Good morning John.

It's, it's Black Friday, of course. You know it's a day in which all Americans keep their lights off for one day and it's really interesting to me that we all do this but very few people actually know the story of how Black Friday began, so let's go back all the way to 1789. Uh, the first Congress of the United States, one of the first acts of that Congress was to create something called the Lighthouse Service. Now lighthouses have of course prevented the deaths of countless sailors over millenia but they do need maintenance, right? Back in the day it was impossible basically to tell the world that a lighthouse was gonna be down for maintenance, which would occasionally result in sailors lured into a false sense of security. They thought there would be a lighthouse there, they don't see the lighthouse, and then dashed upon the rocks and everybody dies.

This was a real problem, so in the mid 1800s the Lighthouse Service decided to pick one day a year in which all of the lighthouses would go down for maintenance and everyone would know that that was lighthouse maintenance day, basically. They picked the day after Thanksgiving because they figured that was something that everyone would remember and also it's a day on which there would be less commercial shipping traffic, but it didn't take too long before people started conflating that maintenance day with a kind of day of remembrance for fallen sailors, so in port towns all across New England all of the lights would get turned off, one to remind everyone this was indeed the day when you couldn't count on the lighthouses, and two, to remember all of the sailors and fishermen who had been lost at sea. Over several decades this tradition spread down the coast and then eventually across the entire United States, many people not really knowing why they were turning their lights off, just knowing that it was sort of a nice cozy thing to do on the day after Thanksgiving, and now here we are in 2017, and of course lighthouse maintenance is done during the day, so weirdly, on Black Friday lighthouses are one of the only lights that actually gets turned on.

That was my Black Friday story time. I made all of that up, except for the part about the Lighthouse Service being one of the first things that was created by the first Congress of the US. That's a real thing. Black Friday actually is the day on which Christmas shopping begins and so all companies are like, no we must have your dollars, and so they lower prices a lot and yeah we're doing that. 20% off almost everything at DFTBA.com.Things from your favourite creators including us, but also CGP Grey and Kurzgesagt, and MinutePhysics, also channels that aren't educational but also we're launching a store for Vi Hart today, so Vi Hart merch for the first time ever is going on sale today.

We've also got 500 signed copies of Turtles All the Way Down that we snagged from Penguin, uh, so most of those are sold out in the real world. We have some at the DFTBA warehouse and we're selling them along with a tuatara pin and a turtles sticker pack, and there is a clearance page where things are 50% off because we literally need to like make room in the warehouse. I always thought that that was always like a made up thing it was like WAREHOUSE CLEARANCES no we need to, there's not enough space in the warehouse. Also we're doing like a last sale of VidCon merch so if you didn't get VidCon merch when you were there, you can get it now. It's on super-sale then we're not gonna have it anymore. Speaking of VidCon there's a 10% discount on all VidCon ticket types if you put in the coupon code turkey tie. Also for the Project for Awesome we usually do a calendar and a t-shirt during the Project for Awesome. This year we're doing that before the Project for Awesome and this is the calendar.

It's just a Vlogbrothers calendar. Me and John did a photo shoot in which we got real silly and, I mean, oh my God. I'm really glad this year's theme is silly brother/serious brother. I'm wearing that shirt right now, actually. It's good and all proceeds go to the Foundation to Decrease World Suck, and there is also a very cool shirt. Ah, there are more things. We just launched a new project called SciShow Finds, which is like cool things that you can get for the sciency loving people in your life, but basically it's just stuff that I would like to get.

And finally, every year John and I do a census of nerdfighteria. It's a pretty long survey. It takes about 20 minutes to do it, more if you're really into it. It helps us understand this community, who you are, what you want, and help us decide what to do next. Thank you so much for doing that, and if you want to turn off all your lights and get cozy this Black Friday, I suggest you do that. It actually kind of sounds like a lovely thing.

 John, I'll see you on Tuesday, but before you turn off the lights, don't forget, go, nerdfighteria census. Thank you so much, it is so helpful to people who do that.