Good morning, John.

Just got back from Indianapolis last night,  where I got to see you and  our family and your dog.  And after weeks of obsessively  checking cloud forecasts,  despite the fact that I could do nothing about it if it was cloudy,  we did indeed get to see the dark, glowing hole in the sky. And I did have the experience  that people talk about  of being totally overwhelmed.

And here's what I think it is.  I've been alive for 43 years, and I've seen the sky be a few different ways. You know, sunsets, darkness, clouds,  normal, very bright sun. But it's pretty, like,   limited number of ways for the sky to be, and the sky's a big part of what I see.  It is weird for, after 43 years, for the sky to do a new thing.

And that's really the big difference between, like, 99% and 100% totality is,  like, at 99%, it's basically  the sky doing its normal thing,  but dimmer. At 100%, it's a whole new thing. We were with a bunch of friends and family,  and hearing other people's reaction to it was really wonderful for me.

There was a few folks who are not like me,  and so they didn't know everything about what was about to happen. And at the end of it, they were like, Hank, I did not know that was going to happen. But the most common thing that almost everybody said was,  can you imagine what it would be like to have that happen if you didn't know  it was gonna happen?

And, like, I try to do my best to remember that I have no idea what it would be like  to be a prehistoric human, except that I know what it's   like to be a current human, and it's probably not   as different as we imagine it. They're doing jokes, they're having friends. They're getting their hearts broken.

They're thinking that their kids   have it so good these days, all the normal things they   were doing with just, like, more suffering mixed in. But I think the thought that's inspiring, the thought of, like,  can you imagine what it was like for people who didn't know,  is I sure am glad I knew that was going to happen. Otherwise, I'd be pretty freaked out right now.

And I think the thought that inspires  that thought is a deeper one that's mostly being unsaid,  but is being experienced by the subconscious, which is, I'm pretty freaked out right now. Both me and Katherine were, like, nauseated afterward, which I don't really know  where that came from or what it is, except for, like, the sky did a different thing. But the feeling I was most left  with after the eclipse, 100% weird.  One anger that it ended.

I had this thought,  which isn't a rational thought, but it's the one I had.  That's not fair. I was looking at that,  and you know that you can't get it back. Like, that's it.  And it's so fast.

So much anticipation and totality ends in a blink. Now, unrelatedly, Monday  was also a big deal for me  for a totally different reason  than I was trying to ignore  while this was all going on. Journey to the Microcosmos, our channel about like,   the beautiful microscopic world that we are constantly surrounded   by but never pay attention to, is closing down.

It's gonna make a bunch more videos, but we're wrapping up production and it's sad. We tried a bunch of different ways to make this show work financially,  and there were times in its  history where it did turn a profit  for a little bit and then it would go back. But like, most of the time it was produced at a loss  for the full four years that we did it.

And of course, I feel like, somewhat responsible for that outcome. But over the years, it's gotten extremely   clear that when it comes to, like, videos on the internet, nothing is inevitable. People's individual decisions decide what exists and what doesn't exist.

And some of those decisions are mine, and they're people at my company. But some of the decisions are people at YouTube,  or they're people watching YouTube, deciding whether or not to click on a video,  to watch it, to share it,  to support it in some way. This is gonna sound dumb,  but things that can exist might not because of people's decisions.

And yes, that does make me worried about our collective decision to give away  so much of our power to algorithms  to make decisions for us. Because if things exist or don't exist  because of peoples decisions, then its the people deciding. But if things exist and don't exist because of algorithms,  then its the platforms deciding.

And oftentimes the platforms don't even know how the algorithms work so very much. It is no humans choice whether or not something exists or does not exist. And that starts to get freaky.

Like a total solar eclipse. Journey to the Microcosmos was a beautiful thing that I had never seen anything like before. And then I saw it, and that was amazing.

And then it was over.  And then I got mad, and it didn't seem fair. Unlike the eclipse, I am somewhat  responsible for it ending.  I don't know how much. But also unlike the eclipse,  I'm somewhat responsible for it existing at all.

So that's something. I think it's super important  to notice that some things are inevitable, like eclipses, and some things are only there  because of human choices. Things like microscopy videos and free educational resources on YouTube  that everyone helps make exist  by buying Crash Course Coins  and supporting Crash Course on Patreon, and things like internet stores  that give away all of their profit to charity.

Because that's another thing that happened. This week, Good Store relaunched a new design  along with its new logo, which I think is cute,  including our little friend Dot. That's Dot.

I often think that people from outside  think that things like Good Store or Crash Course or like the iPhone are inevitabilities. But let me tell you, when I see it from the inside,  when I see like Nerdfighteria  supporting these things,  people at DFTBA, and Complexly working on them,  they feel like they exist  through sheer force of will. Because a store that gives away 100% of its money to charity is not in any way easier to run  than a store that doesn't do that.

It's harder. It is very much not an inevitability.  Everything that we do is temporary, but that doesn't stop me from being mad  when they end or feeling like it's my fault, or I could have done something different,  or just constantly worrying that I'm never doing things quite right. My point eclipse is seem  impossible but are inevitable,  whereas a lot of things in our lives seem inevitable but are very nearly impossible.

Whether that's like the airplane that flew me here from Indianapolis, or this community of people  that have made tons of things that basically shouldn't exist, exist anyway. None of this is inevitable. In fact, the more you look at it,  the more you realize that it was very unlikely that any of   this would happen at all.

Any of it.  Which makes it, to me anyway, extremely precious. Which does kind of make it like, hard for me to look at. Like I almost need eclipse glasses  to look at how special the  last 15 years have been,  we have the opportunity to keep doing more things that are basically impossible.

If you want to be the first to know about them, sign up for We're Here, our newsletter. There's a link in the description  and if you want to go watch some  of my favorite Microcosmos videos,  I'll put a link to those  in the description as well. John, I'll see you on Tuesday.