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My 2025 Bingo Card

2025-01-03 · Q&A · Hank · 6:38 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Everyday life (also: History & curiosities, Philosophy & meaning, Science & nature, Pop culture) · mode: Q&A & conversation

Answering New Year's questions from Bluesky, Hank riffs on calendar reform, unladen swallows, a giant 'potato' that turned out to be a gourd and the Pillsbury Doughboy, admits he denies himself games and music for work, finds hope in history, and resolves to spend more time with friends, John included.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Intro (Bluesky questions), Hank Cyan, the unladen swallow, the calendar and the solar year

  • ★ Hank says it is the new year and he has no space in his head for a complicated video, so he asked Bluesky for New Year's questions to answer. — 00:00:00
  • ★ Asked the airspeed of an unladen swallow in 2025, Hank says there is no single answer: there are hundreds of swallow species and many millions of swallows, all flying at different speeds. (playful) — 00:00:20
  • ★★ Hank explains that Earth's spin is unrelated to its orbit around the sun, so a year is not a whole number of days but 365.24-something, and humans patch this with years that have extra days. — 00:00:44 · Earth
  • ★★ Hank says months are dumb and don't exist: they were meant to roughly follow the moon but no longer do, and October not being the eighth month is inexcusable. (playful) — 00:00:44

00:01:14 — A 13-month calendar with monthless days; video games, music and having no time for them

  • ★★ Hank proposes 13 months of 28 days plus a few monthless days on which everyone just has a good time and nobody expects anything of anybody. (playful) — 00:01:14
  • ★★ Hank says he almost never plays video games; he would like to play the new Civilization, which takes a lot of time, and the only game he plays is Connections. — 00:01:14
  • ★★★ Hank says he never enjoys video games or music anymore because he has put so much on his plate; he loves them when he makes time but denies himself them for supposedly important work, a big current struggle. — 00:01:52

00:02:28 — Tummy hurt and acid reflux; history as a source of hope; the big potato question

  • ★★ Hank says he had tummy hurt for a long time this year (2025), which turned out to be acid reflux, for which there is medicine, and suggests seeing a doctor about it. — 00:02:28
  • ★★★ Hank says history gives him hope: humans keep messing things up and fixing them, making terrible decisions and then correcting them. — 00:02:28 · hope, progress
  • ★★ Hank says the value of a human life has kept increasing, a win; 2025 will be a messy year, no doubt, but the context of history always helps. — 00:02:57 · progress
  • ★★ Hank says that a hundred years ago one in five children in the US died before age five. — 00:02:57 · child mortality, United States

00:03:34 — Doug the New Zealand not-potato, the Pillsbury Doughboy as cannibal, the 2025 bingo card

  • ★★ Doubting that a giant growth in a photo is a potato, Hank reads a New York Times report: a New Zealand couple's giant growth, Doug, submitted to Guinness, proved by DNA to be a gourd tuber, not a potato. — 00:03:34 · The New York Times
  • ★ Hank finds the year-bingo-card idea weird, saying he doesn't feel anyone ever actually had a bingo card for a year. — 00:04:10

00:04:37 — Real-life legendary quest items: a Pizza Hut Magic 8 ball and others

  • ★ Hank says he might make a 2025 bingo card later and, if he does, put it here. (hedged) — 00:04:37
  • ★ Asked for his closest thing to a legendary unique quest item (the asker names a Pizza Hut Magic 8 ball), Hank lists several of his own: a biblically accurate crab he knows is unique, the All Star Singamajig, a hoverboard signed by SourceFed, and one of every player's dice from a Dimension 20 season he was on. (playful) — 00:04:37

00:05:06 — Hank's New Year's resolution to spend more time with friends; John as his best friend; sign-off

  • ★★★ Hank's New Year's resolution is to spend more time with his friends: he does not invest enough in those relationships, for reasons partly internal and partly external that he can't tease apart. — 00:05:06
  • ★★ Hank says spending more time with friends should be everyone's goal: it is achievable, fun, and something to check in with when deciding how to spend his time. — 00:05:44
  • ★★★ Hank says he will now say yes to friends' invitations and no to whatever made him decline, because he needs those relationships and is not healthy without them. — 00:06:13
  • ★★ Hank tells John he is pretty much his best friend and so on that list, hopes his wrist is doing okay, and is excited for his book to come out. — 00:06:13 · John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says Hank meant to answer fun questions but ended up rethinking his life again, which he thinks will be a big theme for him in 2025. (hedged) — video description

Humor (significant)

  • Asked whether he will 'transition to Hank Cyan', Hank says no, though it would be dope. — 00:00:09

    “But I'm mostly just glad that my name is Hank and I didn't get a boring name like John.”

  • Asked the Monty Python question about an unladen swallow's airspeed, Hank answers it as a real data request. — 00:00:20

    “How many significant figures do you want?”

  • Hank complains that months no longer match the moon or their names. — 00:01:14

    “And now we have October being not the eighth month, which is... inexcusable.”

  • Hank doubts a viral giant potato is a potato and checks the New York Times, which confirms it is a gourd. — 00:03:34

    “So that's what I think about that potato. I was right.”

  • Asked whether the Pillsbury Doughboy eating a cookie would make him a cannibal. — 00:04:00

    “Yes, but it would also make all of us monsters.”

  • After listing his own quest items, including a SourceFed-signed hoverboard and dice from a Dimension 20 season he was on. — 00:05:06

    “I've lived a good life, everybody.”

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: friendship

Also: Works: All Star · Civilization (series) · Connections (game) · Dimension 20 · Everything Is Tuberculosis · Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Organizations: Bluesky · Guinness World Records · Pizza Hut · SourceFed · The New York Times

Concepts: child mortality · gastroesophageal reflux disease · hope · leap year · New Year's resolution · potato (concept) · progress · significant figures · video game · work-life balance

Places: Earth · Moon · New Zealand · Sun (star) · United States

Characters: Pillsbury Doughboy

Products: Magic 8 Ball · Singamajigs

Policies: International Fixed Calendar

Also centred on friendship: How to Make Friends · How Do Adults Make Friends? · How I Made Friends · So, I've got cancer · Views · I Was a Teenage Dirtbag

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