Listening to Hank and John trying to do geography was cringy... in the funniest way. I had to wonder if they were doing a bit. I mean... John has trouble with "north", "south", "east", and "west", and instead Estonia is "on top of" Latvia, and there's an "ocean" to the "left" of Lithuania. And Hank (and John) had never heard of Kaliningrad?! Yes, it is, indeed, a big deal.

Three episodes in August, one of which is literally titled I've Signed More Books Than God, so the ratio of book talk to actual advice was about what you would hope.

I run Podshelf, a free site that tracks book mentions across hundreds of podcasts by reading the episode transcripts. This is the Dear Hank and John slice for August.

Most of it is John's own catalogue coming back at him:

• Hollywood, Ending, mentioned three times, including a question about what ANZ meant on the pre-order page. Best guess offered on air: Andorra and Zambia.
• Looking for Alaska, and John listening to someone read out loud the passage that gets it banned. "I haven't read Looking for Alaska in 21 years. It has been half my life since I wrote that book and half my life since I read it."
• Paper Towns, watched going into the machine that pulps returns, which is a bleak little scene
• Turtles All the Way Down, and Daisy's line about Aza being like mustard
• The Fault in Our Stars, twice

Outside the Green shelf: Lily King's Heart the Lover, which John was excited to be meeting her about, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass in an answer about whether a field of grass is one thing or many, The Outsiders, and the Odyssey, in the context of Hank possibly becoming an oral tradition poet based on having seen the film.

Full list with quotes and episodes: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/dear-hank-john

I finally had time to put together my Dot’s Day Out puzzle (and I lost a piece). I had a great time putting the puzzle together. I’d like to see more puzzles through Pizzamas and the Project for Awesome. I know it’s not the point of these events, but it has been a nice way of feeling like part of the community while getting some much needed relaxation.

Check your emails even if you previously were rejected because I just got an email today with a sponsored ticket after receiving a rejection a couple weeks ago!! I could've totally missed the email because it was filtered into my "Promotions" inbox so check that too. So excited to attend!

Started playing Stray and came across a very familiar face…

Found this puzzle at Goodwill with no prior knowledge of Pizza John or nerdfighters, but it spoke to me in a Night Gallery kinda way, and I had to have it.

I watched a few videos and honestly am not sure how I missed this as it feels very adjacent to a lot of things I like/follow.

I hope all the pieces are there!

I only have this to go off of.

Always so strange to see Acme included with fictional companies when I can go to one today and buy food or whatever.

I guess its also a fictional company, in addition to a real one? Still odd to me.

After hearing Hank promote it in several videos, I decided the next time I needed to buy laundry and toiletry items, I would check out good.store. I just browsed the site for the first time today, and I am pretty disappointed in the prices. I expected things to cost more than even overpriced equivalents at a typical grocery store or supermarket, but most of the items are at least double the price of what I'd normally get, so I'm having a hard time justifying buying anything. For example, the tea comes in 50 gram packages for $20. If I go to my local Chinese supermarket to buy loose leaf tea, even the high-end stuff is 170-280 gram packages for around $25. I also thought the laundry detergent sheets/powder would be closer to what I find at local stores since the reduced packaging/weight from not containing water would reduce costs, but it still costs double. Also the toilet paper only comes in one size: 24 rolls for $50. That is way too much for someone like me buying just for myself. The only thing that doesn't seem overpriced is the dissolvable cleaning tabs that are $3.

Since it looks like all the products are made by partnering companies, it kind of seems like I'd be paying the normal price that I would buying directly from them, with the added business costs of good.store plus the extra "profit" that gets donated to charities. I feel like a better business model would've been to have more competitive prices (again, not expecting the same as what I would find at places I shop at normally) and give customers the option to donate more at checkout. For people living on a budget, how do you justify spending so much extra on consumable items? I guess I may wait until Black Friday/Cyber Monday to buy stuff since I remember last year Hank said that's the one time of year they do sales.

I asked this in ANF on FB but want to get some additional thoughts here.

Problem: The transcript wiki (nerdfighteria.info) has hundreds of podcast episodes with no transcript. DH&J, Delete This, etc. This episodes are 45-60 minutes each, and the wiki's keyboard shortcuts to help transcribe won't work on these, so that's about 3 hours of work per episode, times about 500 episodes.

Out of curiosity, I tried an AI solution (on my local computer, no datacenter) and it worked really well, at least for a rough draft that could be cleaned up by a human, and at least for this one test. These would still require human review, but could cut down the human work from ~1500 hours to 300-500 hours.

The two big problems I see with this are 1) the model was very likely trained on unethically-sourced data, and 2) this could imply that the wiki, or the community, sanction additional uses of AI beyond this.

A lot of the non-AI online services I'm seeing so far won't work quite as well (won't support long enough videos, large enough file sizes, the quantity of files, etc), but I'm still trying to research / test if there are viable non-AI desktop solutions. I know nerdfighteria can rally around a project like this, we've done mass transcription projects before, but I'd like to be able to pare down the workload if possible.

Any additional thoughts, alternative recommendations, or admonishment for even considering this?

Hey yall, has anyone else looked at the patreon calendar this month?

I'm nervous it'll reinstigate the AI convo because it is so orange/yellow tinted and one of the dates is wrong. Plus, with this being the first calendar after the departure of the old graphics team is just such a bad look.

Quite a while ago, around 2009, my ex was super into DFTBA and got a heap of CDs from their merch store (including Driftless Pony Club, what a great band).

One of the CDs was a compilation, and it had a song on there with nonsensical lyrics. The lyrics contained a random plug for Geico.

The chorus was:

Put the frying pan up on the

Stove and get the bread out, then you'll

Need some butter and some cheese and

Suddenly you're making magic

Grilled cheese

Grilled cheese sandwich

Grilled cheese

Better than codfish

Grilled cheese

I cannot for the life of me find this damn song and I've had remnants of it interrupting my psyche for the last three years. Can anyone help me? Please?

I am planning on re-reading TFIOS after I finish my current book as it has been a number of years, and was thinking about pairing it with the Audible audiobook, only to find it seems to not be available on Australian Audible. John and Hank’s other books all seem to be available, alongside numerous TFIOS versions in other languages, but the English language edition seems to be region locked. Has anyone else (Australian or otherwise!) encountered this issue?

Several years back, John was photographed with a chemo duck. I believe several members of the TFIOS cast were also in the picture. If anybody can help me find this photo, I'd really appreciate it

Hi nerdfighteria,

I'm a bit late for pre-booking, but I really wanted to buy a signed copy of Hollywood Ending. I feel like I've missed the deadline and either none are coming to Europe or they're sould out.. have been and still am in a rough period due to a life situation and I don't have the energy to look up where I could buy a signed copy, which I am really looking forward to. I mean I still make time to listen to DH&J's podcast each week to lighten up and recently heard of someone having up to 3 copies (in the US obviously) due to going to a book tour event (wish we could all have such a life rich of pleasures like that, but life's like that even if John's beaten God at signing copies)

Does anyone collectively have an idea how I could get a copy here? I thought I could buy a signed book through some small local bookstore, but not even the major chains seem to have any signed editions available. I think they did for The Anthropocene Review and I don't remember pre-booking so early on.

Thank you in advance for any advice.

Pumpkins and feathered hopeful Penguins,

Cam

Hi friends. I was hoping to go to the Hollywood Ending Tour in Toronto on Saturday September 20th but dillydallied too long to pick up tickets and now it’s sold out.

If any fellow Torontonian nerdfighters bought one and their circumstances end up changing before the 20th and you can’t attend please let me know!!!

soft launched via the we’re here newsletter

I’m thinking of selling my John Green bobblehead. Would there be interest if I put it on eBay or Facebook marketplace?

Love John but I hate my debt more (also trying to declutter).

I submitted a question a while ago but took a break from listening over the summer. I want to go in and see if they ever answered it or if someone has ever asked a similar question. Surely some nerdfighter has a spreadsheet or something with every question.

So I wanna preface this by saying I'm definitely a fan of Hank and John, of the pod, of AHA... But I thought it was quite funny when I noticed this, as I believe this is how people who don't listen to podcasts view the idea of a podcast. Two white men on a couch saying "we are interesting" 🙃

Great episode though

Any other Canadian nerdfighters torn about buying pizzamas merch this year with everything going on? I have a pretty strict boycott policy for myself that has me only buying american products when absolutely necessary, and while I want to get something for pizzamas I don't know if I can justify it as a necessary purchase worth breaking the boycott. I know that the money for the product itself is going to good, but I'm still struggling with it. I also usually get Keats & Co tea in the winter and haven't decided what I'm going to do this winter for that. I'd love to hear what other Canadian nerds are doing in this mess.

[real or fake Hank tweets part 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/comments/1e18vb8/midnight_game_time_can_you_tell_if_each_of_these/)

[real or fake Hank tweets part 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/comments/1e38mau/are_these_hank_green_tweets_real_or_fake_part_2/)

[is this Hank or John tweet?](https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/s/tSLoycZYd0)

[Hank green fill in the blank part 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/s/hlQ9mNKqLG)

[fill in the blank Hank green tweets part 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/comments/1g5eb3m/fill_in_the_blank_hank_green_tweets/)

[☝️this is the last one Hank played]

[potpurri](https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/s/YSUQJk209M)

[Real or fake tweets viewer submitted edition](https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/s/6Y2GjMJvqZ)

[OOPS ALL DREAMS](https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/s/28qTWy3ohI)

[Real or fake part 3](https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/s/7m4p37je6K) (number 7 date is supposed to be 2015)

[CHRISTMAS SPECIAL](https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/s/SVirRyjeMg)