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This one's for your mom

2025-04-18 · livestream · Hank · 53:21 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Projects (also: Science & nature, Pop culture, Books & writing, Internet & YouTube) · mode: Announcements · tags: self promotion, timely hook

In a livestream for Good Store's Mother's Day sale, Hank plugs the discounted Mother's Day bundle and new prepaid six-month subscriptions and thanks buyers, jokingly looking up some of their neighborhoods. Between orders he passes on a wolf biologist friend's facts on back-breeding and ghost wolves, plays Connections, reads Keats and tier-ranks cartoon moms. He ends by arguing that people should enjoy things rather than fixate on trivial discourse.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Going live: plans for the stream and the Good Store Mother's Day bundle

  • ★★ Hank says he is live to celebrate Mother's Day at Good Store, including a discounted Mother's Day bundle, and plans to talk wolves, play Connections and blind-rank cartoon moms. — 00:00:28 · Good Store, tier list
  • ★★★ Hank asks viewers to get the Mother's Day bundle from the Mother's Day tab at good.store, where all the money goes to charity, and promises shout-outs on the stream to buyers. — 00:01:09 · Good Store

00:01:35 — A wolf biologist friend's facts: dire wolves, back-breeding, Neanderthal DNA, red wolves and ghost wolves

  • ★★ Hank has just come from talking with a close college friend who is now a wolf biologist studying wolf genomics at Princeton, so he can ask her about the dire wolf news. — 00:01:58
  • ★★ Hank passes on his friend's point that back-breeding is possible and done with other animals, though people would never do it to humans. — 00:02:57
  • ★★ Hank explains with his friend's example that people carry 3–4% Neanderthal DNA but not the same parts, so repeatedly breeding people with different parts could approach a half-Neanderthal person. — 00:02:57
  • ★★ Hank says red wolves fell to a population of 12 before captive breeding began, and some wild hybrids of red wolves with coyotes or other animals exist. — 00:03:57
  • ★★ Hank says his friend is helping investigate wild wolf hybrids with about 30 percent DNA that can't be accounted for, called ghost wolves, a name he loves. — 00:04:22

00:04:45 — Thanking buyers; the bundle postcard on Sun Basin Soap funding the Maternal Center of Excellence; Garden Party soap

00:07:00 — Playing the day's Connections puzzle live

  • ★ Hank plays the day's Connections live; the group he saved for last, expecting purple (things you can pick), turns out to be blue, which disappoints him. (playful) — 00:09:55

00:11:05 — Orders, recreational doxing of buyers' neighborhoods, bundle contents, EcoGeek Earth Day scrub-brush offer, sold-out items

  • ★★ Hank shows the bundle: unscented hand balm, a citrus candle whose profit all goes to the Maternal Center of Excellence, Garden Party soap and Evensong Chai. — 00:13:07 · Maternal Center of Excellence, Sierra Leone
  • ★★ Hank calls being a mom one of the best and hardest jobs and thanks viewers for appreciating their moms. — 00:13:54
  • ★★ Hank says that, as a separate Earth Day promotion, new EcoGeek subscribers get a free scrub brush, his favorite kitchen tool in a long time. — 00:15:52 · EcoGeek
  • ★ Hank says the dishwasher tablets come from Green Llama, whose people he likes working with. — 00:17:02
  • ★★ Hank looks up some buyers' streets on Google images to admire their neighborhoods, calling it recreational doxing; he says he needs addresses only to ship and won't share them. (playful) — 00:19:48
  • ★★★ Hank says the Sun Basin Soap Mother's Day Bundle is a $62 value for $50. — 00:23:02 · Sun Basin Soap, Good Store

00:23:59 — Reading Keats's sonnet On Peace from the tea label, with an analysis

  • ★★ Hank says several Good Store items that showed as sold out, such as the prepaid six-month Awesome Socks Club, were back in stock after an inventory category error was fixed. — 00:25:07 · Good Store, Awesome Socks Club
  • ★★ After reading Keats's sonnet On Peace (suggested on the tea label) and an analysis, Hank says he too would like stability and freedom, but that is not where we seem headed now. — 00:25:45

00:26:35 — More orders; new prepaid six-month subscriptions; tea; soap slivers and soap savers

  • ★★★ Hank announces that Good Store now sells prepaid subscriptions: you pay once for six months (or 12), they then stop, which makes them good gifts. — 00:28:28 · Good Store, Awesome Socks Club
  • ★★ Hank says loose-leaf tea is so easy and good that it has completely changed how he feels about tea. — 00:29:42 · Good Store
  • ★ Hank had forgotten Easter was coming until Orin recently suggested they get Easter eggs to dye. — 00:31:10 · Orin Green
  • ★★ Hank recommends Good Store's soap-saver block: soap that doesn't sit in its own juices lasts longer. — 00:34:37 · Good Store

00:35:56 — A tier list of cartoon moms, and the Ariel and Queen Athena confusion

  • ★★ Hank says you don't have to spend money on a gift, but it is good to recognize moms' work on Mother's Day. — 00:39:15

00:42:38 — Bundle recap, more orders, how far apart two Boston buyers live

  • ★★ Having given up the tier list of cartoon moms, Hank concludes that all moms are S tier except Cartman's mom. (playful) — 00:42:38 · tier list

00:48:24 — Reading comments on his Minecraft movie video: collaborative moviegoing, 'enjoy stuff', ignoring trivial discourse such as the Blue Origin flight

  • ★★ Reading a comment that the Minecraft movie was less a well-made film than a rediscovery of how cool third places are, Hank says there is an element of that. — 00:49:36
  • ★★★ Hank says theater owners and filmmakers usually control moviegoing, but at the Minecraft movie the audience got some control over the experience. — 00:49:36
  • ★★ Hank muses about a new kind of movie made for a vibrant, collaborative theater experience, but says it probably won't happen. (hedged) — 00:50:15
  • ★★★ Hank says the bigger theme, one he is exploring in a lot of his content now, is: enjoy stuff. — 00:51:02
  • ★★★ Hank says there is no reason to focus on things that don't matter: if you think the Minecraft movie sucks, that's fine, but it doesn't matter. — 00:51:31
  • ★★★ Hank says he doesn't care about the discourse over Blue Origin's all-female crew of paying space tourists: nothing important happened, there are real problems, and dwelling on it only makes you irritable. — 00:51:31
  • ★★★ Hank says it is always useful to ask of any topic being discussed whether it is actually important, and whether something important can be discussed inside that frame. — 00:52:36

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says the last day to order the Good Store Mother's Day bundle in time for Mother's Day is April 21. — video description · Good Store

Humor (significant)

  • Thanking a repeat buyer, Hank asks to look up where she lives and names the habit. — 00:19:48

    “Just a little recreational doxing is what we call it.”

  • Zooming out on a buyer's map of Greenville, Hank confesses a private view of a state's shape. — 00:21:33

    “But I've always thought that South Carolina looked like a little bit of a bird, like a bird that's perched, you know?”

  • Reading Keats's line about the mountain nymph being peace's favorite, Hank wants a pun. — 00:24:29

    “I wish it was his favorite B, like B-E-E. That would be better.”

  • The analysis says Keats wanted liberty and an end to war. — 00:26:12

    “So I don't want war, but I do want revolution. That's going to be tricky, Mr. Keats.”

  • Hank on the life cycle of a bar of soap. — 00:32:04

    “the moment where the soap goes from like a bar of soap to a sliver seems extremely fast”

  • Chat tells Hank the picture he thought was Ariel is Ariel's mother. — 00:41:03

    “They could have done a little bit more character development work on her. I feel like that is, that is just Ariel.”

  • Chat mocks Hank for not knowing Ariel's mom is Queen Athena. — 00:41:42

    “So maybe I should have done a little research before I decided that my new job was going to be figuring out moms.”

  • Giving up on ranking cartoon moms, Hank declares a verdict. — 00:42:38

    “all moms are S tier except for Cartman's mom”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Good Store · Mother's Day

Also: People: Hank's wolf-biologist friend · John Keats · Katherine Green · Orin Green

Projects: Awesome Socks Club · EcoGeek · Sun Basin Soap

Works: A Minecraft Movie · Connections (game) · Evensong Chai · Garden Party Soap · On Peace · The Little Mermaid

Organizations: Blue Origin · Dropout · Maternal Center of Excellence · Princeton University · Shopify · YouTube

Concepts: breeding back · coyote · dire wolf · doxing · interbreeding between archaic and modern humans · maternal death · red wolf · third place

Places: Central Park · Georgia (U.S. state) · Great Britain · Greenville, South Carolina · Manhattan · New York City · Sierra Leone · South Carolina

Events: Earth Day · Easter

Characters: Ariel · Elastigirl · Liane Cartman · Linda Belcher · Marge Simpson · Queen Athena

Products: Google Images · Pimm's

Memes: tier list

Only in the description or credits: Green Llama

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