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Hello there everyone! The time has come again for my annual end-of-year post. Last year, I spoke at length about how much 2022 sucked and celebrated the coming of the New Year. I'm not going to do that this time. Simply and honestly put, 2023 was just as bad or possibly even worse than 2022, and that's been very visibly reflected in the pace of uploads to this channel (that is to say, I have only uploaded one video this year).

Speaking of videos, let's talk about the big one I've been supposedly working on. I say "supposedly" because the reality is that since the end of October, all real progress on the writing has stalled out. I originally planned to upload this video back in August, then I thought I'd have it done by this month, and now it's probably a wait until the spring. It's not that I haven't enjoyed working on it a great deal, because I have, but between college and depression and general exhaustion over war and politics, finding the energy to work on this channel has been very difficult. That being said, I have a month of no classes ahead of me and I'm a lot less depressed now than I was back during summer break, so I'm going to force myself to write at least one line of text every day until this thing is done. Next update on that will come when I've finally finished the script.

For 2024, I will make neither promises nor predictions. I won't even express a general hope to be able to make more videos, because we've all seen how that's gone before. Maybe this will be the year I finally make at least one upload a quarter, or maybe it'll be completely dry of content. Whatever happens, happens. I realize this isn't a very hopeful or uplifting message going into the New Year, but this channel has always been my personal project, and this is how I've felt for the last few months. I'm tired of putting up the facade that "exciting things are going to happen!" and "there's a bright future ahead for the channel!" I've repeated that nonsense time and time again and nothing has come of it. The truth is I don't know what's going to happen and I don't know what kind of future awaits.

There probably aren't that many of you left after seven months of no uploads, and those of you who remain are essentially my core audience that has stuck around. To that audience: I'm still here and I'm not going anywhere. For all my tiredness and all the seeming lethargy of the past two years, I still haven't given up and I never will. This post almost certainly makes it sound like I have no more excitement for the channel, but I do. It's just a lot more subdued now than it has been in years past. The second Star Wars video will be finished sooner or later, and there are plans for what comes after it. See you all in 2024 you beautiful bastards. 

Hello everyone! My longtime friend  @FredoRockwell  has conducted an interview with Bashkir independence activist Ruslan Gabbasov, whose brother has been taken hostage by Russian security services. I created the English translation for the interview, and I cannot recommend it enough.

I know I've been AWOL for some time, and I'll have a better explanation soon enough, but right now, I need as many of you to share this in as many places as you can. Your social networks, your community, any media connections any of you may have, anything.

"I believe that, today, the only way to help my brother is large, widespread publicity. Publicity of this crime, this terrorist act that's been committed by the government of Putin." - Ruslan Gabbasov

Free Rustam. 

Hello there everyone! Today, September 27th, 2023, marks four years since I uploaded the first video to this channel. I made a post just like this one exactly a year ago, talking about all my wonderful plans for the future, and most of those plans never came to pass. Just as it was on the third anniversary, I have only uploaded two videos in the past year, and as I get deeper into college, video work is unlikely to speed up. I'll certainly keep trying, but this is probably the new normal. However, I do have two announcements today.

First, a matter of business. After mulling it over for several months, I've decided to create a Patreon, and figured today was as good a day as any to open it. Patrons will be be able to get their names displayed in the end credits of videos, vote on video topics, see new videos early, and receive exclusive video updates:  https://patreon.com/ArkentheAmerikan 

Second, a non-exclusive video update. After over two years and about a thousand comments asking for it, a second Politics of Star Wars video is in production. Working title is "Thus Always to Tyrants," though that isn't quite locked in yet. After months of writing, I'm nearing about 3/4 of completion on the script, and it's currently somewhere between 35 and 40 minutes long. I expect it'll end up around the same length as the first video. The original plan was to publish that video today, but that obviously hasn't panned out. My current guesstimate is that it'll be uploaded at some point in November, but y'all know me by this point.

This is not just going to be a rehash of the first video in a new setting though. I've had a long time to think about how I want to do this, and it's going to be in a completely different style from that first video. A more detailed update will be posted for Patrons in the next few weeks. I'm really quite excited to finalize the script and turn this idea into a reality. More to come soon.

P.S. I said I'd stream semi-consistently over the summer as I worked on the video, but that very quickly fell apart along with the rest of my life. I'm gonna TRY to start streaming with some degree of consistency again in October, but no promises this time. 

Probably should've done this ages ago but I decided the channel profile picture needed a little update.

Also yes I'm still alive and still working on the next video. Proper update soon. 

Hello there! A few weeks ago, I began streaming Jedi: Survivor on this channel, and I've had a blast playing it. I finished streaming it last night, and can honestly say it's by far the best game I have ever played in my life. No story has ever made me feel so much so intensely. But I'll save my gushing about this game for a future video once the series is complete. 

Until then, I come to you all with a question. To this point, all of my streams have been unlisted and placed in a public playlist called "Stream Archives." I often get people asking me during streams where they can find them after they're finished. This has led me to an idea which I would like to run by you fine folks: make all my streams public, including both the ones I've already done and any future ones. YouTube rarely makes good changes to their site, but one great change recently has been the addition of a "Live" section to channel pages, to separate them from videos, and this presents an opportunity for me.

My livestreams would, of course, show up in all your guys' Subscriptions boxes (if you are subscribed, but if you aren't then why are you reading this?) I for one hate it when my sub box is flooded with livestreams, and I usually stream about once a week when I have the time, so that is a factor to consider. All livestreams would of course still go into the Archives playlist.

So, should I make all my livestreams public or not? 

Hello everyone! It's been quite a bit longer than I expected, but my video on the California drought and water crisis is complete! So, my next video, "California's Artificial Water Crisis," will be published Saturday, May 6th, at 12:00 PM Pacific Daylight Time! It's far longer than I originally planned it to be, though still only sits at 19 minutes and 24 seconds. There's a lot of charts and numbers in this one, but that's only because I spent a good two months doing the research/writing for it.

I usually tease the next planned video somewhere around this point, but as the next video is going to be something of a special treat, I'm going to remain cryptic about it for now, until I have more to show for it. I will, however, try to compensate with semi-regular livestreams, and might start to experiment with Shorts. I hope to see you all there! 

Hello everyone! It's been a grueling and exhausting month, but the water crisis video is finally complete! Shouldn't have taken nearly this long to make a video this short (about 19 minutes), but much like last year, life has kept getting in the way. At any rate, the damn thing is finally done. I'll be revising it over the next few days, and you can expect it to be uploaded next weekend, specific time and date to be announced soon.

I've come to accept that my core audience who will watch videos like this is pretty small, but those of you who do stick around are the best. Probably wouldn't keep doing this without y'all.

On a similar note to the last community post, I'll end this with a poll: when watching YouTube, how often do you use headphones? 

Hello there! We are nearly three months into 2023, and I am not exactly making good on the promise I made at the start of this year. I hoped to return to a more regular upload schedule, but thus far, that has not happened. However, I come bearing good news: the script and audio for the next video is, finally, complete. I will begin editing later today or tomorrow, and expect to be done in a few weeks to a month.

The video is something I hinted at on this channel's three-year anniversary, and now it's finally happening: the California water crisis. Like so many of my projects, I planned it to be short and simple, but it quickly spiraled out of control and ballooned to about 20 minutes long. I started out wanting to make one very simple and brief point, but instead ended up going so far as to file a public records request with the CA Dept. of Water Resources. So, to say the least, it's very research-heavy, and is probably the most in-depth I've ever gone on one topic; I am quite proud of it.

I have several ideas for what the next video after this one will be, and with any luck, I can get into something vaguely resembling a slightly normal upload schedule from here on out. Then again, this isn't the first time I've said that, and it has never happened so far, so we'll see.

While we're here, a quick poll: on YouTube, do you use the default Light theme or Dark theme? 

At last! At long, long last, this godforsaken year is coming to its end! I'm not going to sugarcoat it: this has been, far and away, the worst year of my life. It's been an absolute decade of a year — I really can't believe that the war in Ukraine began only 10 months old, that I graduated high school only 6 months ago, that I published what I consider my best video only 4 months ago, and that the person instrumental in its creation died only 7 weeks ago. I guess that gives a small inkling of what I say when I mean it's been the worst year of my life, and that's really only the tip of the iceberg. Like I said, it's been a long year, and I'm just about ready to leave it behind forever.

I look to the coming year with both hope and apprehension. If there's one lesson I've learned this year, it's that our ability to predict even the near future is very limited, and a lot can change in an incredibly short time. There were long periods of this year where I simply forgot about this channel's existence because of how preoccupied I was with other things, but I'm sincerely hoping to return to something resembling normal, both in my life and on this channel, in the next year. 

The show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver ended the years 2016 and 2020 by blowing up massive signs labeled with those numbers, and sadly, I won't be getting that catharsis with 2022. So, instead, if you can all say it with me:

FUCK 2022. HAPPY FUCKING NEW YEARS! 

Hello there all! Upon the release of my last video, I mentioned that the next video may or may not be delayed to after the midterm elections. At the time, it was my hope that that would only be a precautionary warning, but alas, it's become reality, as these things tend to it seems. Just a couple days after the video released, my life went absolutely nuts and is only now beginning to slowly calm down. At the moment, I'm unsure on whether I'll still do the midterm (or now post-midterm) video next or if I'll postpone it to work on something else, because frankly, I haven't done any real work on the midterm video in weeks, and it might be more productive to move on to something else for a while. Would appreciate some feedback on this from you folks in the replies and such. I may also try to get back into streaming more over the next couple months, so there is that to look forward to. Thank you all for your support, see you soon enough!