The world depends on a collection of strange items. They're not cheap

Why HN readers recommended it

Whenever NIST's pricey peanut butter or reference materials come up, commenters point to this as the clear explanation of why they exist.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

Veritasium

Topic

nist reference materials

Format

explainer

Level

general

HN recommenders in dataset

6

HN mentions in dataset

10

Recommendation years in dataset

2023–2026

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• You're forgetting the NIST. They operate at a net profit, selling things like Standard Jars of Peanut Butter for equipment calibration ($1,069 per unit). There's a cool Veritasium video on it: [VIDEO]

• Probably the one linked above by Tom Scott, or this one by Veritasium: [VIDEO] The Veritasium one mentions NIST peanut butter specifically, even.

• Veritasium [1] did a video of exactly this and explains why it exists [at 2m35s]: > An ordinary jar of peanut butter costs less than $5. And on the label you can see the ingredients and the amounts of different nutrients like protein, fats, sugar, …