H.I. No. 16: The Worst Topic for a Podcast

"H.I. #16: The Worst Topic for a Podcast" is the 16th episode of Hello Internet, released on July 15, 2014.
==Official Description==
Grey & Brady discuss Kindle follow-up, the triumphant return of plane crash corner, the American Empire video, brain crack, dreams, and a totally-not-too-long-but-Brady-cut-it-off-needlessly discussion about the design of US state flags. You should probably have this page open during that part.
Also: Democracy 3.
Also: you have homework
==Show Notes==
*UTair Aviation 767-300 NEAR MISS? GO AROUND at Barcelona-El Prat
*American Empire Video
*Brain Crack
*Ze Frank
*Hank Green Pre-History of Online Video
*US State flags
*New York State flag
*American Embassy in London
*Destin's Business Card
*Australian State Flags
*I Have Died Many Times
*Democracy 3
*Call-of-Duty style games
*Homework: Her
*Hello Internet Amazon links
==Other==
 But now if you cut it, you can put it in the extra bits on the YouTube channel. No, don't, I'm not making any promises about that. This could be cut and bend. Yeah. That's the ultimate humiliation there. It's like double cut. It's always funny, like we talked before the show and like I'm looking at you on the camera and it's like normal. And then when we go into this blind mode and you're just a voice, it's like you're a different person. Do you say, do you feel that? It's a strange transition, I think, from, oh, we're just chatting about what we were just talking about. You're very handsome office a moment ago. But now suddenly it feels like there are people here. And of course, the internet is now here with us. That's it. That's what it is. It feels like when we go into, okay, let's start. It feels like there are more people all of a sudden. That's what that feeling is. Yes. So it is, it is different. Suddenly, even though our physical surroundings have changed basically, not at all, except that I can no longer see you and you can no longer see me. Interesting. That's interesting. All right. Anyway, enough of this existential crisis. Follow up, I have something I'm going to call feedback on feedback on feedback, which is on our YouTube channel, which is 10 episodes behind our audio version. I recently just put up the feedback on feedback episode. So it's interesting to have this bit of a time delay. For the YouTube people versus the audio people. And it's like inception every time we talk about people commenting on videos that are commenting on, it gets a bit. Yes, it does. And then trying to keep in mind that this is then going to be our conversation is going to pass through. So are we talking to the people in the future? Or it's always very strange. In that episode, that is the episode where we talk about who is the person who leaves the three star review that you only get five star reviews or three star reviews. Sorry, five star reviews or one star reviews, but you don't get very many three star reviews. Of course. And you get the people who love things and the people who hate things and you don't get the meh people. Yes. And so I can't help but notice that since we put that up on YouTube, that's the episode in which we're talking about reviews, I noticed we got another spike of reviews on iTunes for the podcast. I do go through and I read all of those. I have a little program that actually aggregates the reviews from all over the world so I can see what reviews people have left about the show because I'm very interested. I feel the need to officially tell people you don't need to leave a three star review just so that I will read it. But then we had a big spike in people leaving three star reviews saying, oh, I totally love the show. But Grace had that nobody leaves three star reviews. So here's my three star review. Love the show. It's like when you get, I mean, you probably don't get this so much because your videos get watched so quickly. But on some of my slower channels, you will get a point where you'll have a video that's been up for a while and it's only got thumbs up. Everyone's liked it and it's had zero dislikes. And as soon as someone points that out in the comments and says, oh, wow, isn't it great, this video's never had a single dislike. You will get a dislike within half a second. Yes. And just wants to someone wants to break, break something beautiful. Yes, that's exactly it. You should tell people that you will only read the five star reviews with this aggregate reviews. So people want to have their comment read by you personally, that personal touch, they have to leave a five star. No, I will be honest about this. I do read all the reviews, but I will just say that if you actually like the show, leaving a three star review is not the most helpful thing that you can do. I promise I will read the review anyway. So I don't, you know, I'm like on my videos, I don't like to say the end of the video is like that everyone does on YouTube. Oh, don't forget to like the video. But since we had people go out of their way to give us reviews lower than they normally would, I'm going to take this opportunity to just ask if you enjoy the show, would you please leave a review that is actually reflective of the number of stars that you think the show should get? I would, I would appreciate that. So this is my second call for reviews and I just wanted to put that out there. I read them all. It's not like my emails where I delete things instantly. I'm very interested to hear what people have to say about the show in the reviews. If it makes you feel bad, my mom reads the reviews as well. So she doesn't like to see people give me. Oh man, you shouldn't tell people that. Oh man, that's a big mistake. You think so, trying to guilt people into it. To be fair, right? To be fair. I think it's any three star show anyway. There's another so I for the compilation. Well, I'm trying to think about how to answer that, which is as we have said many times, this is the two dudes talking genre. And I always feel with these things that in the grand scheme of podcasts that are available for people to listen to. Yes, I think this show may be a three star show when you're talking about comparison to something like radio lab, for example, five star podcasts. No doubt about it. But it's always with this kind of show. It's about the reaction for the person listening to the people talking. And so for some people, they're really going to like it and for some people, they're really going to not like it. My side was because I can both kind of agree with you, but I look about it in a slightly different way. And you took that way more seriously than you were supposed to. It was just like a glib comment. No, it was very very serious. I actually, I actually listened to the podcast, would you believe? Like, I've been in it. And sometimes if I'm going for a walk and I've listened to all the ones I want to listen to, I like, oh, I'll chuck on one of those old Hello Internets and have a reminisce about the conversation we had. I've done it a few times. Sorry, I just, I just like the reminiscing there because we haven't been doing this that long. But how do you find listening to the show? Because I mean, I usually end up listening to it about three times probably before it goes up, but that's because I'm editing it. So I mean, how does it, when you're taking a little, taking a little walk, like how you enjoy listening to the show? I always like the most recent one and think that ones are right and the older ones I don't like. And I'm like that with my videos too. If I watch, I can't watch my old videos. I just don't enjoy it. But the most recent video I always think, yeah, it's pretty good. I hope people like that one. Yeah, nobody can, nobody can watch their, uh, their old stuff. It's always terribly cringey. I do want to mention just before I forget one, one more thing about the, the feedback on feedback on feedback, which is, yeah, what I haven't done in a while is mention new countries where we have reviews. Oh, yes. And that's of course because it's like as time goes on, it's harder and harder to get new countries. You're playing Magic the Gathering or anything? No, that sounds like something that you would do. Yeah, it sounds really great. It's a, it's a card game. You have to like buy decks of cards, but some of the cards are really rare. And so basically if you are in a country that we haven't received a review from yet, you are basically like one of the rare Magic the Gathering cards. That's what we're looking for. Yeah. Anyway, so we have, like sports cards, so then I'm with you. Do they vary the frequency of the sport? Yeah, sometimes you get special cards and there'll be like these premium ones that are on this like shiny foil sort of material and they're like rare ones to get. Like here, it's like a golden ticket and will they wonky? You open your pack and there's one of these gold cards where the players all printed on like this different golden material. I didn't know they do that. Yeah, so it's the same idea. Anyway, so we have three that I just wanted to mention quickly. I have not been to any of these places, but they are Costa Rica, Cyprus and Ecuador are new three since the last time I mentioned this a little while ago. So thank you very much to the reviewers in those countries who have added this to our list of places that we have reviews from. So thank you very much. You know Costa Rica has been awesome in the World Cup. That's one of the moment. I do not know that. They were like overachievers. They were actually maybe they weren't overachievers. They were just awesome. They like, they won the group with England and Italy and all that and they did, they're out now, but they did really well. No, one. Congratulations Costa Rica. Yeah. Talk to me about Kindles. You had a, you had, you had a bit of a rant about Kindles in the last episode. Have you gotten over that? No, well, no, I haven't gotten over it because I have to face the horrors that I discussed last time every day when I read a book. So no, I haven't gotten over it. Do you use your Kindle every day? I make a real attempt to try and read something long form every day and I usually do that on the Kindle. I'm not always successful, but I do, I do try to carve out time to say, okay, I'm going, I am going to read some section of a book now and I find the Kindle is the best for that aside from all the parts of the book. During the day, do you do this or will it be like your bedtime thing or when do you normally find this reading time? It's usually around lunch time is when I'll do it. Is it like, okay, it's lunch now. I'm going to try to carve out at least 20 minutes where I'm just going to sit here and I'm going to read a section of a nonfiction book that I'm working my way through. You're so disciplined with your time. Well, I mean, this is the ideal version of it. I don't do it every day, but I would say I do it most days of the week. I'm not, I'm not, I'm curious to know what my hit rate is on this, but I would more days than not I do it is what I would say. So anyway, don't you read regularly? Well, just usually bedtime. Sometimes I'll just like, you know, if I've got time, I was going, oh, read a chapter of a book or if I go on holidays or trips and planes and things like that, but I certainly don't have like a regime or carve out time for it. It's just kind of, I don't know. Life's just too busy. I don't know how you do it. I would, I have a little checklist that's my daily checklist and read for 20 minutes is one of the items on there. So I am happy when I can successfully check that check box. That's how I do it. But you don't have to check that check box, you realize. You could just say, I'm not going to do that today and I'm going to do this instead or do this for longer or what makes you what makes what makes you obey the checklist. Because I wake up every morning thinking of all the things I want to do and I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to do this and I'm going to pay those bills and I'm going to sort everything out. And then the end of the day comes and it's like, well, actually, I didn't do any of that because I got sidetracked. What makes you obey yourself? This could be a whole type of kind of term, but nothing makes me obey the checklist. I have one particular checklist that I use, which is the kind of ideal checklist that on a or sorry, ideal day checklist, I should say, which is that name has I got like a name it saved under. I call it the workflow checklist, but it's basically in a perfect day, I would hit all of the items on this list. So there's time that's blocked out for different kinds of activities, one of which happens to be the reading, some of it which happens to be working on the next video. There's a few other things, but there's maybe 10 items on this, which is the perfect day is hitting all of these items. Well, if there's only 10, surely you can reel off the list for us. No, I'm not going to. I'm not going to. It's secret. Are there like illegal activities on this list? Exactly. Rob a bank. Yeah, so there's nothing that forces me, but it's a nice way to keep track of how did I do? And then I can be a little bit reflective at the end of the day, which I can look at the checklist and say, like, oh, well, today was a day that didn't go very well, or you know, oh, look at this, almost everything is checked off on this list. Like, this is a very good day. The reading is on there because it's not important on any particular day, but it's something that matters over the long run, whether or not you read every day, matters over a long time scale. So it's something I tried to not skip. And there's a few other items that are kind of like that and stuff that it's not important today, but it does matter over the longer term. So I want to throw down a challenge to everyone who comments on Reddit on the podcasts to list the 10 items they think are on a great checklist. And when we eventually get access to that list in a future podcast, we will see how accurate people were. Okay. And be serious about it. Don't not put silly things or rude things. Yeah, tell the internet not to be silly. That's, that's going to work real well. That's let tell them not to put three style reviews. Yeah. Don't hurt my mother's feelings by leaving a mean review. Coming back to the Kindle there. Oh, yes. That's what we're talking about. Oh, right. People were sending me all of this information. I wanted to know why, why Kindle? Do you do this horrific thing, fully justifying the text and making every day a little bit sadder for me? And people sent me all of these answers saying how it's, it's baked into the format of Kindle books that the books are specified that they're going to be fully justified. And so I got some answers from people trying to speculate about stuff. But then I found out, which has just made me even sadder about this whole situation, which I did not think was possible, that on the older model Kindles, which maybe you have because we found out last time you have no idea what Kindle you even have. I sent your photo of my Kindle. You did not. I never got a photo of your Kindle. I sent your photo. You even applied to it. You did not. What? I don't remember. Yeah, because remember you commented that it had the, because it was uncharged and you said you'd never seen the uncharged sign before? Oh, I forgot about this. Yes, you did say me. But yeah, I think, yeah. That's right. Okay. I still don't know what kind it is, but you at least have a photo of it now, so you should know. I guess I do. I've got a keyboard or a button. You did send me that thing. I just put that out of my mind. Oh, okay. You have the same Kindle that I do. You have the Caper White. Yeah. There you go. That's what you have, Brady. Now you know. Thank you. Yes. So, what I discovered that made me even more sad is that on the older model of Kindles, there is a secret option that people can enable, which will left justify the text. Now, here's why this is infuriating to me, because this immediately invalidates all of the arguments that other people have sent me about. Like, oh, it's a formatting problem. Like there's some sort of technical reason. There obviously isn't. If there's a secret option on the older Kindles to be able to left align the text, it is technically possible, which means I am being pushed into the belief that Amazon is just either irrational or vindictive with its choice to force fully justified text on the Kindle page. There's if it's technically possible, if you used to let people do it, if people who still have old Kindles can left justify the text, then you're just being mean by taking this option away on the newer Kindles. There must be a reason. There must be. I want to believe that there is a reason. I really do, but now it's just, I don't know what to think anymore. Again, if anybody listening to the sound of my voice works at Amazon, it's okay. You can send me an anonymous email. I won't tell anyone. I just need to know. You'll probably won't rate it. I just need to know. Leave a review. Yeah, that's excellent. That is what I want. Leave a review. If you're on the software team at Kindle, just slip in a hidden option for the paper white. No one will know. You just put that. Get that pass through on the code review for the next iteration. Make everybody happy. Wouldn't it be awesome if the way you accessed it was you had to type CGP on some screen? Oh man, that would be the best. That would be the best. That would be cool. I'd be really excited about that. I could more pleasantly read books every day. So could everybody else just left just to find the text on Amazon? Anyway, anyway, I don't get started, but that was my feedback. I am even sadder after learning more about the situation, which I did not think was possible. That's that. I would like to thank everybody who has been tweeting and emailing me all the times. They've seen the word humbled being used in various books and articles on that. It's become quite fun. It's become kind of like a Wears Wally, where can you find them? Send them in. Much appreciated and entertained. And also, as we record this, it's the night after Brazil were dumped out of their own soccer world cup in traumatic circumstances for them. They were beaten 7-1 by Germany, which is an unprecedented result, especially for a team like that. And lots of people tweeted me during the game and said, surely this is an example of a team or a sports people being humbled and indeed it was very traumatic for the people of Brazil, though, my condolences. Like, I know it's only sport, but in Brazil, it transcends sport. But losing a semi-final of the world cup in your own country after all that buildup in such spectacular fashion, I feel their pain. Yeah, I don't follow this very closely either, but I can definitely sympathize with that feeling of you. Everybody wants the hosting country to win. That's how it should work. Or at the very least, make it to the final round. So I can definitely understand that there's a very crushing. You feel the same way with the Olympics. Whoever's hosting the Olympics, it feels like I really hope they get the most gold medals. I don't feel that way. What do you mean you don't feel that way? I feel the opposite. I always think it's unfair. I always think if you win a major, major thing in your own country, you've done it with assistance or an advantage. And I think that slightly detracts from the glory of the win. Controversial I know. I don't. Wow. I mean, it just seems too much of a coincidence that the host country suddenly wins more often. Obviously, they've got an advantage. Well, if I spent all my life training to be the world's best at something, and then I went to the Olympics and I got pipped by someone from the home country who obviously got that extra bit of support from the crowd, I'd be devastated. They won because of, you know, I know they didn't take drugs, but they got an advantage that I didn't get home, home ground advantage. So what you're saying is that the Olympics or the World Cup should be held in a country that is not participating? No, I'm not, I'm not saying that. And it's just I think that's what it's just it's just part of the beast that someone is going to have that advantage. But I think this feeling that everyone wants the home country to win. I don't think that's fair. I think it's like, I mean, all the more glory to someone who can who can win against the home country on their home turf. Like it's it's good for the tournament and it's good that Brazil got as far as they did because the more the people of the country are interested in the tournament, the better the tournament is, the crowds are more active. There's more excitement. There's more buzz around the whole thing. I'm glad Brazil did well. And Brazil, I'm just between you and me, Brazil are pretty handy at soccer. So, you know, they win their share of World Cup's anyway. But I think this home advantage thing, I've always felt this, you know, I think there's more glory in winning something on foreign soil. There's more glory for the winning team, but I still feel like I would I would have wanted Brazil to win. Even though I'm not invested in this, that's I would feel like wherever it is, it is hosted. I feel like if I was architect of the universe, I would want them to win. That seems that seems better. I feel a bit like, well, the best team didn't win. Like, you know, the best team didn't get to win. I'm like, stole, stole what was rightfully there because they had an advantage. I'm realizing what I, of course, I agree with you. I'm realizing what I'm what I'm actually saying, but not or what I'm actually thinking, but not saying is that I want whoever is hosting the game to happen to also have the best team that year. That's how I want things to line up. Oh, fair enough. Yeah. This is entirely unreasonable request. But that's what I want. And don't get me wrong. When Australia hosts a big event, I want Australians to win everything. It's not like I, you know, I'm as biased as the next man. But yeah, anyway, I don't know what to think about what I just said, but I'm sure I'll be told. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website portfolio or online store. 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So start a trial with no credit card required today and begin building your website. And when you decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure to use the offer code Hello Internet all one word to get 10% off and to show your support for the show. Once again, that offer code is Hello Internet. We thank Squarespace for their support, Squarespace. Everything you need to create an exceptional website. Any more follow up? No, but what I do have is drum roll, please. The triumphant return of plane crash corner, is it not? Why not? Oh, look at you. You have just made so many people happy. Well, you gave me enough incentive there with that drum roll and you find enough enthusiasm for me to talk about plans for a minute. I'm really interested. I want to hear. Well, your mum does when she's not reading reviews. I know she enjoys playing crash. She does. She does. There were two things I was going to mention. One is, despite my sort of interest in aviation, I've never really followed aviation, Twitter streams and things very closely, but I've recently started following a couple. I can't even remember what they are. They're these sort of aviation geeks who obviously sit at their computer and watch the live trackers of every plane in the world doing what they're doing. I really enjoy it. You get lots of great pictures and information about things happening in the world of aviation. But, and there is a bat, they do make flying suddenly seem much, much unsafer than I previously thought. Because what I've learned, I think it's the sort of false alarm sort of thing. What I've learned is every time any plane decides it's got a problem and wants to divert or land early, skip the queue or go somewhere else. This becomes huge breaking news for these Twitter feeds. Flight 743 has declared an emergency and is now heading to Paris. They've got these regular updates and you can click on links and follow it. You're suddenly thinking, oh my goodness, a crash is going to happen. This is amazing. Oh no. And then every single time the plane lands and it turns out someone stubbed their toe or it was like an onboard medical emergency or something. It could be anything. But every time you think something amazing is happening and maybe there's some minor technical thing which means the plane can jump the queue. But it has, you know, I'm always the first person to say the flying is very safe. But following these Twitter streams does change your outlook on that. And actually it changes it falsely. Flying is still safe. But this sort of, so that's something that's something I've been, I'll send you some of the Twitter streams and you can follow them. Please don't. Please don't send me this. I have no interest in adding daily anxiety to my Twitter stream. I open up my Twitter stream and see nothing but problems. That's like signing up to police blotters all around the world, Twitter streams. I know what I would love to be informed of every murder. Please let me know about every murder that happens in the world. If you hadn't left, I want to know every day. You would never want to go outside if that was your Twitter stream. So we have these little local newsletters and newspapers where I live that they will pop through your letterbox and they'll have a little crime corner. And every single thing that happens in the town, Betty Jones had her pop plants stolen from house number three, makes it into the publication. So suddenly everything's like everyone's a plant burglar. So anyway. So anyway. I picked the daisies in tonight. Yeah, exactly. So you're out following them. You can follow things too closely. Yes, definitely. But there was a video posted just recently. I don't know if you've seen it. Certainly everyone has sent it to me. And well, they've sent it to more than me because it's been watched 16 million times. And I can assure you I'm responsible for only about five of them. So it was a plane, a 767 plane coming into land recently at the airport at Barcelona. And as it came into land, another 767 was sort of putling along on the ground and crossed the runway as it was going about its business. And the two, it looks like the two would have would have hit. And this plane that was coming into land sort of at the last minute fires up the engines to maximum. You can hear the engines screaming and pulls up at the very last minute and flies over the top of this plane that's slowly crawling across its runway. It's worth a watch, you know, it's really interesting to see. You don't have to get to see these things. So I'm sure you'll put the link in the notes. So it's not a plane crash. It's a near plane crash. It's the U-Tair aviation. That's the one. I was just trying to pull it up. You're watching it now, eh? U-Tair 767-300 near Miss question mark. Surely they know person who posted this thing. Well you just are. I mean, it's not as, you know, they're not like, you know, rubbing paint off each other, but you could see what could nearly, what could have happened. Are you watching it? Yeah, I just pulled it up now. Have a little watch. Okay, I know I complained about the question mark in this, but now I can see why there is a question mark in this video. Not close enough for your liking? It's not that it's not close enough. It's actually just that the angle makes it difficult to appreciate the closeness. But you could definitely say looking at this video that they would have collided had the plane not pulled up at the last moment. And it has 16 million views as of this moment. Take it to the bank. Yeah. But the thing is, the thing to remember with those big planes too though, is like, it's like the Titanic, you know, it's one thing to see the iceberg in front of you, but you've think got to do a few things and these things aren't as responsive and nimble as, you know, a bicycle. Yeah. I near Miss can, doesn't necessarily look like a near miss, but it's cool video. I will put it in the description. Still no news on that Malaysia plane. Who knows when will ever get the news. I was talking to a mate of mine who's a pilot the other day about it. And you know, I won't bore you with just more speculation. But one interesting thing he said to me was all those things that got switched off on the plane, all those, the tracking devices that were manually switched off. My mate who flies commercial airliners said he wouldn't even know how to switch those things off if he was asked to. So it's not like it's not like someone has, you know, pressed the wrong button or something like that. Someone, for someone to switch those things off, there's a pretty strong chance they've planned well and advanced to switch it off. So we're getting into conspiracy theory territory here. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. Okay. I'm just saying. You're the expert. You're the expert. I'm not the expert. I'm just some numpty that follows on Twitter and watches YouTube videos and and watch his air crash investigation TV shows of the two of us. You are the experts. That is true of two of us. Right. So there you go. If you're on a plane at the moment, enjoy your flat. I see on Twitter people requesting plane crash corner because they are going to the airport or because they're going to be on the flight. I don't understand this. I'm glad that people like it. I'm glad that people, it makes people happy. But I find that very strange. I don't understand that mindset of, yeah. Anyway, I hope it made those people happy. I've read a few 9-11 books on planes and they've got like, you know, pictures on the cover of the of the towers being struck by planes. And I always feel a bit weird doing that on planes and sort of make sure I obscure the cover and things like that because that seems like bad form. But you also told me you watched those plane crash shows on the airplane. No, I don't do that because I don't, I only usually watch what's available on the plane. And as yet, most airlines have not started showing air crash investigation as part of their in-flight entertainment. If they had it, I probably would. Yeah, that's exactly it. So. Can you imagine that? I'd love that. If we ever fly somewhere together, I don't want to sit next to you. If you are going to be watching plane crash investigation the entire time, that can't I won't. I won't. And I probably won't talk too much about plane crash. I know that's poor form. There you go. Cut it if you need to. You put a video out. Yes, yes it did. Congratulations. This is like a, it feels like you're churning them out at the moment. What's going on? Everyone said that. I don't feel like they're much faster. But I don't know. I haven't, someone out there probably has a spreadsheet of my uploads, casual. I have no idea. Yes, I got this one out frantically and just barely in time for the July 4th deadline. But yes, we are recording it shortly. Actually, maybe not that shortly after, but a few days after the American Empire video went live. So. Already passed a million views. Yes, that has crossed over into my very successful categorization, which is more views than subscribers within seven days. So I can't complain about that. That's an interesting metric. I've not heard that one. I'm pretty sure we talked about this before. Yeah, more views. And after I remember that one, I'll start applying that. I don't think this works entirely. And also, because YouTube has, shall we say, dramatically changed the way subscribers work since about a year ago. My metric used to always be, I would take the number of subscribers and you say, okay, YouTube. I should get more, if I take the subscriber number and divide it by three, so I take one third of that, I should get more views than a third of my subscribers within seven days. And I got that number by looking at other channels that I thought were successful channels and seeing how do their video views do compared to their subscriber numbers. So that was kind of my minimum threshold of what counts as anything below that would be kind of a failure. But I may have to move on. You're making my feel pretty miserable right now. Well, it also depends on what kind of channel you're running. You have to look at what are comparable channels. So I was looking at other channels that had a low upload frequency, but relatively successful videos. But I haven't revised that number recently. I think I may have to because of the way I think subscribers, those numbers mean less now than they used to. So I think that estimate may be a little bit over optimistic. But still, I think a very successful video for me is more views than subscribers in seven days. And so the American Empire won't cross that. And yes, I'm pleased with that. It was a cool video. It was like kind of the American equivalent of your famous UK explained video. I felt very much like that. It was the US version. It was the video that was begging to be made. Yes. Yes. And I have to say why the hell did it take so long to make it? Well, I am kind of unable to believe that nobody made this video before me. This has been anxious and on my mind for a long time that somebody was going to beat me to this video because it seemed it seemed like the obvious thing to do. And I don't know why nobody made it before I did. So I just feel really happy with this one. How do you know nobody's made it? And it just wasn't successful. And it's on some channel with seven views. Well, I don't know that because I'm not YouTube omniscient. I can't know what every video is on the whole. Don't say that. I thought you were. I mean, why don't you know what everybody had for breakfast today? It's like, that's beyond the scope of no ability. Okay. Well, if it's beyond this, you didn't stop you saying it a minute ago. Yeah. I would have to go back and edit in the word, virally successful. Right. No one made a virally successful version of this video is the correct thing. But yes, if you are the listener who made the video that has seven views, I guess I'm sorry, but yeah. So I was anxious about getting kind of scooped on this one. And I have been for a long time because this has been relatively high on my to-do list. Then why did it take so long? Because first, let me say, I loved the video. I actually liked it more than the UK one because I guess a lot of the stuff in the UK when I already knew because I'm part of the Commonwealth and all that. Whereas the US one had lots of new information for me personally. But watching it, it didn't feel like a video that would take years of thinking and research. It felt like, you know, you just had to look the stuff up. Right, a good script. I mean, you wrote a really good script. And, you know, I can respect that. It would take some time. But it still doesn't seem like more than a week or two's work. And it's taken a really long time. Well, I don't want to pick on you or anything because it's a cool video. You always do watch it a million times. Well, first of all, I have not been working on this for a year. That would be a really poor showing if that was the case. It's like, oh, man, you need some help. So there are many things that are on my list, which are in the back of my mind. But it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm actively working on any of those projects. I kind of keep my eyes open for interesting things that might go in the video for things that are on that list. But it doesn't necessarily mean I'm actively working on them. But that's also why I think I think I wanted to Q&A video as I did. I mentioned that it's, I estimate it's about 10 hours per minute on screen to make the videos. But that ignores a lot of this kind of unquantifiable time of grazing and putting things away for a rainy day. That's exactly it. Or I mean, even just like we were talking earlier today, like I spend, I try to spend time reading every day. Does that count as work on video? I often pick books that are related to future topics that I'm going to do. Does that count? I don't know. I don't know how to quantify that amount of time. So yeah, it's ultimately unknowable precisely how long it takes. But in terms of I am going to make an American Empire video, I think I really settled on that probably about three or four weeks before it got published. Okay. I was working on something else and then I had to kind of switch because I didn't, the other thing I realized was not going to be out in time. And so I thought, okay, I want something soon. And I settled on the American topic and I think that was about three or four weeks before. Well, it was a cool video. Well done. I enjoyed it. Thank you for making it. I'm glad you liked it. You were unhappy with the video. I think it would be fair to say you were a bit whos me. This is terrible. My video is a mess. It's going to be awful. You were kind of, you thought it was going to be really bad. And when, so when I watched it and it was really good, I was like, well, what a, what a little moaner you were. No reason. It's like, I think you were actually, you know what you were doing? You were humble bragging. I know. You were telling me how terrible your video was and all the problems it had and you knew it was going to be really good. First of all, even if that's what I was doing, that's not humble bragging. That's lowering expectations. Humble bragging is different. But you were humble jacking. That doesn't even make any sense now. Humble jacking, it's a word. Look it up on Urban Dictionary. I'm sure I'm going to see it. Humble jacking will be on Urban Dictionary before the day is out. It's just, just like, I don't know if you, if you saw it in time, but the Wikipedia briefly had Brady typing listed under the Hunts and Peck typing section on there on there, our article about keyboard typing and it was a Hunts and Peck typing also known as Brady typing. And you can see in the history there was this little edit war back and forth about whether or not this term should be included. And eventually the section of that article on Wikipedia had to be protected by a moderator from, like, we stop arguing about this Brady typing is not a thing. But you were lowering, you were lowering expectations. Okay, no, but that's what I, no, no, I was humoring you before. My sentiment was genuine. And so for, for the listeners, the background here is that you were trying to contact me. We were possibly meeting up. And you contacted me at the kind of nadir of my moment of making this video, which was I was at the very last minute, very early in the morning on July 3rd, just wrapping up the animation, trying to get it exported and uploaded to YouTube. And because this was a rush job, I was up late the night before. And I was just genuinely very sad about this whole project because, well, here's the way into this. My feelings were genuine. And I still look at that video and I'm not very happy with it. But I feel better about it now than I did at the time. Most of all, the fact that it's successful definitely helps. I feel like, okay, other people like this, so I can feel a little bit better about it. But I think this is a great little time to talk about. I think you brought up before, you mentioned it just offhandedly, but the notion of, it's a good time to talk about the notion of brain crack. And brain crack. Do you know what I mean by brain crack? No. Okay. So sounds like a drug thing. Well, it is sort of like a drug thing. And some people will know this just immediately. This is from Zay Frank, ages ago, when he was doing his, basically, the thing that gave birth to modern vlogs, which is the show. And actually Hank Green just did a vlog, brother's video about the history of internet video. I'll put the link in the show notes for people to check out. If you are a young person on the internet and want to hear what it was like for us old timers, for us grandpas to tell you stories about how the internet was back in our day, go watch this video by Hank Green. He mentions the show and kind of why it was important and very influential. And Zay Frank also currently has a YouTube channel, which is doing very well. I'll put that in the description as well. But the show, I was lucky enough to have found it when it was active and I used to watch it all the time. And one of, actually, I would probably say his best episode is this episode where he talks about the notion of brain crack. And it's a very useful thing to think about it. The idea is that what can happen sometimes if you make things is that you have an idea about a video. So in my case, this American Empire video. And what can happen is over time if you don't actually work on that thing, you start to think about how good it will be. As opposed to thinking about how am I going to get this thing done. Okay. As time goes on, you're kind of abstract notion of how good this thing will be becomes very large and very outsized anything that could possibly happen. And I think this American Empire video is a case where I had a severe, severe case of brain crack and didn't realize it until the video was kind of up and over. Because well, after I did the UK explained video, there was a brief time where I thought, like, oh, this is just a one-off thing. And then I, like my YouTube career was very by chance. Like, I happened to make a couple more videos, but I never really thought this would be a thing. But once I settled on, oh, let me try to make these kind of regularly, the idea of doing the UK explain version, but for America was just so obvious. It just so happened that basically for a year and a half, I never made it because there was always something else I wanted to make more. But the result is this thing had been brain cracking into my mind for maybe a year and a half. So the result is when I actually sit down to make the thing, it seems like nothing but awfulness because it's being compared to this abstract idea of how good it's going to be. But you don't have any actual concrete thoughts about it. It's just, you know, I don't know if you ever have this. Let's talk about dreams for a moment, Brady, you know, with my favorite. Oh, yeah. I thought you had to talk about dreams. I love talking about dreams. I don't know if you ever have this experience, but you wake up from a dream and you have the feeling either that something in your dream was really funny or like, oh, I had a really great idea in my dream. Do you ever have that experience? It doesn't ring a bell. I can either remember what was in my dream and therefore all the associated emotions or I don't often wake up and just have a feeling. Hmm. Interesting. Well, I know some people do this anyway, but not you. So you won't be able to sympathize with this. But I have this little theory that sometimes I will wake up from a dream or people will say, oh boy, I had a really great idea in my dream, but I can't remember what it was. Or something was really scary in my dream, but I can't remember what it was. But I'm waking up with that kind of feeling. I have the suspicion that when that happens, what's going on in your brain is the part of your brain that recognizes good ideas or that recognizes something is funny is active, even though there's no input to it. It's just spinning. So you have the same feeling that you have when you have a great idea, but there's nothing there because you're in the middle of your eight-hour evening hallucination that happens every day. And I think the brain crack thing is a kind of similar phenomenon that happens. Like this thing is in your mind. And what ends up happening is that you're not really thinking about, oh, how am I going to make this thing? What happens is just the abstract notion of how good it's going to be is lit up in your brain. And that's the best. You're a Brazilian footballer, imagining what it's going to be like to hold the world cup aloft before you've actually played the games required to win it. Yes, sort of. So in the in the Z-Frank video, can I just interrupt? Am I being stupid? Why is it called brain crack? The idea is that if you're not careful, you become addicted to the brain crack. That like thinking about how good the thing is going to be becomes better than doing the thing. And you can kind of stock of like not doing it. And this is where I was leading with this. This conclusion is the way to break this addiction is when you have ideas in your mind is to just don't think about how good they are. Just make them as soon as you can. And I think that's a useful notion. But you are like the if I was going to pick anyone in the world who doesn't follow that advice, it's you. Well, this is exactly I don't follow that advice at all. And it's partly because my production cycle is very long. But nonetheless, I find it a useful notion to keep in mind. And I'm actually kind of glad that this thing happened because I'm working on something now that I will say I have basically been brain cracking for years. There's a topic that I've been thinking about doing something on for a very, very long time. And it's it's useful for me to remember because I want to try to get it up soon. But I keep working on it and feeling like, oh, this thing is just terrible. But the America Empire video has a mind to be like, oh, no, no, no, just make it. Don't concentrate on how bad you think it is because there's like an optical illusion going on here. You've thought about it so long that you're not even really thinking about it. You're just thinking about, oh, won't this thing be great? And it's a topic that I'm intensely interested in and have been for many years. And I've actually diverted us from talking about it sometimes on the podcast because I want to save it for after the video goes up. So anyway, that is that is brain crack. That is why I was terribly sad about the video. And I feel better about it now, even though I still don't like it. It's not one of my favorites. They're, you know, as with everything, I wish I had had maybe two more weeks to really tighten it up. It feels very, it feels very sloppy to me. But it's that's so funny to you, Brady. Yeah, okay. I guess in two weeks you could probably tighten up that five or six minute video, which was already incredibly tight. Oh, it is so sloppy. So sloppy. That's why I don't like it. Anyway, that's a, I'm not saying you couldn't tighten it, but I don't think it need two weeks. It's, you know, it's to snipper a few words out and shorten a few sentences. This episode of Hello Internet has been sponsored by the people at Harries. Now, Harries is a business founded by two guys called Jeff and Andy, who basically realized something that will all of us know. And that is that razor blades are bit of a rip off. So what they've started is an online service or a website as those things are sometimes called where you can buy shaving kits and then refill the races online for a fraction of the price. And the quality is really good. And I'm not just saying that I can vouch for this because I have a Harries kit. They were kind enough to send me one to try out. And all of my occasional shaves are now with the Harries set. And I'm really pleased with it. Not only does it work brilliantly, which is pretty important with a razor, it looks really cool, very clean and classic design. I'm sure if you've seen them, you'll be equally impressed. Now, if you give them a try, you can get five dollars off your order. If you go to Harries.com and then use the promo code H I H I's in Hello Internet. That's the bit that helps us. So don't forget to put that in. Really great value anyway. 15 bucks will get you a handle, the first blades and shaving cream. And then you get your refills from there. I seriously think you'll be impressed by the product. Check them out online first. There's lots of good pictures on the website and get a real feel for what it's like. Now, at the moment, I think they're only doing this in the US and Canada. So if you're in Europe, I'm afraid you're going to miss out or you might need to arrange some sort of intermediator to smuggle them over here across the Atlantic. But I'm sure they will be servicing Europe soon because it's a good product and I'm sure the demand will be there. But I guess for now, having a set here in Europe makes mind bit of as collector's item. Maybe it's maybe it's worth something. Anyway, go to Harries.com, promo code H I, five dollars off your order. And thanks a lot to Harries for supporting the show. We really appreciate them. The design of US State Flags interest me because I'm a real I love flags. Oh, okay. All right. We're going to talk about this then. I was looking at that and I thought. Here is the worst thing to try to talk about on a podcast. Let me pull it up. I'm always up for talking about flags. Flags and maps are two of my favorite things, which is probably why I like your video so much. Okay. Okay. I am going to send you a link through Skype. Delivered. Opened. Okay. Currently being projected into my eyeballs. I see all the current state flags. I would like to know just looking over them. What are your initial thoughts about this collection of flags? What are your first impressions? My first impressions are that there are a lot of red and blue. I see a lot of British. What I perceive to be British. British e-looking things to them. I don't know. My impression is that there are some of them are very similar to each other. And then some of them are very different. But most of them are. Most of them seem to be blue with a roundish logo in the middle. I feel like I'm supposed to be seeing something that I'm not. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're down. You were not letting me down. You would never let me down, Brady. I'm just curious as to your initial impressions. I would say I'm just a bit overwhelmed, but to give you any one impression. It's just the whole bunch of colorful flags. Though I look at a page like this and this is just a train wreck of awful, awful design. I think these flags are just, it's hideous. And they're not cohesive, but that's the beauty of it, isn't it? They're kind of each has got its own story and everything. Each is disappointing in its own special way. I don't expect them necessarily to be cohesive, but I just, I look at these these state flags and it surely one such, a brasco and new ham, share and Pennsylvania are all quite good for ginia. I mean, they're just good, solid, just like a state legal first, first of all, first of all. We're going to have to help out the people here who are driving in the car or can't look at the, or they're on a plane, of course, or they're on a plane. But you get internet on domestic flights now. Pay for the internet. Look at this train wreck of design. Look at this terrible thing. All right. So the US state flags, it's disappointing. It's because there's so much interesting potential squandered with these flags. And almost all of them, or actually, we'll count up here. The biggest chunk of these flags when you look, they are blue and they have some boring and or ugly seal in the center of the flag. Hey, that's what I noticed. So I was sort of on the right track. Yes. So blue seals or seal in the center of blue. We've got Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, sort of Louisiana, not exactly. Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada manages to make it even worse. New Hampshire, New York, my home state, so disappointing, New York. That's a lovely, oh, that's a fantastic idea. No, it is hideous. All right, hold on. We also have North Dakota, Oregon. At least Oregon mixes it up a little bit. Pennsylvania, Utah as well, also disappointing showing their Utah. Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin. There's a whole bunch of flags that are just blue with a seal in the middle. Okay, so first of all, just horrifically unoriginal or boring flags. I look at something like, let me open it up here. The New York, it's okay for me to criticize my home state flag. I don't want to make people upset. Open up here. So the New York state flag is like so many others. This particularly not great color blue either. Blue black background with a seal. There's two women standing on the either side of a shield. And the shield for New York has a little picture of the Hudson river. And there's a sunrise over the hill in the background. Trust me internet. It sounds so much nicer when I describe it than if you go look at it. If you look at it, I think it's hideous. The sun has a little face on it, like a kinder gardener drew the face. I don't understand why that's there. I think it's just hideous. And think about this. New York is the Empire State. How great is that as a state name, like the Empire State? There's so much cool stuff that you could do with the New York flag. But here is a flag that just is un-iconic and doesn't represent anything interesting about New York state. And no one. That's not flag supposed to be iconic though. It's not like people put the state flags on. It's not like the national flag. I mean, there are 50 of these things. There are 50 of these things. But I think you underestimate Americans' attachment to their states. There's a little as a little legal thing. Actually, I left out of the US video. But Americans are legally citizens of both their state and the federal government, even though you don't have a passport or anything just for the state. But it's a legal level that does exist. That you are a citizen of New York or whatever state you happen to live in and an American citizen. So I think that these state flags, they should be iconic. Partly because you often see them all shown together. So I happen to often go by the US Embassy here in London, which is I'm going to give it the award for the most unfriendly, most unwelcoming building in all of the UK. The no-cure is secure. You could describe it as you might call it secure, but that building just telegraphs go away in every way it possibly can. You look at the building and the building looks back and says go away. No, no, sure, buddy. Yeah. And if you visit the USA Embassy in London out in the front, there are the 50 state flags. And they show them. And interestingly for anyone who goes there, I leave it as an exercise to the viewer to figure out why the flags are in the order that they are in outside of the London Embassy. It's an interesting little challenge. Anyway, precisely because they're shown together, they should be iconic. You should be able to say, oh, that's New York or that's New Jersey. But no, so many of them, I mean, I'm a person who in a weird sense uses these flags professionally, like when I make a video about them, there's no way I could win a guessing game of which flag is who's for almost all of them. But if you got 50 state flags all trying to be iconic and different from the one next to them, wouldn't that just get crazy and you'd start having like, you know, a fluorescent pink triangle one with, okay, you know, a green alien on it just because you want to be different from the guy next to you. Shouldn't there be a little bit of understatement? I mean, everyone's business card looks the same. But that's because business cards are like just this classy little thing. That's the kind of thing that have a little bit of information about you, but they're not, they're not kind of, you know, supposed to scream, look at me, I'm amazing, I'm iconic, look at my stars and stripes. They're just like this understated moment of, hey, here's who I am, buddy. I mean, but there are Austin. There are awesome business cards. You've seen Destins business cards. That man has incredible business cards. Well, okay, you've put me in a difficult situation now because you know, I love Destin, but I think having silly business cards is silly. I think it depends on who you are. I'm not a fan of, I'm not a fan of novelty. I'm, I'm, I'm like, I like just a bit of old fashioned class. And I think these old flags, these nice blue flags with the logos on them. And Destins business card, by the way, is not a business card. It's more of a joke thing that a fun thing he gives to fans. So I'm not dissing Destins business card, but I think state flags like I think have a bit of class. You don't have to scream the loudest and say, look at me, you know, I'm, I'm different from all the others. Why not just be, hey, I'm just a cool calm guy with a classy flag. All right, all right, here's the thing. I, I think that you can design a cool calm classy flag. But I think none of these flags meet this requirement either. I think they're all just kind of hideous. None of them. All right, I'm talking about Destin. What about Alabama? Because I guarantee he's going to get in touch about their flag. Now he loves East state. All right, hold on. Let me, let me, let me take a look at that. I don't want to say none of them because I was actually going to ask before. Alaska, I like, all right, all right. It was going to say, if you had to pick the best flag on here, what would you pick? And I like, from my perspective, there is only one decision to make here. One of these flags is great. And it obviously stands out from the best. And now I'm hoping that you pick it. I like Alaska. I like, I like a few of them. I mean, for, for iconicness, Texas does well. But, I quite like those blue ones with the, I definitely don't like Maryland. Do you know what? I like lots of them. Alaska is my favorite because it's got a constellation on it. It's got the big dipper on it there. Plow. You know, there's a lot there. I like, there's a few I don't like. California is pretty cool. I mean, I like the ones I guess I'm most familiar with. And that invariably are the big famous states. All right, go on then. Put me out of my misery. Okay. If you have, if you line up all these flags and say, which of these is the best flag? I think, no contest hands down. Number one winner goes to the great state of New Mexico. New Mexico has the best flag by far. And for the listener, it is a yellow background. And it's this red symbol, which is just sort of, I don't know how to describe it. It's sort of, it's like a cross, like a little plus sign in the center, but it's, let me describe it for you then. Okay, you do about that. It looks like a corporate flag of a company that produces chemicals. No, so wrong. It looks so wrong. In fact, if I was going to name one that I didn't like, that would be on the list. Oh, it looks like it looks like it's got a corporate like, it doesn't look like it's from the past or from history. It looks like it belongs to some company called Synergy 3000. No, no, New Mexico. Number one in my book, I would say that the logo in the center is vaguely native American looking is the way I would describe it. I'm sure it's got a lovely story behind it. But we're going to have to disagree on it. You know me. I don't care at all about the history of these things. I just care about how it looks. It's funny. It's funny. You picked out, I'll pick another one that you mentioned. You mentioned Maryland is being terrible. We're going to disagree. So I love the Maryland flag. Oh, that is a train. All right, all right. But I love it for a particular reason. So again, for the listener, the Maryland flag is objectively hideous. I think you would agree, right? Do you know what? I'm really reluctant to say too much of this stuff because we're going to find out now. It's like it was designed by some... Oh, don't have your old guy. Don't start pedaling. Don't start back pedaling. Listen, I'm just worried that I don't know the stories and they're funny. I don't know the story. Listen, just listen. In a moment like this, just double down on confidence and ignore ignorance. I'm just going to go or go and flash straight ahead. Okay, so Maryland, I love your flag. And here's the reason why. It is hideous. So it's divided into quadrants. On the top left and the top right are sort of red and white crosses, but they're colored in a strange way. And on the opposite corner are the completely uncolor matched yellow and black checkers that are also skewed at an angle. I think there is nobody you could show the Maryland flag to, who their first reaction wouldn't be. Right? That's terrible. But here's why I love the Maryland flag. To me, it's one of these things in life. Sometimes something is so hideous. It wraps around the spectrum of... We imagine this line is good and bad. And it's like an old-fashioned video games where if you go too far to one side, you end up popping back up on the other side. And to me, that's what the flag of Maryland has accomplished. I don't think they have quite wrapped around far enough. No, it's so awful that I totally love it. Never change Maryland. This thing is just the greatest. Have you ever seen the Australian state flags? Actually, I don't know if I have. I don't know if I have. Let me send you this, because this will disappoint you even more. I don't know if I... I feel like I might have, but I don't remember the Martha top of my head. You have to scroll down to states and mainland territories. National governors, states and mainland territories. And ignore the two that are a bit different, because they're not states anyway. It's ACT in the Northern territory. Yeah, so ignore them. Just look at the other six. Okay, okay. It's the same thing over. It's the same thing repeated. So I like that. Now for the listener again. What we have here for the Australian states is... If you know the UK flag, that's in the top left, as it isn't so many flags. The rest of the flag is blue. And then each of the states has a little different seal that's in the kind of other half of the flag. So what have we got here? One of them is like the... Was that the George lion with the cross? We have a crown and a blue cross. We have what looks like, what is it a crow? Or some kind of bird on a yellow background? That's my state. That's South Australia. That's a piping shrike. That bird. It's a what? A piping shrike. Piping shrike. That's just what it is. Okay. We have a lion on a white circle and then we have a constellation and a crown. Oh, and a, sorry, sorry, Western Australia almost forgot you. We have a black swan on a yellow circle. So basically this is the same thing over and over again with the slight tweak each time. Does this offend you? All right. All right. I give two thumbs up to Australia, because if you're going to do something like this, be consistent about it. I would have no problem with the American states if they all did something similar where it's like, okay, everybody, okay, everybody we're going to get on board and we're going to have a basic template and everybody does a variation on that template. That I would be 100% okay with, but I think the American states are just the worst because even the ones that look similar, they've all chosen a different color blue and it's all... It's like, guys, use the same blue. Don't use slightly different blues. Oh, and the seals are all different sizes and it's just... I cannot tell you... Here's a little detail for people who really obsessively watch the videos. So when I make the country girls, I have to take the flag and kind of fit it onto the skirt. And the skirt is a triangle. Now, you would not believe how poorly almost every flag in the world maps onto a triangle. You need to make more videos about Nepal. Yeah. I don't know, I should... I think in Nepal, I might just change the shape of the skirt, I think is what I'm going to do for that. That would be quite cool. Yeah. But it's surprisingly hard to take a flag and shrink it down so that it is still identifiable in a triangular shape because all the flags are designed to be a rectangle. And I usually spend some time trying to figure out the way to make it look the best. And one of the things that I do, if you pay a lot of attention, is you'll notice a lot of the flags are kind of off-centered from the triangle. I think they end up looking a lot better when they're just a little bit knocked one way or another, which also causes tremendous problems for me in animating it. But that's a side story. I think they're getting some insight into what takes so many weeks for you to come out. Well, I do not want to know how many hours I spent trying to make the state girls skirts not look just disastrous and on a bunch like on the New York one. I zoomed in all the way to get rid of almost the entirety of the flag and just focus on this little bit with the Hudson River or it just, it were just so awful. And that's why this was on my mind as I was like I was dealing with the horrible design of these state flags. And then it's like, how can I try to make them look good? And it was just it was just hideous. I mean, one of the other things I just I'm going to keep going on this. I'm sorry. Okay. I'm looking at these flags. If you're designing a flag for whatever and you give it to me for feedback, like I'm grading it, like I'm the teacher here. If you have to write the name of your thing on your flag, instant fail, instant fail. It's just I'm sorry, Montana, that seal might be really nice, but if you have to write Montana right up across the top, fail, Oklahoma, Oklahoma, you're so close to a kind of awesome flag. I mean, you need to change that blue background, obviously, but your central logo is great. But then you write Oklahoma across the bottom, fail state of Oregon, fail. It's just Kansas, fail, Illinois fail. Look a bit like high school things don't they when they've got the name written on like that. They look there. Yeah. Arkansas fail. It's just that instant fail. And one of the ones one of the ones, which is it just hurts me deeply. California, California, man, you're so close to awesome with this flag. But then you have to write California Republic across the bottom. And I know I know you want to do this because you were for about a week. You were a republic sort of depending on how you want to count that. And so you want to have that there. I understand, but you know what you also have, you've got a huge bear on your flag, right? Go with the bear. And make the bear bigger, make the bear scarier. But then you're at California Republic across the bottom, which is so close. I like it. It's kind of American. America, you know, they does what it says on the tin with America. Like they're not there's not there's there's no subtle to your go. No, there's no surprise you haven't got USA written on your flag. Well, that's exactly it. Like I imagine not like if some of these state designers had made the American flag, it would just it would just say USA, right? Stars and strives everywhere. And it would be it would be written like the memes are with impact font, you know, maybe an exclamation mark. And like then like many of these states do, they also have to write the date. So it's a USA 1776 forever, right? Like exclamation mark. That's what that's what it would be. And it's just, I don't know, it just it makes me sad. Some of them, the one, I don't know, that was constant as well was constant 1848. Well, the ones that really get me are the ones that are so close like the California one. It bothers me more because it's almost great. And I feel the same way with Wyoming, take a look at Wyoming's flag. Wyoming has a American buffalo in the middle. It has some nice bold colors. It's got the red and the blue and the white or the red border with a white border and then a mainly blue. Okay, nice mixing it up. It looks a little bit good. It's like a picture frame and you have the American buffalo right in the center outlined. Very cool. Oh, and then you have to ruin it by like cramming in this seal, which says the great state of Wyoming. No one can look at that flag and not immediately think, oh, it would be so much better if they just took out the seal. How iconic would this be? How cool is this? You have an American buffalo on your flag. It's really what's happened here. And actually, this is what's happened on most of these flags you can tell is they're suffering from being designed by committee, aren't they? It's like someone has said, I'm not voting for it if it hasn't got the seal on it. And someone said, oh, but it's so good. We're just the buffalo, so clean and someone has said, we have to have California written on it and the bear guy's gone, no, I know the bear's so cool to leave the bear. And the other guy's gone, no, no, I'm really proud of the name. And that's where a lot of these have suffered. There's been a group of people who've been required to approve it. Yeah. I mean, one of the ones also, I have, I have, sorry, let me start over there. I'm just, it says that we could do a whole show about these state flags by the side of it. Well, I'm going to keep going because, I am, because you can't be stopped. I can't stop. And you do the edit. Yes, it's true. Also, it's the ones that I just, again, I'm deeply disappointed in Utah, Utah. Again, you're so Utah, it's blue. It has a seal on it. Now, one of the things I like with flags is like, you think, okay, could you have picked, could you have picked a worse topic for a podcast? No, we're going to keep, I know. No one can say these things. No one can see these things. Well, some, hopefully many people right now are bunking off work. And they just have the Wikipedia article for the state flags open so they can follow along. Yeah. Okay, your flag should be, I immediately, immediately identifiable is, is my rule for this. And Utah, because of its, it's kind of, it's history, it has the, the B hive and this notion of industry as the kind of central themes of the state. And so it's like, okay, okay, that's great. Go with the Bs, right? Make your flag about Bs or industry, right? It's very easy to imagine, like, industry, like an industrious image. But no, like they shrink the Bs down so it's so small and it's just barely in the logo and at a glance, you can't possibly tell it. And then, it's just 1896 written across the bottom, like, just go with the Bs, Utah. It's great. There's state highways, it has little B hive as the logo. It just, it seems, it seems so obvious. And I'm just throwing this giant eagle in American format. Yeah, the giant is like to hide the thing that makes them unique. Double down on your uniqueness and, and just go with it. These are flags, I mean, you're willing to design a modern corporate logo here. You're thinking flag, you're thinking corporate, no, no, no, okay, no, no, okay, here's, here's an example I'm going to go with, right? You mentioned Texas before or something you like. Yeah. So the Texas state flag, I feel like everyone would know it because it is so iconic. But it's a blue bar on the left hand side, white star, and then two stripes. The top one is white and the bottom one is red. Now, I'm 100% great with Texas. It's, but it's, it's an abstract flag, but it's, it's the kind of thing where you can, because it's abstract, you can map your feelings of Texas onto it. That's, that's a different way to go. And Texas is a state with an incredibly strong identity anyway. Like, people have a mental image of what Texas is. And you then project your feelings onto that Texas flag and you can do so because it's a relatively abstract flag. And I actually feel the same way, like, I think a similar kind of flag is the, right next door to it is the flag for Tennessee. Mostly red, there's, there's a blue circle in the center, three white stars and a little blue stripe on the side. It's again, that is abstract. And so Tennessee is like, you can project your feelings about Tennessee onto that flag and that flag is also, it's identifiable in a way that so many of these, these seal flags are not. Well, I said Alaska was my favorite. Tell me why I'm wrong or right. I'm okay with Alaska. I'm fine with it. I don't, I don't have any problems there. It's definitely, it's definitely, I don't know, I should, I should, I should, I don't know, I feel like what I should actually do is genuinely sit down and grade all the flags. I feel like, you should rank them in a list. That would be awesome. I couldn't, I don't know if I could rank them except obviously for New Mexico, the winner. But I should, I should at least try to group them. Who gets, who gets A's, who gets B's, who gets C's. I feel like Alaska, it's a solid B, maybe B plus, you know, I don't know. All right. And everybody with words, F, F immediately. So you're giving California an F. D, I'll give California a D maybe. I don't know. I have to think about that. I don't know. I'm making no promises here. But I love that you're so passionate about it. I love flags. I love flags. Oh, it was a, who could not have? I had the flags of all the countries in the world, unlike a poster right next to my bed, where I'd go to sleep every night when I was a boy. And it had the flag, the name of the country and the capital of the country. And I spent so many hours just staring at that, that it's a lot of it is still quite ingrained. And like whenever there's like a flag section on like a quiz show or something, I always surprise myself by how many flags I can identify just like from, from my, from boyhood. Because I don't look at them anymore. But how many of them were just imprinted into my brain from, from that process? Oh, yeah. And I think one of the reasons why I feel so passionate about this is I think that a flag is a really interesting design challenge. How do you want to go? How are you going to represent your nation or some cities have flags? How are you going to represent your city? And what are you going to do in this in this limited space? And there's a lot that you can do with either going along with expectations or breaking expectations like the flags that have crazy shapes. Or there's, I think there's just so much here. And it's, it's really interesting. And there's so much potential, which is not fascinating that you think these are so important. And yet in a previous episode, when I discussed sort of the symbolism and importance of people's surnames to them, you completely just don't get it. Here's it. Well, and yet flags, these abstract things attach to states, you're, you know, God, I can't stop you talking about it. No, you can't. There's, you're putting words in my mouth, though, which is important. I, does it, is this, is this an important issue? I mean, obviously, the hideous way that most of these states have left their flags for hundreds of years signifies that this is not on, on the top of their importance list. So it's, it's hard to say that it's important. I wouldn't say that, but that's why I use the word interesting. I think this is, this is very, this is very interesting how to, how to solve this problem. Arizona, I think good, good job, Arizona. I like that. Oh, no, I don't think there is any. The star is with the sunshine coming out of it. The other one. Oh, how could I, I would, I would go a miss if I didn't mention this. The flag of Hawaii, you know, my, my wife is from Hawaii. So I have to mention this. The flag of Hawaii, I put in the same category as the flag of Maryland, which is kind of hideous, but also wraps around into, you know, what I like it. And, and the Hawaii flag also has the, the UK flag in the top left. And then it has six stripes, red, white, and blue again. But the, when you look at it, the, the British flag does not line up with the stripes. If you are a person who has tremendous OCD, this is not a flag for you. These things do not align in any way. But I think that, it also, it wraps around. I like the, the flag of Hawaii. I also think it's, it's, at least in this crowd, it's very identifiable as, oh, it certainly stands out. It certainly stands out in the page. Yes. And it's a different, it's a different aspect ratio. But seriously, we go to move on. All right, all right. 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Get a free audiobook and a 30-day trial by signing up today at audible.com slash hello internet. That's audible.com slash hello internet all one word. You have been you have been productive though. You also wrote a blog recently. Oh yeah. It's called I Have Died Many Times. Yes. And it was interesting. It was very kind of it's not really something I would necessarily expect from you in some ways. I don't mean to put you on the spot here. I would just be here. How would you try to summarize this for the listener? What would you say that this is about? It seemed to be the message seemed to be that we are always as humans we are always changing over time physically and mentally. And the person you were some time ago is completely different from the person you are now. And that person shouldn't be considered the same as you are now. You can't judge them or compare them to the person you are now. It's like a whole different person. Is that right? Yeah. I think that's sort of the gist of it. One of the things it's a nice thought but it does have a few floor. It has a few not floors. Maybe it doesn't have floors. It's a nice thought but it does beg a few questions. Oh I think it definitely beg it definitely begs some question. This is something that I have found true in the way that I think about myself and I think that it is it's a useful tool for other people to keep in mind which is that you are not... No. It's useful to think of yourself as not the same person that you were. And the easy way to think of this is as the child version of you say like the kid who went to middle school, he's not you. He's someone who became you but for a lot of practical purposes, you are basically different people if there is enough time separating the two of you. And I threw out a number just because I needed to pick a number but I kind of feel like basically if you go back 10 years that's a long enough period of time that you are a different person from that person. And I started out the article by using this example where my wife and I we were having dinner and we realized that we had known each other for 10 years at that point. And as we discussed it, we said like we feel that the people who met both of us have changed a lot and that we are not really those people anymore. We feel kind of grateful to them because their decisions led to our current life but we don't feel like we are them. We feel like we are different people especially since eventually we got married and then you end up you start affecting each other in ways like you were different people before and now you're married and so you naturally affect each other as people are your personalities. But even if you don't get married just living life going on in life, there's a constant change that's happening sometimes it's fast sometimes it's slow but I think people sometimes get hampered by thinking of themselves as a continuous person. How does that hamper them? What problems does it cause if you think in that way? Well, I would say what prompted me to write this is it's something that's just been on my mind for a long time and is this this thing that I saw with my students. I was really aware of as being different from my own life which is that the kids I taught all grew up in a world with with Facebook and I swear I'm not going to pull a like a grandpa get off my lawn moment here. This is this is just a wondering thing. I'm not saying this is bad. I'm just saying I wonder. But so like the high school kids I taught when they went to college they were still very much connected to their previous life. They were still very much connected to all of their friends that they knew in high school and in a way that was not possible because of technological differences when I went to college I mean I might as well have been traveling across the country. I just nobody I knew from high school went to the same college that I did. I just wonder about this effect where with things like Facebook that people end up kind of carrying around the ambient influences from their former selves in unhelpful ways. One of the things that came up in the discussion on Reddit which I thought was a good example was people talking about how when they like grown adults when they go back and visit their parents for holidays that they feel themselves like sliding back into the role of what they were like when they were younger. I don't know do you experience this? I don't I don't know I don't think I wouldn't describe it how you described it but it is definitely when you go back to places of your childhood a strange sensation. Yes I remember you know I go into lots of environments you know that maybe should be intimidating that I'm not intimidating to me but when I went back to my old school recently I felt physically nervous going there and I can't explain why it was a really anxious experience. Well so probably because the school is a time of great anxiety there are things that are always due and the threat of the principal's office looms constant. I don't remember I don't remember I don't remember school being anxious experience but I feel anxious going back there. But yeah yeah I mean there are definitely when you go back to your old haunts you get strange feelings beyond nostalgia so there is something going on. Yeah and I know I experienced this a couple times when I mean like basically after I went to college I very I have very rarely been back to the place where I grew up and oh when I didn't have a bad childhood or anything but on the couple of occasions when I went back I was very much aware of and did not like this feeling of like somebody else grew up here and I'm not that person anymore and like I don't really I don't really want to be here. It's time it's time to go. I'm not I don't know it's just a very very strange very strange influence let's say I sometimes run across people who seem very past oriented and like there are people who are grown adults but who still end up kind of framing events in their life through the lens of their childhood experiences I think is the most common version of this that I see. Can you give like a practical example of that? I can understand it better. For example people saying things like oh I'm I wasn't a very popular kid in high school and then kind of viewing all of their adult interactions in the same way feeling like oh I was always just the unpopular kid and I feel like the I have died many times article is a bit like you don't always have to be the person that you were like you don't you don't always have to be where you are from. The change is possible and constant looking back is bad. I think you look you look forward in your life and things things in your past can positively affect your future but they are done they are over and they only have the amount of importance that you continue to give them and so if you if you're looking back you are constantly reinforcing the importance of things and you know if it's something positive that you want to carry forward into the future that's fine but I don't know it's I feel like people have kind of invisible anchors that keep them being the person that they always were and maybe I feel this more strongly because I had such a sharp break going to college and maybe this is a little too personal but as an example I was not in high school a very popular kid but I was lucky and I had a little group of friends but I would lay out like most teenagers I was like a very mopey person I was not someone probably people would want to be around and I remember very well when I went to my college orientation which was like preparing we're not started colleges and starting now but it's starting in the future so we go to orientation I remember very strongly going to orientation looking around and realizing like oh nobody here knows who I am which also means nobody has any reason to care about me like my friends from high school we've known each other for a long time and so there's there's like an intrinsic caring there but when you just show up to college nobody knows you you have to learn really fast how to not be like a mopey miserable person that people don't want to be around yeah and in some ways like what what what what what that does is it's like look you have spent your whole life being one way and things are changing and like you have to let go of that now that person and all of their reactions has to just be gone and for me that was a very very positive experience and I had a similar kind of thing happen again sort of when I moved to London and it was the same thing like I'm intentionally choosing to move to a place I don't know anyone at all and it's kind of a break with the past again and it's like okay we're going to move forward and and I just think fresh start fresh starts are good for that yeah changing schools and changing things and they that they yeah I am good in the bed yeah hugely in favor of these kinds of fresh starts but I think it's like a it's like a value multiplier if you consciously think of it as I am a different or I can be a different person you know I don't have to be the person that I always was and this this just naturally happens and I the thing that I speculate about a little bit in the article is I worry about kids these days growing up and kind of always having immediate access to the circle of friends they happen to have when when they just grew up wherever they grew up I wonder if that has a bit of a dampening effect or just even even for adults as you this kind of effect that everybody knows online and social media which is as more and more people in your life follow you so just okay first of all it's just a small group of friends and then it's friends and then some family and then some family and some co-workers and then suddenly like on Facebook your face the classic thing like your Facebook friends with your mom and your boss yeah suddenly you're very constrained and you don't it just it changes your actions if you're constantly thinking about all of these people in in your life I don't know I don't know I think maybe I'm just wandering off a little bit far here but it will not I mean I mean I'm still friends with some people from school you know who are very dear to me and you know we're still good friends but there's a whole bunch obviously that I've also just completely lost touch with yeah and not that long ago I kind of re-insured a contact with some school people partly because there was a reunion going on and partly just curiosity and within a few weeks it was like you know I wish them all the all the best in the world and I'm sure they're great people with amazing lives and much happier than me perhaps but they were just like complete strangers to me it was like yes did I even know these people yes the things they're saying and doing in the life they're leading it was like oh my goodness it's this like I'm just becoming friends with complete and utter strangers who just happened to know my name and I sort of end in the end kind of drifted away from that and realized that wasn't probably how I should be using Facebook and don't do it anymore but it was a for while it was a strange experience it was like you know I could never go to a school reunion I think for that reason oh man yeah I've been I've been invited to school reunions and as I feel the same I wish everybody I went to school with great lives I hope they're all doing well I can't imagine ever going to a reunion for for the similar reason that it's it's like a stranger party is basically what it is from from my perspective we have all changed so much that we are fundamentally different and now this is just an arbitrary gathering of people whose past people used to knew each other but like that's not that's you know it's very very strange so yes I have not gone to my high school reunions I don't ever intend to I think this is what I found you I have died many times article quite a strange experience to read I've only read it once to be fair so you know well yeah maybe maybe I've kind of you know I skimmed skimmed read it too much but it was a strange mix of what I would expect from you kind of a very logical thinking and you know a logical argument about the way we should think and progress in life but another part of it seemed kind of a little bit new age and you know the old me and the new me and I have died and it was kind of a little not religious but it was kind of a little bit I guess new age is the way I would describe it and it didn't it didn't seem like the sort of things I would expect from you yeah it's funny because this was this was also a thing where I've been thinking about this article for a while and I thought oh let me just write it and have many many disappointments with it and one of it it one of it is the kind of language like how do you express these thoughts and I'm not a new age kind of person no no I know but I can totally understand that someone reading the article it can kind of sound a bit new agey but I don't I have been thinking very consciously for years in terms of oh there's past me and there's future me and there's present me and I find that very useful but it's sometimes hard to express in writing in a way that doesn't seem dumb I don't know if there's any reincarnation a or something yeah I mean yeah we're not reincarnation either I mean let's forget that but but I don't know I guess but when it boils down to what I have this feeling like the only I don't know the only you you have is like present you and past you doesn't exist anymore and present you can just make decisions for future you but it is also very helpful to consider future you as though he's a different person so what what decisions would you make on behalf of a different person who you don't know yes who you don't know and I wouldn't I wouldn't kept bothered too much about them but but the catch is you are going to eventually be that person so you like you are you have to make decisions for a future you who's like a different person but you will subjectively experience their life and tell us this is you're probably understanding why I thought this whole thing was a bit new age you know yes that's what I mean this in the most not new age you way possible but yes it does it does sound this way and this is also one of the reasons why it's you know again my my wife and I talk about this because we when you were married to someone you talk about long term decisions for your life and we're very conscious sometimes of of when you make long term decisions like don't try to presume that you will know all of the preferences of you from in 10 years from now and and so I think that that is helpful sometimes especially when you're considering like irreversible decisions you know you want to be careful about not necessarily presuming that the future you was going to be exactly like the current you and that's what I talk about in the article is like is there anything you would agree on with the teenage version of you I mean I think I might strangle to death the teenage version of me if I ever met it but like you're so irritating just just shut up I think teenage me current me and future me all share the same views on honey roast cashew nuts delicious I feel like I could order a big ton of honey roasted cashew nuts for future me and he'd be pretty happy with that decision well yes that's why and this is the one thing that I was entirely unable to communicate in the article and is this notion of I don't mean to imply that the future you is a totally different person like that like it's but it's hard to write an article that expresses both of these thoughts at the same time you know like there there are things that can be the same and it's it's actually funny because shortly after I published this I happen to be talking to my parents on video chat and they they were this is again this is one of these things where I feel this most strongly sometimes like when my parents will show me some picture of me as a kid and they'll be like oh look at you here and I feel like I'm not sure that's me that's that's like larval me this you know this person grew up to be me but he's not me anyway my parents were saying how they go oh you know it's so interesting to have seen you grown up and that that from their perspective they say oh adult me is just like the childhood version of me you know from their perspective it seems like I'm I'm the same person but they said I just like I'm I'm just more of what I was as a kid now that I'm a grown up and you know my own subjective experience is is very much different from that so it's just it's it's it's interesting it's it's interesting to see that sometimes but I don't know that's a weird thing. There's only one why people can decide about what they think about what you said and that's really the article for themselves so I'm sure you'll put a link in the show notes yes and I said I'm trying to portray this as a as a useful framework if there's something in your life that you want to change in a in a positive way I think this is this is a useful mental framework to keep in mind and that's kind of why it's kind of why I wrote it but yes I think it's it's uh I don't know I'm not sure it's the clearest but it's there anyway so that's that so you've got here something in the notes about democracy three and I have no idea what that even means sorry Brady this might bore you to tears but no no this is what more about the flags don't you don't you cut me off with the flags that was that was that was just because I want to watch the world cut later on and I thought if I didn't stop you would be talking forever we would we would talk more about flags and other terms what's democracy three democracy three is a video game that I had on my iPad and this was a game it's a video game and that's why I warned you you're going to be bored but I think I'm actually bit pleased about that I thought it was going to be some boring kind of you know paper someone had written about the future of democracy instead but video games potentially is more interesting potentially but maybe not but this is a brief thing so um this was it I had uh this was the game I had saved for after my last video so when the America video went up uh I was like okay for any little bit of downtime what am I going to do and this was on my list to try this one next and this game is the most perfect example of I said before I tend to play games that are basically work and this game game is in quotation marks it is basically a spreadsheet is the way to describe this game in game form uh so it's like it's not what people normally think of and it's a it's a country simulator and you are elected as the the president of a country they have Australia they have Canada the UK there's a bunch of different ones that you can pick can you read design the flag or you stuck with what they've got now you stuck with with it with what they've got um and I'll put a screenshot or I'll put a link to the game actually in the description but I'll also put a link to the screenshot for just people who want to take a look at it uh again in quotes the game all it is is a whole list it's a whole picture of bubbles each of which represents so either some kind of problem in your country or some kind of law in your country and you can click on the bubbles and then you can adjust uh the effects of the law so for example you can set the taxation rate higher or lower you can say am I going to have corporation tax is there going to be a cigarette tax are we going to have a national health service how much are we going to fund it how much are we going to fund the military all the rest of this and there's there must be 200 things that you can pick from and all of them have effects on the voters in this pretend country yeah so this is the basic premise what made me kind of laugh out loud is it puts you in a scenario where you have to think very differently and it's one of the reasons why I really like video games as a kind of cultural thing there's plenty of mindless games like Call of Duty I'm just trying to kill all the foreigners in a horrible way like Call of Duty games are terrible you're just shooting people but they can be kind of interesting tools and democracy three is is set up in a way so that basically there's almost nothing that you can do that's not going to frustrate some people the way so you move the slider and it affects the voters in non-linear ways it's like impossible to try to balance everything and you're put into all of these no-win situations where you just you just can't make everybody happy and slap black make and YouTube videos yes a certain like that you're never going to make everybody happy but that so the thing about it is is that made me laugh realize I'm playing the game and you have to try to keep the budget balance and so that they there are these big things that you're trying to do to keep the country on track let's not default on our debt let's not have crime just go crazy in the streets but there's a million other policies just like in the real world that people care about and playing the game immediately immediately your mind goes toward oh god that you know group x the unions are unhappy and what do you find yourself doing immediately what is some token issue that I can just throw their way to make them happy that basically doesn't really affect anything give them some talk that yeah this is exactly it right like is there some is there some thing that I can do in this game to just make group x happy that doesn't really affect my budget in any any meaningful way right and politician politics but this is why I thought the game was a great example of really kind of showing you look I like I know this in the abstract is one of the reasons why I don't follow the particulars of politics very closely is because when you look into a lot of the issues you realize is so much of of of politics is kind of smoke and mirrors exactly about this like issues that maybe necessarily don't affect lots of things but people just care tremendously about but you know I want to I don't I don't want to mention anything in particular but I'll just pick one that actually happens to be represented very well in the game and it is how much money are you going to put towards welfare fraud investigations and like in the US this is a perfect example yeah people love this people want to hear that you have some huge program that's you know investigating welfare fraud and tada tada but if you actually dig into the numbers this is just such a non-issue almost certainly the amount of money that you put into welfare fraud investigation is going to be more than you save from the level of welfare fraud that actually occurs but people love welfare fraud investigations right as I like even in the game it's like on an intellectual level I'm completely against most welfare fraud investigations because they're not cost effective but boy do the voters love them like yes to welfare fraud maximally funded you know and is the idea of the game is to get reelected is it yes that the country successfully that's exactly get get reelected without running everything into the ground it's just so interesting because you can know something intellectually but I think a well designed game can make you feel it in really instinctually in a way that you can never quite intellectualize and and that that's why I thought this was was a was a great example sounds good yeah but you can also you can see how if someone goes into politics and they've never been into politics before and then you realize in politics okay what do you actually spend most of your time doing fundraising right what are you worried about angry voters you know kicking you out of office so like what can you throw their way that doesn't actually cost you very much money or impact the things you're really trying to do if you're doing that for a long period of time you can see how like the I've died many times think you're a kind of different person at the end of that I'm not necessarily saying you're a worse person I think the politics example sounds worse but just because on a daily basis you're thinking about things in a different way it changes who you are in in the same way that when I like when I became a teacher I think about education in a totally different way than I ever did as a kid and then I'm making like this is my first adult job now I'm making adults decisions in an adult world and all of this feeds back into kind of changing who you are over time but I think you think you'd be a good politician or a political later well according to the game I get assassinated very quickly very yeah if you have one group that particularly doesn't like you like there's a there's a non zero chance that you will be assassinated I don't know how many times I was assassinated by one group or another I love it very frustrating like what can I do to please you group you know trying to throw it just so it's interesting because on paper you should be good shouldn't because you strike you're quite moral you're very logical you do think about what's good for the the greatest good you know efficient you're very efficient on paper you should be a good politician in practice you'd probably be absolutely terrible this is a funny thing because sometimes when I do the like the animal kingdom politics video or I do a video on voting people often lead leave comments they'll say like oh a CGP great for president or CGP great for king and I always sometimes I respond to those comments and then you do not want me as a political leader let me just let me just say that right now this is not something you really want particularly in the if we're talking about the real world like I would never ever ever want to be a politician and I think I would be terribly bad at it because actual politics is about being really good with people and being able to negotiate under certain certain certain situations and you've got a nice voice yes but that that that is a very small part of what actually like oh wow what a nice voice you have but not all voice over actors or politicians you know we're not being run by voice over actors this is it maybe we should be yeah and particularly in the United States if you ever dig into the numbers of how politicians spend their time they basically spend almost all day every day fundraising and people have this notion of oh politicians they're reading laws and writing laws and like no they are on the phone calling people to give them money that is what politicians do most of the time and when they're not doing that they're trying to work out deals with other politicians to get particular pet projects through to make somebody in their district happy so actual politics I would have no interest in ever doing that and then this kind of theoretical position where I am elected king somehow and have absolute powers nobody wants that either that's not that's not a good situation because I agree with you that I my my overriding thought if I was actually in charge of a country is okay this is a huge responsibility I am very concerned about the welfare of my people and I will do things for the greater good but I just sound this is sounding like a bit of a political pitch to me but but this is what I imagine is the banner of great tropicalists is for the greater good but there are a lot of horrifying things that can happen under that kind of notion so you know just because that's the way I would think about it doesn't mean that people would be happy about it at all so I don't think there's any universe in which I should be a political leader and I would not want to be a political leader so anyway well I think I I'd vote for you I'd vote for you don't do not vote for me that's my recommendation is sim city any goods do I keep I keep thinking I want to play sim city again and download it because that would be my escape but have things moved on is that like already no electronic arts the worst video game company in the world currently owns sim city and has run it into the ground in a in a terrible manner I did rage something like that yeah it's electronic arts is awful they've ruined a couple of of great games that I really liked so they are a terrible terrible company and if you work at electronic arts I'm sorry but you should feel bad your company buys great independent game companies and then crushes them and drinks their blood and turns it into money and it's an awful awful company so no I cannot I cannot recommend it but it's funny that you mentioned that because actually sim city was my very first experience with this as a kid the very first sim city I loved that I remember it's so clearly this enlightenment of I mean sim city was so simple compared to something like democracy three but just the notion of all of these citizens they want parks but they get angry when I raise taxes to pay for the parks it's just like just that just that intuitive feeling I think is very interesting like the games can show you and and sim city as a is a good example that and it was my first real experience of that of oh this is teaching me to to think in a different way than I normally do but no I cannot I cannot recommend the current version of sim city I've been looking for a good sim city simulator game for the Mac but I cannot say that I've I've found one yet so sorry sorry braiding I'll just keep working yeah I guess you like making your videos you start playing video games you won't be making as many videos that'd be and people would be sad yeah so all right I think we're done we actually had other stuff to talk about but I do think we have to stop I think we have to stop yeah I think you got a bit sidetracked by the thing did I get sidetracked yeah or or I think you did I get cut off before fully expressing all of my very interesting thoughts were you going somewhere was there like a grand for was there a big payoff that I didn't let you do the payoff was more complaining that's what the payoff was I think you were just going to go through each flag one by one I was probably it was a detailed critique I probably would have if you hadn't stopped me yeah we were going to talk about a movie but I think we'll have to save that for we'll save that there's a movie that we're going to talk about and we'll talk about it in the next episode because we've both got things to say about it yes okay that's your incentive to keep listening to actually I wonder should we tell people what the movie is so it can be like a homework assignment that's a good idea yeah so we could maybe we could do that actually I this is this is also a good good time to mention something else so we will mention the state yeah we'll mention the movie now we wanted to talk about the movie her with what's the I forget I can never remember the guy's name because you changed it what can fanics because he used to be leaf Phoenix and I changed it or something yeah so the movie is called her and we're going to talk about that next time so maybe this is a homework assignment people can watch the movie and then then listen to the episode so they're they are prepared my my advice I'll talk about this more next time but my advice always with movies is just watch it don't try to find out a whole bunch about it just watch a movie and if you don't like it you turn it off but go into it pure so good at first that's that's that's that's for the movie but I will just mention we have links in the show notes and people should be aware that those are affiliate links so if we link to Amazon for example or if we link to iTunes if you click the link and you buy something through that link hello internet does get a very small percentage of that and so I've gotten a lot of requests from people which I really appreciate where they said oh I have all of the websites and the audio books I could possibly have is there any other way that I could support the show and so if we mentioned something that you happen to be interested in you and you click the link that's another way that you can support the show if if you want there's no obligation or we're just just saying that that's the way it is so the people are aware but yes some some people have all the audio books and websites and razors they could possibly want I'm wondering I have no idea as we're recording this who is going to be the advertisers for our show so maybe that will be I'm pretty sure it's not going to be electronic ads yes electronic arts I don't want your money because you're evil
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