H.I. No. 114: Stunt Peanut

"H.I. #114: Stunt Peanut" is the 114th episode of Hello Internet, released on November 29, 2018. The one-day gap between its release date and that of the previous episode, Thelma & Louise, is the shortest between any two episodes of the main series in the podcast's history.
==Website description==
"Grey and Brady discuss: a new, lightning-fast corner, overtourism, a conspiracy theory confirmed, NPCC, CCC, peanuts, and a call for your Christmas Questions."
I am in North Carolina and I don't know if the microphone can pick it up, but if there is throughout the duration of this podcast, the sound of a dog softly snoring, there's nothing that I can do about that because I'm here and as we record, Lucy is sleeping on my lap and I cannot go anywhere, I have to just leave her here. So I apologize if there's continuous dog snores throughout the podcast, but there's nothing that can be done about that. Well, let he who is without snores cast the first stone. I obviously can't call you out on that. I have a long history of it. Little Audrey's not in the room at the moment, but she'll be his own and she'll be going toe to toe with Lucy. Snore for snore. Audrey is less frequent, but suddenly loud and Lucy may be more constant but much softer. So Gray, I'm going to chuck a new corner in here. You know how we always do feedback at the start, you know, based on what's happened before and usually that's more elaborate. I want to have a new one that's just really, really short, short points of order called clarification corner. Okay, all right. I never want to hold you back. I like where you're going with this. I like clarification corner. Yeah, alliteration. Always good. Always works. I like your mission of it's going to be very short. Yeah, but somehow I don't think I'll necessarily be able to stick with it, but clarification corner. Love it. Okay. I thought you'd like this. Like it's because you're a person who likes putting like corrections on the record. Well, yeah, it's the nature of doing podcasts. You say a thing and then you hear yourself say it and you go, why did I say it that way? I wish I could clarify this. So yes, I'm totally going to take advantage of clarification corner in the future. I can already see, I can already see a bright future for clarification corner. In fact, this may be one that you utilize more than me, I suspect. I don't know what you're talking about, Brady. Going back over hundreds of episodes just in episode 38. There's just something that's been on my mind. I want to chuck it into clarification corner. I like, I enjoy there. You went into half nerd voice for me. You didn't go, you didn't go full on nerd voice. No, I pulled it back. I started and then I pulled it back. So what's your clarification for clarification corner? Okay. The first thing I want to clarify, there seems to be some confusion over my use of a clock to rate movies. You know, where the hand is pointing on the clock to how much I like it. Right. Just let me say this because I think it will clarify it in a lot of people's minds. Three o'clock is the same as nine o'clock. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm pointing at 10 o'clock, I may as well be pointing at two o'clock. There's no difference. There's no difference on if you're on the left or the right hand side of the clock. Because I saw a couple of people arguing and they were arguing over whether or not because I chose to point it like about 10 o'clock. That was different than if I had chosen over the other side of the clock. There was no difference. This is a symmetrical scale. All that matters is how close to 12 it's pointing as opposed to six. I'm surprised people would need to clarification of that because to me, that's the beauty of your scale that has more. It is more from this. What that doesn't matter which side you're looking at it from. Yeah. There's more from this binary thumbs up and thumbs down into I mean, you're saying how close is it is to 12 o'clock. I always think of your scale as degrees up from the horizontal that that's what the measurement is. Yes. The greater the strength of a movie, the more it can lift your thumb from resting on the horizontal upward towards the sky. Yeah. But because I chose one side of the clock though, when last time I gave a rating and I chose the later side of the clock over the 10 o'clock side, people read something into that as opposed to if I chose in the early side of the clock, the ones and the twos. There's no difference. Just put a mirror down the middle people. It doesn't matter. That's why this rating scale is so beautiful because it is symmetrical on both sides. And we all know that symmetry is an intrinsic property of beauty. Thank you. Another thing. Look, I don't want to get bogged down in this people saying what state they're from in America thing, which has become such a thing. But when we were at Thinkacan and I was meeting people in the queue, I don't know. I don't know how many people I met. How many Hello Internet listeners I met. I reckon my guess would be 100 to 200. And I reckon at least half of them told me as a joke that they were from the United States. Right. Like when I'd say, Hey, where have you come from? You know, where you're from? I reckon at least half said the United States. Now, I appreciated the joke and we all had a laugh. But just for the sake of total clarification, I do not expect Americans to say they're from America when they're in America. That is when it's okay to say what state you're from. On home soil, you're absolved of this thing. Just to be clear, and I've already I've said this multiple times, but I just want it to be 100% clear. I will throw another little grievance out there, though, about American assumption. And that is the assumption that everyone knows what state you are from by the abbreviation from the state. You mean the two letter abbreviation? The two letter abbreviation. Sometimes I think I've seen people include that in communication. You included it in a communication with me today, but I'm not criticizing you for it because that was in completely different context, but it just did remind me because you're obviously in an American state at the moment. I said, where were you and you just sent me the abbreviation? I'm not pegging on you, but it did remind me that people quite often do that. They'll just include the two letters and assume that outsiders know the state. Most of the time, basically unless it's TX or NY, then you're probably not going to know, you know, I say, I guess, but this is something you should not use to people from outside America. Okay. I can get behind you on this one because it's not always so obvious. Many of them, I mean anything with an X stands out like Texas. That is great. But as soon as you get away from the first two letters or like I'm in North Carolina right now and I sent you back in NC. Okay. It's two words. The first letter for each word. I think you can get away with that. But yeah, I'll know that's also okay. The reason I'm giving you a leaf pass as well is, you know, I know that you have family in North Carolina. So that's it's already become the shorthand of the three or four places you could be. That's one of them. But still, it just reminded me I have seen people do it. And again, I'm, you know, it's a big assumption. Look, I've seen you take an enormous amount of grief on this topic. And I just on this and we disagree fundamentally on some parts. But I want to give you this Brady. I will back you on the state abbreviation one. That's that's for postal workers and shorthand where you already have a pretty good idea where the person is and is that's not good for general communication abroad. All right. I think that's pretty short for clarification. Corners can move on to more elaborate feedback. So since we've been traveling a bunch, I have a little bit of feedback that's been on my mind for a while. And I wanted to ask you about your recent trip to Monchipitu. Mm-hmm. When you were there, how many other people do you think were at Monchipitu with you? Like how many other tourists were there? Well, that's a good question that there is like a daily limit. So I should be able to tell you exactly, but I can't remember what it is. Interesting. They have a daily limit of the number of people that get ferried up on the buses and get and actually get tickets to go on the site. And they also limit the number of people that can go up each peak because there were these two peaks either side of the ruins, sort of the shorter one that's kind of more famous because it's in lots of the photos or the really big tall one that actually is at Monchipitu mountain itself. Oh, interesting. And they limit the number of people that are allowed to climb up each one and you can only go up in the morning or the afternoon. So they do have number controls. Let me have a look for you. Matcha Pichu. Limit. I mean, if you had to guess to me, like a few, a few, a five thousand would be my guess for the day. Okay, so you would guess something like five thousand for the day. Okay, that's interesting because I happened, I happened while I'm in North Carolina to be talking to my parents who listened to the podcast, avidly, the big tims. And they were discussing about how they had been to Monchipitu many years ago, maybe something like 30 years ago, two and a half thousand per day. Oh, okay. So two and a half thousand per day, that's interesting. Yeah. When they went, they were there on a day with six people. And they know that it was six people because at the point when they went to Monchipitu, there was apparently just a single little building that you could go up to on the mountain that had five or so rooms. Maybe they hadn't finished building Matcha Pichu when your parents went. And sorry, Mr. Mrs. Gray. No, I mean, it does sound like a tale from a long, long ago because then their experience of Monchipitu was the next morning were in the ruins and were so far separated from anybody else that they felt like they had the ruins to themselves. Yeah. I've seen videos from Monchipitu and like our friend Destiny put on the conference that we were just at. Like he's done a video, like one of those stereoscopic videos at Monchipitu. And it seems like there's just people everywhere. Like the tourists have overrun this spot. And I don't know, like how do you feel about being in a place like Monchipitu where it's supposed to be like this remote place? But then suddenly there's two and a half thousand people at this ruins at the at the top of a mountain. I mean, that's the reason why Matcha Pichu wasn't really the highlight for me because it didn't feel like special in that respect. But I felt like the site soaked up the people fairly well most of the time in most of the places. When you first go in, it's like a madhouse. There's a few brilliant photo spots and you cannot take a photo at those spots that hasn't got like 19 other people in it and it's really frustrating. But like two or three hours later after we'd climbed up the mountain and come back down, we went back to those same spots and said let's have another crack at that photo and there was no one there. So it's kind of a bit like everyone goes in and goes like gets goes crazy photo crazy because they're looking at this amazing thing and I think this is my one chance to get a photo of me at Matcha Pichu and they go like so everyone goes ballistic and it's a bit of a madhouse and then it just calms down and after an hour or two it's okay. You're still there's still a lot of people and when you're actually down in the ruins and walking through the little laneways and that, there's almost always going to be people around you but it's not like shoulder to shoulder craziness. It was acceptable to me. I'd rather have it to myself and I enjoyed trekking the mountains on the rocky paths on my own far more but it was okay. It didn't ruin it for me. It's interesting because this, I've had this idea bouncing around in my head a lot lately about what seems to be becoming a topic is the concept of over tourism and like here's one of these examples where you know never have there not been people saying oh you visited the place but when I went there they were fewer people there and you didn't get to have the same experience that I had. Like I'm sure that's what your parents gave you that too. Yeah. Well it's an interesting thing like growing up you know my parents did a lot of traveling because of my mom being a flight attendant and even when I was a kid I remember my parents telling me about how you know before I was around when they traveled like these places were very different and of course here I am as an adult and you hear people say this this kind of thing all the time I'm sure Greeks and Romans said it about like oh this place like it's too popular now nobody goes and all of this can be true but I have a suspicion that it that it really has become a thing in the last 10 years right where it can be true that you always turn up the volume on some problem and people can then dismiss it because like oh it's always been getting worse and the answer is like well yes but at some point it becomes such a thing that it that it really is a problem and I got I have just found it very interesting a couple of experiences that I've had in the last two years where it feels like I've gone to some place and there's just so many people at the place yeah it feels like it like the problem here is you're basically having a conversation about limiting access or making things more expensive and I was trying to find some some numbers to back this up about like is it just my imagination or are there more people here and the answer is it isn't and like the number of people who've entered the middle class over the past 10 years is just enormous and I found this statistic from the OECD which says like the the global middle class is sort of estimated at about 1.8 billion 10 years ago and it's about 3.2 billion now and the global middle class is this idea of how many people can travel can do something like go on a vacation and so I was like oh yes in the last 10 years something like 1.2 billion people have become people who are now wealthy enough that they can actually travel to places is that the definition of middle class wealthy enough to travel places that's what I was I was looking at with the way like the OECD talks about it is it's like they're people who have the means to be able to move around like they can take a vacation once every few years that this is this is like the idea of a normal standard of living and I don't know like to me it's just an interesting question about the demands of resources for limited things what are places you've been to where you felt it was a bit ruined by the crowd last summer after I had been doing a bunch of conferences I found myself on the west coast and I thought oh I've had too many people I need to take a break for a while and I thought I know what I'll do I'll drive down the beautiful California coast and I'll go into Big Sur country which is gorgeous area in California full of forests and trails and everything and I went to Big Sur and there were so many people walking on the trails in the forest that it made the forest not able to be walked upon like it was just impossible to manage this situation like there were just so many people that I thought I have to get out of here and just leave and another case is two years ago my wife and I went to Yellowstone and we'd been there 10 years ago and now the place was just packed with people and the thing that I really noticed is in in Yellowstone they have these geysers like these these boiling hot water and it's a windy area and so what happens people lose their hats and it's hilarious right because somebody has the hat blow off their head and then it falls into the geyser and there's nothing you can do about it because it's boiling sulfurous water right like you just tough nookies for you yeah but when we went last time there weren't a couple of hats in the geysers the geysers were literally filled with hats and umbrellas you could walk across them just stepping on the hats yeah and like I've read some interesting things about even the national parks thinking that they might need to do like what Monchupitru does which is limit how many people can come at particular times which is a delicate question when you're talking about federal land or I've seen lots of articles where cities are talking about the the mere presence of Airbnb has taken the cities from full of tourists to over full of tourists and again I like I don't know if there's any solution to this I just find it I find it interesting and it's a weird industry tradeoff of a long time ago a few people might have been able to have a good experience and now everybody can have a pretty bad experience I don't know I just I find I find it an interesting possibly unsolvable problem I mean and you see people like me who seeks out different locations for this very reason like you know Bhutan where they where they charge a tax to stop people getting in the country for that whole reason or Antarctica I would say Mount Everest although that's everyone knows the way that's going but you know yeah I feel it the worst two places in the world that I've been for this and these are not fair examples because they're almost by definition incredibly confined spaces anyway but these are special places in the world that are ruined by the crowd and that is looking at the Mona Lisa and standing in the Sistine Chapel I mean the Sistine Chapel is crazy because you're not supposed to take photos of it and you're supposed to be quiet and I reckon every 10 seconds the security cards go shh and tell everyone to shut up in the Sistine Chapel like to the point where that's annoying so and everyone is taking photos and it's just like a it's a zoo that the Sistine Chapel and one thing that happens very quickly is people get annoyed about the idea of raising the prices to get into places or limiting the amount of people who can see a thing to say like it's you know it's it's exclusionary in this way and it's like of course it's by definition it's exclusionary I think they unfair thing is using money as the excluding factor though that's what the thing I think that seems unfair like you could just say we'll have a lottery for who gets to get into Yellowstone right today and therefore money would no longer be a factor but why use money as the excluding criterion I mean you know me I don't have any problem with the idea of doing an auction again though that's like the rich only the rich get in I mean I know that National Park wants money but can't they just decide look if we sell 10,000 tickets a day for $15 each that's enough now let's let's have a lottery to decide who gets them rather than saying let's just keep pushing the ticket price up until only you know ex-thousand people kind of forward the tickets you have to have some mechanism to exclude exclude and I'm personally fine with either one like depending on what the needs of the institution are but I've definitely come across people who I think particularly in a in a place like a park think the whole idea of having to limit it is unreasonable yeah but it really did start entering my brain at Yellowstone and looking at just like this geyser full of people's hats like you know like you you just can't continue to have people come here all the time without ruining it yeah like it's it's a it's a real it's a real problem and the other thing I noted that's along this topic is I have seen a few parks now specifically have requests for people to not post photos of themselves on Instagram and have those things geotagged because what ends up happening is sort of like what you were talking about at Montepicci that a couple of places like a particular spot in the park yeah becomes the spot that everyone wants to go to just to get the Instagram photo and then to leave yeah and yeah like like everyone guys to everyone wants to go to Pazer and do that photo of themselves holding up the leading tire of Pazer like yeah on the lawn yeah exactly like that but apparently enough people when they go to a place like a park are apparently like looking for where's the best place for me to take a picture of myself in this place and then it leads to this very uneven wearing of the natural resources of the park and I don't know I just I find it interesting and I think it's a problem that's only going to get worse and unsolvable as again like the average level of wealth increases over time and people can travel more I think you're going to start seeing more places having to decide and like look we just need to put a limit in the way that that Montepicci did which I I think that's going to happen and I just don't know how I how I feel about that on either way this episode of Hello Internet is brought to you in part by hover hover is the best way to buy and manage domain names having a domain name is the centerpiece of your online identity so whether it's for you personally or whether it's for a business you run or an organization that you're a part of you want to make sure that you have the domain name that best represents that online identity and hover is the place to go get them I registered 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online identity the place where that begins is with the domain name and the place to get your domain name is hover go to hover dot com slash each i and get 10% off your first purchase that's hover dot com slash each i to get 10% off your first purchase thanks to hover for supporting the show and thanks to hover for helping you get your domain name now great you remember not that many episodes ago i spoke about how i was convinced that airlines were splitting couples and families apart so that they could force you to buy tickets next to each other after my wife and i got split apart on a flight to south america i do remember you peddling this conspiracy theory yes conspiracy theory not have a look at this article in the independent was doing the rounds a couple of days ago okay what am i looking for airline space crackdown on use of exploitative algorithm that splits up families on flights government ministers in the UK have condemned the practice okay digital minister margo james described the software as a very cynical exploitative means to hoodwink the general public and do not think for a second that exploitative isn't easy word to say for me she added some airlines have set an algorithm to identify passengers of the same surname traveling together they've had the temerity to split the passengers up and when the family want to travel together they are charged more outrage i say outrage i mean i'm outraged that i can't read this article without their little video floating over the top that's that too is outrageous that's that's incredibly annoying oh there's the close button jesus could they hide it anymore um okay so is this i'm a little bit confused and you'll have to forgive me for not remembering don't don't look for detail great joy in the air right to forgive me for not remembering the details of your story like can't people unless you're flying Ryan air can't you book the seats i don't understand how or not i was on british airways and i had i was british airways business class right and they split me in my wife apart and this we paid an extra i don't remember how much but it was more than i was willing to pay okay but you but you had but you had booked seats together this is just what i'm the details matter really you had booked no we had no we just we just booked tickets okay and assumes that when it came time to check in we would get a pair together but we were split apart but so we're so we're like three or four other couples hmm and we and we did that musical chairs you know can i swap with your wife and you swap with my husband and if that guy a single guy over there doesn't mind swapping with that and we managed to get all our couples back together in the end through a series of complicated trade-dose right but i was like oh i can't go through that again so then i paid the whatever amount for the flight home just to make sure we could sit next to each other the ironies you then just put your head in the tablet or go to sleep without flight anyway but that's by the bar yeah but you don't want a stranger in your you know in the bubble of air that's around you that's no good so yeah it's it's yeah it's more comfortable even if your wife ignores you the entire flight it's much more comfortable to be sitting next to your wife it's not some not some stinky stranger exactly anyway i i i felt like i was you know i was felt a bit like i was peddling a conspiracy theory last time but now i'm feeling more and more confident now now i'm seeing computer algorithms are doing it for them if if this ends up if it ends up this has been happening i think there is a massive class action looming because anyone who's ever paid extra for a ticket that they say was just to make sure they got to sit next to their partner i think could have a case if they've been deliberately separated to leverage the money from them mm-hmm i mean okay yeah i'll i'll agree with you there i'm still a little bit confused about the details because they don't understand like i don't think i pay extra to reserve a seat i don't think my wife and i have not done all airlines do it okay not all airlines do it some airlines will just let you choose your seats for free but a lot of them do say if you want to choose your seats you know weeks in advance you've got to pay otherwise come check in time you can you can pick from what's left i mean i i think that is terrible then if they're deliberately separating the couples and you're not peddling a conspiracy theory here brady you now have the digital minister on your side which is a exact position i did not know existed but sounds like if you're good at a government job a pretty cool government job to have yeah oh my god i almost forgot brady i have i'm gonna call it n p c c follow up for the show near uh playing crash corner oh i can't believe i almost forgot so interesting well i've got a lot of playing stuff in the show notes today so if you're on a plane you're not gonna you're either gonna love i hate this episode what if you go i'm very excited about this okay so let me paint the let me let me paint the picture yeah you and i we had completed our road trip yep and then the next morning i had to fly into what is rapidly dropping to the bottom of the list of of airports for me newer airport the place of a thousand screens the place of a thousand screens the place that is is so terrible that even if you can wrangle your way into the airport lounge the airport lounge is only as good as a regular airport would be and so is barely in improvement it's terrible at least it doesn't have climate control problems like DC does but anyway yeah i'm flying into this terrible airport everything's fine we're on one of these little planes we're coming we're coming down for a landing approaching approaching and we're at that point where suddenly the houses are big and you can see the details in all the houses i know it's like a sudden transition i always find like it's like you're looking at a map of the world and then suddenly you have that you lose the feeling of i'm looking at a map and you just realize oh you're close to the runway but still very high that if you fell yeah like you'd viscerally understand the height as opposed to something like diving out of an airplane they must be there needs to be a name for that point that could that threshold yeah we'll leave that in your capable hand we'll come back to yeah i'm sure we will yeah so we're at this point we're coming down i can just start to make out all the tiles on the on the roof of the houses yeah and then the plane pulls straight up yeah in the most yeah in the most uncomfortable acceleration i have yet experienced in my life yeah is like we're coming in we're coming in we're coming in and then bam like straight back up in the air for a guy round for a guy round yeah and we go way back up we go way back up over the cloud cover again in just this trajectory right up oh yeah and you know what i was thinking of Brady may i was thinking of you and god damn plane crash corner in this moment and i felt like here it is here it is the last few seconds of my life maybe well approaching and all i'm thinking of is Brady is going to have some memorial episode of hello internet like the final plane crash corner of yeah we're sorry to tell you to say yeah but not only do i have a plane crash corner to report but gray died in that plane crash corner and it's like i it was such a strange first a message from square space yeah but yeah exactly like i was so annoyed in this moment because it's like i legitimately thought oh i might i might be in a plane crash you're like i don't know what's happening things are really bad all of a sudden and what am i thinking of not my wife not my family i'm thinking of the god damn plane crash corner and just what feels like this inevitable thing like i had joked about that before on the show that oh surely this is what's going to happen if i'm ever into plane crash yeah but there there i was faced with the reality of it that oh no it is true i will be thinking of plane crash corner in my final moments so i wanted to tell you this but i also have a question for you which is yeah when we got back up to cruising altitude the pilot comes on as they do when they're little pilot voice and he says hello ladies and gentlemen just wanted to let you know that we've been revectored for an approach to the airport right which is like thanks for this technical term to obfuscate what has just happened that there was some dramatic reason you had to wildly abort at the last possible second and there was some guy with a berrim on the runway swiping up a puddle or something yeah no information was given about why i have no idea why i wanted to know from you because you like to listen to these these reports from the airplane like the the recordings the air the cockpit recordings yeah and i was thinking you told me that there's there's like a channel on the plane where you can listen to these things while they're doing it is there any way that i can get access to the the chatter on the plane to find out what the actual deal was that caused this NPCC to occur what really retrospectively go yeah retrospectively i don't know if that that is that information subject to freedom of information requests maybe if you're really keen maybe i guess you could request the recording just to state your curiosity okay but so i don't know whether i don't know whether or not there are nerds maybe for like airports as famous as nougat there are like nerds who are recording it and you could get the word out and some nerd will have maybe they're you know they keep recordings for months at a time just for their own personal pleasure maybe maybe someone's recorded up straight off the off the frequency but hmm i don't know yeah i would like i would like to know i want to know what it is because revectoring not a satisfactory answer that's not good enough i want to know what was on that runway and i want to see if i can find out what was on that runway this person someone is probably supplying taxing or something wasn't that is hadn't it wasn't as clear as that hoped of yeah i mean that that's my guess that's my guess is that is there like someone just pulled into the runway or you know like a chicken was crossing the runway and we have to stop or whatever but i would still like to know i want to know and so i want to know if there's any way i can try to find out and get the actual recordings of what happened in the most terrifying plane experience of my life would you be willing to put in a freedom of information request to find out uh i mean i had to go through the process i would definitely be willing to have my assistant put in a freedom of information request yeah for sure i would do that and if anyone out there knows whether or not there are like playing enthusiasts who keep recordings of the days traffic for weeks or months have them get in touch yeah i'll tell you the flight number right so if any nerd happens to know it was yeah November 19th united airlines flight 24-08 Knoxville Tennessee to New Jersey Liberty International i want to know i want to know i'm gonna get these recordings Brady i have to know what happened if you can't compete with plane crash corner or np near near plane crash corner time do you have perhaps another corner is there another corner on the on the lineup here nice setup there you've just given me a nice juicy pitch over the plate and let me introduce today's comeback of by popular demand corporate compensation corner the most exciting of corners it is it is the worst name and yet it's the one people always want back i don't know why because the terrible name i guess i also think it's it's the one that is a little bit like the Maryland point right it goes so far beyond that it's great again yeah and it's all about my plane trip okay tell me tell me all right so step so thing great this is gonna take a while okay all right i'm comfortable because i want you to have the context okay because the context does affect the lens through which i was seeing this incident okay yeah no i want all the details this story is going to be about virgin Atlantic okay the airline now i'm gonna say from the start i like this airline hmm i fly with them more than anyone else they're my second favorite airline to fly on after Emirates because Emirates are pretty cool to fly on as well so i don't you know you're okay virgin Atlantic but here comes my but now i'm gonna give you a kicking okay because here's my story well actually maybe i'm not gonna give you a kicking i'm just gonna give the facts great and i want you to tell me at various points whether or not you're cool with it you think they're grievances to be had you know okay cool it as you say it i don't i don't want to i don't want to bias you in any way so i think you do though but okay keep i couldn't keep a straight face i'm sorry i tried all right so i've just been in america for a couple of weeks and i booked this a while in advance and i didn't know what all my plans were gonna be i obviously went to think on and we did our road trip down south and then i booked a little bit of extra time in new york because it was kind of on the way home and i figured i'd want to pick up some more video making on the way back film some number file or whatever else i could pick up you know there are lots of mathematicians around who i might hoover up and i hadn't really thought about or allowed for thanksgiving because it's not really on my radar right so as the time got closer i realized that my flight out of new york was going to be the day after thanksgiving ooh like and that was about as bad as i could arrange anything because obviously i'm going to be on my own in new york on like thanksgiving when no one's gonna be able to see me for interviews or work and all my friends are gonna be busy with you know their families and thanksgiving so it was just this dead day so i called virgin Atlantic like you know a week or two before and said can i change my flight can i fly out any earlier i expected to be you know take a hit for this in the pocket obviously changing your flight so i called up and said can i change my flight what does it cost i'll pay what it costs within reason you know and i was expecting them to come back with some ridiculous amount and then i would make an assessment about you know the value of my time and hotels and things like that right and and for the record and also just you know because i think all this stuff is important this was an expensive flight because it was like all work related and i work a lot on planes now and i need to be able to work the day straight after getting back it was a business class flight so it wasn't like it's super cheap ticket i'd got it was an expensive ticket so i i expect that like that should be taken into account and and also like i fly with them a lot so i've got you know whatever status i am i've you know i've been working my way up the greasy poll to you know silver or whatever like you know i'm not the top run but you know i like to think i'm it they would have called up my account and saying okay this guy's like a customer of some value to us you you me earning those corporate points sound so revolting by describing it in that manner well i think they're pretty useless and turns out they are useless so anyway a called up and i just got told not your book to fly that's locked in you can't change it and i'm like like name your price i said name name your price if they'd said like you know a million pounds i would have said no but if they'd said an amount that i thought was worth it i was gonna i was considering i had a number in my head how high i'd go right and they said no this is you've booked your time you booked your flight that's when you're flying my friend okay the rules are the rules and i'm sure and i'm sure in the fine print and the boxes i ticked and all that sort of stuff i had locked myself in and i accepted this or i i accepted it so this is the context okay this is what's in my head spent thanks giving on my own in new york just so singing itself that's really sad it was i went ahead to look at the macy's day parade for a few minutes which was kind of weird anyway don't you dearest lander the greatest holiday ever really so the next day the next evening it's time for my flight at last i can go home get on the plane we push back from the the gate get out out on the runway and then suddenly they're like oh there's a problem with the plane something relating to one of the engines we're going to pull over and have a quick look when didn't go back to the gate they just pulled over on the side and then they taxi to a special stand for sick planes and then they're like we're going to see if we can fix it and to fix it they had to turn off the engines and then that meant the plane would lose power so they had to call out auxiliary power an auxiliary power unit from somewhere else at the airport which apparently takes a long time and that arrived and then like that broke and a three of three of these auxiliary units in a row broke so they had all sorts of problems and then they tried to fix it and they kept having messages saying we're doing our best they were the staff on the plane were really good the pilot was really polite but clearly that clearly it looked increasingly likely that this plane wasn't going to go it was either three or four hours we waited for them to try to fix this thing you know the pilot was quite reassuring and said things like oh by the way it's not like a safety issue it's like just a computer issue but we can't take off with the issue I'm not whatever yeah but also explain to me how a computer issue is not a safety issue we like the machine that runs the machine has a problem like there's not there's not you know that doesn't make you feel better there were very mixed messages circulating around the plane like at one stage the cabin staff came up and sort of whispered to us look the captain hasn't announced this yet but he's going to deplane he's going to take everyone off just so you know and like I thought at the time I thought that was quite like nice I liked getting the inside scoop about what was going to happen but then it turns out that didn't that wasn't the case and they ended up keeping us on there for another hour or two but also for some legal reasons they had to make this announcement that if you wanted to get off the plane like the buses had come out to take people away just in case but they made this announcement if you want to get off the plane and go back to the airport now you can do it anytime you want just tell us and we'll let you off straight away but then they also said but if you do that and like then we fix the engine you can't get back on okay yeah so this would so like what crazy person's going to get off when maybe the engine's going to be fixed in 10 minutes you have no idea so so no one took this option but that caused a lot of confusion amongst the passengers and then they had to come back on and say look basically they came back on and reading between the lines the flight attendant said look I made that announcement because I have to and she said and it's still valid you still can't get off the plane but she was really saying you're crazy if you get off the plane at the moment I'm legally required to give you this option but speaking of an unofficial role you totally shouldn't take it yeah anyway after this epic way a lot of it in darkness and and just as a side issue because I'm an idiot I had lost my iPad a day or two before so I couldn't watch anything on my iPad or anything I was just stuck just sitting there like talking to my neighbors and oh god yeah oh and and tweeting a lot I'm gonna be crazy on the old Twitter yeah I asked everyone to tell me then nightmare plane delay stories which in a future episode I should keep them we should talk about because they're some really good ones I said tell me you'll tell me your worst delay story to cheer me up and people sent in some great ones eventually word comes through in the captain it's not happening we're getting you off the plane and we're gonna sort you all out everything's gonna be fine we're gonna book you on new flights everything's gonna be wonderful you know happiness and light and I and the mood on the plane I would say was good staff were handling it well morale was high everyone was like I want a pain in the butt but you know haha better than taking off with a bad engine you know plunging into the ocean it's such a lie yes it is better than that that's true yeah so they take us back to the terminal in the buses and this is where this is where it starts getting a bit lower the flies it's that it starts going wrong now we get off the plane and everyone's like okay we were told as soon as you get back to the terminal you're gonna be told what's what and everything's gonna be fine and when we got back to the terminal it sort of occurred to me how hard it is when you've got a whole plane full of people now that you can no longer speak to it once via a PA system and all sitting in their chairs it communication became very difficult with this large group of people and they were getting increasingly tired and irritable because it was about it was after midnight at this point they like traips just through the airport to the to the domestic part of the terminal to like a bad carousel where our bags were supposed to come out soon but took a really long time and then people were saying what's going on when are we gonna fly what's what's the you know what if you sort it out for us and no one like there was no like za or point man that was looking after everything and all the staff there were trying to answer and they didn't really know themselves and then they gave us all these photocopied pieces of paper I've got mine here actually hang on they gave us these photocopied pieces of paper sorry your flights been cancelled etc etc with the details of when the flight was gonna happen and it was 20 it was gonna be like 24 hours later the next night so it wasn't even like the next morning which I think ambitiously we'd all hoped by this point people were on phones some people were organizing new flights but there was a few things on that there was a few things on the piece of paper that caused concern it said we have arranged hotel accommodation for you including meals and refreshments that's nice isn't it however but then it says however if you can return home please do so as we are unable to secure transportation for you this evening we will need to ask you to make your own way to the hotel by taxi please keep your receipts and send them to customer relations at the below email or postal address starting to feel a bit more Mickey Mouse now hang on we're gonna have to find our own way to the hotel and then and then people were asking well what's the hotel and they said we're gonna tell you that later and so then like people people was starting to get a bit more aggressive now and upset and the bags were taking a long time and people were starting to think about all their connections and missed weddings and things like that and then they said all right we're gonna tell you the hope what your hotel is come over to this desk over here but then they announced that if you can please like share hotel rooms like with family and friends because we haven't got enough hotel rooms for everyone because they were having to book these hotels last minute I was like and I was this is this is this is gonna be nuts yeah no like abort abort abort abort so hard Brady I was pretty zanned about all this and I got in the line and I I was in the front half of the line and here's where I will I will admit that when I passed over my boarding pass to like get told my hotel because most people were being sent to this hotel out at La Guadilla and they did say there's a bus you might be able to get on I don't know much about that when I got there because I was like you know a good passenger I had a business class ticket they said oh you've got a different hotel and mine was closer to JFK they were showing you more respect is that that was showing me a bit more respect but I said oh that's good that's good I'm going to a different hotel so which bus do I get on not the La Guadilla bus that you're telling everyone about and they said oh we actually don't think we've got room on that bus because that's the one that the staff are using so they just I just said you want me to get a taxi don't you they said they said you'd really be helping us out if you got a taxi and I was like fine so I I just as soon as the bags came out which they did eventually I just grabbed my bag I got a taxi I was the first person to arrive at this hotel and like got got my room and you know it was it was fine it was okay except I had to check out at 12 and my flight wasn't until seven the next night and like Virgin weren't paying for a longer stay so that was kind of bit of a pain I heard nightmare stories from other people who weren't as quick as me who were even staying in my hotel I got given the wrong hotel name and got trains and buses and all sorts of things and it took them hours to to sort themselves out just to add a slight complication because the plane was in darkness when we left and it was a bit of a confusing time I'd bought some expensive duty free cosmetics for my wife and I forgot they went and left them on the plane so I was like oh at the same time I was like working the emails to like customer service to try and chase down these expensive creams and lotions and this is like the worst possible time to try to be contacting customer service about things because they're obviously like drowning with complaints because of this cancelled flight but the thing that's interesting is all the times is happening I'm seeing this through the prism of you cannot change your flight time this is the time you're flying we have decided the time you're flying home and that's fine I have to accept that but when they change it when they suddenly turn around and say actually circumstances have changed you're not flying at the time you want anymore I was very curious to see how this how this was going to play it felt like other shoes on the other foot now say it was making it was it was making me more I was angry but it was making me more annoyed by the whole thing flew the next night on the same plane got my creams back okay it'd be different ordeal but that is the most important part though that took a bit of work I would be stressed out most about that more in this whole situation that seriously was on my mind a lot yeah no I've done the like oh there's there's special magic pills or creams that you need to get in America that can only be acquired here and you have to bring the back it's very stressful at breakfast the next morning I happened to be sitting opposite the flight attendants and I said look I don't want to annoy you and I know that we're like oh no and I said what do you how do you think I'm going to get my creams back and then I told them what the creams were and they went oh yeah you do need to get them back so they knew they were the posh the posh cream right you didn't just buy some toothpaste that you were complaining about yeah yeah we flew back they were like apologies left right and center when we got off the plane they handed out marks and spences like shop vouchers to everyone getting off the plane which I seem to have lost so I don't know how much it was for and I've just gone on the Virgin Atlantic website and filled out the form I have to fill out for my European Union mandated compensation well I still be entitled to that after Brexit I don't know anyway there's EU mandated compensation which I believe is 600 euros so it's enough to be worth going on and chasing I'm not going to chase the taxi fare back that's just going to be too much effort but I will chase the 600 euros and I got a message saying we'll get back to you within 21 days about your compensation claim so I'm assuming I'll get it that's a real pain in the ass delay that you have there Brady these things you always feel like when one thing goes wrong it dramatically increases the chance that another thing is going to go wrong which then quickly spirals out of control into many things going wrong and this is an example of that and I remember a long time ago my wife and I had some cancellation and where where they started giving out the same thing like here's a piece of paper with some information here's an airport that we're going to he's a hotel that we're going to send you to and you know it was so late at night and my wife and I looked at each other and we realized like no this is just going to be a continuing cascade of errors if we if we go down this journey so we're aborting hard out of here and like yeah we just drove to some other hotel far away but we thought like we need to get out of the system right well like we'll come back tomorrow and see what the situation is but we need to be out of this system for the time being so yeah now that's a smart play actually just get away from the head yeah exactly like as soon as they hand you that piece of paper and we got the same thing do about like oh do you mind sharing a hotel room with someone else is like yeah yeah I do mind I mind yeah a lot like no this is gonna happen but that's why we're like I think I think it was actually DC but wherever it was we're like we're just gonna keep driving until we find some baits motel to stay at and that's that's where we're gonna go like we're not gonna be involved in this anymore waiting for the bus or all that kind of nonsense and it's so sad this happened over Thanksgiving to you Brady that that dinging is your whole story with this sad violin underneath at the entire time it just it makes me so sad 600 euro San OkD for compensation on that it actually seems to be fair it actually seems not that bad as always with these stories when you tell them Brady I don't know what's gonna happen I don't know where it's gonna go and I was expecting that in this story you were going to have some kind of major meltdown but it's it seems to me like you you floated through this minefield of corporate compensation like you said very very zen like like a Buddha I was I was the zen master and I was way I was calming other people down yeah like how to put this and after what virgin had done to me after they'd done me over and said no no you fly when we say and then they they don't then upheld their end of the deal I can't believe they wouldn't let me change my flight well anyway I just I know rules of rules and stuff but like they didn't even like name a price they didn't even try like I think there should be some flicks it was very computer says no there should be some like I should be able to go to like the manager and say what do you reckon maybe this guy's gonna fork over a thousand bucks should we try our luck well I probably wouldn't have but they could try yeah I mean I've I've been in this situation of collecting the airline points and and also whatever you whatever you whatever you called it climbing the the greasy human pyramid to the top of of this horrible system and I too always think wait why do I even have these points what are they for if I can't change my flight or I can't get up like why are you giving me these pretend points that just don't don't do anything so yeah so monopoly money yeah so in some ways I feel like I'm listening to your story through the lens of a person who has already spent a year plus being resigned to the fact that these points mean nothing and you're just going to have to do with the airline tells you and there's there's no other way and I'm mostly just impressed that let's put this way the Brady in my head I would imagine having a tremendous nuclear meltdown in the middle of this whole situation and so I'm very pleased I'm very pleased that you didn't but I thought you were going to have me adjudicating some tremendous personal dispute between like you and the airlines and polite like I'm pretty nice to people 99 point no no no no individuals but I was expecting like an explosion on the Twitter right like who knows yeah who knows what happens on Twitter Brady right it can be a huge disaster so well who knows maybe the people from Virgin Atlantic will listen to this episode and like give me an extra 20 status points that I good for nothing yeah your 20 status points are just good for sorting you in the relative ranking of all humans within their system and and offer you absolutely absolutely nothing I did once go to the front of the play and like you know when you're stretching your legs on a Virgin Atlantic flight and they had written down on a piece of paper like stuck to the wall for their flight attendance the names of all the passengers and their seat numbers and then hand written next to it what their status was so it was like gold gold silver red nothing nothing nothing gold silver and I did and I'm not gold and I did look at it and thought what are those gold people getting that I'm not getting like like are they being nicer to them or they're giving them like more jelly beans or something like why did they have to have that written down by that point we're all in our seats and we're all like on the flight what are they what are those people getting that I'm not getting as as someone who is gold I can tell you what you get Brady yeah what you get is in the mail they send you a little gold tag that you can then affix your luggage so you look like a total status seeking asshole like that's as far as I can tell that is the only thing that you get with this gold membership and I am so aware of people who put it on their bag like it's some kind of proud accomplishment and I just you can never not immediately think less of those people and it's like yeah I could have one of those tags but I'm not putting it on my bag because I'm not advertising for the airline and also it means it means nothing you just want to show off these pointless points that you have so pointless points that's that's what that's what they that's what they get they get a badge to show off like they get a sticker from the airline saying thanks for spending all this money with us would you like to show everybody that you've spent all this money with us that's what you get Brady well as long as I get my 600 euros I'll try not to talk about it again I hope you do but you got to do it fast Brady you got to do it fast before the Brexit window closes presuming presuming that's still happening I guess I'm assuming that's still happening but yeah you got to do it quickly let's not even talk about that I keep wondering you to tell me what's going on with Brexit and you always go oh let's not talk about it so I don't I don't even understand myself and it's changing every day at the moment yeah but so that's why I'm just I'm just going to sit here and assume that it's still happening until you tell me otherwise you're my new source for Brexit and you tell me nothing so like whatever I'm sure it's going great but yeah sounds like do it quickly this episode of Hello Internet is brought to you in part by HelloFresh HelloFresh is the meal kit delivery service that shops plans and delivers step-by-step recipes and pre-measured ingredients straight to your door so you can just cook eat and enjoy no matter who you are hello fresh has something for everyone there's three different plans to choose from their classic their veggie and their family and all of the ingredients that you're going to get in those boxes are made up of fresh responsibly obtained ingredients from carefully selected farms and 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delicious healthy food in an airport but you can get it delivered straight to your door with HelloFresh once again for a total of 60 dollars off that's 20 dollars off your first three boxes visit hellofresh.com slash hello internet 60 and enter promo code hello internet 60 all right I've got a flight to catch hey speaking of planes there's another plane story from a little while ago I've have heard of this before but it never happened to me but I was on a flight and we were seated and the voice came over the PA saying excuse me everyone but we've got someone on this flight with an extreme peanut allergy can no one for the whole flight eat peanuts or touch or take anything out of their bags with peanuts and we won't be serving any peanuts for the whole flight and like I get like you know I get that the funny thing was as the announcement was being made by a wife was stuffing a peanut protein baritone mouth so she was like oh so she put that away and I had so you know and you know I get you know I get that you know this is this extreme case but then a week or two later something else happened which I did think took it to take it to the next extreme okay so I went and saw a play at a theater in Bristol which is a it was a pretty cool play actually it was about mountaineering it was based it was touching the void based on that book touching the void which is quite interesting to see as a play okay so anyway when I was looking at the website the day before going there was a there was a warning I think there was a warning saying it contained you know naughty language okay and there was a warning that the play contained and involved peanuts we and I was like what what what what the heck and then when I got to the theater to watch her as you were going in like the main doors into the theater there were like printed out signs on pieces of paper warning you that the play contained peanuts and involved okay hold on I need to I need to pause here yeah because I'm thinking something that can't possibly be true but but I'm afraid that it is so the play had did they throw peanuts at you from the stage well obviously this is what I was anticipating right there was going to it was going to be some peanuts stunt at some right okay yeah anyway anyway the play in shoes and I'm spending the whole time waiting for like I've got no interest in how they're going to depict like the injuries and the famous story of touching the void all I'm waiting for is what's happening with the baby yeah right okay yeah and a lot of the play was set in like like a tavern like a Scottish tavern in the mountains where people are reflecting on mountaineering and what happens and there's this one scene in the play where two characters are talking and one character is trying to explain to the other one how you climb this rock face and the coach I don't understand help me understand how you climb the rock face and he says let me explain it to you like this and he reaches over like because they're sitting at a at a table with beers and stuff imagine this peanut and he picks up like a peanut from the table that that they're at that you would have at a pub and he holds it up like you know above his head imagine this peanut is a person and you go here and then you move to the right and you move to the left and he's just using the peanut between his fingers to represent a person on a rock face okay tell the story okay and you do this and you do that and you go there and the the other character's like oh okay yes thank you thank you I understand now and then the character puts the peanut back down and they continue their talk at the table and that's it that's it that's all that happens and numerous things came into my head at this point one is if you've got a peanut allergy that is so severe that you could have an attack based on someone on a stage 50 meters away holding a peanut I feel really sorry for you and you and you should be careful but I don't think you should be going like to theaters or places or walking the streets like in the busy center of Bristol if that would be enough to send you into shock great and the second thing that came into my head was I'm not even sure it was a peanut so why did they have to use a peanut well yeah that why not use like a stunt peanut or like a cashew or just like a small pebble I was like completely baffled like there's been a few stories in the news lately in the UK about people dying from peanut allergies so I get that the theater was being extra careful because it was a it was a red hot news story at the time that it just been a court case like a day or two before so I get why they were being cautious but if they were so worried about it just don't use a peanut it wasn't even that important to the to the story it could have been anything he could have used a hot stopper or a potato crisp but they know we've got to keep the peanut in the story it's important to the story but instead let's plaster all these distracting beware of the peanut science all over our theater for everyone to read as they walked in and completely distract you from the play I'm so confused on this on every level could because yeah something joined the club this isn't a play about George Washington Carver like peanuts are not integral to the story not and if it's just an example why not rewrite it hell you don't even have to rewrite it just tell the actor oh this line about it about a peanut we're just going to use a stone we're going to use an almond right it doesn't it's crazy it's crazy making even the front row you wouldn't have been able to tell what it was yeah well but like that's the hilarity of it right it's not even it's not like you know it's not like it's autumn and there are ranging pumpkins on the stage and someone has a big pumpkin allergy and and everyone can at least see the pumpkin I mean it might it's like yeah he might as well be using a dust mite for all people can see in a theater at what like a person is holding between their fingers that's yeah that's crazy I don't I'm just like my head is my head is so swirling on this because yes and I I have unless there's something I missed but I don't think there is I've told you all the information I have yeah I mean and I don't want to make light of peanut allergies you know I get that it's like serious business yeah like this just struck me as crazy yeah and you know I get having having worked in the schools like we had some students with no joke peanut allergies there were a really big deal so I was like I know it's I know it's a real thing and it's a real life threatening thing but I'm agreeing with you about can there even be a person who has an allergy so extreme that to breathe the air of a theater that has been contaminated with a single peanut is a problem and if that person exists they can't live in the world they have to drive out into the middle of Montana and live in a cabin alone forever like surely that's the only thing the person to do yeah first say they're not going to leave the theater and walk within a meter of someone just walking out of a pub with a packet of peanuts yeah I don't know I don't know it's it's very strange like I said if they were that worried about it fair enough fair enough but just don't even use a peanut in the play because it really affected yeah my viewing of the play until that peanut saying happened it was all I could think about and then when it happened all I could think was was that yeah well that's but that's just it like we've talked we've talked about safety gone crazy and that's why this is such a baffling situation because surely if safety is going to go crazy the safest thing to do is to not have a peanut it's it's weird in baffling that you want to draw so much attention to it it's I would almost think I don't know I would almost think like I'm trying to think if I had been in charge of that play what would be the reason that I would do it and the only reason I would do it is because I would find it hilarious to imagine people wondering what the giant peanut explosion is going to be and then to put a single prop peanut on stage and then just have it like that be that the only reason I would do it is is like a just a hilarious troll that I could giggle at from behind the scenes of like everybody's waiting for the peanut and here it comes ha ha ha but like there's no other reason it's madness it's total madness I don't I don't understand that is bizarre Brady that's a really bizarre story I'll also put a prediction down on the table that in 20 to 30 years peanut just don't exist in the in the cuisine of anyone in the world anymore I think peanuts are peanuts are an endangered species for human consumption because of this this sort of stuff is like okay peanuts are going to go away and then someone's going to be watching this play and he's going to the distracting thing will then be what's a peanut what what is what is a peanut that he's using right what is this thing hey great if peanuts go extinct right because of this this situation does that mean people with peanut allergies like you know will reproduce more and peanut allergies will become more and more common and then peanuts will become like a secret weapon and like a country could just drop peanuts on your nation and kill everyone I hadn't thought about weaponized peanuts that wasn't that wasn't where my brain went with that I don't know I mean this touches this touches the topic that is one of the things I don't know what the current consensus state of sciences so I'm going to I'm going to say this next sentence with a huge asterisk on it which is I don't know how true this is this is just my understanding I think that the consensus is lack of exposure to peanuts is a large factor in what causes peanut allergies I think that's true and that then you end up with a self-fulfilling cycle that as you remove peanuts from the food supply specifically of children like I said at the schools I taught peanuts were just totally forbidden so I think that that's the consensus that lack of exposure causes at the very least peanut allergies there are many allergies that don't work like this but for some people food allergies do work like this and that that's kind of why I think it's peanuts may really be a thing that just totally goes away because the more you become cautious about peanuts the more you have to become cautious about peanuts I could be wrong about that but that's that's what I think is the case and so yes if that is true then perhaps in 50 years Brady you could build weaponized peanuts that that could become a thing a peanut bomb yeah a peanut bomb let's let's hope let's hope the brutality of war doesn't reach that level let's just keep the corners going sports ball corn oh god okay is it this just this is just a corner corner show isn't it okay yeah I feel that I've got of course because after this I've got a paper cut to if you let me have one okay let's do sports ball corn first okay I think the story is charming and it's so British so this story starts with a soccer match in the UK I believe it was quite a high level women's soccer match that was being refereed and the referee forgot his coin to at the start of a soccer match you toss a coin usually to decide which team will kick off he'd forgotten his coin so he just organized a quick game of rock paper scissors between the two captains of the soccer teams to decide who would kick off who kicks off in a soccer game is pretty irrelevant anyway if you ask me but anyway yeah but someone has to be first someone has to do it yeah okay yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you know so he said okay let's just do rock paper scissors they did it the game went ahead he got in loads of trouble this referee and he got banned for like a few weeks from being refereeing because he because he did this thing he shouldn't have done which I think is ridiculous that is ridiculous but and I'll come to whether or not you think rock paper scissors is fair anyway but a lot of other people thought it was ridiculous and then across the nation admittedly at low at low levels at low level soccer matches people like referees like did this show of solidarity and they all did rock paper scissors to decide like who were kicking off matches and there was like this like protest this protest amongst referees about this draconian decision and some people were saying oh yeah that's really good and other referees were saying no no you shouldn't be doing this two wrongs don't make a right and for of like a day or two it became this big I won't say scandal it wasn't it was just like it was just like a low level British controversy but I thought it was very charming and I thought it might appeal to you the coin toss versus rock paper scissors it is totally charming yeah and it knows small part because I love rock paper scissors it's great it's not truly random though the way a coin toss is though is it like you can can you outfox your opponent in rock paper scissors is it no longer a chance decision is it now becoming a game of skill to decide something that's supposed to be decided by chance okay here here's here's why I love rock paper scissors it's the illusion of skill which can be useful sometimes so right to go back to my teaching days and this is this is like top tip for teachers aside from one learn how to train dogs which is the most important thing maybe tip number two or three on that list for teachers is anytime a dispute arises between students have them settle the dispute with rock paper scissors right the amazing thing is in all of my years of teaching everyone just took the rock paper scissors decision as like an arbitration from God about who gets that seat right or whatever it is more than a coin toss because I felt like I had some control over their desk I think that's what it is that that it's it wasn't like oh it's a random thing it was I lost in this game of skill that is no skill at all right it's like they like I think the loser took personal ownership of the rock paper scissors defeat and so it was like the greatest arbitration thing ever like there's a problem do rock paper scissors rock paper scissors shoot done okay she won you lose sit down we're done here it's great it's it's perfect but yeah for for something like the kickoff it's it's random it's random enough you know it's random enough for something like a like the who kicks off first in in a football game I'm not sure I would want you know like I wouldn't I wouldn't want my encryption keys generated by a series of humans doing rock paper scissors like it's not random enough for that but it's random enough for most for most everything that you're going to come across in the world so I'm reading this famous story because I just wanted to brush up on it I should have read it beforehand I'm sorry when Sud the Bees and Christie's the auction house is both wanted to auction some sassan painting so to decide who's going to get to sell it they were they had to play rock paper scissors and it says the president of Christie's in Japan spent the weekend reading up on strategies and consulting experts including a colleague's 11 year old twins flora and Alice who recommended using scissors rock is way too obvious and scissors beats paper flora explained on the other hand southerbees didn't prepare at all this is a game of chance so we didn't really give it much thought southerbees impressionist and modern art expert said so who won both auction houses were asked to write their weapon choices on pieces of paper oh that's not that's not quite as fun is it which would then turned over to an accountant looking at the face of the accountant holding the piece of paper you could tell nothing he looks at it for what was probably 30 seconds and your hearts and your mouth in the end Christie's preparations paid off their scissors beat southerbees paper the twins were unimpressed with southerbees choice you never go paper it's a weak move Alice said he is later flora great paper just sounds that it's not going to win that's fantastic I I love this I love this for many levels because the only problem with rock paper scissors that they're trying to avoid here is the people who for some reason think that you you do your role on the word scissors like I don't I don't understand those people and they mess it up right so it has to be very clear that you're doing rock paper scissors shoot you do it one beat after that do rock paper scissors reveal yeah because I would reveal on the scissors oh god no no scissors you can't reveal on the scissors because then you're saying the word of one of the one of the choices yeah well that's what I think about how they did it with this auction thing to you are being asked to write paper or scissors on piece of paper like it felt like that was pre loading it as well so you know rock paper scissors reveal yeah that is the correct but shorted the fact you said scissors last is still bicing it a bit it may be biasing it a bit but to do it on the scissors is just wrong yeah I feel like that's the only thing you have to sort out with the rock paper scissors that's the only problem is some people want to jump the gun okay and then and then you get into this invalidated state of of wait what just happened so that that it's like shooting on nine in a gun duel yes that I guess I guess that's what it's like although not at all but sure uh it's like shooting on nine in a gun duel uh-huh you know I've got a number file video all about like strategies to win at rock paper scissors well this gives it the international rock paper scissors competition right isn't that what that one was about yeah no I know yeah but there's like there's like mathematical research into it and there's like there is a strategy but this is if you're playing multiple games right a one-off game yeah because you can start using what people have used before and watch the video people yeah well that's why people are two people are terrible at being random yeah but that's that's why for a one-off decision it's perfect it's it's random enough like it's it's random enough although yeah like I'm sure I've I've said it before is I occasionally did rock paper scissors with the students about something or other you know when the when the decision didn't really matter but I wanted to give them the illusion that they they're participating in this this dictatorship of the classroom and yeah my favorite move just because it was like a fun psychology move to do was to be like okay we're gonna do rock paper scissors and I'd look at them very seriously I'd say and I'm going rock alright and it would always freak them out right because they'd be like who reveals who reveals which way they're going in rock paper scissors and then you could see they got caught up in their little brains about like wait he can't possibly be telling me the truth about which way he's going and I would go rock and they would almost always go scissors it was great it was so great should we have a one-off game now okay we can do a we can do a one-off game now so we reveal on the beat after the scissors yeah do I do I have to open up my face time do you want to do it live on face time all right I'm looking at you right now we can do it okay hang on let me open up can you see me okay hang on let me see you as well make sure you don't shake so we reveal okay we're looking at other on the face time and we're going to reveal on the beat after the scissors yeah beat after the scissors okay okay here we go rock paper scissors shoot oh yes you win really my paper thinks grace rock I went rock do you know what before you even told that anecdote I said to myself I'm gonna challenge Gray and I'm gonna play paper no matter what nothing that gets said is gonna make me change my mind so I decided that like two minutes ago congratulations you are the winner of the rock paper scissors duel I'm gonna retire and defeated I think that's a good move that's a good move okay everyone I want you to stop and think for a moment what's the best photo you've ever taken can you picture it the best photo you've ever taken I'll have about this what's the best photo with you in it now I reckon you can probably picture them in your mind's eye and I'm guessing you probably posted them to places like twit book and snaps to gram but have you printed them out do they exist in the real world are they on the wall of your hallway at home does one hang in your office if not today's sponsor fracture is here to rescue you in just a few clicks on their very easy to use website fracture will have your picture or pictures printed onto the reverse side of a actual piece of glass mounted with a fitting so you can hang it straight out of the box and shipped to your hot little hands and it's not just photos either why not fracture a piece of art you 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them for bringing so many photos to life in the real world so great we have a very special announcement and opportunity for the teams we want them to get involved with the show in a very special way in the lead up to Christmas sorry I was not there to pause there for you to sort of say something exciting like yeah right ready I know I know the do you wanted me to hype it up but I was realizing in that moment that I don't know any of the details of this I only know the very broad outline of it and so I froze I froze like a deer in the headlights in this recording yes I am very excited for the teams to participate too but I just don't know any of the details so you may remember we had an election where people sent in postcards I do remember that you obviously you remember you had to you had to count them all with me but what we're doing this Christmas is we are asking people who are so inclined to send us a Christmas card partly because well sending Christmas cards is just lovely Christmas niceness isn't it is it is Christmas cards are very nice yeah but secondly as you as you may or may not know Gray is still deep in his project cyclops and he's a very hard man to reach he's a very hard man to influence at the moment because something you want him to discuss here on hello internet you've basically got no chance whatsoever because he's not on the tweets he's not on the snaps to Graham he's not even the reddit but here's the deal people if you send a Christmas card a hard copy Christmas card a physical Christmas card to our address and you write on the card a question or a topic or something that you would like Gray and I to discuss on hello internet over the festive period there is a chance we'll do it because we are going to do our best depending on what happens to to read these cards and talk about them we've got a few plans so if you would like to do it I'm going to put details and addresses and things like that in the show notes it will be in places like you know patreon and my twitter and the information will be available I just want to say something from the start we will receive them up until Christmas after Christmas they won't times up right and they won't even be read they'll probably actually just go straight into like a shredder or the bin so if it's really really close to Christmas or after Christmas I would suggest probably not sending one right because because it just won't get read it we'll just go in the bin right so and I don't want I don't want people to like waste their time and their money so this means you future Tim listening to the show in March or whatever like we're talking to you right now buddy what year is this this is Christmas 2018 by the way postcards are acceptable I actually prefer the idea of like a traditional Christmas card you know like a proper card but postcards are acceptable topics suggesting topics on twitter suggesting them on redder and things like because you can't be bothered with a card it's not going to work I will actively not do those topics so don't say oh I didn't send a card but I'd love you guys to talk about you know unicorns that won't work we will only read the ones on the card but we will read many of these out on the show and it's a chance to be involved I actually announced this on patreon a few weeks ago because you know patreon people get special treatment and their cards are could go to the top of the pile and I've received some already and I thought I'd just share a few now great just to give people an idea of how this could work yeah you won't do you want us to do a little preview with a couple questions this is a little preview so I've chosen I've chosen three that have come in already two of them happen to be postcards and one of them is a Christmas card in an envelope and I'll just I'll just tell you about them so here's a postcard that's come from it's come from Providence R.I. which I assume is reddered yes that's correct Brady yes yes so there we go they've got into the spirit already this is a view the picture on the postcard it's not very Christmasy it doesn't have to be Christmasy we would much prefer Christmasy if you like it does have to be Christmasy Brady they're Christmas cards like okay I don't want just people's postcards it's Christmas is is a charming time of year right it's very special yep you're right it has to be Christmasy from now on yeah it has got a Christmasy stamp on okay well we'll let that one slide just this once Max what did Max say well finally enough Max said said some nice things and then just said and we'll just get a quick response from you here Gray said I'm wondering what your thoughts are with the UPS the US Postal Service and the Royal Mail in the UK when everything is being sent electronically nowadays what is the future of these organizations can they survive in the long term that sounds like something you'd have an opinion on Gray yeah I don't think I don't think they're going away we still need physical objects don't we you still need physical food and and gadgets from Apple yeah yeah and and boxes from Amazon although I think they use their own private service now but you still need to send stuff and nah at least in the UK in particular when I have to go into a like a Royal Mail branch I'm always a bit befuddled by just how much can happen at those branches I think every time I go there's someone who's paying their gas bill at the post office which I'm always fine confusing and I never understand like they do a bunch of things I think they'll they'll spend maybe do a bit more or in other ways they'll shrink in the way that the US Postal Service has a lot of little like super mini branches where it's just in the back of the store there's like a tiny tiny little post office but I mean yeah I'm a very digital person but I don't think the mail is going anywhere I feel like that's almost as fundamental of a government service is something like roads so I don't I don't think it's going to disappear like otherwise how would we get how would we get our Christmas questions I mean like do you think I'm crazy with that reading too as well yeah Christmas questions I like that here's a here's one in an envelope take it out of the envelope be the sound effects for you here take it out I always love your fully work and pretty good aren't I what was thinking I was thinking of the edit yeah this is a very Christmassy card actually if you're in the camera or show yeah I would like to see them let me here we go put them the camera back up there we go oh yeah nice nice Aurora Borealis I feel like everything from Finos Gandia is intrinsically Christmassy yeah nice I like it it is it's over Iceland that's the dancing Aurora Borealis over Iceland beautiful bold call it could have been the Aurora Australis but you showed your biases then it ended up serving you well Aurora Australia's whoever thinks of that nobody oh Australia's all right so let me let me tell you what's in the card it says dear Gray and Brady and they've written your name on the left and my name on the right but then they've put in brackets underneath that they think you're on the right and I'm on the left so I'm expecting a lot of in jokes here oh no no surely surely not Brady the kinds of people who are going to send us Christmas cards those are not the same sort of people who will be interested in the in jokes no way this has come from Mark who is Welsh but seems to be working at the University of Iceland at the moment and has previously worked in Durham Amsterdam and Hidalberg this is quite good this says if this card actually got citations it says my Christmas wish this year is that the sterile neutrino which I hadn't heard of before the sterile neutrino be mage the unofficial official dark matter candidate of hallow internet he says professor Ed Copeland who is in my 60 symbols videos could give a recommendation based on a workshop last February perhaps best check with him and then he gives three archive paper references and their numbers of papers we can look up to read about the sterile neutrino and I have to say you know I love having official and unofficial things for hallow internet right but the idea of having an official dark matter candidate for hallow internet had not occurred even to me hadn't it hadn't occurred to me either I don't know I don't know anything about the sterile neutrino I've never heard of that before no neither do I neither do I but I've got some citations here if you want to read up on it well it also I feel like it's immediately opened the door to some some interesting particle zoo that I was completely unaware of with dark matter particles I feel like that wasn't really in place as a thing when I was doing my physics degree we just had the regular particle zoo of quarks and everything so I feel like yeah what are these these dark matter particles that are out there I know nothing about them so I wouldn't I wouldn't settle immediately on which one is the unofficial official particle I can't you know but it's I would love I would like to know more that's what I would like to know it's a discussion you're willing to have you're open to the idea I am very open to the idea of of a particle for the podcast yes and official like are you talking just an official particle or an official particle that is a candidate to be dark matter or we could just broaden it just say we've got our official particle yeah well I mean look there's there's much to be discussed here I think Brady I'm I'm open I'm open to many possibilities you know if we have the official swamp hand of the podcast like I think I think there can be I think there can be particles it feels very on target I like it I like it yeah but an appquark or something like that yeah I always I always like the quarks yeah with their with their flavors and their spin they're so I know they're whimsical those quarks all right it's not standing good for the sterile neutrino no it isn't that's but that's just it like it's a terrible name it's a terrible name sterile neutrino it just sounds boring yeah no neutrino is always kind of boring it's like oh what does a neutrino do as boiler it doesn't interact with anything ever you have to build these gigantic gigantic facilities to even try to just observe one it's like a like a ghost particle that barely exists at all and that doesn't appeal to you CGP great I present that comment no no of course it doesn't appeal to Brady uh yeah sterile neutrino sterile neutrino sounds even more boring than a regular neutrino no give me give me a give me a charmed quark any day any day of the week give me a give me a peanut neutrino so this last one great it's been personalized it says Merry Christmas in a very computery font and then there's like a robot of some sort that seems to be made of black boxes and it's sitting on top of a rug which has the nail and gear on it this comes from uh Gweedau who says Gweedau from Europe he he say you know obviously this where people are from things gonna haunt me to my dad as like Brady you are set up until the end of the time end of time with this one I'm so sorry this is this is gonna be worse than don't weep at me on when you're on a plane like it's it's it's you know oh the stamp has come from the Netherlands Deer Brady and Gray thank you for bringing much appreciated podcast fun into my life you're welcome Gweedau you're welcome suggestion for a topic and I love this question this is one of my favorite questions in fact we've probably discussed it before I love this question so much but just in case because I can't remember if you could travel back in time as a time traveler if you will to a historical event to clear up a present day mystery which to which historical event would you go a present day mystery the present day mystery thing I didn't read that the first time I went through it that's been of a curve ball I'm not gonna hold you to that but you can use it if you like or if you could just time travel to you know an event or something what would you choose well I'm just trying to think like a present day mystery like did aliens build the pyramids or not well I guess you know you could go to the JFK assassination and stand on the grassy knoll couldn't you and say if there was anyone behind the fence well yeah well this is what this is what I'm trying to think like I suddenly feel as though am I not aware of all of the present day mysteries that exist from history because the only thing I can think of is the JFK assassination right as the as the what happened is there a whole field of these things I don't know well yeah you could I guess you could ask to be on the moon in July 1969 just to be sure that they stepped on it but or what I really want to know is if that bracelet got dropped into the crater or not right that that's right be standing and be standing on the other side of that crater looking going I think they're gonna take some artistic license with this in the future I don't know there was no there was no bracelet let's take away the mystery thing because I think that's that is probably a little bit too too much cognitive load if you could just go back in time for like you know a day to a historical event just to lay your own papers on it what would you choose I don't know I like I just don't care because it's already like it's done and it's over boring no like but that's why I want to know your answer but but for me like I have my answer to this I have you know like there are there are silly answers like the big bang right but my choice is far less significant but pretty famous I would if I could love to go and sit in like you know a hovering flying saucer to watch the Titanic incident I would like to see what that really looked like and sounded like the ship hitting the berg the way it broke apart like just I know it's really morbid but hey you know I'm the guy that invented plane crash corners I can be morbid I think that is an event that has captivated me and has a spell on my brain and I've seen so many pictures and paintings and now movies about it I just am curious to know what the actual event was like that's interesting that's an interesting answer and you know you are the history buff I only just recently came across all of this information about the ship that was nearby during the Titanic what's it called the was it like the California or something something like that not the one that helped was that car pythia or whatever the one that helped them yeah yeah I think that's it like it was the carpathia something along those lines and I never really been aware of of this as a thing like part of the reason that all of all the events happened the way they did on the on the Titanic was they thought there was the ship that was nearby that could they could use the lifeboats to ferry everybody over like that's why the lifeboats weren't full because they thought they had tons of time to get people over to this other ship but that the other ship had turned off their their telegraph operator like their radio operator and weren't receiving any of the messages I think you're right I think the California and was the one that may have been close but the carpathia is the one that actually came and did come in here okay all right maybe that's what it is like that's why these all these names sound sound familiar I was coming across this information somewhere and it's one of those I don't know sometimes I feel like when you're reading stuff there are stories which are just a little too perfect and this version of oh we just don't have the radio on sounds sounds to me like it's a little too perfect of a story like it's it has too much built-in drama and so I can see that I can see that being interesting of you want to hover over and see how how the Titanic actually went down how all the steps really occurred I mean I'm not even being as like nobulous you know wanting to know what was going on on the California and who did what I'm just more like just like what does it look like like what does it sound like like it's just such a famous event when you said you wanted to hover above in a UFO I I thought you were going to say something and then I was like oh I would want to be in that UFO with you huh I thought you were going to say you want to hover above the earth when the asteroid comes and and strikes the surface and wipes at all the dinosaurs now that sounds like a show I could I could get on board for that one good go good that's a good one yeah yeah that's what we can see when we become time travelers and I also extra like that because we're in a UFO above the earth and so we don't have to worry about all the old germs right we can just be can float above and watch the asteroid come in and see the fireworks show for goodbye dinosaurs hello mammals
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