Transcription: Proving the Earth is not Flat - Part 2 - The Stars - VoysovReason

Putting the disclaimer here again.  😃

I use here a video for one side of the ongoing debate regarding a round vs. a flat Earth.  But whether I am on the round Earth side or the flat Earth side is unimportant here.  I chose to transcribe this video because, as I try to do from time to time, I want to hit two (or more) birds with one stone.  And as I was looking for resources for the round vs. flat Earth debate, I found this video that seemed to me a good transcription specimen.  Hit many birds with one stone, I thought - find resources for the issue, practice transcription, add transcription to portfolio/blog.  😃
To try to be fair to both sides of the debate, I will also be transcribing at least one video for the Flat Earth side after this series from VoysovReason.

8:43 PM 6/22/2017 start

This is part 2 of a series called Proving the Earth is not Flat.

In this series, I intend to demonstrate how anyone can prove to themselves, using simple observations and experiments, that the Earth is not flat.  It is a spinning and moving sphere.

In this part, we will look to the stars.  But first, to understand the shape and movements of the Earth, we need to understand how it works within the context of the Solar System and the distant stars that surround it.

The nature of the Earth, Solar System, and stars took many centuries to figure out.  The Greek mathematician, Pythagoras, was the first to propose that the Earth was a sphere in the 6th century BCE.  But it wasn't accepted by most of the world until the Middle Ages between the 5th and 15th centuries.  So, Flat Earthers, you are only about 600 years behind the curve.

Because we live on the surface of the Earth, we are limited to seeing it from our perspective, or at least we were back then.  So when our perspective is limited, scientists create conceptual models and test them against observations.  If a model cannot explain all observations and experiments, you either modify the model until everything fits, or throw out the model and start over.

The prevailing model in the Middle Ages was the geocentric model with the spherical Earth at the center of everything, and the Sun, moon, and stars revolving around us.  And to the casual observer, from our perspective, that is what it looks like.  But, while the model explained many observations, it failed to adequately explain some of them, most notably, the apparent retrograde motions of the planets.

Copernicus solved that problem by realizing that the Sun is the center of the system, not the Earth.  And the heliocentric model still works to this day to perfectly explain all observations, measurements, and experiments.

Also, the ultimate test of any scientific model is its ability to predict future events.  Using the heliocentric model, we can accurately predict lunar and solar eclipses, conjunctions, planetary alignments, and many other phenomena, down to the minute or second.  This is how real science works.  No Flat Earth model has ever been able to explain all astronomical observations, let alone make accurate predictions.  I challenge any Flat Earther to use your model to predict the next lunar eclipse.

So let's see how our view of the stars fits with the heliocentric model, and compare it to the Flat Earth model.  In the heliocentric model, the Earth spins on its axis once per day.  The axis is tilted about 23.5 degrees and that tilt constantly points in the same direction as the Earth revolves around the Sun once per year.  This tilt is the cause of our seasons and the seasonal variation in the length of daylight.  The stars around us are very far away, but all the stars we see without powerful telescopes are circling the Milky Way Galaxy with us in the same direction and the same speed.  So they are essentially stationary from our frame of reference.  It is this backdrop of stationary stars we can look to to understand the shape and movements of the Earth as I will explain.

In the Northern Hemisphere, we look at the stars and we see star formations we all recognize such as the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and Cassiopeia.  But in the Southern Hemisphere, these constellations cannot be seen at all.  And different star formations are seen, such as the Southern Cross and Centaurus.  And some constellations near the celestial equator such as Orion can be seen in both hemispheres.  This makes perfect sense for the spherical Earth.  Northern observers are looking generally upward toward the North Pole, and southern observers are looking generally downward toward the South Pole and seeing different stars.  The curvature of the Earth is what blocks the stars of the other hemisphere from view.

To illustrate, these blue arrows represent the direction an observer in the North views the stars in the sky.  And the red arrows are the direction of the stars viewable by an observer in the South.  They intersect in the middle but you can see how the shape of the Earth limits our view of the opposite hemisphere.

In contrast, on a Flat Earth model, the North is the center and the South is a ring around it.  The stars would have to be arranged in a dome shape over the flat Earth.  In this model, it makes no sense that people in the North cannot see the southern stars, and vice versa.  And it is particularly absurd that people in the outer ring can all see the same southern stars but not the northern stars at all.  There should be nothing blocking their view of all the northern stars.
Also, consider that on nights when the moon is visible, we all see the same moon running across the sky everywhere on Earth, and we see the stars behind it.  This works perfectly fine on the heliocentric model.  But when you look North from the outer ring of the Flat Earth model, there is no logical reason you would not see the northern stars behind the moon.  The moon is supposedly close by and circling above near the equator, and you would be looking northward with the moon near the center of the sky but somehow the northern stars can't be seen?  This is an insurmountable failure of the Flat Earth model.  And it only gets worse for the Flat Earth model.

The nightly rotation of stars is perfectly explained by the Earth's rotation on its axis.  Every night, we see the stars rise and set overhead.  They move very slowly but if you watch for half an hour or so, you will notice them change positions, moving from East to West.  In the Northern Hemisphere, you will also notice the stars to the North rotate counterclockwise around a central point, called the Celestial Pole, very near a star called Polaris.  You can easily see this yourself.  Look for the Big Dipper, and the end of the dipper always points to Polaris, a relatively bright star.  With patience, you can watch the Big Dipper and the other nearby stars rotate around Polaris each night.  This phenomenon is a favorite subject of professional and amateur stargazers and you can find many long-exposure photographs and time-lapses of it.

In the Southern Hemisphere, when you look to the South, you also see stars rotate around a point, but they are different stars, and they rotate in the opposite direction - clockwise.  There is a star named Sigma Octantis very near the Southern Celestial Pole, but it's not a very bright star so it is difficult to see.

This apparent spinning of the stars around a north and south axis is perfectly explained by the heliocentric globe model as the spherical Earth rotates on its axis, and our view of the essentially stationary distant stars rotates.  The distant stars to the north and south spin around a point because we are seeing them over the spinning axis of the Earth.  Depending on how far north or south you are, some stars stay above the horizon all night long.  These are called circumpolar stars.  But they are completely different stars in the North and in the South.  How would this work in the Flat Earth model?  Well, to put it simply, it couldn't.

9:30 PM 6/22/2017 short break
9:33 PM 6/22/2017 resume

In any Flat Earth model, the stars would have to be arranged in a semi-spherical dome over the flat, circular Earth, and Polaris would have to be in the center, and that would seem to explain what we see in the North.  But south of the equator, the outer concentric ring in the Flat Earth model, now you have huge problems.

When you look to the south in South America, in Southern Africa, or in Australia, you see the same clockwise spinning stars.  Yet people in those three locations would be looking in three different directions when looking to the South.  Yet somehow they see the same thing.  Where could the Southern Celestial Pole and the circumpolar stars be in this model?  Are they in many places at once?  No.  It simply cannot work.  Of course, not all three of these distant locations are all in nighttime at the same time, but two of them at a time are.  And the celestial pole and circumpolar stars stay visible all night long and are always directly to the South.

I know some of you are going to claim that it simply doesn't look like that in the South, and that all images of it are faked.  I'm not asking you to take my word for it.  You could go and see it for yourself.  But I do recognize that it is not cheap or convenient to travel to the Southern Hemisphere if you live in the North.  And I have never been there myself.  But if you were to go, I am extremely confident you will see the southern constellations such as the Southern Cross, and also you will see the stars rotating clockwise around the Southern Celestial Pole.

Why am I so sure?  Independent confirmation.  No scientific claim ever comes from a single observer or a single observation.  Science demands that observations are independently confirmed.  And in this day and age, you can easily get independent confirmation yourself by finding someone on social media that lives anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere and asking them what they see at night.  Or find any number of independently produced videos of it on YouTube.  Of course, people lie and videos can be faked.  But if you pick people at random, there is no reason to think they are part of a conspiracy, especially if you don't tell them why you are asking.  And the more independent, neutral sources you can find, the less likely it is that they are all wrong or lying.

If the stars in the south did not actually appear the way they teach it in all the schools of the world, a great many people would have noticed it, as anyone in the entire hemisphere can look at the stars.  There is no way to hide them.  But no one, outside of a few Flat Earthers, have ever said the stars don't look right in the South.  Nearly the entire population of the Southern Hemisphere would have to be in on a conspiracy or somehow deluded if the stars didn't actually appear as people have been reporting for centuries.  The Southern Cross is actually depicted on the national flags of five Southern Hemisphere countries - Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Papua New Guinea, and Samoa.  I'm not asking you to believe me.  Either go there yourself, or find multiple, independent sources to tell you or show you what they see in the sky.

Another thing we notice in the real world is that the stars that are near the celestial equator change throughout the seasons.  We can see Orion in the winter.  In spring, we see the Sickle of Leo the Lion.  In summer, Scorpius dominates the equatorial sky.  And the fall brings the Great Square of Pegasus into view.  This is explained by the Earth's orbit around the Sun.  The night side of the Earth rotates around and thus our nighttime view points outward to different stars.

There is no valid explanation for this observation in the Flat Earth model.  And this brings up a subject that confuses some Flat Earthers.  They say if the Earth orbits around the Sun, why doesn't noon become midnight six months later?  Why don't the day and night times reverse?  The answer is that our system of measuring time already takes the orbit of the Earth around the Sun into consideration automatically.

Noon is when the Sun is the highest in the sky, and the time from one noon to the next noon is divided into a 24-hour day.  This is called a solar day.  But because the Earth orbits around the Sun about one degree everyday, the Earth actually has to rotate a little bit more than the 360 degrees for the Sun to be directly overhead at the same place.  A full 360 degree rotation in relation to the distant stars is actually a little bit shorter than 24 hours - about 23 hours and 56 minutes.  This is called a sidereal day.  So that's why noon doesn't become midnight six months later.  And this orbit around the Sun explains why the stars we see at night near the celestial equator change throughout the year.  The night side of the Earth rotates around revealing different stars.

There is one more thing Flat Earthers complain about regarding our view of the stars that I want to address.  They ask why does Polaris, and all the other stars as well, remain in the same place from our perspective year after year if the Earth is rotating on its axis and on a 23.5 degree tilt, and also revolving around the Sun, and also moving around the Milky Way Galaxy.

This is no problem at all when you understand it.  The Earth's daily rotation on its axis accounts for the rotation we see in the sky and around the two celestial poles as I've shown.  And since Polaris is near the North Celestial Pole, it stays close to the same position.  Also, as I already explained, all the stars we see with the naked eye, including Polaris, are revolving around the Milky Way with us, in the same direction, and close to the same speed, so that will not cause the stars to change their relative position in our sky in the short term.  Just like how other cars on a freeway moving with you seem to stand still.  And one revolution around the Milky Way takes about 225 million years so we are essentially moving in a straight line.  With Earth moving around the Sun, the Earth's axis stays pointed in the same direction in relation to the stars.  And since Polaris is so tremendously far away, our view of it does not change noticeably.

We're going to need some simple trigonometry to demonstrate this.  But I'll use an online triangle calculator to make it easy.  The latest estimate for the distance to Polaris is 323 light years.  This is an unimaginable 1.8 quadrillion miles, or 1.8 thousand billion miles.  Our trip around the Sun is only about 186 million miles which is a tiny fraction in comparison.  So if we form a triangle from Polaris to the Earth and over to the location of the Earth six months later on the other side of the Sun, we can calculate the distance that Polaris will seem to move from our perspective - the change in its viewing angle.  This is called its parallax.  When we plug in the distances of all three sides of the triangle into this triangle calculator, we find that the angle we view Polaris only changes by... are you ready?  0.00000566 degrees.  There is just no way you are going to notice that.  This is why Polaris and all the other stars maintain their visual positions year after year.  They are just so tremendously far away.

So we see that just looking up at the stars provides further confirmation that the Earth is a spinning and moving sphere.  When you understand what you are seeing, and you understand how it fits with the heliocentric model.  The heliocentric model is the correct model because it perfectly explains all observations, experiments, and measurements.  Not because some government agency or secret society says so.  Science works by observation, independent confirmation, experimentation, testing, and making accurate predictions, never by authority.  And science is really open to everyone.  Go out and look at the stars yourself and test the models against what you see.  No Flat Earth model can even come close to properly explaining what we see in the stars or any of the other observations I discussed in this series.  That's why it was thrown out centuries ago.  Thanks for watching.

10:30 PM 6/22/2017 finished transcribing
__ to 11:00 PM 6/22/2017 proofreading #1
11:03 PM 6/22/2017 to 11:26 PM 6/22/2017 proofreading #2

Transcription: Proving the Earth is not Flat - Part 1 - The Horizon - VoysovReason

Let me put a little disclaimer on this next transcription.  😃

I use here a video for one side of the ongoing debate regarding a round vs. a flat Earth.  But whether I am on the round Earth side or the flat Earth side is unimportant here.  I chose to transcribe this video because, as I try to do from time to time, I want to hit two (or more) birds with one stone.  And as I was looking for resources for the round vs. flat Earth debate, I found this video that seemed to me a good transcription specimen.  Hit many birds with one stone, I thought - find resources for the issue, practice transcription, add transcription to portfolio/blog.  😃
To try to be fair to both sides of the debate, I will try to find in the future, a video for the flat Earth side.  For now, though, I have in line parts 2 & 3 of this series from VoysovReason.

Note:
I am keeping my time stamps on the transcription mainly as a guide for me to be able to see how long I take in doing it.  Anyone looking at this transcription because they are looking for a transcriber may also look at the time stamps as an estimation of how fast (or slow) I work.
Also, if I seem to be a bit on the slow side when working, please realize that I do additional 'research' while transcribing.  This includes checking (by google, etc.) to see if I am getting the spelling of names and places, and other terms correctly.

11:56 AM 6/21/2017 start

The Earth is not flat.  We live on a spinning globe.

It's amazing to me that I actually have to say those words in 2016.  But there are a number of scientifically confused people that have convinced themselves, and are trying to convince others, that we live on a stationary, flat plane.

There are a number of reasons for this resurgence of a long-extinct belief system including: literal interpretations of the Bible, scientific illiteracy, cherry-picking and other errors in reasoning, and a general distrust of government leading to imagined conspiracy theories.

I don't, for a second, think that NASA, along with every other public and private space enterprise, and every other scientifically literate person in the entire world are involved in a massive conspiracy to hide the truth from us.  That's a claim that demands really strong evidence.

But let's leave them out of it.  I cannot prove to you that the images and videos from space are real, and you cannot prove that they are fake.  But we don't need to believe them.  We can prove the globe and the heliocentric model to ourselves without them, just as generations of people did long before NASA or anyone else went to space.

In a series of short videos, I would like to teach you how you can prove to yourself with your own eyes and experimentation that we live on a spinning globe.  Several things that we can see with our own eyes clearly demonstrate that the Earth is a globe and cannot be adequately explained by the Flat Earth model, no matter how you try to twist reality.  These include the apparent movements of the sun, moon, planets, and stars, moon phases, lunar eclipses, timezones, and many others.  But in this first video, I'm going to focus on just one thing - the horizon.

The most important thing to understand is that the horizon is flat.  That's right.  From our vantage point, even from a high mountain or an airplane, the horizon is flat.  Flat Earthers, and also many globalists, for lack of a better term, seem to think that the horizon should look curved to us.  That's flat wrong.  And I think this is the single biggest reason there even is a flat earth community.  The biggest source of confusion.  You are expecting to see a curve where there is none to be seen.  You are looking for the wrong thing.

To picture what I mean, look at this orange.  If I take a thin slice of it, I get a round disc.  The edges of it where the knife cut through is a flat circle.  That is what you see when you look at the horizon - the edges of a circle.  The edges don't curve side to side, they run straight across our view.  And since we are always in the center of the circle, they don't curve down.  When you can see the horizon in all directions, it is the same distance away in all directions.  So when you spin around, it looks exactly like a straight line and comes back around to join itself.  Think about that.  If it were curved down, it would not come back around and join itself at the same level.  Even from a high mountain or from an airliner, the horizon is flat because the Earth is so big and we are so close to it.  All we are ever going to see is a small, flat, round slice of the ball of the Earth.

There's a handy website that will calculate the distance to the horizon for any viewing height.  It also tells you how much of an object will be hidden the horizon if it's past the horizon.  The site is: metabunk.org/curve.  Let's look at an example.

12:26 PM 6/21/2017 lunch break
12:50 PM 6/21/2017 resume

This is the view from the JPMorgan Chase Tower, the tallest building in Houston.  The observation deck is 879 feet above the flat Texas landscape.  According to the metabunk site calculation, the horizon is about 36 miles away.  So this is what the horizon looks like on a map - a circle with a 36 mile radius.  As we zoom out, you can see what a small part of the Earth this is - under 1% of the Earth's diameter of 7918 miles.  And when we show it edge on, you can really see that it is just a small, flat, round slice of the large Earth.

But getting back to the orange, you might be thinking that the slice of the orange is not flat.  It curves down in all directions from the center.  Well, yes, that is true for the orange, and it's also true for the Earth.  And you can clearly see that on the orange, but on the Earth, it is simply impossible to see because the Earth is so tremendously big.

If you are 6 feet tall, and you stand at the shore of the ocean, or on a flat desert plane, the horizon is about 3 miles away, and the change in vertical height of the surface is only 1 1/2 feet spread evenly over the entire 3 mile distance.  You just aren't going to be able to see that.  It's way too subtle.

As an illustration, this is a Google Earth picture of the New York City skyline from Caven Point, New Jersey, just over 3 miles away.  The Earth does indeed curve down away from the viewer in this picture but it is just about 1.5 feet spread over 3 miles so it is just too slight to see.  The Statue of Liberty is in the picture and it's 305 feet tall, and only 1.2 miles away, and look how small it looks.  But if the horizon is flat, how does it prove a round Earth, you might ask.  It's what happens when objects are past the horizon that reveals the curve.

Sailors, for many centuries, have noticed that ships sailing away from you in the distance disappear bottom first and sail last.  If you live near a large body of water, you can easily see this for yourself with binoculars or a telescope.  But here is a video you can watch of a cruiseliner going over the horizon.  See the link in the description for the full video.  This only works on a curved Earth.  The view of the ship is obviously going behind the curve and you can always calculate exactly how far away this will happen depending on how high you are up from the water.  The higher up, the farther away the horizon.

Flat Earthers try to explain this phenomenon away in a few ways.  Some claim that the ships aren't actually hidden by the curve, they are just at the limits of our ability to see them, and if you zoom in, they come back into full view.  But whenever they try to demonstrate this, they use a boat that is near the horizon, but not beyond it.  Like this one.  Notice, he did not show a boat that was hidden at the bottom, this is just a blatantly wrong example to use.  I don't know how they think this explains anything.  The examples they use are always not beyond the horizon, but near it or right at it.  To show the effect, you have to show a boat partially obscured by the horizon like this.  Not this.  Some will show a boat in choppy seas and claim that the swells are causing the obscuring of the bottom of the boat.  But, again, that's a bad example to use.  Do you think there are swells big enough to hide half of this cruise ship?  Also, you will need a clear day, and one without extreme cold.  Cold air near the water can create a number of different mirage effects because the temperature differences actually bends the light.  But you can usually tell when this is happening, and it only happens in certain conditions.

Also, the sun and moon rising and setting beyond the horizon perfectly shows that the Earth is curved, and they are much easier to see than distant boats.  They both emerge from or slide behind the horizon exactly as we expect on a globe, and not at all what we would see on a Flat Earth.  Flat Earthers claim that the sun and moon circle above the Flat Earth, and the rising and setting is due to them coming in and out of view due to perspective, as explained - and I use the term loosely - in this clip from Flat Earther, p-brane.

[Clip]

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Ok. Here's a little, uh, illustrator or a little cartoon from a website called timeanddate.com.  It's really funny that they would have a perfect illustration of a sun rising and setting on a Flat Earth due to perspective.  You'll notice that it rises from below the horizon and sets below the horizon.  Now, you might be saying, "well, how's that possible?  I can see now you're saying that it rises and lowers due to perspective but how does it disappear below the horizon?"  Well, I got a theory about that.  Because of the fact that all parallel lines and planes converge at your eye level horizon - this is according to the perspective, I'm not making this up.  If in fact, and they do - they converge at your eye level horizon visually, then it makes sense that after that point, they diverge, meaning they then separate.  So the sun would continue on a downward track, as you can see from my illustration here, the lines would go to your horizon and then afterwards, they would spread out and separate, kinda like a starburst.
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Two huge problems here.

One is that he shows a sun in the animation that always stays the same size, which indeed is what we see in reality.  But if it were disappearing due to perspective, it would be getting bigger as it rises and smaller as it sets.  But in his animation, it does not.  The edges of the circle of the sun would get farther apart and closer together just as all the sight lines he drew in do.  Why would everything get smaller as it moves away except the sun or moon?  That's absurd.

Here is what we actually see.  The sun and moon slide behind the horizon and maintain their visual size.  That is not perspective.  Perspective works both vertically and horizontally.  Objects farther away appear smaller and closer together in both directions.  If the sun and moon were just circling over the Flat Earth and getting too far away to see, then we would see them shrink and fade out of view as they set, but we don't.

Flat Earthers will show you videos where the sun appears to grow or shrink but this is an illusion due to thick clouds.  You can always see that there are clouds near the horizon when they try to show this.  Normally, this illusion does not happen.

The second way this so-called perspective matrix fails is even more ridiculous.  The lines drawn in the illustration are lines of sight, and they correctly converge to the vanishing point - the point at which you can't see farther.  But he claims that past the vanishing point, the lines diverge.  What?  What lines?  It's a vanishing point.  There are no lines of sight past the vanishing point.  There is nothing to diverge.  You can't have lines of sight past what you could see.  And if it did work that way, we could see objects beyond the horizon and they would be upside down.  Think about that.  No.  This is totally wrong.

Another way to demonstrate the curve is with distant city skylines.  A good example is the City of Toronto viewed from across Lake Ontario.  The city is dominated by the distinctive CN Tower, currently the 3rd tallest tower in the world at 1815 feet.  There are many pictures online of the Toronto skyline, viewed from Niagara-on-the-Lake, New York (sic), 30 miles away.  With the metabunk calculation, we see that 486 feet of the tower or about 26% of it should be hidden behind the curve of the Earth from that distance.  And this is exactly what we see as you can easily tell when compared to an image of the full tower at the same scale.

Flat Earthers sometimes show cities in the distance that, according to them, should be below the horizon but are clearly visible and claim this proves the Flat Earth.  This can be difficult to disprove because you never really know where the picture was taken from.  They may have gotten the distance wrong, or the height of the observation wrong, or the calculation wrong.  One example they use is the Chicago skyline seen from 60 miles away across Lake Michigan.  At a viewing height of 6 feet, we calculate that 2166 feet should be below the horizon at 60 miles.  So they are right that the entire City of Chicago should be completely hidden.  And it is hidden nearly all the time.  But sometimes it can be seen from that far away due to a type of atmospheric light refraction phenomenon called a superior mirage.

A superior mirage is caused by colder air below warmer air which bends the light around the curve of the Earth.  This event sometimes makes the news for the very reason that it is a rare occurrence.

[News clip]

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...until I found this photo from Grand Mere State Park.  This is from Joshua Nowicki.  And what you're seeing here is a mirage.  We typically would not be able to see this from the Lake Michigan shore.  We talked about this last night.  Conditions are right on the lake that we're actually seeing a mirage of the Chicago skyline.
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You can tell that it's a mirage because there is lots of distortion.  The Willis Tower on the left is clearly elongated.  And also, there are videos of this same view that show the buildings dancing around, changing shape, and even disappearing.  Even though this is a mirage, the bottom parts of the buildings are clearly still obscured from view, just as we expect.  If the Earth was flat, you could see the buildings on any clear day, not just rarely when the conditions are right for refraction.

Flat Earthers use these rare events to try to prove the Earth is flat, but that makes no sense.  It's called cherry-picking, a favorite trick of all types of science deniers.  You don't get to pick the anomalies that seem to agree with your views and ignore the common observations that don't, and still call yourself an honest investigator.  That is intellectually dishonest.

As I have shown, the horizon is all we really need to know that we live on a sphere.  But there are other observations you can make yourself that all perfectly fit the heliocentric globe model when you understand it, as I will explain in future videos.  Thanks for watching.

2:39 PM 6/21/2017 finished transcribing
2:40 PM 6/21/2017 to 3:03 PM 6/21/2017 proofreading #1
3:04 PM 6/21/2017 to 3:20 PM 6/21/2017 proofreading #2

Transcription: Samuel L. Jackson's Game of Thrones Beginner's Guide (Uncensored)

To start off, this is my transcription of Samuel L. Jackson's hilarious beginner's guide to the TV show, Game of Thrones.  Needless to say, this will contain some F-bombs.  😉  (And I should probably also say *SPOILERS!!!*)

The video came out around four months ago (in July 2016), and I transcribed it shortly after.  I did it in response to someone in the comments asking if anyone can CC the video for the benefit of non-native [English] speakers who might find it hard to follow.  Since I can't CC the video, I gave her a transcript instead, right there in the comment section.  Haha.  😁

Hope you all enjoy.  😃



Transcript:
Ok, newbie, we've only got a few minutes and a lot to cover, so listen up. The first thing you need to know about this world is... No! Not dragons. Fuck those dragons! Focus! The seasons in this place last a ridiculously long time so when we start this, everyone has just come out of a long, long summer. So let's just say... they ain't too happy about winter coming. Ned Stark: Winter is coming. Catelyn Stark: Winter is coming. Olenna Tyrell: Winter is coming! Tyrion Lannister: Stop that. You're making me uncomfortable. Over in Westeros, Lord Eddard Stark, aka Ned, is asked by his friend, the king, Robert Baratheon, to be the Hand of the King, aka right hand man. Ned doesn't wanna go but that's his boy! So he uproots his family and heads to King's Landing. Nice family, right? Don't get attached. I'm just saying. Over on Essos, the exiled children of House Targaryen want King Robert dead and the throne back in their family. Before Robert, it belonged to their father, the Mad King who tried to burn everybody in the kingdom to a crisp with wildfire until THIS motherfucker [Jamie Lannister] killed him. Now, he's the king's brother-in-law, the queen's twin brother. Put a pin in that cause that's important. Now, Daenerys Targaryen gets married off to Khal Drogo, leader of the Dothraki, in exchange for using their badass army to take the throne back. At least, that was the plan. Oh, and she got some eggs as a gift. Beautiful, right? Ok. Now, last place you need to know about is this 300 mile long, 700 foot high ice wall. The Night's Watch defend the wall against their sworn enemies, the wildlings. But that's not the only thing they need to worry about. Now, some time has passed now and all hell has broken loose because of some things I don't have time to explain. Just know that in all seven of the kingdoms of the Westeros, peace time is done! Finito! Everybody thinks they should sit on the Iron Throne. This guy [Littlefinger/Petyr Baelish], this guy [Stannis Baratheon], this guy, too [Renly Baratheon]. But the guy who's on the throne now is the heir. He's not exactly humble about it either. Joffrey Baratheon: The king can do as he likes! People doubt the legitimacy of his right to the throne because his uncle and mom, the queen, are a little too... close. {(song) Come on baby, let's do tonight.} Remember those lovely eggs? Well, Dany found a way to hatch them and yes, you guessed it! Three little dragon babies. Aww. That is so cute! Over on that big ice wall, Jon Snow, Ned's illegitimate son, and the rest of the Night's Watch are really getting worried about the wildlings on the other side. And... they're motherfucking cold. Which is why everybody should be worried about this long ass winter coming, but instead, are too busy fighting! Jon Snow: Loose! Meanwhile, Dany's dragons finally got bigger. Oh, relax. Not that much. She still needs an army if she wants that throne. So she heads over to Slaver's Bay to try and get one. Nobody seems to have any idea that the White Walkers are about to wipe out everybody. The seven kingdoms, the wildlings... EVERYBODY! The only one with a clue aside from Jon Snow seems to be her [Melisandre]! Melisandre: This war of five kings means nothing. Meanwhile, this jerk [Joffrey] is still on the Iron Throne. So right now, House Lannister is winning this game. Tyrion Lannister: If you want justice, you've come to the wrong place. And the only reason they're winning is the wealthy House Tyrell is backing them. So this asshole [Joffrey] has to marry her [Margaery Tyrell] to fuse the families together. So, what happened to all the Starks, you ask. Well, let me tell you! They're not doing so well. Robb, his wife, and his mother, well... let's just say some wedding invitations, you should decline. Sansa's stuck in King's Landing with this motherfucker [Joffrey], and Arya teams up with this scary looking dude [The Hound] to survive. Bran... Bran trippin'. Meanwhile, nobody's paying attention to Dany, who did pretty well for herself! The dragons are even bigger and could now do some serious damage. She's got thousands of followers and eight thousand of the baddest soldiers in the land! Now, that's formation. But she's not the only one who has an army, see? The White Walkers, the scary motherfuckers, they got one, too. The Night's Watch is trying the best they can to stop them. And remember what I said about winter a few minutes ago? It's almost here! And still, ain't nobody ready! Even though they've been saying "winter is coming" for four seasons now. And Cersei thinks she's a good leader but she ain't. She's pretty much Marie Antoinette in this whole situation. Cersei Lannister: Aha, the people. You think I care. So the people turned against the leaders and turned to religion, a dangerous one. As for the Starks... Well, Arya's working on her revenge dance. And Jon Snow is still with the Night's Watch defending the wall. So, let's look at the wall again, shall we? Remember, Jon knows that the White Walkers, aka army of the dead, are coming. And being the good guy that he is, decides to try and save the wildlings from getting wiped out. The Night's Watch aren't exactly thrilled about this idea but Jon didn't care. He's the Lord Commander and they have to do as they're told! And remember that other battle Jon fought we didn't have time to show you? Ha! That's nothing... NOTHING compared to... Man, listen! Trust me. I wish I had time to show you this battle but IT. IS. SICK! Anyway, back to Dany. More power, more problems. She's having trouble controlling everybody - the former slaves, the masters, these guys with the masks. Even her dragons ain't fans of hers right now. And what's worse - before, nobody even knew she had dragons and she wasn't a threat, now EVERYBODY knows she has dragons. And right about now, she could use some solid advice as to what to do next. Tyrion Lannister: I am the gift. He is! Tyrion! Sure, he's a Lannister and he's a lush, but hey, don't hold that against him. Daenerys Targaryen: You're going to advise me. Now, let's check in on the Stark kids one more time. Sansa can't catch a break and is now stuck in the worst relationship of her life with this dickhead [Ramsay Bolton]! As for Arya, a girl has decided to boost her skill set by becoming no one. And out of nowhere, Jon Snow's men show him just how much they didn't appreciate risking their lives to try and save the wildlings. And of course we all know what happened next because it was huge. HUGE! Oh. Y-y-you don't, huh? W-w-wait, what? Oh! Sorry folks, we ran out of time. Shame. Shame! Shame. Because all of this is NOTHING compared to what we didn't have a chance to get into - the backstabbing, the lying, the cheating, the parts that'll make you feel uncomfortable, the parts that will break your heart, epic battles... I mean, you need to see it for yourself. You really do! And uh... Huh? What? Yes! Yes, ok. Yeah, yeah! Yes, we have dragons. After all that, you're still stuck on these fucking dragons? Ok. You wanna see a dragon, motherfucker? Alright! Here you go. Here you fucking go! You happy now?

Hitting two (or more) birds with one stone.

As is customary when I start yet another blog, I begin with a little introduction.  Here goes...  😜

I used to work as a transcriber in oDesk.  One of these days, I hope to go back there and maybe look for some similar work again.  In the meantime, it wouldn't hurt to practice, right?  😉  So, I thought I can do just that using the myriad videos on YouTube.

That is what you'll expect to see in this blog - videos from YouTube, mostly, (or links to them, at least) and my transcriptions.

I'll be hitting two birds with one stone, then.  In addition to being able to practice, I can use this blog as a sort of portfolio that I can show to people who might want to see my transcription work.  Also, it would give value to the time I waste... er, I mean, spend watching video after video after video on YouTube.  😁

I've been planning to do something like this for quite some time now, though I first thought of doing it on some other site.  However, doing this on my own blog is probably the best way to go.  😃