Because I recently rediscovered this, sharing here:

All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.

--Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

NDT's not even going to mention that Santa probably solved or approximately solved the traveling salesman problem for a complete graph of several hundred million vertices embedded in a spherical topology?

Ffs that guy is annoying. Did not even do the math, which should have told him that hypersonic does not even scratch the surface unless he has an extremely wide drop-off region.

Santa is a shared delusion running on people’s minds in a distributed fashion, known in magic occult spheres as an egregore. All of those minds then manifest Santa by their own deeds and the spread of Santa memes. Santa‘s sled is everywhere at once as the sequence of delivered packages doesn’t matter. One Santa manifested everywhere through human thought and action.

On one of our Christmas themed university events this year there was a physics teacher who calculated how many reindeers would Santa need if we assume the friction vaporizes each one at a certain rate. Like if Santa had a line of 42000 reindeers in front of his sleigh he could go around the earth once before the last one turned medium rare.

I know I’m “not cool” and a “booger man” because of what I’m about to say, but NDT just likes to post fun stuff. He’s not being serious and he’s not being a know-it-all. Does anyone here read his books or listen to his podcast? He has a damn comedian on for every episode.

Y'all don't get it. Santa is a hive mind parasite that embeds itself in people and takes over at the later months of the year. It tends to hibernate the rest of the year although much like pollen, it seems to be waking earlier and earlier.

I genuinely hate his uh akshully approach to science

No because santa is a quantum being, he is in a superposition of being in every single house in the world and if someone sees him than only 1 house gets presents. Or something like that, I don't know quantum physics.

Santa likes rich kids more than poor ones.

i mean if the sleigh is designed properly it would be fine, it just the reindeer that need the magic and they have to have it in the first place to pull the sled.

clown-to-clown conversation

It's a clever quantum operation where all the houses are entangled in a superposition and moved into a state where all the presents are delivered. So when one kid opens the present the state collapses and all the presents are delivered.

Santa clones himself

Neil needs to be shoved into several lockers. I can't stand smug people.

Santa is not magic hes just really locked in and his reindeer are built different.

Soft magic systems aren't any fun. Change my mind.

Christianity, stranger things and paranormal activity are equally as uninteresting to me because it's "because I said so". Boooooooo, come up with some rules for your world.

Can we make a new category of fiction called "supernatural" SEPARATE from sci-fi and fantasy? Thanks, that would be nice.

The answer is most likely "the speedforce". The amount of handwaving used to justify going fast in these movies are overwhelming.

Christmas is a federal holiday now too

So, it's for everyone now. Not just Christians

Way more presents than in Tyson's original calculation

Magic is copium for people who can't accept or understand reality.

Why is Santa only delivering to Christians?

Lazy ass parents not bothering to update the believability of Santa Claus. Just say there are multiple Santa's all around the globe that work together. That's why Santa sometimes looks different when you see him at different places. That's why there can be a Black Santa, or Asian Santa.