In the center of London, at 20 Fenchurch Street,
there’s a skyscraper designed by a guy named Rafael Viñoly. Viñoly thought it would be cool to make the
structure slightly concave, in order to increase space on the top floors of the building. It turns out, though, that this wasn’t cool
at all; it was actually really hot. For two hours a day during a two to three
week period every summer, the building focuses sunlight into a beam so powerful that it could
theoretically kill someone standing nearby. And since no one realized this until after
they actually built the building, there is now a giant, unmovable heat ray in the middle
of London that will continue to melt cars and start fires for several weeks a year from
now until the end of time. All that is to say, people make mistakes. Including us. That’s what this video is about—we’re
going to rank all of the major mistakes we made this past year from “oopsie” to “this
is why you’re not supposed to use HAI as a source for your academic papers.” But as we go through each of these mistakes,
just try to remember: at least we only slightly misled you, and didn’t incinerate your vehicle. Okay, so, tied for the bottom of our list
are all of the typos we made this year: Luthor, bovin, caffine, plutonum, trasnalantic, Feburary,
this number is a hundred too small, this number is ten times too big, this cookie is one million
times too big, and this title is a really weird way of spelling these words. Onto the next mistake! In our video about the monetary value of your
life, we used this symbol to represent “healthcare.” What we should’ve used was this symbol:
the rod of Asclepius. The symbol we actually used is called a Caduceus,
which is meant to represent commerce, theft, deception, and death. Insert joke about American healthcare system. The reason that these two symbols get mixed
up by dumb Youtubers is little interesting, though—it turns out, the US Army Medical
Corps started using the Caduceus in 1902 by accident, thinking it was the rod of Asclepius,
and continue to use it to this day because unlike us, they don’t want to admit they
made a big, embarrassing, and extremely avoidable mistake. This is not the flag of Australia. This is the flag of a fictional place called
“Middle Earth,” featured in J.R.R. Tolkien's celebrated fantasy series, "The
Lord of the Rings." Our video about Hollywood dump months might’ve
led you to believe that the Super Bowl is always the first Sunday in February, when,
in fact, last year’s Super Bowl was the last Super Bowl where that was true—from
2022 onward, Super Bowls will be held the second Sunday in February instead. In our defense, we’re a bunch of giant nerds. What did you expect? In our video dunking on the new off-brand
Russian McDonald’s, I tried to hand it to them for at least adding shrimp to the menu. Well, it turns out, Russian McDonald’s has
been selling shrimp for years, so, unfortunately, I can no longer hand it to them. In our video about the world’s newest country,
I said that France was recognized by every other country in the world. That’s mostly true, except for the fact
that it’s a little bit not true. That’s thanks to this place: Bhutan. Bhutan’s isolationist government only maintains
formal diplomatic relationships with these countries, and instead relies on India for
most of their protection and international negotiations. Most other countries, like France, exist in
kind of a gray area where Bhutan doesn’t recognize them in any sort of official capacity
because they don’t need to. So, just to be safe, we’ll strike France
off the list of real countries for all future videos. In our video about the Hajj metro, I described
the Hajj as a “religious pyramid,” when I meant to say “religious pilgrimage.” There’s actually only one remaining religious
pyramid in the world, and it’s the Bass Pro Shop in Memphis, Tennessee. In last year’s mistakes video, as is tradition,
I made a mistake. I pointed out that snakes don’t poison you,
they evenomate you, because their venom goes directly into your bloodstream. Except… it doesn’t. The toxic molecules that compose snake venom
are generally too large to enter the bloodstream, and travel through your lymphatic system instead. So, now, two years after the fact, you guys
finally know how snakes work. As many of you have pointed out, I implied
that Cicero was Greek when I said “The art of writing words really fast dates all the
way back to Ancient Greece with this guy, Cicero.” And, sure, Cicero was Roman, not Greek, but—Uno
reverse card—it turns out this mistake was mistakenly not a mistake. You see, as I mentioned in the video, shorthand
didn’t originate with Cicero, but with his slave, Tiro. And after the defeat of the Macedonians at
the battle of Pydna in 168 BCE, the demographics of slaves in ancient Rome actually skewed
heavily Greek, meaning there’s a good chance that Tiro—and his writing system—were
actually from Ancient Greece. Checkmate, pedants. When we somehow found ourselves citing Supreme
Court decisions in our video about the origin of the high five, I mentioned Justice Clarence
Thomas’ dissent in Dobbs, but this was actually a concurrence. He was concurring that women shouldn’t have
rights, and adding that maybe gay people also shouldn’t have rights. Cool. In our video about the Everglades Jetport,
I said that the Everglades were here and filled with alligators, when they’re actually here
and filled with crocodiles. The only species that live here are old white
people and bipedal mice. Most people would consider using JFK’s assassination
as part of an elaborate joke to be a mistake, but when we did that in our video about U-Haul
registration it was especially a mistake because we said it happened in 1968—JFK was actually
assassinated 5 years earlier; it was his brother, Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated that
year. The joke doesn’t work as well with RFK,
but that’s the cost of being an educational YouTuber. And finally, at number one, our worst mistake
of the year. Frankly I owe you all an apology for this
one—it basically ruins an entire video and there’s no excuse for misleading you all
so badly. The video in question is this one: Why Planes
Fly Over The North Pole But Not The South Pole. In this video I used a long and winding explanation
involving flight regulations, airport positioning, and a whole bunch of other nonsense. But you guys—my dedicated audience—came
out in droves to show me that the problem was much simpler than I was making it out
to be. Because it turns out that Antarctica is actually
a crystalline ice wall surrounding a flat disc Earth, which is enclosed like a snow
globe… for tax reasons. And that’s why planes don’t fly there. But don’t worry, I promise I won’t make
that mistake again. Now, there’s only one place on the internet
better for learning science facts than the YouTube comments section, and that’s Brilliant. Brilliant is my favorite way to learn new
STEM concepts—they can make something as complicated as quantum computing fun to learn
and easy to understand. They have these interactive lessons that are
based on teaching you small, intuitive principles then slowly building them up into the bigger
concepts. That way you start a course by using an artificial
neuron to deduce where a cat likes and doesn’t like to be scratched, and finish with a full
introductory understanding of how neural networks function. And using Brilliant for just a few minutes
each day can help you stay sharp and retain the math and science skills that you’d otherwise
just lose with age. People who enjoy my channels really seem to
love Brilliant, and I think you probably would, too; it’s a great way to kill some spare
time, and turn it into something productive. To get started for free, visit brilliant.org/hai
or click the button on-screen, and the first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant's annual
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