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Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

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Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#131

Post by graypegg »

moffkalast wrote: post #124
c54 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applied Science Ze Frank Asianometry Premodernist Integza

There are just so many great educational/maker channels, here's a bunch more that are least known on my list (in no particular order): Not David iforce2d Chronova Engineering Posy SuperfastMatt Michael Rechtin AlphaPhoenix Hyperspace Pirate Nicholas Rehm James Biggar Casual Navigation Kraut Spanning Tree Geo History EgyptologyLessons Carl Bugeja electrosync Historia Civilis Jeremy Fielding there oughta be Andreas Spi…

Posy!! I can't believe I forgot him on my list! +1

Same with casual navigation! Have I ever worked on or piloted a boat? No. But will I watch little 10min explainer videos about bilge pumps and anchor chains? Definitely.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#132

Post by pixl97 »

kragen wrote: post #66
Waterluvian wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! But the thing is— I’ve got about fifty Tom Scotts in my subscription list. I’m perplexed by doomsaysers’ laments about the state of online educational media. I’ve got far more high quality content for a huge variety of topics than I’ve ever had before. My theory is this: your favourite hobby store expands and adds one more aisle of fantastic products and five aisles of garbage. You’ll likely perceive quality…

the problem i have with educational youtube is that it's competence porn. it's quite satisfying to watch lyle peterson, kiwami japan, grandpa amu, nigel braun, grant sanderson, andy george, or xyla foxlin working through the problems involved in creating something, to the point that hours spent getting satisfied that way displace the far more effortful hours required to work through those problems myself. but i don't…

The particular problem I have with your reply is it is half wrong.

Textbooks tend to be filled with crap themselves. I have a feeling you're judging the contents of 'educational' textbooks rather than the corpus of all textbooks.

Next, you are not an island. You need both things, insight from other people that are learned in said thing your attempting and practice. If you practice without the insight you're going to waste most of your life accomplishing something you could have learned from someone else in a few minutes.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#133

Post by nayuki »

treyd wrote: post #88
graypegg wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answer in Progress - a bit of everything, personal favourite right now! Simone Giertz - engineering EEVBlog - engineering ElectroBoom - engineering Technology Connections - stories about technology Cathode Ray Dude - stories about technology, watch if you like technology connections!! Socratica - math, science, programming explainers VWestLife - retro consumer tech TechMoan - retro consumer tech AvE - Canadian in a w…

To continue with the transit/urbanism channels... * Not Just Bikes * City Beautiful * Alan Fisher * donoteat01 (not really uploading anymore since he has a podcast that takes all his time) * Eco Gecko (also doesn't really upload anymore) * Adam Something And also others... * Folding Ideas (popular topics video essays) * hbomberguy (popular topics video essays) * Epoch Philosophy (drier more academic video essays) * B…

More urbanism/transit on YouTube:

* Oh The Urbanity!

* CityNerd

* Yet Another Urbanist

* RMTransit

* Miles in Transit

* The War on Cars (audio)

* The Urbanist Agenda (audio)

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#134

Post by FireInsight »

withinboredom wrote: post #67
danwaterfield wrote: post #32

On the latest cortex, CGP Grey made the point that what's happening in youtube education-adjacent videos is much the same as what's happening for entertainment in those spaces: the law of the excluded middle. You either do long infrequent videos e.g., like MrBeast, or frequent short videos. Both CGP Grey and Tom Scott did frequent mid-length content, which gets squeezed out.

I assume cortex is a channel or something you watch, not brain matter?

CGP Grey's podcast.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#135

Post by hatsunearu »

JoBrad wrote: post #57
Waterluvian wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! But the thing is— I’ve got about fifty Tom Scotts in my subscription list. I’m perplexed by doomsaysers’ laments about the state of online educational media. I’ve got far more high quality content for a huge variety of topics than I’ve ever had before. My theory is this: your favourite hobby store expands and adds one more aisle of fantastic products and five aisles of garbage. You’ll likely perceive quality…

I’ve also been watching Tom Scott since he started, and love his content. I’ve put a few others that I enjoy below, that also produce what I consider to be high quality and entertaining content. Mind sharing any others? Nile Red Nick Zentner Practical Engineering Real Engineering Ivan Miranda Joe Makes Tom Stanton Veritasium Numberphile Deep Sky Videos Objectivity (Honestly all of Brady’s channels are great) 3Blue1Br…

Camden Bowen (dude is making a 3D printed internal combustion engine)

AustinMcConnell (random shit)

Two Minute Papers (ML paper review)

Plainly Difficult (industrial accidents/disasters)

Perun (military science)

EEVBlog (electronics engineering)

Summoning Salt (speedruns)

High Performance Academy (cars/tuning)

Ordinary Things (random shit)

Grind Hard Plumbing Co (cars/fabrication)

Engineering Explained (cars/explanation)

Half as Interesting (random shit)

Wendover Productions (random shit, but high quality)

Economics Explained (self explanatory)

Mini Air Craft Investigations (self explanatory)

Renegade Cut (leftist content)

LegalEagle (law)

Townsends (historical foods)

Casual Navigation (maritime/shipping)

How To Drink (mixed drinks)

Huygens Optics (optics/fabrication)

EmpLemon (weird video essays)

minutephysics (physics, and general science communications)

All of these I'd recommend for a general audience/nerdy person. Some of them are informative, some of them are funny. I've got much more that I'm personally interested in, but generally won't be interesting for the average person.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#136

Post by ramenbytes »

kragen wrote: post #66
Waterluvian wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! But the thing is— I’ve got about fifty Tom Scotts in my subscription list. I’m perplexed by doomsaysers’ laments about the state of online educational media. I’ve got far more high quality content for a huge variety of topics than I’ve ever had before. My theory is this: your favourite hobby store expands and adds one more aisle of fantastic products and five aisles of garbage. You’ll likely perceive quality…

the problem i have with educational youtube is that it's competence porn. it's quite satisfying to watch lyle peterson, kiwami japan, grandpa amu, nigel braun, grant sanderson, andy george, or xyla foxlin working through the problems involved in creating something, to the point that hours spent getting satisfied that way displace the far more effortful hours required to work through those problems myself. but i don't…

I definitely agree that these sorts of videos have the potential to be a poor substitute for the real thing. Sometimes I notice that I've spent all my time watching videos about stuff I'm interested in and not actually doing the stuff I'm interested in. On the flip side though, as another commenter mentioned, they have the potential to serve as motivation too. For example, when I'm learning a particular technique on guitar I'll intentionally watch or listen to performances that exemplify what I want to learn in order to remind myself of how great it'd be to play that and of why I'm training. I find it helps boost and sustain motivation. Of course it can't be the only thing I do, but when I can't practice (much) on guitar because, say, I'm eating lunch and need both hands, I can loop some Paul Gilbert or EVH performances and get fired up for the next practice session.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#137

Post by libraryatnight »

Waterluvian wrote: post #31
graypegg wrote: post #12

Tom Scott’s work stands out as some of the best examples of how interesting and valuable web content can be. In a sea of short derivative junk-food content, he made things that i honestly learned from, without demanding more than 10 minutes of my time a week! There’s of course a lot of people also doing the same sort of great content, but it does feel like a slowly dying breed. Tom definitely deserves an indefinite b…

I agree! But the thing is— I’ve got about fifty Tom Scotts in my subscription list. I’m perplexed by doomsaysers’ laments about the state of online educational media. I’ve got far more high quality content for a huge variety of topics than I’ve ever had before. My theory is this: your favourite hobby store expands and adds one more aisle of fantastic products and five aisles of garbage. You’ll likely perceive quality…

I have the same feeling. I was sad to see Tom be done, but I'd also prefer that to watching his quality decline, and as you say - I have a lot of Tom Scotts that come up in my feed. Tom's excellent, but there's other people, and no doubt some new people inspired by Tom will enter the space.

I do worry that too many garbage aisles might mean people choose the garbage and never make it beyond, pushing non-garbage into a greater and greater minority.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#138

Post by namtab00 »

JoBrad wrote: post #57
Waterluvian wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! But the thing is— I’ve got about fifty Tom Scotts in my subscription list. I’m perplexed by doomsaysers’ laments about the state of online educational media. I’ve got far more high quality content for a huge variety of topics than I’ve ever had before. My theory is this: your favourite hobby store expands and adds one more aisle of fantastic products and five aisles of garbage. You’ll likely perceive quality…

I’ve also been watching Tom Scott since he started, and love his content. I’ve put a few others that I enjoy below, that also produce what I consider to be high quality and entertaining content. Mind sharing any others? Nile Red Nick Zentner Practical Engineering Real Engineering Ivan Miranda Joe Makes Tom Stanton Veritasium Numberphile Deep Sky Videos Objectivity (Honestly all of Brady’s channels are great) 3Blue1Br…

I'll add some:

AlphaPhoenix - science

Jay Foreman - UK centric cartography skits, very funny

Atomic Frontier - various, Tom Scott style

Climate Town - US centric climate related skits, very informative, also very funny

Dr. Becky - astronomy

Into Europe - light, EU related informative skits

Johnny Harris - journalist turned YouTuber, opinionated but tries to keep a politically neutral stance

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#139

Post by qup »

j-bos wrote: post #86
phillryu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but the burden is now on you to sift through the garbage to find the good stuff, especially since it's mostly mixed together in recommendations or search results etc. It feels more limited to me the other way around, like yes we have added some more good stuff, but good luck finding it. If my favorite hobby store kept on expanding and expanding and the ratio of great stuff to garbage kept going down, I would def…

Youtube makes it pretty easy for me. The algorithm recommends videos nd channels, and I say 'not interested' to the garbage, the result: a high quality subscription tab.

I do the same thing, but they just show me more garbage.

My "subscriptions" tab is pretty good, though.

Re: Tom Scott: After ten years, it's time to stop making videos [video]

#140

Post by namtab00 »

CooCooCaCha wrote: post #42
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #11

What struck me was “it’s either keep growing and become a manager or stop and do smaller projects” As someone who many years back looked at a team of 40 developers I was leading and went “nah, I want to be an IC again” that resonates

I'm not sure I buy his reasoning there. He said that he uploads a video every week which is a brisk pace. Why not a video every month? Every quarter? Perhaps he really just wants a break and this explanation sounded the most reasonable. But I hope he didn't get burned out because he was afraid of switching things up.

maybe it's about being able to adequately pay his team, which might require posting regularly to insure a steady income for payroll...
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