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Greetings all.

We’re back and recovered from our trip. Since I whinged so much about the bad part of traveling, I need to compliment the good. Sort of. Our American Airlines flight from Dallas to Santa Barbara went off without a hitch. As I say, sort of. It wouldn’t be a real airline trip if there weren’t some sort of nerve-wracking screw up.

Our flight was scheduled to depart at 10:10 am. Our son dropped us off at Terminal A a little before 9 am. We checked our bags and headed for gate A8, which was the gate shown on our online boarding passes. We grabbed a seat at gate A. Gate A8 showed that a flight was getting ready to depart for Grand Cayman Island momentarily. I figured when that flight was gone, the sign for Santa Barbara would go up. They usually text us a gate change if there is one.

After we had been sitting there for a bit, an Asian woman came up to us and asked if we were going to Grand Cayman. We said, no, we were headed to Santa Barbara. She said, I don’t think the plane to Santa Barbara is going out of this gate. We quickly pulled up our online boarding passes, which did indeed say gate A8.

As it turned out, she was some sort of airline official. She quickly checked her tablet and told us the flight to Santa Barbara was going out of gate B11, which is in another terminal. No text from American telling us there had been a gate change.

We grabbed our roll aboards and sprinted to the escalator to catch the trains that travel from terminal to terminal. (If you’ve never been there, DFW is enormous. Huge terminals and lots of space between them.) We got on the train, went to terminal B, rushed off and ran to gate B11. The plane was already boarding. A sort of restful morning converted to a frenzy thanks to airline shittification.

After all that, the flight itself was fine. And even arrived early. The only thing fast about flying is the actual flying. The rest is often a nightmare.

Midterms

Does everyone in the US want these midterms to be over as much as I do? I don’t remember where I saw this, but is sums up my feelings to a tee.

My problem isn’t the TV. I almost never watch it, so I haven’t been bombarded there. But my phone is blowing up. Both MD and I get at least ten political texts on our phone every day. And what’s weird is that they come from both parties. How did they get our number? We don’t contribute to either party. We’re not part of any political organization, but somehow our phone numbers have fallen into their hands. I will be so glad when this is over…

Every headline satisfies an opinion. Except ours.

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Another Note re Videos

A couple of people commented that they increased the speed of videos, so they could watch them faster. I should have mentioned that myself. I do this, too.

For those of you who don’t know, you can change the play speed on most videos. The graphic below shows how you do it.

Click on the little gear where I have the red arrow pointing. Then when the menu shows above, adjust the playback speed to whatever you want.

I typically start out at 1.75 times faster than normal. I listen closely, but can still barely understand what’s being said. MD says it’s like listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks give a talk. I listen at this speed for maybe 30 to 45 seconds, then I drop the playback speed to 1.50, which, after listening at 1.75, seems almost normal speech. Then I listen to the rest of the video at that speed. Sometimes if the person talking talks fast, I end up at 1.25, but most of the time I watch at 1.50 speed.

It’s funny, but if you listen at 1.50 speed, then drop back to normal, it sounds like the person who is talking is drunk and slurring his/her speech.

Anyway, this is another way to watch videos quickly if you don’t want to drop the link into AI and get a transcript.

Movie Magic

MD and I haven’t gone to a movie in a theater in years. I can’t even remember the last time. It had to be five, six years ago. And I don’t even remember the movie we went to. Some sort of WWI flick.

While we were visiting our son’s fam in Dallas, our youngest grandson of that bunch cajoled us into going to see You Can See Everything, the documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. So off we went.

You might think a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes would be a strange choice for a 24-year-old young man to want to see. But this young man is an aspiring screenwriter, so what with all the hype about the film, he was eager to see it.

He has always been deeply interested in sports of all kinds. He got his degree in sports management with the idea of becoming an agent for professional athletes. Then he decides he wants to be a screenwriter and has been working hard at it since. I graduated with a degree in engineering and ended up wanting to be a doctor, so I guess it runs in the family.

If you don’t know anything about this documentary, I’ll sketch it out for you.

Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford at age 19 to start a company called Theranos. The main product of this start up was a test that could provide countless lab measurements using a single drop of blood. She raised an enormous amount of money from venture capital, celebs, and politicians, including George Shultz and Jim Mattis. An investigative reporter from the Wall Street Journal delved deeply into what was really going on and turned up what he called a massive fraud.

The walls then came tumbling down around her. She was sued by everyone and ended up with a criminal complaint against her. She pleaded not guilty, went to trial, lost, and was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.

During all the collapse of her (literal) billion dollar business, she falls in love (takes up with at any rate) this guy she meets. They end up having a couple of kids while the collapse, trial, and sentencing are going on. They don’t marry, probably because he has some wealth of his own and California is a community property state. Had they married, all the investors might have come after his wealth as well.

So they are living in a rented condo/house (I was never sure of which was which) on the beach in San Diego. They have a toddler and a relative new born (as she is shown nursing him during the documentary) while awaiting her rendezvous with the hoosegow.

37 days before she goes away for 11 years, they decide to let a documentary maker of questionable standards move in with them until she is locked up. To tell her story, so she said.

I can speak only for myself, but if I were in that situation, the absolute last thing I would want would be a film crew haunting my last few days with my loved ones. But that’s just me. Others may feel differently.

I’m not going to review the movie (you can find countless reviews online: here and here, for example) other than to say I thought it was much, much too long and unnecessarily so. At three hours, it was a test of my continued attention, my rear end, and my much abused bladder. But I persevered and stayed till the credits.

It could have been shortened by at least an hour had not the film maker decided to linger on both his own face and Elizabeth’s. There were some long, long stares with no words being spoken. He would ask, What about whatever? And the camera would linger on a closeup of his face for what seemed like ten minutes. Then Elizabeth would reply “I don’t know,” and the camera would be on her forever. Then back to him. He would say, “What do you mean by that?” Then another interminable close up pause, after which she would say something insipid, long pause, then back to him. If you enjoy that kind of dialogue, then this is the film for you.

As I said, I’m not going to review this flick, but I do want to use it to show how movies are made.

And documentaries. What you need to always bear in mind is that documentaries always show what the maker of the documentary wants you to see. In that respect, they are like the climate change promoters. The entire climate change industry is built on modeling. Create a model using this data and that, and, bingo, we’re all going to die due to climate change. Problem is, the models all say what those making the models want them to say. A different set of data that is just as accurate could show a completely different outcome. But that wouldn’t get funded.

Documentaries do the same. They want you to conclude what they want you to conclude. You should always keep that in the back of your mind when watching any kind of documentary.

Along with understanding the above, you also need to understand how movies and documentaries are made. So I’m going to tell you.

You might wonder how I happen to know anything at all about how movies are made. Well, I can tell you that as well.

MD and I once spent a day being extras on a movie set. It was ages ago, and I can’t even remember the movie. Or if it even ever hit the box office. But I learned a fair amount during that one day.

In addition to that, MD and I spent a long afternoon on a movie set of a film that did get made and had some stars in it. One of whom got sick. A part of the movie was filmed in a set in a warehouse in an industrial park in Little Rock. One of the main characters got sick, so the film crew called our urgent care center to see if we could send someone out to the film site and treat the actor.

We had only one doc at a time working in our clinic, so that doc couldn’t go. MD and I were both off that day, so we went. We (MD, actually) took care of the guy. And the powers that be let us hang around the set while filming was taking place in lieu of payment. During our time there, I learned a whole lot.

I had heard actors being interviewed say that it took hours to film maybe two minutes – if that – of conversation. After I had heard similar stories, I figured actors must be total bone heads if it took them hours to get their lines right. Well, after my afternoon at the shoot, I now know.

As Yogi Berra allegedly remarked, “You can see a lot just by looking.” And I looked a lot.

Before I go on, I’ve got to tell you that what I’m going to reveal will spoil the whole movie/TV/documentary magic for you. Whenever I see anything now, I know how it’s made.

So venture forth at your own risk. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The first thing I learned on the set was that the stars stay holed up in their trailers most of the time. The director figures out how he wants the actors to move in any sort of scene. There are people on the set who are stand-ins. They look similar, have the same general coloring, are the same size as, and dress like the stars. The director uses these folks to get the action he wants. He has them come through the door, turn right or left of whatever, then move to the couch or wherever. This is called blocking. And it takes a fair amount of time to get it just like the director wants.

Only then is the call sent out to the stars, who show up and are told exactly where to walk and what to do.

The big surprise to me was the filming. Had I thought about it, I could have figured it out on my own, but I was always so engrossed in whatever I was watching that the details never occurred to me. I was captured by the movie’s magic. Little did I know that the conversation I was watching took three hours to film, not because the actors couldn’t say their lines right, but because of camera positioning.

Let’s say you’re watching a movie or TV show in which a couple of people are sitting and talking in a booth in a restaurant. You see one person talking, then the other answering. It all goes back and forth. You even see the two of them together from the side. The whole thing looks like a two minute conversation, but it took three hours (or more) to film.

Here’s why.

Assume we have a male and a female talking back and forth in the booth. You see the face of the male who is talking, then the face of the female when she answers. Sometimes you see the two of them from the side. Looks like a normal conversation. But it isn’t.

When the male is talking and the camera is aimed at his face, that’s all you see. His face and the back of the booth. The camera pointed at him is right behind the female’s head. Then when they are filming her answer, the camera is behind the male. You see the female’s face as she responds.

What you don’t realize is that the female’s response to the male may have been filmed two hours after whatever the male said. Or even the next day.

Again, here’s why.

If you had a camera behind the female and behind the male so you could film the conversation as it happened, you would be able to see the cameras. When you filmed the close up of the male talking, what you see is the booth and whatever else is going on in the restaurant behind him. There is no camera behind him filming the female. If there were, you could see it. He does all his lines while the female, or more likely a stand-in for the female, responds to him. He does all his lines for that scene, then they put the camera behind him to shoot the female saying her lines. When you see her speaking, all you see is her, the back of the booth, and the restaurant. There is no camera filming him.

During the back and forth, there will be a shot or two of the two of them together in the booth. When the techs splice the footage of the male talking and the female answering along with all the side shots of the two of them, the magic happens.

It looks for all the world like two folks talking in a restaurant. But it required three different camera set ups (at least) and multiple hours to pull off. That’s why it takes many months to film a movie that lasts an hour and a half.

There is even a person whose job it is to photograph the set after each shot, so that when the cameras are moved around, the set looks exactly the same. Occasionally in a movie, you can see a screw up. When one person is talking, maybe, say, a plate on the table looks one way, then when the other is talking, the plate is slightly different. Most people don’t notice, because they’re engrossed in the conversation. But if you know what to look for, you’ll find it from time to time.

I’ll show you what I mean about the camera placements with some clips I took from the trailer for the Elizabeth Holmes documentary.

Before I get into the still photos, take a look at the entire trailer for the film. (For those of you who hate video, it’s under two minutes long, so suck it up and watch.)

Here is a screenshot I took of Nathan Fielder, one of the documentary makers, talking to Elizabeth Holmes.

Now here is one of Holmes answering him.

Then the scene cuts away to them together.

Notice when you're looking at Fielder, you don’t see a camera behind Elizabeth’s head. Nor do see one behind Fielder’s head when the camera goes close in on Elizabeth. Obviously, there were cameras there, but I strongly suspect the two sides of the conversation were filmed separately and combined to make it seem like they were actually asking and answering questions.

You can see from the scene in which they’re both together leaning over the back of the couch – which, in my view, is a weird way to be talking when they could simply sit side by side – that there is no camera in evidence. That shot was done with a camera from the side.

When you put all these together, it gives the appearance of a continuous conversation between two people. But it’s not. That’s just the magic of movie making.

I’ll concede that there is a tiny probability that the shot of her face could have been taken over his shoulder, and his over hers. But I doubt it. And there are definitely no cameras visible in the shot of both of them.

The shots of her consort, Billy Evans, talking to Fielder was definitely shot in several takes as there is simply not enough room to put cameras behind either one of them.

Here is the screenshot of the two of them together with Elizabeth in the background. Note that there is simply no room for cameras behind either Billy or Fielder.

Again, the magic of the movies makes it all look like one continuous conversation.

I found it kind of weird that Billy and Fielder were having a conversation on the bed upon which Elizabeth was lying. Why would anyone have such a supposedly spontaneous conversation in a bedroom?

What amazes me is that all the reviews I’ve seen of this ‘documentary’ take everything said at face value. Do they not realize this was all set up? Are they so naive as to not understand how movies are made? Were they taken in by what they thought were real conversations? Maybe so. There are plenty of people who believe professional wrestling is legit and those are real conversations the Housewives of Wherever are having over coffee.

They were all asking the wrong question as did Inspector Clouseau in this hilarious clip from The Pink Panther Strikes Again. Clouseau asks the clerk if his dog bites.

BTW, there are multiple camera shots in this short clip. I would imagine it took half a day to shoot this one tiny segment that runs under two minutes. Try to figure where all the camera placements were for this little bit of film. The magic of movies.

The Sun Sees Right Through You

Just as ultraprocessed foods have slipped in to replace whole foods in our grocery baskets, another much less noticed product has also become ubiquitous in our lives to put our health at peril. Before I get to what that is, let’s take a look at our evolutionary history.

When we contemplate evolution, most of us never give the sun much thought. But the truth is the sun is the reason we exist. Even in today’s modern world.

The sun provides and has provided the energy for all human endeavors since the first human was born. The food we use to power our bodies and our brains all comes from the sun. The sun’s rays provide the energy necessary for plants to grow. Herbivores eat plants. We eat plants. And we eat herbivores and other animals. In other words, when we eat, whatever it is, we are eating the sun.

Most of the power we use to fuel our existence comes from the sun. The cars we drive, the planes we fly, the heat in our houses, even the cooling in our homes comes primarily from the sun. Solar panels are obviously fueled by the sun. The same for wind power, which is mostly a function of the sun’s work. Even the gasoline and diesel we use in our cars comes from dead organic matter that was originally generated by the sun’s energy. It is simply stored sunlight.

During our early evolutionary years in the wilderness, our bodies were fueled by the sun. And the sun provided light for us to see by. When we harnessed fire, we essentially were harnessing the sun. The wood we finally figured out how to burn for heat and light was a product of the sun. The sun’s energy fueled the growth of the tree we used to heat our caves. Fire was just the release of the sun’s energy conserved for later use.

It should not be surprising to learn that since we evolved with the sun, old Sol may provide other benefits than simply supplying the energy we consume as food. And maybe, just maybe, getting some sunlight may have other advantages aside from simply providing us with a nice tan.

The sun throws off an enormous panoply of different wave lengths of light, most of which humans can’t see. The narrow band we can see – called the visible light spectrum – comprises a small slice of the total. Just as dogs can hear whistles humans can’t hear, many animals can see wave lengths of light we can’t see. We developed large brains instead of sharp ears and keen vision.

Below is a graphic of the total spectrum of solar light. The visible spectrum is the little band delineated by the dotted vertical lines, so you can see just how much light we can’t see. The visible spectrum spans from 380 nm to 780 nm.

Notice to the left of the visual spectrum lies the ultraviolet (UV) spectrum, which includes UVB, the rays that both give us sunburn and stimulate the production of vitamin D. To the right of the visual spectrum are the longer rays up to and including the infrared rays. We can’t see anything other than those rays in the visible spectrum, but those outside the visible spectrum provide many health benefits.

Before we get to those, let me take you back to last week’s Arrow in which I discussed a study showing that sunlight lowered blood glucose levels.

To quickly recap the study, researchers projected light of 670 nm (wavelengths of light are measured in nanometers abbreviated as nm) onto 11X11 inches of skin on the bare backs of the study subjects for 15 minutes. Control subjects had no light shone onto their backs.

Within 30 minutes after the application of light, the blood sugar levels of those who received the 670 nm dropped their blood sugar levels lower than that of those who didn’t. And their blood sugar levels remained lower for over two hours.

One sharp-eyed reader who actually pulled the study from the link I provided and read it noticed that the authors said that visible light in the range of 470 nm actually raises blood sugar. So we’ve got light within the visible spectrum that both raises AND lowers blood sugar levels, which would seem to be a wash.

I was saving that part for this week’s Arrow, but the reader beat me to the punch.
I mentioned the solution to the problem in last week’s Arrow; I just didn’t explain why.

Remember, I said that MD and I had taken to sitting in the sun early in the morning and just before sunset. Take a look at the graphics below to understand why that solves the problem.

As you can clearly see from the vertical yellow lines I placed, both the early morning and pre-sunset sunlight markedly favors the 670 nm wavelengths vs the 470 nm ones. Especially the pre-sunset sun. Which is why MD and I try to get as much early and late sun as we can.

If you look at the graphic below, you can see that the sun at midday has the same amount of 470 nm as it does 670 nm, so it’s more or less equal. No real advantage in terms of blood sugar lowering. At least that we know of.

Now, let’s look at something a little different.

Here again is the graphic of the late afternoon, sunset spectrum. And right below it is another graphic of the visible spectrum. Look at it closely and try to guess where that particular spectrum of rays comes from.

Before I tell you what this spectrum represents, take note of how much of the blood-sugar-lowering 670 nm spectrum you get when you're showered with this kind of light vs the negligible amount of blood-sugar-raising 470 nm spectrum.

Before I reveal what the above graphic shows, let’s look at one more.

The lower graphic shows light that has a little more of the blood-sugar-elevating 470 nm wavelengths, but vastly more of the blood-sugar-lowering 670 nm wavelengths.

Have you been able to guess what these two graphics represent?

Well, the top one is the visible light spectrum of fire. The very fire we’ve evolved with for millennia. Which looks a lot like the spectrum of light showered upon us at sunset.

And what is the one at the bottom?

It’s the spectrum of light emitted from the much-maligned incandescent light bulb.

It makes sense that the spectrum of light from an incandescent bulb is the same as fire, because, well, it is fire. Electricity heats a tungsten filament until it glows and throws off light with virtually the same wavelength pattern of fire.

And just like a fire, an incandescent bulb will burn out over time.

Now comes the part about how technology has once again screwed us over.

In the same way that Big Food has figured out how to mass produce tasty, addictive, inexpensive ultraprocessed foods, lighting engineers have come up with LED lights.

LED, which stands for Light Emitting Diode, are the darlings of the climate-change crowd. The reason? They are much less expensive to operate.

Why?

Because they emit only part of the spectrum of visual light.

Scroll back up to the top of this section and look at the graphic of sunlight. Notice again that only the area between the vertical dotted lines represents the visible spectrum of light. You can see that there is way more light out of the visible spectrum than there is in the visible spectrum. Ultraviolet light to the left and the huge amount of longer wavelength light to the right.

Since we can see only light in the visible spectrum, the makers of LED lights engineer them to provide light only in the narrow visible light spectrum. After all, that’s the only light we can see.

Since incandescent light bulbs provide the full spectrum of light – not just that shown in the narrow visible spectrum – they ‘waste’ about 90 percent of the light they produce as it is not visible. I used scare quotes around the word waste because the wavelengths both shorter and longer than those in the visible spectrum have health benefits. As I’ve already mentioned, UVB ( on the left side of the visible spectrum) initiates the production of vitamin D. Those wavelengths to the right of the visible spectrum, especially the infrared frequencies, have a multitude of health benefits.

Even though we can’t see those wavelengths, they are good for us for other reasons. And those wavelengths do not shine from LED lights. An LED does not need to heat a filament to incandescence. Electrical energy drives a semiconductor light emitter, the output of which occupies a relatively narrow wavelength band. Consequently, they are much less expensive to operate than incandescent bulbs, which throw off heat and light in the non-visible spectrum. LEDs do produce a tiny bit of heat, but not much compared to incandescent bulbs.

Here is a graphic showing how they work.

Because LEDs consume less power, they have become the darlings of the climate change crowd. Anything that provides the same function, but uses less power than what we’ve been using for years means less hydrocarbon use, which is nirvana to that group.

Sadly, many governments have phased out conventional incandescent bulbs for general household lighting through minimum energy-efficiency standards. These restrictions generally apply to bringing new bulbs to market, not using bulbs already owned, and certain specialized incandescent lamps remain exempt. But in some places they’re hard to find.

The light from incandescent bulbs provides a vastly more lovely living environment than that of LED bulbs. And even though some LED bulbs approach incandescent bulbs in color, they still provide only a tiny segment of the wavelengths provided by incandescent bulbs.

MD and I switched out all of our LEDs for incandescent bulbs when we first got wind of the coming difficulty in obtaining them. Neither of us realized how different the lighting is with incandescents. It is a vastly more beautiful look than the sort of sanitized ‘industrial’ look one sees with LEDs.

Years ago, MD and I attended a public speaking conference put on in Camden, South Carolina by Reid Buckley, the younger brother of William F. Buckley. The conference lasted for a few days, and on the final evening, the group dined in an old, old mansion in the area. The estate was famous for having been commandeered as his headquarters by Lord General Cornwallis of the British army during the Revolutionary War.

Our dinner was in a vast dining room – or maybe a small ball room –that had no electric lighting. The lighting was provided by a single tall taper on each table and other candles in sconces around the room. Had I not been there and seen it, I would never have believed how much light was provided by simple candlelight. Not only was the lighting brighter than I would have imagined, it was breathtakingly beautiful. The light reflecting off the polished furniture, portraits, and mirrors made a magical evening that neither of us have ever forgotten.

Incandescent lighting is much the same, but with the profusion of LED lights, most of us have forgotten just how beautiful it can be. It has the same spectrum as firelight, and there is nothing more soothing or beautiful. We’ve had a million plus years of living with firelight, so it stands to reason that we would at least subconsciously appreciate it more.

MD just tried to order some incandescent lights on Amazon. She found a pack of four 60 watt bulbs for twenty bucks and clicked buy. What she got back was a message that the lights would be delivered on December 13th. About a month and a half from now. Wow! She cancelled that order and searched around and finally did find a batch of 8 that can arrive sooner.

Now you may have seen or purchased full-spectrum LED lights. That does not mean full spectrum in terms of full spectrum firelight or sunlight. It means full spectrum in terms of visible light. And even then it doesn’t cover the complete full spectrum of visible light, just most of it. Caveat emptor!

But there is no UV light and no long wavelength light, both of which provide many health benefits. Just like the lipidologists have sucked the saturated fat out of our diets for no real reason other than simple speculation, the climate changers have sucked the firelight out of our home lighting for similar reasons.

The study I intended to describe in today’s will have to wait until the next issue. I’m afraid I’m running out of my allotted characters and don’t want to have to go back and start removing what I’ve already written to be able to include the study.

But I will tell you there are many studies out there showing the benefit of sunlight.

Just a preview of the study I’ve run out of room for. Researchers in the UK shone sunlight on the backs of subjects and discovered that sunlight penetrates the body and can be picked up with sensors on the other side of the body. Who knew?

And that the sunlight that makes its way through has an invigorating effect on the mitochondria. We all want our mitochondria invigorated, so that is a very good thing. And another reason to get some sunlight every day you can.

As it turns out, Paleolithic light is as good for you as Paleolithic food. We’ve had millions of years to adapt to both.

Odds and Ends

• What is thought to be the world's oldest shipwreck discovered off the coast of Turkey. This one has my SCUBA blood up.

• Our bloodline keeps getting pushed back and back. A new fossil confirms a human ancestor appeared 200,000 years earlier than expected.

• English can be such a contradictory language, being, as it is, a melting pot of so many linguistic roots. Here, for instance, a list of contronyms -- a word that can mean its own opposite.

• For MD and me this article's title should be not the year we were born but 'the most popular breakfast cereal in the year your kids were born' but hey, back in our day there were so few choices and none were sugar sweetened until Tony the Tiger came along. I have to say, and much to our kid's dismay, none of these populated the shelves of our pantry when the boys were growing up. The occasional box of plain Cheerios did, before we had our brain transplants.

• Hallelujah! Benjamin Moore's color of the year isn't some shade of gray or white! MD, especially, is thrilled to see a little warmth back inside the home color palette. Maybe the 'every other house is white with black trim' fad will fizzle out, too.

• Greek comedies that still get a good laugh today. As they say, there's nothing new under the sun.

• Another reason or four why some coffee has more caffeine in it than others.  It's more than just the brew method, after all.

Newsletter Recommendations

Video of the Week

I was despairing over this week’s video, because I couldn’t find anything VOTW-worthy. But fate, in the guise of a random YouTube ad, stepped in and saved the day.

I pay the $13.99 or $14.99 or whatever it is each month to keep me from having to watch an ad or two or three every time I watch a YouTube video. I almost always watch these videos on my laptop and for , research purposes (or golf). Almost never on my phone. The stats have apparently come out showing most people do their scrolling on their phones, so all the ad money goes there. Thus I avoid it if I can.

Since I almost never watch YouTube videos on my phone, I haven’t provided my YouTube account number and all that to my phone. On the rare instance I do watch a video on my phone, I simply let the ad play for a few seconds until the skip this ad notice comes up, and I skip it.

Yesterday, I clicked on a video on my phone, which took me to YouTube. An ad popped up, and before it hit the skip this ad button, I was sucked in. I watched the entire thing.

It is the most brilliant ad I’ve ever seen.

Before I go on, I’ve got to tell you that I have no affiliation with the company that made the ad. In fact, I’m not even sure I know the company that made it. I have no financial interest in the advertised product or company whatsoever. I just believe it’s the best ad I’ve ever seen for anything.

What first got me hooked was its absolutely infectious melody. Sucked me right in. When I got to the end of it – and it is over 5 minutes long – the name of a company popped up and a means to order the product. I immediately went to the company’s website, but the product was nowhere to be found. And when the ad ended, the video went away. I spent at least a half hour searching YouTube for the ad.

I then went back to the original link to the video I wanted to see, and the same ad popped up again. I watched it to the end. (I’ve got to confess, I’ve watched the frigging thing at least 15 times now) I thought maybe I had copied the name of the company incorrectly, but no I hadn’t. I still couldn’t find the product on that website.

I wanted to show the ad to MD, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Then I went to my good friend Perplexity, described the ad, and – Bingo! – it found it. Turns out someone with more technical skill than I possess was able to copy the ad and put it on Facebook.

So, dear reader, it is below. Blow it up to full size and watch it. I haven’t looked into any of the claims made, so I can’t vouch for the product. But the ad is phenomenal.

Let me know in the poll or comments if you liked it as much as MD and I do.

Time for the poll, so you can grade my performance.

That’s about it for this week. Keep in good cheer, and I’ll be back soon.

Please help me out by clicking the Like button, assuming, of course, that you like it.

This newsletter is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment and should never be relied upon for specific medical advice.

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