The Earthquake (feat. Rohin Francis) - Objectivity 264

Rohin Francis (Medlife Crisis) is back with us at the Royal Society to make a random retrieval from the card catalogue. What will he find?! More links below ↓↓↓
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[@MedlifeCrisis]

Ah, so much fun. Great to see part 2 of the series! Thanks to Brady, Keith, and everyone at Objectivity for inviting me along. Long live the geese!

[@afowler13]

all i want in my life is to be in charge of some archive like this and be left alone unless someone wants to know about some obscure something-or-other

[@jcortese3300]

And a job like that almost guarantees that the only other people you'd need to interact with in any depth are fellow nerds. It does sound like heaven when you think about it ...

[@likebot.]

and I wish to be your secretary

[@Macieks300]

Well good news. You can be. A librarian or an archivist does just that.

[@H34L5]

"I think paltry, or, possibly, poultry." Oh, Keith

[@DevilishScience]

Historical earthquake evidence such as this is very important because there were no instruments recording it. It is on the BGS Historical Earthquake catalogue as Mag 3.3 and intensity up to 6

[@Olhado256]

I was actually wondering if there's any value in some guy describing how his bed shook and his poultry was alarmed, but you answered my question!

[@LadyAnuB]

@@Olhado256 The USGS webpage for Did You Feel It? to report an event asks questions like this such as whether furniture moved/shook, stuff fell off the wall, etc. So details like this matter.

[@thomascaldwell184]

I'm with Brady-- a first-hand account of something happening 220 years ago is a neat insight daily life and perception back then.

[@ambiention]

I don’t usually belly laugh at KZbin videos, but when I do it’s at “Swans are famously unreactive to earthquakes”

[@smaakjeks]

And, spoken in the driest British tone one could muster, as well XD

[@virginiatyree6705]

It was quite funny. v

[@rogerlie4176]

Obviously a doctor needs to know these things.

[@redapplefour6223]

to be fair- this is definitely on the more legible side of the handwriting i've seen on this channel

[@VincentGroenewold]

I get Brady very well here; we never read or learn about simple, everyday stuff and such an account brings you back a few hundred years, I love that. P.S. when I was there to read a few papers, when I got my coat I suddenly saw this cabinet they pull the cards from, tucked away in the back. So funny to recognize something like that.

[@MrDestroys]

Love to see medlife crisis collab with my other favorite science youtubers. This was fun to watch

[@noahmcgee710]

There are absolutely no duds on Objectivity!

[@pondersong5525]

None of them had any comment about how the author of this letter expected to be able to ring a bell to find out what was going on. I'm guessing that bell was for summoning a servant?

[@Sevenigma777]

Being Albrecht Durer is my favorite artist of all time i am so sad i didnt get to see that letter. Please Brady take a pic and share it with me!

[@deliciousrose]

Chuckled at 6:05 for Brady's spot-on comment.

[@sschmidtevalue]

The first part of their earthquake description was eerily similar to my experience in the 1994 Northridge earthquake!

[@emanggitulah4319]

Yesssssss... Thanks for making another one

[@willhouse]

WHOA, *somebody* go tell that guy how *utterly amazing* Albrecht Durer was?! 🤯

[@scrotiemcboogerballs1981]

Thanks for sharing

[@notforwantoftrying1]

Keith was on fire in this one

[@virginiatyree6705]

I enjoyed the post. Thank you. v

[@TheyCallMeNewb]

Rohin appears to me the aspiring polymath. This is a wonderful thing. I'm ordinarily given to rebuke one toiling within their field when at the unflinching exclusion of other specialties. An expanding streak of benightedness is the result, with disquietude around it's manifestation, a constant source of difficulty for both them and others.

[@smaakjeks]

Wonderful episode!

[@dingus153]

I would LOVE to see an episode of some kind with the absolutely iconic Australian science communicator, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki

[@ky-gp4sz]

The white gloves are back!

[@rewanthnayak2972]

just after this video got published Nepal was hit with a earthquake with magnitude of 5.6 which was felt in Delhi.

[@r.giuliano]

A delight

[@jacobs83133]

Nice

[@MalteForstat]

You should do a series "White Gloves of Destiny - What you could have had", revisiting some of the almost-picks...

[@scottjacoby2594]

I would have liked to have seen them try and look up the specific earthquake being referenced in the letter. I understand it may pre-date the official record keeping of earthquakes, but it would have been nice to see them try to look it up.

[@PopeLando]

12 March 1800 was twelve days after the first non-leap day in British history. (A year divisible by 4 with no Feb 29th.) I'd be surprised if some people didn't regard the earthquake as the wrath of God for mucking about with the calendar!

[@PopeLando]

PS I drive to Conway quite often, I must see if I can find Caerhun!

[@arnelilleseter4755]

I love the overly polite and elaborate way those old letters are written. I wan't to talk like that.

[@una_10bananas]

HA nice one there at the end Keith

[@mk_rexx]

The gloves chose some letters mentioning Halley because of the guest, and poultry because of the season (at least in North America)

[@idahoog1]

Surely that Dürer letter will show up in a video to come...?

[@fastbike175]

Keith is so cool

[@donepearce]

Brady slightly desperately trying to put a shine in it. But it's luck of the draw - probably not even one percent of the cards lead to something we would consider noteworthy, so they are all the more precious when they do show up.

[@TheRealDoctorBonkus]

Remember, Rohin is a doctor, so he can read all manner of scribled writings! EDIT: And minutes later, Keith made the same comment. Great minds think alike!

[@xpqr12345]

Being able to read scribbles is part of the education to Doctor. --------- The professor had called up medical student Jones, concerning his latest exam. Jones was rather nervous about this, because he had never been called up to the Professor earlier. Knocking on the Prof's door, Jones gets called into the office. "Sit, boy!" booms the professor. Jones sits down in the only chair he can see, and nervously starts wringing his hands, waiting for the Professor to say something while leafing through Jones' latest exam. "I have here your latest hand-written exam" says the professor, sternly looking at Jones. "It is completely illegible! Congratulations boy, you will make an excellent doctor!"

[@virginiatyree6705]

Ah, alas, cursive writing is going the way of the Dodo bird...v

[@michaelwright2986]

I love these videos, but two things constantly surprise me. Whenever a document is in Latin, there is consternation: for at least a hundred years from the foundation of the Royal Society, Latin was the international language of scientific communication, like English now. Of course a lot of the old documents are in Latin, especially foreign correspondence, but you know, Principia Mathematica by a well-known member of the society. It's not as though it's Akkadian cuneiform. Surely there's somebody in the Library who can read Latin. And if not, why not? Second, and this is probably me showing my age, the handwritten documents are thought to be hard to read. Maybe it's because I spent too many decades marking essays and exam scripts written by hand, but they pretty much all seem to be in decent hands, fair copies, and easily legible once you get used to a couple of letter forms. It's not often a humanities person gets to jeer at STEM people, but come on, harden up.

[@bigsarge2085]

🦆 I appreciate the immortalized human experience.

[@Schaaschaa]

In some far off future, I can see a 27th-century Brady visiting the Royal Society's screen archive pronouncing a letter from some Ms. Thunberg expressing her worries about climate change a dud of the mouse of destiny, while fawning about the cry for help by a Nigerian prince that has been saved in the same archive, all the while expressing his bewilderment over the fact that no answer has been recorded.

[@tabularasa0606]

I wonder when the first time will be that a card will be selected that has been selected before.

[@quintrankid8045]

I am not an expert in probability, but I think this is similar to the birthday problem, ie, given a group of people what are the chances two will have the same birthday. The cards are sort of like birthdays and the number of people are the picks. After reading about this online, Assuming the picks are random, I think the answer given as a probability is, NC = NumberOfCards NP = NumberOfPicks 1 - ((NC-1)!/(NC-NP)!)/(NC**(NP-1)) To get a 99% probability seems to require a surprisingly low number of picks. However, I think there are some unknowns, how many cards are there? Are there cross reference cards, by subject, by author, etc? And I suspect cards are not chosen at random. I look forward to being corrected.

[@lo1bo2]

1:33 I have a morbid fantasy of someone being crushed by the moving row of shelves when Keith cranks the wheel.

[@andrerenault]

I hope Objectivity has Gary Brannan on as a guest someday.

[@jek__]

double negatives arent the same as single positives "i eat burritos" != "i dont not eat burritos"

[@rtpoe]

So, what can we learn about the incidence of earthquakes in England from this?

[@kernelle4]

Seems like Fitotron 5000 is really paying of there Brady! Looking great!

[@StrangerThanFic]

There are so many volumes of letters and notes in the Royal Society archive, it seems impossible that they could all be catalogued in that one card catalog. Does that one set of file drawers really have a card for every item in the archive?

[@backwashjoe7864]

If so, it must be a quantum card catalog; the card content collapses to a specific item only when its selected!

[@douro20]

Is that a working barograph or is it just for display?

[@TheTeflonTranny]

Oh, that description of an earthquake is all too familiar...

[@scotskinner4350]

Really, nobody? "That was foul."

[@jeffreybell436]

... Paltry or possibly Poultry.

[@likebot.]

Poultry in motion.

[@Wanttofanta]

Something about “first”?

[@virginiatyree6705]

It's a game all over yt that a LOT of people find joy in playing; rather harmless. Hope that may help. v

[@sk4lman]

Looks like Brady lost in the neighborhood of a shitzillion pounds in weight

[@talideon]

It's kind of good to see bad handwriting from the 1700s!

[@agemoz]

first

[@Notverygoodatall]

blurst

[@likebot.]

fire those monkeys

[@hansdieter4537]

Boring choice, shoulda picked better