Hello Internet - H.I. #53: Two Dudes Counting

Episode Date: December 16, 2015

Grey and Brady count the votes. Click here for a video version of this podcast. And check out the podcast postcards website. Brought to you by: Harry's: Quality Men's Shaving Products. Promocode HI for $5 off your first purchase Igloo: An intranet you'll actually like Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month Listeners like you Postcards!

Okay everyone, the moment has arrived. I've jumped in the car, I'm going to the train station to pick up CGP Grey because today we are counting the votes. Let's get this show on the road, eh? So we're off to Bristol train station, we'll pick up Grey and then the adventure really begins. So I left the house in a bit of a hurry. Surprise, surprise. And I'm a bit disorganised. And I just realised I haven't got the money that I would like to have to pay for parking and crossing the Clifton Suspension Bridge. So I'm going to ring Grey. And I'm imagining Grey's not the sort of guy who's going to have coins on him. But because

he's at the train station, I'm guessing he might be able to get some coins before me. So we'll give him a call and see if he can help us out. I'm guessing he won't answer. Don't leave a voicemail. This account is never checked. Don't leave a voicemail. This account is never checked. Okay, everyone, I'm arriving at Bristol Temple Meads train station. It's quite a beautiful station actually from the exterior, if you ever have a look at pictures of it or visit it. It's not much to look at inside, but it's got a really nice facade.

Very pretty. I'm driving up to it now and see if Grey has arrived. And we'll see if he got those coins. Hello! It's an historical day. It is. Is it historical or historic? I don't know. Leave it for the grammar pedants. Alright. Whatever it is. You take that so I can drive. It's historical. How was your trip? It's rolling. Oh, rolling. Yeah. It was good. It was good.

Yeah. Just a nice, always a nice ride up to see you. Did you get the coins? Yes, I got the coins for you. Did you find that unpleasant, having to handle coins? Yeah, I know you like the sound. There you go. There's coins in my pocket.

So the thing we're going to do now is go to the post box to get the last remaining votes so we've pulled up in clifton near the post box now a whole bunch of the votes in the postcards are already at my house but the last couple of weeks worth we're about to pick up great this is going to be your first time even seeing battles yeah i've never seen them in person this is going to be really exciting is that all all you've got to say? I'll have more to say when I see them. You, on the other hand, you've been spoiling yourself. You've been looking at all the postcards.

So you have an exciting idea of exactly what's there. But for me, this is all the unknown. So who's in a better position? Because I seem more excited. So for all your talk about not spoiling things, I feel like I'm more excited. I feel like I didn't spoil it by looking at them early. Brady, Brady, you're always filled with childish excitement about everything. I am. I am.

All right, come on, man. Let's go. Let's go. We're off. Hello. Hi. I don't have my key. What number are you? Is it 28? Is this for Hello Internet?

Yes. Oh, my gosh, you've got so much i'm sorry are you can i just we're recording hello internet's a podcast so we're just recording me coming to pick them up so you're actually holding postcards in your hand now aren't you yes i'm sorting through the mail what have all you guys been thinking about receiving all these postcards um it's pretty interesting i'm very intrigued to see what it's about do you don't even know what any of this is about i I keep meaning to look at it. Well, you can't read our mail. That would be unprofessional. We're doing a vote. We're deciding what our official flag is going to be.

There are five candidates, so everyone is sending in their votes as to what they want our flag to be. For anyone who's listening, the lady here at Mailboxes is sorting through the last postcards that have made it by deadline. Technically, these haven't made it by deadline yeah but that's that's the way that works yeah you tell people the day before because you're coming the next day otherwise people will be angry so these lucky people are just getting in there's my driver's license because i haven't got my key so you can see that i'm that i'm me we could prove our identity with the podcast though right we could load up the podcast like this is us these are obviously for us yeah but we could be disguised we have like who have similar voices to steal the votes for the election yeah we've been practicing our brady and gray voices for

the last three weeks this is our this is our ultimate heist you ready gray oh my god that looks heavy it nearly ended up being two boxes. I hope you guys can manage this. I think we can manage. Look at that. Holy cow. This is going to be a long day of counting because you said you've got like two more like this? There's two more about this size.

One's bigger than this. One's a bit smaller. Okay, this is very impressive to see in person. And we have to read every single message. Oh, my God. Is that it? You happy? I am just checking checking yeah oh and

there's a big parcel for us as well so i have to sign for some of these parcels do you know what i once covered a trial because i used to be a journalist and i covered a trial by a guy who got blown up by a parcel bomb and the last thing he said before he opened it was haha i hope this isn't a bomb and then he pulled it open and it was a bomb you always have the cheeriest story yeah that's everything you will get some more but it will taper off now okay all right until we do another one of these yeah thank you very much thanks bye all right we're back in the car gray tried to get in the wrong side as i do every time in the uk so even after all this time your default side is the American side. Yeah.

So before we go home and start, well, we're not even going home yet because we've got to go and buy boxes. We've got to get some supplies. Yeah. But before we do that, there's a special trait. Oh, yes.

We're driving over the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Oh, wow. Let's go. Let's do it. It's a mighty handsome bridge. You need to give me a pound because we can't get across it without a pound. Oh, I need to give you a pound?

This is why I have coins? Jingle the coins. I'm trying to get them out of my pocket under the seatbelt. Quick, Graham, quick. We're reaching the bridge. God damn it. I don't like time pressure. I know you don't.

There you go. You have a pound. Are you happy? Yep. So with the recorder, lean across me so we can get the sound of the coin going into the bucket. Okay. Here it goes. All right. This is exciting.

This is the sound of crossing the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Here comes the toll bucket. I'm pulling up. Here it goes. We're on. Well, very exciting. You talk us through it. Greg, give us a commentary. We're driving over it. Yeah, this is a bridge and we are driving across it It's very narrow, isn't it? It is quite narrow, actually

That cyclist guy is way too close Oh, wait till you hit the cars Yeah, but the cyclists are squishier than cars That's the problem with cyclists being so close It's much higher on the bridge than it looks Before you get onto the bridge It's a deep gorge, the Avon Gorge That's why it's so popular for suicides.

Oh, there we go. We're over. Someone should keep score of how long it takes on an episode of Hello Internet before death comes up as a topic, at least incidentally. Yeah. It's an important part of life.

Well, we're across. We're over. You can press that red button on the front now that stops it recording. I think everything is ready for this monumental occasion. This is the biggest go-no-go so far. How many people have all these pieces of equipment? I suddenly know why they feel so nervous when they send people into space and stuff.

This has been like sending a man into space. Yeah. So we are filming this, but for most people, hopefully they're listening to it as a podcast. So, Gray, you can tell people where we are and what's going on. We're in this amazingly, now that I look at it, this amazingly amateurish contraption. I was going to say it looks amazingly impressive. We are in your house, in your kitchen, because it is the biggest table that is available. And we have five plastic containers in front of us, each labeled with one of the flag names.

And we have three very large boxes of postal ballots to go through. And we're going to start sorting and counting very shortly. There's actually a sixth plastic container, because there is a red one to my left, which is like the container of doom. That will be where ballots go that are either mucked up, deliberately being a nuisance, people giving us a hard time. That's the naughty box. Spoiled deliberately or not. My shredder is still not working, so they're avoiding the shredder for now, but they're going in the red naughty box over to the left. How's this going to work, Gray?

I think it's going to work if we start grabbing handfuls and start sorting. The thing that makes this difficult, obviously, we're all about the voting, the one, two, three, the preferences. That's what's important. But the problem is almost every one of these postcards has an interesting face to it. And almost every one of these postcards has little letters or notes or drawings or just little personalizations that are quite cute. But there's probably, I'm guessing there's like maybe over 3000 of them. And this is a bit like, you know, when you do a spring clean and you have to throw it, well, you don't know because your life is one big spring clean. But whenever I do a spring clean and I'm sent to a room and I'm told,

Brady, go into that room and decide what you're going to throw away. I spend like an hour looking at each thing before I throw it away. I can imagine that. So the thing is, earlier today, when we first picked up all these postcards and we just went to grab a quick coffee, I did a quick calculation to figure out how long is it going to take us to sort them based on if it's 3,000 postcards. And it's like, okay, let me do some calculations. And while I was sitting here having you set up everything watching it it did occur to me like wait a minute i'm counting with brady and i did all of my calculations based on two seconds per vote right to sort them through but i'm gonna be like oh no this one's from adelaide oh have a look great this one's got a picture. And let's talk about this for 10 minutes.

Yeah. So my feeling was like, okay, two seconds per seems reasonable. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Get them all in. But yeah, as I was sitting here, I was realizing, no, of course, that's not the way it's actually going to go. But you are going to advocate a bit of ruthlessness here. I am going to advocate moving along.

And we can always talk about many postcards. It's so many in person. That's the postcards it's so many in person that's the thing it's so many in person yeah so we're gonna we're gonna we're not exactly sure what's going to happen today but we're going to start counting and i feel that you are going to be the force of slowness and i'm going to be the force of quickness okay and somewhere in between we will meet so for people who aren't who can't see the camera shots because you're listening, Gray and I are taking handfuls of ballots and postcards out of the cardboard boxes in which they have been transported to my house.

And we're just going to be throwing them into either flaggy flag, club and claws, white cross, nail and gear, or HI logo. Any predictions? This is the one thing we haven't done. I'm not going to make a prediction because you know I've been looking at too many ballots. I have too much information. You got a prediction? Results?

I really don't have a prediction. I'm going to leave my mind open. Like I said, I am going to just accept the will of the people. I don't have a strong guess about which is going to be the winner. Well, the first ballot, number one, that I've pulled out, which is a postcard of a rock. We're not going to do this for every ballot, I promise. It's a postcard which seems to be some picture of a rock. And I can't even tell where it's come from because it's one

of these automatically generated postcards via the postcards which a lot of people have done. It is a vote for flaggy flag number one. They did put number two, white cross, number three, HI logo, number four. Already, already. It's too much. But people have to understand. People have to understand that there are preferences here. But their first vote is flaggy flag into the flaggy flag bin. You go.

All right. My first one is from Sheboygan, Wisconsin. A lovely picture of an autumn scene and a road. Sheboygan, Wisconsin seems to be written in Comic Sans. Nice. Yes. And what have we got on the back? It is Nail and Gears as their first choice.

And they've written a little message. They've told you something about Sheboygan. Sheboygan. Yeah, that one. Sheboygan. Yeah, that one. Sheboygan is home to the world's tallest symbol of freedom. A flagpole 400 feet high with a flag to match. That's nice. Put one of these little markers on there, Gray. You like that one?

No, just so that I can remember this was your first one. This was the first one. Gray and I have got these little stickers and we're going to put them on postcards that catch our eye and we'll tell you about that later maybe. Nail and gear. Okay, so we're not going to do that for every vote. Let's uh, let's, I'm gonna get a glass of water and let's crack on. All right. I'm already distracted though. I'm, I'm actually really good. I'm not, I haven't even looked at them. It's a fancy science thing. Looks like from some science museum somewhere.

See the thing you have to decide when you're sorting, Gray, which is hard, is do you hold them so you're just looking at the back or do you look at the pretty pictures on the front? But it's all mixed up. It's all mixed up. What we should have gotten is your nephew to come in and flip them all in the same direction for us. That's what we should have had him do.

That would have been smart. Even at this very early stage, a lot of them seem to be going into nail and gear and club and... Nail and gear and club and claws are definitely the two early contenders right now. Flag. And it's really early. This is interesting. I mean, we have no ones yet for white cross and HI flag. I don't know.

We've sorted 30. Here is something interesting. And I imagine we'll see a few of these here is someone who has not put any votes on the back of their postcard and they've just written a rant to us and basically what they're saying in a nutshell is that they're upset that we didn't give them a none of the above option and what i'm going to do with this particular one is i'm putting a sticker on it for old time's sake. And this goes into the naughty bin. It's our first naughty one. It's the red bin.

In you go. I just realized I did that wrong. Yeah, I imagine we're going to do a few wrong because we're talking at the same time. Yeah, this is something we wondered as well. Like what is the percentage error rate? It's not going to be zero. It's going to be non-zero. Some people have sent in, like this postcard I'm holding, about the world's largest pelican, which is at Pelican Rapids, Minnesota.

And the thing I like about it is this is an old postcard. It looks like it's from the 70s. Yeah, it looks very old-timey. A few people have sent in vintage postcards, and I'm very... Look, you can even see the pencil written price from the antique store written on it. Kudos to people who sent in antique postcards. And that goes into nail and gear. I just got the first white cross. We still have not had any for HI Logo.

I feel sorry for HI Logo at the start here. First one for HI Logo. There we go. The first one for HI Log logo has come from Porto in Portugal. Best regards from two university students in Porto, it says. And they have voted for HR

logo. Someone here on this postcard I've just pulled out had written their votes and they've then crossed them all out and voted again. They've changed their mind and changed the order, so they're really testing me out here. But how have they voted, though?

Is the top one club and clause? Is that crossed out? They initially had number one as nail and gear, but they've clearly changed it to club. Can I get an umpire's decision here? That is a one for club and clause. I'm going to say that's a one for club and clause, yeah. I think so. In you go.

We're not really looking at the pictures very much. That's going to be a job for another day, I imagine. We have our first death-related postcard. All is vanity and a skull. All right. And the person who sent us this morbid skull postcard, what have they voted for? They have voted for nail and gear.

I'm not surprised. Here's a nice hand-drawn one. Someone has hastily done the HI logo. You don't know that they did it hastily. That might have taken hours. If that took them hours, they've got some answering to do. Nail and gear they have voted for. We've hardly made a dent in box one. Oh my God, you're right. In box one of three. But nail and gear I'm putting down as my early leader. This is the thing with elections, is that in theory, a subset, a random subset of the votes should give you the same result as the whole thing.

But we're going to count them all. Oh, look at it. We both at the same time. There we go. At the same time, we've both pulled out postcards that people have made their postcard the flag they voted for. Making it nice and clear. Quite a few people have done that. I think that's a nice touch as well. Oh, H.I. Logo. Oh, H.I. Logo. At last, H.I. Logo gets another one.

Oh, and another one. It's having a surge. Nice postcard here from Houston. I always like... There are quite a few spacey-themed postcards coming in, which I like. I'm always... Special place in my heart, as people know. They're pandering

This one has a lovely portrait of you and I on the back Which is another theme a lot of people have taken to drawing pictures of us. The only question with this early Preference in voting is if there's any kind of time dependency on the voting because we are sorting votes in reverse chronological order Right because this is the box we picked up today. Yeah, so these are the most recent votes. So we'll find out if there's any kind of time bias. Yeah. And whether there's any sort of clustering and... Look at this. I got a letter. Letter for you. Someone has written a letter. I've written it to Mr. Periodic Videos.

I think that's you. We will put that... That is me. We will put that to one side for now. We told people letters wouldn't be counted as votes, so if there's a vote in there, you've missed out. Flaggy flags having a little surge here. HI logo is so sad over there. HI logo is the... I think if we're going to eliminate anything first, it's probably going to be that one. Do you know what, after your little introduction where you said I was going to be a slowdown distraction,

I'm surprising myself by how undistracted I am and I'm just looking at the votes. I think we have our first single preference vote there. Someone just nailing gears or nothing. That's what they want. That's allowed. That's allowed under the rules. Every time HI logo comes up, I feel like a little thrill for it. So great. One thing that came up a few times, we're sort of speaking in this staccato way because we're working at the same time. Here's another sealed letter. It says, this is not a vote, but please open. We'll see about that. In fact, no, what am I doing? These should go in the red box, the naughty box. There we go. We have one from the land of chihuahuas.

Oh, someone's drawn a cute little chichi audrey is here watching us do the vote by the way people basically grey spent the whole time i was setting up the cameras in the sound system uh playing with audrey i did i did so great yeah the thing i was starting to say was um a lot of people that were against white cross because they felt it was it had like bad connotations or it looked sort of socialist and they were talking about schwa stickers and all sorts of rubbish. Did you ever feel anything about White Cross? I mean, I think that's just silliness myself. All that stuff I think is nonsense.

Each flag is like its own thing. You give it the meaning that it is going to have. Trying to sort this stuff is surprisingly harder than you think it is. You're trying to go fast and sort them correctly and kind of looking at the interesting things. I'm not even looking at the interesting. I'm not even looking at where they're from or what the pictures are. That's for another day for me. I guess you have forever to go through all of these things.

They are going to live at my house, aren't they? Oh, no. I thought I was going to bring them back. I don't think I'd let you leave with them even if you begged. I'm too attached to them now. No, I came here in my pickup truck, wanted to load up the back with postcards that I will keep with me for the rest of my life, move from house to house as time goes on. Wow, we haven't even made a dent in the first box. We've got a Where's Waldo one I like. Nice. That's not going to waste our time.

Yeah, it's like, Where's Waldo one is very nice. We do not have time for that right now. We have an unusual material one. Oh yes, this is made from very thin wood. Very thin piece of almost like very thin balsa wood. Yeah. Very interesting. Where's this come from? Where's that come from? Is that come from... Do you know what country that is?

I don't know. Like it looks like Latvia or something, but where's Vilnius? Vilnius. I have no idea. I don't know. That's a vote for flaggy flag. It's an unusual material, but I'll allow it. Yeah.

Now the votes are in, we don't have to deter people anymore. Right. Yeah. Being idiots. What we didn't want to get was gigantic ones made of aluminum or anything like that. Yeah. Now, here is an interesting thing, Gray. This is a side effect of the process we've gone through.

Because when we went and picked up the postcards today, we saw the people at the post center. They were almost a bit overwhelmed by how much they were having to sort. I wouldn't say they were almost overwhelmed. They seemed quite... They were almost overwhelmed. They seemed quite... They were completely overwhelmed. And as a result, we seem to have here in the box occasionally, letters and things that aren't even meant for us. Either they're meant for other post boxes or other addresses. So I'm going to put these ones in the naughty bin and return these to the mailbox center so they can go to the proper recipients. Are you sure you don't want to separate

them somewhere else? I don't think we're going to have that go to the proper recipients. Are you sure you don't want to separate them somewhere else? I don't think we're going to have that many in the naughty box. All right, all right. I like this one. Someone took the time to do calligraphy for their votes. Oh, that's nice. Let's put a sticker. Look at that.

Nice calligraphy. Very nice. Thank you very much. That's a flaggy flag vote. Maybe people who are more calligraphy oriented, because they're old fashioned, are drawn to flaggy flag, which is clearly the most old fashioned of the flags. I think we have a very high correlation so far with calligraphy and flaggy flag votes.

It's a one to one correlation. So the nail and gear box is definitely filling up the most quickly. The question is, if this continues, if nail and gear keeps its lead, will its lead be sufficient to survive the first runoff when we start distributing preferences? That's why these things are interesting. It may well be that just as in real elections, there's one group that is not the majority, but is very clearly focused, and everybody else is spread out between different choices. That's pretty common when you look at real elections, that there's one group that wants one thing or nothing.

When that happens, Gray, when one person sort of concentrates and the rest is quite spread, is it common for the person who has that first round lead to get pegged back on preferences? I don't have any data to back it up, but I can just say that the things that I have looked at, it seems that in many countries in many elections, it's one grouped together,

large group, and then a number of groups that are split, but would all prefer each other to the one leading contender. So they can pinch victory from that first round leader. That it may be possible that Nailing Gears gets very few second preference votes right wow some this one someone here likes my style because they have typed their vote the postcard is checkpoint charlie the famous berlin wall checkpoint and on the back they have typed their vote and then they have typed a note to us and at the very end they say sadly my typewriter does not have a flower emoji but i can do an interrobang yeah you can manually do an interrobang on a typewriter yeah they have a flower emoji but i can do an interrobang yeah you can manually do an interrobang on a typewriter yeah they've obviously had to rewind to do their interrobang

just to show you how much i love typewriters for people who happen to be watching this they did vote for nail and gear so i'll put it in allen gear just to show you within within reach of where we are doing this count, I have a typewriter. So if you're seeing on the camera, there you go. I've got a typewriter right here. I do love a good typewriter. It's hard work sorting these votes. I've just crossed my activity goal for the day according to my Apple Watch.

It's very happy now. Well done. There we go. Of course I'm wearing my classy. Right. Yes, no, you're much classier than me. This is never the argument. I'm wearing the moon watch.

We have a piece of spam. Oh, yeah, we have. That's not even meant for us. It's just a piece of junk mail. That's very much going in the naughty bin. I've covered a few elections over the years. And I was at an election for the Adelaide City Council. I was sort of there in the room while they were doing this.

They were sorting all the ballots and I was just there talking to the election officials and waiting to see the result. And someone dropped one of the ballot papers and it got sucked into an air conditioning kind of duct and got lost. And they could see it, but they couldn't reach it. And they spent 20 minutes discussing what to do about this one ballot. They didn't know who it was for. And it was and all the all the candidates were there and everyone was discussing what to do and in the end they just left it they said oh well we can't get it out one vote's not going to make a difference i was surprised they did that like it really sticks with me to this day that the election officials decided oh well it doesn't really matter and they

uh they just left this un this uncounted ballot there. And it felt like this travesty. It really, for a few seconds, it shattered democracy for me that election officials were willing to not countervote. I just noticed we have something quite cheeky here. Someone has done the grey peak as the postcard. They have. So the front of their postcode is grey peak.

In fact, they have voted for nail and gear. But it's funny you should say that, Grey, because at that very moment, and I know you don't believe in coincidences. I believe that they happen, but I don't believe that they're magic. No. At the very moment you pointed that out, I too have a Grey Peak, but this person has voted for Grey Peak. They have put their vote that they want to be. Grey Peak is our flag. That is not allowed. That goes straight into the naughty belly. You said it. That one vote being stuck somewhere story makes me think of every once in a while on the internet

you will see someone claiming that an election was rigged or that the results are invalid because they voted for a candidate who then shows up having no votes when they do the final tally. Yeah. Right. So someone will do a write-in candidate and they're supposed to report like, oh, yes, one vote for this made-up candidate. But maybe their one vote was the one vote that gets sucked into the air conditioning

system. And so it's not actually a tampered ballot. Exactly. There are quite a few of these three-dimensional postcards coming in where you, you know, what do you call those, that kind of thing where you tilt the paper to different angles and you see three-dimensional? Well, this isn't 3D. This is just a different... Oh, it moves. Right, it moves. It's the earth moving back and forth. Those things are those, I don't know if you were talking about the tilting ones. Talking about those magic eye things you mean? Where you unfocus?

No, no, not magic eye. Actual like three-dimensional holograms basically. There's a few of those coming in. Hologram type postcards. This is amazing. We're not even, we still hardly made a dent in the first box. Maybe I'm coming back up again to continue doing this. I think my wife could be coming home to a crazy scene.

I was hoping this would all be cleaned up. Exactly. Oh, don't worry. We'll have everything all nice and neat before you come back. My wife would not be happy if she comes home to find her kitchen turned into the Hello Internet polling station. Oh. We saw what happened there.

Oh, Gray threw in two got stuck together oh this looks suspicious oh i have i have suspicious activity suspicious activity look we have potential voter fraud we have exciting we have our first instance of voter fraud. I have four postcards, all identical votes from an identical person, identical front. Oh, I see what's happened here. Explain, Gray, explain. Look, they're numbered. Yeah. Someone's made a flipbook of my first pass the post voting video.

Yeah. And so what we actually have is a serious problem because there are probably 23 of these because they're numbered 21 of 23. So we've got to keep an eye out for this stuff. This voter fraud. And they've even put like their at name and all sorts. They're being flagrant about it. I can't believe we're having to deal with voter

fraud. We're so excited. So keep an eye out for that. Yeah, we've got to keep an eye out for this and on the reverse. My video. I'm sure you know every single frame of my video. I feel like they're probably batched together in here. I'll keep an eye out for them. If I was being really sneaky as a voter

fraudster, I'd spread them out over multiple times. The one who is committing voter fraud, who are they trying to help? They're trying to get club and claw is their preference. Here I have a bill for someone. Someone here obviously has some bank statement or bill that's made it into our election box. I hope it's not vitally important they receive that. Dear sir, your kidney transplant has arrived. Please contact the spy. I like this. We have an unusually shaped one, the beehive, the parliament building in Wellington, New Zealand. Nice. Quite a few votes have come

from New Zealand. I guess they're in the flag voting mood. Yeah. If you're voting once in a flag referendum, you might as well vote in another one. Have you noticed, I don't know if you've noticed, Greg, because you haven't been on email and Twitter much lately, but a lot of people have been sending us the ballot paper for the New Zealand flag referendum. I haven't actually, no, I haven't actually seen it. Yeah, it's out now. People are actually voting. So people have been scanning them and sending us a copy so we can see what it looks like. Do you think it's a well-designed ballot?

Yeah, I do actually. I think it looks reasonably idiot-proof. Even though I don't agree with their shortlist, I think the ballot paper's fine. From memory, they include images of what it looks like flying and things like that. I am worried that when I'm talking to you at the same time, I am throwing loads into the wrong bins. But that's why we have to do the count just separately, right? Because I think the same thing happens when we count. When we talk, it vastly increases the probability of error. We can't do a recount, though.

We can't count them again. No, but I mean, it gives you a chance of when you're counting to just look and maybe notice one that's wrong. Yeah. It's a good thing we've got the bigger boxes. We're going to have to rearrange the nail and gearbox soon just so we can fit more in. This will be interesting to look at in time lapse.

My favorite postcards are the postcards that come from towns that shouldn't really have postcards. Here's one from Wolverhampton. And I know Wolverhampton. I've been there and I like it. I can't say I'm familiar with Wolverhampton. I went and saw The Killers play in Wolverhampton, believe it or not. But I'm surprised it's a town that has a postcard. And when you look at their postcard, you can see why I'm surprised.

No, those are iconic buildings. When you do selection bias, you can make every place look good. Every place has at least one thing that's photogenic for a postcard. There's a vote from Wolverhampton for Flaggy Flag, which they describe as the one true flag. They say, hope you enjoy the glorious 1970s vistas of Wolverhampton. That comes from Martin. Thank you, Martin. It's funny doing this, Gray. This feels like normally for someone like you and your work, this is the sort of job you wouldn't

have ended up doing. You would have outsourced touching all these postcards and dealing with all this paper. It's best not to think how many people by proxy you're touching by touching the postcards. You just put that out of your mind. We'll go and have a big hand wash later on, hey? Yeah, yeah, no, we're gonna have a big hand wash later on. I'm surprised you haven't had one yet. You don't mind a good hand wash.

Who does mind a good hand wash? Someone has sent us a letter, and it feels like there's a postcard in there, and it's come from Nigeria. I think it's legit though, and I just think maybe feels like there's a postcard in there and it's come from Nigeria. I think it's legit though and I just think maybe you can't send a postcard from Nigeria. I'll have to check that one. You want to put that one to the side and we'll take a look at it later? Yeah, I'll put it in the naughty bin for now but I might give that one a chance. Every vote matters, Brady. I know but if you break the rules of voting, you break the rules of voting we said no envelopes there's another vote for grey peak this ballot is spoiled someone here has just written this ballot is spoiled i like that they

went to the trouble of sending it in we have our first tim from their trip to norway oh there we go thanks for voting tim oh someone here has painted a reunion swamp hen on their ballot. That is a vote for flaggy flag. Again, sort of an artistic person there, voting for flaggy flag. Make of that what you will. Oh, now here is an interesting dilemma for us. Here is what looks like a legitimate vote that has come from Portland, Oregon. And someone, I think maybe the postal service,

has put some sticker on the back of the postcard for some reason. That's perfect. Saying, place this article in the foreign holdout, whatever that means. But it means we can't see what they voted for. It sounds like, yeah, this got sorted into their foreign system, part of which Portland makes sure that the message can't be read when they put the sticker on. So, theal Service has put the sticker over the vote. But actually, under the right light, I can see through the sticker and they have voted for nail and gear. And I think we've got to let them have their vote.

I will let you decide on that one. That's going in nail and gear. The vote counts. This one is spoiled by a Tim, but they're voting for the Comic Sans version of Maryland, which was one of the ones originally in our makeup flags for Hello Internet one, but they're voting for the Comic Sans version of Maryland, which was one of the ones originally in our make-up flags for Hello Internet one, but spoiled away.

Spoiled away. It's like a deep-cut Hello Internet reference, though, right? Just for the people who were on that thread who remember that flag. We've got one from the Netherlands, where I just was. Lovely. We've both been jet-setting a bit this last week, but we'll probably talk about that in a future episode, won't we?

Yeah, I think so. I think I could not possibly talk about anything else that I have done while doing this. Yeah. There's a postcard with my face on it. So people are being creative and also taking the mickey out of us, which is to be expected. Expected and appreciated. Nail and gear. Nail and gear.

Nail and gear made of thick cardboard. Nail and gear. Flaggy flag.gy flag club and claws oh here we go this person has broken the rules of voting by writing their message to us above their votes i'm gonna say that's spoiled that's definitely no i'm not i'm not it's spoiled brady but we know their intent and this is democracy no see this is this is how this is how you open up the box of having to evaluate everything i would i would oh look at you i'm just gonna follow my instinct you can't believe it brady if that had landed in my hands it would be in the naughty box already i'm your lucky listener whoever it was who sent that one in i think brady your very fact that you do that is you slowly undermining democracy.

So that's how democracy dies. Yeah. With a wrongly counted Halloweenternet ballot. Yeah. With bending the rules, that's how it dies. It's not about the wrongly counted ballot. You're bending the rules, my friend. I'm just making Star Wars references, basically.

Yeah, I know what you're doing. Yeah. Any excuse. We've got to do a show on Star Wars. Oh yeah. I think that people will demand it. Have you booked your tickets yet? Oh yeah, a long time ago. I haven't. Oh yeah? I'm just going to go along

after the hubbubs die down. I'm surprised. I'm not a sheep. You know what I've done. You know that I've booked my VIP theatre. No other way. Yeah, yeah, of course. There's no other way I'm ever seeing a movie. And it's surprisingly empty when you book it that way. Even for Star Wars.

I have avoided all the trailers so far. But then this becomes like a bizarre kind of investment that you have created over time. That the possibility of ruining gets bigger and bigger as time goes on. Like what you lose is more and more. So that's one of the reasons why I wanted to book soon is it's like protecting the investment of having remained spoiler free for a long period of time have you remained spoiler free no i've been watching i haven't been like watching interviews with the cast and stuff okay but i've been i've watched the trailers and things okay i think i think that's like uh that's like a level one of spoilers

but you haven't been going on like sites that comb through everything and try to figure out all the stuff ahead of time not much i have to admit i've cooled a little bit on how good i think it's gonna be yeah what makes you say that i don't know i'm beginning to think maybe it won't be that great my expectation is not that it will be great what i am thinking not that it will be bad but what i'm thinking is it might be a bit like the rebooted Star Trek, which I quite enjoyed, like was a fun movie, but there's no way I would say, oh, it's a perfect movie. No, but I think that's very good.

I'd be happy if the Star Wars, new Star Wars reached that level. Oh, yeah. And so I do have expectations, but I also feel like I haven't rewatched that Star Trek movie in a long time and I never feel like I haven't re-watched that Star Trek movie in a long time and I never feel like compelled to re-watch that whereas the original Star Wars is like every once in a while it's like well I guess I have to watch the trilogy again. How often would you watch the original Star Wars movies? Probably every once every two years maybe on average I guess. Yeah. What about you Mr. Quotes it all theAll-The-Time? Probably the same, but rarely by choice.

Normally by, oh, it's on TV, I'll have a look, sort of thing. I rarely will. Oh, speaking of which, there's a... There we go, we've got a Stormtrooper. Got a Stormtrooper on the stamp there, vote for HI logo. Ah, look, here's one where the votes have been concealed under a post-it note. Now, is that the one that you saw on Twitter about being concealed under a post-it note? I don't know that it is, but vote is four as I peel it back, club and claws. We have another misdirected piece of mail. That looks like a pay slip for someone. Maybe we can make this profitable. This episode of Hello Internet is brought to you by Harry's. Harry's offers high quality razor blades for a fraction of the price of the big razor brands. And given that Movember is now over, you might need some new razor blades to shave off that stash that you've been busy growing.

Harry's was started by two guys who wanted a better product without paying an arm and a leg. They make their own blades from their own factory in Germany. These are high quality performing German blades crafted by shaving experts, giving you a better shave that respects your face and your wallet. Because they own that German factory, Harry's offers factory direct pricing. Plus, you don't have to wait around for the guy to come unlock the anti-shoplifting case at the drugstore to buy them. They're shipped directly to your door. And boy, do I love not having to go outside to buy stuff. Anything I can get shipped to my door, I will have shipped to my door. Now, if you go to

harrys.com and use the promo code HI, you can check out their starter set which is an amazing deal. For 15 bucks you get a razor, moisturizing shave cream or gel and three razor blades. That promo code HI will get you five bucks off your first purchase knocking it down to 10 bucks for a starter kit. It's a pretty good deal. For comparison Harry's blades are roughly comparable to Gillette Fusion but Harry's blades are roughly comparable to Gillette Fusion, but Harry's blades are about half the price of Fusions. So with great packaging, nice heavy handles, classy designs, you can't go wrong with Harry's. Once again, go to harrys.com and use the promo code HI to get $5 off your first purchase. It's all about voter intent at this point. Now that we did our best to weed out the idiots, now it's about voter intent.

I haven't seen any more ballots from our vote rigger yet. Yeah, I haven't either, which makes me suspicious. Maybe, maybe the real trick here is just to mess with us and to label it one out of 23 but only send four. If that was actually what you've done, sir, congratulations. You've done, that's done. That's true terrorism. See, even this I've been slightly spoiled. I didn't know that mask face for Star Wars.

Oh, you didn't know about that character? I only see the shot of that person from behind in the first trailer, but I never saw that mask. I've just received a slightly small, very small spoiler for Star Wars. We have a spoiled ballot from the Netherlands with Saint Nick. Oh, I should totally know this guy's name. Black Pete, of course. Black Pete, who is a somewhat controversial outside of the Netherlands Christmas character,

but inside of the Netherlands is a totally normal Christmas character who is a helper to Saint Nick but is usually played by a white person who paints themselves black. Ah yes. And is so controversial outside of the Netherlands. Yes. I grew up in a somewhat Dutch household and so seems totally normal to me but I can also understand why not normal. In your household even that, that was used, was it?

My mom had a bunch of, like, Dutch kind of stuff that we used to do around Christmas time. And so I was used to, like, Black Pete was not a character, but I used to see him on, like, wrapping paper and some other stuff. So I was aware of his existence. So the Maryland flag is a bit of a theme on some of these postcards. And here someone has sent in a postcard which has got sort of a Jeep car on it, which has been painted with the Maryland flag motif. Looks awesome. That Maryland flag. And they've written a warning on the postcard saying, P.S. This postcard jams shredders. We're not going to shred that. It's a work of art and it's a valid ballot it's a it's a vote for flaggy flag you really are going to keep these postcards forever aren't you braiding yep when you die will you bequeath them to the museum of hello internet yeah i mean i think that

museum will be up and running before well before i die so they'll probably already be in the museum no great if we have a time lapse video to go with this podcast for people who choose to watch the video the question is will people be able to watch the video. The question is, will people be able to resist kind of fast forwarding through it so they can watch which box is filling up the most quickly? There's always people who jump to the end

right at the start in ways that I cannot understand. People will do it. It's the internet. They can do what they like. It's such a shock when I see a vote for HI logo that I have to double check. I'm doing the same thing every single

time. It's a bit of a, wait, what? Where is that box? I don't even know. I think it's a perfectly acceptable flag. I think it's a bit sad that it's doing so poorly. It's a vote against tradition is what it is, Brady. Well, you designed it, so it's a vote against you. Ooh, burn. I know, you didn't design it to be a flag.

You know, I like people trying to mess with us. It's the picture of one flag, a vote for a different one. So this person here has made a giant postcard with the Club and Claw logo as the face. And then when you turn it over, they voted for flaggy flag. Their second choice is HI logo. And it says, hello, have a nice day. I am Tim. That's a person intentionally trying to mess with us, putting it in the

wrong box. Yeah. We caught you. Yeah, we're very thorough. We're definitely going to catch all of the things that we notice us catching and not catch all the things that we don't. It must have been so fascinating for the people sorting these at the post place. See, Brady, you say that.

You say that because you're the kind of person who would be fascinated about this. But as you have on record, they were not fascinated enough to do any investigation to try to figure out what it was. That's true. They were just wondering

what the hell are all these postcards for, but not wondering enough to type in club and claws into Google and find out the answer. So I think actually we just represented an enormous amount of unwelcome work is the most likely thing here. Quite a bit of misdirected mail actually in the end. I'm feeling much less confident in the postal service than that.

Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely. It makes you wonder how many votes haven't made it to us. And suddenly for the rest of my life, I will feel much more understandable when someone says, oh, it was lost in the mail. And you always yeah right of course it wasn't lost in the mail we have what five pieces of uh mail that was lost in the mail already i wonder if all the neighboring p.o boxes have postcards that they're wondering what the heck they are yeah why did someone send me a postcard that says nail and gears they think it's from like some kind of spy message or something yeah eight people in the last week have sent me a postcard just saying club and claws.

Yeah, it is a bit skull and bones sounding, actually. I'll tell you what, doing this is also making me rethink the request I was going to make to my nephew to go and actually type in all the votes for us. No, no way. I think it's impossible. It's too much. It's too much.

It's not impossible, but you. I think it's impossible. This is too much. It's too much. Impossible. It's not impossible, but it's just, you're burning hours of human efforts. For nothing. Just to indulge our... Not for nothing, but just to indulge a kind of mild curiosity. It's like, oh, I'm mildly interested in the exact statistics. Why don't you spend many weeks typing in all of this information so that I can go, hmm, interesting. Pretty much what I expected.

Oh, wrong one. Two wrong ones in a row. Oh, I kind of zoned out for a minute there. Great. I think I'm having my first brain fade. Do we need to get you some tea? We're due for our first tea break probably in about 20 minutes. 20 minutes? Well, let's finish this box. Oh, but I've been pulling from a different

box. I didn't know you'd done that. You've changed boxes. Yeah, because you were always in my way when I want to grab that box. You're the only one who's emptying that box. That makes me feel good. It makes me feel like we're making more progress than I realized. Yeah, we're actually doing okay. I mean, there's still a lot, but I honestly think we can take a break pretty soon. You take a break before you need to. That's the trick. That's the CGP Grey method of working. Yeah, now I know why you never bloody get your videos out. Take breaks when you don't need breaks, basically.

If you think you might need a break, the answer is yes. If you reach the point where you're thinking, oh, I definitely need a break, you waited too long to take a break. This card left intentionally blank. Why send it? It's fun to send it. Yep, I agree. That's the answer. It's fun to send it.

I mean, if you're... Oh, this person has voted for the red and yellow version of Nailing Gear. That is a spoiled ballot. Oh, now you're being all strict huh no numbers no numbers oh i'm counting it no i i i say you can't count it i'm counting that of course that's what they mean it's a spoil it's not it's not it's not about you divining voter intent it's about is it a valid ballot and it is not a valid ballot this is like a philosophical question about democracy so for people listening this person on the back of their post oh it's the

idiot again i'm gonna throw it oh oh look at look at you you are the most you are the most subjective person ever right you're like oh my bleeding heart wants to go out to this person but then you know who it is you should never be doing anything with elections now i know their intent their intent was not to vote their intent was their intent was to test our system yeah and you failed no no i got it at last only because you happen to look on the other side oh my god rady oh this person's being a pain in the this person now is being such a pain in the butt i'm not even going to show them on the podcast. All of this question, though, over does a ballad count or not, I will have later for you an interesting question about one particular postcard and if it should count or not.

Okay. So we will leave that to later. But don't let me forget because I almost forgot. I think I can predict what your thing is. I can predict what you're going to ask me. Oh, yeah? Mm-hmm. Do you want to do that now?

Do you want to try to predict? I'll try and predict it'll try and predict it i'll give people listening a few seconds to think what they think it's going to be all right i think someone asked if they could give you a postcard in person and and and put it into the boxes today. That is correct. Yeah, that happened. See? You're good. I'm not as dumb as I look.

Did I say that you were dumb? I wanted to see if you could guess it. This is not an implication that you're dumb. Yeah, there you go. So I'll let you think on that, if that should count or not. My feeling is, and I know I'm just a ball of contradiction in your eyes no it shouldn't count oh that one you think now why well if you're going to be really simplistic about it they're either trying to cheat the deadline or save money that other people had to pay because you know people had to buy

stamps and buy postcards to take part and they're sort of thinking i know that i know this isn't their actual reason but the whole idea was we put we put so i'm trying to sort at the same time we deliberately put some resistance in there didn't we so that people didn't cheat the system you know and all these people that have taken the trouble to send us postcards overcame that resistance and went to the post box and all that sort of thing. And one person taking advantage of the fact that they know you or they saw you hasn't done that. So I'm not sure. Don't you think a certain kind of resistance is also following the rules appropriately, which you seem to just be willing to cast aside if you are able to, through magic, divine the intention of the person voting?

No, because what I'm doing is... Doing it properly is a kind of resistance. Yeah, but people make mistakes, you know, people make mistakes. And do we punish them for their mistakes? That's the question we're trying to answer here. If someone with all the will in the world wanted to take part and went to the post office and bought their postcard and forgot to write the numbers, do we punish them for that? Do they not get to be part of democracy because they accidentally made a mistake

as opposed to your person who knew they were supposed to send it but said can you put it in there for me anyway because i won't make the deadline otherwise so they knew they were trying to cheat we have a nice very solid wood postcard oh yeah actually made of wood from north carolina clearly breaking the rules with the mermaid on. Clearly breaking the rules. With the mermaid on it. Clearly breaking the rules. What have they voted for? H.I. Logo? H.I. Logo needs all the help we can get.

H.I. Logo needs all the help we can get. And I will also grant that the unusual materials is vague enough to allow vote counting discretion. Whereas put your numbers on there is not vague enough to allow vote counting discretion. Whereas put your numbers on there is not vague enough to allow vote counter discretion. Although discretion is still being shown sometimes. What can I say? I'm just a kind... Big softy. Big softy. Hard as nails. I think not. I'm showing my cushion side. Here's another unusual one for you. This one's made of metal from Dubai. Nailing gear. Nice postcard.

It's very nice. I like the... What's the current name for it? It's not the Burj Dubai anymore. It's the Burj Al Arab. Is that it? Oh, Burj Khalifa. Burj Khalifa, yeah.

Oh, yeah, it's got Burj Khalifa building on it. It's got lovely stamps. That's just a perfect storm of cool Hello Internet-ness. It's from someone called Peter. Another vote for nailing gear. Now here someone has sent in their ballot and over where the votes should be they have sticky taped... How is it that you get all of the ambiguous ones? It's like the postcards know to get to you to try to make their way through. This person has sticky taped a playing card over their votes, which is actually very hard to remove. It's not like a post-it note.

Invalid. I am going to count that as invalid. Oh, finally. But do you know what? If you look closely, they have actually sticky taped two playing cards there. And I am... Oh, I think I know what it is. I am wondering whether or not it is indeed the the queen of spades and the jack of diamonds but i will not find out now that is going to be a mystery

for another day but i think i think you are right i think your powers of prediction will prove valid yet again that's pretty cool if i've done that but that vote has not been counted because that is too much resistance for us to have to for brady for brady anyway if it was the first one maybe i would have done it but yeah exactly i'm getting tired now yeah now we're actually faced with the true scale of this thing and what time it is and when is your wife coming home yeah this is uh this is taking longer than i thought it would oh this really threw me i was trying to figure out what this person wrote to us but it's actually a postcard to someone else. It is yet another piece of lost mail. Oh dear. Someone visiting Bonn. It's addressed to Steve, love from mum.

And it has ended up in the hello internet ballot box. Oh, I feel really badly about that. That's terrible. Someone's missing a postcard from their mom because of us. I'll tell you what, I've got the correct address. I will get it to the proper address. Oh, yeah? You know where that is? Yep, it's right near where the votes went.

Great. You can explain when you hand deliver it how you ended up with the postcard. Yeah. I'll say, make sure you listen in. Listen, Steve, we were running an election. I'm sorry, but your mother does still love you. Hello Internet is also brought to you this week by Backblaze. You know, Backblaze, they are the online backup experts. If you have a computer, a Mac or a PC, Backblaze is just a required part of an operating computer because

it will automatically, silently, stealthily back up everything that's on your computer so you don't have to worry about managing external disks or when was the last time you saved a copy of that all important project. Backblaze just has you covered automatically. But it's not just backup. With Backblaze, you can access your data anywhere. You can, while traveling, get access to some file that you left access your data anywhere you can while traveling get access to some file that you left on your desktop that you didn't copy over to your phone or you didn't put in your cloud system it's just automatically there with Backblaze so you can always get it Backblaze handles over 150 petabytes of people's data it's quite a lot they know what they're doing

at any time you can restore just one of your files that got accidentally lost. Or if you've had a major disaster, they'll ship a USB hard drive to your door with everything on it. There's no add-ons. There's no gimmicks. There's no additional charges. It's just $5 per month per computer for unlimited, unthrottled backup. The holidays are coming up. And let me tell you, if you are going to visit, say, your older family members, perhaps you are less technical family members, when you're visiting them, just put Backblaze on their computers. It's the holiday gift that keeps giving all year round.

I've definitely done this with my family. You go somewhere and you just make sure, yes, they have a computer. Backblaze is running. So even if something terrible happens to their machine, they haven't lost all of those photos that they've scanned in or whatever it is that they do. So don't put it off any longer. Go to backblaze.com slash hello internet to get a risk free, no credit card required trial. Once again, that's backblaze.com slash hellointernet to get a risk-free, no credit card required trial. Once again, that's backblaze.com slash hellointernet. And thanks to Backblaze for supporting the show. Okay, great. We've had our little tea break. Yep. Before we start more sorting, maybe we should neaten these boxes up a little bit. Well, there's really one that we need to

try to compact. Yeah. The nail and gearbox is close to overflowing. Make sure we don't lose any down in the air conditioning vents. Right. This is hard to do, isn't it? This is actually much harder than I was thinking it was going to be. I thought it was like, oh, it's like playing cards. But of course, it's not like playing cards because they're not all the same size. Yeah. Again, I'm having sympathy for the men and women in the little postal center again now. Dealing with dozens upon dozens of these coming in every day. We should work out what the average is after this.

On average, how many came in in a day? Man, can you imagine if we opened all these envelopes? Oh, you mean if each ballot came in an envelope? That would have been, oh, I don't know. It would be impossible. I mean, I think they'd easily quint up all the time. Oh, yeah, at least. You're not really supposed to be working off-camera, Grey.

It kind of ruins the effect. There's nowhere to go. This way I look like a magic person who's doing something. It's like in Apollo, the Apollo moon missions, whenever one of the astronauts sort of went off-camera and did something a bit off-piste. It was a bit, ooh, what are they doing? This isn't part of the mission plan. What's Grey doing off-camera with all those ballots?

Is he doing something? That's exactly right. Oh, did he change ballots? It's a conspiracy theory. You've just given people their conspiracy theory moment. And whenever someone steps off camera, what are they doing? Who knows? Were there many off-camera moments? I imagine that was planned down to the tens of seconds most of the time. Yeah, there were, particularly in the early missions where there was just one static camera. I mean, all of Apollo 12 was pretty much off camera because they fried the camera 10 seconds into the mission. So the TV footage of Apollo 12 is non-existent because they ruined their camera. I did not know this. Alan Bean accidentally pointed the camera at the sun and burned out the camera. They didn't have a backup camera? They didn't bring two?

No, I guess they didn't. I guess cameras were expensive back then. I mean, there was a camera on the lunar module. I don't know what that would have picked up. That may have still picked up some stuff, the camera they used when they walked down the ladder. But the camera they went and put on the tripod, which was more important, was gone.

I kind of can't believe that they don't have two. Well, weight was so important on those missions. Yeah, weight is so important. But if you lose the camera, I guess the problem is everything is vital, isn't it? Right. All right. So we've rearranged nail and gear there. We've compacted it. We've compacted it so we can fit more in. Let's get back to work here. This is straightaway two for nail and gears.

So Graz, this takes shape. What are you thinking? Is this gonna go to, like, nail and gear clearly has a lead. Mm-hmm. Is this even gonna go to, like, nailing gear clearly has a lead. Is this even going to go to preferences? Well, that's what I was wondering just as we were coming back down and I was trying to eyeball the different heights of the boxes before we compacted. I just found some more votes from our vote rigger. I also like this one, which I think I've seen a few postcards from

and discarded some from, which is, am I disqualified yet? I think there's someone else who's done a bunch that I've caught and put on the side. So you vote rigors. I think we're catching some of yours at least. Yes, we catch every one that we catch. So yeah, what were you saying? Will it go to preferences?

Yeah, we were just eyeballing the size of the various boxes. And I would say that I don't know if it's going to go to preferences. Eyeballing it, it just, it seemed within the visual margin of error that maybe we will, maybe we won't for a nail of gears. Wouldn't that be disappointing if it didn't go to, and you've got to stop calling it nailing gears. Yeah. It's nailing gear. It is nailing gear. Even you're getting the name wrong. I am. You even wrote the name wrong on our official pieces of paper here. Look at this one, Grace. Someone has sent in a postcard

of the skyline of Denver and they've drawn in their own mighty black stuff i also like that it's mbs brackets we have a little abbreviation for it mighty black stamp they voted for club and claw it's club and claws yeah i mean even if nail and gear is going to win win win this which is looking very possible i just hope it goes to preferences. That is where the suspense is. Yes, that is without a doubt where the suspense is. I mean, like our evening will be much shorter if it doesn't go to preferences, but it will be more disappointing.

So we will see. We have another postcard for Steve from someone else. That's two now for Steve that we've accidentally interpreted. We're getting all your mail, Steve. Sorry, Steve. We've got one from Dulles International Airports, where the airport itself is happy that it saw so much of me this summer. So it's a postcard from Dulles Airport. No vote, though. Spoiled ballot. Seems like definitely the way to get our attention is to do the spoiled ballots, because you, by definition, paid more attention to it.

Oh, I like this person's style. They've made a customized postcard with icons of Hello Internet. Oh, look at this. And all of our other YouTube channels and the Cortex podcast. They've made a little... All of our various endeavors.

Yeah. I notice I am taking up a lot more of the time. Yeah, I was going to say. When we say all of our various endeavors, it's my three entire projects and your 16 other projects. They voted for Nailing Gear, and at the end they've written there, Dear Brady, more Keith, please. Obviously enjoying Keith.

Everybody loves Keith. Keith in objectivity. Who doesn't love Keith? There's another one from our fraudster. This person who's been a nuisance, this is one of the other nuisance people who sends this postcard. I finally figured out what their postcard means.

Their postcard says only one of these is filled in according to the vote. So they've obviously sent in like 10 postcards. All of them are spoiled ballots except this one. This one follows the rules. So that's their legitimate vote. I'm always tempted to throw it away. You're so precious. I can see it in your eyes. No, you can

have your vote. Ladies and gentlemen, do not have Brady run your election. With all due respect to nail and gear, I find myself voting against it now because it's become like the big monster. But this is always what it is. Humans love underdogs. That's the thing. Nail and gear has become like Manchester But this is always what it is, right? Humans love underdogs. Yeah. Right?

That's the thing. Nail and gear has become like Manchester United or something like that. Yeah. The Yankees, to put it in your language. It's so popular nobody votes for it, that kind of thing? Another nice postcard of the Burj Khalifa with no votes on the back. I think this is going to go to preferences, Gray. Like I said, I think it's close.

It's like within the visual margin of error. No, I think it's comfortably going to go to preferences. And I'll make another bold prediction. All right. This is a bold prediction. You're getting confident with your predictions now. There are so few votes for HILogo that I think even after we distribute the HILogo preferences, we might need to go to another round. You may be right. You may be right about that. If we have two rounds, I mean, I don't know if i can imagine a more exciting evening than having two preferences rounds to distribute i might not be able to handle that much excitement we have another postcard from marcy this time we're getting many postcards for other people i'm just the mail seems so unreliable it's unreliable thatable. That's the beauty of it, Gray. The randomness.

Is it the beauty of it? Maybe not. I think not. An empty box. I've emptied one of the boxes. There we go. This is a special work of art, this one. This person here who has sent us a postcard has made a compilation postcard of various Liberian county flags combined with the Maryland flag. I believe that's the River Gee.

River Gee County. Do you know? Have I told you this yet? No. I have made my own stamps. You can do this with Royal Mail. You can make your own stamps. I've made my own stamps for my Christmas cards this year and for some postcards I'm sending from Numberphile that incorporates the River Gee County. Oh, that's where you got them from. I knew you had

those stamps. Yeah. I didn't know. I wasn't sure if you actually were importing stamps from Liberia. Oh, no. I also have bought some original ones, but I can't mail things for that. Right. Of course. I had to make my own that I could actually send through the post. Occasionally, you come across a postcard that people have left in like a plastic wrapping. Yeah. Like for protection. Do you think they've done that just because they wanted to make sure it was safe or is that? Yeah, it's like they want it to be mint condition, you know, like comic books. And I'm saying that that's totally valid because you can read it right through the envelope. We didn't really cover that in the rules, did we? Well, that's just it,

right? You know, for the next time we run a flag referendum and we're called in to consult somewhere, we'll know even more things to specify with rules. I tell you what, Gray, if you're serious about you and I getting work as flag referendum consultants, we better hope no one ever listens to this podcast or watches this video because I think that will end it right there. No, this is establishing our bona fides. You reckon? You don't think this makes us look a bit amateur hour? I think most people will look at it and think, oh boy, that looks like a lot of work. Those guys do a lot of work and then not watch the whole thing. I don't think if that's what they can do, just two of them. Imagine if we gave them the whole

government power behind them. What we're conveying here is the impression of impressiveness. Do you know what we should do when we finish? We should figure out how many people listen to Hello Internet, how many votes we got to find out what voter turnout was like, and then compare it with voter turnout at the New Zealand flag referendum. See how we compare. The problem we would have with that, I think that is very interesting, but the problem that we would have with that, I think that is very interesting. But the problem that we would have with that is it is very hard to know how many people actually listen to the podcast. Like any numbers that we come up with, our population numbers will have a huge uncertainty on them. Right.

Right. And so I guess we can do like a bounded uncertainty. So now here is an interesting one. A genuinely interesting one. The person has written their top two choices, nailing gear and flaggy flag, but you can see something is written above it, but it is almost entirely obscured by the airmail notice of the stamp. I don't know. I don't know. What do you think about that? And what they've written above it is clearly, it looks like the bottom of white

cross. Yeah. But, but number one, I mean, we'll put a picture of this in the show notes for people to have a look at. Yeah. If we don't cut this bit out. And if we don't lose track of this postcard. And I'll put a little sticky on it so I can find it. Oh, yeah. In all of this, we'll totally be able to find that sticky later on.

I'm guessing they put that sticker on there. So they deliberately... Do you think they deliberately put that sticker on there? Should I peel the sticker back a bit and see what's under it? Can you peel it back? Should we steam it open? Ah, see, it's not going to come back It's not going to come back

They've written 4, 3 Oh This is an invalid ballot I'm going to say that this is invalid Oh, and they've got two number 1s This is like Ah, okay, so this is again this is someone just messing with us. So yes, underneath...

Oh, we've been messed with. Underneath the airmail sticker, they have a second number one and other things out of order. But the airmail sticker covers it up. Nice try. Well, no, they won that one. No, we caught it. They win it if it gets through and we don't notice. Oh, that's true.

See, this is invalid. Someone has personal information, it's written above the vote. It's invalid. I think that's valid. It's not valid. That is a valid vote. That is not a valid vote. I even know who that person is. I recognize their name from Twitter too. They're like a fan of the show.

But it's an invalid vote. This is invalid. To me, that's a completely valid vote. It is invalid. Oh, he put it in the naughty box. Because it's an invalid vote, because we have rules. This is how society is held together. We have rules. It's invalid.

You write something above the preference there, invalid. You're hard, man. I'm not hard. The rules are hard. They're more like guidelines. They were rules. The only one that is vaguely a guideline is the material one. We will be looking at these postcards again, people, to have a closer look at some of the

things you've done. Because some people have made really creative postcards. They've homemade them and they've put personal messages on them. And we've looked at some of them already, but we'll look at more later. Yeah, I honestly, I wonder, like, I should come back up again and we should like, I don't know, do something again with this. Like, I do want to look at these in more detail today is not that day maybe now's a good time to tell people about my other little project i'm working on oh yeah what are you going to plug here brady no i'm plugging us oh you're plugging us yeah yeah basically i'm doing it but i'm doing it with gray in a way except he's not doing any of the work this is my favorite way of working with other people. We're going to create a separate little blog, sort of website. And hopefully, my plan at the moment, but don't

hold me to it in case I change my mind. Every day, we're going to share in detail a postcard that has been sent in to the election. Look at the picture on the front, look at the back, there might be a funny message, there might be a funny story. It might be from an interesting place, it might have a cool stamp. So I don't what the exactly what the url is going to be yet there'll be a link in the show notes and we'll talk about it again sometime but have a look and keep an eye out for it because if at the moment these postcards are just whizzing by and we're not talking about them in enough depth but some of our favorite ones are going to end up there on this kind of little daily daily website of course I'm not suggesting people go to it every

day because that would be a real chore, but you could maybe dip in every few weeks and just have a look at what the latest ones are that have been added. Oh, you can go every day. They definitely should go every day. Yeah, if that's your style. I'm aiming to have new ones going on every day, but we'll see how it turns out. But basically, we don't want all this stuff just to go to waste. We want to showcase some of the great stuff you guys have sent in yeah i definitely like the idea and we've been talking about ways that uh more people can see some of these interesting things and especially you know you you mentioned this website to me earlier today and now going through all of these

votes it feels even more important that we do something where we're pulling out some postcards yeah another vote for gray peak you can't tell me Grey Peak. You can't tell me what to do. We can't tell you what to do, but we can throw it in the naughty bin. You're in the naughty bin. In fact, we're saying it like it's a punishment. I bet people take loads of pride. I'm sure people are super excited to be in the naughty bin. Yeah.

There's a few HI logos going in just now. It seems like we've moved into a different sort of time area where HI logo was a bit more popular. I was just thinking a similar thing, which is that I'm aware of how it feels like votes come in little clusters. But of course, this is simply a side effect of just going through so many.

Like, it would be shocking if they didn't come in clusters. It's like coincidences. But it somehow feels when I get three in a row, like, oh, wow, that was an interesting little moment. And then I have to remind myself, no, of course it wasn't. Like, you're always going to get three in a row, four in a row, even five in a row like oh wow that was an interesting little moment and then I have to remind myself no of course it wasn't like you're always going to get three in a row four in a row even five in a row here it's just probability like all coincidences

Brady I know you know unless the coincidence fairies don't vote exactly or you dreamt it if you dream a coincidence that's even better that's even better. It's like a twofer.

That's amazing. Yeah. Who would have thought? Imagine if you dreamt you had a dream where a coincidence happens, and then you wake up and that same coincidence happens that day. That's amazing. That would be an amazing coincidence. It would, yeah.

It would be the kind of thing that a person unknowledgeable of statistics might want to draw meaning from. I feel like nail and gear's lead is being pegged back, but that's partly because the Nail and Gear bin has been more packed in, so it looks smaller, so looks can be deceiving. There's still a lot to go. Every time I think we're making progress, I kind of look at what's still to go and think, wow, this is going to be a boring episode. Do you think this episode's even going to need editing, Gray? Do you think we could just leave this uncut? I think the best thing to do would... We could do, in all seriousness... We're not doing that.

No, no, no, listen, listen. Hear me out, hear me out. We're going to do something with the edited version of this. But there's no reason on YouTube we couldn't actually just upload the raw thing of us sorting and counting all of this so people can see exactly how long it took and then just think when people watch it all the way through we will get dozens and dozens of pennies from the new YouTube bread system oh yeah this postcard's got a nice little piece of art somewhat it's a common theme for

people to just sort of draw little cavemen and robots. Someone here has done a really lovely little artistic depiction of us on the moon. With Audrey on the moon with us and the nail and gear flag. Do you recognize the planet? It's the little prince. No, I don't know what that is. You don't know the little prince?

I think you would know it if I showed you the book. You would definitely know it if you saw it. I guarantee it. I've gotten a marriage proposal. Grey, I love you. know it if I showed you the book. Okay. You would definitely know it if you saw it. Okay. I guarantee it. Okay. I've gotten a marriage proposal. Great. I love you. Will you marry me?

Well. Sorry. I'm already married. You're off the market. I'm off the market, as it were. All right. So, sorry, Miss. Sorry.

Miss, it says here, Scarlett Johansson of Hollywood, California. Yeah. Yeah. Too late. Too late. Too late. So I picked up this postcard and it felt a little funny. And the person's written, hugs and kisses from Belgium. But they have made a little origami heart, which goes on the inside of this.

It's like a little envelope that they put together. Oh, nice. I like it. That's really pretty. A lot of postcards have come in with pictures of mooses. Is that the plural of moose? Moosen. Moosen? Moosen. That's really pretty. A lot of postcards have come in with pictures of mooses. Is that the plural of moose? Moosen. Moosen? Moosen.

Is it? Yeah. A lot of people have sent in moosen on their postcards. Obviously, I'm imagining. Oh, no, this one's from Norway. Yeah, Norway is a moosen kind of country. A lot of Canadians also and stuff have sent moose. This person here has sent in a picture of a moose looking at a nude lady in the

water oh my little bit racy a naughty postcard but not one for the naughty bin that's an hi logo too so there you go who would have guessed i've also noticed a few postcards that have got the is it the cora is that the that that leaf that you yes yes people have just sent in pictures of that got uh washington dc i think no that's uh chicago oh of course of course of course chicago you Yes, yes. People have just sent in pictures of that. Got Washington, D.C., I think. No, that's Chicago. Oh, of course, of course, of course, Chicago. You obviously haven't watched the TED Talk about flags. No, I have not watched the TED Talk about flags.

We know. Someday. That is the star of that video. Someday. It's still too open a wound. That's your what could have been moment, like Scarlett Johansson thinking how she could have had you if she'd proposed earlier. Why do you always say Johansson?

I don't think that's the way she says it. I move between the two because I don't know which is right. I've never heard anybody say Johansson except you. Isn't that kind of a Scandinavian way? There was a Formula One driver who I really liked. I'm not saying that there aren't people who don't use the J as the Y sound. I understand that. But wasn't Scarlett Johansson born in America?

I presume she was. We need to find a video of her saying her own name. Oh, yeah. No, no, no, because maybe she's changed it to be a Hollywood. I want to hear her parents say how they say their name. No, she gets to decide how her own name is pronounced. Yes, but if she changes it, she loses her right to tell me off for mispronouncing it. That's a difficult question.

Because then you'll get people who will just demand that you pronounce their name in a completely unrelated way to the actual letters. It quite often happens in sport that for two or three years, all the British football commentators will call a foreign player by a certain name. And then eventually, after two or three years, the player will speak to someone in the media and say, oh, by the way, guys, you've been getting my name wrong all these years.

And like overnight, they will change how they pronounce it. It's really interesting when that happens. But it's like the Stephen Colbert thing. His father pronounces it Colbert. Does he? Yeah. Well, then I think if someone called him that, I'd say, okay, fair mistake.

We've got a hot stopper attached to your postcard. So someone's actually sticky taped a hot stopper to their card. So, Mr. Ruthless Gray, are you going to make that invalid? No, that's fine. What rule does this break? Material or? It's not made out of a different material. There was no envelope that needed to open.

They've written everything in the right. there's no rule that this breaks. So if someone had superglued a poo to their postcard, would you still count it? No, of course not. Because we all have lines, Brady, that we all cross. We all have lines. And your line is somewhere between a hot stopper and a poo. Yeah, I think that that's correct. I think most people's line is somewhere between those two. Yeah. I will not be using that hot stopper and a poo. Yeah, I think that that's correct. I think most people's line is somewhere between those two. Yeah. I will not be using that hot stopper, though.

No. Okay, I appreciate that it was sent in. I will not be using it. That's not going into your personal collection. It's not going into my coffee is what's happening. All right. All right, we've got another one. What do you think, Brady?

All right. What's the problem here? The problem is they got one of the names technically wrong. Someone here has voted, and their number one is Hello Internet logo instead of HI logo. And if you don't count that, you are a ruthless, ruthless, heartless bastard. Clearly we are going to count that. We're going to count it because it's what HI stands for. And I think you could fairly call that the Hello Internet flag.

And also quite frankly I'm going to count it because once again, theGI stands for and I think you could fairly call that the hello internet flag and also quite frankly I'm gonna count it because once again the AGI logo box is so sad. I'll let that one slide. Okay, so we're swapping sides but I'm gonna count from the other side. Now that I've moved position you've got to kind of reorient your brain don't you about where you're throwing things. Yeah, is this gonna mess you up? Do you wanna swap back? No, no, I'm good. I'm adaptable. Oh yeah? That's you, Mr. Adaptable. I'm hard as nails, posh as cushions, adaptable as...

what's something adaptable? Try to think of like a hardware tool, like a multi-tool. Oh, a Swiss army knife! A Swiss army knife, of course! I am the Swiss army knife of vote counters. Adaptable as Swiss army knives. Not quite so catchy, but I'm laughing. It's not quite so catchy, but it works. So here's something controversial. For Christmas, my wife was asking what I would like, and I have asked for a Leatherman. Oh, the great brand difference here.

I've just been looking at them lately, and I think maybe it's time for me to move from Swiss Army knife to Leatherman. Any thoughts on this? Well, when we had our Swiss Army knife discussion a while back, the truth is in my brain, I just grouped these things together, which of course is exactly what the Swiss Army presumably doesn't want you to do. But to me, Swiss Army is like the Kleenex. It's been brandized.

And the only Swiss Army knives I have ever owned are actually Leatherman. And I have always really liked my Leatherman. And I have always really liked my Leatherman. They're completely different. That's like, you can't compare a Leatherman to a Swiss army knife. I believe I just have. Last, but certainly not least, this episode of Hello Internet is also brought to you by the Mighty Igloo, the intranet you will actually like. They use that slogan because if you know what an intranet is, if you have to use an intranet, you almost certainly hate your intranet. It's just some horrible thing from two decades ago at your company that's held together with duct tape. There's just a mess of files and folders everywhere that you're forced to use because your company makes you.

Well, let me tell you, share the good word of Igloo with the IT department at your company. Or if you're at the IT department at your company listening to this right now, check out Igloo at igloosoftware.com slash hello. Igloo allows you to share news, organize your files, coordinate calendars, and manage projects all in one place. And Igloo's latest upgrade, Viking,

revolves around documents and how you interact with them, gather feedback and make changes. They've even added the ability to track who has read critical information to keep everyone on the same page. This is an intranet that is built to be an intranet. It's not just something that was cobbled together out of whatever was lying around 20 years ago.

So if your company has a legacy intranet that looks like it was built in the 90s, you need to give Igloo a try or you need to bring Igloo to the attention of the IT department at your company. Go to igloosoftware.com slash hello and you will see the simplicity and good design that awaits you. Thanks to Igloo for supporting the show. I'm not sure if this is if this is the actual way it works or not but from this company that has many people have used to send us a postcard we have a postcard that says dear person click here to write your message from the company that is sending these postcards. So like they haven't filled out the profile. This is what I'm wondering is, did they write this as a joke or did they just forget to actually fill in the other side?

I think they forgot to fill in the other side. And it's come from Ottawa, Canada. Sorry, person from Ottawa, Canada, but you've mucked up big time there. All right, here we go. This is something that you wanted to mention. We have a postcard that is marked received in damaged condition,

but I think this is a person who actually did this on purpose. I think this is an intentionally comically spoiled ballot because it cuts off exactly part of it has been ripped off and it rips off exactly the the number one choice of their votes. I think this is intentionally spoiled. And you can see what their two, three, four or five is. But they have also ripped through the stamp and they risked it not being posted by ripping through the stamp you think it's a it's a damaged damaged one so maybe it is legit and and we're actually we have a really interesting question with this yeah because you mr intent exactly because they've written all five you know what their first one was

yeah right their first one was nail and gears right because it doesn't need any help yep nail and gear i mean nail gears isn't mentioned they even have a flower for brady i think maybe this i think maybe it's legitimate also where did they get that damage condition stamp well it says received in damage condition right so this is at uh where is it new york when it was passing through new york they stamped it as received in damage condition i think this is still valid though do you know what This is unbelievable because I think we should make this invalid. Why do you think that should be invalid? You can derive what the first one is, right? There's no ambiguity about intent. I'll tell you what, I'll tell you why there is ambiguity about the intent. It's possible they didn't write a number one or it's possible they were taking the mickey out of

us and they put number one grey peak. We don't know what they put as number one you have convinced me it is a spoiled ballot you're gonna you're gonna kick my butt in a minute because i know there's one coming later which is a similar problem that i think we should count but i'll mark it people can look at a picture of this on the website uh we're gonna we're not gonna count this one if they were voting for nailing gear i don't think nailing gear needs the help anyway oh here's another one of these these post cards from um taiwan that is like all three-dimensional and you have to pull levers and things to open oh and it's got it's got stickers stickers for you it's a vote for nail and gear so yeah this postcard's weird people it It's sort of, it looks like a little cardboard,

thin, thin cardboard box with a little paper flap coming out the side. And I'll show people on the video camera now, but when you pull this little paper lever, all these extra bits of paper pop out with writing on them. I said, I think that counts. Like I said, that just, that is just toying with the idea of what a postcard is and just barely slides under. Do you think people are going to see this kind of inconsistent attitude we were taking to what counts and get really upset at us? Or they'll just be like, meh.

They're only going to be upset at you because you're the one who's being inconsistent. You were inconsistent with that damaged one a minute ago. Oh, no, I just put one in the wrong one. I was inconsistent because i realized i was assuming a tent automatically but you raised a totally valid point so i am not being inconsistent you are the one who does elections by feelings oh we've got another misdirected postcard that was intended for abu how on earth this ended up with us i don't know

because the address is not not even mildly similar to obviously the sorting people just saw a postcard and yeah threw it in with us i imagine that that some sorting facility somewhere just got exhausted by postcards and just whatever just send them all on although when i do say that i'm the one who's being perfectly consistent and you are the one who is not i'm still going to make you do the final vote on does hand delivery count? I was thinking about it all the way up here and I cannot come to a conclusion about whether or not hand delivery counts. If it had been hand delivered to the correct address, if it had been hand delivered to the address that we required everyone to send it to, I would count it. Because it was given to you personally, I'm inclined to not count it, even though I suspect it was handed to you by a friend of ours who we like.

I still think we can't make exceptions just because it's our friend. I think you're right. I think you're right. Because it's actually violating two things in the end, right? It's violating the deadline and the delivery as well. Yeah. All right. Decision made. Okay, great.

This is great. This is one of my favorites. This is a postcard that has been completely mashed by the postal service. It's been ripped apart. It's come from California and the U.S. Postal Service has put it in a special plastic bag they put damaged votes in. Damaged votes? Damaged mail.

You know where my brain is. But here we can clearly see all the votes. Like this is clearly a vote for nail and gear. We can see. Yeah. Unambiguous. There's no doubts here. So that's a vote for nail and gear. But again. Unambiguous. Again, people who are only listening and not watching the video, we will also put some links for you to look at some of the stuff but here we go here we have a damaged vote again the plastic bag this is from the british royal mail with our sincere apologies written on it we are sorry that this item has reached you in this condition and when you turn it around half the post the postcard is ripped in half and it is impossible to tell what they voted for

yeah you can tell they voted for flaggy flag over nail and gear and HI logo, but you don't know if there's anything above it. Yeah, you can't tell there's anything above. This feels like a tragedy. It does. This vote, right? Someone sent it in, in good faith. They sent it from somewhere called Lieben...

Is that a place or is that a... It says Lieben im Kiez. You can sort of see the front of the postcard there through the bag sad that's a real tragedy that one yep that's just bad luck that's that's our equivalent of the one that went in the air conditioning duct yeah it just wasn't meant to be for that person i'll tell you what though they've got a really strong chance of ending up on my special website oh here's a very special one because this comes from Glenelg in Adelaide, South Australia.

And Glenelg is the suburb of Adelaide in which I was born. Oh, was it? Yeah. Glenelg? It sounds very beautiful. The person here's written, Brady, I honestly looked for a postcard

of the Black Stump, but alas, this one is just about 15 minutes from where I live. So they're kind of apologizing as if I don't know where Glenelg is. Right, but they actually hit the bullseye. Yeah, exactly. I grew up in Glenelg.

I'm more fond of Glenelg than I am of the Black Stump. Here's one for you. 3D Apollo. Oh, that's a 3D of Buzz Aldrin on the moon. That's someone who's trying to catch your attention. We should have had this company that does postcards over the internet sponsor us. We've done a fair bit of business their way. There's a couple of them, but yeah, some of them have been used quite a lot. They've done well from us. We've done a fair bit of business there. There's a couple of them,

but yeah, some of them have been used quite a lot. They've done well from us. Some of these are a bit rude. Just eyeballing it, it looks like Flaggy Flag is catching up to Club and Claws, which is our early second place contender. What would have been nice if we were organized and rich would have been to have each of these five buckets

on a scale so we could watch the weight of them changing like a live count kind of mechanism. That would have been cool, wouldn't it? For the next referendum. Yeah, it would have been overkill. I have to say there are in some ways far fewer intentionally spoiled ballots than I would have suspected. It's because people want their say, Grey. They want to be part of it. They're good people.

But of course, as I say that, I go through a run of like three intentionally spoiled palettes someone has done the background of my phone that kind of black gray triangle black gray triangles that just makes me wonder how many we have missed as intentional things for the other person like i don't think you would have recognized that image as my phone background yeah yeah maybe not i may recognize that but i'm sure i'm missing a lot of other in jokes uh speaking of which here's you and the professor oh yeah oh no hang on you have stumbled over a very special postcard gray oh have i so this postcard which is a photo of me and the professor in the gold vault which is a just a postcard I've made to send from Periodic Videos, is the postcard I sent to our postbox to test that the address worked.

So this was like the this is a test moment. And it just made it into the box. So this is the postcard that wasn't intended to be a vote. It was just to make sure the address worked. So put it in the naughty bin. It's a spoiled ballot. It's a spoiled ballot, but yeah. Here's one.

I'm going to let it slide. I'm going to let it slide. But someone wrote gear and nail. All right. Someone here has sent in a really, really huge postcard all about the geology of Utah, which is a really interesting postcard. And it's got all this blank space on the back. And I've just really smallly written

one, flaggy flag. And then there's all this white space underneath. Hello, Utah. You are a beautiful state. You know, I think flaggy flag seems to, feels like it's strengthening. That's what I'm saying. It's much closer now between club and cause and flaggy flag. Well, someone has sent in one of those cards that uh radio hams use you know when they contact each other and send like a receipt to say you do you know about this i know nothing about this like radio enthusiasts when they go on and they go hey this is you know bn43z here in sarajevo and they accidentally get to talk to someone in america and they have like

an interaction they then swap details and they send each other these special cards about when they had their interaction and you collect these postcards from around the world showing who you've spoken to and when oh so it's like a calling card for kind of like yeah kind of like yeah I spoke and do you know what there was I can't remember who it is but he's like a king he's like the he was like the king of Saudi Arabia or the king of some really rich state. And he had a hobby, which was being a radio enthusiast. And sometimes just some normal Joe would talk to someone, you know, by code. And sometimes it would be by Morse code or just a really small interaction. And then when they swapped cards, they'd get their card.

It would be from the king of this country. And they didn't realize they'd been speaking to this really important person. We have another postcard that came to us, which was not supposed to. And all of these make me feel bad because then I read this message about how, oh, I'm so sorry we missed each other and we need to catch up soon. I want to hear back from you.

And I was like, oh, it's been sitting in our postbox for a while. Maybe some of those marriage proposals to you have gone to other people's postboxes and they don't realize it's a joke. And they're thinking, this poor guy called CGP Grey, he got a marriage proposal from someone he doesn't even know somehow i'm getting the feeling that most of the errors were in this

direction here's another another one of these interesting ones this person i think has filled out their ballot correctly it's become water stained so their numbering of their ballots has been washed away invalid completely valid invalid because because the we had the vote where someone put the numbers all in the wrong spots. Remember? Yeah, but they did that on purpose. You don't... maybe this person did the same thing. You cannot assume the order.

Invalid. No question about it. Invalid. Shouldn't even be a hesitation. Invalid. God damn it, Brady. I just put it into the box. You can go and find it if it means that much to you.

I feel that the common law of this election process is that the person holding the ballot makes the final decision about the ballots. I think that's a perfectly acceptable way to go. Oh, here's one for you. Again, I think this is a genuine mistake. Someone has made their number one flashy flag instead of flaggy flag. I mean, that could be an autocorrect because it's been typed. Invalid. No. Invalid.

You already counted one where they got the name wrong. Not like that, though. They wrote hello internet logo. You know what they meant. I think you just get some sort of power trip from saying they're invalid. I do not. You're a big meanie. You're a big meanie. You're a big softy is your problem. You've been counting all of them. Feels like we're actually really coming down to the end here.

Okay, this one, this person has been clever. They've sent in a postcard saying, an invalid ballot with no vote, saying don't shred this, think of the whales, because their postcard is a picture of whales. The only thing stopping me shredding it is the lack of a shredder at the moment and i kind of want to keep them all for posterity yeah i was gonna say the lack of a shredder and your natural hoarding tendencies are the only things that preventing these bowels and valve being shredded i am a hoarder and my wife is not and when she comes home and says this this is not what she's's going to want to see. This is like when a parent's walk into the bedroom and the kids have got access to the chocolate and they've got a mess everywhere.

Yeah, it's all over their faces. I feel like I will be losing many points with your wife when she walks home. Like, oh, your party to this? Like, yeah, I guess so. We're like these two naughty kids with all this all this rubbish around us it's really exciting now that the boxes are filled up so much and you've got a real sense of the the proportions of the votes for each one it's like it's really coming it's really come to life hasn't it like the magnitude of it all and the proportions of it all another another postcard

to someone from someone who loves them think of the havoc we might have unintentionally wrecked on some people's lives i know the family feuds we've caused i wanted it to be really close and i'm i don't know is it a landslide what would be a landslide is it only a landslide if you win on for what would constitute a landslide great i feel like informally a landslide is a win by a pretty large margin. So if you don't win the first round, it can't be a landslide. So it can only be a landslide if you win without the distribution of preferences. Even then I would feel like it would have to be like 60% win. Oh no, look, a birthday card.

Dear Sarah, happy 21st birthday. Oh God. Love from Rachel. These are breaking my heart. I will be returning these postcards to... eventually. Yeah, you're gonna hand deliver them around town. No. I think you owe it to these people. Or is it part of their story that they ended up here?

Well, they don't know unless you hand deliver it to them. I feel like the weight of the nail and gear ones here is pressing down on the ones underneath enough to create more space. Yeah we're gonna get a black hole situation soon. On reflection, I wonder if someone would watch this in real time. Is that too boring a thing to upload? It is not the expectation that someone is watching it, it is the funny part of uploading it to me. Okay. Right like that's the... It's like a performance piece someone is watching it. It is the funny part of uploading it to me. Okay. It's like a performance piece. Yeah, right?

It's like the joke of it. It's not that I'm expecting someone actually watching us do the whole thing. It is the only way people will get to see their own vote go in, though. Yeah, because otherwise, if we're doing it sped up. So I think we definitely upload the whole thing with just us doing it. I think this wins the biggest postcard we've got so far. And of course, it goes into your hands and you're, yeah, there you go. You're just with just us doing it. I think this wins the biggest postcard we've got so far. Mmm and of course it goes into your hands and you're yeah there you go you're just totally accept it. What you think that's not acceptable? I know I am NOT saying that it's not acceptable but it just

seems to me like of course you get this one. Great I'm putting it into your hand let's see where you put it now you sort it. That's fine. You've allowed it. There's a couple more handfuls of these things. Yep. It's a good thing too because we're just about topping up the box. Very mildly, don't think I'm getting carried away here, but I'm very mildly feeling the emotion I felt. Like I once ran a half marathon, which was a big deal for me, and coming down the final

straight you feel this emotion. And also when the first time I went to Everestest and you finally get back to the finally end of the trek and you know you're you're back at the last hotel and you're going to get to go home soon you feel this real you get quite overcome by emotion and i'm feeling a mild version of that at the moment which has just been completely scuppered by this this postcard from california of a naked man. This is what the internet is great at, right? The internet is for horsing around. Got to concentrate on these final steps, Gray, and not make a mistake.

This is when you get careless. It's like coming down the mountain. It's the dangerous time. Yeah. Complacency sets in. The finish line's in sight. One false step. Looks like we're just going gonna fit all the nail and gear

into one box. Only thanks to your diligent compacting. I cannot believe the number of misdirected pieces of mail. It's a bit worrying, isn't it? It really is. Here's my last one. My last one comes from the University of Montana, and it is a vote for White Cross.

My last one is mailed from the United Kingdom, but it's a picture of the Red Room in the White House, and it is for Nail and Gear. All right. Here we go. The sort is complete. We have five boxes of votes in front of us, plus the red naughty box with all the mishaps. Clearly Nail and Gear is like the most full even with the clever compacting

and packing it is still by far the biggest. Nail and Gear is the biggest winner. H.I. Logo is the biggest loser. Flaggy Flag and Club and Claws need counting. They're very close and White Cross is in the uh the fourth fourth place so hr logo looks like it's going to be the first eliminated if if that even comes to that if it comes to that yeah yeah we'll have to find out it's time to count counting time i've bought these cool little counters all right so we're gonna going to sort of, I don't know, put them into little groups of ten and count them or something? Yeah, this might be one of these things that we realize very quickly that we don't know

what we're doing. But our initial thought, anyway, is yeah, to try to batch them into ten and on the clicker do ten at a time. Okay, and we'll sort of do around half each, and each sort of in our own little world of tens and then we'll combine our two numbers. Alright. Alright, alright, well you do your thing and i'll do my thing and then we'll it's my first three lots of ten so when you count them do you hear a number in your head oh don't make me think about that stuff

now man it's hard enough i just don't know how to count without hearing i'm thinking about the podcast and i'm thinking about i'm counting numbers in my head but do you hear it i kind of do it's a lot harder to talk to the uh the listeners when we're doing this i mean you realize i am i can't Because I have to hear the number. Yeah. It's the most boring piece of podcasting ever created. Yes it is. Like the sound of clicks intermittently spaced, people? You're gonna love it. Tell me these clickers weren't a good purchase. The best.

I was foolishly thinking, oh, I'll use a tally app on my phone, but this is obviously a bazillion times better. Now here's my first miscount one. Got one for club and claws in the wrong box. Oh, we found one in the wrong box. I'm amazed you noticed that. Are you not looking at the votes while you do this? Not very closely.

Oh, the minute you told me to do it, I found one. A miscount. I found a flaggy flag in the nail and gear box. Oh, and another one. One of us had a brain fade for a minute there. Do you think lots of people are going to watch the videos back and check our work? I bet they do. Someone will. I guarantee you someone at some point will notice something we did wrong. I'll tell you one flaw with the postcards. Because they're all different sizes and textures, it does make this part quite hard.

I can imagine if all your ballot papers are the same, it's a lot easier to count and sort. Yeah, it is surprisingly hard to manage the different sizes of them. It definitely makes it much trickier. Hot and sweaty work, this. I know. Just like all podcasting work, you always end up sweating. Do you sweat when you podcast? Do you not? No. I'm always just a sweaty, disgusting mess after the podcast. I, you always end up sweating. Do you sweat when you podcast? Do you not?

No. I'm always just a sweaty, disgusting mess after the podcast. I always have to take a shower. So I counted 880. How many have you got, Gray? 930. 1,810 votes. To carry the one, the nine goes to a 10, goes to an 80.

What the hell? What is this? Why is there a thing there? I just wrote that as when I was carrying it. Oh okay, yeah that's fine. Yeah we're good. That's right isn't it? Yeah that's right. Alright. So nail and gear, 1810 votes. We might find some nailing gears in the other boxes so that might slightly adjust but we'll keep that ready. Mm-hmm. But that's the benchmark. So Gray and I have countered the nailing gears.

It's already a disaster. Oh, Gray! Oh! It fell apart in my hand. Man, what do you want me to do? I've got a whole other new box here. Look at this. I want you to be more careful.

You're not showing these postcards quite as much respect as I'd like. Look at you becoming Mr. Fussy Pants. I am. I'm upset about that. Are you happy about that? That's better. Going through them again, you start to see some really nice postcards if we missed the first one.

Yeah, there were a whole bunch that I wanted to stop and make a comment on, but no time. And I caught a couple of yours, obviously spoiled ballots, but that you still accepted. What have we got next uh probably club and claws club and claws and flaggy flag i have some suspicions about how well we sorted them oh okay so i feel like it's it's good to pay extra close attention yep the very fact that they switched positions is suspicious to me okay so keep an

eye out for wrong votes here. Yeah, either way. Okay, don't forget to reset your counter. Yeah. Yeah, that's the sound of professionalism, that's what that is. Yep. You realize you dropped one. Alright, so what do you want me to do? You want me to fold them up?

Just like put them in, just keep them straight. Just nice and neat. Yeah. Okay, but then look. Put them in like neatly. Just put them in neatly, don't drop them straight. Just nice and neat. Yeah. Okay, but then look. Put them in like neatly. Just put them in neatly. Don't drop them in.

Let me get you the other. Where's the other stool? Something else we haven't discussed, Gray, is how close does it have to be for a recount? I was thinking the same thing. Because we might miss a three every now and again. We could be 30 votes out here or 60 votes out there It is it is very possible that our margin of error is a hundred plus or minus right like with with the counters and with All the regular counting. Yeah, so in theory if we were doing an election and the vote was within like 200

I would think that would Like on a proportionally sized election. That would be a recount kind of situation. Yep. But I have to go home at some point. Eight, nine, ten. Again. Round number. Brilliant. So that is

club and claws counted and I counted three hundred and sixty. How many did you count? Three hundred and fifty. Seven hundred and ten. That's a massive difference. Oh no, is this going to go to preferences? Well, if you figure, this is almost half that, right? But club and claws and flaggy flag probably have about the same. And then plus the final two, it's going to be close. It's going to be close. All right. So just a reminder, nailing gear, 1,810.

Club and claws, 710. Now we're going to have a look at flaggy flag. Flaggy flag. What's with you, man? What do you mean, what's with me? Put them in neater. Just put them in neater. I put them in the way I put them in.

We got counting to do. The counting is the thing. Yeah, but we've got to arrange them the way I put them in. We got counting to do. The counting is the thing. Yeah, but we've got to arrange them afterwards. It doesn't end. It could be a recount. Yeah, it could be. And if there was a recount, you'll be wishing you did it, Nita. If there's a recount, I'll be coming up tomorrow.

No, we'll bring a divorce lawyer with you. It's like a moment. Are we getting divorced? Oh, no, of course. Are we getting divorced? Oh, no, of course. You're getting divorced. This is, like, interesting, and it feels important, but it's a bit less fun. Do you expect everything to be fun?

Well, that's kind of how I try to arrange life. So we've just finished Flaggy Flag. I'm adding 400. What have you got? 400. 400. 400. Exactly, suspiciously but truly, exactly 800 for Flaggy Flag.

But while doing that, we found two incorrectly sorted votes for nail in gear so nailing gear has gone up by a mere two which we will add to their tally which makes it 1812 and flaggy flag 800 which gives it second place over club and claws a further 90 back on 710. If we add together Flaggy Flag and Club and Claws, we come to 1,510, still 300 votes behind. If the other two candidates, White Cross and H.I. Logo, surpass 300, we are going to go to preferences. If they don't surpass 300, Nailing Gear will win it. I think the interesting thing here as well is that Flaggy Flag are going to go to preferences if they don't surpass 300 nail and gear will win it i think

the interesting thing here as well is that flaggy flag and club and claws had some kind of time variance in the voters because club and claws and flaggy flags switched places right club and claws in the beginning really started out strong and flaggy flag overtook it and i don't know which way it was right because which box which boxes we count. Were we going backwards in time or forward in time? But there was, there was some time variance in voter preference between those two. Something may have happened on Reddit or something may have happened on Twitter that motivated voters or who knows. Who knows. Oh, we're missing one. Oh, we missed, oh, we just found, that's our air conditioner one.

We just found an extra vote for Flaggy Flag, taking it up to 801, not 800. Nice and neat for you. Reasonably neat, not that neat. That's not neat. Oh my God, you thought that was neat. That's terrible, Gray. What are you?

I love that you are Mr. Fussy Britches about this. I am. This is hilarious. Fussy Britches about this. I am. This is hilarious. You're like some kind of animal. We need white cross next. Where's white cross? This is HR logo. White cross must be over here.

This might not go to preferences. I think it might not. This must go over 300 surely. I don't know. Man, it's going to come down to the wire though if it does. Time to count white cross. I'm getting distracted. I saw a Reunion Swamp Hen stamp

and it threw off my count. Or is it Jamaican Swamp Hen? I don't remember. Stop it, this is not the time for joking. Don't make me think. I lost count. Whenever someone says it's not the time for joking, that's exactly the time for joking.

So we've finished the white cross. A bit quicker, obviously, with less votes. I have 160. I have 146. So that is a total of 306 for white cross. So we are going to preferences. We are going to preferences. We are.

If you combine flaggy flag, club and claws, white cross so we are going to preference we are going to preferences we are if you combine flaggy flag club and claws white cross it actually surpasses nail and gear and we still haven't even counted yeah logo does it just or does it just fall short it's it's like too short isn't it no i think it's a pass oh yeah it's a couple short it's like yeah it's like literally too short i think it's five short so it's five short so but i think we i think despite the unpopularity of hi logo i think we have more than five votes for it yeah so thank you hi logo for ensuring that we go to one round of preferences so just to recap nail and gear is out in front but the next three which are flag Flaggy Flag, Club and Claws, and White Cross combined,

actually still fall five short of Nail and Gear, but we have got the HI Logo votes to count, which will put those bottom four combined above Nail and Gear. HI Logo, let's count these ones up, Gray. Reset your counters. All right, yeah, I got it. Final countdown. The final countdown. I think Gray's going a bit delirious on us here people. It's been a long day.

It has been a long day. So HILogo is countered. I had 80. I have 94. So 174 for H-I logo. All right. So have you got your calculator on your phone? Yeah. Let's see how many total votes there were. Okay, you're going to add these together for me, Gray. Nailing gear, 1,812. Flaggy flag, 801. Club and claws, 710.

White cross, 306. H-I logo, 710. White Cross, 306. HI Logo, 174. 3,803 votes in total. Okay, now what percentage did Nailing Gear get? If you do that, divided by that. 8, 112, divided by 3, 80, 0, 3, 47.6%. Of the vote. Now, in a first-past-the-post election, it'd be game over.

We would be finished. But the game is not over. The game is not over. We have one round of preferences to distribute and then to see where we are. But at the moment, I think we have been roped into moving a Christmas tree. Is that not correct? I don't know if we have to move the Christmas tree yet but we do need to stop recording for a second. So after a brief break in moving a Christmas tree we are back and we have found we missed one HI logo vote. It had fallen down a crack, so to speak. So that is added into the HI logo tally, which still keeps it firmly in last place.

But it's 175 is the 50% and being the winner. So now we take last place, HILogo, and distribute preferences. We distribute preferences. Do you think everyone listening understands how this works? Or do we need to explain this? Or is this common knowledge? I think very briefly we can just say that what we're going to do is now look at the second choice of all of the ballots. Some of the votes I have noticed already people haven't listed a second choice. So if that's the case, that ballot is just discarded.

It doesn't count anymore in the election. And yeah, the question is if Nailing Gear can get 90 of the second preference votes of this batch, it wins? And if not, then we go to another round of preferences. Do you think people listening might be thinking, well, whoever voted for HILogo has gone from a loser to now being the most powerful voters of all. They seem to have all the power.

Their second choice is gonna decide the whole election. This is precisely how this is always misrepresented when you do elections. But yes, that's why it is called an instant runoff vote, is that in theory, what this is simulating is doing an election multiple times over multiple stages where you say, we are eliminating the last candidate and now we're going to run the whole election again of the top four, but we're not going to do that. That's what instant runoff is just simulating, is eliminating the worst person or the one with the fewest number of votes and acting as though the whole election is taking place again without that person there. Is it an accurate assumption that if we were to run it again with just the four candidates, Nailgear,

Flaggy Flag, Club and Claw, White Cross, that all the people would vote the same way except the HI logo voters? I mean, in some sense, you can say you know for sure it wouldn't always happen precisely the same way because time is elapsing, right? And people can change their minds. So there is like a small amount of accuracy that you are losing for a vast gain of time. Alright, so here are the HI votes. So for example, I'm taking one out and its second choice was club and claws. So I'm going to put that in a little sub-pile for club and claws and we'll do this for all the HI votes. Looking at their second preference.

Nail and gear is starting to get some of those all-important 90 that it desires. Quite a lot more reading this time, right? Yeah, you have to think about it a bit more here, don't you, as you distribute them. Nail and gear is doing okay. It is getting a lot of second preferences. This person hasn't put a second

preference on their vote, so that is all sort of discarded in a way. What are you thinking, Gray? gray how's it looking the truth is i'm having to focus a tremendous amount on looking at the second place vote so i'm having a hard time thinking anything else it seems broadly to be following the trend of the overall election which is what i would expect but we will have to wait until the final count to see for sure. I have to say this is my virgin preferential vote distribution either way. How are you finding it? Oh, it's very exciting. It's everything I hoped it would be. But you never run an election like this in a school. Kids couldn't handle it. That's why I do the approval voting there. But yes, this is good. I'm kind of wishing it would go to another

round. I don't know if it will, but... You don't want it to ever end, Brady there. But yes, this is good. I'm kind of wishing it would go to another round. I don't know if it will, but... You don't want it to ever end, Brady. I don't, I don't. Okay, great. So the preferences have been distributed. Everyone who voted for H.I. Logo, we've looked at their second choice and attributed them to the other flags.

Correct. Now, first of all, in my hand at the moment are the votes of the people who voted for H.I. Logo who didn't specify a second preference. Who wanted H.I. logo or nothing. All right. So bad luck to them.

How many of those? There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. There's eight of them. Now, the next thing worth looking at is how many white cross people, white crosses in fourth place how many of the hi duds have they picked up in preferences one two three four five six seven eight nine ten so plus 10 taking the white cross total up to 316 now club andlaws was on 710 in third place, a good 91 votes behind Flaggy Flag. How many of the preference votes did Club and Claws pick up to make up some ground?

Did it do well? I felt like it was doing well, but... Split it. I've quickly there counted 31. What did you get? 13? We didn't split them very well. No, not at all. It's a really thick card. Yeah. So there's an extra 44 votes for Club and Claws, taking Club and Claws up to 754. A flaggy flag. 801. Over a thousand behind nail and gear.

I think it's going to need a miracle here, but let's see. I had 21, Gray, what did you have? 16. So there's another 37 for Flaggy Flag, taking it up to 838. How many preferences did Nail and Gear get? If it got more than 90, it's the winner. If it doesn't get more than 90,

we will need to distribute the preferences of our fourth placeholder, which is White Cross. All right. So we need to see, did Nail and Gear get that 90-ish it needs? Here we go. I got 31. 45. That's 76. So that takes the total for nail and gear up to 1,888. So the question is, is that more than half with the eliminated voters? Okay. All right. So let's just quickly just do some math to double check. So we need to now add up the total for nail and gear, flaggy flag, club and claws, and white cross. And basically those eight people whose vote count for nothing now are going to be coming off the tally. Right.

So I will read you the totals for the four leading flags. Okay, go. Now many people will not be listening to the podcast anymore. Right. Because some people will have pens and notepads out and be following this like crazy. Nail and gear, 1,888. Flaggy flag, 838. Club and claws, 754. 754. White cross, 316 Cross 316 316 The total valid ballots we've counted is 3796 What you would need to win would be

You would need to win 1898 ballots to win So nail and gear Is 10 ballots Is 10 short Nail and gear has not yet, after the first distribution of preferences, received the necessary majority.

Nail and gear is being the Zeno's paradox of this. Each round is going to get closer and closer, maybe. So we need to distribute white cross. What are you? You sound disappointed. This is exciting. But flaggy flag, club on claws on white cross can't realistically come back from here, can they? They can if nobody votes for Nail and Gears.

We now have all of the White Cross votes. This is all the people that put White Cross as their first preference, plus the HI logo people who have by default ended up voting for White Cross. And we're going to start redistributing these. But as soon as Nailing Gear gets 10. We know that it wins. We know that it wins. It can't not win.

It can't not win. And then so we can stop for the night. Right. And you can get a train home. Exactly. I guess we start. I guess we start. We start with these, I guess.

And you grab a few and I'll grab a few. But let's keep the Nailing Gear ones nice and clean. Right. So we'll do them below. So there we go. The first one I've pulled out goes to nailing gear nine more needed for nailing gear and another one Eight more needed than the first one for me seven more needed for the next one for me Six more the other ones in the next one five five more needed for nailing gear here club and claws Oh club and claws club and claws making a late go and claws. Club and claws is making a late go.

Flaggy flag. Flaggy flag. We're symmetrical here. Oh, oh, nail and gear. Nail and gears. So how many have nail and gear got now? It is eight. Three, four, five, six, seven.

Nail and gear needs three more. All right, I've got one more for nail and gear. I've got one more for nail and gear. I don't know if it's going to make it, man. Now, hang on. This is interesting. This person here voted for White Cross. Their second preference was HI Logo,

which it can't go to. It cannot go to. Their third preference is nail and gear. And it goes to nail and gear. And nail and gear has won the election. Is that the 10th one? That's 10. That's 10.

We only had to distribute 14 of White Cross's votes for nail and gear. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Citizens of Hello Internet, you have your flag, the nail and gear.