Man announces he will quit drinking by 2050

Posted on November 16, 2021 by peNdantry
Man announces he will quit drinking by 2050
Man announces he will quit drinking by 2050

A Sydney man has set an ambitious target to phase out his alcohol consumption within the next 29 years, as part of an impressive plan to improve his health.

The program will see Greg Taylor, 73, continue to drink as normal for the foreseeable future, before reducing consumption in 2049 when he turns 101. He has assured friends it will not affect his drinking plans in the short or medium term.

Taylor said it was important not to rush the switch to non-alcoholic beverages. “It’s not realistic to transition to zero alcohol overnight. This requires a steady, phased approach where nothing changes for at least two decades,” he said, adding that he may need to make additional investments in beer consumption in the short term, to make sure no night out is worse off.

Taylor will also be able to bring forward drinking credits earned from the days he hasn’t drunk over the past forty years, meaning the actual end date for consumption may actually be 2060.

To assist with the transition, Taylor has bought a second beer fridge which he describes as the ‘capture and storage’ method.

Man announces he will quit drinking by 2050
Man announces he will quit drinking by 2050

Image source unknown
Text transcript courtesy of my eyes and fingers
Audio conversion from text transcript courtesy of Free TTS
Video courtesy of Synthesia (free demo, 200 character limit so I had to truncate it)

Posted in ... wait, what?, balance, Climate, Communication, Core thought, Energy, Environment, GCD: Global climate disruption, Just for laughs, memetics, Phlyarology, Strategy | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

The green way to blog longevity via image optimisation

Posted on November 9, 2021 by peNdantry

Back in 2018, I wrote a post called ‘Turbo-boost your site by optimising images‘. Since then, I’ve encountered a number of bloggers who have started new blogs; and they’ve all done so for the same reason: because their old ones ‘ran out of space’. That has spurred me to write a more detailed follow-up to my earlier post.

There are several very good reasons to consider optimising your images, including:

  • Minimising your blog’s data storage needs delays the point at which you run out of space (and it might also save you money).
  • It makes your pages leaner, so they load faster – which benefits all your site’s visitors.
  • It’s the greener choice, as it reduces society’s need to generate electricity. (Although you don’t pay for this directly, in effect we all do.)
  • Image optimisation is quick and easy to do, and it’s really not difficult to learn how to do it.

I thought it might be useful to illustrate this with an example…

All Things Bright and Beautiful (a case study)

Ju-Lyn, the owner of the site, kindly agreed to let me shine a spotlight on it.

Here’s what Ju-Lyn says on the site’s last post:

After much contemplation, I’ve decided to start a new blog instead of upgrading this current one which is pushing close to the memory limit. I’ve consulted some of you, dear BlogFriends, who have done one or the other, and I have dug deep as to where I see myself with blogging in the coming years.

Ju-Lyn, on All Things Bright and Beautiful

Had Ju-Lyn optimised her images, that memory limit would still be far away. She might even have found that she’d never been faced with the problem with which she wrestled here.

Church of St Francis of Assisi, Singapore, 21Feb2021 by Ju-Lyn (optimised to the actual size needed)

As an example: the image in that post, linked above, is rendered as 250 by 333 (pixels), yet the actual image is a massive 3024 by 4032; the WordPress.com system automagically resized it to fit.

The ‘weight’ of the original image, in terms of how much space it requires on disk, is ~1.5 megabytes (MB). That itself is pretty big, though some of the pictures my dumbphone gives me are twice that, or even larger.

With Ju-Lyn’s permission, I made a copy of that image and resized it to the actual size used on the post – 250 by 333 pixels. It’s the one shown here on this page.

The ‘weight’ of this resized image is just 13 kilobytes (KB). That’s less than 1% of the original. To put it another way, in case percentages aren’t your thing: the space required by this one unoptimised image is as much as that needed by a hundred optimised ones.

Here’s a link to the original image. Depending upon your bandwidth, you may notice how slowly it loads (on first access), compared with the smaller copy.

A quick look around other pages on the site suggests that all of its other images are also unoptimised. I’m pretty sure that this is the reason for the looming ‘memory limit’ problem that caused Ju-Lyn to start afresh with a new site (that one’s called ‘Touring My Backyard‘).

Also, optimising your images has another distinct benefit: it allows your pages to load much more quickly. That’s a kindness to all of your site’s visitors. (It’s also of particular relevance to those accessing your site via a dumbphone: large images burn through data budgets!)

A bit of personal history

Back in the early days of the innerwebz, ‘broadband’ hadn’t yet been devised; everyone and his dog connected with a modem on ‘dial-up‘, and the bandwidth available using that was a tiny fraction of what we’re now used to. In those early days, I designed websites for businesses, and to make them fly it was crucial to make each page as lean as possible so that it loaded fast. Images were always the issue… and so I learned how to optimise them.

So, when I started blogging, over a decade later, I naturally used the same techniques. My blog here, ‘Wibble’, has been going since 2007. Its media library contains just over 500 images, yet the total weight of all of those is less than 40MB – because every single one of them has been optimised. That total is just 1% of my 6GB allotment (I have a WordPress.com ‘personal plan’; free sites get half that). I’ll probably be dead long before I get to even 2%, let alone anywhere near the alloted maximum, so I’ll never have a need to close ‘Wibble’ down and start afresh.

Reducing your data storage needs is the green choice

There’s another excellent reason you should consider adopting this technique: it’s the green choice.

In ‘Diving deep into the blogosphere‘ I made a stab at estimating the number of blog posts that exist (just on WordPress.com), and came up with a number: 21 billion (and that’s almost certainly an underestimate).

Now, not all of those posts have photographic images on them, but a lot of them do (and by far the majority of those images aren’t optimised; they’ll have been plonked on the page directly from the camera). Let’s say a quarter of all of those pages contain at least one such image, and that the weight of each image is ~1.5MB as in the example from the case study above. So, that’s about five billion times 1.5MB, which comes out as a staggering 7.5 petabytes (PB). And that’s just for images, the vast majority of which are humongously larger than they need to be.

ARSAT data center (2014) by IMarcoHerrera (resized to 350×234 pixels, ~19KB) CC BY-SA 4.0
(click to embiggen)

All that data has to be stored somewhere: in data centres, which are industrial-scale operations, some of which use as much electricity as a small town. Globally, about two-thirds of electricity is generated by fossil fuels. So, if you’re as concerned about climate change as I am and want to reduce your own carbon footprint, one way to take action yourself is to minimise how much data you store. Yes, of course it’s true that images are a tiny fraction of the whole of society’s data storage needs, but it all adds up. As enormous as ‘7.5PB’ is, it’s still just a drop in the pond. Global demand for data storage is measured in zettabytes (ZB) – millions of PB – and growing fast.

We all need to find ways to be kinder to Spaceship Earth, and this one is very easy to do.

Cutting to the chase

My own rule of thumb for the width of images on web pages has long been 350 pixels for centre-aligned images, and 250 pixels for left- or right-aligned (to give the adjacent text more room). On a dumbphone this distinction is irrelevant, as images are rarely, if ever, shown with adjacent text.

It’s very quick and easy to make your images smaller. I use Paint Shop Pro (version 6, which, while it’s ‘obsolete’, still does exactly what I need it to do: if it ain’t broke, why fix it?). But you don’t have to use that: there are other software applications available (but don’t even bother looking at MS-Paint, that’s utterly useless!). There are also many websites that offer free online image manipulation.

Another thing to bear in mind, when visiting sites that offer images, is that these may offer downloads in a variety of different sizes – though you may have to hunt for that option. On both Unsplash and Pexels, for example, the default download link is to the highest resolution image. However, if you click on the image presented on the site first, that opens up a new window with a ‘Download free’ button offering more options. ‘Small’ is 640 pixels wide: more than big enough for most purposes, but still a substantial saving. One of the options Pexels offers is a ‘custom’ size, which can remove the need to do further image manipulation.

For instance, an image I just happened to look at on Unsplash (‘tools in order’ by Mikael Kristenson) offered me a whopping 5.7MB file by default (8688×5792), but the ‘Small’ version (640×426) is only 57KB – just 1% the size, yet still perfectly adequate.

Sometimes, of course, you’ll want a high resolution, such as when you want to crop the image to show only a part of it. Or you may want versions at different sizes (such as when you want to do the ‘click to embiggen trick‘ that I’ve used on the ARSAT Data Center image above).

I think that just about covers it. If you have any questions, please ask. I’d be happy to help! :)

Addendum 20Nov2021

While responding to Goldie’s comment on this post, I found some WordPress.com support pages containing a lot of helpful information on this topic, including a page devoted to image optimization and an overview that you may find useful.

Posted in Computers and Internet, Energy, Environment, Strategy, Tech tips | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 55 Comments

No more “blah, blah, blah” – we need ACTION, NOW

Posted on November 2, 2021 by peNdantry
‘Honest Government Ad | COP26 Climate Summit’ from thejuicemedia

Hello. Bonjour. ???, Salaam ??? ???. I’m from the Australien Government with a message for the world as we gather in Glasgow for this crucial Climate Summit: Fuck you.

Over the coming days, our Prime Marketer will be there trying to shake a lot of hands and saying a lot of “blah blah blah”, like, “We’re reducing emissions,” and, “Net Zero by 2050”. But, for those of you not fluent in Cuntonese, the official language of the Australien Government, what he’s saying is, “Fuck you; we’ll keep digging, burning, and exporting fossil fuels, let you do the hard work and then take all the credit.” Fich dich ins knie [get down on your knees].

We have lots of experience at this because that’s what we do back home, where we let the states and territories build renewables, subsidise EVs, and retire coal plants, while we obstruct renewables, shit-talk EVs and subsidise coal plants – and then take credit for reducing emissions. We even take credit when those reductions are due to policies the opposition introduced when it was in office: policies we scrapped, causing emissions to rise again.

Sometimes we even take credit for things nobody does, like carbon credits for not clearing land that wasn’t ever going to be cleared anyway.

If a tree isn’t cut down in a forest, does it make a sound? Why, yes: ‘cha-ching!’.

All that might sound like we do nothing, but we’re actually very busy: our ‘Environment Minister’ just opened three coal mines in a single month whilst appealing a court ruling that she has a duty of care towards children over climate change – and our Minister for Emission Reduction (yes, that’s really his title) is supporting massive new gas projects that’ll contribute a cubic shit-ton of emissions to the world, not meeting the Paris target: the equivalent of 46 more coal plants; that’s three more than the 43 new coal plants China’s planning to build.

We really are overachievers or, as you Italians might say, “Siamo dei gran stronzi” [“We are great assholes”]. What’s that? How can we be expanding fossil fuels now that we’ve announced ‘Net Zero by 2050’? Oh, sweetheart, we can, precisely because of ‘Net Zero by 2050’!

Does it come with a policy? Nope.
Is it binding? No.
Does it rely on technologies that work, or even fucking exist? Nah.
But does it distract from what we’re doing this decade? You betcha!

And don’t think we’re the only ones: am I right, Norway? Nice huge gas exports you got there. Hey, Canada, America, loving that ‘Line 3’ pipeline you guys just expanded. UK? Nice new oil rigs you got ready to go there in the North Sea. Russia, baby, we see you doing fuck-all.

And to all the other governments attending, we know you want to punch us in the face for obstructing every COP since Kyoto. But, hey, as long as you keep buying our coal and gas exports, we know you secretly love us for it. Most Australians are profoundly ashamed of our climate shitfuckery, so don’t blame them. Well, except the dickheads who keep voting for us; for them, we reserve our biggest fuck-you of all, with our ‘Technology Not Taxes’ plan, which means you pay for bullshit technologies that greenwash fossil fuel companies and they keep paying no taxes.

That’s the Australien way.

We hope you enjoy this summit, and if it fails, don’t forget to thank Scotty from coal fondling and all of us here at the Australien Government. Allez-vous, ??? ??? ???. Yes, touch my ??? [we are a prick].

Authorized by the Department for Blah Blah Blah.

thejuicemedia (these guys are awesome!)

The transcript above was made with the help of Sonix, which did most of the donkey work for a tiny fee (I did have to spend some time tidying it up). Note that I do not have the copyright owner’s permission to publish this transcript here. I’ve investigated the copyright rules regarding transcriptions (more about that here), and one thing I’ve learned is that it’s no defense to make a disclaimer like “these aren’t my words, no copyright infringement intended.” However, I offer the transcription here as a service to society (especially the deaf community). I do hope the copyright owner won’t object. And I hope that you find this video as entertaining and/or interesting as I did.

OK, that’s the comedy skit done; so, what can we do?

Apart from trying to pressure our esteemed ‘leaders’ to actually get off their pompous behinds and do the right thing, there is quite a lot we can all do individually. One example was highlighted to me just the other day by the Ecology Building Society:

https://zero.giki.earth/

And to round things off, here’s a reminder of why we need to care:

A timeline of Earth’s average temperature since the last ice age glaciation, by xkcd

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to do some more preparatory work to ‘remove the trip from Madrid to Moscow and back from my bucket list‘, AKA ‘arrangements to ensure that my remains are not cremated after I’m gone’. (Could I perhaps persuade you to do likewise?)

Posted in ... wait, what?, Climate, Communication, Core thought, GCD: Global climate disruption, Phlyarology, Strategy | Tagged , , , , , , , | 20 Comments

The Magnitude of the Challenge

Posted on October 26, 2021 by peNdantry

With the COP26 climate summit due to kick off in Glasgow on Sunday, here’s a stark warning of what the future holds in store for us all if our global ‘leaders’ fail to come through (as I fully expect them to do).

As Sir David Attenborough said recently:

If we don’t act now, it will be too late.

Sir David Attenborough
Dr Will Steffen from the Australian National University discusses ‘Climate Change: The Magnitude of the Challenge’ at Festival of Ambitious Ideas, May 2016

Dr Will Steffen: OK, now, as Monty Python said, for something completely different: I’m going to talk a bit about climate change, but probably stuff you haven’t seen or heard about before. So, I want to talk about the magnitude of what we have to deal with and the reason that the exciting developments that Laughlin talked about need to be accelerated; they’re not optional, they must be done.

Slide showing global temperature variations wildly swinging over the last 100,000 years, marked with human events from the first migrations out of Africa up to the stable period of the last ~10,000 years (the Holocene).
Slide #1: Human Development and Earth System Dynamics (Source: Greenland Ice Core Data (GRIP) and S. Oppenheimer, “Out of Eden”, 2004)

All right: That’s the 100,000 year history of homo sapiens – half the time we’ve been on the planet. Just look at the last 10,000 years; a very even climate. That’s the only time in our history that we’ve been able to develop agriculture, villages, cities and civilization. It’s a planetary sweet spot, and we’re leaving it really fast.

Slide showing global temperature variations wildly swinging over the last 100,000 years, marked with human events from the first migrations out of Africa up to the stable period of the last ~10,000 years (the Holocene).
Slide #2: Temperature rise: Beyond the envelope of natural variability? (Source: Summerhayes 2015)

That’s the last 2,000 years. Rome was at point zero, the city of Rome. Look: you can see natural variability of climate; that’s temperature, that wavy black line. Look at the right hand end: that’s what we’re doing because we’re burning fossil fuels. It’s shooting way outside the variability – natural variability – that we’ve designed our cities for, and our own physiology is built for.

Slide showing the IPCC 2013 forecasts for two possible global surface temperature futures: one being 'business as usual', taking us up to ~3°C to ~5°C, and a much lower path that assumes action to address the problem.
Slide #3: IPCC temperature projections (Source: IPCC 2013)

We can look toward the future; and these are the projections from climate models. And a lot of people may question them, but climate models are bloody good at getting global average temperature; in fact, they’re spot on, because we understand the physics of the climate system really, really well. Those are our two futures. The future that Laughlin is talking about is the blue one. And that’s very positive because we can get emissions down very fast, as he said, we can stabilize the climate by the period 2050 to 2100. Where are we going now? We’re going on the orange one, and that’s going toward a 4°C temperature rise by the end of this century compared to pre-industrial. Any idea what the temperature difference is between the last ice age and the present? Any guesses? 4°C. See, we’re talking about a shift as big as between an ice age when mastodons and woolly mammoths were around and humans barely survived. We’re talking about the same difference – but not in 5,000 years, in one century.

Dr Will Steffen standing at the lectern, with a slide showing the unprecedented steeply rising forecast of global temp up to 2100AD, with the last two millenia shown for context. Subtitle reads, 'it is impossible to survive that sort of change. That's beyond human physiology'
Slide #4: Projected temperature rise by 2100CE, in the perspective of the last 2,000 years (Historical data plus IPCC projections)

So, let me put that change on the same timeframe that I just showed you. There is our 2,000 year history where we developed our cities, modern civilization. There is the spike at the end where we are now. And there’s the projections, on the same timeframe, at 2100. OK? The problem there is that, in my view, it is impossible to survive that sort of change. It’s beyond human physiology to deal with that sort of change; in fact, large mammals as a whole will not be very good in there. Our cities are designed for that wavy black line there, and remember, a lot of our infrastructure is designed for 100 years. That’s just 100 years. In fact, that 5-6°C is business as usual 85 years from now: a human lifetime. So, what Laughlin is talking about is really important and it is not optional. It must be done and it must be accelerated.

Slide showing the unprecedented steeply rising forecast of global temp up to 2100AD, with the last two millenia shown for context. Arrows show the 2°C to which we're already committed, and the point at which civilisation becomes at risk (~5°C).
Slide #5: Projected temperature rise by 2100CE with additional notes (Historical data plus IPCC projections)

So, let me just leave you then with a couple of numbers. See, that’s what we’re committed to, by the way. Even with the fastest rollout we can of solar, of non-carbon transport, of different agriculture; we’re committed to pretty much 2°C. We’re not going to make the Paris 1.5°C; that’s already out of the question. And that’s already a big shock, but that is the trajectory we’re on now. And that’s a collapse scenario, no matter what we do with all the whizz-bang technology, because physiologically, we can’t survive that. So the real challenge is: we’ve got to make sure we hit that 2°C.

Slide of text detailing three aspects of rates of climate change: Increase in CO2 is ~100 times the max rate in the last deglaciation; Since 1970, global avg temp has risen ~170 times the rate over the past 7000 years (and in the opposite direction); Rate of increased ocean acidification is unparalleled for more than 300 million years.
Slide #6: Rates of Climate Change (Source: De Vos et al 2014; Wolff 2011; Marcott et al 2013; NOAA 2016; Canfield et al 2010)

Let me leave you with some thoughts about rates of climate change. CO2 – that’s the big gas that we’re worried about in the atmosphere – the last time that rocketed up was when we came out of the last ice age; it went up by 100 parts per million in 5,000 years. It was 280 just a century or so ago; it’s hitting 400 now today at Cape Grim, as we speak. All right, that’s 100 times faster than the maximum rate the Earth has experienced. Look at temperatures: since 1970, the global average temperature has risen at a rate of about 170 times the background rate over the past 7,000 years. Why do you think reefs are bleaching all over the world? Why do you think we’re having massive fires in Canada? That’s why. It’s not something for the future; that’s why it’s happening. And ocean acidification: it’s going faster than it has for 300 million years, and that’s why ocean ecosystems as a whole are in trouble.

So, I’ll just leave you with this point: it’s that we have two possible futures. We don’t want that one, for sure. So, everything Laughlin has been talking about – and lots of other people – about getting carbon out of our economy: it’s not optional. If we don’t get carbon out of our economy over the next two or three decades, that’s where we’re heading.

Dr Will Steffen, Climate Change: The Magnitude of the Challenge

The transcript above was made with the help of Sonix, which did most of the donkey work for a tiny fee (I did have to spend some time tidying it up). Note that I do not have the copyright owner’s permission to publish this transcript here. I’ve investigated the copyright rules regarding transcriptions (more about that here), and one thing I’ve learned is that it’s no defense to make a disclaimer like “these aren’t my words, no copyright infringement intended.” However, I offer the transcription here as a service to society (especially the deaf community). I do hope the copyright owner won’t object. And I hope that you find this video as entertaining and/or interesting as I did.

Slide #1 (@21 seconds)

Slide showing global temperature variations wildly swinging over the last 100,000 years, marked with human events from the first migrations out of Africa up to the stable period of the last ~10,000 years (the Holocene).
Slide #1: Human Development and Earth System Dynamics (Source: Greenland Ice Core Data (GRIP) and S. Oppenheimer, “Out of Eden”, 2004)

Human Development and Earth System Dynamics
x-axis: Age (kyrs before present), graduated (left to right) 100, 80, 60, 40, 20
y-axis (left): (can’t make out label), graduated (top to bottom) -34, -38, -42, origin (not marked) ~-46
y-axis (right): label ΔT (temperature change), graduated (top to bottom) 0, -20, origin (not marked) ~-30
Source: Greenland Ice Core Data (GRIP) and S. Oppenheimer, “Out of Eden”, 2004

There is a dashed line that runs across at the level of 0ΔT.

The main chart contains pointers to events:
~95k First migration of fully modern humans out of Africa
~70k Aborigines arrive in Australia
~60k-~40k Migrations from South Asia to Europe
~18k Beginning of agriculture (coincides with the start of the Holocene)
~10k Great Asian, European, African, American civilizations

The graph starts at -38 on the left, and progresses towards the right in crazy, jagged swings up and down across most of the chart. Then, at ~12k, it settles on the 0ΔT line and continues there to the right-hand side. This activity is enclosed by a shaded oval which has a red arrow pointing at it from text that reads ‘Holocene’.

Slide #2 (@41 seconds)

Slide showing global temperature variations wildly swinging over the last 100,000 years, marked with human events from the first migrations out of Africa up to the stable period of the last ~10,000 years (the Holocene).
Slide #2: Temperature rise: Beyond the envelope of natural variability? (Source: Summerhayes 2015)

Temperature rise: Beyond the envelope of natural variability?
x-axis: Years (C.E.), graduated (left to right) 0, 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200, 1400, 1600, 1800, 2000
y-axis: “Stand. Temp. (°C” (truncated), graduated (top to bottom) 0.2, 0, -0.2, -0.4, -0.6
Label below, presumably indicating source: Summerhayes 2015

Three lines slope gradually down from left to right; the middle one begins at 0°C and ends at ~-0.4°C. The two lines either side are 0.1°C away. The label beneath these three says ‘Natural Envelope of Temperature’. Above the lines are two labels: ‘MWP’ (medieval warm period?) from ~1000CE to ~1200CE, and ‘L/A’ (?) from ~1200CE to ~1800CE.
The graph itself starts at -0.2C, stretches across to ~1900CE varying between the upper and lower boundaries of the ‘Natural Envelope of Temperature’ zone, and then abruptly shoots off the top of the chart (creating a shape that I would call ‘the hockey stick’).

Slide #3 (@67 seconds)

Slide showing the IPCC 2013 forecasts for two possible global surface temperature futures: one being 'business as usual', taking us up to ~3°C to ~5°C, and a much lower path that assumes action to address the problem.
Slide #3: IPCC temperature projections (Source: IPCC 2013)

IPCC temperature projections
Chart title: Global average surface temperature change
x-axis: (no label, but inferred calendar years CE), graduated (left to right) 1950, 2000, 2050, 2100
y-axis: (no label, but inferred degrees Celcius), graduated (top to bottom) 6.0, 4.0, 2.0, 0.0, -2.0
Source: IPCC 2013

The graph starts at ~-0.5°C at 1950CE on the left, and progresses towards the right (I assume this is historical data): the line is relatively thin. At 2005CE it splits into two bands that spread as they move towards the right (my assumption is that this spreading represents uncertainty of the accuracy of the projection into the future):
an upper orange band that extends up to ~3°C to ~5°C
a lower blue band that spans ~0°C to ~2°C.

There is a legend at the top left showing black, blue and orange, but I cannot make out the labels :(
There is a blue line extending up from 2005CE. Above the line of the graph before this point is the number ’42’; to the right, the number ’39’ appears above the orange banding, and the number ’32’ appears below the blue banding. I have no clue what those numbers are supposed to represent.

Slide #4 (@138 seconds)

Dr Will Steffen standing at the lectern, with a slide showing the unprecedented steeply rising forecast of global temp up to 2100AD, with the last two millenia shown for context. Subtitle reads, 'it is impossible to survive that sort of change. That's beyond human physiology'
Slide #4: Projected temperature rise by 2100CE, in the perspective of the last 2,000 years (Historical data plus IPCC projections)

This shows slide #2 (the past 2,000 years) together with the range of projected temperature rises, between 1.5°C and an almost inconceivably steep slope up towards a gut-wrenching ~6°C…

Slide #5 (@204 seconds)

Slide showing the unprecedented steeply rising forecast of global temp up to 2100AD, with the last two millenia shown for context. Arrows show the 2°C to which we're already committed, and the point at which civilisation becomes at risk (~5°C).
Slide #5: Projected temperature rise by 2100CE with additional notes (Historical data plus IPCC projections)

As slide #4 above, but with two additional annotations:

  1. An arrow pointing to the 2°C mark at 2100CE, labelled, “Committed“.
  2. An arrow pointing to just below the 5°C mark at 2100CE, labelled, “Earth System moves to a new state? Severe challenge to contemporary civilisation. Possible collapse?“.

Slide #6 (@217 seconds)

Slide of text detailing three aspects of rates of climate change: Increase in CO2 is ~100 times the max rate in the last deglaciation; Since 1970, global avg temp has risen ~170 times the rate over the past 7000 years (and in the opposite direction); Rate of increased ocean acidification is unparalleled for more than 300 million years.
Slide #6: Rates of Climate Change (Source: De Vos et al 2014; Wolff 2011; Marcott et al 2013; NOAA 2016; Canfield et al 2010)

Rates of Climate Change
Source: De Vos et al 2014; Wolff 2011; Marcott et al 2013; NOAA 2016; Canfield et al 2010

This slide features the following sobering facts:

  • Rate of atmospheric CO2 increase over the past two decades is about 100 times the maximum rate during the last deglaciation.
  • Since 1970 the global average temperature has risen at a rate about 170 times the background rate over the past 7,000 years of the Holocene, and in the opposite direction.
  • Rate of increase in ocean acidification is unparalleled for at least the last 300 million years.

If we don’t act now, it will be too late.

Sir David Attenborough
Posted in ... wait, what?, balance, Biodiversity, Core thought, Education, Energy, Environment, GCD: Global climate disruption, Health, Strategy | Tagged , , , , | 22 Comments

How to celebrate being 42 every fourth year

Posted on October 19, 2021 by peNdantry
Deep Thought reveals The Answer

A long time after Deep Thought reveals The Answer to Loonquawl and Phouchg, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect try to figure out what The Question might be. Marvin (the Paranoid Android) had told them that The Question was imprinted in Arthur’s brainwave pattern, so they try to tease it out from his head by means of a makeshift Scrabble set. Arthur draws tiles from a bag, revealing a question:

“What do you get if you multiply six by nine?”
“Six by nine. Forty two.”
“That’s it. That’s all there is.”
“I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001), The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

In these enlightened days, of course, no one believes a word of it (as someone once said). But, nevertheless, the meme of ’42’ spreads relentlessly. Well, it does that in my head, anyway.

If you, like me, are addicted to the meme, I’ve come up with another way you can celebrate it. And it’s a way that allows you to do it once every four years – provided that you’ve completed at least 22 circumsolar navigations. That’s 22 in decimal, of course. Another way of saying ‘decimal’ is ‘base 10’; and numbers can be written specifying the base using positional notation. So, ’22’ can be shown as ’2210‘.

The ‘question’ that Arthur and Ford discover, 610x910, equals 5410. But that answer can also be represented in any other base, not just base 10. In base 13, for instance: 613x913=4213 (four times thirteen plus two). Just to be clear: I didn’t come up with that; someone else did, decades ago. Douglas Adams himself is said to have refuted this explanation, claiming:

I may be a sorry case, but I don’t write jokes in base 13.

Douglas Adams (allegedly: I’ve been unable to verify this quote)

I’ve always thought that was a pity, really; it’s a wonderful solution, as it highlights the reality that we, homo fatuus brutus, the descendants of DNA‘s ‘B Ark’, have made such a grand job of so thoroughly screwing things up. I don’t mean to slur the man’s good name, but I wonder whether he was perhaps just covering up for not having thought of it himself.

My friend Rusty is a fellow forty-two aficionado (with emphasis, naturally, on the ‘fish’). He’s fond of pondering alternative solutions to the answer for The Answer (one particularly good example of which is recounted in my post 42!). Rusty was as pleased as Punch when I told him I’d figured out that he’d be able to celebrate his ’42nd’ trip around the Sun on his next birthday :)

For ages 22 and up, you can figure out the base you need to use to ‘be’ ’42’ from the formula (age-22)/4+5.

Or, if formulas befuddle you, to put it another way:

  1. Subtract 22 from your age.
  2. If the result is negative, you’ll have to wait (until you’re 22). Otherwise:
  3. Halve the result; then halve it again (note that half of zero is zero!)
  4. If the result isn’t a whole number (including 0), try again next year. Otherwise:
  5. Add 5 to give the base conversion needed to make you ’42’.

And if even that’s too much for you, here’s a handy conversion table:

AgeBaseNote
225
266
307
348‘Base 8’ is also known as ‘octal’. A minor geek’s perfect age?
389
4210The ‘natural’ perfect age?
4611
5012
5413
5814
6215
6616‘Base 16’ is ‘hexadecimal’. A major geek’s perfect age?
7017Douglas Adams (RIP), next birthday (11 March)
7418
7819
8220
8621Carl Sagan (RIP), now
9022
9423
9824
Ages at which you can be said to be ’42’ in the given base

So, now I have another day to celebrate: 11Mar2022, the day on which Douglas, were he still with us, could be said to celebrate his ’42nd’ birthday :)

Postscript

In trying to allocate an appropriate date on which to publish this post, I initially thought of 13Apr2022, as that is 42 days before Towel Day next year. But I’ve already got a post scheduled to mark that event.

Then I thought, Why not 42 weeks ahead? Unfortunately, I’ve missed the boat on that, as, by my reckoning, that would be Wednesday 04Aug2021.

But having come so far, I pushed the boat out even farther still, thinking, Why not ’42’ days ahead – but in a different base? 4210 is 2224… and 222 days before Towel Day is 15Oct2021.

Dang. That was last Friday.

And then I thought, So what? It’s all nonsense anyway :)

2022-05-25T10:10:00

  days

  hours  minutes  seconds

until

Towel Day 2022

Note: the clock is calibrated according to 10:10:10 UTC
as that, to me, is the best time for this planetary event.

Posted in ... wait, what?, Just for laughs, memetics, Phlyarology | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 21 Comments

The secret to success

Posted on October 12, 2021 by peNdantry

I was brought up to believe in the value of a meritocracy (my school’s motto was ‘Virtus non stemma’ – ‘Worth, not Birth’). It took me a very long time to recognise that the world doesn’t work that way. Far too many believe that our society is a meritocracy, and that rewards accrue to those most worthy; but the reality is an inversion, and a perversion: ‘Birth, not Worth’.

I chanced upon ‘The Pencilsword #TEN: On a Plate’ by Toby Morris not long ago. While looking for a way to contact Toby to ask for permission to reproduce it, I discovered that he says that ‘#TEN’ is widely stolen, widely shared. It’s all good.

Toby’s insightful cartoon reminded me of a video by Veritasium on ‘the success paradox’, which questions whether success is luck or hard work. I’ve included that below, too (together with a transcription).

I think that these two complement each other wonderfully.

First, you must believe that you are in complete control of your destiny and that your success comes down only to your own talent and hard work. But second, you’ve got to know that’s not true for you or anyone else.

Veritasium

Veritasium: During the COVID lockdown, this headline went viral: “Nearly half of men say they do most of the home schooling; 3% of women agree.” I bring this up not to debate who’s right, but because it’s a great example of something called ‘egocentric bias‘. Most people think they do most of the work. For example, researchers have asked authors of multi-author papers what percentage of the work they personally did; and when they add up those percentages, the sum is on average, 140%. When couples are asked to estimate how much of the housework they do, the combined total is almost always over 100%.

Now, you might think this is because people want to appear more helpful than they actually are, but that’s not it. When couples are asked what fraction of the fights they start, or how much of the mess is theirs, the total is again over 100. People think they do more of the work, but they also think they cause more of the problems. So why is this? I think it’s simply because you experience and remember vividly all of what you do, but not all of what everyone else does. So, naturally, you overestimate your own contributions and underestimate others’. I think this bias leads us to underestimate the influence of other things on our lives, like the role luck plays in our success.

Take hockey players, for example. If you ask a professional hockey player how they managed to reach the NHL, they might mention their hard work, determination, great coaches, their parents’ willingness to get up at 5am, and so on, but they probably won’t acknowledge how lucky they were to be born in January. And yet, in many years, 40% of hockey players selected into top tier leagues are born in the first quarter of the year, compared to just 10% in the fourth quarter. An early birthday can make you up to four times as likely to be a pro hockey player. And the reason for this disparity is presumably because the cut-off date for kids hockey leagues is January 1st. Those born in the first part of the year are a little older and so on average, bigger and faster than kids in their league born late in the year. Now, as they grow up, this difference should eventually shrink to nothing. But it doesn’t; because the young kids who show the most promise are given more time on the ice, and enter more tournaments, where they receive better coaching and improve their skills. And these advantages compound year after year. So by the time you get to the pros, birthdays are heavily skewed towards the start of the year. But does any professional hockey player feel thankful for their birthday? Probably not.

And we are all like that, largely oblivious to the fortunate events that support our success. Probably the most significant bit of luck many of us enjoy is being born into a prosperous country. Around half the variance in income received by people around the world is explained by their country of residence and that country’s income distribution. If you were born in Burundi, for example, which has the world’s lowest gross national income per capita of just $730 a year, it doesn’t matter how smart or hard-working you are, you’re unlikely to earn much as an adult. Now, many people get offended if you point out how big a role chance plays in their success. And I get it, if we are just a product of our circumstances, then our hard work and our talent seem to count for nothing. People think it has to be either skill or luck that explains success. The truth is, you need both. Take these eight track and field world records; all the athletes who achieved these records are obviously world class: extremely dedicated and talented, and yet when they achieved their world records, seven out of eight had a tailwind. Now, these athletes all had the ability to win a gold medal, but to set the world record required a bit of luck as well.

The importance of luck increases the greater the number of applicants applying for just a few spaces. Consider the most recent class of NASA astronauts. From over 18,300 applicants in 2017, only 11 were selected and went on to graduate from the astronaut training program. And we can make a toy model of the selection process. Let’s assume that astronauts are selected mostly based on skill, experience and hard work, but also, say, 5% as a result of luck; fortunate circumstances. For each applicant, I randomly generated a skill score out of 100 and I also randomly generated a luck score out of 100. Then I added those numbers together, weighted in the 95:5 ratio to get an overall score. This score represents the selectors’ judgments, meaning the top 11 by this metric would become astronauts. And I repeated this simulation a thousand times, representing a thousand different astronaut selections. And what I found was the astronauts who were picked were very lucky; they had an average luck score of 94.7. So, how many of these selected astronauts would have been in the top 11 based on skill alone? The answer was, on average, only 1.6. That means even with luck accounting for just 5% of the outcome, nine or maybe 10 of the 11 applicants selected would have been different if luck played no role at all.

When competition is fierce, being talented and hard working is important, but it’s not enough to guarantee success, you also need to catch a break. Largely, I think we’re unaware of our good luck because, by definition, it’s not something we did; like the housework done by your significant other, it goes unappreciated. And here’s the crazy thing: downplaying the importance of chance events may actually improve your probability of success, because if you perceive an outcome to be uncertain, you’re less likely to invest effort in it, which further decreases your chances of success. So it’s a useful delusion to believe you are in full control of your destiny. I mean, if I had known how bad I was when I started YouTube or how much work it would take, I might have given up right then.

Welcome to Veritasium: an online science video blog.

Now, there may be another benefit to overlooking your lucky breaks, which is it makes it easier to justify your place in society. If you have a lot of wealth or power, you can just chalk it up to your own intelligence, effort and perseverance. It makes it easier to accept inequality.

In one experiment, participants were put in groups of three in small rooms to discuss a complex moral problem, and one person in each group was randomly designated the ‘team leader’. Half an hour later, the experimenter came by with four cookies for each team. So who got the extra cookie? In each case, it went to the team leader, even though they had no special aptitude: they didn’t have extra responsibilities and they’d gotten their position through chance alone. Once you have achieved a certain status, it seems natural to feel like you deserve it, and all the other good things that come your way. Now, this is just an anecdote, but whenever I’ve been upgraded to fly business class, I’ve always observed the worst behavior in my fellow privileged passengers; they just act so entitled and uncourteous.

And research has found evidence for this as well. In another experiment, participants were asked to think of a good thing that happened to them recently. And then one group was asked to list their own personal qualities or actions that made that good thing happen. Another group was asked to list external factors beyond their control that led to the event, and a control group was simply asked to list reasons why the good thing happened. Now, for completing this task, participants were told they would be paid $1, but at the end, they were offered the option to donate some or all of the money to a charity. Results showed those who listed their own personal attributes contributed 25% less than those who listed external factors beyond their control.

Now, think of what all this means for people in our society, specifically for people in positions of power, like business leaders and politicians. Now, undoubtedly, most of them are talented and hard working, but they have also been luckier than most. And like most of us, they don’t realize just how lucky they are. And this gives them a distorted view of reality. They’re kind of living in a form of survivor bias. All these leaders have worked hard and ultimately succeeded, so, to them, the world appears fair. In their experience, it rewards hard work. But what they don’t have is the experience of all the people who have worked hard — and failed. So what are they to make of people less successful than themselves? Well, the natural conclusion is that they must just be less talented or less hard working. And this perspective makes them less inclined to be generous; to give back. And they are the ones who set the rules for how society operates.

And this is particularly unfortunate, since one of the main ways many of us are lucky is in our country of residence. But what is a country except for the things put there by people who came before; the roads and the schools, public transport, emergency services, clean air and water and everything like that? It seems a cruel trick of our psychology that successful people without any malice will credit their success largely to their own hard work and ingenuity, and therefore contribute less to maintaining the very circumstances that made that success possible in the first place.

The good news is that acknowledging our fortunate circumstances not only brings us more in line with reality, it also makes us more likeable. In a study where people had to read the transcript of a fictional 60 Minutes interview with a biotech entrepreneur, experimenters tried changing just the last paragraph where the interviewee is talking about the reasons for their company’s success. In one version, the entrepreneur personally takes credit for the success they’ve had. But in the other, he says luck played a significant role. Now, people who read the luck version of the transcript judged the entrepreneur as kinder, and thought they’d be more likely to be close friends with him than those who read the other version of the transcript. And raising our awareness of fortunate events can also make us happier because it allows us to feel gratitude.

Personally, I am grateful to Michael Stephens of Vsauce, who on October 7th, 2012 posted the video, ‘How much does a shadow weigh?‘ which shouts out my slow motion Slinky drop video; and within three days my subscribers had increased by a third — and within a month they had doubled, leading me to quit my part time job and work exclusively on YouTube videos. And I’m grateful to the writer of the free newspaper they give out on the trains in Sydney who didn’t quite understand electricity, leading me to post this picture of their article to my Instagram with a caption, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’. And I’m lucky that the first person to answer correctly was a beautiful woman who became my future wife. Yep, that is how I met your mother. Now, initially, I wanted to make this video just to say our circumstances and psychology conspired to make us oblivious to our own luck; and this leads successful people to view the world as fair and those less successful than them as less talented or less hard-working. And this is before you factor in any discrimination or prejudice. But, it also became apparent to me that I should talk about what to do if you want to be successful in such a world.

And I think the best advice is paradoxical. First, you must believe that you are in complete control of your destiny and that your success comes down only to your own talent and hard work. But second, you’ve got to know that’s not true for you or anyone else. So you have to remember if you do achieve success, that luck played a significant role. And given your good fortune, you should do what you can to increase the luck of others.

[Snipped section where ‘Veritasium’ talks about his ‘Snatoms‘ product, and offers a deal that has long since expired.]

And I really want to thank you for watching; and thank you for all my good luck.

Veritasium: The Success Paradox; Is Success Luck or Hard Work?

The transcript above was made with the help of Sonix, which did most of the donkey work for a tiny fee (I did have to spend some time tidying it up). Note that I do not have the copyright owner’s permission to publish this transcript here. I’ve investigated the copyright rules regarding transcriptions (more about that here), and one thing I’ve learned is that it’s no defense to make a disclaimer like “these aren’t my words, no copyright infringement intended.” However, I offer the transcription here as a service to society (especially the deaf community). I do hope the copyright owner won’t object. And I hope that you find this video as entertaining and/or interesting as I did.

Posted in ... wait, what?, balance, Communication, Core thought, Education, perception, Phlyarology, Strategy | Tagged , , , , , , | 39 Comments

Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot

Posted on October 5, 2021 by peNdantry

Carl Sagan’s marvellous, awe-inspiring ‘Pale Blue Dot’ speech puts Life, the Universe, and Everything* into perspective.

Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagan: That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of: every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines. Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there: on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings; how eager they are to kill one another; how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit? Yes. Settle? Not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the Pale Blue Dot: the only home we’ve ever known.

Carl Sagan (1934–1996)

The transcript above was made with the help of Sonix, which did most of the donkey work for a tiny fee (I did have to spend some time tidying it up). Note that I do not have the copyright owner’s permission to publish this transcript here. I’ve investigated the copyright rules regarding transcriptions (more about that here), and one thing I’ve learned is that it’s no defense to make a disclaimer like “these aren’t my words, no copyright infringement intended.” However, I offer the transcription here as a service to society (especially the deaf community). I do hope the copyright owner won’t object. And I hope that you find this video as entertaining and/or interesting as I did.

Be humble, for you are made of dung. Be noble, for you are made of stars.

Serbian proverb

* Carl would have been 86 now. Which is 42 (in base 21).

Posted in ... wait, what?, balance, Core thought, People, Tributes | Tagged , , , | 17 Comments

I am not pendantry (I am me)

Posted on September 28, 2021 by peNdantry

My friend Goldie, in a short conversation recently via the comment thread on a 2017 post of his* asked me whether my moniker should have an initial capital.

That simple question got me thinking.

A bit of background

I adopted ‘pendantry’ as an Internet alias, a ‘handle’, decades ago on Usenet. It derives from a word I coined at around the same time:

pendant (n). One who, by correcting others, gives himself (or herself) just enough rope by which to hang.

Me (AKA nobody important), circa 1993

Of course, that same character string has also long been used to describe ‘a loose-hanging piece of jewellery‘: and that, I am not. I needed to find a handle that was unique – and without resorting to the practice, especially common at that time, of simply appending random digits.

I am not a number, I am a free man!

Patrick McGoohan (1928–2009) as ‘The Prisoner’
The Prisoner – Simpsons Parody

Adding ‘ry’ to ‘pendant’ did the trick, creating a new word intended to mean ‘engaging in the activity of being a pendant’. While still a noun, it’s still not a proper one. And as it’s a thoroughly unimportant one, it’s utterly undeserving of an initial capital – as indeed, in the Grand Scheme of Things, am I. Some might argue that it is a proper noun (which would mandate the use of a capital ‘P’) as it is a word used as a name; but it’s just one of many aliases I use on the Internet. Although it does feature with a capital ‘P’ in my 2012 post ‘Pendantry (an explication)‘, that’s purely due to the coincidence of the word’s position at the beginning of that post’s title. It’s a nickname, a label that no more demands an initial capital than does my email logon alias at my place of work; and it is no more ‘me’ than is my given name, though convention demands that I use capital letters for that.

The joke’s on me

Initially, I was quite pleased with myself for crafting the handle. It served two purposes: it afforded me a ‘get out of jail free’ card on those occasions when, while correcting others, I would get it wrong (though I do try hard not to make that error, I’m only human).

It was also intended as a trap (one that I, at the time, considered to be a humorous one): it allowed me to pounce on those who might accuse me of having a typo in my nickname – and turn the tables on them. That has indeed happened a few times over the years (especially in the early days), and although I expect that some may have seen the funny side of it, I now think that it’s very likely that many did not.

Call me stupid, but it’s only fairly recently that it’s dawned on me that my attempt to be funny has backfired. On many occasions, I’ve been addressed, or referred to, as ‘pedantry’ (with a single ‘n’). An honest mistake, and it’s one that, lately, I’ve been more and more hesitant to point out, as doing so can cause embarrasment. But, considering that it’s part of this blog’s address, it’s kind of important (well, to me at least). There is in fact a site called ‘pedantry.wordpress.com’ (with one ‘n’). It was set up in 2006, and consists of just a single blog entry by ‘tallguy’ (though it’s true that I am a guy who is tall, that alias is not one of mine). I’ve just visited that site – to see that Fandango left a comment earlier this year, one that indicates that he has made that very mistake. I wonder how many others might have done the same over the years?

I’ve long known that many people don’t recognise that the letter ‘n’ appears not once, but twice, in ‘pendantry’; but it’s only after considering Goldie’s polite enquiry whether or not he should ‘capitalize my nick’ that it struck me that there was a possible solution to this conundrum: one that could kill two birds with one stone.

Time brings opportunities for learning, and change

People don’t like being told they’re wrong; especially so when they consider the mistake they’ve made to be a trivial one. I had cause to reflect upon this earlier this year, when one new blogging acquaintance rebelled against my attempt to (as I saw it) help them to improve, and made it quite clear that my comments weren’t at all welcome. I wrote a post on the subject at the time: ‘Everything has its place‘.

The fashion for correct grammar (which I consider to be useful, on the grounds that it enhances communication) has fallen out of fashion. As with reliance on ‘sat-navs’ making the art of being able to read a map redundant, reliance on autocorrect (which my brother, quite appropriately in my view, insists should be called ‘autopervert’) has made people more familiar with typographical mistakes, and more lazy in their own writing. The Anti-Grammar-Nazi Brigade appears to be going from strength to strength, and sometimes it’s necessary to accept the inevitable.

The upshot is: it makes complete sense to draw attention to that first ‘n’… and Goldie gave me the clue I needed that has enabled me to do just that. No, my nick does not need an initial capital, I realized: it needs an internal one!

A quick trip to WordPress.com/me allowed me to change my name, to peNdantry.

You could say that I’ve grown up. (Well, in some ways, at least.)

Thanks once again, Goldie; you did indeed give me food for thought. (As well as the opportunity to craft what I hope some will consider an interesting post.)

* … which I stumbled upon while doing my duty as a member of the ?Random Raiders!, proving once again that what goes around, comes around.

Posted in ... wait, what?, balance, Communication, Just for laughs, perception, Phlyarology | Tagged , , , , , , | 22 Comments

The implausible green star hunter

Posted on September 21, 2021 by peNdantry

None of us will ever forget the day we saw it.

Though we may live to regret having done so.

We weren’t looking for it, as such – naturally not: why would one deliberately try to find something that can’t exist?

What we had been doing was cataloguing the stars, systematically and methodically, day after day, year after year; and, all the while, honing our technology, techniques and devices to reach farther and faster.

Hunting for some proof that we weren’t alone in this vast universe.

We’d been scanning the sky for decades.

And then, one day, we saw it.

Or, rather, I saw it.

A green star.

In case you don’t know, I should explain. There are red stars, blue stars, and white stars. You might think, since the three primary colours of light are red, green, and blue, that there should be green stars, too: but you’d be wrong. Green stars aren’t just incredibly rare: the nature of reality forbids their very existence.

I could prove that to you if I had more time. But I don’t, because they’re coming. Somehow, they knew that I’d seen this impossible thing. Within minutes, I heard them – in my mind. At first, I thought it was just a dream… but it soon became clear that everyone in the world heard them, too.

The message was very polite, very friendly. It was quite long, but it boiled down to:

“Greetings! So glad to meet you, at last. Our ambassadors are on their way and will be with you tomorrow.”

Excuse me, I have to go now, I have so much to do to prepare for their arrival. The President has to be briefed, my budlings need to be fed and watered – as does my pet Zeek. And the stress of the last few hours has brought on a case of epidermal shock; my skin is in dire need of exfoliation, it’s more sickly yellow than healthy green right now, and, as ‘The Discoverer’, I want to look my best. There are bound to be photographers.

Oh, I do hope that I still have enough time to get my ears repointed.

Word count: 360; Reading time: 1 min 19 sec (numbers courtesy of wordcounter.net)

This work of fiction was inspired by:

The Star That Can’t Exist, by Cool Worlds

‘The Star That Can’t Exist’
presented by Professor David Kipping
(See below for full transcript)

As placing this video’s transcript here would make for a long scroll, I’ve moved it to the foot of the post – because I didn’t want to risk you missing the finale:

Kermit sings “It’s not easy being green”

It’s not easy being green.
Having to spend each day
the color of the leaves
when I think it might be nicer
being red
or yellow
or gold
or something much more colorful like that.

It’s not easy being green.
It seems you blend in
with so many other ordinary things
and people tend to pass you over
because you’re not standing out
like flashy sparkles in the water,
or stars in the sky.

But,
green is the color of spring.
And green can be cool
and friendly like.
And green can be big,
like a mountain,
or important,
like a river,
or tall like a tree.

When green is
all there is to be,
it could make
you wonder why,
but, why wonder?
Why wonder?

I’m green,
it’ll do fine,
it’s beautiful.

And I think it’s
what I want to be.

The transcript above was made with the help of Sonix, which did most of the donkey work for a tiny fee (I did have to spend some time tidying it up). Note that I do not have the copyright owner’s permission to publish this transcript here. I’ve investigated the copyright rules regarding transcriptions (more about that here), and one thing I’ve learned is that it’s no defense to make a disclaimer like “these aren’t my words, no copyright infringement intended.” However, I offer the transcription here as a service to society (especially the deaf community). I do hope the copyright owner won’t object. And I hope that you find this video as entertaining and/or interesting as I did.

… and here, as promised, is the transcript of the earlier video:

The Star That Can’t Exist, by Cool Worlds

Narrated by Professor David Kipping

This video is sponsored by Brilliant.

The universe is peppered with a zoo of breathtaking astronomical objects: everything from quasars to icy moons, from tidal streams to magnetars. Time and time again, nature reminds us that her imagination can easily exceed our own. Yet, amongst this menagerie of phenomena, there is one simple type of object which is bizarrely absent; a case where our imagination indeed wins out: a green star.

The physics of light teaches us that green is one of the three primary additive colors, along with red and blue. Mix these three colors together and you can make any other color you want. And so, when we first learn about stars, it’s perhaps not remotely surprising that some stars are red and some stars are blue, and yet there are no green stars. At first, you might think that perhaps the answer to this is that there are, in fact, green stars out there somewhere; just that they’re incredibly rare. After all, in infinite space, surely all possibilities eventually happen. It’s just a question of travelling far enough to find one.

Yet, the absence of green stars isn’t merely some issue of insufficient data: it’s far deeper than that. It turns out to be an intrinsic rule of our universe. Green stars simply cannot exist. It’s as if somebody wrote into the rules of our universe that, ‘yes, you can have red stars and blue stars, but our universe doesn’t deserve to enjoy the restful, pale light of a tranquil green star’. But, why? Well, to understand this, we have to cover what gives a star its color.

Stars are essentially nuclear engines, converting lighter elements, primarily hydrogen, into heavier elements, primarily helium, deep within their core. The thermal energy released keeps the inner core incredibly hot – over 10 million Kelvin. The outer, inert, layers absorb some of this heat, too, through radiation and convection, and the outermost layer of the Sun is about 6,000 Kelvin. Almost all of the atoms inside a star have been ionized because of the high temperatures involved. So, what this means is that the protons and the electrons have been separated to form this kind of plasma soup. Now, photons, as they try to pass through this plasma, will strongly interact with the ions, so much so that the plasma is essentially opaque to visible light. So, that means that we can’t actually see the inner layers of the Sun. The outer layer fully blocks our view and has no transparency. Thus, when we look at a star, its appearance, including its color, is completely governed by that outermost layer, known as the photosphere. So really, rather than saying there are no green stars, we should really say there are no green photospheres, since that is the only part of the star that we can actually see. Ok, fine, but what gives photospheres their color then? Or, really, I guess a more precise way of framing this would be to ask, “in what ways does light get released from this photosphere layer?”

There’s three basic ways in which light can be released from a given strata of matter: transmission, reflection and emission. Now, we’ve already discussed how stars are mostly a plasma, which means that they have negligible transparency and reflection. Light just gets absorbed by the ionized material, so that leaves us with emission only. Molecules can release radiation through all sorts of interesting processes, such as transitions between different vibrational modes within the molecule. But a star is just too hot for any of that; the extreme heat just rips apart these molecules into their constituent atoms. Now, atomic transitions, they can still occur, but the vast majority of a star’s energy is released through the most basic process: thermal radiation.

To an excellent approximation stars just emit in the same way that an idealized blackbody would. That means that the distribution of how much high energy and low energy photons are produced, known as the emission spectrum, is conveniently governed by a single parameter, its temperature. This curve, known as the Planck or blackbody function, is one of those topics that our Columbia [University] physics students get to wrestle with in their freshman year. It’s an incredibly important physics concept, but sadly one that we just don’t have time to dive into deeply today. However, a great way to learn more about this concept is through our sponsor, Brilliant.

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Now, for the purposes of this video, the most important thing about the Planck function is that no matter what temperature we choose, it always has the same basic shape. It starts from zero, rises up to some peak and then slowly drops back down again. This immediately tells us that blackbodies, and thus photospheres, and thus stars do not emit light at just one wavelength, one color of light. No, they emit at many colors simultaneously. And yet more; most of the wavelengths are completely invisible to us. Our eyes can’t see x-rays and ultraviolet, nor can they see infrared and radio waves. What we see, the color, is governed by the shape of the blackbody curve within this tiny little sliver corresponding to the visible band. The overall basic shape of the Planck function is really always the same, except that it shifts over to higher energies as the object’s temperature rises.

Here, I’m showing you what the disc of a star would look like as we change its stellar temperature. On the right, I’m showing you the location of the star’s color on an RGB color wheel. As you can see, the increasing temperature changes the star’s color from red to white to blue, but, gracefully, it avoids green. With what we’ve discussed so far, we’re actually ready to get some understanding as to why green stars don’t exist, indeed why they can’t exist. The visible part of the spectrum can be further subdivided into three colors: red, for the low energy end, then green in the middle and then finally blue at the highest energy. Now, in this visible region, the blackbody spectrum can really just do one of three things. If we have a very hot star, then the spectrum is shifted over to the high energy side and thus, within the visible region, we will be looking at the declining tail part of the Planck function. Ok, so, what does that mean? Well, it means that we have a little bit of red, a bit more green and lots of blue. So, hot stars tend to look more blue than anything else. Alternatively, let’s take a very cool star. Now, the peak occurs in the low energy region, and thus the part of the Planck function falling within the visible band is the rising portion. So, this means that we have lots of red, some green, but hardly any blue. Thus, overall, red wins, and we get a reddish looking star.

Ok, so that’s two very different possibilities and yet still no green star. But perhaps you might be thinking that there is some middle ground here. Perhaps we can tune this to create, finally, our harmonious green hue. Let’s try setting the peak of this curve right in the middle of the green band: that would correspond to a star whose photosphere was about 5,400 Kelvin. Now, as we can see here, it peaks in the green, but it’s still overall pretty flat in the visible region. That means that there’s still quite a bit of red and blue light mixed in here. In fact, with a bit of math, we can calculate that the star produces about 15% of its total light in the green band, but 13% in the red and 13% in the blue. And if you add roughly equal amounts of red, green and blue together, well, then you get white light. In fact, this is indeed the case for our Sun. It peaks close to green light here, but still appears white to us, at least if you’re in space. That’s because of this contaminating contribution of the red and blue components. The only way that we can make a star genuinely appear green would be if we could keep the peak of this function in the middle of the green band, but simultaneously compress it down, kind of squish that function so it peaks more heavily in the green wavelengths.

But, of course, with the Planck function, as we’ve already discussed, there is only one controlling parameter: the temperature. There’s just nothing else that we can change here to possibly create that desired ‘squishing’ effect. Remarkably, that statement is true, even if we try to change the constants of the universe itself. In the Planck function, we have the following three constants that we could consider varying; these are fundamental constants of the universe. In 1893, Wilhelm Vien showed that the peak of the Planck function occurs at this wavelength, so let’s impose that this must equal 530 nanometres, that’s the center of the green band. The width of the Planck function is a bit trickier; that’s characterized by its standard deviation. Remember, we want to try and shrink this down to something like 10 nanometers or smaller to create our vivid green star. With a bit of math, we find that the standard deviation of the Planck function is this, which, recall, we’re going to try and set to be below 10 nanometers. Look, don’t worry about the details here; the important thing is that the second term looks familiar because it’s already in our other equation for the peak, so we can do a little substitution here to conveniently remove this.

Finally, we can multiply through these numbers here to get our final simplified inequality. Remember that this represents our requirement for a universe to create a green star. It states that we need 900 nanometers to be smaller than 10 nanometers, but, of course, it’s not. In fact, it’s almost 100 times bigger. And note that I didn’t even choose constants of the universe here; they all just canceled out. It’s somewhat staggering, then, that there aren’t just no green stars in our universe: there are no green stars, even in a multiverse of differing physical constants.

Is there any way then to create a star which appears green? Well, clearly trying to change the constants of nature doesn’t work, nor indeed is trying to add different stars together. If I take a red star and a blue star and I kind of merge them almost on top of one another, well, that would just create a whitish blob of light again; not a green star. There is one way that we could create a green appearing star, but it’s really just an optical illusion that only happens when we view stars through a planetary atmosphere. Our Sun provides a clear example of this through the famous green flash effect. As the Sun sets on the horizon, light has to travel through more atmosphere than when the Sun is overhead. The atmosphere preferentially scatters blue light, hence, why the sky is blue. And so at sunset and sunrise, the Sun’s blue light component gets almost totally removed. And so that leaves us with a reddish looking sun. Now, to get green, we have to combine this scattering effect with another effect called refraction. As the Sun dips below the horizon, light from the Sun can actually still reach us: it can bend through the air via refraction and thus continue to reach our eyes. But crucially, red light doesn’t bend, doesn’t refract, as strongly as green light does. So, what that means is that there’s a certain angle at which the red light isn’t bending enough: it gets blocked off by the horizon, thus leaving us just with the green light component. In practice, the Sun dips behind the horizon pretty quickly, and so this effect doesn’t last very long, sometimes just a few seconds, hence the name the green flash.

In the same way, then, we can imagine that a bright Sun-like star, but not the Sun itself, that is setting on the horizon, could also appear green via the same effect. But remember, this is just a temporary optical illusion. In deep space, dust clouds can sometimes interact with light, too, but it’s difficult to imagine how such clouds could conspire to create the same effect in a persistent way. It really does seem as if nature prohibits green stars to grace our skies.

Now, in a way, this actually presents kind of an interesting opportunity because, look, we have established that to the best of our knowledge of the laws of physics, as we know them, nature cannot produce green stars; it simply can’t do that. And so, if we ever did see a green star out there in the universe, well, it cannot be natural. It would have to be an artificial effect. Somebody must have done that to that star. And look, it’s not even that technically difficult to imagine how that would happen. We can make light sources appear green all the time; you just grab a green filter, and you stick it in front of the light source. So, we could imagine a advanced civilization perhaps wrapping their star up in a kind of bubble of semi-transparent material to create the illusion of their star appearing green.

Of course, building a filter this large would be an outrageous engineering project, one only possible by a highly advanced civilization. But, in principle, this bubble, which might remind you of a Dyson sphere, could just sit around the star for billions of years, making the star appear green and thus artificial. For billions of years, anyone looking at that star would immediately be able to tell us something was very wrong with it, that someone must have done that deliberately. But, why would somebody do this? Well, who knows, but maybe it’s nothing more complicated than a cosmic art piece made by a highly advanced civilization which thinks nothing of wrapping stars up in giant bubbles for their own amusement. Or, maybe it’s made by a civilization which is trying to use it as a beacon, as a signal, that somebody lives here in this neck of the woods. After all, what we have here is an effect which is non-natural; an effect which is viewable from afar just by the color alone; it could persist for potentially billions of years, and it is effectively a completely passive beacon, requiring no active power source to maintain.

Whenever astronomers come across possible non-natural phenomena like this, we call it a ‘technosignature’. Narrowband radio communication is perhaps the most famous example of this. What makes this a green star effect, an interesting technosignature, I think, is that it’s incredibly easy to look for. We can trivially measure the color of a star, and indeed we regularly do so for billions of them. Now, I bet when you started this video, a video about why we don’t see green stars in the universe, you didn’t expect it to lead to technosignatures. But I think this little journey that we’ve taken together here kind of illuminates how astronomers often come up with technosignatures in the first place. You start with a simple question about the nature of the universe; you then consider through a possible natural exceptions to this behavior: you estimate how observable this effect might be, and, in the end, you might be left with something potentially interesting to go after.

Whether a civilization would actually go to the enormous trouble of doing this: who knows? I have to admit I’m rather skeptical about that. But, on the other hand, xenopsychology is complete speculation. So, perhaps so. The real point here, and ultimately the strength of any technosignature, is that this effect is incredibly easy for us to check out. Many stars have already had their colors measured and catalogued online, available through services like SIMBAD. And, if we find a green star and it turns out not to be an alien civilization after all, then you’ve just discovered the very first example of a completely new phenomenon anyway.

So there you have it. Green stars can’t naturally exist, not in our universe or indeed within a broader multiverse of varying physical constants. But, despite that, perhaps they are out there: beacons of artificial construct, monuments to a civilization’s mastery of the cosmos. But, more importantly, I hope this illustrates how sometimes asking simple questions, the kind of questions that a child might pose, can lead to profound and fascinating insights. Never dismiss those simple questions, because sometimes pulling on those threads can unravel the very sense of our place in the universe. So, until the next video, stay thoughtful and stay curious.

Thank you so much for watching this video, everybody. If you liked it, then be sure to click the subscriber link down below [assumes YouTube], so of course, you get access to all of our future videos too. And if you really want to help us out, then you can become a regular supporter of our research group, the Cool Worlds Lab, by clicking the link up above [assumes YouTube] where you get access to special perks as a member of our team. Thanks for sticking to the end on this one and until next time, have a cosmically awesome day.

The transcript above was made with the help of Sonix, which did most of the donkey work for a tiny fee (I did have to spend some time tidying it up). Note that I do not have the copyright owner’s permission to publish this transcript here. I’ve investigated the copyright rules regarding transcriptions (more about that here), and one thing I’ve learned is that it’s no defense to make a disclaimer like “these aren’t my words, no copyright infringement intended.” However, I offer the transcription here as a service to society (especially the deaf community). I do hope the copyright owner won’t object. And I hope that you find this video as entertaining and/or interesting as I did.

Posted in ... wait, what?, Fantasy, Flash fiction, People, Science, Science Fiction | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Confirmation that two-thirds of headline analyzers spout utter nonsense

Posted on September 14, 2021 by peNdantry

On the grounds that headlines are all-important for getting potential readers to actually click through to read the rubbish I write, I’ve been spending more time lately refining them than I used to. Making sure the spelling’s correct, trying to get the length right, and including keywords, positive words, emotive words, ‘calls to action’ and so on.

This is all based upon the kind of advice that’s quite commonly bandied about, which tends to look like:

  • keep it short (8-14 words)
  • restrict the number of characters to around 70
  • focus on ‘who’, not ‘why’
  • be specific
  • put keywords near the beginning – or the end
  • consider adding a [bracketed qualifier]
  • try to optimise for your audience, search and social media

(That list is mostly a summary of an article by Corey Wainwright called ‘How to Write Catchy Headlines and Blog Titles Your Readers Can’t Resist‘ – I’d offer a hat tip to ‘The Nerdy Lion’ for providing me with that link, but his website seems to be having problems at the moment.)

The thing is: although I consider the extra effort worthwhile from the point of view of crafting a more well-rounded post, I don’t think that it’s made the slightest difference to my blog’s traffic.

Dr Bob Rich put me on to the Advanced Marketing Institute’s ‘Headline Analyzer‘ some time ago, and I’ve been using that (thanks, Bob!). It’s undoubtedly been useful in getting me to think more about the words I choose. But, while it’s useful for honing headlines – I tend to agree with its assessments when it offers different values for similar alternatives – I’ve come to realize that the ‘ratings’ it generates are more than a little bit suspect. For one thing, it provides percentage values, which imply some sort of scientific basis, and these are to two decimal places, suggestive of a high degree of accuracy; yet a suspiciously large proportion of the results I’ve seen end in ‘.00’. For another, there’s a high occurrence of duplicate numbers such as ‘22.22%’ and ‘33.33%’ (those two, in particular, appear far too frequently).

A while ago, I even stumbled on one headline that had scored a nonsensical ‘125.00%’. Unfortunately, I can’t now recall what that headline was. I used the form on the tool’s website to send them a query about it, and neglected to take a copy; I didn’t get a response. I’d pretty much forgotten about it until recently; when working on the post ‘A unique opportunity (time-limited offer!)‘ – its headline scored exactly ‘100.00%’ (!), and it was that that caused me to smell a rat.

The Advanced Marketing Institute's '100.00%' assessment of 'A unique opportunity (time-limited offer!)'

Disillusioned, I went searching on DuckDuckGo for alternative tools, and then spent some time comparing their results. What I discovered was quite interesting….

A comparison of three – free! – headline analyzers

1. Advanced Marketing Institute (‘AMI’)

https://www.aminstitute.com/process/headline.cgi

Pros:

  • no login
  • fast
  • simple

Cons:

  • minimalistic
  • suspicious results

2. isitwp

https://www.isitwp.com/headline-analyzer/

Pros:

  • no login
  • good suggestions

Cons:

  • mostly quick but sluggish at times
  • when displaying the headline, Irritatingly Transforms Each Word To An Initial Capital

3. CoSchedule

https://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer

Pros:

  • retains a history of previous entries
  • comprehensive suggestions (although perhaps over-the-top!)

Cons:

  • registration required (the data requested implies that only companies are invited, but nonsense alias information was accepted)
  • insistent nagging to ‘upgrade to premium’ (paid plan, and not cheap)

The results

I ran a couple of dozen of my most recent post titles past each of these three ‘headline analyzers’. None of them agreed on their assessments of the headlines I offered them. One that CoSchedule rated in the top three, the other two rated in the bottom three; one that AMI rated second best (85.71%), isitwp rated as worst (42), while CoSchedule gave it a noncommittal value (57).

And none of the results, as far as I could determine, bore any correlation at all to any post’s traffic, in terms of views, likes or comments.

When I took my five best-performing posts (in terms of views) in the last year and fed their titles to these tools, not one of them came up with a particularly high rating, and their average scores were much the same as the average of those I’d examined earlier.

Then, just for fun, I tried the first two lines of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky:

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe

AnalyzerRatingComments
AMI0.00%‘Neutral’
isitwp48‘positive sentiment’, ‘more likely to get clicks if it had more uncommon words’ (really?)
CoSchedule70‘easy for most readers to comprehend’, ‘message is clear and concise’ (wait, what?)
Analysis of the first two lines of ‘Jabberwocky’

What started out as just a quirky idea ended up confirming my suspicions that these so-called ‘analyzers’ are little more than self-absorbed nonsense generators. Only ‘AMI’ offered anything resembling an honest judgement of this particular ‘headline’.

And here are the results for the title of this post:

AnalyzerRatingComments
AMI22.22%‘Empathetic’
isitwp48Your headline has a negative sentiment.
CoSchedule65‘Nice work! Your headline’s message is clear and concise.’
Analysis of ‘Confirmation that two-thirds of headline analyzers spout utter nonsense’

Oh, look, there’s that ‘22.22%’ again. I think that pretty much sums it all up.

Don’t get me wrong: I still think that headlines matter. I intend to continue using the ‘AMI’ tool (unless, perhaps, you’re able to suggest a better one?); mainly because it’s fast, totally free, and doesn’t take itself as seriously as its competition. I believe that, in the blogosphere at least, what’s more important than catchy headlines is: good connections with other bloggers.

As a counterpoint, though, I offer a highly thought-provoking video from Veritasium on his experience with titles on YouTube:

Veritasium: ‘Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective’
AnalyzerRatingComments
AMI50.00%‘Intellectual’
isitwp45Your headline is too short.
CoSchedule47‘Nice work! Your headline’s message is clear and concise.’
Headline analysis of ‘Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective’

Veritasium: Can I tell you something I’m bad at? I am terrible at making clickbait. Up until two years ago, my most popular video was about a basketball being dropped from a dam with a bit of backspin. It takes off like a rocket and shoots out way farther than you’d expect. This video was embedded on literally hundreds of news websites, and in its first week it got 16.3 million views. But almost none of those views came on the YouTube platform. Why? Because I gave it this thumbnail and I called it ‘Strange Applications of the Magnus Effect’.

(This video is sponsored by KiwiCo. More about them at the end of the show.)

Now I believe within YouTube, I’m used as an example of how not to package your video. As if to demonstrate just how bad a title and thumbnail this is, someone else re-uploaded the video with the clever title ‘Basketball Dropped From Dam’, and within a few weeks that video had received tens of millions of views on YouTube. This was when YouTube gave me access to Content ID; that’s the system that allows you to earn revenue when someone else re-uploads your videos, which was good, but I still wasn’t very good at clickbait. So for this video, I called in an expert.

Veritasium: I wanted to see your reaction face. Can you give me like a reaction face? Like, what’s a good thumbnail face?

Mr. Beast: Oh, I got you. This is a thumbnail face. I have like 10, I go through the motions of like we just pick the best one and probably have like five hundred of these just saved and we can just photoshop my face on my face; then I don’t really have to do it anymore.

Veritasium: When I started on this platform some 10 years ago, clickbait was less important. Subscribers were what mattered because most of the views came from the sub feed and videos went viral, usually by getting a lot of attention elsewhere – like on Reddit or Facebook – not due to the YouTube algorithm, but once you had a big video and people subscribed, well, then your next video would likely get a lot of views from those subscribers. So YouTube would take that popular video and share it with more people, and so you’d get more subscribers, in a positive feedback loop.

But soon, YouTube realized that this did not create the best experience for the viewer. They discovered that showing people only videos from channels they were subscribed to led to fewer clicks, less watch time and less engagement with the site as a whole. Plus, they knew that relying on other platforms to drive traffic to viral hits was risky, since those other platforms might disable the traffic at any time. So they needed to make YouTube a destination in itself. They wanted people to come to YouTube, see videos that interested them, click on at least one of them and watch it for a while. Ideally, get sucked down the YouTube rabbit hole and spend hours on the site without even noticing it.

The ultimate resource is people’s time and attention, and every platform is trying to capture as much of it as possible. So to make YouTube this go-to destination, they had to decrease the importance of subscribers, make it less like a podcast app where you only get the shows you’re subscribed to, and more like Reddit, where stuff with the most engagement rises to the top. But that necessarily meant increasing the importance of clickbait.

Now, there seems to be a paradox when it comes to clickbait, people almost universally claim to hate it. But you also see it everywhere. So why is this? Well, one of the problems is we don’t all agree on the definition of clickbait. When I google it, the top definition is, ‘[on the Internet] content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular web page’. We could call this ‘Type I Clickbait’, and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. I mean, if you didn’t try to attract attention and get people to click on your links, then you wouldn’t really be doing your job. But there is a second definition, one that I think more people ascribe to, which is: ‘something [such as a headline] designed to make readers want to click on a hyperlink, especially when the link leads to content of dubious value or interest’.

Wikipedia says a defining characteristic of clickbait is that it is sensationalized or misleading, and it also talks about teasers that intentionally withhold information to exploit the curiosity gap. They give you enough information to make you curious, but not enough to satisfy that curiosity. Here are two actual titles from a news website: ‘9 out of 10 Americans are Completely Wrong About This Mind-Blowing Fact’, and ‘Someone Gave Some Kids Some Scissors. Here’s What Happened Next’. I think we can all agree that these are examples of bad Type II Clickbait.

Now, imagine a clickbait space where on one axis you have how misleading or sensationalized it is, and on the other, how much information is intentionally withheld to create a curiosity gap. Well, then these two titles fall in the top right corner, and these are the zones of Type II Clickbait. At the other extreme, you have things that are so unsensationalized as to be dull. You could call this the ‘Dead Zone’. Now here is where you would find ‘Strange Applications of the Magnus Effect’. I mean, I didn’t tell you what the applications were. Now, in the middle is where you would find Type I Clickbait. But honestly, I think Type I and Type II clickbait are so different that we shouldn’t even use the same word for them.

Instead of Type I Clickbait, my friend and YouTuber Brady Haran suggested ‘Legitbait’. I mean, it might sound enticing, but it is legit. Instead of Type II Clickbait, we could use ‘Clicktrap’, ‘Clicktrick’, ‘Linktrap’, or ‘Dupechute’. What’s important to recognize is that for any given video, there is no one true title and thumbnail. Each video could have hundreds or thousands of different ‘Legitbait’ titles: for example, ‘How does a zero-g plane work?’, ‘I went on a plane that does parabolic trajectories’, ‘What happens to FIRE on a zero-g plane?!’ Now, the most enticing titles and thumbnails are found close to Type II Clickbait. I’m reminded of the infographic by Smarter Every Day showing that on social media, the greatest engagement occurs close to the boundary of what’s allowable. But remember that everyone’s definition of clickbait is different, and everyone’s perceptions of words and images are different. So these are not clear boundaries, they’re actually kind of fuzzy; what for one person might be ‘Legitbait’, for someone else could be a ‘Clicktrap’. What’s clear is that on a site where clickthrough rate is important, clickbait of all types is inevitable.

Veritasium: How important to a video success is the title and thumbnail?

Mr. Beast: Very important, of course, if they don’t click on the video, they don’t watch it. You can’t get 10 million views unless 10 million people click on the video. So, I mean, it’s literally that simple. They don’t click on it, they don’t watch it.

Veritasium: So why is clickbait everywhere? Well, because it works. More enticing thumbnails get more clicks. Despite some people’s claims that they won’t click or they’ll unsub. It’s just like evolution; whatever survives, multiplies and traits become amplified. If you don’t begrudge the giraffe its long neck so it can reach the highest leaves, can you begrudge a YouTuber the big red arrow that allows them to reach further audiences?

I talked about this in my video two years ago. To be successful as a YouTuber, you need to optimize two things: watch time, and the clickthrough rate of your videos; that’s the number of times the title and thumbnail are clicked divided by the total number of times they’re shown; that’s the number of impressions. Now, at the time, this was something of a revelation for me because I always thought my job was to make great videos and then a title and thumbnail that adequately represented what the video was about. But now I’ve realized that making the title and thumbnail is at least half the job. This is not just because better titles and thumbnails get you more clicks, but because better titles and thumbnails will get you way more impressions.

YouTube has limited real estate with which to show you virtually infinite content, and so it’s not enough to make a good video even if people watch all of it. You also have to make a title and thumbnail that gets clicked, especially in competition with other really good titles and thumbnails. That’s the only way you can expect YouTube to give you more impressions.

Now, the big development since my last video on this is YouTube introduced real-time metrics like views, impressions and clickthrough rate, and I suggested this would create an arms race. So, what you can bet will happen is that creators will launch a video and then they’ll be sitting there with all these different variants of thumbnails, and they’ll be swapping them out and looking at what that does to clickthrough rate and then going with the one that leads to the greatest clickthrough rate. And this is basically what has happened.

Let me give you my favorite example. Last year, I made a video about asteroids, which I thought was really good. I called it, ‘Asteroids: Earth’s Biggest Threat’, which is something Stephen Hawking said; and people were very positive about the video. They thought it was maybe one of my best, but the performance was well below average. In its first day, ‘Asteroids’ was ranked ninth out of my previous 10 videos. It was probably on target for about one and a half million views, so I tried different titles and thumbnails like ‘Asteroid Impact: What Are Our Chances’, or ‘Asteroid Impact: What Could We Do?’ But none of these changes got much traction.

And then, on day three after launch, I changed the title and thumbnail to: ‘These Are The Asteroids To Worry About‘, and, immediately, the video started doing better. It quickly shot up from almost my worst performing video – to my best. It now has 14 million views. Nothing about the video changed, just that one image and 38 characters. But because of that, the video has reached nearly 10 times as many people as it otherwise would have. And the title and thumbnail accurately describe what the video is about. I mean, sure, there’s a curiosity gap, but you couldn’t explain the whole concept in the length of the title.

So, if you see a YouTuber changing titles and thumbnails, this is why; because that effort can be rewarded many times over. I’ve seen people objecting to this practice because they think the creator is trying to dupe their audience, get them to click on the same video more than once, but that’s not it. The whole point is to get YouTube to show the title and thumbnail to more people. We’re trying to increase the number of impressions, which is heavily dependent on the clickthrough rate.

Now, a lot of my recent videos have this typical view curve: there’s an initial spike after I release the video, and then a dip, and then a second bump after I have figured out a better title and thumbnail. I change the title and thumbnail and I watch the real-time view graph: what I’m looking for is a noticeable bump in views; sometimes there’s no change, sometimes it gets worse; but on occasions when you see something like this, well, then you know you’ve found a winner. This is something all the big YouTubers are doing. Not even Mr. Beast knows exactly which thumbnail will work best beforehand.

Veritasium: Have you ever changed a title in thumbnail, and then the video did better?

Mr. Beast: Oh, of course. So like everybody, I usually make like two or three thumbnails, and then if it’s not doing as well as I want, we usually just swap them out and see if it does better. The thing is like, you don’t really know. I mean, you could know if you just were an almighty being that could just predict what people would be interested in. But, you know, usually like you do hide and seek; you don’t really know if, like, you hiding in a tree and then someone walking below you is a good thumbnail, or if you’re hiding in a trashcan in the market in front of you. So, you know, just do both and then see which one interests people a little bit more.

Veritasium: I feel the same way, but I do feel like you have a better sense of this than, like, most people.

Mr. Beast: Of course, I mean, no one gets 40 million views on video.

Veritasium: But what is the point in getting more views? Well, if you’re cynical, you might say it’s all about money and fame. And while there are certainly financial incentives to getting more views, that’s not why I do it. As an educational YouTuber, I think there are two very good reasons for using excellent Type I Clickbait over more straightforward packaging.

To understand the first reason, let’s consider two different possible titles for my most recent video. I called it, ‘The Simplest Math Problem No One Can Solve‘, but it’s a video about the Collatz conjecture, so perhaps a more straightforward title would have been simply to call it that. The problem is, if I publish a video called ‘The Collatz Conjecture’, the most likely people to click on it are those who already know what the Collatz conjecture is, and the vast majority of people will never have heard of it. So for them, the title is meaningless and only the very curious or those who really like Veritasium would click. In contrast, calling it ‘The Simplest Math Problem No One Can Solve’ conveys more information about the video to everyone, and this means more people can click on it, most of whom will never have heard of the Collatz conjecture, so I get to teach them something new. And since the video has a higher clickthrough rate, YouTube shows it to even more people; so, if my aim is to increase the level of knowledge in the world by the maximum amount possible, this is the way to do it.

The second reason we need to optimize titles and thumbnails is to support the major goal of this channel. We are trying to make the best science films on every topic we tackle. That means traveling to meet experts and film experiments, hiring people to build props, make spectacular animations, research and fact check. We hire expert consultants to double- and triple-check our work. I don’t want to make vlogs; I want to make science documentaries on YouTube that put broadcast to shame; and to make this possible and sustainable, the videos have to get views and lots of them. And to do that, we have to make the best titles and thumbnails we can.

YouTuber and Patreon CEO Jack Conte has talked about ‘adjusting your packaging’: the idea is know what you’re passionate about, what you won’t compromise on; and that stuff goes in the box. All the rest, like what paper it’s wrapped in, that’s the packaging. So the video is my focus, and the title and thumbnail are the packaging that I’m happy to adjust so I can make the type of videos that are important to me. Now, is it ironic that a channel whose whole purpose is to promote a truth-seeking mindset has to experiment at the edge of what is truthful in order to fulfill that purpose? It is something that I often worry about.

Veritasium: When I did like risking my life to do X, it’s like, well, what probability of death does there have to be for you to risk your life? Like 50%?

Mr. Beast: I love how he always overthinks things. Funny. He’s like, is my life risked enough where I can put, ‘I risk my life’, you know? I only had a 9% chance of dying, and I need at least a 13% chance. He is so funny. He was the same way two years ago when he asked me all this stuff. I was like, dude, just do whatever makes the most sense.

Veritasium: Yeah, I mean, obviously, like, I feel like my instincts are not good…

But what I realized is that I don’t have to trust my instincts. This problem of getting the best title and thumbnail, well, it’s a scientific problem. We’re just asking which accurate representation of the video will get the most clicks from a general audience. And that’s a problem we can use the scientific method to solve. So I’ve hired a couple of really bright people, and we spend a lot of time brainstorming and making titles and thumbnails and testing them out.

For example, on Twitter and Patreon, Veritasium titles and thumbnails have gotten better; not because I’m better at it, but because of my team and our testing. If you have ideas about how we could do it better, please get in touch. The results have often contradicted what I expected. I mean, this video seemed to perform 10% better when we excluded the word ‘surprising’ from the title, so it became simply, ‘The Secret of Synchronization’. I thought these two titles were basically a toss up, but Patreon had a strong preference for one over the other.

What’s interesting about this research is that the more clickable titles and thumbnails often better represent the content of the video. Let me give you some examples. You know, one thing I didn’t expect when YouTube brought in the real-time analytics tools and allowed title and thumbnail changes to affect impressions was that it would also work for older videos. So, here is an old video that I originally entitled, ‘Why The Neutron Is The Hero of Nuclear Physics’. In hindsight, it’s a weird kind of meaningless title, so I changed it to, ‘Why Einstein Thought Nuclear Weapons Impossible’. It’s clearer, more accurate, and this is what happened to views after the change.

I changed ‘Strange Applications of the Magnus Effect’ to ‘Backspin Basketball Flies Off Dam’. Again, more accurate, and the video is now being watched on YouTube, probably 10 million more views than it otherwise would have had.

Even anti-clickbait has proven effective. Here’s a video I originally titled, ‘Are Negative Ions Good For You?’ which is a question nobody asked, ever. Now, I changed it to, ‘Do Salt Lamps Work?’. Seriously. And here’s the result. One and a half million more views.

I think, looking at these examples, you could easily make the case that YouTube has made me better at what I do. It has improved the clarity and accuracy of my titles and thumbnails to help me figure out what is interesting to my audience and how to encapsulate that in a single image in fewer than 50 characters.

For those of you who worry that a focus on titles and thumbnails will prevent me from picking challenging science topics, well, I simply ask you to look at the videos from the last year or two, like the ones on Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, general relativity, Penrose tilings, the logistic map, Newton’s method of calculating π, the one-way speed of light. Good titles and thumbnails make it possible to tackle these topics and to reach more people who have never heard of them before.

There is a symbiotic relationship between views and video quality. The more views we get, the more people, locations, props and equipment and research we can invest in. This makes the next video better than the last. If we can be good at titles and thumbnails, the ultimate outcome is better videos. That is something I think you and I both want.

Hey, this video was sponsored by KiwiCo, a long time supporter of the channel. Now, KiwiCo makes awesome hands-on projects for kids, including big kids like me. They have eight subscription lines targeted at different age groups all the way down to newborns. What I love about KiwiCo crates is that they make learning fun and something to look forward to. I mean, when I pull out a crate, my kids just jump at the chance to make it with me, and all the materials you need come right in the box, so there’s no need to run to the store: you just open it up and go. My kids and I just built this domino machine, which, who knows, might be inspiration for a viral video. Now, the big idea is that while playing and having fun, kids learn about ‘STEAM’ concepts; that is: science, technology, engineering, art and math. And in addition to the project, there’s a magazine with a lot of additional information. So, I think this is the best way to learn; by doing something yourself and having fun. It’s how education should be. So if you want to try it out, go to kiwico.com/veritasium50, and you’ll get 50% off your first month of any crate. I will put that link down in the description.

So, I want to thank KiwiCo for sponsoring Veritasium, and I want to thank you for watching.

Veritasium: ‘Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective‘

The transcript above was made with the help of Sonix, which did most of the donkey work for a tiny fee (I did have to spend some time tidying it up). Note that I do not have the copyright owner’s permission to publish this transcript here. I’ve investigated the copyright rules regarding transcriptions (more about that here), and one thing I’ve learned is that it’s no defense to make a disclaimer like “these aren’t my words, no copyright infringement intended.” However, I offer the transcription here as a service to society (especially the deaf community). I do hope the copyright owner won’t object. And I hope that you find this video as entertaining and/or interesting as I did.

Header image adapted from
‘Charting Goals and Progress‘
by Isaac Smith on Unsplash

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