Dear Hank & John - 302: Please, Your Reimbursement Here

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

What's less scared of us than we are of it? Why do spammers call me Cameron? Why can't Jeff Bezos give his money away? Is there less oxygen where plants don't grow? How do I reply to a friend with a t...enuous grasp of geography? Can my glasses burn my eyes like a magnifying glass? Hank Green and John Green have answers!If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at hankandjohn@gmail.com.Join us for monthly livestreams and an exclusive weekly podcast at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to Dear Hank and John. Or is it prefer to think of it dear John and Hank, sorry I'm a little slow in the uptake because I'm stressed out. I know. It's a podcast where two brothers answer your questions, give you a duvies advice and bring you all the week's news from both Mars and AFC, Lindblden. John, did you hear that the Pfizer vaccine has been approved not just for emergency use, but just as a normal medicine now.
Starting point is 00:00:24 Unfortunately, M&M still can't get it. Why is that? Because he only gets one shot. Oh, I mean, alternately, it could have been Alexander Hamilton. There's been a lot of people who only got one shot over the years. Oh. And who did not want to throw it away. Yeah. Well, I think Alexander Hamilton got several shots. He just didn't throw any of them away. Arguably. He's one shot. Well, look, I'm not an expert in Hamilton.
Starting point is 00:00:52 All I know is that the line is I'm not throwing away my shot. I'm not throwing away my multiple shots. So I'm not throwing my shots. Anyway, however many shots you need, please get them. Yes. I'm done with in my shots. Anyway, however many shots you need, please get them done with this whole situation. I'm also done with having my old YouTube account that I used to upload private family videos to HACT.
Starting point is 00:01:14 That has really been a day ruiner. And I'll tell you one thing, I'm not, I'm not, but such a pain. And one thing I'm not particularly sympathetic to at the moment is the hackers, um, relentless reminders that he is a good guy, which is the phrase he keeps using. Look, I got to done so much worse than that. Yeah, yeah, that is his perspective.
Starting point is 00:01:41 He's like, I'm a good guy because I could have done something worse. And my perspective is like, the real good guys. That's true of every bad guy. Every bad guy could have been worse. The real good guys don't generally brag about being good guys to people they've just hacked. Oh God, it's not the first time that we've had a situation like like that though the last time it happened, they were gooder than this guy, where they only left comments as us, rather than making private videos public.
Starting point is 00:02:14 Yeah, I mean, they did apologize for it. Yeah. Anyway, let's talk about something else because I haven't been able to do anything else all day, which has been very frustrating because like, obviously, this person didn't necessarily know about my week schedule when they decided to hack me at 5.30 in the morning on a Monday. But now everything is late. Yeah, if I could. Everything for the rest of the week is late. Yeah, if I could, everything for the rest of the week is late. If I could have picked a week to be hacked,
Starting point is 00:02:46 it would not be the week of my birthday and 17 other deadlines. But you know what Hank, you don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who hurts you. Specifically, I should have turned on two factor authentication in that 15 year old YouTube channel. John, congratulations on being a 44 year old. What's it like? Tell me so that I can get ready in a few minutes. That's not great. I'll be honest. This is the first birthday. You get hacked.
Starting point is 00:03:17 First thing, first thing you get hacked. This is everybody when they turned 44. This is the first birthday I've had where I like, for some reason, it didn't bother me at all to turn forty or to turn forty-two. Those both seemed like the ages of young people and but this birthday is the first one where I've like felt that thing that all humans feel. And it's so cliche like one of one of my big problems actually with getting older is that all the cliches are true. You, that like the stupid things people say that are uninteresting and extremely superficial, nonetheless do happen to you and like do occur to you and you do think those things. And I really dislike like having to have thoughts about myself and the universe that are super
Starting point is 00:04:03 cliché and obvious. So I'm not having it. I'll be honest, it's not the worst birthday I've had because like a lot of people, I turned 13 once. But it's the worst birthday I've had in a while. No, I think like it's my second pandemic birthday. And I was kind of, I was kind of hoping I was only gonna have one. And I think I might have a third pandemic birthday. So it could be, I am also, because I've known people
Starting point is 00:04:39 who are currently my age who have died. I, of like died of things, like not like accidents, but of diseases. I mean, I know people who are my age who've died of COVID. Yes. I have gotten to the point now where I am thinking about my mortality, like maybe the amount that you did when you were at 13.
Starting point is 00:05:01 Oh yeah. And it's a lot. It's like double or triple what it was 10 years ago. And, you know, not multiple times a day, but maybe multiple times a week. Do I think like, oh, God, it would be really inconvenient for everyone around if I kicked it, especially if you kicked it before signing that will. It's really close. Great.
Starting point is 00:05:22 We're really close. We basically, basically, he's just getting the papers drawn up. I know that this has been a multi-year joke here on the podcast, but it is also a multi-year series of mistakes I have made where I was like, I thought you could say it's a multi-year process. I don't want to encourage all of our listeners that it just isn't. It doesn't take that long unless, unless you just stop answering emails for months and months at a time. Yeah. I have noticed that you have that habit, Hank. There are basically two kinds of emails that you get from Hank Green.
Starting point is 00:05:55 One is within 30 seconds of sending an email to him, you get a reply. And the other is six months later. That's the one you want. And the, yeah, the best thing about the one that is six months later, because Hank and I correspond to fair amount. And we're C seed on a lot of the same emails is that when you get one six months later, you also get like 42 others. So you know exactly how much time Hank put into the email because you have one email and then four minutes later, you get a second email and then two minutes after that, you get a third email.
Starting point is 00:06:30 Yeah. And you should really use the like snooze or whatever system on Hank. So oh, I shouldn't say that we use less someone hack me, please. Don't hack people. Like even if you can, don't. Can I tell you about my most successful hacking,
Starting point is 00:06:46 John? As a child, I hacked a website. I'm going to be so mad. I'm already mad. You with your gray hat on what is your gray hat hacking story, Hank, that where you can portray yourself as a hero by retroactively fitting your ideology to your urges. It was more, I considered myself a kind of chaotic, good agent or chaotic neutral. Let's not use any good. I ran the Mars web ring when I was in high school. I remember it was huge. Do you remember what web rings were?
Starting point is 00:07:29 Of course, that was like where you would basically advertise other people's websites. There were also about Mars and they would advertise your videos via a ring. Right, and so you could like click, click, there was like arrows and several people would have the web ring thing at the bottom of the website. And you click the right arrow and you'd go to another website about the same topic.
Starting point is 00:07:48 And this is before search engines were any good. So if you wanted to be like into dogs, you could be like in the dog web ring. You'd be on a website about dogs at the bottom. It's like, oh, I want to see another website about dogs. I'll click the arrow and go to the next one. Yeah. It was also in the days when websites ended, you know, so you'd get to the end of the website and you'd be like, I'm not done.
Starting point is 00:08:07 Yeah, I need to be distracted more. Is there another website? And it turns out that there was. Yeah, you could reach the end of the ring as well. Like there is. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, you could, I mean, like back then Yahoo had an index of all the web of like all the websites that were at least indexed
Starting point is 00:08:26 on Yahoo. And like, you could do all of them, you know, like if you really tried, like you could have gotten to the end of the internet in 1994, 1995. Yeah. So that was around when I ran the Mars web ring. And part of that is that I, for some reason, had access to the database of all of everybody's login information, which was not encrypted. And so it was almost as if I had intentionally created the Mars webbring in order to just
Starting point is 00:08:58 get access to people's login information. And so if they use the same login information for the Mars webbring that they did for their like FTP server, I could go on their FTP servers and so To a few different Mars websites. I put Marvin the Martian Just Photoshopped him into the images like random images on the site so that Marvin the Martian would suddenly appear and People would be like what happened and then they would change it back and then I would put him back Just so that they knew that the world was a goofy place. Not goof and dangerous.
Starting point is 00:09:30 A place where your own information is never safe and where there is no privacy and privacy is a complete illusion. And humans aren't even allowed to have private thoughts that disagree with the social order less uh... they get exposed via a hack so yeah anyway welcome to i i kind of i was like man this dystopia is gonna suck in fifty years but it turns out
Starting point is 00:09:57 it already sucks yeah it's not great i think the only thing that can improve my mood is reading questions from our listeners which by the way i can only do for probably the first 20 minutes of the podcast because I thought I had a computer charger here, but I don't, and my computer's gonna run out of battery. So I got it.
Starting point is 00:10:13 I'll ask the first few questions. Okay. This first question comes from Emily, who writes, dear John and Hank, I recently had an encounter with a desert stink beetle in my home, and in my sheer panic, I told myself, it's more scared of you than you are of it. What's something that we are more scared of than it is of us? I have a good answer, Emily.
Starting point is 00:10:32 It's surveillance capitalism. It's not scared of us at all. Yeah, no, there's many, there are many things that do not have any emotions at all That I am very afraid of and they are they are they I in fact, I'm afraid of some of many human emotions More than they are afraid of me and my own self Even my own emotions. I'm often more afraid of you Whoa, you're telling me that you're more afraid of you than you are of you Yeah, that's the point I was trying to get misunderstood the question. I mean, that's deep, that's real deep and it's too deep. I can't handle that level of depth right now.
Starting point is 00:11:14 I can't go there today. Are there animals, non-human animals that we are more scared of than they are scared of us? I think the answer is a definite yes. Oh yeah, oh yeah. I mean, almost anything bigger than us. Well, any of the larger crocodilians, John. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:33 I think probably, I think maybe as a, maybe if they're moms and their kids are nearby, they might be a little bit anxious, but like not scared. And also my fear of them is very high. So that threshold is, is high. Yeah. Yeah. I also feel extremely afraid of alligators, like a lot of kids who grew up in Florida. And I think it's mostly a rational fear. Like, I don't, I don't want to get into the debate about whether animals have souls, but one thing I know for a dead certain fact
Starting point is 00:12:13 is that alligators don't have souls. Like if you look, I mean Hank, you've looked an alligator in the eye, right? I mean, there is, there's nothing there, man. There's nothing there. Man, there's there's nothing there. Okay. All right. Well, look, that's that's your take and you can have it. We're gonna get we're gonna get so many emails from people who have like that alligator. So are like my alligator cuddles with me at night and when I feel sad, my alligator like crawls over and gives me a little polite bite on the tip of the nose, but no.
Starting point is 00:12:45 Yeah. My opinion is that every animal has a soul. Okay. Except for many reptiles. But not all. Every experience I've ever had with a constrictor, I have been more afraid of it than it is of me. I can guarantee that. I know that I shouldn't be afraid.
Starting point is 00:13:04 I know that these are animals that have been trained to behave well around people. And yet when they are on me, I'm like, I really don't want to have to pull that thing off of my face. I think I'm more afraid of most people than they are of me. Well, that's because you're like, yeah, yeah. I think like, I think if I walk into any bar, which first off, that's not not not going to handle that a while, but assume a world where I walk into a bar and everybody turns to me. I think everybody in that bar is less afraid of me than I am of them.
Starting point is 00:13:46 Yeah. Well, you know, that's, yeah. So you've asked the wrong person, Emily, I think that might be the better, I might be the better brother to ask. Lama's, I am so afraid of, and I can't tell you why. It's just the way that they look at me, but they do not seem at all shy around me. Yeah. Now that I think about it, Hank, I think that stink bug might be less afraid of me than I am of it. Yeah, absolutely. Because yeah, that stink bug is good. That stink bug isn't worried about me.
Starting point is 00:14:16 It's thinking about other stuff. Yeah, stink bug stuff. Yeah, there's a spider actually just living in dying. Just saw spider on my ceiling. and I am definitely more afraid of it than it is me because it doesn't even know I'm here Ah am I at the very bottom of the fear pyramid am I like am I the lowest Is that you just then lied to the whole time it turns out you are more afraid of everything than it is of you of the fearsome pyramid is not possible that I'm at the very bottom. The last last creature on earth, the most afraid. No squirrels. I am the son. I think there are squirrels that are more afraid of me. Oh God. You know Hank, I was feeling so bad and I was in such a bad mood and then I remembered my all-time favorite onion headline. Last moments of roadkill squirrel frantic comma in decisive.
Starting point is 00:15:13 I like to remember that because almost all of my decisions under stress are also frantic and in decisive. Oh God. I have, man, I have also had a stressful start to the week, John. Oh, good. I have done. I didn't even, I didn't even ask you how your week was because I was in, yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah. Johnland. I'll confess to being a little self-absorbed right now. Um, how is, why is your week stressful? Oh, it's just begun, Hank. It's like we're, we're 30 minutes into it. It's just, it's like normal, like business contract stuff, John.
Starting point is 00:15:47 The stuff that I don't talk about in public because it is both extremely unrelatable and boring. Oh, God, it is so boring. But it's important. All right, Hank, I'm going to ask you another question. And this one is also of real interest to me. It comes from Rachel who writes, dear John and Hank, often when I get spam text messages, they're addressed to Cameron. This happens even if they're from different numbers, but my name
Starting point is 00:16:11 is Rachel. None of my family or friends are named Cameron. Who is Cameron? Have I been renamed by the spam text gods without my knowledge, please help Rachel? Or is it Cameron? Rachel. Or is it Cameron? Well, you may be Cameron or Cameron, some person named Cameron, either mistyped or intentionally wrote the wrong phone number when signing up for a service that Cameron knew was likely to result in a great deal of spam. Well, Hank, it's funny you should say that because in the last 24 hours, I have received, I will read you two of the text, the spam text messages I have received in the last 24 hours. Text number one, William, we accidentally searched your phone bill last month. Please, your reimbursement here. Now I did not. Now, let me read you another one. Now I'll let me read you another one. I got to get
Starting point is 00:17:06 there. Hank. No. No, I did not. I don't even know your phone number. We're up against our big end of month deadline and falling behind on the grassroots support needed to fully mobilize. mobilize. They're all I promise. Well, I am both William and Hank. So Rachel Cameron and I have something in common. Yeah, you and Rachel have something in common and you're saying I and Cameron have something. John, John, I literally don't know if I could tell you your phone number. Well, I don't think you have to tell me my phone number. I think you just had to tell one spammer of my phone number. You just had to know my phone number on a day when you were being asked
Starting point is 00:17:52 if you wanted to join a mailing list and you thought, no, I don't. And then you were like, whatever shall I do. I do think of. No, I would just do my number with one number changed. That's, and then that's how you get a camera situation with some stranger.
Starting point is 00:18:06 Not me. Okay, well, I guess. This is fascinating though. This is fascinating that somehow they have, they have gotten confused between the two of us. So like, there is some, like look, we operate in a lot of the same spaces on the internet. They just got confused in whatever data gathering system
Starting point is 00:18:23 they use. Hey, William, our big sale this weekend starts Thursday with hundreds of items marked up to 50% off. That's another text message I received this week. That sounds, where's that from? Is that local to any in Apple's? No, no, it was, I'm not going to click the link, Hank. I already got hacked this week. They didn't tell you what company it even was. You have to click the link hank. I already got hacked this week. They didn't tell you what company it even was. You have to click the link to find out where the sale is? Hank. Because you have used Venmo for over a year,
Starting point is 00:18:52 please claim your $200 gift card from we. From we? And then I was able to, yeah, I was able to put together that they met us, but they wrote we. There's one of the ways I know that probably isn't from Venom. Wow, that is weird. Again, I did not click that link. Yeah. Yeah. So Rachel, Cameron, we are in the same boat. And I think we're in the same boat for the same reason, which is that Hank shared our phone number against our will. That's what I do. I do it to Rachel. I do it to John. I do it to everybody. It's, look, I got to earn money somehow, John.
Starting point is 00:19:27 You're just selling, just selling phone numbers to people with really poor grammar. All right, Hank, let's answer to the question. I've still got some computer power. So it's on me. Ava writes, you're John and Hank, could one of you please explain why Jeff Bezos can't give everyone a billion dollars because to me, it seems like that would work, but I'm not very good at math. This is a great question, Ava. Okay. And there is like a lot of confusion about this to be fair. Like there are a lot of people saying that there are individuals on earth who could end world hunger or who could end poverty. And this is in no way to take away
Starting point is 00:20:09 the unmet obligations that the richest people in the world I think have to the communities that have so massively enriched them. But Jeff Bezos is very, very wealthy, but he could only make 200 people billionaires. Yeah. Right. And for that matter, he could only make, he could only give a million dollars to 200,000 people. Now, it's a lot of people. Yeah. So a lot of millions of dollars, more millions of dollars than probably anyone should have. but it is less than 0.1% of the population of the United States. So if Jeff Bezos gave out all of his wealth in an equal way to everyone living on earth, everyone would get about 30 bucks. So in essence, we've all given Jeff Bezos, we've all given one man 30 dollars,
Starting point is 00:21:04 which is a lot. I would argue that it's a little bit too much. And I would like to reclaim some of it in the form of taxation. Yes, let's move on. Okay. John, this next question comes from Olivia who asks,
Starting point is 00:21:20 steer Hank and John, since plants and trees create oxygen, I've accepted that as true, even though I don't really understand it, Is there less oxygen where plants don't grow like deserts or the tundra? Love you, live you. Nice. It's good. I didn't get it until I said it. The air air moves around real good air moves around real good and fast. And there are like, there are places where you can see elevated concentrations and they do this. Like you can see like cool when that maps that NASA has that show the different concentrations of different molecules
Starting point is 00:21:50 moving around the earth, particularly because we pay a lot of attention to where oxygen is generated, because it means that carbon is captured, usually when that's happening. But it doesn't take long for it to get spread out pretty good, because there's wind. Mostly there's wind. There's all these like pressure dynamics where hot air at the surface floats up to the where it's cold and, um, and that causes all kinds of wild perturbations of the atmosphere and the have coriolis effects and stuff that give it a good, it basically, uh, there's the earth is just a giant cocktail shaker and the, just like when you're mixing a drink, all the gin gets spread out,
Starting point is 00:22:31 the oxygen is getting spread out too. Look, luckily, otherwise there would be some places on earth where you'd be like, ah, suddenly I can't breathe too good. I mean, we'd also have a bunch of other problems if there was no wind. Yeah, yeah, be huge. In fact, on this face station where there is no wind, this will actually happen. People can exhale a bubble of carbon dioxide around them
Starting point is 00:22:50 and they start to get really stuffy and sort of uncomfortably deprived of oxygen. And so astronauts on the space station will have fans in their little sleepy cubbies to make sure that the air gets circulated. That reminds me, actually, that the final, I think, at least for now, episode of the Anthropocene Reviewed has just come out as this podcast is being uploaded. It is about the first work of art made from outer space in March of 1965 by the Cosmonaut Alexey Lanov. And if you want to learn
Starting point is 00:23:26 way more about that space mission, Vosko 2 and the drawing of an orbital sunrise that has become very important to me, you can listen to the Anthropocene Reviewed Wherever you get your podcast provided that you can figure out how to spell it, which I can't even after all this time. But yeah, it's a wild story, Hank. The first art made in space, very nearly stayed in space. Oh, wow, that's a good teaser. Yeah, I poured everything I had into that one. I was just thinking about why we make art and what we give up to make it. And we give up a lot sometimes.
Starting point is 00:24:08 All right, Hank, here's another question. It's from Becca Shewright. Steer John and Hank a few days ago, I posted on Facebook asking if anyone had a high chair, I could use for my five month old, my host mother that I had stayed with in 2015, replied that she had one I could have and asked if I wanted her to drop it off this weekend. The only thing is she lives in Scotland and I live in Wisconsin. How do I reply? I asked if I wanted her to drop it off this weekend. I think you say yes, I would love for you to drop it off this weekend. That would be lovely.
Starting point is 00:24:41 Thank you. That was like to see you. Thanks for offering to make the trip. Why don't I swing by, actually? No, no, no, no, no, frankly, I think you let them make the trip. Although, I'm not sure right now you even can make that trip necessarily, but that's what I would say. I would say great. Bring it on over. I'm free all day Saturday. I'll be here. And if you could bring me some, if you can bring me some scotch too, that would be fantastic. Yeah, and maybe some haggis and perhaps some 19th century golf clubs. I don't really know what Scotland has. Yes. Well, here's, here's what you want, John.
Starting point is 00:25:15 You are Iron Brew. Iron Brew. I remember when we went to Scotland, Hank, like the first time we went like professionally and we toured in Scotland and everybody wanted us to drink iron brew and I did drink it. And I think it's wonderful when a community has fried in its drink. Yep. The way that Waco, Texas has Dr. Pepper, the way that Atlanta has Coca-Cola, Scotland has iron
Starting point is 00:25:46 brew. There's just the one problem, right? Like, we don't have to say that loud. We don't have to. The physical reaction. We don't have to. Okay. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:25:59 I don't mind the taste. It makes my stomach feel very bad. Oh my God. Yeah. I don't know if, I mean, yeah, it tastes fine on the tongue my God, yeah. I don't know it. Oh, I mean, it, yeah, it tastes fine on the tongue, but then like coming back up four minutes later, it's not great.
Starting point is 00:26:13 It's, it's a lot. Yeah, so just say, I'd love for you to come by Wisconsin, PSI live in Wisconsin now. So you may not be able to come. But it's a lot of, to hear from you. It's a chance to reconnect, hopefully. There it you. It's a chance to reconnect, hopefully. There it is.
Starting point is 00:26:26 It's a chance to reconnect and say, hey, I know that it'll be hard to ship the high chair, but can you please ship the iron brew and whatever those good ships they have there are. And some tea, because we have terrible tea here in America. I think that it's the amount of orange food coloring in iron brew that's the issue, because I kind of get a similar stomach ache
Starting point is 00:26:47 when I drink phanta or orange crush. I get the same, yeah, actually, yeah. And I get it for, I definitely get it from Mountain Dew too. No, I can drink Mountain Dew all day. Oh, my tummy. Oh wait, are you, wait, are you talking about moonshine? Yeah, the stuff that you, where you feel like a $50 bill on a tree stump and come back the
Starting point is 00:27:06 next day, that stuff. Yeah, they call it that good old mountain dew and then that refused her few. I believe it's the, the couplet. Oh, gosh. What I want is some pork pies. Really? Sorry. Now, that's the stuff right there.
Starting point is 00:27:20 You should come, I mean, by the way, Hank, AFC Wimbledon have a new stadium where there are plenty of savory pies available. So they have any vegetarian because I'm trying to eat less meat. I don't know. Maybe Mrs. The Whole Point. I haven't been able to go. So I will report back when I am able to. Anyway, that reminds me that today's podcast is brought to you by Iron Brew. Iron Brew. It's Scottish. It's kind of, it's like a heavily caffeinated phanta. Spidegast is also brought to you by the larger crocodilians. The larger, the larger crocodilians. They are less afraid of you than you are of them. Today's podcast is also brought to you by Cameron. Cameron also known as Hank. That's not me. And this podcast is also brought to you by Cameron. Cameron also known as Hank. That's not me. And this podcast is also brought to you by Alexei Leianoff, the first person to create
Starting point is 00:28:11 art and space. And apparently it almost didn't make it back to Earth, but we're not going to find out why until we listen to the most recent episode of the Anthropocene Reviewed. Also the first person, we're really heavily selling this free podcast. Well, look, we should probably we should probably be selling the other was the interview book available wherever fine books are sold. But Alexi Landon also did the first space walk. In fact, he did the first space walk about five minutes before he made the first art from space. Whoa. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:45 Like he got back in and he started doing art or he did it when he was in the space. He got back in and he started doing art to calm himself down because he almost died while he was out there. Ooh. Yeah. That sounds unpleasant.
Starting point is 00:28:58 It was a little, the Vosko 2 was a little bit of a stressful mission, Hank. So anyway, there are harder things than getting hacked. Like almost dying in space. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, Alexei Lano just to be clear, made a choice to go to space. Like he didn't have to become an astronaut. You didn't have to start a YouTube channel. We also have a project for awesome message from Nikki Satterland and Wisconsin.
Starting point is 00:29:26 Nikki, right? Ty John and Hank so much of my views on humanity, the universe and my place in it come from this community. And it strikes me as weird that this can be the case when you don't know me. Not bad, just weird. Our worlds are colliding for a brief moment. And now I don't know what to say. Perhaps archipelago. That's a fun word.
Starting point is 00:29:44 Thank you. Archipelago. Thank you,ago, that's a fun word. Thank you. Archipelago. Thank you, Nicky. It is a fun word. And I've always wanted to live in an or on around. I've always wanted to live on or around an archipelago. An archipelago.
Starting point is 00:29:58 Yeah. If I could, there's like a good grocery store. I feel like I would have been very happy living by the ocean, but I would have been much less productive. And in the end, I made the great first line of a novel, John. I made the start, right? Yeah. Well, I'll I'll get to that. I'll I'll put aside what I'm working on and focus on. I feel like I could have been very happy living by the ocean, which is actually now that I've said it a second time, not that good of a first line for an awful. I like it. I like it. Hank, before we get to the all important news
Starting point is 00:30:31 from Mars and AFC Wimbledon, I wanna ask this question from Greta, who writes Dear John and Hank, by the way, shout out to my computer for lasting this whole time on 5% battery. Yeah. Greta writes Dear John and Hank, I've seen movies where people start fires using magnifying glasses, question mark, question mark.
Starting point is 00:30:46 I'm a generally anxious person, and thus whenever I'm wearing my glasses outside, I imagine the sun beaming through them and burning either myself or a plant. Oh, God. Is this possible and why? Autocorrect, thinks, is a great name to just sign off? Autocorrect, thinks I'm great, Greta.
Starting point is 00:31:06 That must feel good. Yeah, people can't write your name without thinking how great you are. You get a lot of text messages for great. Yeah, high grade, since you spent $200 with Venmo this month. Oh gosh, I like that Greta is worried about burning their own eyes or a plant. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:31:33 Well, those are the two things to worry about really. Like you don't want to accidentally start a forest fire because your glasses have such high magnification. I am alive to that concern. And then also you don't want to burn yourself. So Hank, can I start a fire with my glasses? You can, but not accidentally. So your glasses are not designed to focus light in the same way as a magnifying glass. You can absolutely start a fire with a magnifying glass. And if you leave a magnifying glass like sitting the same way as a magnifying glass. You can absolutely start a fire with a magnifying glass. And if you leave a magnifying glass like sitting the wrong way in a house, you can burn stuff.
Starting point is 00:32:10 And so you gotta be careful about that. Like if there's a big steady beam of light coming in and you just got really unlucky, then that absolutely can happen. But glasses, eye glasses, unless they're very strong, I don't think even at any angle could concentrate light that much. But in general, because they're not designed to concentrate light, they're designed to bend it a little bit to correct for the deformations in your eyeball lens. But you can, eyeball lens. But you can, if you really need to, one of the things I have read is that you can put a drop of water on your eyeglasses, and you can use that as a way to sort of, like, magnify the magnification, and then maybe you could use your eyeglasses to start a fire. But look, my plan is if I am in the woods and I need to start a fire, to look back at my past and to say, what giant mistake did I make in order to get here?
Starting point is 00:33:13 Because it's not seem like something that would happen to me. How did I get here without a lighter? And for that matter, how did I get here? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny that our father is such a camper and fire builder and backpacker and, you know, like lived in a root cellar in New Hampshire for nine months without interacting with anybody.
Starting point is 00:33:39 Just eating, eating bird food. Yeah. And we like cannot, cannot stomach the thought of sleeping in a tent for a single. My God. I'm done with that stage of my life. I last time I slept in a tent. I don't know, maybe I don't know, five, six years ago, I would felt so bad the next day. It cert so much. Yeah. No, it no, it's not for me. Meanwhile, our father slept in a tent like four nights ago. He did.
Starting point is 00:34:10 And he's significantly older than we are. And yeah, as you might guess. And yet, you know, he was able to like sleep in a tent, wake up in the morning and like go hike another 10 miles and then sleep in a tent, wake up in the morning. It's, he's made of different stuff. Yeah. Now Hank, I feel like I've been going first with the news from AFC Wimbledon of late just because it's the start of the season.
Starting point is 00:34:31 It's so exciting. Yeah. Uh-huh. But let's let's let you start this time. Well, China's rover, the Zhirang rover has finished its primary mission on Mars. On August 15th, it completed 90 souls on the Utopia planicia, so it's been there for that 90 Martian days, so three Martian months, I guess. What is time? But in that time, it's driven across the landscape, it's studied some different features, it's made sure that all the scientific experiments are in order, taken some selfies, sent back 10 gigabytes of scientific data, and that was the plan for what it was supposed to do, but it is still operational and it will continue traveling and studying different areas of Mars while the orbiter that was part of the mission, the Chan-Win-Wan does a global survey of the planet.
Starting point is 00:35:16 And from mid-September to October, the rover will have to go into safe mode because of a solar conjunction where the sun is in between us and the Mars and the Mars. Yeah. And so we can't talk to it. Right. Right. And but when that's over, the scientists behind your own plan to send it towards a groove like feature that's about a mile away.
Starting point is 00:35:37 So it's going to go on a little journey. So it's finished its primary mission, but it is still operational, which is great news. And it's going to keep doing science. They're on the red planet. Can you do a global survey of a non-earth globe? What do you mean, John? Well, you said you just you just answered your question. I guess I guess you can, right? Like if it's it's a globe, if it's not on earth, it's it's just got to be a glob.
Starting point is 00:36:02 Globular. It's got a yeah, as long as it's globular, that seems wrong. I'm going to Google globular and find out if that's wrong. Well, no, that's that is wrong, but it's glow. No, it's globe shaped or spherical. That is exactly what globular means. Yes. That's not what I think of when I think of globular at all.
Starting point is 00:36:20 Me neither, because globular proteins do not look like earth to me, but whatever, that is what globular means. I you know, we started out this podcast on a low and we're ending it on a high with me knowing the definition of globular. The news from AFC Wimbledon is discouraging, but also encouraging. So very frustratingly midweek we played Jillingham or possibly Gillingham scientists are still debating what the town is called. And we were up one nil with like three seconds left in the game when Jillingham or Gillingham scored an equalizer on a ridiculous deflected shot that was just like pure sheer stupid luck and what are you going to do? And then we played Sunderland away from home and Sunderland are expected
Starting point is 00:37:15 to probably win the league this year, although they've been expected to win the league for the last few years and have it managed to. And they're very good and they have a much higher budget than we do. And we were definitely not as good as them, like watching the game. I was like Sunday and are better. But we were in the game, in the whole game. And I think it would have been a nil, nil draw, except for another ridiculous, you know, once in a blue moon, deflected shot that just happened to bounce the right way and go into the goal. So we lost that game and we tied the previous game, which means, which means that after four league games, AFC Wimbledon have five points, you get three points for a win, one point for a draw. So we've had one win and two draws and one loss. I mean, if we keep that
Starting point is 00:38:06 basic number, the same all through the season will be fine. And that'll be great. And I would be very happy. Well, especially when that, when that Jilling Gillingham game was, it was should, by all right, it was very winable. It seemed verynable to me. So you had 16 shots to their five. Yeah, we outplayed them. But then Sunderwin, I mean, really did just play us off the pitch. It felt like to me that'll happen. So we'll see.
Starting point is 00:38:36 Well, you know, I still feel really encouraged though. Like, are you guys all is incredible? I mean, he might be the best player in all of league one. He's just incredible. He's got at some point clubs in higher leagues will recognize that he's incredible and he will no longer be an AFC. Well, but for right now, he is, he's something special. So it's a joy to watch him. And in general, like, you know, the way that they're playing is much more entertaining and fun to watch than in previous seasons. So hopefully that'll also lead to some good results down the road.
Starting point is 00:39:12 All right. Sweet. Well, I'm looking forward to them continuing to play good sports. And you getting over there to have some fish and chips and meat pies at Plow Lane, John. Oh, can't wait. I love to come with you, Ethan. I can't wait. Thanks for being able to buy a guest with me. If you want to send us questions, you can do that. We are at hankinjohn.
Starting point is 00:39:32 At gmail.com. A email address that is unhackable. I challenge any hacker to come and know. No, no, no, no. It's definitely God. And please, just don't, you know, like, just this is just because you can do something. It doesn't need you.
Starting point is 00:39:55 Yeah, gosh, that took me a lot of learning. We're off to record our Patreon Only podcast this week in stuff. You should go find more out more about that at patreon.com slash during and John. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Mettish. This week in stuff, you should go find more out more about that at patreon.com slash steeringon.john. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tuna Mettish. It's produced by Rosiana Holtzrohaas. Our communications coordinator is Julia Bloom, our editorial assistant to Staboki Chakr Fardi.
Starting point is 00:40:13 The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast is by the great gunna rola. And as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome. you

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