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What is going on here? Why have I grouped all of video into 1 recap? Because I didn’t want to write too many recaps and some of the categories didn’t feel like they deserved a full post.

YouTube

Top Channels

1. Milo Rossi (Miniminuteman)
2. Angela Collier
3. Any Austin
4. Secret Base
5. RobWords
6. Cambrian Chronicles
7. Cracking The Cryptic
8. Hank Green (hankschannel)
9. Jay Foreman
10. Jomboy Media

I had decided to watch less YouTube this year. I used to check my Subscriptions feed every day but felt like I was wasting too much time on videos that I just wasn’t super interested in and was just watching because they were there. I’ve started watching a bit more frequently as the end of the year has approached, there is a few channels I will check when I see social media updates or, in the case of Jomboy Media, a video is recommended (either algorithmically or thru a friend). His is the only channel in my Top 10 I’m not subscribed to.

This has led to some weird behavior like not having watched a Cracking the Cryptic video since the beginning of April or binging Any Austin and Cambrian Chronicles videos in a short period. Beginning of the year I am planning on going thru my subscription list and purging a bunch of old subs and just curating it to be a useful feed again. I’m hoping to be able to use it less destructively next year.

My “Watch later” list has been the defining experience of YouTube for me this year. I had about 100 videos on it and really wanted to get thru it. I’ve got it down to hover around 30 for a while now, with some videos requiring me to do some homework before watching and other just needing to set aside an hour or two. This has led me to not watching videos from some of the essay channels I’d like to watch such as Accented Cinema, Five by Five Takes, and particularly Sage’s Rain. I also need to catch up on like 2 years worth of Noclip documentaries.

Top Videos (ish)

I hadn’t been keeping track of my favorites from the year and I don’t regularly add videos to my Favorites playlist. I’ve only added 11 this year which isn’t a lot compared to the number of videos I have watched. I also basically never like a video.

The useful to know ones from that list (ordered by added to list, newest first, earlier in the year last):

1. How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it) ~ Not Just Bikes
2. The New Nuclear Age is Coming ~ hankschannel
3. Human Nature, Hope & Ice Cream ~ Pop Culture Detective
4. The Games Behind Your Government’s Next War ~ People Make Games
5. Where Do Skyrim’s Rivers Come From? ~ Any Austin
6. Work. ~ Historia Civilis
7. Slamilton - A Basketball Musical (Full Album) ~ Psynwav
8. Superpositions, Sudoku, the Wave Function Collapse algorithm. ~ Martin Donald

Other good videos I watched that will mostly be recent ones I can remember. I’m going to try and limit it to 2 videos from a single channel. In no particular order:

• A THOUSAND SUNS ~ Blackmilk Studio {playlist}
• asterisks in sports ~ hydn
• Correcting the NFL’s passer rating lie ~ Secret Base
• Filip Zieba Debunked ~ Miniminuteman {playlist}
• How accurate is the Covid death count? (w/ Hank Green) ~ Howtown
• How American Fire Departments are Getting People Killed ~ Not Just Bikes
• How Japan Took Over Baseball ~ Baseball Doesn’t Exist
• How Star Trek: Picard Ruins Star Trek ~ Angela Collier
• How We Discovered the Ice Age ~ Aidin Robbins
• I Ran the NYC Marathon to Find Out How Marathons Make Money ~ Morning Brew
• I Watched Ancient Apocalypse So You Don’t Have To ~ Miniminuteman {playlist}
• I Went Down a Rabbit Hole Trying To Recycle All My Tech Waste ~ Morning Brew
• Internet Vs Ocean: the essential wires we never think about ~ Jay Foreman
• Medieval Cat Laws - Laws for your Medieval Cat ~ Cambrian Chronicles
• Patriarchy According to The Barbie Movie ~ Pop Culture Detective
• Powering an E-Bike using Disposable Vape Batteries ~ Chris Doel
• Pseudoarchaeology and the Pseudoscience Pipeline - Milo Rossi LIVE at Virginia Tech ~ Miniminuteman
• REFORM! | Pretty Good ~ Secret Base {multipart}
  • REFORM! Part 1 | Pretty Good
  • REFORM! Part 2 | Pretty Good
  • REFORM! Part 3 | Pretty Good
• The Most Illegal Baseball Bat Ever Created ~ Baseball Doesn’t Exist
• the nfl player who literally did not exist ~ hydn
• The Royal Title that No One Can Remember ~ Cambrian Chronicles
• the sham legacy of Richard Feynman ~ Angela Collier
• The Unbreakable Kryptos Code ~ LEMMiNO
• These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us ~ Not Just Bikes
• Weird maps win elections - Gerrymandering explained ~ Jay Foreman
• When Natural Gas Had No Smell ~ Practical Engineering
• Why the Internet Is Running Out of Electricity ~ Morning Brew

TV Shows

Watched Seasons

* D20 seasons are shows on Dimension 20, it may be like “Season 26” but since it’s an anthology show, it’s weird putting that. Fantasy High: Junior Year is season 3 of the Fantasy High setting, Misfits & Magic Season 2 is self explanatory, and Never Stop Blowing Up is the first and only season of that setting so far.

Currently Watching

1. Adventuring Academy (S5)
2. Dirty Laundry (S4)
3. Gastronauts (S1)
4. Jentry Chau vs the Underworld (S1)
5. Make Some Noise (S3)
6. Nobody Asked (S1)
7. Skeleton Crew (S1)
8. Star Wars Rebels (S3)
9. Time Quangle [Dimension 20]
10. Very Important People (S2)

It’s taking me “so long” for Rebels season 3 because I’m watching along with the A More Civilized Age podcast and they took a couple month break covering the season while one of the hosts wasn’t able to participate. The other shows are currently airing (Jentry Chau just released a couple weeks ago on Netflix).

Top 10 Favorite Shows This Year

1. Dimension 20 (all the seasons, I can’t pick)
2. Star Trek: Lower Decks
3. My Adventures with Superman
4. Arcane
5. Game Changer
6. Strange New Worlds
7. Star Wars Rebels
8. Very Important People
9. Reacher
10. Smartypants

I am just in love with Dimension 20, I really enjoy the “short” seasons (compared to Critical Role) and think they do an excellent job editing the show and making the stage look awesome.

Lower Decks is possibly may favorite Star Trek but I haven’t watched the older stuff in the past few of years. I felt like the last season was just getting going when they were on the penultimate episode and it’s a big shame that it ended with this season. I rarely got the references they were making but still found it very funny. The show really felt like it understood the joy present in idea of the world.

My Adventures with Superman is one of my favorite DC cartoons and could possibly rival Young Justice and Teen Titans depending on how long it runs. The relationship between Lois and Clark and the fact they kicked it off right away really makes the show sing.

Arcane was just as beautiful as the first season and that helped carry it thru some rougher story telling. Despite that, I really enjoyed it overall and would like to see them do more shows in this universe and style.

Strange New Worlds took me a bit to get around to after watching the backdoor pilot on Discovery and I wish I’d had jumped on board sooner though the wait between the first and second season would’ve been awful (like the wait for the third is now). I love all the characters on the ship and think they have established great dynamics between them.

Star Wars Rebels has been made very enjoyable by listening to A More Civilized Age’s coverage of it. I probably would’ve liked it anyway but their insights into the show and catching things I wouldn’t have thought about makes it that much better. I think the crew of the Ghost is a great cast and wish Disney would’ve understood why it’s so good and carried that into the movies and other shows.

Reacher was a semi-impulsive watch after hearing a couple people talk about how surprisingly good it was. I binged both seasons in like 2 weeks and just instantly fell in love. I had enjoyed Alan Ritchson on Blue Mountain State and Titans prior to watching Reacher so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. At first I’d wished we’d gotten more of the characters from season 1 in season 2 but then I had such a blast with the season 2 characters.

Game Changer, Very Important People, and Smartypants are my 3 favorite shows on Dropout TV right now. Dropout is the only platform I check every day for the new episode of whatever show and watch every episode of every show on there (eventually). I think these 3 shows really show the strength of the talented cast the service has (outside of D20 which I already talked about).

Looking Forward To

• more Dimension 20
• The Dragon Prince (S4)
• Rebels (S4) and beyond
• Scavengers Reign (S1)
• Strange New Worlds (S3)

I had just missed the release of season 4 of The Dragon Prince and then kept putting it off but now that the show has released it’s final season, I think I’ll end up binging everything pretty quickly. I had been told by my friends that I really need to watch Scavengers Reign because it’s amazing so it’ll be the next thing I start once a few of my current shows end. The other shows on that list are seasons after ones I’ve talked about above.

Movies

I only watched 8 movies this year and they just so happen to be in order from best to worst (ish, Akira is better than Deadpool and Spider-Man). Though Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is only listed 3rd because I’ve seen it before and hadn’t seen the first 2. This was also rewatching Akira because my friends hadn’t seen it before (somehow…). I also watched the Mobile Suit Gundam recap movies, but forget when I actually watched them, they are above Deadpool below Spider-Man on my list.

I really want to finally get around to watching John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) because I love both the series they came from and just missed them in the theater. I would like to get back to my watch thru of the Godzilla movies in release order with Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964) and continue with my Gundam watch thru of every one of the those shows and movies.