WEBVTT

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(Exhaling)

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Hello.

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My name is Simone.

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You know how people tell you

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if you get nervous when onstage,

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picture people in the audience naked?

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Like it's this thing that's supposed
to make you feel better.

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But I was thinking --

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picturing all of you naked in 2018
feels kind of weird and wrong.

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Like, we're working really hard
on moving past stuff like that,

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so we need a new method of dealing
with if you get nervous onstage.

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And I realized that what I'd really like

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is that I can look at you as much
as you're looking at me --

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just to even things out a little bit.

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So if I had way more eyeballs,

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then we'd all be really
comfortable, right?

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So in preparation for this talk,

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I made myself a shirt.

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(Speaker rummages)

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(Laughter)

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It's googly eyes.

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It took be 14 hours

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and 227 googly eyes to make this shirt,

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And being able to look at you
as much as you're looking at me

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is actually only half
of the reason I made this.

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The other half is being able to do this.

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(Googly eyes shake)

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(Laughter)

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So I do a lot of things like this.

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I see a problem and I invent
some sort of solution to it.

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For example,

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brushing your teeth.

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Like, it's this thing we all have to do,

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it's kind of boring,

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and nobody really likes it.

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If there were any
seven-year-olds in the audience,

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they'd be like, "Yes!"

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So what about if you had
a machine that could do it for you?

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(Laughter)

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I call it ...

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I call it "The Toothbrush Helmet."

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(Laughter)

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(Robot moves)

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(Robot brushes)

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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So my toothbrush helmet is recommended
by zero out of 10 dentists,

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and it definitely did not
revolutionize the world of dentistry,

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but it did completely change my life

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because I finished making this toothbrush
helmet three years ago,

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and after I finished making it,

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I went into my living room

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and I put up a camera,

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and I filmed a seven-second
clip of it working.

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And by now,

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this is a pretty standard
modern-day fairy tale

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of girl posting on the internet,

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the internet takes the girl my storm,

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thousands of men voyage
into the comment sections

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to ask for her hand in marriage --

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(Laughter)

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she ignores all of them,

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starts a YouTube channel,

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and keeps on building robots.

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Since then, I've carved out this little
niche for myself on the internet

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as an inventor of useless machines,

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because as we all know,

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the easiest way to be
at the top of your field

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is to choose a very small field.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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So I run a YouTube channel
about my machines,

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and I've done things like
cutting hair with drones --

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(Drone flies)

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(Laughter)

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(Drone crashes)

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(Laughter)

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(Drone flies)

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(Drone crashes)

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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to a machine that helps me
wake up in the morning --

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(Alarm)

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(Laughter)

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(Video) Simone: Ow!

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to this machine that helps me
chop vegetables.

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(Knife chops)

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I'm not an engineer.

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I did not study engineering in school.

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But I was a super ambitious
student growing up.

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In middle school and high school
I had straight A's,

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and I graduated at the top of my year.

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On the flip side of that,

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I struggled with very severe
performance anxiety.

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Here's an email I sent
to my brother around that time.

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"You won't understand
how difficult it is for me to tell you,

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to confess this.

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I'm so freaking embarrassed.

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I don't want people
to think that I'm stupid.

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Now I'm starting to cry too.

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Damn."

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And no, I did not accidentally burn
our parents' house down.

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The thing I'm writing about in the email,

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and the thing I'm so upset about,

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is that I got a B on a math test.

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So something obviously happened
between here and here.

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(Laughter)

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One of those things was puberty --

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(Laughter)

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beautful time indeed.

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But moreover,

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I got interested in building robots,

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and I wanted to teach myself
about hardware.

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But building things with hardware,

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especially if you're teaching yourself,

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is something that's really
difficult to do.

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It has a high likelihood of failure,

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and moreover,

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it has a high likelihood
of making you feel stupid.

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And that was my biggest fear at the time.

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So I came up with a setup that would
guarantee success 100 percent of the time.

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With my setup,

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it would be nearly impossible to fail.

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And that was that instead
of trying to succeed,

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I was going to try to build
things that would fail.

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And even though I didn't
realize it at the time,

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building stupid things
was actually quite smart,

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because as I kept on
learning about hardware,

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for the first time in my life,

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I did not have to deal
with my performance anxiety.

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And as soon as I removed
all pressure and expectations from myself,

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that pressure quickly
got replaced by enthusiasm,

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and it allowed me to just play.

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So as an inventor,

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I'm interested in things
that people struggle with.

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It can be small things or big things
or medium-sized things,

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and something like giving a TED talk
presents this whole new set of problems

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that I can solve.

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And identifying a problem
is the first step in my process

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of building a useless machine.

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So before I came here,

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I sat down and I thought of some
of the potential problems I might have

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in giving this talk.

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Forgetting what to say;

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that people won't laugh --

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that's you --

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or even worse,

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that you'll laugh at the wrong things --

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that was an OK part to laugh at,

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thank you.

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(Laughter)

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Or that when I get nervous,

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my hands start shaking

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and I'm really self-conscious about it.

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Or that my fly has been
open this entire time,

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and all of you noticed but I didn't,

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but it's closed so we're
all good on that one.

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But one thing I'm actually really 
nervous about is my hands shaking.

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I remember when I was a kid,

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giving presentations in school,

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I would have my notes on a piece of paper,

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and I would put a notebook
behind the paper

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so that people wouldn't be able
to see the paper quivering.

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And I give a lot of talks.

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I know that about half of you
in the audience are probably like,

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"Building useless machines is really fun,

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but how is this in any way
or form a business?"

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And giving talks is a part of it.

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And the arrangers always put out
a glass of water for you onstage

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so you have something to drink
if you get thirsty,

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and I always so badly
want to drink that water,

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but I don't dare to pick the glass up,

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because then people might be able
to see that my hands are shaking.

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So what about a machine
that hands you a glass of water?

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Sold to the nervous girl
in the googly-eye shirt.

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Actually, I need to take this off
because I have a thing --

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(Googly eyes shake)

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Oh.

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(Laughter)

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(Laughter)

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I still don't know what to call this,

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but I think some sort
of "head orbit device,"

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because it rotates
this platform around you,

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and you can put anything on it.

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You can have a camera;

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you can get photos of your entire head.

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Like it's really --

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it's very versatile machine.

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(Laughter)

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OK, and I have --

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I mean, you can put some
snacks on it for example --

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if you want to.

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I have some popcorn here.

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And you just put a little bit like that.

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And then you want to --

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there's some sacrifices for science --

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just some popcorn falling on the floor.

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Let's do the long way around.

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(Robot spins)

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(Laughter)

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And then you have a little hand.

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You need to adjust the height of it,

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and you just do it by shrugging.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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It has a little hand.

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(Hand thwacks)

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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I just bumped my mic off,

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but I think we're all good.

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OK, also I need to chew this popcorn,

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so if you guys could just clap
your hands a little bit more --

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(Applause)

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OK, so it's like your own little
personal solar system,

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because I'm a millennial,

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so I want everything to revolve around me.

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(Laughter)

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Back to the glass of water,

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that's what we're here for.

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So, I promise --

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I mean, it still has --

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it doesn't have any water in it,

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I'm sorry.

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But I still need to work
on this machine a little bit

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because I still need to pick up the glass
and put it on the platform,

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but if your hands
are shaking a little bit,

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nobody's going to notice

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because you're wearing a very
mesmerizing piece of equipment.

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So, we're all good.

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OK.

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(Robot spins)

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(Singing)

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Oh no, it got stuck.

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Isn't it comforting that even robots
sometimes get stage fright?

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It just gets stuck a little bit.

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It's very human of them.

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Oh wait, let's go back a little bit,

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and then --

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(Glass falls)

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(Laughter)

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Isn't it a beautiful time to be alive?

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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So as much as my machines can seem
like simple engineering slapstick,

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I realized that I stumbled
on something bigger than that.

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It's this expression of joy and humility
that often gets lost in engineering,

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and for me it was a way
to learn about hardware

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without having my performance
anxiety get in the way.

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I often get asked if I think I'm ever
going to build something useful,

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and maybe someday I will.

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But the way I see it,

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I already have

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because I've built myself this job,

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and it's something that I could
never have planned for,

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or that I could --

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(Applause)

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It's something that I could
never have planned for.

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Instead it happened just because
I was enthusiastic about what I was doing,

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and I was sharing that enthusiasm
with other people.

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To me there's a true beauty
of making useless things,

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because it's this acknowledgment

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that you don't always know
what the best answer is.

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And it turns off that voice in your head

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that tells you that you know
exactly how the world works.

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And maybe a toothbrush helmet
isn't the answer,

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but at least you're asking the question.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)