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Next video is tomorrow morning (US). I made this one in Godot! 

Hey everyone, the next video is coming soon. It will involve blobs eating mangoes.

Also, there's a new shirt! It... also involves blobs eating mangoes.

I'm posting about the shirt early because it's part of DFTBA's black friday sale, which ends tomorrow. They're offering free shipping on orders over $50 (for example, a shirt and a blob plushie). And if you order by the end of the sale, it should ship in time for holiday gift giving.

Buying one is like buying me a mango. :)

 https://store.dftba.com/collections/primer 

24 hours 

Hey folks. The YouTube algorithm is starting to notice this evolution simulation video.

It uses a pretty simple environment where reproduction is determined by a creature's location, but the cool thing is that it uses mutating neural networks to model the creatures' brains that control their movement through variations on the environment. Maybe this is a spoiler, but the coolest part to me was how it ended up showing how mutations and genetic diversity are important when the environment can change.

Anyway, I can see why it's getting attention and thought you all might like it if you haven't seen it already. 

Perhaps the most common question I get in comments is about how I make the simulations. I use the Unity game engine, so I thought some of you might find this series useful. It's not a tutorial (at least not yet, it's still being made), but I think it's great learning advice, and it mirrors my own process of learning Unity. It seems like a great video to check out if you're trying to figure out where to start with your own journey learning to make games or simulations, or if you're just curious to see an overview of the tool. 

24 hours 

Hey everyone. A few announcements.  

First off, the next video is coming along in the next few weeks. It's a little too early to give an exact date, though.

Second, as a way of trying to connect a bit more often, I'm going to stream myself working on Wednesday mornings (US) for the next several weeks, potentially longer if it seems to be going well. I'll largely save Unity work for these streams, so if you've wanted to see how Primer videos are made, here's a chance. You can find the stream here:  twitch.tv/primerjustin
 
Third, related to connecting a bit more, times as they are, there is now a Primer Discord server. Just watching videos isn't a great way to learn deeply. The Discord server is a place to chat about the concepts from the videos, simulations in general, or related topics. You can find the server here:  https://discord.gg/NbruaNW 

Thanks to everyone who donated to the fundraiser for GiveDirectly over the past five weeks. We raised over $13k dollars! You're a truly amazing group of people. 

By far, the most common comment is a request to be able to play with the simulation.

Now, thanks to  ‪@Minutelabsio‬ , you can play with the model from Simulating Natural Selection!

Simulator:  https://labs.minutelabs.io/evolution-simulator/#/s/1/viewer?intro=1 Video introducing it:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nMo8... 

If you're among the 4-19% of respondents who don't think COVID-19 is really serious, I'm assuming you haven't looked at the data. 

If all goes well, the next video will be simulating disease dynamics, distinguishing between epidemics and endemic diseases, which will be important far into humanity's future. I'm not sure what the state of COVID will be when I get it done, though, so I'm sharing this graph now.

Please tell your friends.