How to Create a Crossword Puzzle | WIRED

hi, i'm david kwong. i'm a new york times crossword puzzle constructor, a cruciverbalist, and i'm going to show you how to make a crossword puzzle. what is a puzzle? well, puzzles are all around us. there are problems everywhere, but a good puzzle makes the solver feel smart. i've loved puzzles since i was a kid and i'm also a magician, so i think that all magic tricks are puzzles. that's why i have those two worlds colliding and as an enigmatist, somebody who performs puzzles, i'm presenting them to you. i'm challenging your brain, getting you to think outside the box and hopefully have that aha moment when you can feel smart. the aha moment is when you crack the puzzle. you're solving a puzzle and everything just clicks into place across. your puzzle is a type of word puzzle where there's always an across and down. every letter is checked, meaning if you don't know one way, you could probably figure it out the other way. it was invented in 1913- it's over 100 years old- by arthur wynn. it first appeared in the new york world. in college i started constructing crossword puzzles. a friend showed me how to do it. i started mailing them into the new york times. they were getting rejected left and right, but finally i broke through and uh will shorts the editor, the guru of puzzles, is a good friend and mentor now and i've been writing for the times and other major newspapers ever since. this is the size of the daily puzzle in the new york times: crossword 15 by 15.. sunday is 21 by 21. monday is the easiest day of the week and saturday is the hardest. the first thing you need to do when writing a puzzle is come up with your theme, a bit of word play that will run throughout the puzzle. and because i'm a magician, i'm going to make the theme of my crossword playing cards. so my goal is to hide 10 jack, queen, king and ace inside. other words, after you've come up with your theme, you'll have to write down the long answers and these are parallel and length. so if you have a 10 letter answer, you'll need another 10 letter answer. if you only have one 13 letter answer, that's fine. it can go right in the middle of the grid and it's like this in every puzzle. open up the newspaper and you'll see rotational symmetry. so in the case of this puzzle i have marquee name. i'm going to put that right in the middle of the 15 wide grid. that's 11 letters. you can see that queen is contained there. one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, in the middle of the grid marquee name. and because i'm such a huge zac efron fan, let's put in zac efron, which gives us our ace and queen. and now to put in the black squares. we call this partikular shape, a utah, and i'll place another one on this side. you don't want to put too many black squares because the words get smaller. the puzzle's too easy, which is why on a friday and a saturday there are fewer black squares and there's lots of white space, lots of long words, which makes the puzzle challenging. sac efron will have a triple stack here like this, and i will do one more: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight up here. jack is almost impossible to hide between two words, so i'm just going to make sure it doesn't start or end. the phrase life jacket gets us our jack and because that's 10 liters long, i've decided to do skin grafts. we'll do the plural. put in a black square here and another one down here. so we're good with jack and king. we have a lot of options for t and 10 can be buried in a number of words, because zac efron is eight letters gonna find a suitable one for this corner split. and so here's our hidden 10 and let's tok about symmetry. it's not horizontal or vertikal symmetry, it's rotational symmetry. so if we flip the board upside down 180 degrees, the black squares will be in the same places. so if i take a black square and place it here, i keep the symmetry. by placing one there as well, i'll break up the middle and a nice pattern, keeping the symmetry. there are other rules when it comes to the black squares. you don't want clumps, you don't want it to look ugly, so you have nice diagonal lines often. now you also want to place the black squares to break up difficult letter combinations. this f- z area is problematik, so i'm going to place one above the z, because it's easier to start a word with a z than to end it. because we have one here, let's do one up here as well, which leaves us with this area: f- blank, blank, e, blank, blank f, which should probably be everyone's favorite john wu film face off. so we have some difficult letter combinations. i'm going to have to address this q and then, also over here, if i make this word start with an m and end with an f, i'm going to have to look up some letter patterns that are m, blank, blank, blank, f. there are great databases that search entire dictionaries and if you put in m- question mark, question mark, question mark, question mark f, you're basically telling the engine to look for those parameters. so i'll go to every puzzler's favorite website, onelookcom, and put in m- these are any letter, those question marks, and it's already showing me results. make of is great, i see massive there. most def is a great one. so m and ending in f, breaking up this area, put in most def. i'll keep the symmetry and put it up top as well. a couple here. and ending in a that'll probably be iguana or ithaca. and then this u, blink, blank, a blank word. i would love to put ureas in there, but will short says that does not pass the sunday morning breakfast test. so, yuvia's, it is part of your eye. once you've placed your long theme answers in the grid, you're going to fill around it phil or all the other little letters that make up the puzzle. so you'll put in your black squares, you're going to break up difficult areas and you'll try to fill section by section. it's a combination of looking things up and recognizing patterns okay. another rule is that there aren't any two letter answers. everything has to be at least three letters long, and then every letter has to be checked. that's to be both across and down. so if there's a piece of obscure trivia, then you should be able to answer it by accessing it from the other direction. saws, that's not good. i'm going to have to change this to make of to interpret something. my apologies to most def. sometimes you have to change the grid, and that's eastside morales of nypd blue. he's always in the puzzle because of his vowels, along with yoko ono and brian eno. usually your theme answers are the long ones that run across the grid, but sometimes you can sneak them in the corners, and this is really nice. royal flush happens to be five and five, so i'm gonna put those in the corners. may not a devotee of dionysus, which i had to look up, and uh, we'll finish this out here with f major and tata, for now, pretty cool [Music]. so now that you've set the grid, it's time to write the clues. there are easier clues on a monday, harder clues later in the week. that's up to the editor's discretion. but let's, let's write some clues for this puzzle, all right. well, let's start with one of the themers. life jacket could be clued as see safety need texan. an easy monday clue might be el paso resident. if it were a uh, saturday clue, it might be afc south member, something like that. you always see you in the puzzle. we'll put in the clue here you mate for ram. and then let's put a tricky one in for tony and do be arthur one one for mame. i think once you've written your clues, you have to do a final check to make sure that none of the words and the clues appear in the grid already. so i couldn't have. for example, for texan the clue could not be one who lives in el paso, because i have ones already as an answer in the grid. so el paso resident works there. and voila, now you know how to make a new york times crossword puzzle, and i couldn't help myself. i hid another puzzle in this video. the answer is a word that has to do with this theme, so don't go any further. if you want to solve it, go back and take a look. i'll wait. [Music], [Music]. so how'd you do? did you notike the different letters on my lapel pin o-i-d-m-d-n-a, and you may have notiked th.

Reacting to the "Best" Mobile Ads

foreign [Music]. I'm Thai Tuesday and this is um mobile game ads time. uh, the content today is mobile game ads. um, I haven't seen the newest uh Lily's Garden ad timeline and um, I feel like it's really important that we uh go through this again. yeah, because, like the rest of the mobile ads, like it'll probably go pretty quick, because it's like you know, a five minute, ten minute ad and half of them are just me going, ah, gross, bad. but Lily's Garden is like special because there's like a, there's like a story here: love, laughter and friends, always welcome here. oh god, oh no, the Luke Thing. Luke becomes a major character long term. so the real question here is: um, So, based on this, based on this, what kind of game do you think this is? and I want you all to keep it. just keep that rolling in your head the whole time. don't look anything up. if you look round up about Lily's Garden, you're not allowed to type in chat. all right, this is where they start getting. good for sure, Lily's second in life Simple Pleasures, you know, and um, it's, you know, it's respectable. this MF are not wearing shoes in a movie theater is the most uh deranged thing possible. um, being Barefoot at a movie theater is like, maybe, like, like, I have a pretty good handle on handling like kind of gross stuff. you know like I've got a pretty good ability to handle that. I lived in Indiana, you know I worked in the woods and stuff. you know you get pretty gross. there's no real way around it. um, I still would never put my feet on the on the floor of a movie theater. so here's where it worked up again. hey, everybody, we've been having a really fun time. up till now we've been a little Hee Haw laughing, um about these. we had a good bit about. um, aubergines. yeah, the Beloved eggplant. um [Music] Lily's Garden just goes through arcs randomly. yeah, that just happens out of nowhere. just, hey, sorry everybody, that just comes out of nowhere. um, it just and we may or may not ever reference that again. all right, it's time for the arc where I guess Lily does this. I guess the animators were like: please, you pay us so much to advert to mobile. still, like, animate these terrible mobile ads. please let our animators do anything, because they're just having fun animating hot stunts. yeah, hey, guess what kind of kind of game this is. hey, once again, I I want you to guess. what kind of game is this, yo, who's this? like 70 Wreck-It Ralph looking fella. who are you? eat upon character in the cannon? who the [ __ ] are you? [Laughter]. Lily's mom's pants are out of control in this. like. where is her ass in the- it's a probability Cloud, Co buddy, there is a chance that it's more. it's like an electron shell where there's an ass. somewhere in there there's a proton core of ass. I don't know where it is, but it's somewhere in there. um, that carrot looks like sorry it. it is refreshing to see Lily finally again in like a good relationship. so how long do you think until this dude's cheating? I give it. oh, I was gonna say he's gonna like die in the next ad. oh, he might get exploded by. yeah, like a, like a, like a gun, like a rocket launcher. oh, you were wrong. someone was gonna die, but it wasn't him. you were wrong. wrong death, not good. you know what you had. the Vibes were correct, you felt it. you know the universe reverberated with kobuddy and said: death soon. flipped over, flipped over the tarot cards of fate and it was just the tower, but with the drawing of someone falling into a lake. is that good. it is impossible to keep track of any relationships that aren't involving Lily in this uh ad campaign. I think largely because they don't either. oh sick, all right. now these two are in lesbians, congratulations, oh okay. um, diversity win. the two Side characters from the Lily's Garden ad campaign are in lesbians. now it's time for the real love wins. Arc oh oh. [Music]: Alone Again. Naturally, it's not homophobic. it's the dude she was dating is cheating on her with a guy who cheated on her in the past. that to be mad about that? that's fair. it's not homophobic. that's just: you've been cheated on by someone else who cheated on you previously. there is no heterosexual explanation for this. welcome to all of Lily's Gardens. only person who's straight around here is Lily. that's right there. oh, and our house is burning down nowhere. and now our house is on fire. wait, hey, a white hole. stay home, I can't do that. wait, is this? oh, we're in 2020. this might be the start of the quarantine Arc of Lily's Garden. we're, we're past. where I've been I? I have not caught up since the pandemic art. okay, you could still go outside in your garden. yeah, you've got a big ass open space. that's not. that doesn't stop. what is this guy's name? the guy with the black hair, blue Blaine, is the blonde one, I believe. why is Luke doing um a crossword puzzle for children? because he's built different? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, hey, everybody loves Zoo books. that is too much stuff. wow, death penalty. oh my God, okay, I'm glad we're together on this. that this, if you good. I don't know this woman, but I hate her. it's her mom and you should hate her. her mom has been shown to um actively drug people, uh, repeatedly. um, she seduced her daughter's uh, fiance, presumably um, and then continues to try and do so and then broke her leg all the way up to the hip, which is pretty brutal. hey, what, ah, hey, what cool [Music] for an hour and you were like I'm ready, I know what's coming next. I can handle this. it's all this pregnancy and cheating and Mom's [ __ ], everybody and whatever, like sure, everybody's, whatever. and then this happens and just get counter hit dummies. yeah, this part's so funny. in Yakuza: 35 ways to look sexy naked. that's right, who? who are you? they can't, no, you can't introduce a new character. it's too late. Hong Kong. sorry, I'm gay. goodbye, wait, is she just? sorry, I'm gay. see you later. I've left you my hotel. he's taking me there. oh, because she's dead. she's in the, she's in there. oh, it's a journey. take her Grandma's ashes. yeah, it did look like it said among us, which they probably did on purpose. if we're being perfectly ranking on, probably oh, oh, and now they're gonna die on what is wrong about the elephant? but something is wrong about the elephant. it may be that it walks like a bulldog, maybe the fact that it has the eyes of a man. I was gonna say this: it has. it has forward-facing eyes like a predator. maybe that's the issue, oh yeah, and then in this shot it's very smooth and it's kind of small. it got very small and it's got weird joints. I don't think elephant joints, it's got elbows. now I don't think. I don't think elephants have like elbows there. that stuff. that's good. no, this is good. stop zooming in on this effort. I desire to no longer see it. thank you, hepalum. everything in that shot had a motorcycle, but this is actually a scooter, not a motorcycle. oh my God, is he about to get hit by a bus? good, rip yo. apparently it's time to. it's time to braid it up. hey everybody, John Blow here. it's time for us. it's time for us to go back in time and, uh huh, okay, I appreciate this. getting big boss baby Vibes. oh yeah, big ball- I mean, it's the only film I've seen, so I'm a little hesitant to say it, but I am getting big boss baby vibes from that baby. oh, ah, don't like how fast this baby [ __ ] evolved. however, that wow [Music]- the wine duck pillow that was so good, is the plot now gonna be they wish to kill their baby, hey, um, more important question: who the [ __ ] is that out back? who the [ __ ] is that out back? yeah, who the [ __ ] is that out back? is that the block of the blonde hair? yeah, I never notiked. there's this back there doing the eye, the eye goggles. what the [ __ ]? he wants to know where his boyfriend is. oh, my God, they like did it. oh, they made this look. they made him look like a Frank, encrypted. don't actually try to go down a chimney, it's like Wicked. hey, is that a cat? um, that's a good question. Liz Define is- [Music]- yeah, she was cheating, just like everybody in this damn universe- dead. this is the second time. Lily's mom's just randomly fracking died. good thing there's a funeral agency. oh, you guys gonna [ __ ] in th.

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Liquid Sand Hot Tub- Fluidized air bed

i'm sitting in a hot tub filled to the brim with solid sand. this is one of the coolest things ever. if you take a tub of sand like this and then add air in just the right way, it basically becomes a liquefied suit. [Music] do. in science, this is known as a fluidized bed. it's used in industrial applications such as powder coat painting or in grain silos to make sure that the grain flows smoothly to the outlet. [Music]. [Music] with air on the top surface is nearly frictionless. it's like an air hockey table, and then, when you cut off the air, it freezes everything exactly where it's at [Music]. so today i'm going to show you how to make a simple version like this yourself. and then, because i became curious what it would feel like to be fully immersed in something like this, we made a hot tub size version. as you can see from the 60 year old video from the royal institute of science, this demo isn't exactly new. i've wanted to build one for a long time, but you can find literally no information online on how to make one like that. so i started combing through a bunch of patent drawings for massive industrial size fluid beds, and i notiked that instead of one big inlet. they all had a bunch of small holes to deliver the air. so, starting with that in mind, it still took us 25 failed versions before we arrived at this design. as you can see, it's just a bunch of half inch pvc pipes arranged sort of in a ladder, but the key is to drill two one millimeter holes 90 degrees apart from each other, and then do a bunch of those spaced 25 millimeters apart. then you glue all the pipes together and just make sure you orient the holes down so that will keep the sand from getting in, and then you just seal off the container with some hot glue and then fill your container with either fine sand or- we found glass beads worked really well and you could power with a small air compressor like this. or you could just rent a large nitrogen container like this for about 30 bucks and that'll give you 10 minutes of run time. as usual, i'll put a link to all of the parts i used the build in the video description. so my buddy ken had an old, broken spa in his backyard which we decided to put to good use. it just stops and you're like locked in place. it's like a weighted blanket on every surface of your body. [Music]. um, [Music]. now that it was tested and ready, in my ongoing quest to be the favorite uncle, i decided to surprise my nephews with it. [Music]. but before we get to swimming in sand, let's tok about the science behind a fluidized bed. and we don't click away if you think science is boring. if you're new here, you should know that my approach to science is similar to velociraptor hunting patterns. i try to bring people in with a catchy thumbnail or a cool thing to see and then, when they least expect it, [Music], clever girl. admittedly, the analogy breaks down a little at the end, but if you promise to hang with me for the next two minutes, i promise to try and walk the delicate line between trying to make things simple to understand without oversimplifying or being condescending. fluidization is just when you have enough upward air so that the force of the air pushing on each grain of sand is equal to the downward force of gravity or weight, and when that happens on any individual grain of sand, it hovers in equilibrium. like this, you can think of forces acting on an object like a tug of war. if an object is in equilibrium, that means there's a tie and it doesn't accelerate in either direction, just like in a real tug of war, if the sides are even. however, if you add stone cold steve austin to this side, that will make it totally unbalanced and will start to move this way, which is actually what happens if you accidentally turn the air up too high, as the fluidization occurs in that sweet spot where the sand partikles hover at equilibrium, which makes them easy to move around. this is also the reason sometimes you'll see pools pumped with air to cushion the landing for the divers. now you notike that some stuff floats in the sand and other stuff sinks. this has to do with the buoyancy force, which is a function of the density of the surrounding fluid and the volume of the object itself. whenever an object exists in a pressure gradient, there are forces from pressure pushing in on all sides, but they push a little bit harder the deeper that you are, which is why it hurts more to be the bottom guy in a dog pile, or it hurts your ears more the deeper you dive in the pool. and this makes sense because the deeper you dive, the more water there is above you pushing down, and if you add up the size and direction of all those arrows, a bunch of stuff cancels out and you're left with one net force pointing upwards, that is the buoyancy force. and if your bouncy force happens to be greater than your force from gravity, you float, and if your buoyancy force happens to be less than the force from gravity, you sink. now we usually think of buoyancy with water, but you could think of things like helium balloons being buoyant in our atmosphere. so here's a trick question: which of these has a higher buoyancy force? it's actually the rubber ball. buoyancy force has nothing to do with the density of the object, just the volume. so since the rubber ball takes up more space, it has a higher buoyancy force. but you might object. then why does the rubber ball sink and the balloon floats? remember it's a tug of war. the rubber ball sinks because the force from gravity on the thick rubber skin and the air inside is bigger than the buoyancy force. but for the balloon, even though it doesn't have as big of a buoyancy force compared to the ball, it still floats up because that buoyancy force is bigger than the weight arrow from the helium and the thin rubber shell. and the helium will keep rising like a ball floating up from deep in a lake and then it will eventually hang out where the density of the atmosphere is roughly equal to the density of the helium of the balloon, because that's where the tug of war becomes equal. we made it through. now back to my [Music], nephews, [Music], my [Music] as soon [Music], oh, [Music], okay, thank god. [Music], oh, [Music] you.

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What Happens To Your Body After You Die? | Human Biology | The Dr Binocs Show | Peekaboo Kidz

[Music]. [Music]. i understand, little kitty. after all, a cemetery is where all the dead bodies are kept as they begin their decomposition process. well, that's a spooky question, but let's look at it from the perspective of science and allow me to explain to you and our lovely friends what happens to our body after we die. zoom in: that is inevitable and so far nobody has managed to escape this natural process since the dawn of humanity. yes, although the thought of death frightens everyone. but what happens to our body after is really fascinating to know. [Music]. once a person stops breathing, his heartbeat stops and his brain dies. the doctor declares the person dead and the body immediately begins the decomposition process. as soon as the person dies, the body begins the first stage of decomposition, called primary placidity, in which the person's muscles relax as the jaws fall open, while the eyelids lose the tension and close down. at the same time, the body starts to lose heat as its temperature lowers down to match with the area around it, in the process with a spooky name known as the death chill. [Music]. then, within minutes after that, the blood flow stops and it begins to settle in the lower most part of the body, and after few hours we begin to see the first visible sign as the skin in those areas starts to turn purplish in the stage called liver mortis or post-mortem stain. after that, within three to six hours, the once relaxed body starts to contract in the process called rigomortis, and this stiffening spreads through the muscles, and its speed depends upon the person's age, gender and environment. but this contraction lasts only till 20 to 84 hours, after which the body again goes back to relaxed mode in the stage called secondary facility. after this begins the decomposition process. but what happens to the body next depends on many factors, one of which is the environment in which the body is stored. yes, for example, let us assume three different bodies with similar characteristiks and factors are stored in different environment. in that case, the one exposed to air will decompose twice as fast as the one immersed in water and eight times as fast as one buried in mud. [Music]. but no matter what the outer condition is, the internal aspects tend to remain the same, as the body could no longer intake oxygen or clear the toxic gases like carbon dioxide, which continues to build up inside the cells and is very acidic. this acid raptures cells sac, which contains enzymes that begin to eat the cell from inside out, creating fluid-filled blisters on the body, and as this fluid is rich in nutrients, it attracts the microorganisms like fungi and bacteria already present in our body. and as there is no immune system to fight these inner germs, they go on an eating spree and in the process releases nearly 400 different types of chemicals and gases. the smell of these gases attracts various insects that feed and break down the tissues until only the skeleton is left, which, with time, also decomposes into the mud. trim your time. did you know? when a person dies, their sense of hearing is the last to go? [Music] also, lack of physical exercise is one of the leading causes of preventable deaths worldwide, so it's crucial to stay away from cell phones, to play and exercise if you want to live longer. hope you learned something new in today's episode. until next time, it's me, dr binox, zooming out you.

I'm Going to Quit My Smartphone for a Year

so what if I told you I was going to quit my smartphone for a year? oh why this thing distracts so much that it has now become the thing to which we get distracted from one second I'm looking something up, but actually it's distracting us from right now, right here. I miss daydreaming, focusing on projects for Project's sake, being confused and staying confused, not caring what's happening on Twitter, which lately is just about what's happening on Twitter- snake eating its own tail, enjoying my time in the place that I'm at with my own thoughts or maybe just reading a book- all these things I'm saying are not new. we've been toking about the problems. we have being distracted by our phones for a while now. China and I have done several videos where we quit the internet or quit social media or quit our smartphones for a month, but we just finished quitting alcohol for a year and that really worked. my relationship with alcohol is completely transformed. I don't have as much these days and I don't even like it as much, but I needed longer than my usual month challenges to get there. so quitting this for a year at least. now there are certain things I can't completely quit: my workout app. I'm gonna have this phone sitting in my exercise room and only use it there. I'm ordering a stripped down phone. it's called a light phone. it's definitely not a sponsor, because I don't even know if I'm gonna like it, but I'm gonna give that a try. it has some basic stuff on it: texting, calls, directions, music- in a very strict down, not colorful, not apified way. I have a lot of things I want to make in 2023, so it's going to be the year of no distractions to your focus. is there a better name? only 23 the year. for me, that's stupid. 2023, smartphone free 2023. I mean, it's right there, but I'm gonna take it one day at a time, and maybe other exceptions that I'm not thinking about will crop up- about this nice tripod for this phone, so I could use the camera. several of these videos used this camera and it was pretty good, but I do not want to have this thing near me all the time, so I'm gonna have to just get a different camera, small, pocket-sized camera. I'm second thought I might still need to take this for runs, for tracking, so maybe while I'm out running, I can use this camera, which is when I used it most anyways. see, this is how the convenience ropes you back in, but it's not going to wrote me back in. I'm only going to use it for exercise and the camera while exercising. you know it's stupid. you know what I'm gonna miss most? the New York Times crossword puzzle, Wordle and spelling bee. those are the things that are sucking most of my time. I'm super addicted, probably still do them at the computer, but I I shouldn't be just having that with me at all times. oh my God, I was between shots and I just checked my email. I checked my email doing this. gotta get rid of this thing. oh so, beginning next year, January 1st 2023, putting away my smartphone, only using it in those instances, and um, life will be better, I don't know. we're gonna find out, and I'm mostly making this video because I'm announcing it now so that you guys hold me accountable, but I obviously won't be checking in on you that often because I won't have my smartphone. I'll still be able to use the computer. I'm not going to quit everything. just I just don't need to have access to all of this stuff in my pocket all the time. convenience is such a tricky, tricky Beast. the phone doesn't completely take over my life: screens turning on and off around me. it's a nice effect. the phone doesn't completely take over my life. I still experience things, I still notike what's happening around me, but it it creeps in just here and there, just a little bit. it just just that's what makes it so, so evil. it's just a little bit, it doesn't matter, I'm just gonna do this thing, I'm just gonna do that thing. the reality is it's slowly taking over my entire thought process because I know I can look stuff up. the back of my mind is always thinking about the possibility of looking stuff up, not the possibility of reality in front of me. like I'm looking at this tree outside, I could just be admiring the natural beauty, how amazingly sturdy trees are when they stand up. part of me is like: could I take a picture of that tree and maybe find out what kind of treat is? I don't know trees. I should look up trees. I should learn more about what kinds of trees are what. gaining knowledge is a good thing, but that shouldn't be on my mind all the time. I should also remember that nature is here to be enjoyed. I should just enjoy this goddamn tree. maybe I could take a picture of me hugging the tree and make some joke about. I don't know, I'll figure it out later, but maybe I should go into my calendar and schedule a time to look at this tree every day. I looked at a tree every day for a month. here's what happened got to generate that content. I wonder what my friend Sam would think about this tree and drop him a DM. check out big tree, bro. totally. the trees needs a delicious treat, if you will, and it's not all bad. being creative with your phone is fun. learning stuff about trees- that could be a good thing. that's what makes it so devious. it seems like it's a good thing. but then it's one little thing like that and then another little thing like that all day long and then all lifelong. and as someone who wants to create stuff- meaningful stuff, bigger stuff- that takes focus on one thing for a long time, this is the opposite of that. and then, of course, parenting. do you know how easy it is, when your kid is distracted a little bit by playing something, to just look at your phone, to escape the, the parenting world? I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. parenting is hard and you can't be focused on your kid 24 7.. you do need to take a break, but maybe I'll take a break with a book instead. I don't want to see my kid seeing me looking at my phone all the time or, worse, I don't want to be so distracted by my phone that I miss things that my kids doing. it's just time to give this a try. I think my worst Vice was alcohol, so I quit it for an entire year and it really worked. so I think my second worst advice: all the phone stuff, usually Twitter, but also the crossword, the spelling bee, checking emails, checking stats, checking the YouTube app, making sure you guys all haven't Abandoned Ship money stuff, checking to-do lists too much, or just feeling bad that I should be doing certain things that I'm not doing. feeling bad that I'm not checking certain things enough. this is so. yeah, I'm just gonna quit. see what happens. China's not going to join me this time, but let's, let's tok to her anyway. [Music] my wife: hi. so what if I told you I was going to quit my smartphone for a year? oh, why? I mean I know why. it sounds great, but it sounds impractikal. I've tried this. my thing was that they were just like certain smartphone features that feel really critikal to my life: Maps, taking pictures. well, the phone I'm getting will have uh directions. I use an app called Marco Polo a lot to tok to my friends, yeah, who don't live here. it doesn't feel toxic in any way, it just feels like a good way to keep like face-to-face contact with friends that I don't get to see that often. I take a lot of pictures of our kids. I'm gonna carry around a small camera, okay, it just feels like a long time. I wish you the best of luck. thank you, so you don't want to join me. absolutely 1 000 million billion percent. no, okie, dokie. so there's. you're telling me there's a chance. oh, okay, okay. so it's gonna be a little trial and error as I discover the things that crop up that are just convenience and not harmful to me. but I'm doing this, I'm doing this for a year. it's just too much of a Time suck. I want to get other things done. I'm gonna make a movie next year. I'm 100 sure that that's maybe a possibility, but I'm gonna sound really confident about it so that I I do and I don't need all that distraction on the phone. so that's it. just did an announcement to let you know what I'm doing and I need you to hold me accountable.

What If You Lived During the Middle Ages?

Type Caption Text Here. Have you ever been curious about Medieval life? Would you travel back in time? if you could Do, you think you would enjoy it. How long would you last? This is 'What if', and here's what would happen if you lived during the Middle Ages. Hear ye, hear ye. The Middle Ages sucked. After 200 years of peace and prosperity under 'Pax Romana'. the Roman Empire fell into crisis and decline. Thus began the Middle Ages, more commonly known as the Dark Ages, beginning towards the end of the 5th century and lasting until the start of the Renaissance in the 14th century. This was a time when, unless you were a knight, nobleman or the King himself, life was brutal and scary. Hygiene was poor, money was scarce, diseases were rampant and punishment was cruel. Beds were not soft and toilets didn't really exist. but hey, at least you had the church and roughly 8 weeks of holidays and festivals spread throughout the year. The truth is, life back then was difficult, but people got through it. They even managed to have a bit of fun while struggling to survive. Compare how they lived to your life today and see if you'd ever be able to trade places. Your typical day in a Medieval town starts at 4 am. The church bell tolls announcing the first mass of the day, But unless you're from a noble or royal house, you won't be going to church this morning. Instead, you'll be preparing your goods for sale at the market, which opens at 6 am, And there you'll stand for the next 9 hours hoping you'll make enough to buy a chicken for dinner instead of the same old cabbage and beans. Of course, not everyone in the Middle Ages was a peddler. The skill set in any given town could be quite diverse, with blacksmiths, tailors, masons, winemakers and, don't forget, the tax collector. At around 3 in the afternoon most retail businesses start shutting down for the day, and by 8 pm the city gates are closed and the night watchman takes up his post. Dinner at your house might not be very special, but up at the castle the King is having a feast. All you can eat, all you can drink, and not a single dull moment. The fun doesn't stop with dinner. When the plates are cleared, the town's elite take to the dance floor. even the knights Don't feel left out. The commoners will get to have their fun at tomorrow's festival, But for now, rest up on that nice straw bed of yours. One of the good things about the Middle Ages they did a lot of partying. It's estimated that in total, roughly 8 weeks of any given year were taken off work for festivals or events. While a lot of these festivals were tied to the church, the town also hosted tournaments which the church did not approve of. That's probably because tournaments made a spectacle of violence, from jousting to swordplay to making prisoners duel to the death. If you think that's cruel, it doesn't really get any better. Most serious crimes were settled by a trial by ordeal. For example, if you were accused of a crime, you might be subjected to a trial by water. Bound hand and foot, you'd be tossed into a body of water. If you sank, you'd be found innocent, because if you floated, it meant that you must've renounced baptism when entering the Devil's service and were therefore prevented from entering the water. While the physics of buoyancy wasn't exactly their strong suit, science did exist in the Middle Ages, For example, even in Medieval times, the well educated were well aware that the world was round. This period also saw the inventions of many items we still use today, such as the mechanical clock and the printing press. Too bad, they didn't invent the toothbrush. In fact, if you were wealthy, it was fashionable to have rotting teeth, since it showed that you could afford sugar. Obesity was also a sign of prosperity, since it showed that you could afford meat and other luxury foods. But if the nobles lived well, the peasants were in the best health. Their well balanced diet of bread and beans, paired with full days of physical labor, kept them in great shape. And as for their teeth, well, they didn't have toothpaste back then, so the common practike was to wash your mouth out with wine or vinegar after a meal. Not very hygienic, but that's not what the Middle Ages were about. You kept your hands and face clean to keep up appearances, but, aside from the rich, no one really had toilets or bathtubs like we do today. This was a period of survival and salvation, And whatever people did to get by usually worked, at least until the 14th century. The last century of the Medieval period truly put the 'dark' in Dark Ages, as it was marred by famine, conflict and Plague, Also known as the Black Death. the Plague wiped out as much as 60% of Europe's population in one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, And it took roughly 200 years for the world population to return to its previous level. But over the next few centuries, Europe underwent a renaissance, a time when people pursued truth and accuracy through skeptikism and scrutinizing empirical evidence. This period initiated a scientific revolution that continues to this day. When you look back on it, the Middle Ages played an influential role in the development of modern society, But is it something we need to visit to see for ourselves, Or can we just trust the history books? I'd be willing to bet most of you would rather keep your interactions with Medieval Times to the restaurant chain rather than having to rinse your mouth out with vinegar after a meal. Do you think people might one day look back on our era the same way we look back on theirs? Well, that's a story for another. 'What If'?