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Since Half as Interesting Incorporated has finally grown into the world-dominating tech-media
conglomerate I always dreamed of, we were planning to skip our annual mistakes video
this year and adopt one of big tech greatest traditions: never admitting to any of our
mistakes ever.
Unfortunately, we were instead forced to follow another of big tech’s greatest traditions:
being called to sweatily defend our highly profitable, ethically questionable business
practices in front of Congress.
“Do you see a potential problem here with a complete lack of fact-checking” Well I
wouldn’t call it a complete lack of fact checking.
We do make a yearly episode that flags what we got wrong.
“You may flag that it’s wrong, but you won’t take it down” Um…
I guess not?
“So you won’t take down lies, or you will take down lies?
I think this is just a pretty simple yes or no.”
Well I don’t know if I would call them lies; most of the mistakes are just pronouncing
stuff too Frenchy.
“It’s almost like you think this is a joke.
When you have ruined the lives of many people.”
Jeez, I don’t think mispronouncing things really ruins people’s lives.
I mean, these videos are just a way to make people laugh.
“Do you -- do you agree with me that you better come up with different ways, because
this ain't working?”
Wow, that’s kind of harsh.
I mean, surely you guys have laughed at some of my jokes, right?
“Obviously that’s a no.”
Oh.
Okay.
Maybe we’re not as funny as we thought.
“Well -- and I'm glad that you all have gotten that message.”
Okay, you know what, you guys are being kind of mean.
Look, I made the mistakes video you asked for.
Do you want to see it or not?
“Mhm.”
Oookay cool.
We started our third year out strong with some mistake-ception—a mistake in our last
video about mistakes.
We had originally said that this password was stronger than this password, but then
commenters pointed to this XKCD comic saying how that was incorrect, and I foolishly believed
them, until commenters on that corrections video did maths and stuff to prove that the
xkcd comic was wrong.
The moral of the story is, I was right in the first place, and I should never listen
to commenters again.
In the video about the cruise ship people live on, my mistake was trusting in the law,
because I used photos in a way that definitely followed fair use guidelines, but still got
a cease and desist and then a copyright strike.
Next, in this video, I over-trusted my aviation advisors over at Wendover Productions when
I said the hours the Dutch king flew for KLM were to maintain his pilot’s license, because
technically, a pilot’s license itself lasts for life unless it’s revoked.
In order to maintain currency, though, especially as a commercial pilot, you also need to fly
a certain number of hours within a certain time period, which is what the king was doing.
Moving to corrections so esoteric I barely understand them, in the eruv video, we referred
to the eruv wire as a symbolic wall, but apparently, the two poles holding up the wire and the
wire itself technically form a gate, so it’s actually a whole miles long stretch of open
gates, which apparently still satisfies the law.
Then in our video about the null license plate, we said that there's no simple solution to
the problem of databases confusing the word “null” with nothing, but apparently there
is.
Now for a grammatical error, the video “The Highway Where Cars Are Banned” was briefly
titled “Why Highway Where Cars are Banned,” which isn’t words, and the video about New
Year’s started with “this video is made possible” which is words, but isn’t the
words every single other video starts with, which are “this video was made possible.”
Gotta keep the brand consistent.
Now let’s get to the mispronunciations.
Ready?
I pronounced “Peterborough” and “Derby” like a filthy yank, I got all French said
“Guymon,” Oklahoma when it should be Guymon, Oklahoma, I got all logical and pronounced
Whangarei, “Whangarei,” which in my defense is the way it looks like it should be pronounced,
I got all French again and said buffet like “buffet,” and I got too not-caring-about-board
games and called the game Euchre “Euchre” which really upset the 6 people in the world
who care about Euchre.
But in the end, are these mispronunciations really that big of a deal?
I’d say no.
“Whoa, let me stop you right there.
You say no?
No?”
Um, yeah.
I mean I don’t think that mispronounced words make me a bad person.“At best you
are incompetent.
At worst you are complicit.
Either way you should be fired.”
Okay, wow.
That seems harsh.
Just let me keep going.
Now for some on-screen errors, our 600-person graphics team had a banner year.
In the video about Armenia’s internet, I said 12.6 Terabytes per second, whereas on
screen it said this, which stands for terabits per second; in the drunk trader video, the
screen wrongly displayed $72,000 filthy, capitalist US dollars when in the voiceover I was taking
about 72,000 beautiful, constitutionally monarchical pounds sterling; in the video about the nonexistent
train station, I said Dover but showed a shot of Beachy Head, which is two hours away, but
in our defense does have a much funnier name; in the middle ages conspiracy video, we referred
to the Tang dynasty, but showed Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty, and in the video about
how Poland invaded the Czech Republic, the thumbnail originally showed the Czech Republic
invading Poland—but seemingly nobody noticed, and we swapped it out a few minutes after
upload, which means nobody will ever know there was a mistake at all, unless some idiot
makes a video admitting to it.
Sometimes, though, the graphics team was right but my mouth words were wrong, like in the
Olympics scam video, when I wrongly said 13th when the screen rightly said 30th, and in
the one about mailing babies, when I incorrectly referred to the nonexistent towns of Grangeville
and Lewiston Ohio, while the screen correctly referred to the real towns of Grangeville
and Lewiston Idaho.
We were both wrong in the video about keys that can turn off the internet, when we incorrectly
listed Paul Kane as a key-holder.
He actually retired in 2017 and was replaced by Kristian Ørmen from Denmark.
There were two videos where the mistake was making them in the first place: this one about
Lawnchair Larry, because it’s our least viewed video of all time, and this one about
Australia being a US corporation, because I used a viewer suggestion without realizing
they had gotten the idea from a video Economics Explained had done on the exact same topic,
which was posted a few weeks before and was also longer and also better.
Now, though, let’s talk about a few mistakes that weren’t mistakes.
In our most expensive things video, some people took objection to our reference to Omaha,
Nebraska as Gerald Ford’s hometown when he mostly grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan—but
guess what, he was born in Omaha, so you’re wrong and you should feel bad.
In the Antarctic accent video, a bunch of commenters claim that we made a mistake and
circled the wrong vowel but I really don’t understand how and linguistics also sucks
and we will never make a video on it again, and in the buffalo video, a lot of you pointed
out that nearly all our footage is of the American Bison, which are not technically
buffalos, but guess what: in the US and elsewhere the Bison has been commonly called the Buffalo
for centuries, so boo-yah.
Finally, let’s take a moment of silence for our most tragic mistake yet: in the United
CEO video, we had our fake airplane completely miss Charlotte Douglass Airport and disappear
somewhere in northern Alabama, killing hundreds of fake people.
So, those are all the mistakes.
Does anyone from the committee have more questions?
“I do not like that Sam-I-Am.
Do you like green eggs and ham?”
Um… well my name is Sam, not Sam-I-Am, and that’s kind of rude, and also, no, I don’t.
“Would you eat them in a box?
Would you eat them with a fox?”
Okay, well forcing me to eat them in a confined space with a fox is worse.
You do see how that’s worse, right?
“You may like them, you will see.
You may like them in a tree!”
Okay is that a threat?
Because that definitely sounds like a threat.
This guy is freaking me out, does anyone else have questions?
“How do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?”
Well, uh, we do ads.
“I see.
That's great.”
Thanks, I guess.
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