cares really, right? Doesn't matter. So here is my view on it. You have the competing needs of two different entities. On one hand, you have the competing needs of citizens. And on the other hand, you have the competing needs of the states. These are the two players in this game. And it really is like a question of kind of governing preference, which way you want those things to lead. Like, do you care more about the sovereignty of the states? Or do you care more about like the citizens as a whole? And like, I really don't think there's a correct answer to that. I really think that's a bit of like a preference argument. Now, the problem is, here's what I think happens. It's almost like an optical illusion that occurs in people's minds when we're discussing this. So there is the very legitimate, very real complaint that if you're just going by popular vote because America is so enormous, you end up with just the city's controlling things. And I don't think that's an illegitimate complaint. And you also end up with just this weird and real disparity, especially in a country as big as America, that it's like you have like this ocean of the rural. And poking up in random locations is an urban archipelago. Right. And like, the cities have much more in common with each other than they'd necessarily do with their own states. And the rural areas often have much more in common than they do with the state that's, you know, one hour's drive away. And so there's this weird geographic fragmentation. And I think it's totally legit for people who are not in the cities to say, like, look at all of this land, like look at all of this space. This has to have some kind of waiting and balance against the cities. Like I can understand that argument. Okay. Yeah. And so here's where I think the reasoning then starts to turn a little bit because what happens is the minority group, which in this case is, you know, it's very close, but let's just say it's rural citizens are in the minority or, you know, will essentially be soon. And they say, you know, we should have more votes or our vote should be weighted more in order to balance out the cities. And that right there is the moment that I think there's a problem because there is actually a simpler, fairer solution, which is you have to require a super majority. You don't just require 50.001% of the votes. If you want to say, like, look, we need to have an elected leader who is going to be representing a lot of our people, what you want to do then is say, instead of giving this waiting differently, which I think has a real unfair feeling and leads to strange results sometimes, I think it's easier to say, look, the candidate has to win 60% of the ballots cast. That's what you actually want because otherwise, you end up with these weird situations where you end up with minority rule. And people are always like, oh, minority rule is awesome when it's me. And it's like, no, you're doing this the wrong way. If you want to protect a minority group in a voting block, what you require is more consensus, not less consensus. So that's my feeling on this. Does that create a situation where, because as I understand it, grade the electoral college, waiting a tweet from time to time as demographics change. Yeah, it's every 10 years with the census. Yeah. So with your suggestion here of this super majority instead, instead of like waiting the votes, just requiring the winner to get more votes. Right. A higher percentage of the votes. Yeah. Are you just creating a new number to be tweaked? And as more and more people move to the cities and the rural areas get less and less dense, you're going to have to say, oh, we need to move this up to 61 or 62 now, because at 60, the city still just have complete control. And oh, now we've got to move it up to 64, because more and more people have moved into the cities. It just feels like you're tweaking the numbers in a different way to how the electoral college does it. This is totally what setting up a voting system is. It's a question of which number are you going to tweak? And I get driven kind of crazy when people want, they people want two things. They want the system exactly as it is right now, or they want the perfect alternative. And it's like, okay, well, you're never going to have a perfect alternative, because fundamentally what governance is is compromise. Right. And it's just a question of, how are we going to do this? Right. But some people are always going to be unhappy. And so yes, if you are, you're looking at like a voting block and there's a bunch of people, you want to have a super majority for certain kinds of decisions. And I think it's, it's a fair system to say, and you know, especially with like a presidential election, even changing that number by like the candidate needs 55%, not 50%. I think would wildly change the kind of candidates that you would end up getting, right? Because you just need like a different kind of person to actually win that. You need someone who actually appeals to a broad base of the population as opposed to people like save the electoral college forces presidents to appeal to a broad wide range of the population. But I think it is pretty clear in practice, like that doesn't actually happen. Whereas even if you required a 55% super majority in order to win, I think that would have to change the way candidates run. But yes, I totally concede that that means in the future, you are signing up to adjusting this one number. But I think that's a clearer, fairer thing to adjust. How much consensus do we require among the population to elect a president versus how much more should people's votes in Wyoming count than someone in Texas? Right? Like I think that's a fundamentally divisive and unfair argument to be having. This magic number, this super majority number, which would be tweaking from time to time as the country changes. How is that calculated? Like in simple terms, how do you even arrive at that number? But I don't know how the number would be arrived at. This is where the debate would begin. But I think the simplest starting point would be to try to go around and say like, okay, what is the number of people who live in metro areas, right? In large metro areas. And we're going to require the super majority number to be larger than just these populations, right? Whatever it is. I expect in America, that would be something like 55%. Right? It's not even like a huge gap, just like more than our current system. Yeah. So that's my viewpoint. I just think it's kind of crazy when the argument starts out as we can't get everybody to agree and we need to protect the rights of the minority. And it's like, okay, yes, agree. We're all in the same page so far, so good. And the way we do that is by making it so that the minority can elect someone who rules us all. And it's like, no, no, this is worse. Like this is worse. I know you're concerned about rule of the majority, but I don't see how rule of the minority is an appropriate solution. I think rule of the super majority is the appropriate solution for protecting minority rights. But pray the minority only has that power when the majority split, don't they? Like you make it sound like some little state decides the whole election. But that's only become the case because the Californians chose a Democrat and the Texans chose a Republican. And if those majorities got behind one candidate, then the little state wouldn't even have a chance of having a say of who the president is. So you've just changed arguments here because now you're talking about states. I'm simply talking about people voting and requiring a super majority of people voting. And under this scenario, everybody's vote is worth the same. So someone in Hawaii, their vote is worth just as much as someone in Utah. Everybody's votes are the same. And we're just requiring a higher threshold to actually be the victor. That's a different thing from talking about a system where we're going to require states to win. Right? Like the totally different thing. I thought you were talking about the minority state chasing someone. Right. Yeah. Sorry. No, I'm talking about the minority rural population. Right. Yeah. Presuming that they are the minority population. But this holds true for any electoral system. Like, and I think it's a thing that you can see in almost any country is this question of we need to decide how many people need to agree. And lots of our political systems, I personally think are intentionally designed so that you can end up ruling with a small minority. The systems are not designed to be fairly. You know, this is a whole thing. But I find it interesting when citizens themselves are arguing for this minority rule. But they only ever argue for it when like they are the minority group that is going to end up ruling. And it's like this is not how we run a civilization. We need super majority consensus. What are you thinking there Brady? It's politics, isn't it? It's like broken. And the problem is you only get one chance to start these systems because it's pretty hard to change the mid-stream because it becomes all political. The minute you start the system. So it's just a job problem, isn't it? Yeah. It's one of the ways why I am so dead set in my videos to not talk about particular candidates or particular parties because this is the lesson that I learned in the very old now UK referendum on the alternative vote that if I could talk to people about the system in general, almost everybody could agree on what was a fairer system. But the moment people started thinking about their particular political party, it was like it was amazing to see how people would suddenly change their position entirely. You're like, no, you know what? This system that I agreed moments ago was terribly unfair. Actually, I think it's the best system because I win under it. I find that so frustrating and so my opposite. Great. Is that a mistake you're making? Is that your downfall though? Because I feel a little bit like you're in a battle for hearts and minds here and you'd like people to see the right path. And if they're watching some utopian CGP-grade video where politics doesn't exist and everything's perfect and idealized, like you can win that argument, you know, because you're a smart argument, but the minute your argument falls into the real world where the argument actually does have to be won, you say that it gets, you know, it all gets drowned out by the shouting and the idiots. Don't you need to find a way to take this argument into the real world and persuade people? It's not that it gets drowned out. It's that people are likely to revert to their previous position when they realize the thing that they agreed on was the fairer system. We'll disadvantage them in particular. Yeah. And I totally agree that this is a thing that people do. And, you know, at least right now I'm still relatively riled up about that. Although, just to be clear, like, at the time of this recording there are some reports that the popular vote win might switch. Because it is incredibly close. Like, you know, there's absentee ballots being counted and there's a whole bunch of stuff. And if that happens, I will honest to God, I will be relieved, right, that like the president won with the popular vote and the electoral college vote. Like, I don't care what your particular politics are. It's better for everyone. But it's like, yes, I am in a bit of an argument for hearts and minds on this. And while I am still relatively riled up about this and, you know, like putting out not great videos because I'm just like, I got to get it out of my head. I am aware that thinking strategically, there may come a time when I have to be more particular about this. And I do have some thoughts rolling around in my head about like basically doing like some back of the envelope calculations and like, how many subscribers do I have in what states, like with the YouTube demographics? And it's like, I was thinking about some things. I got some plans like maybe four years isn't good, but maybe eight years is perfect. Like, I am totally aware of what you're saying that if it comes to an actual fight in the mud, you have to be more specific. And that day may come. You're running for president, aren't you, Greg? Is that why you said how many years do you have to live in America to be eligible? Because you have to move back to do that. Oh, yeah, you have to live a certain number of years in a row in America. You've got to be over 35, don't you? But you've also got to have lived in the country for. Yes, that's right. It's over 35 natural born citizen and some number of years. I forget exactly how many years. But I am giving no details of the vague ideas in my mind, but I've like, I've been thinking about it. I've been thinking about some things. All right. Well, that's something to look forward to in eight years when we're still doing Hello Internet. You can tell me all about it. Oh, yeah. Is that a promise? We're still going to be doing it. You was breeding. I think this episode's going to go eight years if we don't stop soon. So the elections have essentially ruined our black mirror discussion. But for people who haven't done their homework, it's good because you know how like when you haven't done your homework and then there's like a fire alarm or something, and it means the teacher doesn't catch you. Basically, this has been a fire alarm for people who haven't done their homework because we have run of time for black mirror. We started early because we knew that this might run long, but we have run longer than we even planned for. And we are frankly out of time. So if you haven't done your homework, it's going to be collected next time, which will be a discussion about black mirror. Go watch it if you haven't. We'll talk about it then. If you have done your homework, you're probably really pissed off with us right now, but sorry. Yeah, but you know, you know, blame CGP Grumpy.
==Episode List==
==References==
Category:HelloInternetEpisode
__NOTOC__Category:ArticleCategory:ArticleCategory:ArticleCategory:ArticleGroup1