Good morning, John. It's—it's Black Friday. Of course.
Uh, you know, it's the day in which all Americans
keep their lights off for one day.
And it's really interesting to me that we all do this.
But very few people actually know the story of how Black Friday began.
Let's go back all the way to 1789,
The first Congress of the United States.
One of the first acts of that Congress was
to create something called the lighthouse service.
Now, lighthouses have, of course, prevented the deaths of countless sailors over millennia,
but they do need maintenance, right?
And back in the day, it was impossible, basically,
to tell the world that a lighthouse was going to be down for maintenance,
which would occasionally result
in sailors being lured into a false sense of security:
They thought there would be a lighthouse there;
they don't see the lighthouse;
and then dashed upon the rocks and everybody dies.
This was a real problem, so in the mid-1800s,
The lighthouse service decided to pick one day a year
in which all of the lighthouses would go down for maintenance and
and everyone would know that that was Lighthouse Maintenance Day, basically.
They picked the day after Thanksgiving
because they figured that was something everyone would remember
and also, it's a day on which there would be less commercial shipping traffic.
But it didn't take too long before
people started conflating that maintenance day
with a kind of Day of Rememberance for fallen sailors.
So in port towns all across New England,
all of the lights would get turned off:
One, to remind everyone that this was indeed the day when you couldn't count on the lighthouses;
And two, to remember all of the sailors and fishermen who has been lost at sea.
Over several decades, this tradition spread down the coast,
And then eventually, across the entire United States,
many people not really knowing why they were turning their lights off,
just knowing that it was sort of a nice cozy thing to do on the day after Thanksgiving.
And now, here we are in 2017,
and of course, lighthouse maintenance is done during the day,
so weirdly, on Black Friday,
lighthouses are one of the only lights that actually gets turned on.
That was my Black Friday storytime!
I made all of that up,
except for the part about the lighthouse service
being one of the first things that was created by the first Congress of the U.S..
That's a real thing!
Black Friday, actually, on which Christmas shopping begins,
And so all companies are like, "No, we must have your dollars,"
so they lower prices a lot.
And, yeah, we're doing that.
20% off almost everything at dftba.com:
Things from your favorite creators, including us,
but also CGP Grey, and Kurtzgesagt, and Minute Physics.
Also channels that aren't educational,
But also, we're launching a store for Vi Hart *today*.
So Vi Hart merch, for the first time ever, is going on sale today.
We've also got 500 signed copies of Turtles All The Way Down that we snagged from Penguin,
So most of those are sold out in the real world,
but we have some of the DFTBA warehouse
and we're selling them along with a tuatara pin and a turtle sticker pack.
And there's a clearance page
where things are 50% off because
because we literally need to, like, make room in the warehouse.
I thought that that was always a made-up thing
that was like "WAREHOUSE CLEARANCE,"
And no, we need to—there's not enough space in the warehouse.
Also, we're doing, like, a last sale of VidCon merch,
so if you didn't get VidCon merch when you were there,
you can get it now.
It's on super-sale, and then we're not going to have it anymore.
Speaking of VidCon, there's a 10% discount on all VidCon ticket types,
if you put in the coupon code "TURKEYTIME".
Also, for Project for Awesome,
we usually do a calendar and a t-shirt;
During the Project for Awesome this year,
we're doing that before the Project for Awesome,
And this is the calendar,
it's just a vlogbrothers calendar;
me and John did a photo shoot in which we got real silly,
And, I mean, oh my Goooood...
I'm really proud of this;
the theme is "Silly brother, serious brother."
I'm wearing that shirt right now, actually.
It's good, and all proceeds go to the Foundation to Decrease World Suck,
and there's also a very cool shirt.
Ah, there are more things!
We just launched a new project called SciShow Finds,
which is like "cool things you can get for the science-y loving people in your life."
Basically, it's just stuff that I would like to get.
And finally, every year, John and I do a census of Nerdfighteria,
It's a pretty long survey.
It takes about 20 minutes to do it.
More, if you're really into it.
It helps us understand this community:
who you are, what you want,
and to help us decide what to do next.
Thank you so much for doing that, and
if you want to turn off all your lights and get cozy this Black Friday,
I suggest you do that;
it's actually—kind of sounds like a lovely thing.
John, I'll see you on Tuesday.
But before you turn off the lights, don't forget:
Go. Nerdfighteria Census.
Thank you so much.
It is so helpful to the people who do that.