H.I. No. 88: Do Not Ring Bell

"H.I. #88: Do Not Ring Bell" is the 88th episode of Hello Internet, released on September 19th, 2017.
==Official Description==
Grey & Brady discuss: space flags for the people, YouTube fair use (or not) continued, Space X feedback, listener images, changes in spoiler culture, and the rules of portrait photography.
==Show Notes==
*Discuss this episode on the reddit
*Hand-made Hello Internet flags by Kate
*H.I. 86: Banana Republic
*Bold Guy vs Parkour Girl
*H3H3 reacts to Bold Guy vs Parkour Girl
*Victoria Bitter 1988
*Hello Internet at Congress
*Random Acts at Basecamp
*HI Flag at Trafalgar Square
*HI Proposal
*Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize
So Brady, I am recording Hello Internets on the road this time. Yeah. So I'm not in my normal podcasting home studio where everything is just the way I like it. So I'm in this hotel and I'll just say that sometimes when I put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, the sign, it's not always respected. Sometimes people still ring the little buzzer at the door. They don't always respect the Do Not Disturb sign. And before this podcast started, I thought, I know what I have to do. I have the regular Do Not Disturb sign up, but I wrote a little note and I stuck the note on the outside of the door over the buzzer button which says Do Not Ring Bell. Here's the thing though. Like as soon as I put it up and now that I'm here and now that I'm recording with you, I feel like I have put a big sign on the door which is essentially asking, nay, begging all passers-by to ring the bell. Not necessarily stuff, but just like Scallywag, Stag Patty and stuff like that. Anybody? I'm pretty close to the stairwell. So there's a high volume of traffic by the door. And so this is going to be seen by pretty much everybody on the floor. And I think the reason I'm thinking this is because I'm pretty sure that if I walked by somebody's door and there was a sign that said Do Not Ring Bell, I'm not saying I would ring it, but I'm saying I would pause. I would pause and I would look and I would feel the call of the button. I just don't know if everybody can resist that kind of thing. So I wouldn't feel that, Cole, that reminds me of a story that I know someone who once was on a train and there was this guy in his seat who was asleep, he'd put a sign in front of him like on his table saying, please wake me up before Reading Train Station. And the train was now like three or four stops beyond Reading and someone had just written on the sign, ha ha, oh god. That's pretty mean. Not even waking the person up, just like wanting them to know that I knew something bad had happened to you and hadn't acted. That's terrible. I know. That also just feels like a very different situation because in that moment of, please wake up at Reading, you're being a hero by performing an action. It feels like it's extra vindictive to just like, nah, I'm not going to poke this guy who has requested it to be woken up. It feels like it's anti-civilization somehow to not do this tiny gesture that allows you to be a hero. Whereas the Do Not Ring Bell sign, it feels like a temptation for a scallywag who can just get away with it, right? Like an anonymous scallywag and press the button and run away. It feels like it's a different kind of thing in my mind. Like the sort of person who takes their photo next to the Do Not Stand on the Grass sign, standing on the grass sort of thing. Like that kind of rebellion as opposed to like just like being actual nasty. Right. Yeah, it's an actual nasty. Yeah. Anyway, I am going to be nervous throughout the recording to see if we actually make it to the end without there being any bell ringing. So, Gray, just a quick update on Space Flag, the miniaturized handmade Hello Internet Flag that flew into space. Did you hear that people flew into space? Where did it go on, Space Breedy? It went into the void of space. Oh, okay. It didn't go to a planet much to my wife's disappointment. So we did mention in the last episode that my friend Kate who made like handmade the miniaturized flag because she's like into making all these little stitchy crafty things and kind of got roped into making a space flag. And I did say to her, look, I think some people might want one of these flags. Would you be willing to make some? She was actually abroad for the launch. So she didn't get to enjoy the glorious moment, but she is excited to hear it happen. And I said to her, look, are you going to make some flags for the dims? And the thing is they take a long time to make. And like she has other things she's supposed to make. And also, I think they're a bit boring to make because they're like just like with all due respect to the nail and gif legs. How dare you Brady. How dare you? I mean, it is just like a gray rectangle with a little white thing stitched onto it. But she has agreed to make some. We haven't agreed how many yet. It would be severely limited. And because they take her a number of hours each one, the cost per square centimeter may not be appealing to all. As anybody who looked through the show notes in the last episode could see from that gorgeous macro photo that you sent me of the close up of the flag that went into space. This is very, very labor intensive work on a small scale. This is not mass produced. You're getting a lot of human hours per square centimeter of this thing as well. You are. So I will put a link. And if you want not the space flag, because the space flag obviously is going to be going on its world museum tour, possibly ending up in that secret place. Pyramid underneath the Louvre where all the best stuff is kept that no one knows about. I don't know, maybe. So you're not getting that one. You're not getting that one. But you're getting the same style made by the same person. And because I'm obsessed with certificates of authenticity, I will even personally sign a certificate of authenticity to say that this is not the authentic one that went into space, but it was made by the same person. You're including a certificate of anti-authenticity? Is that what this is? Yeah, a certificate of non-authenticity. A certificate of semi-authenticity. There is an authentic element to it. Insofar it is the same design and made by the same person. But like it's a replica space flag. Unless of course you buy one and send it into space, in which case it too will become a true space flag. OK, right. OK. In fact, if you are in the business of sending miniaturized, hello internet flags into space, this is your moment, you know. And it's actually quite cheap compared to most space components I would imagine. Yes, compared to most space components. The flag is going to be quite cheap. Compared to most miniature flags, it's going to be horrifically expensive. Yeah, I will say. So go and have a look. And I'll tell you what, if you don't want the flag, just go and have a look at Kate's shop because she makes nice stuff. And you know, she might cook me dinner one night if someone buys something from her shop. So, Gray and I benefit in no way from this. We are getting no money from the space flags. This is not a hello internet enterprises venture. This is just doing a bit for the Bristol craft scene. This is entirely Kate's doing with the of the people design of the flag. Brady is adding his certificate of semi anti-authenticity to go along with it at a little bit of a bonus. Just off the goodness of my heart because he's such a good guy. Yeah, thanks to Kate for making the authentic flag that went into space. And even if you're not interested in one of the flags, go check out her store in the show notes. Well, here we are again, the snors. It's time for a back plays ad. And as always, sponsors buy slots on this show because people keep signing up, which of course is great. But I always feel a sense of nervousness that back plays even keeps buying these ads because it means that so many of you are out there. Still digitally unprotected that you're signing up every time the ad happens. I think it's great that you get your data protected, but it makes me nervous to know that people out there don't have online backup. Okay, so listen, if you're one of those people who's sitting in front of a computer right now that doesn't have online backup, you need to go to backplays.com slash hello internet to get started. These will give you unlimited cloud backup for your Mac and PC for just $5 a month. Everything you have on your computer, your personal photographs, movies, projects you've worked on, all of that you need to have backed up off site. And back plays is the company that you want to have do this. It's the company that I use to backup my data. In fact, I'm sitting in front of my computer right now. If I click on a little back plays icon, I can see that I currently have three and a half terabytes of data secured with back plays. And one of the perks of having your data backed up online is that you can access it from anywhere in the world. It's not just an insurance policy. If you ever find yourself away from your home system and you need to access a file that you saved on your computer, you can go to backplays and download just that one file wherever you are in the world. And you may be wondering if like me, you have terabytes of data backed up into the cloud, how on earth do you get that back? Well, if you ever have a catastrophic failure, back plays can ship you an encrypted hard drive with all of your stuff. A while back, I actually had to make use of this service and boy was I'm glad to get all of my data back. Thanks back plays. Okay, so listen, right now, if you don't have online backup, go to backplays.com slash Hello Internet. This will give you a fully featured 15 day trial. Go there, see how the system works, start getting your data moved into the cloud. Thanks to back plays for supporting the show and thanks to you listeners for signing up with back plays, both to help support the show and to help yourself keep your data protected. Backplays.com slash Hello Internet. All right, last episode we were talking about the automatic slash maybe manual system that YouTube now has for determining how advertised your friendly videos are on the system. I know, my derangement controversy. Your derangement controversy? What do you mean your derangement controversy? Is this how my video got my video about mathematical derangements got? Oh, one. Right, no, of course, yes. I just like the algorithm got completely confused by your word derangement and I was thinking that crazy. Exactly. I don't remember a Brady going crazy, but I certainly wouldn't. That is advertiser friendly. I'll tell you that right now. Like you should, you just marked me as an advertiser friendly for a moment. I totally did. I had no idea what you were talking about. It was all just jibber jabber, all of a sudden they're Brady. But yes, that is exactly what we're discussing. His video is titled confusing algorithms. Now, of course, as is the way of these things, the very hello internet YouTube video that I was uploading while we were recording that episode came marked back as unfriendly for advertisers, which we mentioned in the show. A little bit of a cliffhanger for, of course, what would happen? I think I figured out why that may have been flagged, by the way. Why? Because it was called like banana republic. So they probably thought it was about like politics and stuff. You mean, they probably thought it was about a clothing manufacturing company? Banana republics also like a term, isn't it? Like a political term? It may be a term. I'm still holding the guess or assumption that the first pass of all of this stuff is being done by a straight up just machine learning algorithm. And the very idea of trying to come up with explainable reasons for why or why not things get flagged might not make sense. Maybe it was maybe it is something simple like that. It's just banana republic as a title is the thing that threw it off. This is exactly the kind of thing why, like why this topic came up on the show and why YouTubers get all upset about it is because this kind of thing I think does have a sort of chilling effect on content production where you never know what's going to trigger the system. And then you you mentally start airing on the side of more safety because of the incorrect misfiring of this. And this is one of the reasons why like I'm just I don't like it when these systems like YouTube or Twitter or Facebook start getting in the game of classifying material into different bins and buckets like as we've discussed many times in the show. I understand why it happens, but it does just like this is where I start getting nervous about the control that these companies have over like what people make and what people can promote on the internet. But anyway, all of that aside, our video got flagged. So I thought, oh, this is exciting. I get to go press the little button which says submit it for a manual review and sure enough. And I says, especially short amount of time later, I got the confirmation email saying that it had gone through the manual review and that episode was not deemed advertiser friendly. Wow. So it's got no ads on it still. Well, the mystery deepens because I wanted to today go get some screen shots that I could put in the show notes for today's episode. And when I logged on to YouTube, it was mysteriously gone now. Now the video is 100% in the clear. I was looking for my email. I was trying to find some kind of notification about this or like I couldn't find any contact from YouTube. Maybe I got stuck in my junk mail filter somewhere, but my subjective experience is submitted the video for review. It came back saying it was manually reviewed and unapproved. And then who knows what happened later on. It just got set back to normal. Maybe an engineer at YouTube listens to the show. Maybe the manual review was a many stage process. Who knows? As usual, YouTube doesn't seem to communicate what their process is very clearly. But that's what's going on with the advertiser friendliness of the Hello Internet videos. That's interesting because my video that we spoke about at length last time that caused me the problem with the title derangement. I contacted my partner manager at YouTube and gave it a, you know, hey man, what the heck's going on here? And he was like, oh, let me kick it up the food chain to monetization team or something. And within about 24 hours, I got an email back from them saying it's all sorted. And it was back to normal. But interestingly in that 24 hour period, I got another email from someone like just a Tim saying, hey, I listened to Hello Internet and I also work at Google, not at YouTube, but at Google. But I've, I've referred this internally in the internal Google system. And I've been told they're going to sort it out as well. So they were getting it from all fronts on this one. And like the Hello Internet situation, I received no like formal notification or email saying you're back in the club, it just sort of quietly happened. So and another interesting thing happened because I've had a few other ones flare. It's just like, you know, minor videos on minor channels. So I press the button to get one manually reviewed. And this message came up on my screen and it said something along the lines of it will be manually reviewed quicker if it gets X thousand views in a certain time. But what happened was I wasn't paying attention and I sort of clicked off that screen straight away and didn't read the message. And I was like, oh, oh, hang on. What did that message say? And like I tried to go back and to find out what the message was and I've never been able to find it again. But obviously there is some part of the system where you only get manually reviewed if the video is still getting the love. That would make sense like they would have to prioritize if there's actual humans on the other end who are looking at this kind of thing. And if there's a super mega viral video that's having a problem, I think everybody can agree that YouTube should probably be looking at that first before a video that has three reviews on it. Like there has to be some kind of prioritization on the other end. Unless it's my video. Well, unless you're Brady. Brady has an idea of a certain level of respect that he should deserve. So he's going to get stuff kicked right up to the chain, right? There's a separate Brady process in YouTube. That's what I imagine he would want. I don't want any more respect than I just what I deserve and no more. I, mere man of the people, want a system that treats everybody the same and fairly. But we're different kind of people that way. No, no, no, no, everyone should get the respect they deserve. Right. No, I understand. Respect it deserve. Devils in the details. But yeah, so this whole thing, it's broken, Gray. It's broken. It's broken. It makes everybody gun shy. Yeah. Some people were sending me evidence again of as you were questioning last time the manual review, like what does this word mean? And people were sending me either videos or screenshots of examples of having submitted a video for manual review and getting the reply back in an impossibly short amount of time when no one could possibly have reviewed it. So I think your doubts about the humanness of that is definitely warranted. And I particularly liked MC Hesher in the Reddit left a great comment. They said it's manual review and manual stands for machine automatically notifies user a while later. I quite like that. I think that's the manual review. And I could easily see that being the process. I have not yet heard from anyone who passed the manual review. That would be interesting to hear about. Oh god, you know what? That's an excellent point. I'm just realizing I haven't heard anybody who's gotten the opposite thing either. It's only denials to be continued. I don't want to solicit those replies, but we'll see what's going on in the Reddit and to be continued. Another thing we spoke about was the landmark court case. Oh, there was quite a bit of feedback on that in the Reddit I noticed. Yeah, there was a lot of feedback on this. Obviously, it's a complicated case. I don't want to get into all the details, but there is something that I do want to clarify here because what I was talking last time about this idea of I had this feeling like the H3H3 video, I was using this phrase, obviates the need to watch the original video. A whole bunch of people were pointing out to me a thing in the court case in the verdict, which was in a sense directly addressing this idea, but I don't really think so. Where the judge was talking about destroying the market value or damaging the market for a product and how this is not an argument that can be used against fair use. I think it's pretty clear why, because if you're saying reviewing a movie, many YouTube channels do in a funny way. There's nothing funnier than reviewing a terrible movie and just saying how terrible it is. This is just endlessly entertaining. It's obvious that these reviews damage the market for the very thing that they are building upon with fair use. You can't use that as an argument. Everybody was bringing this up as the judge has addressed this thing that you're talking about. I don't think this is the same. I'm just lacking the words to describe this, but I really do feel like there's something different here than simply damaging the market for the original thing. I really feel like if you watch the H3H3 video, people are pointing in the court case as well, it did use something like 75% of the original material. It really did replicate the experience of watching the original thing in a way that a funny review of a bad movie doesn't. They both damaged the market for the original. They can both have an impact on how much the original is viewed, but I still feel like there's a separate category here where one thing is almost completely replicating the experience of watching the thing and adding something on top of it. I've been trying to think like, I need a comparison for this. The closest thing I've come up with is simply the idea of commentary tracks. Just the podcasts or YouTube channels will create commentary tracks that you can listen to while you're watching a movie. So, Brady, you and I, we could get together some evening watch 27 dresses, record ourselves talking over the movie, and we could sell that as an additional commentary track that someone could listen to while they're watching the movie. That's totally fine. What we can't do is put up a video on YouTube of the movie with our commentary track on top of it. That is against copyright. I feel like that's closer to the idea of what I'm trying to get at here. That a commentary track that would go along with the original media obviates the need to watch the original thing. I think the H3H3 video is in my mind very close to that same kind of thing. I think that that video is like the limit in my mind of what is acceptable. This is the thing that I'm trying to articulate and I just want to clear up that it's not the same thing as damaging the market. In the last episode, I felt this way and I'm feeling it again and I know you keep saying otherwise, but I think somewhere in the back of your head, you don't think that was fair use. I know you're not willing to say it on the podcast, but that's what I think you think. Like I think you're not sure that that was the right decision. I think you're in favor of fair use. I just think you're not entirely convinced that that was fair use. I really do think that video sets the absolute bare minimum for what I'm willing to accept. That's why I actually think this is a really interesting case, but that this is also in the context of fair use laws as they are currently written. Maybe what I'm advocating for is I think in the internet world there needs to be something that needs to be added to the concept of fair use that would then make this video no longer actually apply. Maybe that's what it is that you're hearing when I'm talking about this. Obviously, the court case would stand as it is, but laws don't get enacted retroactively. I'm not saying that this should be overturned. I'm saying that I think there's an additional idea here that under my conception of fair use in the internet world, I would want to add some kind of clause that would say, oh, actually, maybe this doesn't quite cut it because it does RV the need to watch the original thing. Just one last thing, by the way, about that discussion we had. I don't think we spent enough time just emphasizing how unbelievably bad that Matt Hoss video was that they were critiquing like we kind of got so lost in the weeds of what's fair and what's not fair and created what and what's original. We never just stepped back and said, isn't it incredible that a video that bad gets made and like, it was terrible, wasn't it? It was terrible. And like offensive and poorly done in many ways. Like it was right to get the Mickey taken out of it. It was right for the picking. Don't get me wrong. It was a video posted onto the internet that basically had a please don't make fun of me sign attached to it. And it's like, well, now you made me do this by putting the sign on here. I was just going to keep walking by, but now that you put the sign on here, I can't help it. And of course, with all these things, like the reason this case becomes a big thing is because it's a perfect storm of a whole bunch of elements. And it seems like the creator was was rather prickly about his obviously terrible video getting torn to pieces. Like and that's what was really driving this thing. And that's why this court case got pushed all the way to the conclusion, whereas perhaps someone taking advice of lawyers might not push that all the way to its conclusion, because like, this is not a good reason to push this forward. I think this was part of the problem that H3H3 had was the way to mock this video was to show the video. Like it mocked itself. And that's kind of how they did it. That's the way they mocked it was just to say, you know, this speaks for itself, man. They could have just reuploaded the whole video as a parody and said, isn't this funny? So they didn't actually need to do much to mock it, which was kind of maybe their semi-undoing although I realize they weren't undone because they won the case. But like, you didn't need to like put much critique or craft into editing it. You just had to say, can you believe this? Just look at this. Can you believe it? We hold this terrible video that has been made. I am never surprised that terrible videos get uploaded to YouTube. You know, people make terrible things all the time. And if you make a terrible thing, you probably have terrible judgment about how you think that thing is going to do in the first place. I think those two things are correlated, like your inability to perceive how a thing might be perceived might also be the same thing that leads you to make something that's terrible in the first place, which then makes you more likely to upload it to YouTube. I don't think these are disconnected traits. But yeah, so that's what we didn't really discuss the original thing very much. But also it's partly because I think the more interesting discussion is around the ideas about the thing. It's a bit like when you talk about free speech issues, you necessarily have to have conversations about defending the kinds of speech that you don't like because good speech doesn't need defending. And the copyright thing is the same kind of thing. The copyright cases are about terrible stuff. There's a reason why that's what ends up causing these to be the focal points of the discussion. But just because artwork is terrible doesn't mean that it forfeits its right to copyright protections. I've looked it up. It does remind me of one of my favorite quotes from one of my all-time favorite speeches in one of my all-time favorite movies, when President Andrew Shepard says in the American President, you want free speech. Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs, that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this is the land of the free, then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free. Man, I love that speech. I love that film. You'll think I've ever seen that movie. Oh man, it's great. You probably like it. I don't know. Maybe you wouldn't. I'm going to say you have a pretty bad record in my book of recommending movies to be Brady. Do you like the West Wing? I could never really get into the West Wing. I sort of half-watched it when it was on. Well, then you probably wouldn't like it that much. I tried years later to get into it, but I think it showed its age. I think it was a show of the time. I'm watching it again now. I'm loving it. Well, I think there's a difference when you enjoy the thing at the time. You can rewatch it again. My perfect example of this is Ghost in the Shell. It is impossible to recommend to anybody to watch now, really. But it's like I can rewatch that and still have the same feelings of the first time I saw it. So maybe West Wing is like that. I sometimes go on YouTube and watch TV ads from my childhood. That have been uploaded to YouTube and I love them. One's that I still know the lyrics off by heart and sometimes you can find what on YouTube. So you're watching like, awkward compilations from the 80s on YouTube? Is that what you're doing? They're not usually awkward ones. Oh, okay. What are they? There are a few awkward ads actually that I would like to find. Oh, yeah. There was an ad for a beer called Vic Bitter, which was the most awkward ad I'd ever say. And I wonder if that still exists. Oh, great. Do you want to send it to me, Brady? You sound so happy. Sorry. All right. I'm sending you this. Okay. This has got a bit of awkward in it. I still know it off my heart. Nothing's going to translate better across the internet and across time than cross-cultural nostalgia. All right. I'm watching it. I'm not talking about when you want to drink a beer. Okay. So it's a bunch of men doing manly things. Right. Fixing trains. Yeah. And like wearing white singlets and drinking beers together, like after doing work. And whenever they have to do anything that's not manly like that guy who's getting married and like he's having to wear the suit and stand next to his wife, he looks really, really uncomfortable and it's only a beer that can help him. But when they're doing all the other stuff like throwing out by a little bit of how you take care of, it's like, yeah, this is brilliant. Now let's have a beer. That's Oka, man. That's Oka. I particularly like that there's a guy who's printing the news who's all like, whoa, this is some manly work here printing the news, wiping his brow. It used to be hard, sweaty work. If nothing else, just make sure you put into the podcast that line where he goes, Meta Effect. I got it now. Our heart and thirst needs a big cold beer. And the best cold beer is big. A long cold, big. It can come at any time. You're taking a vow or feeding a cow. Matter of fact, I got it now. That's like a legendary line from that ad. You're taking a vow or feeding a cow. Matter of fact, I got it now. It's pure poetry, Brady. A heart and thirst needs a big cold beer. And the best cold beer is Vic, Victoria Bitter. They didn't pay a cent for that ad, but if sales of Victoria Bitter have just skyrocketed in us across Australia. I want to hear you say, and the best cold beer is Vic in your CGP Grey voice. And the best cold beer is Vic? Why do you want this from me? No, that's not OK. And the best cold beer is Vic. You want me to put on a silly voice? I will do no such thing. There are no silly voices on this podcast, Brady. You have to sound like you're feeding a cow. I don't know what feeding a cow sounds like. I'm sorry, I've never fed a cow. I actually know, maybe I have fed a cow. You didn't feed a cow the Australian, I have just throwing bales off the back of a truck. You probably like just like put some grass in their mouth or something. No, I fed a cow when they took the middle school kids on a field trip out to a pretend farm to try to show kids in New York what urban life is like. And I'm like, this is where milk comes from, kids that were all horrified, right? Imagine if you'd gone out with a guy from the Victoria Bitter Act, that would completely fright you out. We have to stop where I'm going to start looking at more Australian ads, and that will be the end of this podcast. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you in part by Squarespace. Squarespace is the world's easiest award-winningest place for you to make your website. When I said at the start there that this episode is brought to you in part by Squarespace, it's not simply because they're one of the sponsor slots, but it's also because Hello Internet itself runs on Squarespace. I didn't really know how to make a podcast when we started this, and Squarespace made it super easy for me to do that. To help turn what was just an idea for a thing into something I could easily do with some drag and drop tools. If anyone I'm talking to even vaguely mentions the idea that they need a website for a thing, I always tell them to use Squarespace. 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Thanks to Squarespace for supporting the show and thanks to Squarespace for literally bringing you the show. That's a great episode. I spoke about SpaceX not for the first time and I thought, because I wasn't critical of SpaceX, but I was like just a bit mere. I don't think it's that big a deal. And I thought doing that would result in like lots of cheer pressure and complaining and people would start writing me big long emails and writing monologues telling me why I'm wrong and telling me all about how great SpaceX is. And that's exactly what happened. I do have to say, Tim's in the Reddit. I'm glad you're there. I always love the conversation. The Reddit for me is where the real action of the podcast happens, right? After hours on the Reddit, people leaving comments competing with each other to make funny jokes. It's always great. It's one of the parts of doing the podcast I enjoy the most. And of course talking to Brady, I enjoy talking to Brady the most and the comments equally. But I was a little bit dreading this SpaceX feedback and there was a kind of wall of monotony to the feedback about SpaceX as well. I wasn't even the main brunt of it. Like you got much more of it than I did. But there was a little bit of a feeling of being in school while someone's telling you about a thing that you're supposed to care about because it's super important. You're sitting there and they're telling you it's like, yes, but the legislative branch of government is very important and you need to be and it's like, oh, the thing is as well, great. I kind of, I always felt sorry for them because, and I don't know if I was so forware enough to realize this, but like they couldn't win because I'd basically said, I don't think SpaceX is that great. It's just alright. But the thing that annoys me more is people who contact me telling me that why SpaceX is great. It would be like me saying, CGP great. You have blue hair and you're just the sort of person who would deny having blue hair as well. Right. Exactly. Because now what can you do? Like you're like, and that's kind of the position these people were put in that were pinned into a corner. I believe the phrase for this is a Kafka trap where you like linguistically given someone no way out. The people who are most ex are the ones who most vehemunately deny being ex and it's like, oh, okay. Well, there we go. There's no way out of this one. Yes. So that's what you did to those poor SpaceX fans. So those people who wrote me big long emails, can I just say, thank you for listening to the podcast and I did skim read what you wrote mostly. Yeah. I also feel like I put people in a bit of a difficult position as well because I don't know if it came across what the main thrust of my argument was I just sort of lack interest in SpaceX. And as I've said many times on the podcast, I think interest is one of those things that needs no explanation and is just a thing that exists or doesn't exist and is ultimately unexplainable. And so it's like, yes, I totally should be one of those people sending you Brady an email about how great SpaceX is. But just for whatever reason at this moment right now, it just, it doesn't actually peak my interest that you can't talk someone into being interested into a thing. Perhaps when they get closer to their state admission of putting humans on Mars, like it'll get more exciting then. Yeah. Yeah. I'm the same. I'm not anti-spacix. I'm just not super excited about it. Everyone's saying, oh, but their plan is to put someone on Mars. You know, the day that spaceship's going down to land on Mars, I'll be watching. I'll be super excited then. I will turn on the news that day, right? That's definitely a thing you'd want to see. Yeah. I do have one question for you though. I'm interested in one kind of feedback and what you think about this, which was a lot of people were saying that you have an idealized image of the sort of heroism of the NASA days and like, why NASA was doing what it was doing. I'm just curious if you have a response to that that your NASA fandom is actually just very similar to SpaceX fandom. Well, you've probably pulled the same trap on me that I pulled on them there. Like, what can I say? If I say, no, no, no, they were the real heroes. And I know it. Yeah, maybe. Maybe, you know, it was before I was born. I wasn't around for the Apollo missions. And I'm sure lots of people around the time of Apollo certainly during the 60s when they were just building things and testing things. I'm sure lots of people saying, yeah, mate, talk to me when they're on the moon, then I'll be interested. Maybe it's the same thing. But I can't critique myself on that. I read books and I watch movies and TV shows and I look at it and I think, wow, that looks amazing. But maybe I'm wrong. But they were put in footprints on the moon. And when they put footprints on Mars, that'll be awesome. Will that be more awesome than footprints on the moon? That is the question. Which is more awesome? Setting foot on the moon, setting foot on Mars. All right. I'm going to say setting foot on Mars is more awesome than setting foot on the moon. And my reasoning for this is while they are both people landing on foreign objects, I think the tremendous difference in distance between these two things, it's like that saying where a difference in amount has become a difference in kind. So that I think while superficially they look like they're the same kind of thing and one just seems like it's second, the challenge of landing on Mars is so much incredibly harder than the challenge of landing on the moon. I think when I do the mental calculus of that, it's a more impressive thing to put a man on Mars than to put a man on the moon. Do you think the same thing, Brady? No. I knew it. I knew he'd be the moon is more impressive. Okay. What's your argument for the moon being more impressive just that it's first? First. Yeah. There were two things. The main thing is that it was the first foreign body. And we went thousands and thousands and thousands of years without setting foot on another thing in space. And then we did it. And if 50 or 100 years later, we then do the next one. When you look at that span of human existence, it's just a tiny split second later, isn't it? And also this is less my argument, but it is also part of my argument. The moon is like this glorious, gorgeous companion that we've had in space for as long as we've been on the planet. It's been this gorgeous pearl that we've just looked at and dreamed about. And then we did it. We stepped on it. And that was amazing. The moon is more just this red dot that we're aware of, but isn't really part of our consciousness. The moon is part of every human's consciousness. It's one of the first words you can say as a kid. It's this thing you look at in the sky. And you're like, Mom and Dad, what's that thing? The moon is very special to humans. So the moon has a more special place in the human heart. And it was the one we did first. And I agree Mars is way, way harder. In the span of human history, it's too close to the moon in terms of when we did it. I'm assuming that we do it at some point in the next hundred years. Yeah, I think it's a never ability. Yeah. So it's too close in terms of time and it's not quite as special an object. And it wasn't the first object in space we did. You don't need to explain to me the difference between the moon and a planet. All the distances involved or any of those things. I understand them all. If you said to me, do you want to be the first person to step on the moon, which is obviously something I can't do? Or do you want to be the first person to step on Mars, which is incredibly unlikely that I'm going to be given that opportunity. But if I could have had either, I would have taken the moon. I'll grant you that in the waiting room before you can pass on to the next life when you are finally forgotten from all of the history books and everybody's memory. I think that the first person to land on the moon is going to be remembered on a thousand year time scale more than the first person to land on Mars. I'll concede that. It seems like which piece of information will be lost to the dustbin of history first. And I think the first person on Mars will be the one that is lost first. I feel like I can sympathize with you. But something in my brain is a bit like you're saying, oh, it's more impressive when the first guy from England set sail and lands on the shores of Ireland than when he set sail and lands on the shore of America. It's something about that. It's more impressive to land on America from England for the first time than it is to land on Ireland. Let me play your game on you then, which is more impressive. The Wright Brothers first flight at Kitty Hawk or the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Well, unfortunately, you've picked something that doesn't work very well for you because I think that first flight is deeply unimpressive. It barely deserves the word flight. Sorry, North Carolina, who's everyone of your license plates says first in flight. I'm deeply unimpressed with the Wright Brothers' first work. Go watch the video. It's not that great. Yeah, I know. I know how short. I mean, it was less than the wingspan of a 747. But I still think it's the one. And in the grand scheme of things when we're doing, who knows what in space in a million years, the flight to the moon will be like the Wright Brothers flight. People will laugh that we're impressed by it, but it's still the one for me. I'm looking forward to these emails, good. Now I'm going to have all the Mars cheer pressure to take them to me as well. I can't believe I'm having to defend myself as like a lover of space. I'm sitting in an office surrounded by space memorabilia. Like this to me is just the way of the world because it doesn't matter if we're talking about space or if we're talking about politics or if we're talking about anything. It's like you get attacked from two groups. The group that is the most different from you. And then the... Duh! We haven't done any viewer images for a while. You know, pictures that people have sent in. Oh, yeah. You can always send them people. Message for Brady at gmo.com. It's a number four instead of the word four. Why isn't it the word four? I think that confuses people. Well, they're confused now because now you're talking about it. They're thinking, ah, they talked about it, but which one actually was it? It's the number four. I don't know why it's the number four though. It should be four, F-O-F-O. It should be F-O-U-R. It should be messages. That's for you. I'm Brady. That's what it should be. Yeah. You're removing all the confusion. Brady's such a common name. I think message four Brady with the word four was probably taken for a while. I don't know. It's message four Brady with the number four. Look, if you don't understand what we're talking about, then you're probably not someone who's emailing when I read in the first place. So let's just move on. Let's start with this one's come from a team who recently, well, it was recent when they wrote the email, went on a trip to a DC Washington, USA, and had a tour of the capital. The tour was incredible. And I met a representative congressman of Minnesota, my state of residence. I love how proud Americans are like talking about their representative or their congressman. Look, every American is from a great state. So anyway, this person met their congressman who was on a break and took them on a deluxe behind the scenes tour. And they got to see all sorts of things. And they posed for a picture together on the balcony of the speaker, which overlooks the Washington monument. Apparently it's a big deal that balcony. And I will send you the picture of the two of them together on the balcony. And being a loyal fan, this person asked to pose for a photograph with their congressman holding between them his phone with Hello Internet playing in the middle. So it's like, yes, congressman, I'd love to have a picture with you, but do you mind if I also hold my Hello Internet phone so that you and I could share the moment? I think that's a good move for congressman. I think being a Hello Internet listener gets you votes. I think gets you lots of votes. Yeah, you think he's jumping on our co-taus. So anyway, there you go. If you ever get to make someone really, really famous and have that once in a lifetime photo, make sure you two hold a phone between you with the Hello Internet logo because you may get mentioned here on the podcast. And if you're in political office, I'm very happy for you to endorse the Hello Internet podcast. But what must have you been thinking when this guy said, do you mind if I just hold my phone here with this thing, this podcast blank? I don't know how that was explained. I think politicians must have to deal with this kind of thing all the time. I bet when people visit their politicians, they always want to take a picture. And I bet there's a pretty high frequency of, oh, I would like X in the picture as well. I bet this guy is like the, it's like the third phone photograph he took of the day. I think that's what happened. You reckon? No, you're probably right. That's what I reckon, Brady. In the hands. Oh, yeah, no, you've no, great. You, as always, you are eagle-eyed. And that pin was mentioned actually. That is the official pin that only congressmen get to wear. And the center of the email even pointed out to me, you can tell he's a congressman because he's wearing a pin. That's interesting. I did not know that congressmen have a special pin that they only they can wear. Huh, interesting. We had another interesting message. This came from Rebecca, who describes herself as a girl, Tim. But I don't think you need to describe yourself as a girl, Tim. A Tim is a Tim is a Tim. Agreed. But Rebecca came to the random acts of intelligence event that was held in Huntsville, which apparently she says was in November 2014. Can that be right? Was it that long ago? I think so. I think so, Brady. Goodness. So after the show, Rebecca managed to get Dirk and Henry's signatures on her random acts of intelligence poster. But she was unable to get yours or mine because the signing cues were moved outside and I think she basically lost interest. But that's my words, not hers. I remember freezing to death outside when they moved alive. So that's how they actually dispersed the crowd. It's gone outside where it's physically uncomfortable for you to stay here too long. So anyway, Rebecca has used this to sort of contrive quite a tail here, which I won't read in its entirety. But the main thrust of her narrative is that in order to try and get my signature, she thought it would be a good idea to go to Everest Base Camp because that's a place that I was likely to be. So she tells her tail. But what she says here, in true hard as now's fashion, I decided to go to Everest Base Camp during the July monsoon season. For while Gray said about the trip, no, not in a thousand years of my stepping in that helicopter going to that bridge in that country. Sounds like me. I knew you may have been up to the challenge. Rebecca was blocked by the 2015 earthquake, but after eight days trekking through the summer, the sun, the rain and snow, she reached Everest Base Camp and she took her random acts of intelligence poster with her in case I would sign it. She was disappointed to find I was not there, but she did send a picture. So here is a picture of Rebecca on her way back down from Base Camp, but I know that sign she's posing with there and it's not very far from Everest Base Camp itself. So there's Rebecca who took her random acts of intelligence poster all the way to Everest Base Camp in a tube and took this picture. And she actually sent me this and I got in touch with her and this is the ulterior motive for me talking about this on the podcast, Gray. I said to Rebecca, if you send that to me here in England, I will sign it for you. So she has sent it to me and I've signed it, but I've misplaced her address and she's not replying to emails. So Rebecca, I have signed your poster, which has been to random acts of intelligence Everest Base Camp and has now crossed the ocean to me. If you want it back, I'm gonna need an address. Otherwise it's gonna stay on my desk and I'll give it another three weeks before it goes into a drawer and then gets forgotten forever. Yeah, it gets filed away in the modellium. It's in another box in Indiana Jones style archive in Brady's house that'll never be found again. That photograph is fantastic. We talk about Derek is everywhere in the world all at once. Yeah. I somehow feel like you should simultaneously be at Base Camp all the time somehow it just it seems like while you're telling this story, some part of my brain was honestly expecting it to conclude with and I was at Base Camp and I signed the poster for her and now we have a picture with like I know that that camp possibly be true, but there was some part of my brain which just felt like this is how the story will end. At last not on this case. Funnily enough Derek was there, but he'd already signed the poster so she didn't bother. Yeah. It's very, it's unremarkable because he's everywhere. Speaking of photos, the security guards at the monument at Trafalgar Square guarding the lines must fast becoming very familiar with the nailing here logo for the number of people in Hello Internet, T-shirts and flags who are posing for pictures. I cannot possibly share all the pictures that people have sent of themselves at the lines at Trafalgar Square. There has been a lot and it's all been great. It's really really great. I've just arbitrarily chosen one which was tweeted by Rich Riggley because it was one of my favorites because it's a two-stage photo here. You can see in the tweet there's stage one climbing up to the line, flag in hand and then getting up there and posing for the picture. Nice sequence, nice sequence of pictures. Yeah, that's a good one. I agree there's been a lot of flag unfurling and on other forms of Hello Internet, a re-around Trafalgar Square. It's been great to see. And yes, I imagine that the guards are at least becoming somewhat familiar with this logo and wondering what's going on. What is this? They probably think it's some nefarious organization. And one last one which was just one that caught my fancy. This was a chap here. Again, there's a tweet that we'll link to in the show notes so people can see it. This was a chap whose name is Tom, funnily enough, but clearly does listen to a bit of Hello Internet. And there is a picture of him having an incredibly romantic moment proposing to his future wife. And he did so wearing a mighty black stump t-shirt. Oh, wow. And I think that's amazing. That's fantastic. That's really great. Not only is it great, it's also like the height of ridiculousness. I even put this picture on my personal Facebook for my friends and Adelaide because I said to all my own Adelaide friends, you know who'd like that building on Grenfell Street. I make jokes about it on this podcast and I made a t-shirt and now here's a picture of the guy proposing to his wife wearing a t-shirt of the Grenfell Center. It is absurd. It's the height of absurdity, but I absolutely love it. And it's a great photo. That proposal is taking place in a great location. They're in an open space surrounded by trees with a blue sky above them and a mighty black stump t-shirt on one of them. Do you think it's acceptable that he wore a mighty black stump t-shirt for proposing to his wife such a crucial moment in history? But these events, it's impossible for people on the outside to pass judgment on the internals of a couple's relationship. So I'm going to say that because he did it, yes. It was perfectly appropriate for this couple to do that because if it was horrifically inappropriate, I don't think the second photo would be the two of them walking hand and hand out of this location, right? It might be a much more angerful photo, the second way around. So I think it went great. The question now is, which t-shirt is he can actually get married in? No, great. Do you think that to people? That's not fair. Don't listen to the Brady. Like, don't listen to people. He's just trying to put you into a trap there, buddy. This is already amazing. I wish the two of you the best. One thing that we've taken interest in over the years, are people who listen to a lot of Hello Internet in a short period of time for one reason or another. And we have a message here from someone called Nathan. And he sent this a little while ago. He was doing a lot of listening to Hello Internet because I think it's when he first got into the show. Around the time between episode 83 and 85, on our release schedule, that could be quite a lot of time. I don't particularly remember that. That was when he was listening. And at the time, he was doing a lot of commuting. And he was also like moving house and doing a lot of driving. So he was listening to a lot of Hello Internet in a concentrated period. And if you were a details person, the order he listened in was he listened from one through to 83. And then he listened to one to six, like started again. And then 84 came out. So he listened to 84. And then he went back and went from seven to 50. And this was done in a short space of time. And he's given me the stats here. These are the numbers. He listened to 30 episodes in eight days from May 26 onwards. He listened to 84 episodes in 31 days. And his total between May 26 and July 27 was he listened to 137 episodes of Hello Internet in 63 days. Over to a day for 63 days. And he's claiming that as a record. If anyone thinks they can better it. Keep quiet. I can understand this because I know with things that I've listened to or even like YouTube series, like you sometimes just get into a real groove with something like that. If I went back through my own listening or viewing history, there are periods of time where it's like, oh, this podcast I listened to an ungodly amount of episodes in a short period of time. I have also done that thing where you go back through an archive and and relisten to a show. So I feel like I can totally understand this behavior. Although I would suspect that probably I'm thinking maybe you have never relistened to a podcast. Brady, I think that I'm going to guess that's your behavior. You don't seem like a podcast re-listener to me. No, probably not. Most of the podcasty stuff I like is quite contemporaneous sort of stuff. I like it. It's like a Hello Internet box set. Well, like a box set. You can binge Hello Internet. It's crazy. You can binge Hello Internet. Many hours of content at this point binge. And it's relatively unhinged from time. I don't think any of the episodes are too specifically located to a period in time. I mean, I guess this episode will seem a bit dated when someone is listening to it on Mars and listening to our debate about which is more impressive or not. I guess there is a whole bunch to listen to. I forget. I can't remember if we came with a term for it or not, but I do think it's interesting that I've been seeing more and more comments in the Reddit where people lament the fact that they have caught up two episodes. And so people have been saying like, oh, they've been listening through the back catalog and then the most recent episode is the first one that they had to wait for. Or like the new episode just came out as they finished the archive. And now suddenly they have to wait. I know that experience too. Like I have definitely done that with podcasts that have long back catalogs. And it's like, oh, great. I'm binge listening through this whole thing. And it's like, but it comes to a point where you know you're catching up to modern day time. And then suddenly it's like, I listened to eight hours of this yesterday. And then the breaks get slammed. It's like, but there's no more. Like there's no more for me to listen to. It is a weird moment of like, I'm all caught up. I've been bending this over a period of time and I want more. And there's nothing more. There's a micro version of that that it cares when you watch normal television. If you have like a digital box, which you know, I know you don't watch normal television. But if you're watching something that is currently on, but you're like 20 minutes behind. So you've got some like lag in the bank. So like when the ads come on, you can fast forward the ads and you're still behind in the next lot of ads come on and you can fast forward. And then the third lot of ads come on and you're fast forwarding through them. And suddenly like it stops and the ads start playing. And you're like, Oh, I've used up all my like credit. And now I'm just watching like in normal human time. And I can't use that buffer anymore. I thought you were going to say about just catching up to episodes of a TV show that's on the air. A behavior that I have noticed in myself is many years ago, I decided at some point like, oh, I'm not going to watch TV shows until like the season is out. I'll wait until season three comes out and then I'll watch the whole of season three. And I don't want to watch it in any other way. Yeah. But I have noticed recently that this behavior is like cranking up in my head and intensity. And now I find myself thinking, I don't want to watch that show until the whole show is over. So it's like not even until the season is over. I was like, I'm going to wait until the whole thing is over. To me, the standard example of this is Game of Thrones. Like I haven't watched a single episode of Game of Thrones. And my feeling has always been like, I'm going to wait until it's done. I don't need to watch it in any particular time. I don't want to do this. Don't do that with Hello Internet though, by the way. If you're listening and you're waiting for Hello Internet to be done before you start listening, don't do that. You have to listen to it now. Don't wait. Get into it now. But TV shows wait until it's over. You bring up Game of Thrones. There will be no Game of Thrones spoilers today. It's something I had been meaning to bring up. And that is, have you ever known a TV show with such an anti-spoiler culture around it as Game of Thrones? Like it is such a forbidden thing to spoil Game of Thrones above anything else that exists. It's such an electric fence on social media. If someone even says, I thought last night's episode was quite good. Shut up, shut off, you spoil it again. And by the way, I'm one of those people. I'm super red-hot on Game of Thrones spoilers. Even saying an episode was good, I get angry at people because that removes the possibility that it would be bad and you've therefore spoiled something. And it's so hot around Game of Thrones. I've always held that even opinions about episodes like Good or Bad are a form of spoilers, which I think is an extremist spoiler position, but I'm happy to hold that position. I'm happy to mark out that territory. But it's interesting you've been there because I'm aware of this that there does seem to be a real culture of anti-spoilerism in Game of Thrones. And I will go even further than that. I have no evidence for this whatsoever. But I am convinced that Game of Thrones has played a not insignificant role in changing the whole culture around spoilers in a broader context. Like I'm aware that when we started the podcast three years ago or whatever now, I feel like online land was still going through some kind of transition around spoilers. Like spoilers were much more of a thing. I feel like in all kinds of media, people have almost entirely adopted a new norm around spoilers. And I feel like I remember it used to bother me much more as a spoiler extremist. But now it seems like everybody's gotten much more on board with the idea of don't talk about stuff that could be potentially spoilers. And I think it really is the tremendous popularity of Game of Thrones and the spoiler nature of that show that has introduced a lot more people to the idea of a broader concept of spoilers and why it is a social good on the internet to keep your mouth shut about spoilers. I mean, the fact people watch shows in such a time-shifted manner now as well because of Netflix and the ability to record shows and stuff also, but Game of Thrones is kind of king of that hate. The technological change obviously contributes to it. I suspect that Game of Thrones accelerates that. It's just like the right example very intensely over a long period of time which contains the technological change that people are going through. It's right at the axis for being able to lean on the lever the hardest about changing the culture around spoilers. And of people who commit spoilers, I found there are two types. One that I like and one that I have issues with. One is the person who may spoil something inadvertently and then like apologise and me a culper and delete the offending item and just hold up their hands and say, my bad, I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking. But the people who really annoy me are people who then try to defend why what they said is not a spoiler. And in doing so, perhaps commit even more spoilers. Like if someone says you're committing a spoiler, you're probably committing a spoiler and you don't have to say to me, no, no, that wasn't a spoiler because I didn't even mention or that didn't actually even happen. I was like saying that didn't even happen. Like you're spoiling again. Like if I make some joke about the fairy on the green tree and then there's such thing happens and someone says, oh, don't spoil it. I'm not spoiling it. You idiot, there is no fairy on the green tree. You're still spoiling. Shut up. Saying a thing has been spoiled is like describing an internal emotional state. You can't argue against that. I will add there's a final category, which is the thing that bothers me the most is apparently there's some kind of, I'm just going to call it BS study from years ago about how people who are spoiled about the contents of movies enjoy the movies more even if they don't think they do. One of these things where it's like, oh, we did surveys about what people think about the movie and like we asked some questions before like one of these studies. I just feel like, yeah, let's see you replicate this a whole bunch of times, but whatever. It got published somewhere and I feel like I have been linked to this thing a million times where people are like, oh, if someone spoils a thing for you, even if you don't think you like it, more science says that you do. It's like that doesn't change anything about how I actually feel about this. Like don't try to pull this kind of Kafka trap on me. It's like, I feel like I'm less happy, but you're telling me like waving this paper around that I'm actually happier. It's like, no, void and no, I'm not accepting this as a result. The only thing I'd say to that, I mean, my instinct is that you're right and it's BS. But the one thing that runs against that in my head is if you're going on a holiday, most people look forward to the holiday and they enjoy booking it and they enjoy the month or two of knowing they're going to go on the holiday. And if I just said to my wife tomorrow, surprise, we're going to Hawaii in 20 minutes. She would still enjoy Hawaii, but she hasn't had those two months of looking forward to it and telling her friends and planning what she's going to do. So there is a looking forward to a component. I wonder if that emotion and that feeling, that phenomena, does map onto seeing movies in any way. I'm not saying knowing how the movie ends makes you enjoy the movie more, but is there some component of like a looking forward to it, that that study is somehow tapping into or riffing off? No, I'm going to say no because going on a vacation, it's not a spoiler. But like you do before you go on your vacation, like look at what the rooms are like and look at the beaches and look at all the different photos and read everyone's reviews on Trip Advisor and like you immerse yourself in it for a month or two beforehand. So it's not like you arrive on the island and go, oh my goodness, I didn't even know there was going to be an infinity poll. Like you've looked at the infinity poll a thousand times before you get there. I feel like I'm trying to marshal in my brain some kind of argument for how knowing the infinity pool is there is not a spoiler, but I actually find like in some perverse way, you're almost walking me into the argument that it's right because I'm aware like one of the things that I like doing the most on vacations is exploring new stuff. Right, I like to go wander around the hotel and find new things. So if I knew exactly what the hotel was like, it would be kind of like a spoiler. So I've kind of argued you the other way rather than getting you to think it's okay to know about film. So I've now got you to a point where you're not even going to look at hotels before you go to them. I think maybe I have just discovered that I thought I was the most extreme spoiler position the person could have, but I've discovered there's a whole vast new territory of greater spoiler extremism to be enjoyed. Hello internet today's sponsor is audible with an unmatched selection of audio books, original shows, news, comedy and more. Get a free audio book with a 30 day trial at audible.com slash hello internet. When you use audible, you can listen to your audio books on your iOS device, Android, Amazon, Fire tablets or your computers and your position in the book will synchronize across all of those devices. Plus, it's really nice if you are listening to a book for a particular project and you also want to have the ebook copy of that. Audible has whisper sync for voice, which will automatically keep the book on your Kindle in sync with the audio book, which can be very nice. Often if I'm listening to a nonfiction book, I will get the ebook version so that I can open it up on my phone and highlight or make note in a particular passage that I've just heard on the audio book. It's really nice to be able to do that. Now when you sign up with audible, you get a free audio book to listen to and you might want to try this circle by David Eggers this time. It's a book I read a little while ago and Brady just messaged me the other day asking if I had seen the movie that's based on the book. As a thing he wants to talk about at some point on the show. Now you know me, I don't like spoilers, so I'm not going to say very much about the plot, except to just simply say that the book takes place largely at a Google Stroke Facebook like company in the current time or perhaps the very near future. So that's the circle by David Eggers if you're looking for something fiction to listen to. But of course, Audible's catalog is ginormous. If you want to listen to it, Audible has it with an unmatched selection of audiobooks, original audio shows, news, comedy and more. You'll find what you're looking for. Once again, get your free audiobook with a 30-day trial today by signing up at audible.com slash hello internet. Thanks to Audible for supporting the show and thanks to Audible for giving me many, many hours of things to listen to. I've got something else for you here, Gray. A bit of a humans need not apply unless going on here. So the national portrait gallery has this annual photographic portrait competition called the Taylor Wessling photographic portrait prize for photos of people and they had 5,717 submissions this year. And they've got a short list of three, the final three that they've decided are the best and they are going to then tell us who the winner is in about a month's time. I'll send you the three finalists. Here comes the first one on my message. The first one appears to be like a woman looking out a sort of a smeared window and this is a woman I believe in Northern Iraq who is sort of fleeing the so-called Islamic state group and sort of a dramatic picture. So that's one of the pictures. Very emotional picture. I actually don't think it's that good to be honest, but anyway, I think the window just looks a bit grubby, but what do I know? You're not a portrait photograph finalist. That's for sure, Brady. Exactly. And if I took that photo, it would be the greatest photo I'd taken in my life. So what do I know? Here's another finalist. This is a gentleman, I believe, who was rescued from the Mediterranean. He was sort of fleeing political strife in Africa. A very good picture of this chap with a sea behind him, very dramatic. I'm going to say that's a better portrait than the previous one. It's a very good photo like I can't take my eyes off it. And the other one is a picture of this is a woman named Erica. This picture was taken in Japan. You know, Saka. I don't know, what do you think of that one? That's a strange photograph. It is a strange photograph. Because that is not a photograph of a person. Erica is an Android. Okay. Yeah. This is what's causing some controversy because the portraits are supposed to be of humans. And this person took this picture of Erica, the Android, at the Hiroshi Ishigaro laboratories in Osaka, University, Japan. And it's supposed to be some kind of comment on humanity and things like that. And so there's been this controversy. Should it be allowed? It's technically against the rules. So humans don't even need to apply for the job of model in human portrait photos anymore. You'll have to take my word for this. But like the very first thing I did when you sent me this photo was I zoomed in on the face because it did just look weird. It doesn't quite look right. It was on the front page of the Times newspaper today. And I just glanced at it over my piece of toast. And I was like straight away. I thought, that's not a human, is it? Now that I know it's not a person, I could say what I was thinking, which is like, oh, it looks like this person has something wrong with them. Maybe the genetic problem or something. The face just looks wrong. I guess if the question here is, should you be able to photograph a non-human in a portrait competition? No, clearly not. Thumbs down on that immediately. What is even the discussion here? The art gallery says, the gallery has decided not to disqualify this portrait, though, except it is a breach of the rules. The rules are reviewed every year. And this issue will be taken into consideration for next year. What? The Taylor Wesseng photographic portrait prize is dedicated to showcasing the best and contemporary portraiture. There are occasions when particularly compelling portraits raise interesting questions about the genre of portraiture. And these may be included at the judge's discretion. Okay, well, they worm their way out of it with that last line there, didn't they? Like, oh, it's against the rules, but we have a rule about judge discretion. So now it's technically okay. It's genius, too, because like, you know, I'm basically a boring portrait competition is now on the front page of the times. No, surely not, Brady. Do you think that was one of the motivations? I take it back. Sorry, it's more about showcasing the best and contemporary portraiture and raising interesting questions about the genre of portraiture. And now it is being discussed on this podcast. What is a portrait? And the answer is clearly not a photograph of a mannequin or an android is not a portrait. I don't agree with that. The photographer said that they had half an hour with Erica and a young research in which to take the photograph. I find it weird that like, there was only like half an hour. It's very like, it's my keynote isn't that like in terms of, you know, you can only have certain amount of time with the robot. It was session five. And as soon as the photographer left, the android smashed its own hands to pieces trying to escape from the room. Yeah, that's what happens. It's just like whispered. Get me out of here. Just like guys. It's so creepy even just to think about it. Oh, then of course. If if I was in the room with the android and it whispered, get me out of here. It's like, okay, how fast can we set it on fire? Like that's my only goal. They always make them kind of like reasonably attractive, don't they? These things. Like I've never seen like a fat one with a beard. What do you mean in your android portraiture? You've never seen fat ones with beers? What is the context in which you've never seen an unattractive robot? Is that what it is? But they always make them like typically attractive, like cliche attractive, don't they? Because if they make them unattractive, then we're more likely to kill them, Brady. We're more likely I can kill unattractive things, that way. I think that is true. We don't eat super cute things, really. Right? They're like, how bad do you feel about killing a spider versus how bad do you feel about killing a bunny? You meant it as a joke, but I think that is literally true. I hadn't experienced this week. I realized there are two times that I can think of where this happens. And this is a time when you feel this need to be way more serious and intense and sort of solemn, then is natural. The first one is when you are at an airport and they ask you questions like, have you got anything dangerous in your bag? Have you got a knife in that? You know how you feel this kind of strangeness come over you where you have to really intensely and seriously answer the question? Like, no, I will not joke. I will not laugh. I will not smile. This is a very serious moment between two people and I would take it seriously. Do you get that feeling when that question happens? I have a difficult time with that moment because of this pressure. It's like, my very intense desire to signal that I am the world's most boring man and that I'm also taking this very seriously and that I have nothing but the utmost respect for authorities in this moment. Always ends up making me just be weird. My wife is commented on it. She's like, what is wrong with you? I have ended up stumbling over really obvious questions like, what do you hear for? And it's like, I'm seeing some family and then I've got to, there's a little... Yeah, going into the country. I'm actually thinking of a few more examples as we speak, but yeah, yeah, that's true as always. It's the same when you're going into the country, when's your flight home and stuff. But when I get pulled over when they're scanning me at the airport and security, it's the same thing. They ask me questions about packing the bags and it's like, I somehow stumble. I don't even know what I do, which is like, it's like a blind panic until it goes away. So, yes, Brady, I know exactly which time. An intense desire to be more serious than normal. There's another time that happened to me this week that I realized happens in our lives and it is different because it's a time that's usually associated with a bit of a laugh, but at the same time that that emotion comes over everyone as well for a few brief seconds. And that is the moment at a wedding when the celebrant says, does anyone here in the room know of any reason why these two people cannot be married? And I know there's always a joke afterwards in everyone laughs when there's like a few no one objected. But for those few seconds, like, you feel like I must not move my hands. I must not open my mouth. I must, and like the strange feeling comes over you like a call of the void, quasi seriousness, quasi. It's a very weird moment. I was at a wedding on Monday and it happened and I thought, this reminds me of that feeling when they asked me about, did I pack my own bags? While I've been speaking about it, I've thought of one other time that happens as well. And that is when you're at an auction and it's like final bids. Do I have any more bids and you're like in the room and everyone, you feel this weirdness like I must not move. I mustn't like wink or have a tick in my face or move my hand in case I ruin the whole auction and they think it's a bid. I have never been in a wedding where they actually ask that question. The weddings I have into, this is simply not part of the ceremony. It's a legal requirement. Is it a legal requirement in the UK or in Australia? I think in the UK. I've been at religious and non-religious ceremonies. The one I was at this week was not religious in any way, but the question has to be put out there in case like for the sake of the registrar to know that one of them isn't already married or something like that. That might make sense. I've never been to a wedding in the UK. I've only been to weddings abroad and I've never heard that question asked. I would definitely feel the same thing like you need to sit there silently. But what I like about this is you're relating this and I'm thinking I've never been to a wedding where they actually ask if there's any objections. Then you immediately follow it with your other example of being at an auction and I'm sitting here thinking, have I ever been at an auction in my entire life? I think the closest I've ever gotten to being at an auction is bidding on eBay right back in the early 2000. That might be the closest I have ever been to a real live auction. I like the idea that your weekends are filled with weddings where you're trying to sit still and then you go to the you go to some auction hearing. What are you buying at auctions Brady? I've been to a few auctions. I don't like buying things in auctions except of course dinner dates with death later. Of course. There's an auction house on the way to my gym and I like you know, I'll take some stuff and the other day the auction was on when I was on the way back from the gym and I thought I'm going to go in. So I just pulled over and walked in and watched them auctioning off some stuff. You know, had a look in the cabinet looked at the nice old watches and bits of furniture. I didn't bid on anything. I just wanted to soak up the atmosphere. Be truthful Brady. Was it on the way back from the gym? Or was it on the way to the gym? It was on the way back because I'm always too late on the way. It was like for a personal training session so I couldn't be late. Of course not. Can't possibly be late for a personal training session. I think it was on the way back. Suddenly it's not so clear is it? But you didn't buy anything at the auction Brady? Didn't buy anything at the auction. I'd rather not buy things in an auction. Don't like that level of attention. Oh yeah. No, you don't want that attention Brady. I don't like attention. I know I'm doing podcasts and make YouTube videos and stuff but I think maybe what it is is you want attention on your terms. Maybe that's it. But no, the moments when you have to be solemn. I'm sure I've mentioned it before but those are moments where I know what you're saying but lots of times in these moments. Not at security and if I'm not at a wedding but I often find that that makes everything funnier like when someone wants you to be really serious. The most strong example for this of this for me was always when I was teaching and I would bring all the kids into church and we'd be sitting there in church and there's something about the whole architecture of a church of England church where they're like very intent on being super serious like it just makes everything funny even though like nothing funny is actually occurring but it just it's like oh you've taken what would just be oh we're just a church and whatever but now your intense desire to make this really serious has made everything really funny and that's so that's a different kind of reaction to let's have a little solemn moment.
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