The Titan, the Cheater and the American Emperor

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I’m going to ditch the headings this time to avoid fracturing the sections needlessly. The Nutshell links themselves can do the job of dilineating each video. Speaking of Nutshell, they don’t work on RSS feed readers because it relies on JavaScript being able to run within the articles themselves. Otherwise they’ll just be conventional links prefixed with colons.

:Famous Grandmaster Pretends To Be A Beginner! (The Ultimate Hustle!!!) GM Sam Shankland by Coffee Chess

A very boring video. A totally-absolutely-completely famous grandmaster (that I’ve never heard of before) comes in as a guest player and does exactly what it says on the tin. After the game the grandmaster then promotes his various books, and the other half of the video is one of the channel owners having post-game commentary. And not the commentary I expected - nothing about the game itself, just a bunch of nothing merely to pad the watchtime to 10 minutes. Wouldn’t recommend.

:The Truth Behind The Cheater by Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

I much, much more entertaining video. If you’ve never heard the story before, a man attempted to cheat in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire by having someone in the audience cough whenever he spoke aloud the correct answer. All he had to do was speak each answer in turn and whenever he heard a cough, he’d lock in that answer. The unfortunate (but hilarious) result was that basically every question ended up sounding like this:

“I don’t think it’s A, I have a gut feeling…”

“I’ve heard of B before. It could be correct but I’m just not sure.”

“I don’t know what C is at all. I just don’t.”

cough cough

“Option C, final answer.”

Needless to say, what the host says in the video introduction sums things up nicely:

Getting away with cheating us out of a million quid was gonna need a mastermind with a cunning plan and a genius accomplice, but luckily for us it was major Charles Ingram who had neither of those things.

:Why Thanos’s MCU Introduction Now Makes No Sense by Screen Rant

I know that this being a Screen Rant video warrants low expectations, but I watched this thing for free and I want my money back. The entire 10 minutes of it can amount to them saying “these previous movies directed and written by totally different people completely contradict Avengers Infinity War and Endgame! They should’ve planned this X years in advance and they completely botched it. But we won’t really say that because then the fans will cut our throats, so we’ll say something with over-the-top benevolence and generously share what we would’ve done instead”.

I’m seeing a pattern that most of the videos I added to my watch later playlist back in the 2017-2019 era are clickbait videos full of fluff. At least every now and then there’s a diamond in the rough, such as the next video in the list.

:REALLY WEIRD HISTORY: The Emperor of the United States by AustinMcConnell

Austin McConnell is an incredibly good storyteller, especially on history and non-fiction. He also had heart surgery and a stroke last year, and after months of rehabilitation pretty much bounced right back. It’s all documented on his YouTube channel, and it’s really heartwarming to have seen it all play out (pun not intended).

This video was one of my favourite videos back in the day, and I suppose I left sitting around in my watch later playlist needlessly (goes without saying as I never removed anything from it until now). :Emperor Norton was the self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States (and Protector of Mexico). While obviously lacking any political power at all (and effectively being a vagrant in poverty after being oofed by the economic market), he became a local celebrity in San Francisco and it got to the point that he had his own currency (accepted by multiple businesses), was able to make proclamations and demands on newspapers, and enjoyed free train rides, meals and rent. The guy even had merch.

Emperor Norton was Emperor over the course of 5 presidents, including James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln.

A very highly recommended watch. Austin McConnell tells his story in a very compelling way, and makes only 13 minutes feel like an entire documentary.

:Much Luxo Lamps Spoof Effect Logo Part 1 by CREA TVs

A series of increasingly weird edits of the Pixar Lamp animation:

1. 5 lamps repeatedly jump on and squash every single letter in PIXAR.
2. 2 lamps squash only the I and A in PIXAR.
3. After the original lamp squashes the I, a pink lamp hops over to squash and replace it.
4. The original animation is overlayed with a 4x4 grid of smaller copies of the animation happening simultaneously.
5. The original lamp is accompanied by a much larger lamp that squashes the letter at the same time as the smaller one, but doesn’t actually squash the smaller one (implying that the larger lamp has preferential mercy).
6. 4 lamps squash all but the I in PIXAR.
7. =The animation is mirrored along the y-axis so it looks like 2 lamps are squashing the I’s in PIXIP.
8. A blurred mess of what looks like a million lamps all squash the I in PIXAR.
9. A 3D animation in which a tiny lamp attempts to jump onto the I but struggles to, prompting its mother to help it up. The little lamp succeeds in squashing the I, and the mother gives it a kiss. As the mother hops away, it accidentally knocks over the lamp. The I attempts to unsquash itself, and then the whole scene goes dark.

I don’t really know what to say.

:Avengers Endgame Final Battle Part 1 - 16 Bit Scenes by Mr Sunday Movies

A recreation of one scene in Avengers Endgame in a 16 bit video game theme, animated completely from scratch. It’s an impressive video that must have taken a lot of work to design and animate. The second half of the video goes into the behind the scenes, and it was very interesting to see all the effort that went into making it look and feel authentic (e.g. some audio was taken from real Avengers video games from a long time ago).

There’s a part 2, but I don’t believe I’ve watched it yet. Perhaps I should sometime.