However, there was another problem I noticed: Videos that had been published longer the

6 min readDec 6, 2020

In the midst of that environment, DuBridge still tried to play the good soldier for his boss. Along with ABM and Vietnam, Nixon’s other major scientific fight was over the SST, or supersonic transport — an extremely expensive, extremely fast airplane, really. In April of 1970, a member of the House of Representatives accused the White House of suppressing a report on the SST; DuBridge acted as the deflector shield.

Once more, DuBridge showed what it meant to be a science advisor to the White House: sometimes, one must defend the indefensible. Apparently though, the SST incident represented one of the final straws he could tolerate: on August 19 of the same year, 1970, he submitted his resignation.

The report supposedly showed the super-fast plane to be “economically wasteful and environmentally harmful,” which theoretically might have helped opponents scuttle further funding to the project. DuBridge, in a letter, wrote that the report was not finalized and “was used as part of a direct input to the President.” That president had asked Congress for $290 million that year for continued development of the SST.

Firstly, if a channel has built up a large audience, then it will be much easier to get a comparable level of views compared to a smaller channel. Some of this may reflect more experience leading to better videos, but I didn’t want to discount potentially high-quality videos from smaller channels. A 100,000 view video from a channel with 10,000 subscribers is probably better than a 100,000 view video from a 1 million subscriber channel.
I played around with various thresholds and these ones seemed to filter out these low-sub low-view videos pretty well. I tested the code on a few different topics and was starting to get pretty decent results.
The president, of course, didn’t take kindly to a scientific community so diametrically opposed to his actions. For DuBridge, that community’s primary representative in Nixon’s orbit, that meant diminishing access. A few years later, he would say that White House staff “gradually built an impenetrable wall around the President.” In an essay written for a book compiled much later by William Golden, one contributor put it another way:

“Misuse of scientific and technical knowledge presents a major threat to the existence of mankind. Through its actions in Vietnam our government has shaken our confidence in its ability to make wise and humane decisions.”

When I looked at the results, some of them looked promising. However, I did notice a problem: For videos with really small subscriber counts, the score would get heavily amplified and surface to the top.

In one sense, it worked, as David lasted longer in the role than his predecessor did. He spent his 28 months at the White House again pushing for increases to federal funding for science, helping negotiate international collaborations, and continuing some of DuBridge’s policy fights that smoldered on past his exit. (That suppressed SST report was finally released more than a year after the Congressional complaints, and it did indeed recommend against further government support for the plane.)

I love watching YouTube videos that improve my life in some tangible way. Unfortunately, the YouTube algorithm doesn’t agree. It likes to feed me clickbait and other garbage.

The Text Me Anytime Friend: This person might live near you or across the globe. They may have kids close to your kids age. These people will make themselves known to you — they’ll model empathy about their hard times and look for the same from you. This person is probably awake rage-breastfeeding their baby at the same time you are.

I knew I’d need the YouTube API to get video information (what’s an API?). I’d then create a formula which processed that information to rank videos. For the final step, I planned to set up an automated email to myself using AWS Lambda, which would list the top-ranked videos.

The Resource Authority: This person is a human encyclopedia of kid clothes, toys, medicine, parenting approaches, doctors, schools — you name it. They’re the person who read all the books and reviews aka, have done the work for you! Make sure to say hello to her and do small favors for her wealth of knowledge.Child Free Champion: Last but not least, is this hero of the village. It could be your actual blood relative, your neighbor or friend who does not have a child of their own and understands deeply how valuable support is. They’re your buddy to call for support on a walk in the park with the kids (for extra entertainment) and available for last-minute, urgent childcare needs.

Child Free Champion: Last but not least, is this hero of the village. It could be your actual blood relative, your neighbor or friend who does not have a child of their own and understands deeply how valuable support is. They’re your buddy to call for support on a walk in the park with the kids (for extra entertainment) and available for last-minute, urgent childcare needs.

I decided to start with total view count, as a reasonable first-degree proxy of how valuable the video would be. In theory, videos that are interesting or well-explained will gain positive audience feedback, get promoted more and thus have more views.I read through YouTube’s documentation here and saw that you can get information at the level of videos (title, when published, how many views, the thumbnail, etc) and at the channel level (number of subscribers, comments, views, channel playlists, etc).

Nixon replaced his high priest of science with a virtual unknown, Edward E. David, Jr., described as being “well outside the main channel of the American scientific establishment.” Perhaps the idea was to move that dividing line between presidential policy cheerleader and scientific advocate toward the former and away from the latter — if the scientific community didn’t know the new advisor, they couldn’t expect much of him.
I started by visualising what I wanted the tool to do. I wanted something that would (i) rank videos based on likely relevance for me and (ii) automatically send me suggested videos, which I could select from.
And secondly, videos can get lots of views for the wrong reasons, such as clickbait titles or thumbnails, or being controversial. I’m personally less interested in these types of video.

Now that you’ve said hello, followed through and supported your own growing community — -let’s talk about some strategic folks who are especially valuable to have in the community.

The Mentor If Grandmothers and Great Aunts were meant to be a part of the communal aspect of parenting, finding a been-there-done-that parent with children older than yours is an invaluable fill-in. They are the holders of institutional parenting knowledge and because they have done this before, can give you insights from a hindsight perspective.

In spite of DuBridge’s willingness to jump on board the ABM train in Nixon’s White House, it didn’t take long for his usefulness as science advisor to come into question. In July 1970, a “prominent science historian” told the Washington Post that science had been all but disappeared from “the high councils of the Nixon administration.” The previous year, the Times reported on a growing “groundswell of dissent” among scientists around the globe; work stoppages normally associated with workers pressing for better wages had spread all the way to — believe it or not — entire countries’ collections of astronomers. A group of scientists at M.I.T. arranged another stoppage and released a statement that read in part:

Sure, the details of those plans might have been different, but this was no fluke. Generally speaking, the scientific community has shot down as unfeasible, too expensive, or otherwise unwise virtually every large-scale missile defense idea of the last seventy years. But time and again, the scientist at the president’s right hand has found himself defending — or, at times, aggressively supporting — these plans in spite of their dubious technical feasibility. It is perhaps the best example of the disconnect that the advisors have all been forced to confront — science for science’s sake, or science for the president’s sake.

However, there was another problem I noticed: Videos that had been published longer the

Written by sdrtyutr