Hi hankschannel.  I don't--I need some social media that isn't social media right now, you know?  Um, I think there's a lot, you know, like, like, the first thing to interface with is like, losing a person is sad, and I think that like, especially when it's a person who's had such a tremendous impact on life in America and the tremendous positive impact on the world, so I think that that, that's a thing.  Gotta focus on that thing.   Do I have a comb?  I do.  Why?  It's a fidget.  I don't actually use it on my hair.  I don't think ever.  I use it Orin's hair 'cause it's cute, and so I feel like there's a challenge there, but of course, it must be very strange to be in this situation when you are the person in question, when you're a member of their family, when you're a loved on, to recognize that like, this, you know, the sadness of loss is mingled with the known immediate, you know, conversation that will begin about who will replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the Supreme Court and who will nominate and confirm that person and, you know, this is all sort of like, for me, a little bit tarnished by the fact that it, you know, Donald Trump released a list of judges recently and like, I don't know.  Maybe it was more well-known, like, in some group of people that this event was upcoming.

If it was only well-known to Donald Trump and very close, you know, 'cause of course, I think the president should know something like that, but  it just seems really, like, untactful to release that list so recent to this event if it was a known thing.  I don't know if it was, but it does make me think weirder about that released list that I think weird about it a lot already because it was a very strange list.

So I think that that--but what--what is, you know, all of that aside, the thing that I'm thinking about right now is this immediate conversation.  The immediacy of the conversation, and like, maybe, and I don't know, maybe it's--there are reasons to like, to sort of like, arrive at it, but I, you know, but I think that for me as a person, I guess there are a lot of people who need to have this conversation immediately and of course, Twitter is the place where we have those conversations now, but, you know, and I think probably there's lots of conversations among the people in the press and in the government who need to be having conversations who are having them, but for me as a person, I found myself like, being like, okay, tell me what I need to know about this situation right now, and ultimately, and that's why I'm making this video sort of immediately.  

Ultimately, like, there isn't--like, it's not really gonna change that much for me, aside from the fact that like, I'm gonna wanna donate to support people.  I'm gonna wanna encourage people to vote, etc.  But it doesn't like, whether I find out this sort of like, large scale implications of this tonight or three days from now or even a couple weeks from now doesn't matter that much for me, and so I think that the better thing is for this to be about, you know, imagining the American story and imagining the size of impact that an individual can have, but also that like, to some extent, you know, like, we are all responsible for the progress, like, the arc of progress, you know, and we do that with our world building, how we imagine the world.  Just the mere way in which we imagine the world and have conversations with those around us.  

I think that we--I'm thinking a lot about this, about how we imagine the world, about our, like, our myth-building, because ultimately none of us will ever understand the world in like an accurate way.  It's far too complex for that, so we all have all these little shortcuts and we tell a story about ourselves and who we are and the role that we play in our society and the role that society plays in our lives and other peoples' lives.  So we tell this story and so to me, this is a moment of imagining that story and hopefully doing that world-building and that myth-building consciously and having heroes is an important part of that and having heroes that, for me, the American story that I can be proud of is one that, you know, not in a straight line, not every year, but over the course of the whole thing, has become more just, and there's some people who don't believe this, who don't think this, and you know, I disagree with them, but like, and there are some people who think that the thing was perfect from the beginning and that it hasn't been about making a more perfect nation or improving upon any of the stuff, it's just been about like, sort of perfection from the beginning or that it's an ideal, or that it's not even really--it's not about reality so much as the American myth of like, you know, a sort of--trying to avoid a couple of hot words in this conversation--but it is about a kind of allegiance to the nation and that part of that allegiance is just believing in its perfection regardless of reality. 

I think it's hard to actually believe that if you know any of American history and you know, I think that there--like, so, so, you know, I find myself in between those perspectives, you know, pretty far away from that second one.  Closer to the first, but I think that, you know, having those heroes matters because it matters to how we imagine the story of America and how we imagine the story of America matters a lot to the future of not just the US.  I say America, I'm sorry, I mean the United States.  I know some people, just to clarify that point, some people, and this is like, it's less accurate to say 'America' because 'America' is two continents, so you should say the US, but you know, language, and so, and also, and also we focus on ourselves, I think you'll find.  Americans in particular, but also everyone.

So, you know, the, you know, I think that how we imagine the story of this country affects the future of it and so I think having heroes matters and having, you know, and that the story of those people, so I think that like, if you see, and I imagine you will, opportunities to engage with the story of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, her legacy and her, you know, how she lived her life, how she, you know, how she got to hold one of the like, be one of the most influential people in the, you know, in equality and justice but also just in the US in general.  I think that it's good to spend some time with those stories, regardless of the, you know, because unless you're working in the press or government, then how--and, this may be incorrect.  You know, it may be that like, we all, like, there's a place for immediate activism and that like, letting everybody know the, you know, the sort of temperature of things, will help people make more informed decisions and hopefully more correct decisions in this moment, but I don't know about that.  What I do know is I don't know what this ultimately means, what's ultimately going to happen, but I can definitely see myself getting really stressed out about and thinking about it and I imagine even with this long conversation, I will still be, you know, looking at the inside of my eyelids and not not thinking about it.

You know, about like what the outcome is here and what--and how this affects the election and how this affects congressional races, etc, like, you know, I think that that's complicated and so, it's best if I can think about story here rather than the, you know, what right now is a lot of guessing about what's going to happen, a lot of prediction, which has its place but I think is really stressful to engage with, so that's what I'm thinking about and I think that that stuff is really, really sucks you in.  It creates a lot of sensation.  I'm sorry about the weird camera angle, by the way, I should have mentioned that at the beginning.  Just got my camera propped up, and I think that like, that's gonna create a lot of sensation.  Also is going to like, feed into my desire for feeling like, like meaning-seeking as well as sensation-seeking and so I'm gonna be drawn to that but I think that it might be fairly empty in the near term and it will be time not well spent, necessarily, because ultimately the like, five days from now will be a better time to think about that, when things are more solidified in terms of the impacts of the passing of Justice Ginsburg, but what won't change in that time is the story of Justice Ginsburg, and so I am, you know, I think that there will be plenty of opportunities to engage with that story and so that's what I'm planning to do if I can, because of course, this is an exercise of self-control that I do not always have, is how I'm planning to spend the time that I might otherwise spend speculating or indulging in the speculation of others.  

That is all.