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Feeling Like a Failure (During an Eclipse)

2024-04-12 · letter vlog · Hank · 6:09 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Projects (also: Personal life, Nerdfighteria) · mode: Personal essay · tags: timely hook, self promotion, civic or action cta

After seeing the April 2024 total eclipse and feeling angry that it ended, Hank announces that Journey to the Microcosmos is wrapping up production and argues that eclipses seem impossible but are inevitable, while things like Microcosmos, Crash Course, Good Store and the community seem inevitable but exist only through people's choices, which makes them precious.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Seeing the total eclipse in Indianapolis: the sky doing a new thing, other people's reactions, prehistoric humans, nausea

  • ★★ Hank, back from Indianapolis where he saw John, their family and John's dog, got to see the total eclipse after weeks of obsessively checking cloud forecasts, and felt totally overwhelmed. — 00:00:00 · Indianapolis
  • ★★ Hank explains the overwhelm: after 43 years of seeing the sky only a few ways, it is weird for it to do something new; at 99% it is the normal sky dimmer, at 100% totality it is a whole new thing. — 00:00:29
  • ★ Hank says being a prehistoric human was probably not as different as we imagine: they made jokes, had friends, got their hearts broken and thought their kids had it good, just with more suffering. (hedged) — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Most onlookers asked what it would be like to see totality without knowing it was coming; Hank thinks the deeper, unsaid thought behind that is "I'm pretty freaked out right now". — 00:01:30
  • ★ Hank and Katherine both felt nauseated after the eclipse, which Hank can't explain except that the sky did a different thing. — 00:01:30 · Katherine Green

00:01:59 — Anger that totality ended; Journey to the Microcosmos is closing down after mostly running at a loss

  • ★★ The feeling Hank was most left with was anger that the eclipse ended: an irrational sense that it wasn't fair, since after so much anticipation totality ends in a blink. — 00:01:59
  • ★★★ Hank announces that Journey to the Microcosmos, their channel about the microscopic world around us, is closing down: more videos will come out, but production is wrapping up, and he is sad. — 00:01:59 · Journey to the Microcosmos
  • ★★ Hank says they tried many ways to make Microcosmos work financially; at times it briefly turned a profit, but most of the time it was produced at a loss. — 00:01:59 · Journey to the Microcosmos

00:02:45 — Online, nothing is inevitable: people's decisions, and increasingly algorithms, decide what exists; Microcosmos compared with the eclipse

  • ★★★ Hank says it has become clear that with online video nothing is inevitable: individual decisions, his, his company's, YouTube's and viewers' choices to click, watch, share and support, decide what exists. — 00:02:45 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Hank worries about our collective decision to hand power to algorithms: then platforms, which often don't know how their algorithms work, decide, so it is no human's choice what exists. — 00:03:14 · recommender system
  • ★★ Like the eclipse, Microcosmos was something beautiful he had never seen before, then it ended and he got mad; unlike the eclipse, he is somewhat responsible both for its ending and for its existing at all. (hedged) — 00:03:44 · Journey to the Microcosmos
  • ★★★ Hank says it is important to notice that some things, like eclipses, are inevitable, while others exist only because of human choices. — 00:03:44

00:04:13 — Crash Course and the relaunched Good Store exist by force of will; eclipses seem impossible but are inevitable, our projects the reverse

  • ★★ Hank says free educational resources on YouTube exist because everyone helps by buying Crash Course coins and supporting Crash Course on Patreon, as do internet stores that give all profit to charity. — 00:04:13 · Crash Course, Crash Course coin, YouTube
  • ★★ Hank says Good Store relaunched this week (week of 8 April 2024) with a new website design and a new logo he finds cute, including its little friend Dot. — 00:04:13 · Good Store
  • ★★★ Outsiders may think Good Store, Crash Course or the iPhone are inevitable, but from inside, with Nerdfighteria supporting them and people at DFTBA and Complexly working on them, they exist through sheer force of will. — 00:04:42 · Nerdfighteria, DFTBA Records, Complexly, Good Store, Crash Course
  • ★★ Hank says a store giving all its money to charity is not easier but harder to run than a normal store, and very much not an inevitability. — 00:04:42
  • ★★ Everything they do is temporary, but that doesn't stop Hank being mad when things end, feeling it's his fault or that he could have done differently, or worrying he never does things quite right. — 00:04:42

  • ★★★ Hank's point: eclipses seem impossible but are inevitable, while many things in our lives, like the plane that flew him from Indianapolis or this community's creations, seem inevitable but are nearly impossible. — 00:04:42 · Nerdfighteria, Indianapolis

    “a lot of things in our lives seem inevitable but are very nearly impossible”

00:05:31 — None of it was inevitable, which makes the last 15 years precious; newsletter ask

  • ★★★ None of it was inevitable, indeed very unlikely, which makes it extremely precious to Hank and hard to look at: he almost needs eclipse glasses to see how special the last 15 years have been. — 00:05:31
  • ★★ Saying they can keep doing basically impossible things, Hank asks viewers who want to be first to know to sign up for the We're Here newsletter, linked in the description. — 00:05:31

00:06:01 — Newsletter link, favourite Microcosmos videos in the description, sign-off

  • ★ Hank links some of his favourite Microcosmos videos in the description (Microscopic Predators, Proof of Atoms, This Ciliate is About to Die). — 00:06:01 · Journey to the Microcosmos

In the description and comments

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Good Store · Journey to the Microcosmos · Solar eclipse of April 8, 2024

Also: People: Katherine Green

Projects: Complexly · Crash Course · DFTBA Records · We're Here newsletter

Works: Crash Course coin

Organizations: Patreon · YouTube

Concepts: historical determinism · recommender system

Places: Indianapolis

Products: iPhone

Only in the description or credits: Deboki · James (person, mentioned from 2019)

Also centred on Solar eclipse of April 8, 2024: Two Reasons Why This Eclipse is So Dangerous

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