Podcasts about ehh

The boys are almost back! Train is late, Rosen is watching the Mets, and Brian is kind of tired. Ehh, could be worse!

Ehh, it's an episode.

On the first half of today's show the boys jump into their round table. Jae is feeling EHH as we move into 2025 and Nick is feeling UGH. Jae talks…

Ever notice that the best part of a holiday treat isn't actually eating it...The best part is the anticipation leading up to it!​​​​​​​It's like that cookie exchange you and your friends have been planning all week? Somehow, those cookies end up tasting better in your imagination than they do in real life.Funny how anticipation works, right?So here we are in the holidays.And it's a minefield packed with challenges as irresistible as they are delicious.Everywhere you turn... it's temptation.Cookies piled high at the office. Big family dinners you can't escape. Drinks that insist on refilling themselves.And let's be honest, we've all made those promises to “be good” only to watch it all unravel.But think about this… maybe the key isn't swearing off treats or dodging the dessert table? Maybe the key is leaning into the lead-up!Think about it.The magic of the holidays isn't just about the cookies on your plate. It's the smells. The anticipation. The story you tell yourself about what's coming.Here's a scenario for you—You're at a party. The dessert table is stacked, and every treat has your name on it.But instead of diving in, you pause.You tell yourself, “Ehh. Not yet. I'll hold off for a minute.”So you sip your drink, chat with friends, and soak it all in.And when you finally grab that treat, it's not just dessert anymore.It's a moment.And in that moment, you're calm. You're in control. And you're actually enjoying it.Feels way different than the stress of avoiding everything, doesn't it?Anticipation is your secret weapon.It's not about saying no—it's about saying “not yet.”And that tiny shift of what we tell ourselves turn impulsive moments into intentional moments.So… how would your holiday season look if you made anticipation part of your plan?Tune in and let's dig into this strategy and share how you can make this your most mindful—and satisfying—season yet.*Tried every diet out there and nothing sticks?Imagine having a coach checking in on you EVERY day—keeping you on track and adapting your plan to whatever life throws your way.A personalized, 1:1 coaching program designed just for you can really change the game.➤ https://www.mybodytutor.com/coaching/weight-lossWhy don't we talk and see if we're a good fit for each other? Let's set up a chat.➤ https://www.mybodytutor.com/book-a-callWhat've you got to lose?

Podkast nagrany przed WIELKIM Stary Gracz Party 2024. Przezimował tydzien bo grudzień. Ehh. Rafał grał w nowego Indianę. Wszyscy wiemy że jest świetny. Tam 4 godziny scenek, niesamowity Troy Baker i możliwość machania łopatą. Musi pojawić się The Thing. Ja ciągle w COD Black Ops 6. Bardzo mi się podoba czerpanie z innych tytułów. Od Prey po Control. Z plotek nowy Spielberg. Na Prime zaraz Secret Level, no i Reacher. Na Apple Rozdzielenie S02. W kinach Mickey7. Oglądaliśmy: Anatomia Upadku, Strefa Interesów i Dzień Szakala z Eddie Redmayne. Ja zachęcam do niedocenionego “Mężczyzny imieniem Otto”. Stary nie zachęca do “Longlegs”. Potem “Pokój Nauczycielski” gdzie kradzież przeradza się w dramat. Rewelacyjna IMO Leonie Benesch. Nie oglądajcie Cross'a na Prime i Drogówki po latach. A Obcy Romulus już na płytach. Emejzing już nie emejzing bo używany iPhone padł. Ale już działa. I nie trzeba mieć 40 lat aby przejść do Apple'a. Wstępniak. (00:01) Zaraz impreza Tematy główne. (03:10) Kolekcjonerka Indiany i sama Indiana (17:20) The Thing REMASTERED (19:20) COD Blops 6 (21:40) Serialowe i filmowe newsy (30:20) Anatomia Upadku [Max] (32:50) Strefa Interesów [Max] (35:40) Dzień Szakala [SkyShowtime] (40:16) Longlegs (44:20) Pokój Nauczycielski [Max] (48:50) Cross [Prime] (55:40) Drogówka [Netflix] (59:40) Wszystkie koleżanki mają choinkę O nas więcej, tu też wszystkie linki! https://www.ahasuper.pl Fajnie? Niefajnie? Napisz do nas! ahasuper@ahasuper.pl Współpraca reklamowa: info@digitalaudio.pl Gdzie nas słuchać? https://anchor.fm/bartosz-drozdowski  Gdzie nas oglądać? https://www.youtube.com/@ahasuper Aha Super na fejsie, https://www.facebook.com/AhaSuper01 Aha Super na insta! https://www.instagram.com/AhaSuper01 #drozdowski #szychowski #ahasuper #podkast #podcast #lifestyle #seriale #filmy #komiksy #gry #kultura #dzieci #rodzina #giełda #btc

(3:00) Three TD loss to a 5 loss Florida team at home. Just awful.(8:00) Barring contractual catastrophe, Gus Malzahn slated to be next offensive coordinator at FSU(29:00) Gus creates good opportunities for RB and OL but QBs and WRs? Ehh....(46:00) Flag fiasco(50:00) DC vibes(55:00) Portal might actually have some dudes in it(1:00:00) Will the ACC get two teams into the CFP?Music: unwritten law - Please Come Home For Christmasvitaminenergy.com | PROMO: warchantbogo | buy one, get one free!

(3:00) Three TD loss to a 5 loss Florida team at home. Just awful.(8:00) Barring contractual catastrophe, Gus Malzahn slated to be next offensive coordinator at FSU(29:00) Gus creates good opportunities for RB and OL but QBs and WRs? Ehh....(46:00) Flag fiasco(50:00) DC vibes(55:00) Portal might actually have some dudes in it(1:00:00) Will the ACC get two teams into the CFP?Music: unwritten law - Please Come Home For Christmasvitaminenergy.com | PROMO: warchantbogo | buy one, get one free!

Il gelato italiano - Spendieren Sie einen Cafè (1€)? Donate a coffee (1€)? https://ko-fi.com/italiano Livello B1Happy 1st Advent - open e new door of italian language an culture every day on Luisa's Advent Calendar!Einen schönen 1. Advent - öffnen Sie jeden Tag ein Türchen an Luisa's Adventskalender - hier!Buongiorno cari amici e amanti dell'italiano e benvenuti all'episodio numero 165.Oggi vi farò venire l'acquolina in bocca. Ehh. Sì, sì vedrete che episodio delizioso oggi! Non sapete cosa vuol dire „avere l'acquolina in bocca“? Beh l'acquolina in bocca è quella sensazione che proviamo in bocca quando vediamo o sentiamo parlare di qualcosa di buono, in tedesco potremmo tradurlo con „euch wird das Wasser im Mund zusammen laufen“ e in inglese „to lick one's chops“.Ora vi svelo il mistero: vi parlo di gelato. Il gelato piace praticamente a tutti e così ho pensato di parlarvi della sua storia, di spiegarvi i vari tipi di gelato, di raccontarvi alcune curiosità e darvi anche una ricetta con il gelato. Partiamo allora alla scoperta del gelato.Non si sa bene quando sia stato inventato per la prima volta. C'è qualcuno che addirittura fa risalire le origini del gelato alla Bibbia, quando Isacco offre a suo padre Abramo latte di capra misto a neve, inventando così il primo „mangia e bevi“ della storia.....The full transcript of this Episode is available via "Luisa's learn Italian Premium", Premium is no subscription and does not incur any recurring fees. You can just shop for the materials you need or want and shop per piece. Prices start at 0.20 Cent (i. e. Eurocent). - das komplette Transcript / die Show-Notes zu allen Episoden sind über Luisa's Podcast Premium verfügbar. Den Shop mit allen Materialien zum Podcast finden Sie unterhttps://premium.il-tedesco.itLuisa's Podcast Premium ist kein Abo - sie erhalten das jeweilige Transscript/die Shownotes sowie zu den Grammatik Episoden Übungen die Sie "pro Stück" bezahlen (ab 25ct). https://premium.il-tedesco.itMehr info unter www.il-tedesco.it bzw. https://www.il-tedesco.it/premiumMore information on www.il-tedesco.it or via my shop https://www.il-tedesco.it/premium

This movie really needs no introduction and it's a wonder why we waited so long to do it. Is it a Thanksgiving movie? No. But are you going to be using a blade to cut your turkey soon? Ehh? Ehhhh?!?! Coincidence or not- this movie taught us to avoid "Blood Raves". That sunscreen and motorcycle helmets protect vampires from exploding and that Wesley Snipes is the ultimate bad-ass. Join us as we give a modern day review of 1998's Blade. •0:00:00 - Introductions •0:03:30 - Memories of first viewing •0:10:30 - Pertinent movie details  •0:15:30- Critical and fan reviews •0:25:00 - Scene by scene breakdown  •1:50:00 - Modern day ratings —————————————————————— SPONSORS: **DraftKings- Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app and use code CONFUSED —————————————————————— **Support us at http://patreon.com/confusedbreakfast for bonus weekly episodes, voting on upcoming movies, giving your modern-day ratings on our movies and much more. Special thanks to our executive producers- Josh Miller, Starling, Bud Larsen and Michael Guiliano. Welcome to our newest members - Danny Laudati, Samantha Scott, Joe Allen, PO Muff, Charles W Forsythe, Allen Cline, Blake Zink. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you have a weight loss goal? Should you write your goals down? Should you read your goals everyday? When it comes to goals, there are so many questions, suggestions, and “experts” telling you what to do. And if you ever meet with a trainer or nutritionist, there's a good chance their first words might even be - Okay, what are your goals? Goals are everywhere! And they're so important, right? I mean … goals are good, right? Ehh, they can be. But it's not always that simple. There's a fundamental truth in life that definitely applies to your goals. It can possibly even cause your goal to work against you and maybe even cause you to quit to your diet or weight loss program! Today, I'm going to explain this “basic truth”, two problems that it can cause when it comes to your body and losing weight, and then I'll give my specific recommendation on how to avoid these pitfalls. Plus, I'll offer my two cents on the best way to pursue your weight loss goals.COREY'S ANTI-DIET CLASS: http://www.AntiDietClass.comFREE MENOPAUSE DOWNLOAD: http://coreylittlecoaching.com/menopausePURCHASE RISE NUTRITION PRODUCTSWebsite: https://challenge2rise.com/Elite Omega-3 on Amazon: https://a.co/d/3dgilSGEssential Nutrients on Amazon: https://a.co/d/6rcULakElite Nutrients on Amazon: https://a.co/d/duQn1TD

Mom and the Neighbor.by Krosis. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories.On the way to school, Ed asked Perry, "So where are you from, originally?"*Long way from here, Ed...not even sure you'd have a proper frame of reference.*"How am I hearing you in my head?"*I told you before, dude, we are one. If you work at it, you won't even have to vocalize for me to 'hear' you.*"Really? Cool." He continued walking. "Hey, Perry?"There was no response. "Perry?""Knock knock!" Eve Doughtry called out, looking in through her neighbor Darla's screen door. Her friend's pretty face poked out from the kitchen."Eve! C'mon in!"She did so, and rounded the corner to find Darla's wide ass pointing right at her as the woman pushed a tray of muffins into the oven. Eve suddenly had a strong urge to flip the woman's skirt up and...She shook her head. And what? Where had that come from? she wondered.Darla stood up and turned around, a vision of brunette beauty, 5'3" and voluptuous. "Lemonade?" she asked.Eve nodded, and they sat at the kitchen table to chat. After shooting the shit about the usual subjects, Eve asked her, "So how's the sex life?"Darla spluttered around a mouthful of lemonade. "Cripes, Eve, that's forward, even for you. Umm...I guess things could be better. We'd been trying for a baby, but no luck. We're kinda losing hope, so there hasn't been much action lately. Oh, why am I telling you all this?" She took in her friend Eve, looking as gorgeous as ever, especially with those huge boobs that had only grown larger after having a child. She sighed, jealous.Eve's eyes bored into hers. "Well, we were a lot closer at one point."Darla blushed. "That was when we were younger. We're both married now.""Hm."Beeeep!"Oh, my muffins..." Darla got up and headed back to the oven.Eve got to her feet as well, unzipped her slacks, and pulled down her panties as she came up behind her friend. After Darla placed the hot muffin tin on the stove top and closed the oven door, Eve grabbed her from behind, one hand moving to Darla's breast while the other went under her skirt."Eek! Eve, what are you...ohh..."Eve's hand slipped into Darla's panties and expertly manipulated her clit. "Lean forward," Eve instructed her, and she did.As she had imagined when she first walked in, Eve flipped Darla's skirt up onto her back and moved her hips forward, nudging aside the woman's panties and slotting the head of her new 3" blue cock between her friend's vaginal lips."Oh my God, Eve, what is that? Oh..." Darla felt what seemed to be a small penis pushing into her wet pussy. "Are you wearing a strap-on? That's so naughty...umm..."Eve's small penis was soon buried inside her friend's pussy, and she pulled back to slam it into her again, making Darla cry out in pleasure. "Take off your blouse," Eve urged her."Ugh...ugh...ugh..." Darla groaned as her friend thrust that hard alien cock inside her. She tried to unbutton her top, but then just gave up and pulled it up and over her head.With her quick fingers, Eve quickly unfastened Darla's bra, freeing her B-cup breasts, and moved her hands to them, squeezing those mounds and lightly pinching her nipples. "Hmm...maybe I'll fill you up with a baby..." Eve whispered into Darla's ear."Oh God!" Darla moaned. "You always know what to say to make me hot, Evie! Fuck me!"She did, pounding her new cock inside her friend's pussy. Soon, Eve felt the stirrings of an orgasm, one much like the squirting ones from the previous night with her husband. She thrust faster, feeling her new cock throbbing as her release approached.All through the previous day and night, Perry's blue sperm had been at work inside Ed's mother. Unable to find an egg to inseminate, they swam on, eventually finding one of her ovaries. Sensing the similarities between that organ and Ed's testicles, and with their need to propagate all-encompassing, they transformed that female gonad, while also increasing the mass of her clitoris and connecting that organ up to her new, blue testicle."Huh!" Eve cried out and thrust hard into Darla's pussy. Her new testicle produced a burst of blue sperm, which shot down through her pelvis and rushed up the shaft of her cock. Her new blue penis ejaculated hot alien seed into Darla's overheated vagina."Oh God...!" Darla cried out in orgasm as she felt the hot liquid shoot inside her. "What is...?! Oh!""Perry!?"*Oh, sorry, Ed, got distracted by something. What's up?*"I was gonna ask what your plans were here on Earth. You just want to be my penis forever?"*Sure, Ed! What more do I need?*Darla lay on the kitchen floor, her body intertwined with Eve's, breathing heavily. She stared at her friend's now 4" blue penis, wondering how that came to be, but strangely not worried about it.Deep inside her, Eve's blue sperm swam, searching...Ed and the Librarian. "So, when can we go fuck Charisma?" Ed whisper-asked Perry in a stall in the boy's bathroom at school. The senior student had tried to telepathically talk to the alien, but it hadn't worked. Perry insisted that he'd get it eventually, but for now he had to at least whisper.*You have to get her alone somewhere...where can we do that?* Perry asked him in his head."I...I dunno...I didn't really think about this very well, did I? If she's not in class, she's always surrounded by her friends. It's not like I can just pull you out and you'll hypnotize all of them...er, can you?"*Let's just stick to one at a time, okay, Ed? Rome wasn't built in a day.*Ed paused. "Rome? What do you know about Rome?"*I know what you know, Ed, now that we're joined.*"So...you know what I'm thinking, at all times?"*Ehh...I try not to listen in too much, but I need to know more about your world, bud. You're my Encyclopaedia Eddica.*The bell rang and Ed headed to class. A couple rows over sat Charisma, the bubble-bodied blonde cheerleader, in a tight top and short skirt, neither of which were appropriate for the school dress code, but her mostly male teachers never complained. Ed sighed and tried to think of a way to get her alone. Eventually, the teacher asked him a question, and Ed looked like an idiot when he had to ask him to repeat it. After that, he concentrated on his work.When the bell rang for lunch, Ed grabbed his stuff and followed Charisma. She would be heading to meet her friends, but in the meantime, maybe he'd have a chance to get her alone! As he entered the busy hallway, he was buffeted by the cross-channels of hangry teenagers, unconcerned about his paltry needs. He hopped up into the air for a better vantage point, spied Charisma heading down one hall, and rushed after her.He was always just a little too slow, getting blocked by people who were crossing in front of him, or stopping outright when they encountered one of their friends. He didn't want to start shoving people...that could get you a bloody nose! Finally, he rounded a corner and she was gone.He heard the library door close and followed, though he didn't know why Charisma would be in there...reading hardly seemed like one of her pastimes.*Now, now, Ed!* Perry admonished him, *Are you making assumptions based on someone's looks?*He could see Mrs. Parker at her desk. The slightly overweight, thirtysomething brunette woman, with her glasses perched on her hawkish nose, would be the epitome of a dour old librarian after another 20 years or so, Ed thought. He stepped up to her. "Um, Mrs. Parker? Did Charisma come through here?"She looked up. "The cheerleader? Heh...she wouldn't come in here by choice, Ed.""See?" Ed subvocalized to Perry."See what?" Mrs. Parker asked him.*Hmm...I think we have something she can see, Ed...* Perry suggested.Suddenly, Ed felt desire surge through him, and his eyes roamed Mrs. Parker's stacked form. Her breasts might actually be larger than his mom's, he thought. He took a quick look around and, seeing no one else in the library, unzipped his jeans. "Have a look at this, Mrs. Parker."She couldn't help but stare as Perry slithered out from Ed's zipper hole. "Umm...oh wow..." she moaned, her eyes going glassy."Is there somewhere we can go to be alone, Mrs. P?"Soon, in the library office, the curvy librarian was sucking Perry into her mouth. Ed groaned, enjoying the feeling of his new cock being fellated. Once again, he marvelled that he could feel the alien appendage as if it was his own penis."Let me see your boobs, Mrs. P." She quickly unfastened her sweater and blouse, and let those bra-covered EE-cups out to play. "Oh damn..." Ed moaned as she unfastened the bra and those massive mammaries sprang out."Let me..." she moved back and surrounded Perry with her boobs, moving them up and down the alien penis' shaft."Holy shit..." Ed had never felt anything like it, and Perry was long enough that she could continue to suck him on the downstrokes.After a few minutes of this, she got up, pulled down her skirt, hose, and panties, and bent over her desk. "Please..." she urged him.Ed was super hard now, and moved up behind her. Perry, eager as always, contorted and adjusted himself so that he could insinuate himself into the woman's wet pussy."Oh..." she moaned, "you're so big, Ed..."Once Perry was inside her, Ed started to thrust, making them moan. Ed realized that Perry had done something to him to get him into the mood to fuck her, as he hadn't really thought of the older woman as sexy before. There was no stopping him now, though! He continued to thrust his blue 10 inches into the wanton woman."Ugh! Ugh! Oh, so deep..." she moaned and orgasmed. "O-h! Oh, Ed, I may never be able to have sex with my husband again after you..."Ed felt proud at hearing that, though it was all Perry, not him, he realized. Well, he reconsidered, he was the one moving his hips, so maybe he could take a little credit? He continued to thrust, and reached around to fondle her massive boobs."Mmm..." she moaned as he pawed at her mammaries. They had grown during each of her two pregnancies. They caused her chronic back discomfort, but nobody could beat her in the breasts department. It seemed that Ed liked them, so she was happy.Then she frowned. There was something bothering her...pregnancy? Why was she thinking about that? She shook her head...she'd come back to that thought later, after this hot sex.Ed's fingers finally found Mrs. P's nipples and pinched them lightly. She gave a little squeak and came again, and this time it pushed Ed over the edge into his own orgasm. He thrust into her hard and fast, feeling his balls boil up a load of cum, which pleasurably rushed up his shaft and splashed deep inside the woman's unprotected reproductive system."Oh...!" she cried out, her waning orgasm ramping back up upon feeling Ed's hot cum fill her depths. Her spasming cervix was deluged by potent alien cum.Finally, Ed collapsed upon the woman's back, gasping. He could feel Mrs. P's pussy, still cumming as it sucked the last few drops from Perry. When she stopped vibrating, Ed pulled out, and blue-tinged semen splashed onto the office floor. "Oops! Sorry..." he offered."It's...okay, Ed..." she breathed, slowly coming back to reality. Then she stood up. "Oh! I...we...oh no! What did we do, Ed?!"Ed had re-zipped and was heading out the door. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone, Mrs. P; our secret." He gave her a wink and then went to go grab some lunch. Darla watched Eve's back as her old friend and neighbor walked back home. She couldn't believe what they had done together, Eve taking what seemed to be an actual blue penis and fucking Darla right there in the kitchen! It had been incredibly hot, especially when Eve suggested that she might even impregnate Darla, as bizarre a statement that was.Her clit itched a little, and she gave it a scratch through her skirt. She shuddered at how pleasurably sensitive it was.Deep inside the woman, Eve's blue sperm had already found Darla's waiting egg and quickly laid claim to it, one alien spermatozoa piercing the cellular membrane and injecting its genetic payload inside. Under The Bleachers. The next day, Ed once again tried to get Charisma alone during lunch, but she managed to find her friends first. The clique of cheerleaders giggled at each other over some stupid thing.*C'mon, Ed! Let's find someone else.* Perry suggested."Mrs. Parker again?" Ed considered, heading toward the library.*Naw...someone new, guy. Don't you want to 'play the field'?*Inspired, Ed headed out to the playing field, but everyone there seemed to be in groups. Then he had an idea and went under the bleachers, where he found a couple of seniors: Cora...something, and another girl he didn't know."Ugh...our secret spot isn't so secret anymore...seeya, Cora," the other girl said as she tossed the remains of her cigarette and trudged off the other way.Cora, an elfin, auburn-haired retro grunge chick, with the requisite flannel overshirt and oversized jeans, regarded Ed as he approached. "Ed, right? You smoke?" She took a puff from her cig."Umm...no," Ed responded. She knew his name?"Then what'cha doin' here? This is the unofficial smoke pit." The school had closed the official one the previous year. She held out her half-finished cancer stick to him.Ed paused only a moment before he took it and pulled a drag off of it. Then he started hacking up a lung.Cora grabbed it back with a smirk. "Poser." Then she paused, looking at his crotch. "What the hell is that?"Ed looked where her eyes were pointing. Perry was writhing within his pants. "Perry?""Who's Perry?" Cora asked, unable to tear her eyes away from Ed's undulating crotch. "Jeez! What's going on in there?"*Woo! What was that? I feel good...lemme out to play, Ed!*"The nicotine, maybe?" Ed could feel Perry straining at the confines of his jeans. "Okay, just a sec..." He unfastened his pants and Perry sprang out, hard and pointing at Cora."Holy shiuh..." The grunge girl's mouth hung open as Perry gave her his alien whammy. "I gotta...gotta have that in me, Ed..." She said and pulled off her overshirt, showing off her braless, undershirt-covered A-cup breasts, her poky nipples quite visible through the thin fabric. Then she was pulling her oversized jeans off, revealing surprisingly small hips and slim legs. Why had she been hiding her cute, sexy body with those bulky clothes? Ed wondered.She pulled down her undies and bent over, grabbing onto one of the bars that held up the bleachers. "Get that huge thing in me..." she commanded him breathily, and he stepped forward to grab her hips.Perry dipped down and slithered between her legs, making her gasp. "Oh, wow, that's...uh...oh shit..." She bent over more as Perry's head slipped between her vaginal lips, and Ed thrust in, his passage aided by her suddenly wet pussy. "Ahh fuck..." she moaned, "you're so fucking big..."As Ed thrust into the mesmerized teen, he pulled her shirt up and reached under to massage her small breasts. He felt her pussy grip him tightly, and she moaned as he stimulated her boobies.Perry noticed mucus around Cora's cervix, and remembered the lady doctor from the other day, as well as their neighbor Darla when Eve, Ed's mom, had fucked her with her new blue cock. Darla had mentioned that she was trying to get pregnant, and Eve's blue sperm had found an egg waiting inside her...that was it! He was figuring these humans out, bit by bit.Ed had found Cora's nipples and pinched them between his fingers. "Uh! Uh!" she cried out, and came again."Oh shit..." Cora's grasping pussy pushed Ed over the edge, and he thrust hard inside the slight girl. Pleasure rushed up his oversized cock, and then he blasted blue alien seed deep inside her.As she felt her fertile insides inundated by hot sperm, her nipple-induced orgasm was supplemented by a full vaginal one, and she moaned in pleasure, her needy pussy urging Ed's cum deeper inside her unprotected reproductive system. Finally, she slumped forward, barely able to hold herself up."I...I gotcha...you're in trouble!"Ed turned and saw the girl that had left earlier, now pointing her phone at them, clearly recording. He pulled out of Cora, making her gasp at the sudden evacuation, and turned to the newcomer."You...you keep away with that...thah..." The girl dropped her arms to her side, her jaw dropping open as her mind was ensorcelled by Perry's writhing form.*I got her...your turn, Ed.*My turn? Ed wondered, and then he stepped forward. "Gimme your phone." She handed it over, and he quickly stopped the recording and deleted it. When he turned back to the girl, she was on her knees and reaching for Perry.Unlike Cora, this girl had larger breasts, probably a C-cup, he figured. She wore a t-shirt and shorts, and he thought that he recognized her from the soccer team. She was pretty, not beautiful, but she had nice curly brown hair and an athletic figure. She took the first few inches of Perry into her mouth, and Ed moaned at the feeling of her warm mouth around his cock. Despite having just cum inside of Cora, he was soon ready to go again.There was no way to lay down under the bleachers without getting dirty, so he had this new girl do as Cora had, grabbing hold of a supporting bar and bending over after shucking her shorts. As with Cora, her juicy pussy allowed Perry easy access to her sodden depths.Ed was amazed that two women's vaginas could be so different. Cora's had been tight but slick, but this girl's pussy was looser, but also somehow less slippery, her vaginal walls pulling at the skin of his cock as he thrust and withdrew. Both were amazing...Perry had been right to suggest fucking a variety of women, Ed realized. He pulled up her shirt to get at her boobs, though he had to unfasten her bra first, and then his hands were mashing her more substantial breasts between his fingers, making her gasp in pleasure.Cora...he looked around. She was laying on the ground, unconscious, near the supporting bar he had fucked her against. "Did you knock Cora out?" he asked Perry subvocally.*Yeah...controlling more than one at a time's a strain, Ed. I brain-blitzed her so you can do this one...what's her name?*Ed considered. "You know what? I don't even care." And he thrust faster into the athletic girl.*Good for you, man! You'll be a player in no time!*"Oh God..." the girl moaned, "...oh God..." Then as Ed thrust one last time and buried his cock as deep as possible inside her, she cried out, "Oh God!" as she felt Ed's hot sperm bathe the walls of her vulnerable pussy, the sensation causing her own orgasm to wash over her. "Uh! Uh! Uh!"Then the bell rang, signalling the end of lunch. Ed's empty stomach growled, but his cock felt damn good, and that was what mattered, he figured. He pulled out, causing the girl to gasp and sink to her knees, Ed's white semen splashing out and soaking the ground between them. Then he zipped up and headed back to class. In the afternoon, a census taker arrived at Ed's house. Eve invited the woman in before seducing her and filling her up with a load of blue sperm. The woman left on unsteady legs, her body inundated with alien seed, swimming deeper into her vulnerable insides...Spring Break, and a visit from extended family.For the rest of the week, Ed was unable to get the primary object of his lust, the cheerleader Charisma, alone. He made do with any other senior students or teachers that he could find, though, filling them up with his alien sperm, unmindful of the danger. Then Spring Break started."Okay, when Erin's family gets here, we're going to have you..." Ed's mother Eve pointed at her husband Bob, "in Ed's room with Dave. I'll be sleeping with my sister in our room, since I haven't done that in forever, and then the kids will take the living room, like normal."Ed scratched his head. Normally Aunt Erin and Uncle Dave would take his room. This changeup was odd."I don't wanna sleep on the floor, Eve," Dave told her.She gave him the look that told him that she was done arguing. "Just blow up the air mattress, Bob; it's only one night.""Humph." When his aunt's family arrived, Ed was surprised to see that his strawberry blonde cousin Julie had grown even taller in the last year, about 5'10" now, though the 18-year-old's willowy figure had filled out as well, becoming more substantial in the hips and bust. He waited for Perry to say something about the gorgeous young woman, but he had been strangely silent for most of the day. Ed hoped that the alien parasite was finally realizing that his family was off limits. Next door, Eve's neighbor Darla had invited another neighbor, Mrs. Chen, over for tea. Darla's new 5" blue cock, overstimulated by the other woman's orgasming pussy, ejaculated alien seed deep inside her. Across town, the curvy librarian Mrs. Parker was sawing her new 5" blue cock into the juicy pussy of Mrs. Abed, the co-owner of the local convenience store. Bags of chips rained down from the shelves from their frenzied coupling. After a sumptuous dinner, the extended family sat down to play some board games. Ed and Julie's team stomped the parents at Pictionary, but then the brother-in-laws Bob and Dave destroyed everyone with their ability to remember useless facts in Trivial Pursuit. Finally, it was time for bed.The taller Julie took the couch, of course. Ed had mixed feelings when he found that he had grown just enough that he could no longer fully stretch out on the love seat. After some uncomfortable adjustments, he finally fell asleep. Erin, Ed's Aunt, woke up to find what she thought was her husband sidling up to her, his hard cock poking into her thigh. "Oh, Dave..." she moaned, and raised her leg to allow his penis to slip between her thighs. Her bedmate slipped lower, and she could feel that hard cock start to press between her vaginal folds.Then she remembered that she wasn't at home, and had gone to bed with her sister. "Wait, wha?"Then Eve thrust, burying her now 6" blue penis deep inside her sister's pussy.Erin gasped, feeling pleasure blossoming from within her. She moved a hand to her partner's chest and found her sister's substantial breasts. "Wha? Evie? How?""Shush!" Eve responded as she started to thrust in and out of her sister's well-lubricated pussy.Erin moved her hand down, between her sister's thighs, and felt the impossible cock there. It wasn't a strap-on dildo; there was no belt or harness. Everything felt unreal...was she dreaming? she wondered. She felt Eve's fingers move her hand aside so that she could thrum her sister's clit. "Oh..." Her nipples were so hard under the fabric of her nightie...she lay back and enjoyed what her sister was doing to her, the craziness of it not fully registering in her conscious mind.Soon, she felt her orgasm rise from her clitoris and where that wonderful cock slid along her most private of places. "Oh, Evie...Evie...Unh!""Yes.." Eve hissed, and thrust deep. Her own orgasm rushed up through her cock and injected blue sperm inside her orgasming sister's pussy.Erin's eyes flew open as she felt that amazing cock throb, and then hot cum splashed deep inside her. That sensation took her orgasm and rebounded it through her body. Her back arched in pleasure as her cervix spasmed open, allowing her sister's alien sperm to seep through into her fertile, forbidden depths. "Uh! Uh! Uh..." "Perry?" Ed couldn't sleep. Julie's breathing was regular now, so he figured it was safe to talk.*Oh! Hey, Ed!*"You didn't answer me all evening. Were you sleeping?"*Naw...I gotta make sure things are progressing well, y'know?*"Progressing?""Who are you talking to? Are you on the phone?" Julie asked. A light shone at him from the couch."Ack!" Ed cried out, covering his eyes against the sudden glare."What...is that?"Oh no! Ed realized that Perry was moving. "Don't look, Julie! I'm not decent!" He moved his hands down to try to cover up, but Perry slipped out of Ed's underwear and thrashed his blanket off."Oh my god! Is that your penis..." The light flipped up to illuminate the ceiling as her phone fell to the carpeted floor.Ed froze. "Julie?" He couldn't see, as the beam had been right in his eyes and now it wasn't. He blinked, trying to get his eyes to adjust to the gloom, and then he felt her grab his cock."Julie, no! I mean, Perry, no!" Ed hissed. "She's my cousin!"*Mother this, cousin that! You know what, Ed? I think you need to expand your horizons!* With that, Ed felt his cock get harder as a rush of desire roared through him."Oh no..." Ed moaned as Julie took Perry into his mouth. "Julie..." She grasped his shaft and stroked, making him feel tremendously good as he lay back. Then she took her mouth off of him and he felt her climbing on top of him. "No..." Then Perry was slithering up inside her.*Mmm! Some yummy blood up in here! Munch munch munch!*Ed raised his head. "Oh shit! Was she a virgin?"*Nope! I had no problem getting in. The blood seems to be coming from further inside.*Julie was on her period, Ed realized. Well, at least there was no way that he was going to get her pregnant...He paused. He had been fucking women every day since Perry had arrived, without a condom...why hadn't he even considered that he could get those women pregnant? Was this Perry's doing, or was he just that dense?*Fuck fuck fuck!* Perry urged him.Julie was grinding herself down on him now, having finally been able to take all 10 inches of him inside herself. Ed raised his knees, grabbed his cousin's rounded hips, and lifted her up and down upon his cock."Huh! Uh! Oh..." she moaned, feeling Ed's huge member filling her, unlike her boyfriend with his mere six incher. She pulled her t-shirt off, setting her B-cup breasts free, and now that Ed's eyes had adjusted to the scant light from her phone flashlight reflecting off of the ceiling, he saw that they were amazing, pale and round, with small, dark areolas. He leaned forward to take one into his mouth."A-ahh!" Julie cried out as he greedily sucked. "Careful! They're really sensitive at this time of the month, Ed."He switched to licking at her nipples instead. She rode him harder."It's...so deep..." Julie moaned. Then she stopped moving. "Oh my god...it's...pushing...ow...!"Ed stopped moving as well. "Perry? What're you doing?"*I'm peckish for period, Ed! Yummy!*Ed didn't know enough about female anatomy to realize that Perry had forced his way through Julie's cervical opening and was now in her womb, consuming all the excess uterine lining that was sloughing off. All Ed knew was that Julie was in pain. He reached down and flicked at her clitoris while he continued to lick at her nipple.After a minute she relaxed. "It's...better now..." she whispered, and then she began riding him again. "That felt so strange, almost like losing my virginity again, but it's feeling...good...oh..."Ed could feel her pussy gripping him tighter and knew that he wasn't going to be able to last much longer. "Can we be...kissing cousins?" he asked her."Mmm..." she moaned, and moved forward to kiss him passionately. As her tongue speared into his mouth, he felt his balls give up their contents. His cum rushed up his lengthy shaft and was injected directly into her uterus."Umm!" Julie screamed into his mouth as she came hard, her body shaking in extreme pleasure as Perry spewed hot alien seed into the deepest recesses of her body. They found one of her ovaries within minutes and began the transformation process, just as their compatriots had done with several other women over the past couple of weeks.In the morning, Julie woke Ed up, excited. "My period's all gone! I should come visit you every month, Ed!"Ed looked around worriedly and then laughed, glad that nobody had overheard that.After breakfast, both families gave each other hugs and Aunt Erin and her brood headed home. What a crazy night, she thought as her husband drove them home.Deep inside her womb, her sister's blue sperm penetrated her vulnerable egg. The fertilized ovum would implant itself into the lining of her uterus the next day.To be continued in part 3, by Krosis for Literotica

Mom and the Neighbor.by Krosis. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories.On the way to school, Ed asked Perry, "So where are you from, originally?"*Long way from here, Ed...not even sure you'd have a proper frame of reference.*"How am I hearing you in my head?"*I told you before, dude, we are one. If you work at it, you won't even have to vocalize for me to 'hear' you.*"Really? Cool." He continued walking. "Hey, Perry?"There was no response. "Perry?""Knock knock!" Eve Doughtry called out, looking in through her neighbor Darla's screen door. Her friend's pretty face poked out from the kitchen."Eve! C'mon in!"She did so, and rounded the corner to find Darla's wide ass pointing right at her as the woman pushed a tray of muffins into the oven. Eve suddenly had a strong urge to flip the woman's skirt up and...She shook her head. And what? Where had that come from? she wondered.Darla stood up and turned around, a vision of brunette beauty, 5'3" and voluptuous. "Lemonade?" she asked.Eve nodded, and they sat at the kitchen table to chat. After shooting the shit about the usual subjects, Eve asked her, "So how's the sex life?"Darla spluttered around a mouthful of lemonade. "Cripes, Eve, that's forward, even for you. Umm...I guess things could be better. We'd been trying for a baby, but no luck. We're kinda losing hope, so there hasn't been much action lately. Oh, why am I telling you all this?" She took in her friend Eve, looking as gorgeous as ever, especially with those huge boobs that had only grown larger after having a child. She sighed, jealous.Eve's eyes bored into hers. "Well, we were a lot closer at one point."Darla blushed. "That was when we were younger. We're both married now.""Hm."Beeeep!"Oh, my muffins..." Darla got up and headed back to the oven.Eve got to her feet as well, unzipped her slacks, and pulled down her panties as she came up behind her friend. After Darla placed the hot muffin tin on the stove top and closed the oven door, Eve grabbed her from behind, one hand moving to Darla's breast while the other went under her skirt."Eek! Eve, what are you...ohh..."Eve's hand slipped into Darla's panties and expertly manipulated her clit. "Lean forward," Eve instructed her, and she did.As she had imagined when she first walked in, Eve flipped Darla's skirt up onto her back and moved her hips forward, nudging aside the woman's panties and slotting the head of her new 3" blue cock between her friend's vaginal lips."Oh my God, Eve, what is that? Oh..." Darla felt what seemed to be a small penis pushing into her wet pussy. "Are you wearing a strap-on? That's so naughty...umm..."Eve's small penis was soon buried inside her friend's pussy, and she pulled back to slam it into her again, making Darla cry out in pleasure. "Take off your blouse," Eve urged her."Ugh...ugh...ugh..." Darla groaned as her friend thrust that hard alien cock inside her. She tried to unbutton her top, but then just gave up and pulled it up and over her head.With her quick fingers, Eve quickly unfastened Darla's bra, freeing her B-cup breasts, and moved her hands to them, squeezing those mounds and lightly pinching her nipples. "Hmm...maybe I'll fill you up with a baby..." Eve whispered into Darla's ear."Oh God!" Darla moaned. "You always know what to say to make me hot, Evie! Fuck me!"She did, pounding her new cock inside her friend's pussy. Soon, Eve felt the stirrings of an orgasm, one much like the squirting ones from the previous night with her husband. She thrust faster, feeling her new cock throbbing as her release approached.All through the previous day and night, Perry's blue sperm had been at work inside Ed's mother. Unable to find an egg to inseminate, they swam on, eventually finding one of her ovaries. Sensing the similarities between that organ and Ed's testicles, and with their need to propagate all-encompassing, they transformed that female gonad, while also increasing the mass of her clitoris and connecting that organ up to her new, blue testicle."Huh!" Eve cried out and thrust hard into Darla's pussy. Her new testicle produced a burst of blue sperm, which shot down through her pelvis and rushed up the shaft of her cock. Her new blue penis ejaculated hot alien seed into Darla's overheated vagina."Oh God...!" Darla cried out in orgasm as she felt the hot liquid shoot inside her. "What is...?! Oh!""Perry!?"*Oh, sorry, Ed, got distracted by something. What's up?*"I was gonna ask what your plans were here on Earth. You just want to be my penis forever?"*Sure, Ed! What more do I need?*Darla lay on the kitchen floor, her body intertwined with Eve's, breathing heavily. She stared at her friend's now 4" blue penis, wondering how that came to be, but strangely not worried about it.Deep inside her, Eve's blue sperm swam, searching...Ed and the Librarian. "So, when can we go fuck Charisma?" Ed whisper-asked Perry in a stall in the boy's bathroom at school. The senior student had tried to telepathically talk to the alien, but it hadn't worked. Perry insisted that he'd get it eventually, but for now he had to at least whisper.*You have to get her alone somewhere...where can we do that?* Perry asked him in his head."I...I dunno...I didn't really think about this very well, did I? If she's not in class, she's always surrounded by her friends. It's not like I can just pull you out and you'll hypnotize all of them...er, can you?"*Let's just stick to one at a time, okay, Ed? Rome wasn't built in a day.*Ed paused. "Rome? What do you know about Rome?"*I know what you know, Ed, now that we're joined.*"So...you know what I'm thinking, at all times?"*Ehh...I try not to listen in too much, but I need to know more about your world, bud. You're my Encyclopaedia Eddica.*The bell rang and Ed headed to class. A couple rows over sat Charisma, the bubble-bodied blonde cheerleader, in a tight top and short skirt, neither of which were appropriate for the school dress code, but her mostly male teachers never complained. Ed sighed and tried to think of a way to get her alone. Eventually, the teacher asked him a question, and Ed looked like an idiot when he had to ask him to repeat it. After that, he concentrated on his work.When the bell rang for lunch, Ed grabbed his stuff and followed Charisma. She would be heading to meet her friends, but in the meantime, maybe he'd have a chance to get her alone! As he entered the busy hallway, he was buffeted by the cross-channels of hangry teenagers, unconcerned about his paltry needs. He hopped up into the air for a better vantage point, spied Charisma heading down one hall, and rushed after her.He was always just a little too slow, getting blocked by people who were crossing in front of him, or stopping outright when they encountered one of their friends. He didn't want to start shoving people...that could get you a bloody nose! Finally, he rounded a corner and she was gone.He heard the library door close and followed, though he didn't know why Charisma would be in there...reading hardly seemed like one of her pastimes.*Now, now, Ed!* Perry admonished him, *Are you making assumptions based on someone's looks?*He could see Mrs. Parker at her desk. The slightly overweight, thirtysomething brunette woman, with her glasses perched on her hawkish nose, would be the epitome of a dour old librarian after another 20 years or so, Ed thought. He stepped up to her. "Um, Mrs. Parker? Did Charisma come through here?"She looked up. "The cheerleader? Heh...she wouldn't come in here by choice, Ed.""See?" Ed subvocalized to Perry."See what?" Mrs. Parker asked him.*Hmm...I think we have something she can see, Ed...* Perry suggested.Suddenly, Ed felt desire surge through him, and his eyes roamed Mrs. Parker's stacked form. Her breasts might actually be larger than his mom's, he thought. He took a quick look around and, seeing no one else in the library, unzipped his jeans. "Have a look at this, Mrs. Parker."She couldn't help but stare as Perry slithered out from Ed's zipper hole. "Umm...oh wow..." she moaned, her eyes going glassy."Is there somewhere we can go to be alone, Mrs. P?"Soon, in the library office, the curvy librarian was sucking Perry into her mouth. Ed groaned, enjoying the feeling of his new cock being fellated. Once again, he marvelled that he could feel the alien appendage as if it was his own penis."Let me see your boobs, Mrs. P." She quickly unfastened her sweater and blouse, and let those bra-covered EE-cups out to play. "Oh damn..." Ed moaned as she unfastened the bra and those massive mammaries sprang out."Let me..." she moved back and surrounded Perry with her boobs, moving them up and down the alien penis' shaft."Holy shit..." Ed had never felt anything like it, and Perry was long enough that she could continue to suck him on the downstrokes.After a few minutes of this, she got up, pulled down her skirt, hose, and panties, and bent over her desk. "Please..." she urged him.Ed was super hard now, and moved up behind her. Perry, eager as always, contorted and adjusted himself so that he could insinuate himself into the woman's wet pussy."Oh..." she moaned, "you're so big, Ed..."Once Perry was inside her, Ed started to thrust, making them moan. Ed realized that Perry had done something to him to get him into the mood to fuck her, as he hadn't really thought of the older woman as sexy before. There was no stopping him now, though! He continued to thrust his blue 10 inches into the wanton woman."Ugh! Ugh! Oh, so deep..." she moaned and orgasmed. "O-h! Oh, Ed, I may never be able to have sex with my husband again after you..."Ed felt proud at hearing that, though it was all Perry, not him, he realized. Well, he reconsidered, he was the one moving his hips, so maybe he could take a little credit? He continued to thrust, and reached around to fondle her massive boobs."Mmm..." she moaned as he pawed at her mammaries. They had grown during each of her two pregnancies. They caused her chronic back discomfort, but nobody could beat her in the breasts department. It seemed that Ed liked them, so she was happy.Then she frowned. There was something bothering her...pregnancy? Why was she thinking about that? She shook her head...she'd come back to that thought later, after this hot sex.Ed's fingers finally found Mrs. P's nipples and pinched them lightly. She gave a little squeak and came again, and this time it pushed Ed over the edge into his own orgasm. He thrust into her hard and fast, feeling his balls boil up a load of cum, which pleasurably rushed up his shaft and splashed deep inside the woman's unprotected reproductive system."Oh...!" she cried out, her waning orgasm ramping back up upon feeling Ed's hot cum fill her depths. Her spasming cervix was deluged by potent alien cum.Finally, Ed collapsed upon the woman's back, gasping. He could feel Mrs. P's pussy, still cumming as it sucked the last few drops from Perry. When she stopped vibrating, Ed pulled out, and blue-tinged semen splashed onto the office floor. "Oops! Sorry..." he offered."It's...okay, Ed..." she breathed, slowly coming back to reality. Then she stood up. "Oh! I...we...oh no! What did we do, Ed?!"Ed had re-zipped and was heading out the door. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone, Mrs. P; our secret." He gave her a wink and then went to go grab some lunch. Darla watched Eve's back as her old friend and neighbor walked back home. She couldn't believe what they had done together, Eve taking what seemed to be an actual blue penis and fucking Darla right there in the kitchen! It had been incredibly hot, especially when Eve suggested that she might even impregnate Darla, as bizarre a statement that was.Her clit itched a little, and she gave it a scratch through her skirt. She shuddered at how pleasurably sensitive it was.Deep inside the woman, Eve's blue sperm had already found Darla's waiting egg and quickly laid claim to it, one alien spermatozoa piercing the cellular membrane and injecting its genetic payload inside. Under The Bleachers. The next day, Ed once again tried to get Charisma alone during lunch, but she managed to find her friends first. The clique of cheerleaders giggled at each other over some stupid thing.*C'mon, Ed! Let's find someone else.* Perry suggested."Mrs. Parker again?" Ed considered, heading toward the library.*Naw...someone new, guy. Don't you want to 'play the field'?*Inspired, Ed headed out to the playing field, but everyone there seemed to be in groups. Then he had an idea and went under the bleachers, where he found a couple of seniors: Cora...something, and another girl he didn't know."Ugh...our secret spot isn't so secret anymore...seeya, Cora," the other girl said as she tossed the remains of her cigarette and trudged off the other way.Cora, an elfin, auburn-haired retro grunge chick, with the requisite flannel overshirt and oversized jeans, regarded Ed as he approached. "Ed, right? You smoke?" She took a puff from her cig."Umm...no," Ed responded. She knew his name?"Then what'cha doin' here? This is the unofficial smoke pit." The school had closed the official one the previous year. She held out her half-finished cancer stick to him.Ed paused only a moment before he took it and pulled a drag off of it. Then he started hacking up a lung.Cora grabbed it back with a smirk. "Poser." Then she paused, looking at his crotch. "What the hell is that?"Ed looked where her eyes were pointing. Perry was writhing within his pants. "Perry?""Who's Perry?" Cora asked, unable to tear her eyes away from Ed's undulating crotch. "Jeez! What's going on in there?"*Woo! What was that? I feel good...lemme out to play, Ed!*"The nicotine, maybe?" Ed could feel Perry straining at the confines of his jeans. "Okay, just a sec..." He unfastened his pants and Perry sprang out, hard and pointing at Cora."Holy shiuh..." The grunge girl's mouth hung open as Perry gave her his alien whammy. "I gotta...gotta have that in me, Ed..." She said and pulled off her overshirt, showing off her braless, undershirt-covered A-cup breasts, her poky nipples quite visible through the thin fabric. Then she was pulling her oversized jeans off, revealing surprisingly small hips and slim legs. Why had she been hiding her cute, sexy body with those bulky clothes? Ed wondered.She pulled down her undies and bent over, grabbing onto one of the bars that held up the bleachers. "Get that huge thing in me..." she commanded him breathily, and he stepped forward to grab her hips.Perry dipped down and slithered between her legs, making her gasp. "Oh, wow, that's...uh...oh shit..." She bent over more as Perry's head slipped between her vaginal lips, and Ed thrust in, his passage aided by her suddenly wet pussy. "Ahh fuck..." she moaned, "you're so fucking big..."As Ed thrust into the mesmerized teen, he pulled her shirt up and reached under to massage her small breasts. He felt her pussy grip him tightly, and she moaned as he stimulated her boobies.Perry noticed mucus around Cora's cervix, and remembered the lady doctor from the other day, as well as their neighbor Darla when Eve, Ed's mom, had fucked her with her new blue cock. Darla had mentioned that she was trying to get pregnant, and Eve's blue sperm had found an egg waiting inside her...that was it! He was figuring these humans out, bit by bit.Ed had found Cora's nipples and pinched them between his fingers. "Uh! Uh!" she cried out, and came again."Oh shit..." Cora's grasping pussy pushed Ed over the edge, and he thrust hard inside the slight girl. Pleasure rushed up his oversized cock, and then he blasted blue alien seed deep inside her.As she felt her fertile insides inundated by hot sperm, her nipple-induced orgasm was supplemented by a full vaginal one, and she moaned in pleasure, her needy pussy urging Ed's cum deeper inside her unprotected reproductive system. Finally, she slumped forward, barely able to hold herself up."I...I gotcha...you're in trouble!"Ed turned and saw the girl that had left earlier, now pointing her phone at them, clearly recording. He pulled out of Cora, making her gasp at the sudden evacuation, and turned to the newcomer."You...you keep away with that...thah..." The girl dropped her arms to her side, her jaw dropping open as her mind was ensorcelled by Perry's writhing form.*I got her...your turn, Ed.*My turn? Ed wondered, and then he stepped forward. "Gimme your phone." She handed it over, and he quickly stopped the recording and deleted it. When he turned back to the girl, she was on her knees and reaching for Perry.Unlike Cora, this girl had larger breasts, probably a C-cup, he figured. She wore a t-shirt and shorts, and he thought that he recognized her from the soccer team. She was pretty, not beautiful, but she had nice curly brown hair and an athletic figure. She took the first few inches of Perry into her mouth, and Ed moaned at the feeling of her warm mouth around his cock. Despite having just cum inside of Cora, he was soon ready to go again.There was no way to lay down under the bleachers without getting dirty, so he had this new girl do as Cora had, grabbing hold of a supporting bar and bending over after shucking her shorts. As with Cora, her juicy pussy allowed Perry easy access to her sodden depths.Ed was amazed that two women's vaginas could be so different. Cora's had been tight but slick, but this girl's pussy was looser, but also somehow less slippery, her vaginal walls pulling at the skin of his cock as he thrust and withdrew. Both were amazing...Perry had been right to suggest fucking a variety of women, Ed realized. He pulled up her shirt to get at her boobs, though he had to unfasten her bra first, and then his hands were mashing her more substantial breasts between his fingers, making her gasp in pleasure.Cora...he looked around. She was laying on the ground, unconscious, near the supporting bar he had fucked her against. "Did you knock Cora out?" he asked Perry subvocally.*Yeah...controlling more than one at a time's a strain, Ed. I brain-blitzed her so you can do this one...what's her name?*Ed considered. "You know what? I don't even care." And he thrust faster into the athletic girl.*Good for you, man! You'll be a player in no time!*"Oh God..." the girl moaned, "...oh God..." Then as Ed thrust one last time and buried his cock as deep as possible inside her, she cried out, "Oh God!" as she felt Ed's hot sperm bathe the walls of her vulnerable pussy, the sensation causing her own orgasm to wash over her. "Uh! Uh! Uh!"Then the bell rang, signalling the end of lunch. Ed's empty stomach growled, but his cock felt damn good, and that was what mattered, he figured. He pulled out, causing the girl to gasp and sink to her knees, Ed's white semen splashing out and soaking the ground between them. Then he zipped up and headed back to class. In the afternoon, a census taker arrived at Ed's house. Eve invited the woman in before seducing her and filling her up with a load of blue sperm. The woman left on unsteady legs, her body inundated with alien seed, swimming deeper into her vulnerable insides...Spring Break, and a visit from extended family.For the rest of the week, Ed was unable to get the primary object of his lust, the cheerleader Charisma, alone. He made do with any other senior students or teachers that he could find, though, filling them up with his alien sperm, unmindful of the danger. Then Spring Break started."Okay, when Erin's family gets here, we're going to have you..." Ed's mother Eve pointed at her husband Bob, "in Ed's room with Dave. I'll be sleeping with my sister in our room, since I haven't done that in forever, and then the kids will take the living room, like normal."Ed scratched his head. Normally Aunt Erin and Uncle Dave would take his room. This changeup was odd."I don't wanna sleep on the floor, Eve," Dave told her.She gave him the look that told him that she was done arguing. "Just blow up the air mattress, Bob; it's only one night.""Humph." When his aunt's family arrived, Ed was surprised to see that his strawberry blonde cousin Julie had grown even taller in the last year, about 5'10" now, though the 18-year-old's willowy figure had filled out as well, becoming more substantial in the hips and bust. He waited for Perry to say something about the gorgeous young woman, but he had been strangely silent for most of the day. Ed hoped that the alien parasite was finally realizing that his family was off limits. Next door, Eve's neighbor Darla had invited another neighbor, Mrs. Chen, over for tea. Darla's new 5" blue cock, overstimulated by the other woman's orgasming pussy, ejaculated alien seed deep inside her. Across town, the curvy librarian Mrs. Parker was sawing her new 5" blue cock into the juicy pussy of Mrs. Abed, the co-owner of the local convenience store. Bags of chips rained down from the shelves from their frenzied coupling. After a sumptuous dinner, the extended family sat down to play some board games. Ed and Julie's team stomped the parents at Pictionary, but then the brother-in-laws Bob and Dave destroyed everyone with their ability to remember useless facts in Trivial Pursuit. Finally, it was time for bed.The taller Julie took the couch, of course. Ed had mixed feelings when he found that he had grown just enough that he could no longer fully stretch out on the love seat. After some uncomfortable adjustments, he finally fell asleep. Erin, Ed's Aunt, woke up to find what she thought was her husband sidling up to her, his hard cock poking into her thigh. "Oh, Dave..." she moaned, and raised her leg to allow his penis to slip between her thighs. Her bedmate slipped lower, and she could feel that hard cock start to press between her vaginal folds.Then she remembered that she wasn't at home, and had gone to bed with her sister. "Wait, wha?"Then Eve thrust, burying her now 6" blue penis deep inside her sister's pussy.Erin gasped, feeling pleasure blossoming from within her. She moved a hand to her partner's chest and found her sister's substantial breasts. "Wha? Evie? How?""Shush!" Eve responded as she started to thrust in and out of her sister's well-lubricated pussy.Erin moved her hand down, between her sister's thighs, and felt the impossible cock there. It wasn't a strap-on dildo; there was no belt or harness. Everything felt unreal...was she dreaming? she wondered. She felt Eve's fingers move her hand aside so that she could thrum her sister's clit. "Oh..." Her nipples were so hard under the fabric of her nightie...she lay back and enjoyed what her sister was doing to her, the craziness of it not fully registering in her conscious mind.Soon, she felt her orgasm rise from her clitoris and where that wonderful cock slid along her most private of places. "Oh, Evie...Evie...Unh!""Yes.." Eve hissed, and thrust deep. Her own orgasm rushed up through her cock and injected blue sperm inside her orgasming sister's pussy.Erin's eyes flew open as she felt that amazing cock throb, and then hot cum splashed deep inside her. That sensation took her orgasm and rebounded it through her body. Her back arched in pleasure as her cervix spasmed open, allowing her sister's alien sperm to seep through into her fertile, forbidden depths. "Uh! Uh! Uh..." "Perry?" Ed couldn't sleep. Julie's breathing was regular now, so he figured it was safe to talk.*Oh! Hey, Ed!*"You didn't answer me all evening. Were you sleeping?"*Naw...I gotta make sure things are progressing well, y'know?*"Progressing?""Who are you talking to? Are you on the phone?" Julie asked. A light shone at him from the couch."Ack!" Ed cried out, covering his eyes against the sudden glare."What...is that?"Oh no! Ed realized that Perry was moving. "Don't look, Julie! I'm not decent!" He moved his hands down to try to cover up, but Perry slipped out of Ed's underwear and thrashed his blanket off."Oh my god! Is that your penis..." The light flipped up to illuminate the ceiling as her phone fell to the carpeted floor.Ed froze. "Julie?" He couldn't see, as the beam had been right in his eyes and now it wasn't. He blinked, trying to get his eyes to adjust to the gloom, and then he felt her grab his cock."Julie, no! I mean, Perry, no!" Ed hissed. "She's my cousin!"*Mother this, cousin that! You know what, Ed? I think you need to expand your horizons!* With that, Ed felt his cock get harder as a rush of desire roared through him."Oh no..." Ed moaned as Julie took Perry into his mouth. "Julie..." She grasped his shaft and stroked, making him feel tremendously good as he lay back. Then she took her mouth off of him and he felt her climbing on top of him. "No..." Then Perry was slithering up inside her.*Mmm! Some yummy blood up in here! Munch munch munch!*Ed raised his head. "Oh shit! Was she a virgin?"*Nope! I had no problem getting in. The blood seems to be coming from further inside.*Julie was on her period, Ed realized. Well, at least there was no way that he was going to get her pregnant...He paused. He had been fucking women every day since Perry had arrived, without a condom...why hadn't he even considered that he could get those women pregnant? Was this Perry's doing, or was he just that dense?*Fuck fuck fuck!* Perry urged him.Julie was grinding herself down on him now, having finally been able to take all 10 inches of him inside herself. Ed raised his knees, grabbed his cousin's rounded hips, and lifted her up and down upon his cock."Huh! Uh! Oh..." she moaned, feeling Ed's huge member filling her, unlike her boyfriend with his mere six incher. She pulled her t-shirt off, setting her B-cup breasts free, and now that Ed's eyes had adjusted to the scant light from her phone flashlight reflecting off of the ceiling, he saw that they were amazing, pale and round, with small, dark areolas. He leaned forward to take one into his mouth."A-ahh!" Julie cried out as he greedily sucked. "Careful! They're really sensitive at this time of the month, Ed."He switched to licking at her nipples instead. She rode him harder."It's...so deep..." Julie moaned. Then she stopped moving. "Oh my god...it's...pushing...ow...!"Ed stopped moving as well. "Perry? What're you doing?"*I'm peckish for period, Ed! Yummy!*Ed didn't know enough about female anatomy to realize that Perry had forced his way through Julie's cervical opening and was now in her womb, consuming all the excess uterine lining that was sloughing off. All Ed knew was that Julie was in pain. He reached down and flicked at her clitoris while he continued to lick at her nipple.After a minute she relaxed. "It's...better now..." she whispered, and then she began riding him again. "That felt so strange, almost like losing my virginity again, but it's feeling...good...oh..."Ed could feel her pussy gripping him tighter and knew that he wasn't going to be able to last much longer. "Can we be...kissing cousins?" he asked her."Mmm..." she moaned, and moved forward to kiss him passionately. As her tongue speared into his mouth, he felt his balls give up their contents. His cum rushed up his lengthy shaft and was injected directly into her uterus."Umm!" Julie screamed into his mouth as she came hard, her body shaking in extreme pleasure as Perry spewed hot alien seed into the deepest recesses of her body. They found one of her ovaries within minutes and began the transformation process, just as their compatriots had done with several other women over the past couple of weeks.In the morning, Julie woke Ed up, excited. "My period's all gone! I should come visit you every month, Ed!"Ed looked around worriedly and then laughed, glad that nobody had overheard that.After breakfast, both families gave each other hugs and Aunt Erin and her brood headed home. What a crazy night, she thought as her husband drove them home.Deep inside her womb, her sister's blue sperm penetrated her vulnerable egg. The fertilized ovum would implant itself into the lining of her uterus the next day.To be continued in part 3, by Krosis for Literotica

Ehh la rivoluzione francese, quando il buon vecchio popolo era ancora in grado di insorgere. Aspetta.. il popolo? In questa puntata il nostro ormai amichevole storico di quartiere Guido Damini ci spiega perché il popolo nello scoppio della rivoluzione francese c’entra ben poco. Siete sorpresi? Allora lo sarete ancora di più quando sentirete cosa ci ha raccontato sulla famosa presa della Bastiglia.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week the Real Life in Italy explores the misconceptions and realities of Northern Italy vs Southern Italy. Your host, Evelyn is an american in Italy, located in Piedmont, Northern Italy, and this week I'm joined by Claire, a British expat living in Sicily. We each chose to share 5 stereotypes we hear about North Italy and South Italy, and share our own experiences with them. Is it true Southern Italy has a lot of crime? Is it true that “everything works” in the North? Ehh, well time to listen and find out! And of course, we share our daily life experiences as expats in Italy, and the unique charm that both regions of Italy offer. Join us as we explore what sets the North and South apart, debunking myths and revealing what life in these regions looks like. You can find Claire here: https://www.youtube.com/@MsBritaly https://msbritaly.com __ If you enjoyed the episode, and show, please leave us a 5 ⭐️ rating, it means a lot! Thanks for listening to the Real Life in Italy. This podcast is for foreigners living in Italy, who are all just trying to make sense of it all. Listen in to learn all about a side of living in Italy everyone else forgot to tell you about. But don't expect us all to be better, I promise. Expect some good laughs, helpful tips and cultural explanations, and expat stories to remind you that you aren't alone, and it'll all work out. Learn more about Evelyn at www.collineallemontagne.com www.instagram.com/collinemontagne You can show your support by buying me a glass of wine, I always appreciate it: www.buymeacoffee.com/colline

Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Elizabeth talks with Brooke about running a small scale farm, including what goes into feeding over 700 families year-round, the importance of community accessible farm space, how climate change continues to mess things up, and how taking care of the soil really matters. Host Info Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: Elizabeth on small scale farming **Brooke ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Brooke Jackson. And today we're going to be talking with Elizabeth Miller, a farmer, about her work in having an organic farm and some really cool stuff that she does that's worth all of us learning how to do a bit of. But before we get into that, we'd like to give a shout out to another one of the podcasts on the Channel Zero Network. So here's a little jingle from one of our friends. Doo doo doo doo, doo doo. [Singing a simple melody] **Brooke ** 01:29 And we're back. So as I mentioned in the intro, I have with me today, Elizabeth Miller, a wonderful lady who owns a farm. And Elizabeth, I'll hand it off to you to tell us a little bit more about yourself. **Elizabeth ** 01:46 Thanks for having me. I'd love to talk about farming and my community. I've been running Minto Island Growers for about 16 years here in South Salem. My husband Chris and I started the farm way back when. We were passionate about environmental science and community food systems when we met in college, and I grew up working on our family farm and it was the kid who always wanted to come back and work with plants. And when Chris and I formed our partnership we were ready to come back here, in 2008, after working at a farm in California and really building a community based organic farm. And I can delve more into what that means to me. But one of our primary works that we do on our farm is centered around our CSA program, which is an acronym for Community Supported Agriculture that's practiced in lots of different ways all over the world, really. Every farm does a little bit differently but you have a subscription based weekly produce box. And we do a main season and a winter season for that. And I can, again, talk more about that if that's of interest. And we have a farm stand where we also do lots of food: woodfired pizza and berry milkshakes and salads, things that we hope reflect all the beautiful abundance and diversity that you can grow and eat here in Oregon. And it's also just a wonderful community hub for families to come and gather and join and connect with nature and really connect with the earth. That's what I firmly believe food can do for us and feed our souls and bodies in all the really most profound ways. We do organic plant starts and we do mint propagation and we used to do native plant work that were projects that I grew up doing, but we don't do any of that anymore. And that's a short summary. And I'll stop talking so we can get into more detail. **Brooke ** 03:46 No worries, thank you. Now listeners, you're listening to this and you may be wondering why we're having a farmer come on and talk and we've definitely talked a lot about gardening, at home gardening, growing your own garden. We've talked a little bit about community gardens. And what intrigues me about what Elizabeth's doing and what I think is useful to us is that she and her farm operate on a fairly small footprint. They grow an incredible diversity of food. And it's a fairly small staff. And when I think about the future and climate change problems that we're having and the number of food chains, food supply insecurities that we have, I'm concerned a lot about how we grow food to feed a community. And I feel like what Elizabeth does with her farm does feed a large community and there may be parts of that that are replicable for the rest of us. So if we find ourselves in a time in which our supply chains have broken down or we can work together to develop a farm, there's a lot of insights from what she does that would help create those kinds of things and replicate them in other places, because she's not a large scale industrial farmer and is not mono-cropping. And really does, like I was saying, a lot on a small footprint with a small staff. So. Elizabeth, would you tell us a little bit more about some of the specifics of the farm like how much land do you farm? How much food do you produce? How many different crops? What's your staff size? Some of those kinds of things to fill in the details of what I was just saying, **Elizabeth ** 05:46 Sure, happy to. We lease about 29 acres. A lot of that encompasses non-production areas where we grow our plant starts and have our washing station and a commercial kitchen that supports the food cart. So in any given season, we are probably cultivating between 8 to 12 acres of land and that also includes lots of fallow fields that are either not in the rotation that year or hopefully are being cover cropped to add more nutrients and organic matter to the soil and to just practice good rotation. And one of the most amazing things about growing in the Pacific Northwest is the huge amount of diversity that you can grow here in this temperate climate, even with climate change. And that's going to stay true even within a climate change context. And I feel like having a diverse...a business model based on a high level of diversity can provide a lot of resilience within, you know, socio-political changes, climate change, context environmental extremes, you know, that.... Even though diversity is challenging, because it means you have to have a greater skill set per crop. And the complexity, the number of successions, and the complexity with the number of crops makes it difficult to run as lean and efficient and profitable of a business, it still provides a lot of resilience and it's really what our business model is based on. So we grow, you know, about 30 to 40 different crops and within that, over 100 different varieties. You know, just with pepper, eggplant, and tomato alone there's probably 30 to 40 varieties there, which is a little bit insane, but it's also incredibly exciting because there's so much diversity out there. And as a farmer, you know, it's just...it keeps...it's just exciting to delve into the world of diversity within varieties. And we do that both for fun, to expose our customers and our eaters and for ourselves to more options and things you don't get in the store. That's one of the fun things about gardening at home or working on or buying from a small farm is just getting access to more interesting varieties. We do that also because there's a lot of great plant breeding that goes on and can--depending on what the breeders are focusing on--there can be more resilience within a variety. That's especially true with the hybrid brassicas. So, you know, we love the seed saving. We love open pollinated varieties and heirloom varieties. But as farmers who rely on growing food for our economic living, we do buy hybrid seeds--nothing GMO, of course, because we're certified organic and we wouldn't do that anyway. But we do see it with certain crops like the hybrid brassicas--like the heading brassicas, like broccoli, cabbages, etc--having options with hybrids is really important for just vigor and yield and consistency. And even with tomatoes, we love growing the beautiful diversity of all the open pollinated heirloom tomatoes but, you know, now that we've been farming for over 16 years, we're seeing diseases we hadn't seen before, especially with the extreme.... Well, we had already seen late blight in our tomatoes, but I'm sure that it would have been.... Our very, very wet spring we had last year, we saw a bigger increase in fungal and bacterial diseases and we've seen resistance to those things in different varieties. So that's been an interesting thing we've observed in the last couple years. So yeah, our CSA model, it's changed a little bit over the years but essentially we do 22 weeks of a main season. And then we do about 7 weeks of a winter season. And our main season is June through the end of October and winter being November through February. And we could easily do a year round CSA in terms of what we're able to grow. It's those bridge months, we call them, from like February March, April, May are challenging but we have farmer friends who are really successfully do a year round CSAs because you can grow so much diversity here, especially if you utilize covered spaces really strategically, like hoop houses or even lower tech stuff like caterpillar tunnels--which are also important in a climate change context, even more so than then they have been in the past. So we do a combination for our CSA program of pack [unsure of spelling] shares, where we decide what goes in those shares. and we do two different share sizes to make it more...give more options to the community. And those get delivered to drop sites still relatively, you know, the farthest.... We used to go to Portland and then we realized at a point that we could fulfill all of our CSA shares here in the community. And so we decided to just deliver into the Salem area, which is so much better for many, many reasons. So the farthest we go out is Kaiser. But many of our drop sites are really pretty close to the farm. A few are five minutes away. Some are 10 minutes away. And that's because we really do cater to our local Salem community. And we are so proud of the relationships we've been able to build with our community over time, which I can talk more about because it's really its own thing to discuss. And then we do a market-style option, which again, different farms define this and do this in different ways. But for us it means setting up our produce at our farm stand two nights a week from four to seven. And we have a combination of fixed and choice items. And so the fixed items allow us to just have a little more reliable crop plan and make sure that we're still getting that good level of diversity out to our customers. People have to try to eat bok choy at least once a year, not five times a year, but once a year. It justifies us growing it too, which is good, you know. You want that diversity. It's good for our bodies. It's good for the soil. It's good in many, many ways. And then they get their choice items which they get to choose amongst. And like we've found that market-style option to just be incredibly popular, both for our customers and for us as a farm. It gives us so much more flexibility. It allows us to.... It justify us growing more specialty crops too because we can pick those really small amounts of like a specialty crop fully and put it out for market-style choice and we know that it'll all get taken and chosen versus like not being sure that that would all get enjoyed in our packed boxes, because we want to make sure that folks are really enjoying their CSAs. One of the big pieces...the most consistent piece of feedback we've gotten over the years, and many other CSA farms we hear this too, is that folks aren't able to fully utilize everything that's in their share. And they're usually joining a CSA because they value that local produce so much. And so trying to find ways to fit different people's needs within the CSA, you know, do the combo and fix and choice and also not...still grow specialty items but not have to grow huge quantities of it, you know. We've really fine tuned our model quite a bit over the years in the options that we've created. And then the winter season's every other week with a bigger break in the winter. And that's a combination of storage crops, but a lot of crops still coming from the field, which is really one of the things I love to talk about when I do tours is talking about just the amount you can still eat fresh from the fields where your nutrient density is still so high because things are fresh. You know, you lose a lot of your nutrients when things are picked and sit on the store shelves or, you know. They can be...not all frozen things are bad, you know. You can capture nutrients with certain types of processing techniques. But if it's not being processed in a certain way and it's just fresh, sitting on the shelf, you can lose a lot of your nutrient density that way. So the winter CSA is a really fun eating because it's still very, very diverse. And a lot of it's still really fresh. And there's some folks that just do that CSA. They might be really avid home gardeners, but they either don't have the scale or the storage capacity but they still want to eat a seasonal diversity and eat local and fresh. And so they'll come to our farm just for the winter CSA which is really neat. Yeah. **Brooke ** 14:13 And you do garden, or excuse me, "garden..." you do farm year round basically. It's not that you're...you're not working throughout those months when there isn't the CSA, right? Your farmers are still quite busy. **Elizabeth ** 14:29 That's very true. And yeah, you had asked to talk about our staff. So we--  **Brooke ** 14:34 Yeah, hold on, let me back up before you get into the numbers just because I want to review. Okay, so you're operating on eight or nine acres a year generally. And you're growing how many different crops, not including sub varieties? **Elizabeth ** 14:48 I'd say 30 to 40. I haven't encountered the actual list in a few years, but it's definitely between 30 and maybe 45.  **Brooke ** 14:58 30 to 45 crops. 8 or 9 acres. You're sort of actively actually farming and yielding stuff from May/June through winter. **Elizabeth ** 15:10 Well, with our covered spaces, honestly, it's almost February now. February or March through.... We had a really big success last year in growing a much greater amount of food fresh from the soil but in the covered spaces with the addition of the caterpillar tunnels. We were harvesting quite a bit starting in early March. **Brooke ** 15:32 You didn't say numbers on the CSA, but I just happen to know that it's about 250 families that sign up that get that weekly produce box through the summer. Plus, you still have a farmstand that people come and buy fresh at. Plus, you have wholesale. Do you know how much food you produce? Like I don't.... You know, I know sometimes I hear about tons of this or that, but....  **Elizabeth ** 15:54 You know, I don't know the statistics and I really should. We keep them all in our harvest spreadsheets for our own record keeping and for Oregon Tilth for the organic certification. And I should know some of those stats because it'd be really.... What I really should know is per acre and by crop, you know, per bed-foot yield. But it's changing. I mean.... I have two really talented.... Shoutout to my two head farmers, my harvest manager, Arabella, and my field manager, Justin, are in their fifth and sixth year of farming on our particular farm, which is important to say because you have to really learn how to farm a particular farm. You can be a talented grower, but knowing a particular farm's soil, experiencing multiple seasons of variations, both in disease, pests, cropping patterns, weather patterns, learning that level, you know, you have to know a lot about many different crops. It's a huge breadth of knowledge that you need. And so you only really get that depth by farming many seasons. So they're just at the peak of their game in their trajectory this year. And so many crops statistics that they have reported have been double or more. I mean, just.... And it was a quote, unquote, "normal year," you know, with no big climate extremes. No, you know, heat dome. No raining for the first three months of spring so that, you know, the soil tilth was so much better than last year, for instance, where we had one of the coldest, wettest springs on record. And we saw the effects on crop health, and especially disease, but just crop health generally because of the tilth of the soil. The roots...the plants just were never as healthy, especially the one-time plantings that you would have to establish in the beginning of the year when we were so pressed to get things in the ground. So this year has just been so incredibly positive and more bountiful than normally even so. It's really turning my head of what's possible growing wise, you know, because there's so much variation within a crop year-to-year. And you know that with a large level of diversity, you're never going to grow each crop perfectly. There's always going to be something that's going to have a challenge or be better than expected or have some unusual circumstance. That's the challenge but also the wonderful curiosity of farming is you're always learning something new because soil systems and ecological systems are so complex. So I should...I'll get some of those steps under my belt for the next time I have a conversation like this.  **Brooke ** 18:39 Well and that diversity, you know, another example of why that diversity is so important is that you're going to have some kind of crop failure or problem going on, right? Okay, so the CSA feeds something like 750 families. So if you had to take a guesstimate with, you know, Saturday markets and farmstand and wholesale, what do you think.... Like how many additional families worth of produce do you suppose that you put out? **Elizabeth ** 19:12 Oh, gosh, I mean, I'd say there's, you know, probably 700 to.... I don't know if we should say 1000 family units that come through the farm. You know, some people come to just have a milkshake with their kids and play on the playground, which is wonderful. My single biggest driving factor in starting the farm was that I wanted to continue a deep, and deeply important to me, and long family tradition of working within natural resources in Oregon. But most importantly, I wanted to keep the soil productive and in agricultural production so that it could be farmed for a few generations because we will need that soil and once.... If you can't afford to keep land in agricultural production and it's developed, you can never really go back from that. And two, was to give people the same opportunity to connect with the land that I had, you know? My family happens to own it. But of course the white people took all the land from the Native Americans and have abused it in many different ways over the years. And thankfully, the family tradition I was raised in, generationally it shifted, of course, because we've learned so much more about how to treat the land well. But there was always a history, like when my family was in timber. And that's where my family got its start was, you know, getting to take advantage, in some sense, of Earth's, you know, capital that it had grown for hundreds of years. And that's given me, in some way, the opportunity to have. But there was always an ethic of conservation and stewardship within my family's relationship to the land or to the natural resource that they were able to have the privilege to get to interact with. And I believe firmly that I'm so passionate about the Earth because I had the opportunity to connect with it. And so many people just don't have the exposure. They don't have the opportunity to either be out in nature or to have a garden. And of course, many people, you know, encounter that and experience it and find inspiration on their own. But it's hard...it can be hard to find that connection and that care for the earth and that perspective if you don't have the opportunity to interact with nature and with the soil. And food is such a fundamental way that we can all do that. And it connects us all. We all have to eat. So I just felt that our farm at Minto needed to be a community farm. People needed access to it. They needed to be able to connect to it and we needed to be able to connect to each other through that mechanism of growing and eating food. So that's always been a driving principle of our farm and our business. **Brooke ** 22:08 Yeah, and I'll say, you know, as an indigenous woman, how proud of you I am and how grateful I am for your ongoing.... You know, and you don't shy away from the awareness of the privilege that you have and where it came from and then the commitment that you have and have had towards land preservation and restoration and the way you take care of this piece of land. Yes, it is a business. But I think you would do things that would help the land and hurt the business because of your priority structure. Not that you would generally have to make that choice. But like if that's...if it came down to a decision between the two, I know that you're always going to take care of the land and make sure that it's healthy and strong and sustainable for generations. And that's really important culturally to me. So I'm, I'm grateful for that and to be a part of it. **Elizabeth ** 23:05 And thank you for that comment. I have so much learning to do. But I am so thankful for my family and especially my father for giving me that opportunity. He's my greatest hero and we share the same passion for plants and for soil and really the idea of stewardship that we just happen to be lucky to be able to have this relationship and that it's, you know, really.... I really wanted to examine what the idea of ownership is.... It's never made sense to me that we have the ability to own land, you know, and so there's so much more soul searching and seeking of...questioning of what that means. But I definitely see it as there's a huge responsibility when you do have the opportunity to try to do the best you can. And I'm thankful that my dad's been able to learn from me too. He still thinks we're crazy with all the amount of work that we put in. But he also understands. He sees how responsive the community has been to it. Because I believed...I knew that the community would come for this because it's just so fundamental. It's so fundamental to our wellness to be connected to the earth and to each other and to do it through food. It's like you can't really argue with it. And I am not.... This is not a discovery I'm making. This discovery has been fundamental to how we've interacted as a species since we've been evolving, you know? So um, yeah, so back.... I didn't really get to talk about the team that that makes it all happen because I-- **Brooke ** 24:53 Yeah, you must have a massive staff to produce this much food and be working this long and year round and so much land that you're doing. It must take an army to get that out, right? **Elizabeth ** 25:06 Yes, I simultaneously feel that it's huge and tiny and huge. And you know, my conception of it, my concept of it, expands and contracts depending on how I'm looking at things. But I just want to say that the people who choose to work on organic...small organic farms--or any farm really--are just some of the best people around there. They're in it because they're passionate about plants and soil and feeding their community. They're not in it because they're trying to make a bunch of money and they're sacrificing. Agriculture is often a lower paid profession. And there are very few farms, unless they're in a nonprofit structure or have figured some things out that I'm really trying to figure out, but there's usually not a benefit package to support, you know, these worker populations. And so it's just, it's a labor of love, the people that choose to do this work, and I am so humbled and proud to work with them every day. So we have a team of year-round managers. That's about four or five. And then we have a seasonal staff that expands quite a bit and quite a bit more so even this year to about between 20 and 30. But that encompasses all the farmstand staff and food cart and our perennial crew. And I haven't yet spoken about the fact that we grow blueberries and strawberries and we also have a neat  tea project. Camellia sinensis is the tea plant and all the types of teas, black, green, oolong, ect... come from that one plant. And my dad has a real innovative approach to plants and agriculture, always has, so he, with a partner, in the late 80s planted tea, and so I've gotten to try to move that project forward. And so we have managers that kind of head each part of that farm. We have a CSA manager. We have a CSA logistics person. We have a field manager. We have a perennial manager. We have a farmstead manager, a food cart manager. And often those folks will take on many other roles too on the farm or have done other.... So, it's a small but mighty team. And since we do farm year round, that core managerial staff is often working in the winter still, which is wonderful but also challenging because they work so hard during the main season that then to continue to work when it gets so much colder and wetter and muddier and everything is hard and you can't necessarily warm up and recharge your body during the day, it's.... I'm at a crossroads with our business where I'm really trying to build longer term sustainability. And we've been doing this for 16 years, so that's quite a long time and some big lessons learned and there's still a lot of resilience needed in our business model to keep going. And our managers are really the heart of the farm. I can't physically do all the work as a mother of two younger kids.  My husband, Chris, now works as a mint breeder and he still is able to work from the farm but for a totally different company. And he really supports my ability to keep farming because the economics are really challenging with small farms. So I'm just trying to think very creatively with the newer perspectives I have of how people can do this work year round, long term, and what they really want to do during the winter. I think it's an incredible niche for other folks that are interested in this as a business model. There are some beet firms that only do winter farming because so many fewer farms there do it and you can do so much. But I'm thinking of different options and different models for our farm, but that's probably a level of detail we don't need to go into today but it's.... Yeah, I'm really looking at our business model from all angles to try to build in long term resilience, just in terms of the model. Yeah.  **Brooke ** 29:24 Well, I might love to have you back sometime and talk about some specific things like winter farming or maybe.... I would love to do a whole thing on potatoes and I don't know if you want to come back for that but.... **Elizabeth ** 29:35 Well, I might stop throwing them so I don't know if you want me to. Not fully. Not fully. But if there's one crop I know we lose money on its potatoes. **Brooke ** 29:47 Wow. Okay, that's really interesting because potatoes are--  **Elizabeth ** 29:49 I'm not sure. My numbers will tell me this year but.... Yeah, we could do a deep dive on potatoes, even later in the episode if we have time, but.... People love potatoes, though. So that's a thing. There's like.... You want to grow what people love and you know they'll use. And they're nutritious. And they store. And they're so versatile in the kitchen. But....  **Brooke ** 30:12 Nutrient dense.  **Elizabeth ** 30:16 Yep. But we've had such a difficult time growing them consistently well. Last year, we doubled our yield from the previous year, and grew them better than we ever had. And then this year, it's kind of back down to, "Ehh?" normal yields. We're like, well, did we learn anything? What were the factors, you know. Sometimes there's trajectories in crops and trends and you're like, okay, I'm steadily getting better at this. I'm learning things that I'm applying to a consistently better outcome. Potatoes are not one of those crops. There just seems to still be so much uncertainty and variation in the end yields. And to me, you know, I like to think about what is really unique about a locally grown vegetable. And often there is something really special, whether it be a variety or the fact that it doesn't store well or it's super delicious, or it's more perishable, or, you know, many, many things. Potatoes, in my mind, unless it's a really interesting variety and it's a new potato, to me, potatoes are almost.... There's not that many distinguishing features that make a fresh, locally grown potato that different in comparison to everything else we grow. To me, it's more of a commodity type thing. Same with onions, but I love growing alliums and I will never stop growing them. But I could deep dive into those specific crops if we wanted to. **Brooke ** 31:43 Yeah, I think I'll save that for probably another one. But that is really interesting to know. And some of our audience members are going to have some strong feelings about not growing potatoes. And I understand that. And we've done episodes around.... Well, I don't know if we did it. I know Margaret, who's one of our other hosts who originally started the podcast, has certainly done a deeper dive on potatoes on one of her other podcasts. Anyway, sorry. If you said it, I guess I missed it, you talked about your management team but then like the harvest staff you have kind of at the height of your season, how many folks do you have?  **Elizabeth ** 32:25 Yeah, I'd say six to eight. I mean, you know, on a...Tuesday is our biggest harvest day, and there's probably, you know, six to eight people out there. Some of the managers come in to do half days, but you know, on a Wednesday, that's the second biggest day of our CSA, we'll have four or five in the morning and then three in the afternoon. So it really...it really varies.  **Brooke ** 32:50 So less than one person per acre? Not that that's how.... That's not a great measure. But, you know, if you're growing eight or nine acres, you have-- **Elizabeth ** 32:59 It's difficult to talk about the stats because you're growing...you have to do.... There's so many steps that go into the full execution of a crop. You know, onions, for instance, your crop planning in November. You're starting the seeds very, very early, actually. We used to do it in February. Now it's March. Because they're relatively slow growing and you have to grow quite a bit. You know, one onion plant is an onion versus a potato plant grows multiple potatoes. Same with a kale plant. You know, so lots and lots of seedlings, many, many flats. And then they are in the greenhouse for a long time. Then they get transplanted out and they grow all season long. They don't get harvested for storage until.... Of course we're taking spring or fresh onions out of the field starting in maybe July, but the bulk of the allium harvest isn't until August/September. And then they're stored all winter. So the labor that's spread across that whole.... You know, it's almost.... I mean, we have onions year round so sometimes an onion will be a seedling or in storage for almost an entire year. So it's difficult to fully, accurately allocate your labor across an acre or crop just because-- **Brooke ** 34:15 Sure. Yeah,  **Elizabeth ** 34:16 You know, but yeah, in peak season from June through September, I would say that there's six to eight people on average that are full time growing those crops. Growing, harvesting, delivering, etc...processing, delivery, ect... **Brooke ** 34:36 And that's what it takes to grow enough food to feed more than 250 families a weekly box of produce, six to eight folks. **Elizabeth ** 34:43 It probably could be quite a bit more. I believe, you know, with better farming techniques and, you know, I don't know if we want to go into no-till philosophy and practices on this episode, but from the learning we've been doing about some of these no-till farms that have been in operation for quite a long time. Singing Frog is one in California that's pointed to a lot because they've been farming for so long. The yields that they're getting per acre, it's almost like double or triple or even quadruple sometimes what even the best, you know, organic producers are saying they're getting. So I believe on our footprint we could be growing a much higher density of food per bed foot or per acre than we even are now, but it's very labor intensive. It's a very.... Which I think is good and challenging economically. But it's good that there is the opportunity for people to grow food for a living as their job. It's extremely enriching and gratifying on many levels. I think the economics are the hardest part. And I believe farmers should be making as much as doctors are making. I mean, maybe, yeah. Ehh, maybe not a specialist surgeon, you know, but you know what I mean? It's a very undervalued profession, especially for the crew position versus a managerial position. It's incredibly important and incredibly difficult. And food prices in our country, and across the world, it's just the way that we perceive food value is challenging. And affordability is incredibly challenging too. But there's just many things that should change in our food system to value, you know, to value food better. Not necessarily that it should cost more money for people, but the way that that work and that product is valued, there's a lot of improvement that could be made in that and you know, we could talk all about government subsidies and policy and all that another time. But I believe there's a lot.... I believe the federal government should be subsidizing small to medium diversified organic farms, not just large scale commodity farms growing GMO soy for a stupid faux green biofuel, you know? I mean, there's just so much wrong with our agricultural policy. But, again, another episode in the making maybe? **Brooke ** 35:06 Yeah, there's so much to get into there. And that's interesting. So you've had 16 years of learning and growing and it's a nonstop process, it sounds like. Partly with just because some crops are fickle and because of climate change. So, I want to rewind for a second all the way back to 16 years ago when you and Chris first started and compare, you know, what your staff size looked like, how much of the land you were farming, what kind of yield you were getting in those first few years as you were learning and developing. **Elizabeth ** 38:04 Again, I don't have those statistics. They're all anecdotal at this point. The big context for when Chris and I started the farm was that we were both more steeped in native plant and restoration work. Chris did, you know, he did Environmental Science at Colorado College and I was on that track as well but switched to more social sciences and music and.... But, you know, that's what I grew up primarily working with on our farm. We had a native plants nursery, and my dad did forestry research. And you can still see some of the cottonwoods, the native and the hybrid cottonwoods on the farm, which are an interesting thing that isn't active really anymore. But you know, those woody perennials and their kind of environmental uses, you know, from both just standard restoration to bio energy and phytoremediation, like toxic metals and wastewater clean up. And Chris and I were really interested in green roofs and urban use of plants, you know, and that.... So when we started the farm, we were passionate about food systems and we started a small CSA. We started with five people, five shares. And LifeSource was actually our first sale of Romaine. I still have the receipt framed. We sold them some romaine. And we're not currently selling to them right now. But we have sold them quite a bit in the past. And Marion Polk Food Share is currently our large wholesale account. But yeah, we started with five members, one who is still an active member of our CSA, which I love. And we actually had a largely Latino crew. Pedro and Maria were husband and wife. Pedro used to work with my dad doing the hybrid poplar harvest. And Maria and her sisters and her nieces were our core crew for quite a long time. And they are amazing people who I miss on the farm. And that's another whole topic, of just agricultural labor and how that's changed so much. But it's interesting to think back to that because that's a very different population of people. And they are such skilled agricultural workers. And I miss so many aspects of that on the farm. And currently most of our worker population are young students. It's a lot of Willamette students, other students, people who are transitioning to other professions, people who are going into horticulture, you know, who are plant and science based people all mostly in their early 20s or 30s. It's.... How to do this work into your 40s, 50s, and 60s, and 70s is a whole nother thing that I'm thinking about quite a bit now as I'm entering my early 40s. But yeah, very different demographics of people who were working on the farm. And Chris and I were doing so many native, woody plant-based projects at that time. We were in mint propagation, and that was both really positive because we were really passionate about that work and it's really interesting work, and Chris had been working at a living roof ecological restoration company down in California before he moved up to Oregon. And it also spreads really, really thin across the farm and across many projects. And it didn't...we didn't have the.... Now, in hindsight, I realize it. Doing too many things just doesn't allow you to really focus in and hone your skills and get your discipline, especially with the economics, in your key project areas. And so we grew our CSA model and the direct-to-farm model really quickly. I think we said, "Yes," to everything. Like "Yes, we'll do the Wednesday farmers market. We'll do the Salem public market, we'll do the Salem Saturday market. We'll do the Tuesday OHSU farmers market and then oh, while we're up at the Tuesday OHSU market, they want to do wholesale for their institutional bid at OHSU, and they need a new CSA farm for all of their drop sites. And I thought, well, what an opportunity. They're one of the largest employers in Oregon there. They have an in-house nutritionist who is incredible, who's still there and still passionate about food systems, and what an amazing opportunity. And it was. I mean, I don't know.... It felt to me at the time it was, but really, it just, I think, spread us too far and wide and thin. And so that's one of the biggest hindsight reflections I have at this point of just.... And I encourage anyone who's interested in this type of farming model is t to make this model successful, to actually not burnout with an injury, to burnout psychologically, like my husband, Chris did, and physically doing this work, to not get into debt, you know, to have a good business plan, and to be disciplined about your numbers, you just have to plan well, and you have to be diligent about your expansion. And I think we just...we had so much enthusiasm and so much demand for our products, so we just grew really fast without really understanding the economics of that growth. And so there was a mid period where our first really.... Tim, who's now a farmer in...he was a Willamette student and now a farmer in New Orleans. And a very wonderful farmer himself, now. He and his partner, Madeline, also a really talented farmer, they're both from Willamette. But Tim was our first kind of longer term staffer who became a manager. And he really.... He and Lindsey, another wonderful Willamette student, they were so gung ho about scaling up our CSA, and also doubling our market sales at the Saturday market, you know. They had these personal professional goals that they brought to the business. And we had never before had the capacity for that kind of growth because we hadn't had folks that were like, you know, quote, unquote, "like" Chris and I, that kind of had that same bird's eye view perspective and were really interested in the business side of things and the strategy and we're kind of doing the business planning with us and really had the capacity to take on that growth. And so they wanted to expand the CSA by like 40 shares one year and they were in their fourth year of farming. They had the capability. They're both incredibly bright and incredibly hardworking. And they were also young. They had that 20 year old energy. It's really something and it's unique, you know?  And so those were some of those mid years of growth, really came from those strategic managerial staffers that really when I look at the peak, the growth spurts that we've had over the business as the business has expanded and also gotten better and more efficient and gained the knowledge and depth, it's because of these...it always has coincided with the peak of these managerial staff that have come into their third and fourth and fifth seasons. And they go in cycles. And they eventually have to cycle through because they want their own farms or they can't physically, they don't physically want to do the work anymore, or, you know, there's a combination of reasons, but it's always a cyclical thing. And that's a pattern that is now known to me, but it also is still a vulnerable pattern. So those are the patterns I've had, yeah, the kind of patterns I've been able to recognize at this point. Yeah.  **Brooke ** 45:49 So if people are doing this model, either for business or, you know, in the context of trying to develop a small farm like this for community support and perhaps a climate collapse situation, knowing that sort of rotation that people will go through and helping make sure that, you know, whoever's.... Even if you're collectively running the farm and everyone sort of equal partners, knowing that there is sort of that learning and burnout cycle to be aware of and, you know, having the members of your community that are doing this together supporting each other and taking some turns with it over time, like that sounds really important. **Elizabeth ** 46:29 And trying to build structurally into the business ways to prevent that burnout. So even this next season that I'm looking towards, where those two key managers are moving on, and we've known that and we've been planning for and they're going to help us transition at the beginning of the next season, thankfully, but we're looking towards, you know, training a new set of managers. The expectation for that new set of managers is going to be completely different. I want every manager to be able to go on vacation during the peak production season for at least like a week or a long weekend, a Friday, Monday, or four or five days. They need that. They need that physical and psychological break. They need that recharge. Everybody needs it, everyone deserves to go on vacation and to not work, especially farmers. And there was never that.... Our previous managerial staff, they're just, that isn't a common expectation on most farms. You're just sort of expected to to work your ass off, excuse me, and you will anyway. So, it's up to the owners, or to the collective leaders, to find ways to build that structure of balance into the structure from the beginning, but this is the advice I would give. Because the work is hard no matter what. It's some of the most challenging work you're going to do no matter what, especially in a climate change context. The extremes are here. They're not predictable. You might have experienced one extreme, but you don't know what the next extreme is going to be like or what it's going to do in your ecological system. So you can't even really plan for it. That's the challenge of farming in a climate change context is these extremes. I'm sure there'll be some similar ones. Perhaps we'll be able to apply lessons learned. But that's been the biggest challenge of experiencing these climate extremes over the last five or six years is that it's been a new extreme each time. And so the learning curve is immense and it's stressful and it's costly and there's so much uncertainty. So that's a challenge. **Brooke ** 48:35 So really quickly then as our last thing on this, before we wrap, you've mentioned some of the climate issues that we've had, and I know I've mentioned these on other episodes of the podcast too, that, you know, for instance, last year, we had a really long, cold wet spring that went well into the first part of the growing season and it really screwed a lot of things up in a lot of different ways. And then two years ago we had some really extreme heat in that summer or a couple times over temperatures that have, you know, record breaking heat temperatures here. And so now we're looking ahead at the world and we know that there will continue to be climate issues and to some degree, you can kind of predict for your own area what's most likely to happen and what's somewhat likely to happen and what's not very likely to happen in terms of your individual climate extremes. Is that something that you actively work into your plans or is it something you deal with as it comes up? You know, how much are you looking ahead and planning for that and practicing for that on your own farm? **Elizabeth ** 49:43 Yeah, I think that we're planning for it to the extent that we can, you know. Like you've said, there is some predictability and now that we have experienced, you know, the heat dome.... The wildfires were so, just almost a completely totally different scenario, because you could hardly be outside safely, you know, but you we had to keep...some crops had to continue to be harvested or else it would make them unharvestable for a period after. You know, farms like ours, you have to continually harvest many crops. And then flooding has been really.... Wet and cold is always something we dealt with, but the extremes of last year were just far and above. And then flooding has been also greater and at times that we had never experienced before. Like we had some really intense flooding in April. I think that was like six years ago now. And so, yeah, ways that we're adapting and planning for that, you know, where we have floods...we have fields that are more flood…that are more.... All of our farm fields are in the floodway, actually. It's a pretty extreme flood plain designation from the Army Corps. But some of our fields are lower and they farm, you know, almost every winter. And so to the extent we can, we plan our rotations so that our winter crops are now, like I mentioned before, we had some crops, some of our first crops of the season in April, flood. So to the extent we can, we try to be cognizant of where that flooding might happen and try to put more vulnerable plantings in higher fields. But that's difficult for us to always do, but we try our best at it. Season extension, you know, through covered spaces is something that farmers have been doing all over the world forever, because it just gives you more flexibility, extends your growing season, and you can control your environment better. Sometimes you have less...you're less prone to pests. Those diseases can be much greater risk. So,you know, we had never had a huge amount of covered spaces. They're expensive to put in. And they're more difficult growing environments. I always like to say that they kind of expose all your weaknesses. And so since we've been spread so thin across so many projects and so much diversity and probably more scale than we should have expanded to too early, we have not always been the greatest hoop house or covered space growers. But our team's really improved in that area in the last few years. And so we've really benefited from partnerships with the NRCS. They administer the organic equip program and they give dollars towards conventional and organic farmers, the organic equip program specifically for organic farmers for many projects like cover cropping, restoration projects, hedgerows, and, most impactful for us, hoop house infrastructure. So all of our hoop houses and our caterpillar tunnels, including two more that we bought that haven't been put up, were all partially funded by the NRCS, which is really, really great use of our tax dollars. We can all at least maybe feel good about that for the use of our tax dollars. Yeah. And so that's.... Those spaces have been really instrumental in our bridge season growing, would you like to call it, especially the early season. Like, we all know Oregon springs can be cold and wet in a normal year and relatively unpredictable, and so because we are building our farm model on a CSA that starts in June, which actually really isn't that early, and people are really ready to eat seasonally from the farm in June. They're coming to us in April and May like, "When does the CSA start?" Like they think it should just all be available. And yeah, certain crops are. But to have the level of diversity and scale in June to feed that many people does take quite a bit of planning and land space. And so having just those extra covered spaces so that we can just fine tune our planting schedule and our planting mix in those early months, has been really key. And then methodologies that were even kind of pre a climate change context but just for better spring farming, like there was a practice that we were following, many farmers are doing, with preparing beds in the fall, tarping with silage tarps, and then that allows you to just pull back those silage tarps in the spring when you have a couple days of dry out. And then you can direct seed and transplant right into those beds, as opposed to having to wait for a one or two week dry window and leaving soil uncovered without a cover crop, which you don't really want to do anyway. So that completely changed our spring growing. And then adding in extra covered spaces this year was what allowed us to have such a wonderful early diversity. And then pushing, being pushed more towards no-till and regenerative practices that are, we feel, can just provide even more resilience in a climate change context, and in any in any context, you know, when you're building up the quality of your soil with the microbiology and organic matter. And from what we've researched and seen, the potential for healthier, happier crops that are produced with less fossil-fuel-based equipment and don't release carbon because of tillage, and just myriad other benefits that we've been seen and been hearing about, we were motivated to start our own no-till experimental plot. And so we had our first crops on that this year and they did well. And the soil--we didn't know how our heavier clay content soil would respond to no-till practices and from what we've read and understood, really the benefits of no-till don't take in massively so until years three to five. It takes a while to do your weed control and for your microbiology to get in there and add all that soil health. It just takes a while for the soils to adjust. Yeah, it's like how to.... How I say this to kids on tours is like, “How do forests feed themselves? How do those big old growth trees get so big? Humans aren't coming in and fertilizing those trees. It's just decomposition and micro organisms and all those amazing nutrient relationships between the micro organisms.” It's like they're just all working in this beautiful, and even more so we know now, because of these really cool scientists that are doing forestry research showing how these forest communities are this huge interconnected network with the root systems and the fungi and bacteria. It's just so much more complex and interconnected than scientists ever even thought. And so it's the same principle applied to annual or perennial farms. So we're only in...this will be year two. But we were already interested in those practices and some folks on our staff, Garabella, had studied that in college at Willamette and was already really passionate about it. We'd been doing some experiments with it, but this was our first year really biting the bullet and saying, okay, this is our no-till plot. And we're really, really enthused by the results and how well the soils responded. It's hard to break that addiction to tillage. I love tillage. I love tractors and PTO shafts and rototillers. But it's also really disruptive. SO it's breaking those habits. Yeah. **Brooke ** 57:11 And I know you can talk about this literally, for the rest of the week, but we should probably wrap it up here for now. It's been really great having you on and I do hope that we can have you again to talk about some more specifics of this and other things so we can continue to learn how to develop some of this in our communities and encourage the farms that are doing it. **Elizabeth ** 57:35 Thank you so much for having me and exposing and educating our community. **Brooke ** 57:40 Absolutely. And, you know, also to the world over because we have listeners internationally as well. And we love you all very much. Elizabeth, is there anything that you want to plug or promote here before we say goodbye? **Elizabeth ** 57:57 Just in relation to our conversation earlier, just really taking many, many steps back and looking at the communities of people that had a relationship to this land for generations before us. And there's an awesome nonprofit here in Salem run by Rose High Bear, and it's called Elderberry Wisdom Farm and they're an indigenous based nonprofit. And I'm not going to get their mission statement right. But they're educating about indigenous plant communities and knowledge bases and practices of those communities in relation to land. And I'm looking forward to learning more from Rose about their work. And obviously, they're working specifically with the elderberry plant but also indigenous youth. And so if you're in the Salem community, check out their work and support them. **Brooke ** 58:47 Wonderful. Okay, thanks so much for that, Elizabeth. We also want to say thanks to all of our listeners who check out our podcasts. If it's something that you are enjoying, please like it, share it, let others know about it. That's how we reach more voices and help more folks. If you want to comment at me about any of this you can find me on Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Brook with an E. Especially if you have any follow up questions for Elizabeth because she's pretty easy to get ahold of and likes talking about her farm and so I will probably try to drag her back around. So if you want specific questions answered, I'd be so happy to share those with her. This podcast is brought to you by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness publishing collective that produces podcasts, zines, books, posters, comics, and many other forms of educational leftist media. You can check us out at Tangledwilderness.org You can find all of our latest publications there. And if you really love our work and want to help us continue, especially with the podcast production, you can support us on Patreon. We do a monthly zine mailing to our Patreon supporters. That's a really wonderful mix of stories, politics, and poems. It's a different thing that comes out every month. And we especially want to give thanks to some of our patrons who support us at the $20 month level. And those wonderful folks include patolli, Eric, Perceval, Buck, Julia, Catgut, Marm, Carson, Lord Harken, Trixter, Princess Miranda, BenBen, Anonymous, Funder, Janice & O'dell, Aly, paparouna, Milica, Boise Mutual Aid, theo, Hunter, Paige, SJ, Dana, David, Nicole, Chelsea, Jenipher, Kirk, Staro, Chris, Micaiah, and as always, Hoss the Dog. Thank you so much.

We're gettin' real weird with history this week courtesy of a dieselpunk/blitzpunk prompt from patron Kaiser. Guest host Jonnie Law joins us as we scorch this alt history WWII-era Earth with battles and pollution, and then infuse it with occult artifacts, art-loving robots, and the power of cinema. Scientific accuracy? Ehh don't worry about it, we don't have any idea how diesel engines work either. Check out Jon's Roll for Narrative videos at https://www.youtube.com/@jonnielaw !   Do you have a setting you'd like us to build? Send us your worldbuilding prompt! https://forms.gle/F4SNMH3k7ea5fr1F8 And if you're feeling particularly generous, you can support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/worldbuildwithus Chat with us on our Discord server: https://discord.gg/SRFhWV3 Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@worldbuildwithus Email us your suggestions: WorldbuildWithUs@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @LetsWorldBuild    Intro theme: "Half Mystery" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0  Outro Theme: "Study and Relax" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

  Manga by Masahiro Hirakata Is there more to this series than a quirky character design? Ehh not really. We and our guest YouTuber Sarcastic Chorus discuss Shonen Jump manga Rookie Policewoman Kiruko .  Show Notes: • You can reach us at Twitter @shonenflopcast, Tumblr shonen-flop, or email shonenflop@gmail.com • You can find our guest at youtube.com/@SarcasticChorus or @ChorusSarcastic • Help keep the show running by joining the Shonen Flop Patreon at patreon.com/shonenflop. Get perks like early access to episodes; joining us during recordings, and exclusive episodes on manga like Agravity Boys, Magu-chan: God of Destruction, and PPPPPP. • Get Shonen Flop merch, including this episode's cover art, on a shirt, mug, print, or whatever else might catch your eye https://www.teepublic.com/stores/shonen-flop?ref_id=22733 • Become a member of our community by joining our Discord. You can hang out with us, submit your questions or six word summaries! Find it at https://discord.com/invite/4hC3SqRw8r • Want to be a guest? You can ask to be on a future episode at bit.ly/shonen_flop_guest Credits: • Shonen Flop is hosted by David Weinberger and Jordan Forbes • Additional editing assistance by Dylan Crider you can find his podcast, Anime Out of Context at animeoutofcontext.com • Assistance with pronunciation, translation, and other miscellaneous research done by Tucker Whatley and MaxyBee • Episode art by Merliel (IG: mer_liel) • Cover art funded by our generous art benefactor Nigel Francis MAL Description: After eagerly waiting for the arrival of his new subordinate, policeman Haruki Anjou finds out the recruit, Kiruko Otonashi, is a tonfa-wielding ex-mercenary who doesn't believe in moderation! Whether it is chasing down a thief or doing daily patrols, Kiruko is sure to complete the task using the full force of her military training and ridiculous strength, much to Anjou's chagrin. Even though Anjou can barely contain the new recruit, his life gets much more difficult when Kiruko's old squadmate, the behemoth Bullet Hawk, and special investigator Chiaki Uchigane come to town as well. With the four's combined talent of greatly exaggerating even the simplest of duties, the city of Nagashima can rest assured that its police force is enthusiastic, to say the least!

In the perfect world, the best dog recall training concludes with you able to let out a call and a whistle and your dog rushing towards you. But that's not always the reality. Our dogs love to explore — sometimes leaving a significant gap between us and them. That kind of independence is good! But it's anxiety inducing when your dog becomes too far from you and you aren't sure your call can make them come back. It's important that before we let our pets roam freely, we need to assure that wherever they are and whatever that do, with just one call they'll come back to you. The foundation of teaching recall training to dogs is this: your dog should know that you calling out to them is ALWAYS a good thing. How do you practice dog recall that makes your dog come back to you every time? Read on to learn more. Key Takeaways: There's power in giving random treats to your dog when you're doing recall training. When recall training, you have to trust your dog that he will come back to you when you call. Giving clear and consistent commands can increase the success of recall training. DOG CALMING CODE: TEACHING DOG OWNERS TRAIN DOGS BETTER Table of Contents: What Makes Dog Recall Training Fail AKA Why Your Dog Isn't Listening To You How to Teach Dogs Recall Training with Treats – Tips From a Top Dog Trainer The Power of Giving One Clear Command How to Improve Recall Training with a Professional Dog Whistle 9 Dog Recall Training Rules That Will Change How Your Dog Reacts To Your Call Factors That Make Recall Training for Dogs Not Work How Long Does Recall Training Take? Daily Activities for Recall Training for Dogs Conclusion: Recall Training is Your Call! What Makes Dog Recall Training Fail? AKA: Why Your Dog Isn't Listening to You “Dan, I try calling and whistling and my dog isn't responding. I have to chase him to ensure he's safe and get him home.” This scenario is common to me: dog owner starts recall training and doesn't get any results. Dogs ignore recall training by not responding, or running away even more. But what makes dogs not listen to recall? What makes a recall not work at all? The answer is this: dog recall training fails when owners don't build confidence in dogs that being called in is always A GREAT THING. START TRAINING PUPPIES WITH THE RIGHT FOUNDATION. START WITH THE PUPPY COACH™️ PROGRAM. As A Dog Trainer, My Biggest Dog Recall Training Tip Is To Only Use Recall For Rewards And Not For Punishments The best way on how to recall train a dog is to make the recall really good news. Helping your dog associate recall with perks can make training easier. (I talk about my unconventional strategy in the video below.)   When they are called in, it should always mean REWARDS; be it hugs, treats, or play time! Once we have established positive association with recall, it will be much easier to call our dogs in. Since Your Dog Will Be Distracted By The Outdoors, You Have To Make Sure Your Recall Has Something Exciting To Offer Another rule I have for a successful recall training is this: always making sure that my dogs will get a treat or a reward THAT THEY LOVE! The outdoors is exciting! Our dogs will be busy chasing around birds and jumping on puddles. We have to make sure that when we use the whistle or the call, we have something that they love! They'll come running to us EVERY TIME with this strategy. A BETTER WAY TO START DOG RECALL TRAINING? START WITH THE DOG CALMING CODE™️ How to Teach Dogs Recall Training with Treats – Tips From a Top Dog Trainer Over the years, I have learned of a super successful strategy for recall training that made dog owners say “Wow! Dan, you totally made him come back!” Will you be surprised if I tell you my recall training is inspired by the slot machines at the casino? How to Use Treats in Recall Training: What Works the Best Like what I mentioned above, you need to remember the two things that make recall training work: a.) Dogs need to know that when you call, it's always for something good. b.) They should know that if they come, a delicious treat is waiting! Now here's my Number #1 tip: GIVE RANDOM REWARDS. People Keep Coming Back to the Slot Machines Because of the Jackpot. You Can Use This In Rewards for Recall Training Before I start recall training for dogs, I always let my dogs see the rewards they're going to get when they come to me. It's like letting them know “There's a jackpot here!” In a bag, I would have my dog's favorite treat. Let's say they like chicken. I would mix it in with other great treats like cheese and bacon. Then I would let my dog smell the bag to let him know a treat is waiting for him when he comes back. PUPPY COACH™️: DOGGY DAN'S PROGRAM FOR TRAINING PUPPIES THE RIGHT WAY. Give Their Favorite Treats Randomly “But Doggy Dan, will my dog like it if I don't give my dog his favorite treats every time?” One of the biggest misconceptions when using treats in dog recall training is that the more we give them their favorite treat, the more they will come back. If we go back to slot machines, will it still be exciting if we get a dollar for every dollar we put in? Over time, it will become boring. Your dog's favorite treat will feel ordinary when they get it every single time. “Ehh. My mom is calling. I'm going to get cheese again. Let me chase that butterfly one more time.” Now compare it to giving their favorite treats randomly! They will come back again and again because they'll be waiting for that golden jackpot — that favorite treat among the treats. Every time you call, they will be thinking “I could be getting cheese this time!” and they'll be running to you swiftly! The Power of Giving One Clear Command How many different names, phrases, or tones of voice do you employ when summoning your dog? Let's be truthful! Many individuals possess an assortment of commands. Some are used when the dog is in trouble, while others signal the arrival of a treat. However, the reality is that this array of words, expressions, and vocal inflections only serves to confuse our dogs. FROM WELL-TRAINED PUPPIES TO WELL-TRAINED DOGS. TRANSITION WITH THE DOG CALMING CODE™️. Consistent Command = Consistent Message Ideally, we should aim for a single word or phrase, consistently delivered in the same tone, whenever we want our dog to come. This word or phrase should signify "Come here, and I will reward you with food before allowing you to resume playing." The more varied our commands, voices, and sounds are, the more inconsistent the message becomes for our dog or puppy. I understand that it's not always easy, but maintaining a calm demeanor and utilizing a consistent command, even when our dog fails to respond, is crucial for successful recall. Refrain From Using Commands to Scold Your Dog Above all else, refrain from scolding them upon their eventual arrival. Simply attach the leash and ignore any misbehavior. It is remarkably easy to undermine a strong recall by angrily reprimanding them when they do come. This creates a detrimental cycle, making it even less likely for them to respond the next time they are called. Therefore, remember this: The one clear command must convey the message "Come here, and I will reward you with food before allowing you to resume playing!" How To Improve Recall Training with a Professional Dog Whistle The whistle produces a consistent sound. Regardless of your frustrations, haste, or distress, when you blow the whistle, it emits a steady tone. Surprisingly, your dog responds remarkably well to this neutral sound. Whistles are User-Friendly Operating a professional dog whistle is a breeze (just be cautious with metal ones in extremely cold temperatures, as they may stick to your lips). The sound of a whistle carries a great distance, much farther than your voice can travel. Voices do not carry well, particularly if you have a soft voice. The whistle I utilize can reach up to 500 feet, and it spares strain on your vocal cords! PUPPY COACH™️: THE PROGRAM TRUSTED BY THOUSANDS OF PUPPY OWNERS. Whistles Are Easy to Hear Effective dog whistles operate at a high frequency, making it effortless for dogs to detect while remaining gentle on human ears. The high-pitched tone also cuts through background noise, such as people shouting, wind, and the rustling of trees and bushes, due to its unique sound. Using a Whistle Preserves Your Voice You will never again need to shout or raise your voice in front of others. Also, the fastest way to establish a reliable recall is to begin anew with a distinct sound. The whistle grants us this opportunity. If you're just starting whistle training for dog recall, or if you want to use the whistle the right way, you can check out my Whistle Training Masterclass. This training course will help you master the right way to use the whistle in no time. Free whistle included! 9 Dog Recall Training Rules That Will Change How Your Dog Reacts To Your Call Whether you're starting recall training for dogs, or you want to teach recall better to your dogs, here are some helpful rules to remember. Rule #1: Avoid Giving Special Treats Freely Remember, it's important not to offer special treats to your dog too freely and frequently. By keeping these rewards limited, you make them more valuable and maintain your dog's motivation to respond to your call. Rule #2: Establish The Idea That Responding to a Call = Rewards Create a strong association between your dog coming to you when called and receiving rewards. This helps them understand that coming to you promptly leads to positive outcomes, reinforcing their recall behavior. TRAIN YOUR GROWING DOGS WITH THE DOG CALMING CODE™️. Rule #3: Prepare Special Treats That Are ONLY for Recall Training To make recall training extra enticing, prepare special treats that are exclusively reserved for these training sessions. This way, your dog will associate the unique treats with the recall command, making it even more rewarding for them. Rule #4: Trust Your Dog Have faith in your furry friend's abilities! Believe that they can successfully learn and improve their recall skills. Your confidence in them will positively influence their performance and reinforce a strong bond between you both. Rule #5: Use a Line When Doing Recall Training During recall training, consider using a long line or leash. This allows you to maintain control while giving your dog the freedom to explore and respond to your call. It provides a safety net and helps build a reliable recall even in distracting environments. Rule #6: Use a Powerful, Familiar Command Choose a clear and distinct command for recall, such as "Come" or "Here." Consistency is key. By using the same command consistently, your dog will become familiar with the recall cue and respond accordingly. Rule #7: Increase Motivation By Letting Them Know Hard Work Produces Treats Boost your dog's motivation by letting them know that their hard work during recall training leads to tasty treats. Reinforce the idea that their efforts are rewarded, encouraging them to come to you eagerly and promptly. Rule #8: Only Call When Necessary Avoid overusing the recall command. By only calling your dog when necessary, you prevent diluting the importance and effectiveness of the recall cue. Reserve it for situations that require their immediate attention or potential danger. Rule #9: Use a Professional Recall Whistle Consider incorporating a professional recall whistle into your training routine. These whistles produce a consistent and easily distinguishable sound that carries well, ensuring your dog can hear it even from a distance. It provides a fresh start and a unique signal for recall training. Now I know choosing the best dog recall whistle can be a tough choice. Believe me — I have tried every type of professional dog whistle for recall. As a dog trainer, I always make sure to recommend the one that checks all the boxes. This is why I decided to design and manufacture a dog whistle that truly addresses dog recall issues of thousands of dog owners. You can check it out here! PUPPY COACH™️: LEARN THE SECRETS TO TRAINING PUPPIES THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY. Factors That Make Recall Training for Dogs Not Work Factor #1: Inconsistent Reinforcement One common reason for recall training failure is inconsistent reinforcement. If rewards are not consistently given when the dog responds to the recall command, they may not associate coming when called with positive outcomes. This inconsistency can confuse the dog and undermine the training progress. Factor #2: Lack of Motivation Dogs may fail to respond to recall commands if they do not find the rewards or reinforcement offered during training sessions motivating enough. It's essential to understand what truly motivates your dog, whether it's treats, playtime, praise, or a combination, and use those incentives effectively during training. Factor #3: Insufficient Training in Different Environments Recall training conducted solely in a controlled or familiar environment may not translate to real-life situations. Dogs need exposure to various environments, distractions, and stimuli to generalize their recall behavior. If training is limited to one setting, dogs may struggle to respond reliably in new or stimulating environments. Factor #4: Ineffective Communication Dog communication breakdowns can hinder recall training. If the dog does not understand the recall command clearly or if the owner uses inconsistent cues or body language, the dog may become confused or unsure about what is expected. Clear and consistent communication is vital for successful recall training. DOG CALMING CODE™️: PREPARING PUPPIES TO BECOME WELL-TRAINED, CALMER DOGS How Long Does Recall Training Take? When it comes to dog recall training, the duration of the training process can vary from dog to dog. Dogs, like humans, require time to adapt to new skills and behaviors, and recall training is no exception. Consistency plays a crucial role in achieving success. Recall Training Truth #1: Recall Training Takes Time First and foremost, it's important to understand that dog recall training is not an overnight accomplishment. Dogs need time to grasp the concept and fully integrate the recall behavior into their routines. Patience is key during this process. Recall Training Truth #2: Consistency is Key Consistency is a vital factor in the effectiveness of dog recall training. Regular and consistent training sessions provide dogs with the opportunity to reinforce their understanding of the recall command. It's not enough to practice the recall command occasionally or sporadically. Regular exercise of the recall behavior helps dogs build a strong association between the command and the desired action. To achieve optimal results in dog recall training, consistent exercise is necessary. Recall Training Truth #3: Practice Makes Perfect Practice the recall command in various environments and situations, gradually increasing the level of distractions. This allows your dog to learn to respond to your call regardless of the surrounding stimuli. By exposing your dog to different scenarios, you help them generalize the recall behavior, making it more reliable and applicable in real-life situations. Recall Training Truth #4: Every Dog Is Different It's important to note that the timeline for dog recall training can vary widely. Some dogs may catch on quickly and demonstrate progress within a matter of weeks, while others may require more time and repetition to fully grasp the concept. Each dog is unique, and their individual temperament, previous training experiences, and ability to learn all play a role in the duration of the training process. Remember, successful dog recall training is a journey that requires dedication, consistency, and patience. With time, effort, and regular exercise of the recall behavior, you can establish a strong and reliable recall response from your dog. Daily Activities for Recall Training for Dogs Indoor Recall Practice In a controlled indoor environment, call your dog's name followed by the recall command ("Come" or any preferred cue). Use an excited and positive tone. When your dog comes to you, reward them with praise and a high-value treat. Repeat this exercise multiple times throughout the day. PREPARE YOUR DOG FOR RECALL TRAINING WITH THE DOG CALMING CODE™️! Leashed Recall Walks During regular walks, incorporate recall training by periodically calling your dog to come to you. Start with shorter distances and gradually increase the distance over time. Use treats or toys as rewards when they reach you promptly. This exercise strengthens recall skills while adding distractions and reinforcing the behavior on-leash. Recall with Distractions Find a quiet outdoor area with mild distractions, such as a park or a backyard. Allow your dog some freedom to explore, but intermittently call them to come using the recall command. Increase the difficulty by introducing distractions like toys or other dogs. Reward them generously when they respond promptly despite the distractions. Hide and Seek Recall Play a game of hide and seek indoors or in a securely fenced area. Have a family member or friend hold your dog while you hide. Once hidden, call your dog's name followed by the recall command. When they find you, reward them with treats and praise. This game makes recall training fun and reinforces their response to your call. Recall at Mealtime Incorporate recall training into your dog's mealtime routine. Before placing their food bowl down, call them using the recall command. When they come to you, reward them with their meal. This reinforces the recall behavior and adds value to responding promptly to your call. HELP PUPPIES MASTER RECALL TRAINING WITH THE PUPPY COACH™️! Conclusion: Recall Is Your Call Dear dog owner, your dog loves you and will naturally come to you. However, it isn't enough to know our dogs will come back to us. We have to be assured that through our command, we can help them be safe. I know recall might be a daunting task, but it's a skill that will not only keep your dog safe. It's a skill that can help you create a lasting bond and connection with your beloved dog. Through consistency and the right strategy, you can make your recall training efforts yield successful results. Best of luck with your recall training!   ~ Doggy Dan 

Episode Summary On This Month in the Apocalypse, Brooke, Margaret, and Inmn talk about a lot of really bad things that happened in July, from the intensifying heat, to floods, to medicine shortages, to Antarctica's ice melting, to grain shortages, to terrifying new laws. But also, there are some hopeful things that happened, and as always the group finds ways to stay positive and for communities to prepare for what's to come. Host Info Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript This Month in the Apocalypse: July, 2023 Margaret 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Margaret. Now one of you says, "Hi." Brooke 00:22 Hi, Margaret. Margaret 00:26 No, you say "Hi," like you say who you are. Brooke 00:29 Oh, hi, who I am. Brooke. Inmn 00:32 And I'm Inmn. Brooke 00:34 Did I do good? Was that good? Alright, Margaret 00:37 Y'all did great. I'm joined by Brooke and Inmn today for another episode of This Month in the Apocalypse. And this is an extra special extra apocalypsey month that we're going to be talking about because we're talking about July, 2023, the hottest month in the history of humans being alive. Unless you're listening to this in August, in which case maybe you're like, "July that was some fucking amateur hour shit." But for now, hear us at the end of July, hottest month ever. And you know what else is hot is the Channel Zero Network, the network of anarchists podcasts. There's nothing wrong with this comparison. We are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcast and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Da da da da duh daa [Humming a melody] Inmn 02:12 And we're back. And to start off today, we're going to talk a little bit about global temperatures and the heatwave that we are in the middle of experiencing right now. So this July was quite possibly the hottest--or I mean, definitely the hottest month on record in, you know, a recorded historical way--and possibly one of the hottest months on the planet in a very long time. So I live in Arizona, and in Phoenix, the ground temperature...There were daily record breaks in the in the heat where the hottest day on record was...it was 117 degrees. And then the next day it was 118 degrees. And then the next day, it was 119 degrees. Margaret 03:09 They won't even make it to that 20. Like come on. Just give us the round number. Brooke 03:15 No, no, don't. Stay less. Margaret 03:19 Oh, interesting. Okay. [dryly sarcastic] Inmn 03:21 There is I learned, a really horrifying thing that happens at 120 degrees. So I really hope that it doesn't get to 120 degrees. Do y'all know what happens when the ground temperature reaches 120 degrees in the sun? Margaret 03:35 Does Mothra break out of the cracked Earth and fight Godzilla? Inmn 03:41 Sort of. Propane tanks spontaneously combust. Margaret 03:49 That's bad. Brooke 03:51 Oh my gosh, Inmn 03:53 It's really bad. So in actuality, the temperature did reach 120 degrees because an enormous propane tank near the Sky Harbor International Airport exploded along with a bunch of like five gallon ones and it caused this huge fire. A bunch of cars were destroyed. And yeah, which you know, is by itself not like some huge world ending thing. But if you live anywhere where it might be 120 degrees on the ground, possibly in Arizona, take your propane tanks out of the sun because they might explode. Margaret 04:35 Normally, I would say don't put them inside because in general that's a really bad idea. But, it's probably better than like popcorn kernels in your yard. Inmn 04:46 Yeah, yeah. And I say this for people who like, you know, if you have a grill outside that just has the propane tank attached to it and it's not in the shade or anything. Um then, yeah, it could just explode and destroy your house. Brooke 05:06 But only if it's 120 degrees. If you're at 119, you're perfectly safe. Leave those propane tanks just right out there in the middle of the sun on the asphalt, right? [sarcastically] Inmn 05:16 No, don't do that. [laughing] Margaret 05:18 Place them near the following people who run the following companies. Brooke 05:29 Do you want to know about the the average overall temperatures in the month of July in Phoenix while we're talking about Phoenix? Margaret 05:36 I mean, no, but tell us anyway. Brooke 05:39 Okay, for the month of July, in Phoenix, the average high temperature, daily high temperature, was 114 degrees. And here's the really fun one, the average low temperature like the coldest it got was 90 degrees. Margaret 05:56 There was also a new low warm record. There was a night in Phoenix where it didn't get below 97 degrees. Inmn 06:04 Oh, golly. Margaret 06:06 Which is too hot. Inmn 06:08 It is too hot. Margaret 06:09 And, I didn't write this number down because I forgot. Massive..Like there was also a record for the most electricity the city of Phoenix has ever drawn because everyone was running their air conditioners, for good reasons. This is not a "Don't run your air conditioners," this is more of a, "There is a limit to what the grid can handle." Inmn 06:31 Yeah. And just to, since we're hyper focusing on Phoenix, in the last, I think--I don't think this was last month-- but in the last couple of months, the governor did halt a lot of new housing developments that were getting built due to concerns over the future of water in Phoenix. Margaret 06:57 And it seems like there's two ways to read that. There is the like...I am notably on the record of feeling like people who are...That Arizona is in trouble. I am on the record for that. And I don't want to get into specifics. But the more kind way to read the lack of expansion is that it was less like these places are out of water and more that, I believe in Arizona, or in the Phoenix metro area or something, you have to be able to prove that there will be water access for the next 100 years in order to build. And so it is a little bit less like these places are out of water and more like, "We cannot guarantee this water." I think that's the kinder way...No, not the kinder...That is one way to read that. The other is that Arizona is in fucking trouble. Inmn 07:55 Yeah, and you know, it stems from these like larger issues of the Colorado River having these like all time lows in water flow, and just due to Phoenix being this like huge, sprawling place that is like under constant development. Like I think it's where...Outside of Phoenix is where Bill Gates is trying to build some like new smart future city. Which is really confusing. Margaret 08:27 Has fucking Elon Musk gotten into him or something? Inmn 08:29 Yeah, like it's supposed to be this like huge self contained smart city that's outside of...it's in the larger Phoenix area, but like is separated from Phoenix. And my first thing that I thought was like, "Why? There's no...Where are you going to get water from?" Which I guess if you're really...If you're Bill Gates, you maybe have to worry less about where your water's coming from. But... Margaret 08:57 I mean, eventually. Other heat stuff from this month, let's see, we had...I was looking at a bunch of maps of where all of this heatwave stuff hit right, and overall, the hardest hit places were the coastal south, the southwest, of course--Phoenix gets a lot of the attention and for good reason--the coastal South got an awful lot, and then actually in terms of it being way hotter than usual, it also affected the lower and middle Midwest. The Pacific Northwest and central Appalachia--aka the two best places in the country based on the general disbursement of the three people on this call--were the least affected. And last weekend--sorry last week--thousands of people across the US went to the hospital for heat related illnesses. Only six states have laws protecting workers that say things like "You actually can't make people work when it's too hot out or they'll die." Only six states actually have laws that are like, "You have to provide like shade, and rest, and water for people working outside." I read a heartbreaking story about a young man who died laying cable trying to send money to his mother and work his way through school and all that shit. The federal government is working on a law about, "Maybe you shouldn't let people work where it kills them in the heat." That law has not..They've been working on it for years and nothing has happened. Yep. Got any more heat heat or move on to wildfire? Brooke 10:41 Capitalism is so ridiculous. The fact that we have to come along and legislate like, "Hey, maybe don't work people to death in the heat." Like that shouldn't have to be a law that anyone has to have because we are fucking human beings. And yeah, we should treat each other better. Yeah, yeah, sorry. It's upsetting. So, the United States is not the only place that's super hot. Europe's going through another massive heatwave like they did last summer. And last summer's heatwave, you may recall from the news, was breaking record temperatures and was quite severe. And one report I read said something like 60,000 Europeans died last year due to the heatwave. Their average temperatures are currently much higher than they were last summer even...or are getting to high temperatures earlier in the summer than they did last year. That's what I really mean to say. And it's affecting lots of things. For instance, Greece is experiencing wildfires on a massive scale, which I guess they're somewhat prone to wildfires already like the Pacific Northwest. But, the amount of acreage burning right now is two and a half times the average that they've experienced this time of year. Particularly the island of Rhodes, which is a Greece Island. Greek. Greek island. [The island] has had to evacuate tens of thousands of people off the island due to the wildfires. There's something like 90,000 acres of wildfires currently burning in Greece, which is a really significant size of wildfire. And it's weird how much perspective shifts on this, especially being from somewhere like the Pacific Northwest where we're kind of prone to wildfires. And if we get one that's like 10,000-20,000 acres, I'm like, "Meh [disapprovingly]." I mean, that's huge. But at the same time, in the last few years, we've had ones that are at 90,000-100,000 acres. So, you know, perspective shifts on what a severe wildfire is, but 90,000 acres is just massive. So yeah. Greece is...Greece is not having a good time with the fires right now. Margaret 13:03 And then, right before we hit record [on the episode], I was reading about how today, there's a third 300,000 person city in Sicily, whose name I forgot to write down, that is largely without water or electricity today because the 46 degree Celsius which I want to say is like 118 [Fahrenheit], or something like that, melted asphalt and fucked up all the infrastructure underneath. So no more electricity and water in a town of 300,000, that is also like experiencing a ton of wildfire. Apparently like the city is also surrounded by wildfire, but maybe that was a different city nearby. Brooke 13:45 You know when you say that, Margaret, it does...I distinctly remember us talking last summer about the heatwave and how a lot of European towns, countries, aren't built for the high heats and things were melting like that. Like the asphalt and stuff. Margaret 13:59 And then, yeah, I remember. And you had England, you had like the tarmac, which is the British word for asphalt, I think. I don't know. They don't do anything. Right. And then, speaking of places that Europe hasn't done right, Northern Africa is also completely fucked by the current heatwave. And in particular, wildfires. Algerian wildfires are fucking everything up. Like, as I'm...Like, as we're recording, unfortunately, they'll probably get worse by the time this comes out. Algerian wildfires, so far, have killed at least 38 people, including at least 10 soldiers who were doing wildland fire duty. More than 1,500 people have been evacuated from 97 fires around that country. Tunisia is also having some fucking times because, actually, it turns out that national borders are nonsense. And Algiers, the city of Algiers, had a fun 120 degree day. This I believe last week. And two years ago, Algerian wildfires killed 65 people in one week, including, a lot of those people are the people who are like, bravely fighting those wildfires. And I don't know, those people are fucking heroes and martyrs to climate change. Brooke 15:17 Is the heat causing other kinds of problems in the world, Margaret? Margaret 15:21 You mean the Antarctic ice that isn't there? Well hear me out. It's actually a solution because we're all going to move to Antarctica, which will be green. And there won't be any Lovecraftian temples with strange writing...in the mountains of madness. Someone's gonna yell at me about Lovecraft. Anyway. Antarctica is like having some real interesting times. I don't know if people have seen the news this week. Every now and then like climate change people like post the deviation from norms charts, where the like waves go up and down and stuff. And this year's, they're just not. Usually they're like, "Check it out. This wave is a little bit different. It's pushing the envelope. It's got some new records." There's no Antarctic ice. That's an exaggeration. That's hyperbole. Antarctic ice is lower than it's possible for people to easily conceptualize right now. It's winter in Antarctica right now. It's...When we talk about the hottest year on record, and we're like, "Oh, well, it's summer. Of course, it's hot, right?" Where I'm at, the hottest year in the fucking world, half of the world is in winter right now. Right? But, sea temperatures are rising, which actually are going to...Fuck I forgot to write this down..I was reading about right beforehand. There's a new study saying that the Gulf Stream, the thing that like cycles the fucking goddamn waters of the world, will likely stop somewhere between 2025 and 2100, with the average guess being about 2050 but as soon as two years from now. Which will have all kinds of changes. Ironically, one of them is that Europe might get colder. It's that movie, The Day After Tomorrow, is based on this concept of the Gulf streams disappearing. Brooke 17:10 Oh, that movie. Margaret 17:11 Yeah. That beautiful, wonderful movie. I barely remember it. We snuck into the theater. And I was like too paranoid the whole time. I was like afraid we'd get caught because we were like, really obviously dirty punks. And it was just like, so obvious. But, we didn't get caught. And I don't really remember much about that movie besides it's cold, and that people are willing to walk a very long way for their family, which is very sweet. So this event is, this is a historic low of ice following the previous all time lows of 2016, 2017, and 2022. But this is a five to six sigma event. Five to six--not like cool guys who'd go their own way--but five to six standard deviations away from a normal event, which is a meaningless thing. I had to spend like 20 minutes reading about what the fuck that means to try and explain it to people because you're just like, "Oh, it's a lot, right?" It's a lot, a lot. Statistically, a four sigma event, four standards of probability standard deviation thing, is now you're talking about something that is functionally 100%. Right? This is now so far...Basically, it's like imagine stuff is on a bell curve. The far edges of it are the sigma, are the standard deviations away from the norm, the norm is the center. When you get to the...When you get to like four, you're at functionally 100% of things don't don't fall into this, right? Or something that happens functionally 0% of the time, it's not actually 0% of the time. So it is...but it's often seen as statistically insignificant. For example, if you were to flip a coin 100 times, the odds of that coming up heads all 100 times is one in 3.5 million. That is a five sigma event. Right? The standard deviation, this the amount of Antarctic ice that isn't there this winter when it's supposed to be coming back, is more than that. It is about twice that. It is a one in 7.5 million year event, which isn't to say this happened 7.5 million years ago. It didn't. That's the odds of it happening randomly any given year. So it's really funny because scientists have to be very exact, which is part of what causes a lot of like climate change confusion, because if you ask a scientist like, "Is this man made?" a scientist has to be like, "We cannot to 100% certainty, certain that," right? Because they're like, because they're not certain, and science is based on an uncertainty. And so like a lot of the articles they're like, "Look, technically we're not sure. It's just really, really unlikely that it isn't." And I remember--one time I asked one of my science minded doctor friends--I was like, "What are the odds I am going to have the following health problem that is too personal for me to explain on-air?" He was like, "Look, that is possible. That is a possible risk vector. It's about as likely as you getting eaten by a shark, today, in Asheville, North Carolina." Which is to say, it was possible but not worth fucking worrying about. And this is the opposite of that. This is worth fucking worrying about. And ice decrease, of course, obviously, it makes the water get bigger, right, because it's not in ice form. But also, ice reflects back an awful lot of sunlight. There is a chance that the ice will be back next year. There is a chance that it won't. I was not able to find...I was able to find scientists being like, "We don't fucking know." I was not able to find scientists giving statistics. This is...I think..So I'm gonna go on a rant. I warned everyone--not you all the listeners--but I warned my co-host that I'm gonna go on a little bit of a rant today. Brooke 20:58 And that was it. Margaret 20:59 No, no, we're just getting started. Sorry. Brooke 21:05 Let me buckle in for this. We buckle in for this. Okay, yeah, ready to go. Margaret 21:07 Alright. So I think...I try really hard to not be like, the-sky-is-falling girl, right? I talk about preparedness and possible bad futures. Semi professional--actually, I don't get paid for this--but like, I do it a lot. It's like one of the main things. It's like, what I do with my time. And I try really hard to be like, "Look, we don't know. Don't put all your eggs into your savings for the when-you're-80 basket. But also don't put none of them in, right? Because the future is unknowable. And that is true. I think that this month marks a turning point where we can no longer in good conscience, talk about climate change as a possibility or even as like a certainty that's a little bit away. And we don't know how bad it's going to be. I think we have to talk about things from the point of view that this is happening. And this is really bad. And this is going to stay bad no matter what we do. That is not to say we can't do anything. And that's not to say we can't mitigate it. But I think that we need to just like...I know I will at least have to stop hedging some of what I say. And I think that this month is the most clear that we are in a really bad time--I don't wanna say "apocalypse," because it's a sort of a meaningless word--since we've been having the show, with the possible exception of March, 2020. And so I just like really quickly--and we'll get back to our regularly scheduled talking about some stuff--I want to talk about some of the stuff we can do really quickly and like what I think is really useful. And overall, what I believe is useful, is that we need to start working together in communities to build bottom-up solutions, not necessarily just to climate change--although that's true--but to preparing for and weathering the impacts of climate change. I don't believe that top-down solutions are coming. Prove me wrong government handler assigned to listen to this show. Prove me fucking wrong. I will turn in my anarchy card if you fucking stop global warming. Maybe. I might thank you and then still try to end you. But... Brooke 23:25 Weather. Weathering climate change. Margaret 23:31 I believe that working to create small, medium, and large scale communities that work from the bottom-up, that are horizontally organized, that work in federation with other groups to organize on as large of scale as is necessary, is our best bet going forward for how we can mitigate the worst effects of this, both in terms of our survivability, and in terms of having a culture that directly confronts fossil fuel infrastructure, that directly confronts, you know, the people who are doing this, right? There's that old, I think Utah Phillips quote, "The Earth isn't dying, it's being killed. And the people who are doing the killing have names and addresses." Brooke 24:22 I'm gonna put that on my wall. Margaret 24:24 I believe that we can build the kind of resilient communities that can allow more of us to live as long and healthy lives as is possible, considering what's happening. And I believe that the time to start thinking about that and doing that is now. I think that it is time for people to talk to their neighbors. It is time for people to work at like whatever your local community center is that is most aligned to your values. If you don't have one, fucking start one, and start having skill shares. Start prioritizing this. I think that people should make their decisions about where they want to live based on climate right now, and not just move away from the bad--obviously, that's going to happen--but also like where you want to live when/if the structures that currently provide for us are no longer able to do so. Like for myself, I didn't pick "I'm moving to where I think is going to be the least impacted by climate change." I moved to where my family is. Because that is a priority that I will make above my own personal safety every time, you know. But everyone's going to make those decisions differently. And then the other final thing is that I think that we have this problem where Al Gore government type people are like, "This is your fault because you didn't use fluorescent light bulbs, you used incandescent light bulbs," right? [Brooke laughs] To date myself to like 20 years ago when that was like a way that we were trying to get blamed as individuals, like, "If you don't recycle then like the world's gonna end." And it's like, "Oh, the world's ending. It's clearly because I didn't recycle enough." Like one, recycling is mostly fake. Although it shouldn't be. And I think it's still good practice for people to think about their waste, right? But, and so individual like so...[tails of and start over] So there's this problem where corporations are like, "Ah, individuals, that's the solution. We don't have to change anything," right. But we can accidentally fall on the other side of that. And we can say like, "Oh, well, since this isn't my fault. And my individual choices don't necessarily change things. I'm off the hook." And we the way we talk about the hook is wrong. There is a difference between fault and responsibility. It is not your fault, dear listener, that this is happening. Right? It is not your fault that you once got drunk and threw a car battery in the ocean. I have no idea why everyone uses throwing car batteries into the ocean as the example of horrible pollution that individuals can do. But it like comes up all the time. So, if you...[interrupted] Brooke 26:58 I have ever heard that example before. Margaret 27:00 Then you have different DMs than me. When you wanna talk about climate change, people are like, "I'm gonna throw my car battery into the ocean." I don't get it. If someone wants to explain it to me, you can send it to me by my DMs and I won't look. And but there is a difference between the fault and the responsibility. It is not your fault, right? But it is our--not your--our responsibility because no one else is going to fucking do it. Rather, the people whose fault it is, are not going to fucking do it. And we need to figure out how to do this because we're running out of time. And I think that...It's essentially liberalism in a bad sense. It is both liberalism to blame the individual, right? But it's also liberalism to be like, "Well, it's not my fault. So I don't have to do anything about it," because like, when you're being oppressed, right, like...For example, I, to use myself as an example as like a trans person, right? It is like not my fault that people hate trans people. But like, I don't want to be oppressed. So, I need to look at doing that. I need to look at solving my problems even though it isn't my fault. And it is a delicate balance to walk when we talk about this because we need to not blame victims. But we need, as collectively the billions of victims of climate change, to figure out our own power and work our way out of this. I think that's the end of my rant. Brooke 28:31 Actually, I really appreciate that, Margaret, especially the end part there, just because like I, in my own personal life, have been struggling with a little bit of that lately, especially with the heat this summer, and that feeling like, you know, there's nothing I can do, this isn't my fault, so fuck it, I want to turn down my AC some more or something like that. And I haven't, but that like the mentality that I'm struggling with sometimes right now. So I really appreciate you saying that. Margaret 28:59 Yeah, and like use your AC. Like, I mean when there's like...Sometimes you get these like warnings--there are individual structures that are currently top-down that I don't think are bad--like when they send out a text being like, "Look, if everyone could kind of lay off the power a little bit so we don't all have brownouts, that would be really good." Like you know, that's when we can all like pitch in. It sucks that we're all expected to pitch in while they still fucking clear cut, and drill, and burn everything in the goddamn world. Inmn 29:29 Yeah, it's like the...Like this came up in Texas. Was it last year or like the year before with like the huge power outages in Texas? They were due to...There was like a huge heat wave. And the thing, one of the things that the grid collapsing was blamed on was people cranking their ACs because it was like 115 degrees outside. And which, you know, probably probably the ACs are not actually what caused the grid to collapse. It's like, the normal strain of the grid is supporting so many unnecessary and ridiculous things. But like, people were asked to turn off their air conditioners, right, during a heatwave so that the grid wouldn't collapse because the grid is not managed well and it's owned by private companies and they don't manage it well. And so the grid collapsed. And then people were like...People were getting heat sick. People were dying. And it's like, we can rely on things like ACs to cool ourselves. But we actually can't because of the mismanagement of utilities and stuff like that could be what causes grids to collapse, not because it is the individual's like fault, but that there's all this other mismanagement and strain from Capitalism, etc. Margaret 30:57 Totally. And like, I think it's a good example too where, at the same time, it is not the people who want to turn up their AC's fault, right? But I want to be alive more than I want to not be at fault, right? So it's like, if I...[interrupted] Inmn 31:15 Just because it's not our fault, it still might cause it. Margaret 31:20 It's our problem. You know, someone else caused a problem. Like, the person who's hitting me with a stick, it is their fault that they are hitting me with a stick, but they're clearly not going to stop. And the AC example is like, if I get a text that's like, "Turn down your AC or everyone's power is going to go out. I'm going to turn down my AC because I don't want everyone's power to go out." And it's not because I'm like--I mean, it is a good like, we're all pitching in together to not die thing, right--but it's also like...It's hard, because it then becomes easy to blame people to be like, "Oh, you didn't turn down your AC. So it's your fault." It's like, "No, it's the people who fucking..." I mean, Texas is that brilliant example, where it's like cut off from the rest of America's grid because it's like, "We got to be Texas." And that's like, why it's so--and that and all the privatization--is why it's so precarious. And so we just build resiliency. It's like, I don't want to be pure fault. I want to be alive. And so like, I want to say like, "Okay, what will I do to keep cool if my AC goes out?" You know? Anyway. Brooke 32:29 Can I point out that it's weird how we talk about AC because we talk about turning down the AC, which makes me think like turning down power. But actually, what we mean is turning down temperature. Yeah. And then I say, when I say like, turn up the AC, that means make it, I'm making it hot--in my mind, in my mind--if I turn up the AC. Anyway. Yeah, it's difficult. Yeah. Floods! Margaret 32:54 All right. Margaret 32:56 That would be really bad if there's more than one disaster at once. Can't wildfires be enough? Or have there been floods? Inmn 33:02 There have also been floods. And I'm going to focus in on a couple of kind of specific floods that have happened this month in the United States. But there is this...It points to this larger problem and some of the things that I learned after digging into the floods in Vermont, kind of highlight some key issues that I think are worth exploring. So, the flood in Vermont that happened on like July 10th or 11th or something, where essentially two whole months of rain fell in two days. There was like nine inches of rain, which, I was curious how much water that is because, you know, we hear like, "Oh, one inch of rain, nine inches of rain." Like what does that mean? And nine inches of rain over like, over 20,000 square miles--which I don't actually know how big Vermont is, but this is the statistic that I looked up--is like two and a half not trillion but the next number, the next magnitude. Quadrillion? Margaret 34:24 I don't really know what's above a trillion off the top my head. Inmn 34:26 Yeah, it's like two and a half quadrillion gallons of water, you know. It's so...I hope I don't get at'd about this math, but... Margaret 34:35 No, it is quadrillion. That is the...Well, you at least got the word right. I looked at that. Inmn 34:41 Great, great, great. Yeah, it's like...It's that much water. So like when we think about like, "Oh, one inch of rain is falling." Like one inch of rain falling in one day as a lot. You know, like where I used to live flooded over an inch and a half of rain, you know? And so to put that in perspective, nine inches of rain fell in Vermont over a two day period. And in the first 24 hours, the river--and I am not going to pronounce this right--the Winooski River, it rose 19 feet in 24 hours. And then on the next day, in a couple hours, it rose to 40 feet. And they're measuring this on a 170 foot dam. And are there any guesses as to how high the water rose on that dam? Brooke 35:41 70 foot damn. Water had nine inches.... Margaret 35:47 I'm just gonna be wrong. Seven feet. Brooke 35:50 Oh, I was gonna guess like 50 feet. Margaret 35:51 Yeah, I just figured I'd be wrong. Inmn 35:54 It rose 169 feet. Margaret 35:58 Nice. I mean... Inmn 36:02 It came within one foot of the dam breaching, which it like, this dam sits over Montpelier, which is like one of the only cities in Vermont, and so the dam came within inches of breaching and... Margaret 36:16 Oh, jeez, it would have flooded the city. Inmn 36:19 Yes, it would have. Like, this already huge catastrophe would have turned into something several magnitudes higher if the dam had been breached. Brooke 36:31 As an indigenous woman. I'm like, "Fuck you, dams." But at the same time, like I don't want them to break like that and kill a bunch of people. Inmn 36:40 Yeah, and yeah. And so the dam did not breach. There was only one recorded death in the incident. Margaret 36:50 A lot better than Pennsylvania did this month for floods in terms of deaths. Brooke 36:55 But, wait, what happened Pennsylvania? Inmn 36:56 Wait, wait, sorry. I got more. I got more. So, one of the other big concerns, and I think this ties in well to kind of preparedness, is locally, there were a lot of people worried about a rather large houseless population that was turned out of COVID housing, like a COVID housing program that ended in June, and so in July, there were like, a lot more houseless people kicking around areas--and houseless people, as some may know, love to congregate around like rivers and stuff because those are usually pretty chill places to hang out and like access resources and stuff. And so like, one thing that's noted is that like a lot of people experiencing housing insecurity tend to congregate in the most flood prone areas because those are the areas available to people to congregate. And so one cool thing that did happen is there was this shelter network, that when they heard about the severe storms, they immediately went and started doing outreach to people living by the river. And actually, they were able to do in evacuation of people on a bus. The bus actually ended up getting caught in floodwaters and was destroyed. But the people on it were not harmed. And people were able to like evacuate by other means. But yeah, just as like a wonderful thing you can do if you think your area might experience a flood is doing outreach to like houseless communities who might not know about the danger and might not have the resources to escape it themselves. Yeah. One of the other big things was that in Vermont--this isn't quite as true as in a lot of other places, but it's something specific to areas like Vermont, or like West Virginia, or like other mountainous areas--like they have that phrase like, "Well, it's only three miles as the crow flies, but it's going to take an hour and a half to get there on the windy mountainous roads." Well, Vermont has a lot of windy mountainous roads, and almost all of those roads became completely undriveable because of roads washing out, mudslides, and these like huge floodwaters. And so the populations of Vermont were largely left trapped in their homes unable to escape if things had gotten worse. Like people described being completely cut off on these little, you know, mini islands in floodwaters. And yeah, just things to think about if you live in these, if you live in mountainous areas, is like having these kind of early warnings to leave places because as much as you might be able to fortify your house as like a bunker for preparedness, if you get trapped in it and it floods then it didn't save your life. Brooke 40:14 That goes back to what you [Margaret] were saying about community building earlier. Margaret 40:20 As someone who often lives in the mountains, and currently lives in the mountains, and this is like...Mountains flash flood really bad. And a lot of mountainous areas, like in the mountains, people often build in the hollers in the lower areas between, you know, in the valleys between different pieces of the mountain and stuff. But...And usually it's like the town actually floods sometimes more than some of the rural houses outside of town. Not necessarily, right. But it's like, because you put all...If you have a bunch of houses, you put them in the low lying area. But, if you've got like two houses, you can put them up on the ridge. And there's like unfortunately...If you're randomly being like, "Man, I want to move to the mountains," you should think about buying one of the houses and that's up on a hill instead of down in the valley for that reason. And then the other weird random thing that I was like reading about is that apparently in a lot of flood prone places--this isn't like...this isn't gonna save everyone--but people put an axe in their attic because one of the ways that a lot of people die in floods is that they go higher and higher in their house. And so then, as it gets up to their second floor, or whatever the fuck, they then go into their attic. But if you go into your attic, you can't get out in a flood. And so some people keep an axe in their attic. I don't know whether that's...I'm reading about it in a book, but in a fiction book, you know? Inmn 41:43 Yeah. Yeah, that is...that is weirdly relatable. Like me and Margaret used to live somewhere that was prone to flooding. And I remember the first time that we got a really bad flood, like this was when our eight foot wide stream turned into like a 70 foot wide moving current of water that was up to your chest... Margaret 42:10 And bringing all kinds of shit down from... Inmn 42:14 Yeah, and yeah, there's like trees floating by. And there's all these, you know, tiny houses and structures and stuff, and nobody there was all that concerned about it I think, except for me. Like, we were running around trying to save tools, and equipment, and like stuff like that, and make sure the cars were up on the highest ground possible. And I was like, "We have to leave because we might not be able to if we wait too long." And like, thankfully, I was wrong. But like it worried me how unworried people were about the flood in this like mountainous area that we could have easily become trapped in. Margaret 42:59 I was a little bit like, "My house was on the hill." So I went down to help. Why don't we put our houses on the hill, which is not very community minded of me. Inmn 43:12 No, that's fine. But sorry, just to speak to one other thing real quick. So another thing to think about with flooding is that--and I've never thought about this until I was reading about it to prepare for this--but if you grow food, either in a garden or on a farm water, like when there's these huge floods--especially when the wastewater management facility gets like flooded out like it did in Vermont--all of the water that is in this flood water is very dirty. It's filled with like...It's filled with raw sewage, like a stupid amount of raw sewage. It's filled with like oil, and like contaminants, and like chemicals, and like anything that was swept up in the floodwaters. And so, if you grow food and your garden gets flooded out, you can't eat any of that food, even if it's like root vegetables Like pretty much like all fruit and vegetables that get contaminated by floodwater are like completely inedible and like unsafe to eat. So, it's something that, you know, in a local area where a flood happens, it can cause a lot of problems for people and then like globally, it can also cause huge problems with food insecurity. Yeah. And, talking about another food insecurity thing that's connected to floods, so, in Ukraine this past month, a dam, like one of the largest water reservoirs in Europe, was blown up. And you know, a lot of people are like, "Oh, the Russians did it because they're in control of it." And the Russians are like, "We didn't do it, but the dam did mysteriously blow up". And it... Margaret 45:10 Derek Jensen was running...Someone in a raccoon sweater was seen running from the crime, screaming about how trans people are bad. Inmn 45:17 Yeah. And so like this...the water in Kherson rose 20 feet, and it destroyed all of these like irrigation systems. And it is expected to affect 600,000 hectares of farmland that produce over 4 million tons of grain and a huge amount of the world's vegetable oil. Margaret 45:48 Okay, I was reading about how there's a vegetable oil shortage is expected. But I didn't get to the why. That explains that. Inmn 45:55 Because a dam exploded in Ukraine. Margaret 45:59 Because of the war that is currently localized but will eventually spread. Inmn 46:04 Brooke, are there other things going on with food insecurity? Brooke 46:07 Never. But maybe. I don't think I have anything on food insecurity. Inmn 46:14 Oh, oh, sorry, I read the notes wrong. Margaret 46:16 I made these notes ahead of time for everyone. And I put them in the chat. But then they lost all their--just so everyone knows behind the scenes and all the cool insider information--I put in the chat an agenda of what we're going to talk about, but it lost all of the formatting when I pasted it in. So, it's basically incomprehensible. But, I will tell you about medication insecurity. Ehh? That will make everyone happy. Because that's not one of the...Okay, just to be clear, like medication is obviously one of the things that people will get the most concerned about when it comes to preparedness and stuff, right? Because of the way that medication is gate kept--sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad reasons--It is not necessarily available to people to do anything sort of like stockpiling and things like that, right? And we rely on a lot of medications for very good reasons in our society. Tornado Alley. You're like, "Oh, obviously it's related to tornadoes." Tornado Alley is the alley...It's the the part of the US where tornadoes are sort of expected and normal, as if they're not fucking terrifying. Jesus Christ. There's very few natural disasters I'm more like... Because I feel like a tornado could just be behind your back and you wouldn't know. It's like a horror movie. You're driving down the road, and then everything turns green, and then all of a sudden there's this death machine just like, "Baaaah!" [makes a 'scaring someone noise] and it's coming at you--and it makes exactly that noises and sticks his tongue out. And people are like, not excited about tornadoes. At least I'm not. Brooke 46:19 And they're green and have tongues. Margaret 47:35 Yeah, well, the sky does turn green sometimes before a tornado. Anyway, so Tornado Alley is expanding thanks to climate change is the point of this. And there's been more and more bad tornadoes further east than there used to be. A tornado in Rocky Mount North Carolina, which is outside of previous Tornado Alley, at least according to the article I read. I've been in North Carolina when there have been tornadoes, but they weren't like, "This is totally normal." It was like kind of a bad thing. Well, do you know that there was one 1.4 million square foot Pfizer a manufacturing plant that was responsible for 25% of all of Pfizer's medications that it sends out to hospitals? Brooke 48:24 Nope. Margaret 48:27 Did you know that one tornado destroyed the entire fucking thing this month? A tornado of 150 mile per hour wind speeds--I wrote down the like classification, but then I deleted it because I didn't feel like looking at all the classifications and trying to explain it...A tornado. It was a bad tornado. And it fucked this thing up. It destroyed 50,000 pallets of medication. And more specifically than that, it stopped the ability for this plant to produce the medication. It was an injectable sterile medication place, so, a lot of anesthetics, so things that make you unconscious, and I think also some antibiotics, and other stuff that goes into like IVs, and stuff was destroyed and the capacity for Pfizer to make more of it was destroyed. The one silver lining is that the article used to have it wrong and say, "25% of the US's injectable medication." That was only Pfizer's percent, which is probably a lot still. Pfizer's a really fucking big name in medication. So medication shortages were already, before this, the worst that they've been in 10 years. In 2014 there were medication shortages about as bad as now. At the end of June, again before the tornado, there were 309 specific like named drug shortages in the United States. A lot of them are related to like chemotherapy and all kinds of stuff. So that's bad. Brooke 49:52 I didn't realize the medication shortage was worse now than it was like during the height of the pandemic and the end of it because I feel like you don't hear about it. Margaret 50:02 Yeah, I mean, well the pandemics over. So no one has to worry about anything anymore. [said sarcastically] I feel like this is the kind of thing where it's like, it's so hard because it's like...Well, it's like, as we talked with...Like, This Month in the Apocalypse is just a fuck ton of bad shit, right? Like and we're talking about or like some posi like little silver lining, like I saw cute monkey, kind of style stories, you know. Like, he's on roller skates. And, and it's like, it's hard to spin fucking this shit. It's hard to spin. Too much of our...I don't even want to tell them they're making drugs wrong. I don't know how to fucking make insulin, you know. But, obviously, there's some problems with centralization when there's tornadoes around, which I guess was like my Mothra-Godzilla thing I was talking about earlier. And I don't know, I mean...but it's the kind of thing that I wish we stayed more aware of. And I think it's the kind of thing that people mostly don't want to think about because we like to imagine that even if we'd go into debt to do so, if bad things happen, the existing system will be there for us. And, I don't want to knock the people who work really goddamn hard to make the existing system work, and the nurses, and doctors, and all the rest of the staff who work endlessly to make this shit happen. And so Pfizer is trying to move that manufacturing to other plants. But they haven't been able to yet. And they're basically like, "Look, it's not actually easy. You would be talking about moving..." None of the employees were hurt is the one upside of all of it. There's 2000 employees at that plant. And that's all I got. Besides...Are we ready for headlines like do do do [makes type write noise] headline time? Inmn 51:49 I think Brooke has something about a murder wall. Brooke 51:52 I know, but I don't want to talk about it anymore. Because it's so depressing. I want to talk about happy headlines. Margaret 51:59 Should we just shout out that there's a fucking murder wall and it's bad. Brooke 52:04 The great state of Texas. Yeah, that wonderful place, and it's a dictator du jour, Greg Abbott, decided to roll out some new measures in order to try and stop immigration across the border. So they got a whole bunch of buoys. Buoys are things that float in the water that are like wrecking ball size, which I actually don't know how big a wrecking ball is, but I assume they're massive, Margaret 52:31 Bigger than a breadbox. Brooke 52:38 Like the size of a car maybe? I actually don't know. Somebody, somebody comment and tell us how big wrecking balls are. I don't know big. Anyway, they got a shit ton of them and floated them out into the Rio Grande River and anchored them to the riverbed to basically create a floating wall in the middle of the river that's currently about 1000 feet long and make it longer. And then they also went through...As part of that project, there's lots of little islands that are on the Rio, and they tend to have grasses, and shrub brushes, and stuff like that. And they had the the Texas military go in and basically bulldoze everything off the top of the islands. So, they're just like dirt mounds in the middle of the river, and also, Margaret 53:25 Some World War I shit is what's happening. Brooke 53:27 Yeah, yeah, they bulldozed down the riverbanks on the United States side so that they could put up barbed wire along sections of the river there to, which you know, the river is at its low part right now because we're in summer, so I'm sure that taking away all of the vegetation and root systems won't have any problems with the waters rise later in the year. [Sarcastically] Inmn 53:53 None at all. [Also sarcastically] Margaret 53:54 Well, you know, it's just worth the trade off to economically destroy....Even if even if I was a fucking capitalist, I would be against the border wall. Like what the fuck? Like? Brooke 54:04 Yeah, it's...There's several things that are wrong with it besides just the really obvious, you know, ethical wrongness of the whole fucking thing. Margaret 54:14 The murderness. Brooke 54:14 And, you know, as an indigenous person, I have really complicated feelings about that because borders and migration anyway, but like it was the state of Texas that did it. They didn't talk to the local cities and municipalities about the work that they were doing. So they just, you know, rolled up destroying this shit. And then it's also technically international waters because it's a border between two countries and they didn't talk to Mexico about it either or the federal government for that matter. So you know, Mexico is threatening to to take action against Texas, and the federal government has sued the state of Texas, and local governments are super pissed off. So fun on so many levels. Margaret 54:59 I'm glad people are pissed off about it. So that's the one...I'm glad that murder wall has been a step too far for even some governments. Inmn 55:09 Yeah, I mean, it's like, Arizona did a similar thing last year before the governor...Like when the governor realized that he was not going to get reelected, He started building this giant shipping container wall along the border. And he was actually ordered by the federal government to stop doing it. And he just didn't. And there were...But there were all these like interesting things that happened where there were local sheriffs and stuff who were enforcing that law against the governor, like the people building the wall. And then there were all these wild disputes about it, where it became very like a the US government versus the US government like situation. Margaret 55:57 I don't hate that. I've played enough Risk. I know that when my enemies are fighting, it's time to sit back. Inmn 56:04 Yeah, but a really cool thing that was able to happen was that a lot of people were, because it was not a legal thing, were able to stage some pretty large scale defense against the area by going and occupying the area to stop construction, but no one was going to arrest them because it wasn't legal for them to be building it. Brooke 56:25 Oh, this river section also hosts a large annual kayak race that now can't happen because the buoys are in the way, so like a Republican kayaker guy who's like, you know, super into anti-immigration, is like, "But now that, you know, we can't do our kayak race here, I'm super pissed off about it." So like, even more reasons that people are angry about this that are ridiculous, but hey, let's, you know, let's be angry. Margaret 56:55 Yeah. Inmn 56:56 Yeah, golly. Is it time for headlines? Margaret 57:00 It's time for headlines. Is that our wait, we got to come up with....[Brooke makes type write noise] Yeah, there we go. Alright. What I got. Okay, you know how there's this thing that like COVID and the flu and shit were all hitting and then there was also RSV, which like mostly comes up for kids, and adults...In adults who aren't old. I don't know how to phrase this. Without, okay, whatever. In some people, it just manifests as a cold and other people it is really bad, right? RSV I don't even know what it stands for. I didn't write down enough. This is my supposed to be my headlines. And now I'm contextualizing...They have an injectable antibody that the FDA just approved called Beyfortus. And it's the first time that there has been a good specific thing that is like a preventative for RSV that has become available. And so that's promising. I'm curious to see how that goes. Because I know RSV was like fucking over a lot of people I know. Apparently, cement is one of the biggest causes of climate change and damage. It is the 12th biggest cause of climate change. It beats out air travel, apparently. And it...And cement overall puts out more carbon than the entire country of India does. One company is working on a carbon negative cement that is just like manufactured very different from Portland cement. Portland cement is like the main way that people make cement, which both involves a lot of burning of carbon in order to create it because you need kilns. And also then it is slowly off gassing carbon for like, a very long time with the concrete. And so they're working on, and they've proven it to be like structurally sound, and who knows whether this will act...[interrupts self] I know that it won't see widespread adoption because there's no incentive for it because capitalism is the economic system that runs the world. But someone has invented a concrete that actually absorbs carbon. It just sort of passively brings it on instead of putting it out. Brooke 59:15 I don't know if this is the same project, but I worked for a nonprofit a couple of years ago, or right before the start of the pandemic, that was doing research into this very thing. And they were putting really tiny amounts of wood fiber, cellulose, into cement and they were...They weren't doing it. They were funding, because it was a charity organization, they were funding the testing of this. And I wonder if this is maybe the next stage of that or even the same company. Margaret 59:41 This company is called Brimstone, which is funny. They might be evil. They might not be. But, they're named Brimstone and we don't live in a boring world. And then my final little posi note is that some agricultural workers have been like...Well, some agricultural workers have been dying in the heat. And so another agricultural woman, agricultural worker woman, developed a cooling vest and has just been doing a lot of studies about like, just specific ways about like, how people who are working outside and are stuck working outside beat the heat with these hot new ideas. But it's like...It's one of those things where it's like, well, what if people just didn't have to do this fun work outside in the goddamn heat? But, it's still good for us to develop these systems. And I love that it is coming from people who do this work themselves. So, I think it's like kind of a swamp cooler style vest. It's like...And they just did a lot of studies about like, if a worker drinks water, versus a worker drinks electrolytes, the person who drinks electrolytes is going to have a substantially lower risk of hospitalization and heatstroke. And then even like, wearing a wet bandanna makes a huge difference. Obviously, like anything that relies on swamp cooling is going to be different based on your humidity levels. If you're in the southeast, it's going to be way harder to use passive cooling from water than if you live in the southwest. But that's what I got. Anyone else? De de deet deet, de de deet deet [making typewriter noises] Hot off the Wire. Inmn 1:01:22 I have a bunch of headlines. They're not good. One is interesting. Margaret 1:01:30 You're fired. I'm not actually capable of doing that. Okay. Inmn 1:01:36 In the great state of Florida this month, it was declared by Rick DeSantis that middle schoolers will be taught about the personal benefits that slavery had for individuals as part of DeSantis' "War on Wokeness." He also was quoted as saying that he was really upset about the ways that--and he meant this in how Democrats are doing it--are criminalizing political differences, which is interesting because he's like the forefront of criminalizing political differences. Margaret 1:02:16 So, it's almost like it's illegal to advocate the eradication of people based on their race. Inmn 1:02:21 Yeah. And he passed some wild laws in Florida this month. This one, this one is...Like by itself, you might hear it and you're like, "Lack of sympathy," but like contextualizing it with other stuff that Rick DeSantis is doing is important. So, he passed a law that allowed for the death penalty in child rape convictions despite the Supreme Court having ruled otherwise. Which, you know, when I hear that I'm like, this is another Roe v. Wade situation of states like trying to get laws passed in the hopes that when federal rulings are overturned that they have these laws on the books. Margaret 1:03:03 Yeah, I mean, this is so that he can kill gay people and trans people. Inmn 1:03:06 Yeah, so then interestingly, in Texas last month, a lesbian couple was arrested for kissing at a mini golf course. And they were charged with "sexual harassment of a minor." So like, if we contextualize these things together and DeSantis' like war on trans people, we can sort of see where this is going is that he does probably want to make it legal to enforce the death penalty against trans people. He also signed a bill to end unanimous jury requirements in death penalty sentences. Margaret 1:03:46 Sick. Inmn 1:03:48 Now you just need an 8-4 in favor, which is a huge, huge spread. You know? Yeah, this is gonna go great. He was also involved in a car accident this morning in Tennessee and he was...not hurt. Margaret 1:04:08 Dammit. That's fucked up. Inmn 1:04:10 Right. In some other fun headlines, Robert Kennedy claimed at a press conference that COVID may have been ethnically targeted to spare the Jews in a absolutely absurd brand of conspiracy theories against Jewish people. Student debt forgiveness: people will be expected to pay back their refunded payments according to the student debt forgiveness being repealed. Margaret 1:04:47 Have they met the blood and the stone? The ability to withdraw one from the other... Inmn 1:04:57 Supreme Court ruling was like kind of...Not like overturned but an old ruling was over...like, not used in a case right now around stalking, where it's going to be a lot easier for people who are stalking people, especially on the internet, to not get in trouble for it. And it kind of boils down to this idea there that the more deluded the stalker, the more protected the stalking will be. Margaret 1:05:31 It's like pleading insanity, kind of? Inmn 1:05:34 Yeah. Being like, "This person was unaware of the impacts that it could have had on this person." Margaret 1:05:40 Classic thing that should inform the law. Inmn 1:05:48 It's weirdly situated like that to protect people like at protests, who might scream like, like, "I'm gonna fucking kill so-and-so," you know, in like a heightened state, and then that being weighed against that that person probably didn't mean that. But, it being used like that to protect people threatening to kill people on the internet while stalking them is, you know, clearly, clearly these things aren't the same thing. Brooke 1:06:25 Laws are bad. Inmn 1:06:26 Puberty blockers in England were disallowed on a large scale outside of exceptional cases. So like, trans kids in Europe will no longer be allowed to access puberty blockers. Margaret 1:06:43 You mean, the UK. Technically no longer Europe, thanks to their right wing move to separate themselves. Yes, does not make it any better for the UK kids. I'm sorry. I'm being a pedant. I apologize. Brooke 1:06:54 Yay, terf Island. Inmn 1:06:59 Putin signed new legislation on like this past Monday, I think, which marked the final step in outlawing gender affirming procedures. So basically, you can't get any gender affirming, like surgical procedures in Russia any more. And the bill was unanimously approved by the Russian Parliament, which bans any medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person as well as changing any one's gender marker on their documents. The only exception will be for medical intervention to treat congenital anomalies, which I think probably refers to like, assigning intersex people genders. It also annuls marriages in which one person has changed their gender and bars, transgender people from becoming foster or adoptive parents. And yeah, so Russia is even more terrifying. Margaret 1:08:03 Starting to not like Russia. Brooke 1:08:07 Starting to? Margaret 1:08:08 I don't know. Putin starting to seem like kind of a...I'm starting to develop a negative impression. [sarcastically] Inmn 1:08:17 Yeah. And, you know, just to give people in the United States an idea of where we're headed, this was all in the name of "Upholding traditional family values." That was the main cause for this legislation. Brooke 1:08:31 TFV. TFV. Inmn 1:08:34 And my last little headlines, which I wanted to connect to talking about heat wave stuff earlier, a nine year old migrant died after having seizures due to heat related illness in Arizona. This past month, there were at least 10 recorded migrant deaths in southern Arizona due to heat related complications. But, Border Patrol claims to have rescued 45 people from the scorching heat of the desert. But interestingly, in Ajo, Arizona, which is like western Arizona, there was a...It was like 114 degrees outside and border patrol had 50 migrants in custody who they were keeping in an outdoor chain-link pen with like, no shade or anything. So, they have the people that they rescued then put in life threatening conditions, Margaret 1:09:40 Starting to not like the United States Government either. Yeah, starting to feel on par with Russian governments. I know you're supposed to pick one or the other party. Yeah, it's bad. Everything's bad. Inmn 1:09:56 Really bad. And I want to get more into the southwest and border patrol and this issue another time. But...Stuff's really bad right now. So yeah, that's my headlines. Brooke 1:10:11 Margaret, you're the optimistic one today. What do we do? What do we do in this terrible world, Margaret 1:10:17 We build resilient communities, network them together, teach each other things, try to limit the amount of gatekeeping we do within those communities. We value conflict resolution as high as we can. We value survival skills and more traditional forms of preparedness, and we support a diversity of actions against all of the negative things that are happening in the world, whether or not we believe those actions are strategic. We support any action that falls within our bounds of ethics, including people who are like annoying church liberals, or people who are like taking things too far with the gasoline and the timers made out of kitchen timers. We support the wide range of it and we try to live our lives as best we can. We recognize that winning is not a condition. It's not like a win state, right? There's not a state in which we win. But instead, there's a reason we say, "Winning at life." We don't say, "Won at life." We say that we are in the process of winning. And when we fight, and when we build, and when we love one another we win. We live the best lives that we can despite everything that's happening and we work really hard to help other people live the best lives that they can. Was that a rhetorical question? I'm not sure. Brooke 1:11:34 No, I do feel a little bit...No, honestly, I feel a little bit better now. I really do. Love wins. We win with love. Love and care. And the thing that goes on if me being me as a nurturing, loving person. Inmn 1:11:50 In living like we're preparing for the world to die, should we also live like the Empire could be dying? Margaret 1:12:02 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, capitalism has proved a sturdy beast, but it can certainly be slain. And if anything can slay it, it is the nightmare that is coming that we will all figure out how to come together to handle. Yay. Good. That a good end note? Anyone got more headlines? Brooke 1:12:34 No? Well, no. I'm too sad. Margaret 1:12:42 Well, if you enjoyed this podcast, you can tell your friends about it. And you can more than that, get together with your friends and talk about what the fuck we're gonna do, right? Because it is a good idea for us to get together and talk about what we're going to do because you're talking heads on the radio podcast land can't tell you what to do. You. You and your friends decide what risks are appropriate based on what's happening, and what you all want to do with the time that is available to you. But, one of the things you can do with the time that's available too, is support this podcast by supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. We put out new features every month. And we have multiple podcasts, including one called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness and one called Anarcho Geek Power Hour, and one called Live Like the World is Dying, which you probably know is the one that you're listening to right now if you made it this far. And if you become one of ou

Welcome to the "Secrets of #Fail," a new pod storm series hosted by Matt Brown. In this series of 2023, Matt dives deep into the world of failures and lessons learned along the way from high-net-worth individuals.  Join Matt as he dives into the world of failures and lessons.Series: Secret of #FailHaving worked her way up through the trenches of corporate and hospital recruitment, Erin founded eHH in 2003. As a true innovator in the healthcare recruitment industry, Erin has grown the company from a sole proprietorship to leading a group of more than 20 seasoned recruiters and sourcers. She has broken traditional agency molds of commissions for hire and developed sustainable, successful recruitment solutions for both eHH and its client hospitals. The eHospitalHire recruitment team acts as an extension of a hospital's own team to meet the high demands and unique challenges in healthcare recruitment. In addition to the services side, Erin has taken eHH's first sourcing product, SourceLync, set to launch early 2018, from concept to market. The eHospitalHire team now boasts, as its clients, some of the largest and most respected hospital systems in the country. Get an interview on the Matt Brown Show: www.mattbrownshow.comSupport the show

We (Kyle and Scott) take a break from playing DnD to talk about playing DnD. In this minisode, dubbed The Chaser by Kyle, we take a brief glimpse behind the scenes and talk about our favorite moments from Talltale Tavern's first adventure "Diselderly Conduct." Plus, a sneak peak at what's to come in our next one shot "Zoonopia!" Is it still a sneak peak if it's just someone describing something to you? Ehh close enough. Enjoy! Follow the podcast's socials! Instagram: ⁠@talltale_tavern_podcast⁠ YouTube: ⁠@TalltaleTavernPodcast⁠ TikTok: ⁠@TalltaleTavernPodcast

NO Biden, 9/11 Putin, fidgety RFK. Calls: "flat earth," race, TRUTH. Supreme Court allows Affirmative Action based on "racism"! The Hake Report, Thursday, June 29, 2023 AD TIME STAMPS * 0:00:00 Topics: Biden, Putin, RFK, Affirmative Action* 0:03:17 Hey, guys! Pelagic fishing brand tee* 0:05:58 Sleepy Joe: NO! Hunter Chinese shakedown* 0:09:23 Biden not that into abortion* 0:15:05 Putin pics with Bush, Condi, Giuliani 9/11* 0:22:26 WILLIAM: mother, BART, riptide, space, WHM* 0:37:19 TRICK, MT: flat earth, narcissism* 0:46:05 TRICK: Coddling govt * 0:55:35 Bing Yu (Ice Rain) - Andy Lau (1997)* 1:01:24 Supers: disrespect music, listeners, Tony, Maze* 1:03:19 Fidgety RFK spilled 2nd drink at town hall* 1:11:43 TONY: stop stereotyping! I tell the truth!* 1:19:21 ART: Affirmative Action, flat earth, RFK/Trump* 1:29:06 NATHAN: PsyOpery, sleep, caffeine* 1:34:30 Supreme Court ends Affirmative Action? Ehh* 1:47:05 MAZE: y'all didn't rebuild! Arrest opioid users!* 1:53:51 Breakups Are Always on Rainy Days - Jacky Cheung (1992)BLOG https://www.thehakereport.com/blog/2023/6/29/the-hake-report-thu-6-29-23 PODCAST by HAKE SubstackHake is LIVE Mon-Fri 9-11 AM PT (11AM-1PM CT / 12-2 PM ET) - Call-in: 1-888-775-3773 - thehakereport.com VIDEO  YouTube  |  Rumble*  |  BitChute  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Odysee*  |  DLive  |  Kick  PODCAST  Apple  |  Spotify  |  Castbox  |  Podcast Addict  |  Pocket Casts  |  Substack  (RSS)  *SUPER CHAT on asterisked platforms, and/or:  Ko-fi  |  BuyMeACoffee  |  Streamlabs  SUPPORT / EXCLUSIVES  Substack  |  SubscribeStar  |  Locals  ||  SHOP  Teespring  SEE ALSO  Hake News on The JLP Show  |  Appearances elsewhere (other shows, etc.) Get full access to HAKE at thehakereport.substack.com/subscribe

Ehh not feeling this one

“Lose weight while eating your favorite foods!”“Burn fat without doing a strict diet!”“Drop pounds without dieting!”These headlines are specifically designed to catch your attention and promise something that you really, really want, but will they deliver? Ehh, maybe … but probably not. But the big question should be - is it even true?? Can you actually lose weight without dieting? I believe so and I explain why and how in this episode. Forewarning - it's not what you think.Today, you'll learn . . .What it really takes to truly change your body long-termWhy “religion vs relationship” totally relates to losing weight successfully Choice vs ForceThe importance of shifting from “have to” to “want to”Grab a cup of coffee and get ready to take notes!Real Life Weight Loss Plus - or - AdsCAST YOUR VOTE: http://www.LoseFatList.comCONTACT COREY: support@CoreyLittleCoaching.comRise Nutritional Supplements Website: https://challenge2rise.com/Rise Smart Energy on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075KGT699Rise Elite Nutrients on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09D9ZN66PRise Essential Nutrients on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09GKZMFF5Rise Protein Blend on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09D9ZN66P

How many of us have told ourselves (or heard from others), "You need to get organized?" Yet the HOW piece is still confusing! What "organized" means to different people varies widely, and there's the big challenge of maintaining any system you create! (Because, hello? It's FUN to get going with all of the new tools and gadgets, but continuing after the newness fades? Ehh...) Our guest, Debra Levy, offers easy and brain-friendly ways to get and stay organized, including how to think about managing time as part of your system. This episode is great for grownups and kids alike! The Rocks, Pebbles, Sand Video About Debra: Debra Levy, is a Certified Life, ADHD, and Productivity Coach, and is the owner of A Life That Fits, LLC. She is dedicated to helping her clients make time and space for what matters most in their lives. Debra begins by working with her clients to clarify what is important to them, what will make them feel happy and fulfilled, and determining what guidance and support is required to create the life they want. She focuses on areas that are a struggle for many of her clients (whether ADHD or neuro-typical) including time management, hyper- focusing, distractions, the setting of goals and priorities, and establishing healthy boundaries. Together, she and her clients work on gaining insight into what is holding them back. She helps them to become more aware of their own natural abilities, modalities, and tendencies, make room for their big-picture goals, and implement step-by-step solutions to help them get from where they are, to where they want to be. Debra is here to partner with her clients on a thought-provoking and productive journey to envision “A Life That Fits” their values and dreams and provide the motivation and accountability to maximize their potential. www.alifethatfits.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/debraslevy/  https://twitter.com/alifethatfits  https://www.instagram.com/alifethatfitscoaching/  https://www.facebook.com/alifethatfitscoaching/

Bu video 03/01/2016 tarihinde yayınlanan “İman Zaafı ve İslam'ın Gurbeti” isimli bamtelinden alınmıştır. Tamamı burada: https://www.herkul.org/bamteli/bamtel... *İnsanlarda dinî duygu ve düşünce, öncelikle telkinle başlar, sonra da taklitle benimsenir ve yaşanmaya devam eder. Belki hepimizin mebde-i hayatına inilse, çocukluk dönemine gidilse bir ilmihal bilgisi mahiyetinde Allah'a, meleklere, kitaplara, peygamberlere, ahiret gününe ve kadere imanın yanında kelime-i şehâdet getirmek, namaz, oruç, zekât ve hac gibi dinin temel rükünlerinin bizlere telkin edildiği, bizim de onları taklitle alıp zamanla benimsediğimiz görülür. Usûlüddin uleması (kelâmcılar), bu şekilde taklitle kazanılan inancın bile insanı kurtaracağını söylemiş ve bunu ıstılahî ifadesiyle, “Taklidî iman makbuldür.” şeklinde ifade etmişlerdir. Fakat her ne kadar böyle denmiş olsa da, inkâr ve dalâlet fırtınaları karşısında imanın ayakta kalabilmesi için taklitle benimsenen bu mülâhazaların, daha sonra altlarının doldurularak sağlam bir blokaja oturtulması ve içte hazmedilip sindirilmesi gerekir. Zira taklit, nazarînin başlangıç noktası olarak mebdede bir vazife eda etse de, onunla elde edilenlerin kalıcı hâle gelmesi tahkikle mümkündür. *Belki günümüzdeki bu iman zaafının, Allah'tan kopukluğun ve Efendimiz'den (sallallâhu aleyhi ve sellem) fersah fersah uzak bulunuşun arkasında bu taklit vardır. Bu açıdan da evvela imanın amelle, nazarî bilginin aksiyonla takviye edilmesi lazımdır. Sonra ikinci derecede, yaptığı amelleri şuurluca yapmak gelir. Bunun üzerinde ısrarla durmak lazımdır. Şayet iman, marifetle taçlandırılmazsa, insan yol yorgunluğundan kurtulamaz; sürekli imanı heceleyip dursa da onun semerelerine ulaşamaz. *Evet, iman, “vicdan kültürü” şeklinde de ifade edebileceğimiz marifet ile taçlandırılmalıdır. Ondan sonra bir aşk ve Allah'la münasebet dönemi gelir. Biliyorsanız, O'nu çok seversiniz. Bilen sever; bilmeyen sevemez. İyi biliyorsanız, içinizde O'na mülâkî olma iştiyakına kadar meseleyi götürebilirsiniz. “Bütün benliğinle ahirete yönel ve ahirete, ahiret kadar değer ver! Ehh bu arada dünyadan nasibini de unutma!..” *Dünyaya dünyalığı ahirete de ebedîliği ölçüsünde teveccüh etmek lazımdır. Nitekim Cenâb-ı Hak şöyle buyuruyor: وَابْتَغِ فِيمَا آتَاكَ اللهُ الدَّارَ اْلآخِرَةَ وَلاَ تَنْسَ نَصِيبَكَ مِنَ الدُّنْيَا “Allah'ın sana verdiği her şeyde âhiret yurdunu ara; ehh bu arada dünyadan da nasîbini unutma!” (Kasas, 28/77) Bu âyet-i kerimede Kur'ân, “Ahiret yurdunu ara” derken “ibtiğâ” fiilini kullanıyor ki bu, “Bütün benliğinle ahirete yönel ve ahirete, ahiret kadar değer ver!” demektir. Bundan da anlaşıldığı üzere, ahiret için bütün imkânlar seferber edilmeli, dünya için de “nasibi unutmama” esasına bağlı kalınmalıdır. *İnsanlar çok kitap okuyabilirler, çok kitap yazabilirler, belki çok güzel şeyler de konuşabilirler. Fakat imanlarını marifetle taçlandırmamışlarsa, marifetlerine muhabbet sorgucu takmamışlarsa, muhabbetlerini aşk u iştiyaka çevirememişlerse, bu mevzuda bir “Hel min mezîd – Daha yok mu?” kahramanı olarak yaşamamışlarsa, bir de dünyada bata çıka yürüdükleri halde mümin olduklarını iddia ediyorlarsa, yalan söylüyorlar demektir. Kur'an-ı Kerim, kuru bilgi, faydasız malumat ve amele dönüşmeyen nazariyat insanlarını “tıpkı ciltlerle kitap taşıyan bir merkebe” benzetir. (Cuma, 65/5) Ziya Paşa'nın şu sözü de bir yönüyle aynı hakikati ifade etmektedir: “Bed asla necâbet mi verir hiç üniforma? / Zer-dûz pâlân ursan, eşek yine eşektir.” Yani; özü kötü olan insanlara hiç giydiği üniforma (işgal ettiği makam) şeref verir mi? Nitekim sırtına altın semer vursan da eşek yine eşektir.

In the grand scheme of things, $5 million is chump-change for THE chump - found liable for sexual battery & defamation today. Does it affect his base of support? Pfft. Will it give GOP voters reason to pause? Ehh. Will the party elite wash their hands of him? C'mon. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in town over the weekend; the highlight being his commencement speech at Georgia Tech's undergrad graduation ceremony. I have that for you today. Enjoy.

Waldemar Hummer, Co-Founder & CTO of LocalStack, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss how LocalStack changed Corey's mind on the futility of mocking clouds locally. Waldemar reveals why LocalStack appeals to both enterprise companies and digital nomads, and explains how both see improvements in their cost predictability as a result. Waldemar also discusses how LocalStack is an open-source company first and foremost, and how they're working with their community to evolve their licensing model. Corey and Waldemar chat about the rising demand for esoteric services, and Waldemar explains how accommodating that has led to an increase of adoption from the big data space. About WaldemarWaldemar is Co-Founder and CTO of LocalStack, where he and his team are building the world-leading platform for local cloud development, based on the hugely popular open source framework with 45k+ stars on Github. Prior to founding LocalStack, Waldemar has held several engineering and management roles at startups as well as large international companies, including Atlassian (Sydney), IBM (New York), and Zurich Insurance. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from TU Vienna.Links Referenced: LocalStack website: https://localstack.cloud/ LocalStack Slack channel: https://slack.localstack.cloud LocalStack Discourse forum: https://discuss.localstack.cloud LocalStack GitHub repository: https://github.com/localstack/localstack TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Until a bit over a year ago or so, I had a loud and some would say fairly obnoxious opinion around the futility of mocking cloud services locally. This is not to be confused with mocking cloud services on the internet, which is what I do in lieu of having a real personality. And then one day I stopped espousing that opinion, or frankly, any opinion at all. And I'm glad to be able to talk at long last about why that is. My guest today is Waldemar Hummer, CTO and co-founder at LocalStack. Waldemar, it is great to talk to you.Waldemar: Hey, Corey. It's so great to be on the show. Thank you so much for having me. We're big fans of what you do at The Duckbill Group and Last Week in AWS. So really, you know, glad to be here with you today and have this conversation.Corey: It is not uncommon for me to have strong opinions that I espouse—politely to be clear; I'll make fun of companies and not people as a general rule—but sometimes I find that I've not seen the full picture and I no longer stand by an opinion I once held. And you're one of my favorite examples of this because, over the course of a 45-minute call with you and one of your business partners, I went from, “What you're doing is a hilarious misstep and will never work,” to, “Okay, and do you have room for another investor?” And in the interest of full disclosure, the answer to that was yes, and I became one of your angel investors. It's not exactly common for me to do that kind of a hard pivot. And I kind of suspect I'm not the only person who currently holds the opinion that I used to hold, so let's talk a little bit about that. At the very beginning, what is LocalStack and what does it you would say that you folks do?Waldemar: So LocalStack, in a nutshell, is a cloud emulator that runs on your local machine. It's basically like a sandbox environment where you can develop your applications locally. We have currently a range of around 60, 70 services that we provide, things like Lambda Functions, DynamoDB, SQS, like, all the major AWS services. And to your point, it is indeed a pretty large undertaking to actually implement the cloud and run it locally, but with the right approach, it actually turns out that it is feasible and possible, and we've demonstrated this with LocalStack. And I'm glad that we've convinced you to think of it that way as well.Corey: A couple of points that you made during that early conversation really stuck with me. The first is, “Yeah, AWS has two, no three no four-hundred different service offerings. But look at your customer base. How many of those services are customers using in any real depth? And of those services, yeah, the APIs are vast, and very much a sprawling pile of nonsense, but how many of those esoteric features are those folks actually using?” That was half of the argument that won me over.The other half was, “Imagine that you're an enormous company that's an insurance company or a bank. And this year, you're hiring 5000 brand new developers, fresh out of school. Two to 3000 of those developers will still be working here in about a year as they wind up either progressing in other directions, not winding up completing internships, or going back to school after internships, or for a variety of reasons. So, you have that many people that you need to teach how to use cloud in the context that we use cloud, combined with the question of how do you make sure that one of them doesn't make a fun mistake that winds up bankrupting the entire company with a surprise AWS bill?” And those two things combined turned me from, “What you're doing is ridiculous,” to, “Oh, my God. You're absolutely right.”And since then, I've encountered you in a number of my client environments. You were absolutely right. This is something that resonates deeply and profoundly with larger enterprise customers in particular, but also folks who just don't want to wind up being beholden to every time they do a deploy to anything to test something out, yay, I get to spend more money on AWS services.Waldemar: Yeah, totally. That's spot on. So, to your first point, so definitely we have a core set of services that most people are using. So, things like Lambda, DynamoDB, SQS, like, the core serverless, kind of, APIs. And then there's kind of a long tail of more exotic services that we support these days, things like, even like QLDB, the quantum ledger database, or, you know, managed streaming for Kafka.But like, certainly, like, the core 15, 20 services are the ones that are really most used by the majority of people. And then we also, you know, pro offering have some very, sort of, advanced services for different use cases. So, that's to your first point.And second point is, yeah, totally spot on. So LocalStack, like, really enables you to experiment in the sandbox. So, we both see it as an experimentation, also development environment, where you don't need to think about cloud costs. And this, I guess, will be very close to your heart in the work that you're doing, the costs are becoming really predictable as well, right? Because in the cloud, you know, work to different companies before doing LocalStack where we were using AWS resources, and you can end up in a situation where overnight, you accumulate, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars of AWS bill because you've turned on a certain feature, or some, you know, connectivity into some VPC or networking configuration that just turns out to be costly.Also, one more thing that is worth mentioning, like, we want to encourage, like, frequent testing, and a lot of the cloud's billing and cost structure is focused around, for example, hourly billing of resources, right? And if you have a test that just spins up resources that run for a couple of minutes, you still end up paying the entire hour. And we LocalStack, really, that brings down the cloud builds significantly because you can really test frequently, the cycles become much faster, and it's also again, more efficient, more cost-effective.Corey: There's something useful to be said for, “Well, how do I make sure that I turn off resources when I'm done?” In cloud, it's a bit of a game of guess-and-check. And you turn off things you think are there and you wait a few days and you check the bill again, and you go and turn more things off, and the cycle repeats. Or alternately, wait for the end of the month and wonder in perpetuity why you're being billed 48 cents a month, and not be clear on why. Restarting the laptop is a lot more straightforward.I also want to call out some of my own bias on this where I used to be a big believer in being able to build and deploy and iterate on things locally because well, what happens when I'm in a plane with terrible WiFi? Well, in the before times, I flew an awful lot and was writing a fair bit of, well, cloudy nonsense and I still never found that to be a particular blocker on most of what I was doing. So, it always felt a little bit precious to me when people were talking about, well, what if I can't access the internet to wind up building and deploying these things? It's now 2023. How often does that really happen? But is that a use case that you see a lot of?Waldemar: It's definitely a fair point. And probably, like, 95% of cloud development these days is done in a high internet bandwidth environment, maybe some corporate network where you have really fast internet access. But that's only a subset, I guess, of the world out there, right? So, there might be situations where, you know, you may have bad connectivity. Also, maybe you live in a region—or maybe you're traveling even, right? So, there's a lot more and more people who are just, “Digital nomads,” quote-unquote, right, who just like to work in remote places.Corey: You're absolutely right. My bias is that I live in San Francisco. I have symmetric gigabit internet at home. There's not a lot of scenarios in my day-to-day life—except when I'm, you know, on the train or the bus traveling through the city—because thank you, Verizon—where I have impeded connectivity.Waldemar: Right. Yeah, totally. And I think the other aspect of this is kind of the developers just like to have things locally, right, because it gives them the feeling of you know, better control over the code, like, being able to integrate into their IDEs, setting breakpoints, having these quick cycles of iterations. And again, this is something that there's more and more tooling coming up in the cloud ecosystem, but it's still inherently a remote execution that just, you know, takes the round trip of uploading your code, deploying, and so on, and that's just basically the pain point that we're addressing with LocalStack.Corey: One thing that did surprise me as well was discovering that there was a lot more appetite for this sort of thing in enterprise-scale environments. I mean, some of the reference customers that you have on your website include divisions of the UK Government and 3M—you know, the Post-It note people—as well as a number of other very large environments. And at first, that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but then it suddenly made an awful lot of sense because it seems—and please correct me if I'm wrong—that in order to use something like this at scale and use it in a way that isn't, more or less getting it into a point where the administration of it is more trouble than it's worth, you need to progress past a certain point of scale. An individual developer on their side project is likely just going to iterate against AWS itself, whereas a team of thousands of developers might not want to be doing that because they almost certainly have their own workflows that make that process high friction.Waldemar: Yeah, totally. So, what we see a lot is, especially in larger enterprises, dedicated teams, like, developer experience teams, whose main job is to really set up a workflow and environment where developers can be productive, most productive, and this can be, you know, on one side, like, setting up automated pipelines, provisioning maybe AWS sandbox and test accounts. And like some of these teams, when we introduce LocalStack, it's really a game-changer because it becomes much more decoupled and like, you know, distributed. You can basically configure your CI pipeline, just, you know, spin up the container, run your tests, tear down again afterwards. So, you know, it's less dependencies.And also, one aspect to consider is the aspect of cloud approvals. A lot of companies that we work with have, you know, very stringent processes around, even getting access to the clouds. Some SRE team needs to enable their IAM permissions and so on. With LocalStack, you can just get started from day one and just get productive and start testing from the local machine. So, I think those are patterns that we see a lot, in especially larger enterprise environments as well, where, you know, there might be some regulatory barriers and just, you know, process-wise steps as well.Corey: When I started playing with LocalStack myself, one of the things that I found disturbingly irritating is, there's a lot that AWS gets largely right with its AWS command-line utility. You can stuff a whole bunch of different options into the config for different profiles, and all the other tools that I use mostly wind up respecting that config. The few that extend it add custom lines to it, but everything else is mostly well-behaved and ignores the things it doesn't understand. But there is no facility that lets you say, “For this particular profile, use this endpoint for AWS service calls instead of the normal ones in public regions.” In fact, to do that, you effectively have to pass specific endpoint URLs to arguments, and I believe the syntax on that is not globally consistent between different services.It just feels like a living nightmare. At first, I was annoyed that you folks wound up having to ship your own command-line utility to wind up interfacing with this. Like, why don't you just add a profile? And then I tried it myself and, oh, I'm not the only person who knows how this stuff works that has ever looked at this and had that idea. No, it's because AWS is just unfortunate in that respect.Waldemar: That is a very good point. And you're touching upon one of the major pain points that we have, frankly, with the ecosystem. So, there are some pull requests against the AWS open-source repositories for the SDKs and various other tools, where folks—not only LocalStack, but other folks in the community have asked for introducing, for example, an AWS endpoint URL environment variable. These [protocols 00:12:32], unfortunately, were never merged. So, it would definitely make our lives a whole lot easier, but so far, we basically have to maintain these, you know, these wrapper scripts, basically, AWS local, CDK local, which basically just, you know, points the client to local endpoints. It's a good workaround for now, but I would assume and hope that the world's going to change in the upcoming years.Corey: I really hope so because everything else I can think of is just bad. The idea of building a custom wrapper around the AWS command-line utility that winds up checking the profile section, and oh, if this profile is that one, call out to this tool, otherwise it just becomes a pass-through. That has security implications that aren't necessarily terrific, you know, in large enterprise companies that care a lot about security. Yeah, pretend to be a binary you're not is usually the kind of thing that makes people sad when security politely kicks their door in.Waldemar: Yeah, we actually have pretty, like, big hopes for the v3 wave of the SDKs, AWS, because there is some restructuring happening with the endpoint resolution. And also, you can, in your profile, by now have, you know, special resolvers for endpoints. But still the case of just pointing all the SDKs and CLI to a custom endpoint is just not yet resolved. And this is, frankly, quite disappointing, actually.Corey: While we're complaining about the CLI, I'll throw one of my recurring issues with it in. I would love for it to adopt the Linux slash Unix paradigm of having a config.d directory that you can reference from within the primary config file, and then any file within that directory in the proper syntax winds up getting adopted into what becomes a giant composable config file, generated dynamically. The reason being is, I can have entire lists of profiles in separate files that I could then wind up dropping in and out on a client-by-client basis. So, I don't inadvertently expose who some of my clients are, in the event that winds up being part of the way that they have named their AWS accounts.That is one of those things I would love but it feels like it's not a common enough use case for there to be a whole lot of traction around it. And I guess some people would make a fair point if they were to say that the AWS CLI is the most widely deployed AWS open-source project, even though all it does is give money to AWS more efficiently.Waldemar: Yeah. Great point. Yeah, I think, like, how and some way to customize and, like, mingle or mangle your configurations in a more easy fashion would be super useful. I guess it might be a slippery slope to getting, you know, into something like I don't know, Helm for EKS and, like, really, you know, having to maintain a whole templating language for these configs. But certainly agree with you, to just you know, at least having [plug 00:15:18] points for being able to customize the behavior of the SDKs and CLIs would be extremely helpful and valuable.Corey: This is not—unfortunately—my first outing with the idea of trying to have AWS APIs done locally. In fact, almost a decade ago now, I did a build-out at a very large company of a… well, I would say that the build-out was not itself very large—it was about 300 nodes—that were all running Eucalyptus, which before it died on the vine, was imagined as a way of just emulating AWS APIs locally—done in Java, as I recall—and exposing local resources in ways that comported with how AWS did things. So, the idea being that you could write configuration to deploy any infrastructure you wanted in AWS, but also treat your local data center the same way. That idea unfortunately did not survive in the marketplace, which is kind of a shame, on some level. What was it that inspired you folks to wind up building this with an eye towards local development rather than run this as a private cloud in your data center instead?Waldemar: Yeah, very interesting. And I do also have some experience [unintelligible 00:16:29] from my past university days with Eucalyptus and OpenStack also, you know, running some workloads in an on-prem cluster. I think the main difference, first of all, these systems were extremely hard, notoriously hard to set up and maintain, right? So, lots of moving parts: you had your image server, your compute system, and then your messaging subsystems. Lots of moving parts, and wanting to have everything basically much more monolithic and in a single container.And Docker really sort of provides a great platform for us, which is create everything in a single container, spin up locally, make it very lightweight and easy to use. But I think really the first days of LocalStack, the idea was really, was actually with the use case of somebody from our team. Back then, I was working at Atlassian in the data engineering team and we had folks in the team were commuting to work on the train. And it was literally this use case that you mentioned before about being able to work basically offline on your commute. And this is kind of were the first lines of code were written and then kind of the idea evolves from there.We put it into the open-source, and then, kind of, it was growing over the years. But it really started as not having it as an on-prem, like, heavyweight server, but really as a lightweight system that you can easily—that is easily portable across different systems as well.Corey: That is a good question. Very often, when I'm using various tools that are aimed at development use cases, it is very clear that one particular operating system is invariably going to be the first-class citizen and everything else is a best effort. Ehh, it might work; it might not. Does LocalStack feel that way? And if so, what's the operating system that you want to be on?Waldemar: I would say we definitely work best on Mac OS and Linux. It also works really well on Windows, but I think given that some of our tooling in the ecosystem also pretty much geared towards Unix systems, I think those are the platforms it will work well with. Again, on the other hand, Docker is really a platform that helps us a lot being compatible across operating systems and also CPU architectures. We have a multi-arch build now for AMD and ARM64. So, I think in that sense, we're pretty broad in terms of the compatibility spectrum.Corey: I do not have any insight into how the experience goes on Windows, given that I don't use that operating system in anger for, wow, 15 years now, but I will say that it's been top-flight on Mac OS, which is what I spend most of my time. Depressed that I'm using, but for desktop experiences, it seems to work out fairly well. That said, having a focus on Windows seems like it would absolutely be a hard requirement, given that so many developer workstations in very large enterprises tend to skew very Windows-heavy. My hat is off to people who work with Linux and Linux-like systems in environments like that where even line endings becomes psychotically challenging. I don't envy them their problems. And I have nothing but respect for people who can power through it. I never had the patience.Waldemar: Yeah. Same here and definitely, I think everybody has their favorite operating system. For me, it's also been mostly Linux and Mac in the last couple of years. But certainly, we definitely want to be broad in terms of the adoption, and working with large enterprises often you have—you know, we want to fit into the existing landscape and environment that people work in. And we solve this by platform abstractions like Docker, for example, as I mentioned, and also, for example, Python, which is some more toolings within Python is also pretty nicely supported across platforms. But I do feel the same way as you, like, having been working with Windows for quite some time, especially for development purposes.Corey: What have you noticed that your customer usage patterns slash requests has been saying about AWS service adoption? I have to imagine that everyone cares whether you can mock S3 effectively. EC2, DynamoDB, probably. SQS, of course. But beyond the very small baseline level of offering, what have you seen surprising demand for, as I guess, customer implementation of more esoteric services continues to climb?Waldemar: Mm-hm. Yeah, so these days it's actually pretty [laugh] pretty insane the level of coverage we already have for different services, including some very exotic ones, like QLDB as I mentioned, Kafka. We even have Managed Airflow, for example. I mean, a lot of these services are essentially mostly, like, wrappers around the API. This is essentially also what AWS is doing, right? So, they're providing an API that basically provisions some underlying resources, some infrastructure.Some of the more interesting parts, I guess, we've seen is the data or big data ecosystem. So, things like Athena, Glue, we've invested quite a lot of time in, you know, making that available also in LocalStack so you can have your maybe CSV files or JSON files in an S3 bucket and you can query them from Athena with a SQL language, basically, right? And that makes it very—especially these big data-heavy jobs that are very heavyweight on AWS, you can iterate very quickly in LocalStack. So, this is where we're seeing a lot of adoption recently. And then also, obviously, things like, you know, Lambda and ECS, like, all the serverless and containerized applications, but I guess those are the more mainstream ones.Corey: I imagine you probably get your fair share of requests for things like CloudFormation or CloudFront, where, this is great, but can you go ahead and add a very lengthy sleep right here, just because it returns way too fast and we don't want people to get their hopes up when they use the real thing. On some level, it feels like exact replication of the AWS customer experience isn't quite in line with what makes sense from a developer productivity point of view.Waldemar: Yeah, that's a great point. And I'm sure that, like, a lot of code out there is probably littered with sleep statements that is just tailored to the specific timing in AWS. In fact, we recently opened an issue in the AWS Terraform provider repository to add a configuration option to configure the timings that Terraform is using for the resource deployment. So, just as an example, an S3 bucket creation takes 60 seconds, like, more than a minute against [unintelligible 00:22:37] AWS. I guess LocalStack, it's a second basically, right?And AWS Terraform provider has these, like, relatively slow cycles of checking whether the packet has already been created. And we want to get that configurable to actually reduce the time it takes for local development, right? So, we have an open, sort of, feature request, and we're probably going to contribute to a Terraform repository. But definitely, I share the sentiment that a lot of the tooling ecosystem is built and tailored and optimized towards the experience against the cloud, which often is just slow and, you know, that's what it is, right?Corey: One thing that I didn't expect, though, in hindsight, is blindingly obvious, is your support for a variety of different frameworks and deployment methodologies. I've found that it's relatively straightforward to get up and running with the CDK deploying to LocalStack, for instance. And in hindsight, of course; that's obvious. When you start out down that path, though it's well, you tend to think—at least I don't tend to think in that particular way. It's, “Well, yeah, it's just going to be a console-like experience, or I wind up doing CloudFormation or Terraform.” But yeah, that the world is advancing relatively quickly and it's nice to see that you are very comfortably keeping pace with that advancement.Waldemar: Yeah, true. And I guess for us, it's really, like, the level of abstraction is sort of increasing, so you know, once you have a solid foundation, with, you know, CloudFormation implementation, you can leverage a lot of tools that are sitting on top of it, CDK, serverless frameworks. So, CloudFormation is almost becoming, like, the assembly language of the AWS cloud, right, and if you have very solid support for that, a lot of, sort of, tools in the ecosystem will natively be supported on LocalStack. And then, you know, you have things like Terraform, and in the Terraform CDK, you know, some of these derived versions of Terraform which also are very straightforward because you just need to point, you know, the target endpoint to localhost and then the rest of the deployment loop just works out of the box, essentially.So, I guess for us, it's really mostly being able to focus on, like, the core emulation, making sure that we have very high parity with the real services. We spend a lot of time and effort into what we call parity testing and snapshot testing. We make sure that our API responses are identical and really the same as they are in AWS. And this really gives us, you know, a very strong confidence that a lot of tools in the ecosystem are working out-of-the-box against LocalStack as well.Corey: I would also like to point out that I'm also a proud LocalStack contributor at this point because at the start of this year, I noticed, ah, in one of the pages, the copyright year was still saying 2022 and not 2023. So, a single-character pull request? Oh, yes, I am on the board now because that is how you ingratiate yourself with an open-source project.Waldemar: Yeah. Eternal fame to you and kudos for your contribution. But, [laugh] you know, in all seriousness, we do have a quite an active community of contributors. We are an open-source first project; like, we were born in the open-source. We actually—maybe just touching upon this for a second, we use GitHub for our repository, we use a lot of automation around, you know, doing pull requests, and you know, service owners.We also participate in things like the Hacktoberfest, which we participated in last year to really encourage contributions from the community, and also host regular meetups with folks in the community to really make sure that there's an active ecosystem where people can contribute and make contributions like the one that you did with documentation and all that, but also, like, actual features, testing and you know, contributions of different levels. So really, kudos and shout out to the entire community out there.Corey: Do you feel that there's an inherent tension between being an open-source product as well as being a commercial product that is available for sale? I find that a lot of companies feel vaguely uncomfortable with the various trade-offs that they make going down that particular path, but I haven't seen anyone in the community upset with you folks, and it certainly hasn't seemed to act as a brake on your enterprise adoption, either.Waldemar: That is a very good point. So, we certainly are—so we're following an open-source-first model that we—you know, the core of the codebase is available in the community version. And then we have pro extensions, which are commercial and you basically, you know, setup—you sign up for a license. We are certainly having a lot of discussions on how to evolve this licensing model going forward, you know, which part to feed back into the community version of LocalStack. And it's certainly an ongoing evolving model as well, but certainly, so far, the support from the community has been great.And we definitely focus to, kind of, get a lot of the innovation that we're doing back into our open-source repo and make sure that it's, like, really not only open-source but also open contribution for folks to contribute their contributions. We also integrate with other third-party libraries. We're built on the shoulders of giants, if I may say so, other open-source projects that are doing great work with emulators. To name just a few, it's like, [unintelligible 00:27:33] which is a great project that we sort of use and depend upon. We have certain mocks and emulations, for Kinesis, for example, Kinesis mock and a bunch of other tools that we've been leveraging over the years, which are really great community efforts out there. And it's great to see such an active community that's really making this vision possible have a truly local emulated clouds that gives the best experience to developers out there.Corey: So, as of, well, now, when people are listening to this and the episode gets released, v2 of LocalStack is coming out. What are the big differences between LocalStack and now LocalStack 2: Electric Boogaloo, or whatever it is you're calling the release?Waldemar: Right. So, we're super excited to release our v2 version of LocalStack. Planned release date is end of March 2023, so hopefully, we will make that timeline. We did release our first version of OpenStack in July 2022, so it's been roughly seven months since then and we try to have a cadence of roughly six to nine months for the major releases. And what you can expect is we've invested a lot of time and effort in last couple of months and in last year to really make it a very rock-solid experience with enhancements in the current services, a lot of performance optimizations, we've invested a lot in parity testing.So, as I mentioned before, parity is really important for us to make sure that we have a high coverage of the different services and how they behave the same way as AWS. And we're also putting out an enhanced version and a completely polished version of our Cloud Pods experience. So, Cloud Pods is a state management mechanism in LocalStack. So, by default, the state in LocalStack is ephemeral, so when you restart the instance, you basically have a fresh state. But with Cloud Pods, we enable our users to take persistent snapshot of the states, save it to disk or to a server and easily share it with team members.And we have very polished experience with Community Cloud Pods that makes it very easy to share the state among team members and with the community. So, those are just some of the highlights of things that we're going to be putting out in the tool. And we're super excited to have it done by, you know, end of March. So, stay tuned for the v2 release.Corey: I am looking forward to seeing how the experience shifts and evolves. I really want to thank you for taking time out of your day to wind up basically humoring me and effectively re-covering ground that you and I covered about a year and a half ago now. If people want to learn more, where should they go?Waldemar: Yeah. So definitely, our Slack channel is a great way to get in touch with the community, also with the LocalStack team, if you have any technical questions. So, you can find it on our website, I think it's slack.localstack.cloud.We also host a Discourse forum. It's discuss.localstack.cloud, where you can just, you know, make feature requests and participate in the general conversation.And we do host monthly community meetups. Those are also available on our website. If you sign up, for example, for a newsletter, you will be notified where we have, you know, these webinars. Take about an hour or so where we often have guest speakers from different companies, people who are using, you know, cloud development, local cloud development, and just sharing the experiences of how the space is evolving. And we're always super happy to accept contributions from the community in these meetups as well. And last but not least, our GitHub repository is a great way to file any issues you may have, feature requests, and just getting involved with the project itself.Corey: And we will, of course, put links to that in the [show notes 00:31:09]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I appreciate it.Waldemar: Thank you so much, Corey. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.Corey: Waldemar Hummer, CTO and co-founder at LocalStack. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment, presumably because your compensation structure requires people to spend ever-increasing amounts of money on AWS services.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

AB Periasamy, Co-Founder and CEO of MinIO, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss what it means to be truly open source and the current and future state of multi-cloud. AB explains how MinIO was born from the idea that the world was going to produce a massive amount of data, and what it's been like to see that come true and continue to be the future outlook. AB and Corey explore why some companies are hesitant to move to cloud, and AB describes why he feels the move is inevitable regardless of cost. AB also reveals how he has helped create a truly free open-source software, and how his partnership with Amazon has been beneficial. About ABAB Periasamy is the co-founder and CEO of MinIO, an open source provider of high performance, object storage software. In addition to this role, AB is an active investor and advisor to a wide range of technology companies, from H2O.ai and Manetu where he serves on the board to advisor or investor roles with Humio, Isovalent, Starburst, Yugabyte, Tetrate, Postman, Storj, Procurify, and Helpshift. Successful exits include Gitter.im (Gitlab), Treasure Data (ARM) and Fastor (SMART).AB co-founded Gluster in 2005 to commoditize scalable storage systems. As CTO, he was the primary architect and strategist for the development of the Gluster file system, a pioneer in software defined storage. After the company was acquired by Red Hat in 2011, AB joined Red Hat's Office of the CTO. Prior to Gluster, AB was CTO of California Digital Corporation, where his work led to scaling of the commodity cluster computing to supercomputing class performance. His work there resulted in the development of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's “Thunder” code, which, at the time was the second fastest in the world.  AB holds a Computer Science Engineering degree from Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu, India.AB is one of the leading proponents and thinkers on the subject of open source software - articulating the difference between the philosophy and business model. An active contributor to a number of open source projects, he is a board member of India's Free Software Foundation.Links Referenced: MinIO: https://min.io/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/abperiasamy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abperiasamy/ Email: mailto:ab@min.io TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Chronosphere. When it costs more money and time to observe your environment than it does to build it, there's a problem. With Chronosphere, you can shape and transform observability data based on need, context and utility. Learn how to only store the useful data you need to see in order to reduce costs and improve performance at chronosphere.io/corey-quinn. That's chronosphere.io/corey-quinn. And my thanks to them for sponsor ing my ridiculous nonsense. Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn, and I have taken a somewhat strong stance over the years on the relative merits of multi-cloud, and when it makes sense and when it doesn't. And it's time for me to start modifying some of those. To have that conversation and several others as well, with me today on this promoted guest episode is AB Periasamy, CEO and co-founder of MinIO. AB, it's great to have you back.AB: Yes, it's wonderful to be here again, Corey.Corey: So, one thing that I want to start with is defining terms. Because when we talk about multi-cloud, there are—to my mind at least—smart ways to do it and ways that are frankly ignorant. The thing that I've never quite seen is, it's greenfield, day one. Time to build something. Let's make sure we can build and deploy it to every cloud provider we might ever want to use.And that is usually not the right path. Whereas different workloads in different providers, that starts to make a lot more sense. When you do mergers and acquisitions, as big companies tend to do in lieu of doing anything interesting, it seems like they find it oh, we're suddenly in multiple cloud providers, should we move this acquisition to a new cloud? No. No, you should not.One of the challenges, of course, is that there's a lot of differentiation between the baseline offerings that cloud providers have. MinIO is interesting in that it starts and stops with an object store that is mostly S3 API compatible. Have I nailed the basic premise of what it is you folks do?AB: Yeah, it's basically an object store. Amazon S3 versus us, it's actually—that's the comparable, right? Amazon S3 is a hosted cloud storage as a service, but underneath the underlying technology is called object-store. MinIO is a software and it's also open-source and it's the software that you can deploy on the cloud, deploy on the edge, deploy anywhere, and both Amazon S3 and MinIO are exactly S3 API compatible. It's a drop-in replacement. You can write applications on MinIO and take it to AWS S3, and do the reverse. Amazon made S3 API a standard inside AWS, we made S3 API standard across the whole cloud, all the cloud edge, everywhere, rest of the world.Corey: I want to clarify two points because otherwise I know I'm going to get nibbled to death by ducks on the internet. When you say open-source, it is actually open-source; you're AGPL, not source available, or, “We've decided now we're going to change our model for licensing because oh, some people are using this without paying us money,” as so many companies seem to fall into that trap. You are actually open-source and no one reasonable is going to be able to disagree with that definition.The other pedantic part of it is when something says that it's S3 compatible on an API basis, like, the question is always does that include the weird bugs that we wish it wouldn't have, or some of the more esoteric stuff that seems to be a constant source of innovation? To be clear, I don't think that you need to be particularly compatible with those very corner and vertex cases. For me, it's always been the basic CRUD operations: can you store an object? Can you give it back to me? Can you delete the thing? And maybe an update, although generally object stores tend to be atomic. How far do you go down that path of being, I guess, a faithful implementation of what the S3 API does, and at which point you decide that something is just, honestly, lunacy and you feel no need to wind up supporting that?AB: Yeah, the unfortunate part of it is we have to be very, very deep. It only takes one API to break. And it's not even, like, one API we did not implement; one API under a particular circumstance, right? Like even if you see, like, AWS SDK is, right, Java SDK, different versions of Java SDK will interpret the same API differently. And AWS S3 is an API, it's not a standard.And Amazon has published the REST specifications, API specs, but they are more like religious text. You can interpret it in many ways. Amazon's own SDK has interpreted, like, this in several ways, right? The only way to get it right is, like, you have to have a massive ecosystem around your application. And if one thing breaks—today, if I commit a code and it introduced a regression, I will immediately hear from a whole bunch of community what I broke.There's no certification process here. There is no industry consortium to control the standard, but then there is an accepted standard. Like, if the application works, they need works. And one way to get it right is, like, Amazon SDKs, all of those language SDKs, to be cleaner, simpler, but applications can even use MinIO SDK to talk to Amazon and Amazon SDK to talk to MinIO. Now, there is a clear, cooperative model.And I actually have tremendous respect for Amazon engineers. They have only been kind and meaningful, like, reasonable partnership. Like, if our community reports a bug that Amazon rolled out a new update in one of the region and the S3 API broke, they will actually go fix it. They will never argue, “Why are you using MinIO SDK?” Their engineers, they do everything by reason. That's the reason why they gained credibility.Corey: I think, on some level, that we can trust that the API is not going to meaningfully shift, just because so much has been built on top of it over the last 15, almost 16 years now that even slight changes require massive coordination. I remember there was a little bit of a kerfuffle when they announced that they were going to be disabling the BitTorrent endpoint in S3 and it was no longer going to be supported in new regions, and eventually they were turning it off. There were still people pushing back on that. I'm still annoyed by some of the documentation around the API that says that it may not return a legitimate error code when it errors with certain XML interpretations. It's… it's kind of become very much its own thing.AB: [unintelligible 00:06:22] a problem, like, we have seen, like, even stupid errors similar to that, right? Like, HTTP headers are supposed to be case insensitive, but then there are some language SDKs will send us in certain type of casing and they expect the case to be—the response to be same way. And that's not HTTP standard. If we have to accept that bug and respond in the same way, then we are asking a whole bunch of community to go fix that application. And Amazon's problem are our problems too. We have to carry that baggage.But some places where we actually take a hard stance is, like, Amazon introduced that initially, the bucket policies, like access control list, then finally came IAM, then we actually, for us, like, the best way to teach the community is make best practices the standard. The only way to do it. We have been, like, educating them that we actually implemented ACLs, but we removed it. So, the customers will no longer use it. The scale at which we are growing, if I keep it, then I can never force them to remove.So, we have been pedantic about, like, how, like, certain things that if it's a good advice, force them to do it. That approach has paid off, but the problem is still quite real. Amazon also admits that S3 API is no longer simple, but at least it's not like POSIX, right? POSIX is a rich set of API, but doesn't do useful things that we need to do. So, Amazon's APIs are built on top of simple primitive foundations that got the storage architecture correct, and then doing sophisticated functionalities on top of the simple primitives, these atomic RESTful APIs, you can finally do it right and you can take it to great lengths and still not break the storage system.So, I'm not so concerned. I think it's time for both of us to slow down and then make sure that the ease of operation and adoption is the goal, then trying to create an API Bible.Corey: Well, one differentiation that you have that frankly I wish S3 would wind up implementing is this idea of bucket quotas. I would give a lot in certain circumstances to be able to say that this S3 bucket should be able to hold five gigabytes of storage and no more. Like, you could fix a lot of free tier problems, for example, by doing something like that. But there's also the problem that you'll see in data centers where, okay, we've now filled up whatever storage system we're using. We need to either expand it at significant cost and it's going to take a while or it's time to go and maybe delete some of the stuff we don't necessarily need to keep in perpetuity.There is no moment of reckoning in traditional S3 in that sense because, oh, you can just always add one more gigabyte at 2.3 or however many cents it happens to be, and you wind up with an unbounded growth problem that you're never really forced to wrestle with. Because it's infinite storage. They can add drives faster than you can fill them in most cases. So, it's it just feels like there's an economic story, if nothing else, just from a governance control and make sure this doesn't run away from me, and alert me before we get into the multi-petabyte style of storage for my Hello World WordPress website.AB: Mm-hm. Yeah, so I always thought that Amazon did not do this—it's not just Amazon, the cloud players, right—they did not do this because they want—is good for their business; they want all the customers' data, like unrestricted growth of data. Certainly it is beneficial for their business, but there is an operational challenge. When you set quota—this is why we grudgingly introduced this feature. We did not have quotas and we didn't want to because Amazon S3 API doesn't talk about quota, but the enterprise community wanted this so badly.And eventually we [unintelligible 00:09:54] it and we gave. But there is one issue to be aware of, right? The problem with quota is that you as an object storage administrator, you set a quota, let's say this bucket, this application, I don't see more than 20TB; I'm going to set 100TB quota. And then you forget it. And then you think in six months, they will reach 20TB. The reality is, in six months they reach 100TB.And then when nobody expected—everybody has forgotten that there was a code a certain place—suddenly application start failing. And when it fails, it doesn't—even though the S3 API responds back saying that insufficient space, but then the application doesn't really pass that error all the way up. When applications fail, they fail in unpredictable ways. By the time the application developer realizes that it's actually object storage ran out of space, the lost time and it's a downtime. So, as long as they have proper observability—because I mean, I've will also asked observability, that it can alert you that you are only going to run out of space soon. If you have those system in place, then go for quota. If not, I would agree with the S3 API standard that is not about cost. It's about operational, unexpected accidents.Corey: Yeah, on some level, we wound up having to deal with the exact same problem with disk volumes, where my default for most things was, at 70%, I want to start getting pings on it and at 90%, I want to be woken up for it. So, for small volumes, you wind up with a runaway log or whatnot, you have a chance to catch it and whatnot, and for the giant multi-petabyte things, okay, well, why would you alert at 70% on that? Well, because procurement takes a while when we're talking about buying that much disk for that much money. It was a roughly good baseline for these things. The problem, of course, is when you have none of that, and well it got full so oops-a-doozy.On some level, I wonder if there's a story around soft quotas that just scream at you, but let you keep adding to it. But that turns into implementation details, and you can build something like that on top of any existing object store if you don't need the hard limit aspect.AB: Actually, that is the right way to do. That's what I would recommend customers to do. Even though there is hard quota, I will tell, don't use it, but use soft quota. And the soft quota, instead of even soft quota, you monitor them. On the cloud, at least you have some kind of restriction that the more you use, the more you pay; eventually the month end bills, it shows up.On MinIO, when it's deployed on these large data centers, that it's unrestricted access, quickly you can use a lot of space, no one knows what data to delete, and no one will tell you what data to delete. The way to do this is there has to be some kind of accountability.j, the way to do it is—actually [unintelligible 00:12:27] have some chargeback mechanism based on the bucket growth. And the business units have to pay for it, right? That IT doesn't run for free, right? IT has to have a budget and it has to be sponsored by the applications team.And you measure, instead of setting a hard limit, you actually charge them that based on the usage of your bucket, you're going to pay for it. And this is a observability problem. And you can call it soft quotas, but it hasn't been to trigger an alert in observability. It's observability problem. But it actually is interesting to hear that as soft quotas, which makes a lot of sense.Corey: It's one of those problems that I think people only figure out after they've experienced it once. And then they look like wizards from the future who, “Oh, yeah, you're going to run into a quota storage problem.” Yeah, we all find that out because the first time we smack into something and live to regret it. Now, we can talk a lot about the nuances and implementation and low level detail of this stuff, but let's zoom out of it. What are you folks up to these days? What is the bigger picture that you're seeing of object storage and the ecosystem?AB: Yeah. So, when we started, right, our idea was that world is going to produce incredible amount of data. In ten years from now, we are going to drown in data. We've been saying that today and it will be true. Every year, you say ten years from now and it will still be valid, right?That was the reason for us to play this game. And we saw that every one of these cloud players were incompatible with each other. It's like early Unix days, right? Like a bunch of operating systems, everything was incompatible and applications were beginning to adopt this new standard, but they were stuck. And then the cloud storage players, whatever they had, like, GCS can only run inside Google Cloud, S3 can only run inside AWS, and the cloud player's game was bring all the world's data into the cloud.And that actually requires enormous amount of bandwidth. And moving data into the cloud at that scale, if you look at the amount of data the world is producing, if the data is produced inside the cloud, it's a different game, but the data is produced everywhere else. MinIO's idea was that instead of introducing yet another API standard, Amazon got the architecture right and that's the right way to build large-scale infrastructure. If we stick to Amazon S3 API instead of introducing it another standard, [unintelligible 00:14:40] API, and then go after the world's data. When we started in 2014 November—it's really 2015, we started, it was laughable. People thought that there won't be a need for MinIO because the whole world will basically go to AWS S3 and they will be the world's data store. Amazon is capable of doing that; the race is not over, right?Corey: And it still couldn't be done now. The thing is that they would need to fundamentally rethink their, frankly, you serious data egress charges. The problem is not that it's expensive to store data in AWS; it's that it's expensive to store data and then move it anywhere else for analysis or use on something else. So, there are entire classes of workload that people should not consider the big three cloud providers as the place where that data should live because you're never getting it back.AB: Spot on, right? Even if network is free, right, Amazon makes, like, okay, zero egress-ingress charge, the data we're talking about, like, most of MinIO deployments, they start at petabytes. Like, one to ten petabyte, feels like 100 terabyte. For even if network is free, try moving a ten-petabyte infrastructure into the cloud. How are you going to move it?Even with FedEx and UPS giving you a lot of bandwidth in their trucks, it is not possible, right? I think the data will continue to be produced everywhere else. So, our bet was there we will be [unintelligible 00:15:56]—instead of you moving the data, you can run MinIO where there is data, and then the whole world will look like AWS's S3 compatible object store. We took a very different path. But now, when I say the same story that when what we started with day one, it is no longer laughable, right?People believe that yes, MinIO is there because our market footprint is now larger than Amazon S3. And as it goes to production, customers are now realizing it's basically growing inside a shadow IT and eventually businesses realize the bulk of their business-critical data is sitting on MinIO and that's how it's surfacing up. So now, what we are seeing, this year particularly, all of these customers are hugely concerned about cost optimization. And as part of the journey, there is also multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud initiatives. They want to make sure that their application can run on any cloud or on the same software can run on their colos like Equinix, or like bunch of, like, Digital Reality, anywhere.And MinIO's software, this is what we set out to do. MinIO can run anywhere inside the cloud, all the way to the edge, even on Raspberry Pi. It's now—whatever we started with is now has become reality; the timing is perfect for us.Corey: One of the challenges I've always had with the idea of building an application with the idea to run it anywhere is you can make explicit technology choices around that, and for example, object store is a great example because most places you go now will or can have an object store available for your use. But there seem to be implementation details that get lost. And for example, even load balancers wind up being implemented in different ways with different scaling times and whatnot in various environments. And past a certain point, it's okay, we're just going to have to run it ourselves on top of HAproxy or Nginx, or something like it, running in containers themselves; you're reinventing the wheel. Where is that boundary between, we're going to build this in a way that we can run anywhere and the reality that I keep running into, which is we tried to do that but we implicitly without realizing it built in a lot of assumptions that everything would look just like this environment that we started off in.AB: The good part is that if you look at the S3 API, every request has the site name, the endpoint, bucket name, the path, and the object name. Every request is completely self-contained. It's literally a HTTP call away. And this means that whether your application is running on Android, iOS, inside a browser, JavaScript engine, anywhere across the world, they don't really care whether the bucket is served from EU or us-east or us-west. It doesn't matter at all, so it actually allows you by API, you can build a globally unified data infrastructure, some buckets here, some buckets there.That's actually not the problem. The problem comes when you have multiple clouds. Different teams, like, part M&A, the part—like they—even if you don't do M&A, different teams, no two data engineer will would agree on the same software stack. Then where they will all end up with different cloud players and some is still running on old legacy environment.When you combine them, the problem is, like, let's take just the cloud, right? How do I even apply a policy, that access control policy, how do I establish unified identity? Because I want to know this application is the only one who is allowed to access this bucket. Can I have that same policy on Google Cloud or Azure, even though they are different teams? Like if that employer, that project, or that admin, if he or she leaves the job, how do I make sure that that's all protected?You want unified identity, you want unified access control policies. Where are the encryption key store? And then the load balancer itself, the load, its—load balancer is not the problem. But then unless you adopt S3 API as your standard, the definition of what a bucket is different from Microsoft to Google to Amazon.Corey: Yeah, the idea of an of the PUTS and retrieving of actual data is one thing, but then you have how do you manage it the control plane layer of the object store and how do you rationalize that? What are the naming conventions? How do you address it? I even ran into something similar somewhat recently when I was doing an experiment with one of the Amazon Snowball edge devices to move some data into S3 on a lark. And the thing shows up and presents itself on the local network as an S3 endpoint, but none of their tooling can accept a different endpoint built into the configuration files; you have to explicitly use it as an environment variable or as a parameter on every invocation of something that talks to it, which is incredibly annoying.I would give a lot for just to be able to say, oh, when you're talking in this profile, that's always going to be your S3 endpoint. Go. But no, of course not. Because that would make it easier to use something that wasn't them, so why would they ever be incentivized to bake that in?AB: Yeah. Snowball is an important element to move data, right? That's the UPS and FedEx way of moving data, but what I find customers doing is they actually use the tools that we built for MinIO because the Snowball appliance also looks like S3 API-compatible object store. And in fact, like, I've been told that, like, when you want to ship multiple Snowball appliances, they actually put MinIO to make it look like one unit because MinIO can erase your code objects across multiple Snowball appliances. And the MC tool, unlike AWS CLI, which is really meant for developers, like low-level calls, MC gives you unique [scoring 00:21:08] tools, like lscp, rsync-like tools, and it's easy to move and copy and migrate data. Actually, that's how people deal with it.Corey: Oh, God. I hadn't even considered the problem of having a fleet of Snowball edges here that you're trying to do a mass data migration on, which is basically how you move petabyte-scale data, is a whole bunch of parallelism. But having to figure that out on a case-by-case basis would be nightmarish. That's right, there is no good way to wind up doing that natively.AB: Yeah. In fact, Western Digital and a few other players, too, now the Western Digital created a Snowball-like appliance and they put MinIO on it. And they are actually working with some system integrators to help customers move lots of data. But Snowball-like functionality is important and more and more customers who need it.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Honeycomb. I'm not going to dance around the problem. Your. Engineers. Are. Burned. Out. They're tired from pagers waking them up at 2 am for something that could have waited until after their morning coffee. Ring Ring, Who's There? It's Nagios, the original call of duty! They're fed up with relying on two or three different “monitoring tools” that still require them to manually trudge through logs to decipher what might be wrong. Simply put, there's a better way. Observability tools like Honeycomb (and very little else because they do admittedly set the bar) show you the patterns and outliers of how users experience your code in complex and unpredictable environments so you can spend less time firefighting and more time innovating. It's great for your business, great for your engineers, and, most importantly, great for your customers. Try FREE today at honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud. That's honeycomb.io/screaminginthecloud.Corey: Increasingly, it felt like, back in the on-prem days, that you'd have a file server somewhere that was either a SAN or it was going to be a NAS. The question was only whether it presented it to various things as a volume or as a file share. And then in cloud, the default storage mechanism, unquestionably, was object store. And now we're starting to see it come back again. So, it started to increasingly feel, in a lot of ways, like Cloud is no longer so much a place that is somewhere else, but instead much more of an operating model for how you wind up addressing things.I'm wondering when the generation of prosumer networking equipment, for example, is going to say, “Oh, and send these logs over to what object store?” Because right now, it's still write a file and SFTP it somewhere else, at least the good ones; some of the crap ones still want old unencrypted FTP, which is neither here nor there. But I feel like it's coming back around again. Like, when do even home users wind up instead of where do you save this file to having the cloud abstraction, which hopefully, you'll never have to deal with an S3-style endpoint, but that can underpin an awful lot of things. It feels like it's coming back and that's cloud is the de facto way of thinking about things. Is that what you're seeing? Does that align with your belief on this?AB: I actually, fundamentally believe in the long run, right, applications will go SaaS, right? Like, if you remember the days that you used to install QuickBooks and ACT and stuff, like, on your data center, you used to run your own Exchange servers, like, those days are gone. I think these applications will become SaaS. But then the infrastructure building blocks for these SaaS, whether they are cloud or their own colo, I think that in the long run, it will be multi-cloud and colo all combined and all of them will look alike.But what I find from the customer's journey, the Old World and the New World is incompatible. When they shifted from bare metal to virtualization, they didn't have to rewrite their application. But this time, you have—it as a tectonic shift. Every single application, you have to rewrite. If you retrofit your application into the cloud, bad idea, right? It's going to cost you more and I would rather not do it.Even though cloud players are trying to make, like, the file and block, like, file system services [unintelligible 00:24:01] and stuff, they make it available ten times more expensive than object, but it's just to [integrate 00:24:07] some legacy applications, but it's still a bad idea to just move legacy applications there. But what I'm finding is that the cost, if you still run your infrastructure with enterprise IT mindset, you're out of luck. It's going to be super expensive and you're going to be left out modern infrastructure, because of the scale, it has to be treated as code. You have to run infrastructure with software engineers. And this cultural shift has to happen.And that's why cloud, in the long run, everyone will look like AWS and we always said that and it's now being becoming true. Like, Kubernetes and MinIO basically is leveling the ground everywhere. It's giving ECS and S3-like infrastructure inside AWS or outside AWS, everywhere. But what I find the challenging part is the cultural mindset. If they still have the old cultural mindset and if they want to adopt cloud, it's not going to work.You have to change the DNA, the culture, the mindset, everything. The best way to do it is go to the cloud-first. Adopt it, modernize your application, learn how to run and manage infrastructure, then ask economics question, the unit economics. Then you will find the answers yourself.Corey: On some level, that is the path forward. I feel like there's just a very long tail of systems that have been working and have been meeting the business objective. And well, we should go and refactor this because, I don't know, a couple of folks on a podcast said we should isn't the most compelling business case for doing a lot of it. It feels like these things sort of sit there until there is more upside than just cost-cutting to changing the way these things are built and run. That's the reason that people have been talking about getting off of mainframe since the '90s in some companies, and the mainframe is very much still there. It is so ingrained in the way that they do business, they have to rethink a lot of the architectural things that have sprung up around it.I'm not trying to shame anyone for the [laugh] state that their environment is in. I've never yet met a company that was super proud of its internal infrastructure. Everyone's always apologizing because it's a fire. But they think someone else has figured this out somewhere and it all runs perfectly. I don't think it exists.AB: What I am finding is that if you are running it the enterprise IT style, you are the one telling the application developers, here you go, you have this many VMs and then you have, like, a VMware license and, like, Jboss, like WebLogic, and like a SQL Server license, now you go build your application, you won't be able to do it. Because application developers talk about Kafka and Redis and like Kubernetes, they don't speak the same language. And that's when these developers go to the cloud and then finish their application, take it live from zero lines of code before it can procure infrastructure and provision it to these guys. The change that has to happen is how can you give what the developers want now that reverse journey is also starting. In the long run, everything will look alike, but what I'm finding is if you're running enterprise IT infrastructure, traditional infrastructure, they are ashamed of talking about it.But then you go to the cloud and then at scale, some parts of it, you want to move for—now you really know why you want to move. For economic reasons, like, particularly the data-intensive workloads becomes very expensive. And at that part, they go to a colo, but leave the applications on the cloud. So, it's the multi-cloud model, I think, is inevitable. The expensive pieces that where you can—if you are looking at yourself as hyperscaler and if your data is growing, if your business focus is data-centric business, parts of the data and data analytics, ML workloads will actually go out, if you're looking at unit economics. If all you are focused on productivity, stick to the cloud and you're still better off.Corey: I think that's a divide that gets lost sometimes. When people say, “Oh, we're going to move to the cloud to save money.” It's, “No you're not.” At a five-year time horizon, I would be astonished if that juice were worth the squeeze in almost any scenario. The reason you go for therefore is for a capability story when it's right for you.That also means that steady-state workloads that are well understood can often be run more economically in a place that is not the cloud. Everyone thinks for some reason that I tend to be its cloud or it's trash. No, I'm a big fan of doing things that are sensible and cloud is not the right answer for every workload under the sun. Conversely, when someone says, “Oh, I'm building a new e-commerce store,” or whatnot, “And I've decided cloud is not for me.” It's, “Ehh, you sure about that?”That sounds like you are smack-dab in the middle of the cloud use case. But all these things wind up acting as constraints and strategic objectives. And technology and single-vendor answers are rarely going to be a panacea the way that their sales teams say that they will.AB: Yeah. And I find, like, organizations that have SREs, DevOps, and software engineers running the infrastructure, they actually are ready to go multi-cloud or go to colo because they have the—exactly know. They have the containers and Kubernetes microservices expertise. If you are still on a traditional SAN, NAS, and VM architecture, go to cloud, rewrite your application.Corey: I think there's a misunderstanding in the ecosystem around what cloud repatriation actually looks like. Everyone claims it doesn't exist because there's basically no companies out there worth mentioning that are, “Yep, we've decided the cloud is terrible, we're taking everything out and we are going to data centers. The end.” In practice, it's individual workloads that do not make sense in the cloud. Sometimes just the back-of-the-envelope analysis means it's not going to work out, other times during proof of concepts, and other times, as things have hit a certain point of scale, we're in an individual workload being pulled back makes an awful lot of sense. But everything else is probably going to stay in the cloud and these companies don't want to wind up antagonizing the cloud providers by talking about it in public. But that model is very real.AB: Absolutely. Actually, what we are finding with the application side, like, parts of their overall ecosystem, right, within the company, they run on the cloud, but the data side, some of the examples, like, these are in the range of 100 to 500 petabytes. The 500-petabyte customer actually started at 500 petabytes and their plan is to go at exascale. And they are actually doing repatriation because for them, their customers, it's consumer-facing and it's extremely price sensitive, but when you're a consumer-facing, every dollar you spend counts. And if you don't do it at scale, it matters a lot, right? It will kill the business.Particularly last two years, the cost part became an important element in their infrastructure, they knew exactly what they want. They are thinking of themselves as hyperscalers. They get commodity—the same hardware, right, just a server with a bunch of [unintelligible 00:30:35] and network and put it on colo or even lease these boxes, they know what their demand is. Even at ten petabytes, the economics starts impacting. If you're processing it, the data side, we have several customers now moving to colo from cloud and this is the range we are talking about.They don't talk about it publicly because sometimes, like, you don't want to be anti-cloud, but I think for them, they're also not anti-cloud. They don't want to leave the cloud. The completely leaving the cloud, it's a different story. That's not the case. Applications stay there. Data lakes, data infrastructure, object store, particularly if it goes to a colo.Now, your applications from all the clouds can access this centralized—centralized, meaning that one object store you run on colo and the colos themselves have worldwide data centers. So, you can keep the data infrastructure in a colo, but applications can run on any cloud, some of them, surprisingly, that they have global customer base. And not all of them are cloud. Sometimes like some applications itself, if you ask what type of edge devices they are running, edge data centers, they said, it's a mix of everything. What really matters is not the infrastructure. Infrastructure in the end is CPU, network, and drive. It's a commodity. It's really the software stack, you want to make sure that it's containerized and easy to deploy, roll out updates, you have to learn the Facebook-Google style running SaaS business. That change is coming.Corey: It's a matter of time and it's a matter of inevitability. Now, nothing ever stays the same. Everything always inherently changes in the full sweep of things, but I'm pretty happy with where I see the industry going these days. I want to start seeing a little bit less centralization around one or two big companies, but I am confident that we're starting to see an awareness of doing these things for the right reason more broadly permeating.AB: Right. Like, the competition is always great for customers. They get to benefit from it. So, the decentralization is a path to bringing—like, commoditizing the infrastructure. I think the bigger picture for me, what I'm particularly happy is, for a long time we carried industry baggage in the infrastructure space.If no one wants to change, no one wants to rewrite application. As part of the equation, we carried the, like, POSIX baggage, like SAN and NAS. You can't even do [unintelligible 00:32:48] as a Service, NFS as a Service. It's too much of a baggage. All of that is getting thrown out. Like, the cloud players be helped the customers start with a clean slate. I think to me, that's the biggest advantage. And that now we have a clean slate, we can now go on a whole new evolution of the stack, keeping it simpler and everyone can benefit from this change.Corey: Before we wind up calling this an episode, I do have one last question for you. As I mentioned at the start, you're very much open-source, as in legitimate open-source, which means that anyone who wants to can grab an implementation and start running it. How do you, I guess make peace with the fact that the majority of your user base is not paying you? And I guess how do you get people to decide, “You know what? We like the cut of his jib. Let's give him some money.”AB: Mm-hm. Yeah, if I looked at it that way, right, I have both the [unintelligible 00:33:38], right, on the open-source side as well as the business. But I don't see them to be conflicting. If I run as a charity, right, like, I take donation. If you love the product, here is the donation box, then that doesn't work at all, right?I shouldn't take investor money and I shouldn't have a team because I have a job to pay their bills, too. But I actually find open-source to be incredibly beneficial. For me, it's about delivering value to the customer. If you pay me $5, I ought to make you feel $50 worth of value. The same software you would buy from a proprietary vendor, why would—if I'm a customer, same software equal in functionality, if its proprietary, I would actually prefer open-source and pay even more.But why are, really, customers paying me now and what's our view on open-source? I'm actually the free software guy. Free software and open-source are actually not exactly equal, right? We are the purest of the open-source community and we have strong views on what open-source means, right. That's why we call it free software. And free here means freedom, right? Free does not mean gratis, that free of cost. It's actually about freedom and I deeply care about it.For me it's a philosophy and it's a way of life. That's why I don't believe in open core and other models that holding—giving crippleware is not open-source, right? I give you some freedom but not all, right, like, it's it breaks the spirit. So, MinIO is a hundred percent open-source, but it's open-source for the open-source community. We did not take some community-developed code and then added commercial support on top.We built the product, we believed in open-source, we still believe and we will always believe. Because of that, we open-sourced our work. And it's open-source for the open-source community. And as you build applications that—like the AGPL license on the derivative works, they have to be compatible with AGPL because we are the creator. If you cannot open-source, you open-source your application derivative works, you can buy a commercial license from us. We are the creator, we can give you a dual license. That's how the business model works.That way, the open-source community completely benefits. And it's about the software freedom. There are customers, for them, open-source is good thing and they want to pay because it's open-source. There are some customers that they want to pay because they can't open-source their application and derivative works, so they pay. It's a happy medium; that way I actually find open-source to be incredibly beneficial.Open-source gave us that trust, like, more than adoption rate. It's not like free to download and use. More than that, the customers that matter, the community that matters because they can see the code and they can see everything we did, it's not because I said so, marketing and sales, you believe them, whatever they say. You download the product, experience it and fall in love with it, and then when it becomes an important part of your business, that's when they engage with us because they talk about license compatibility and data loss or a data breach, all that becomes important. Open-source isn't—I don't see that to be conflicting for business. It actually is incredibly helpful. And customers see that value in the end.Corey: I really want to thank you for being so generous with your time. If people want to learn more, where should they go?AB: I was on Twitter and now I think I'm spending more time on, maybe, LinkedIn. I think if they—they can send me a request and then we can chat. And I'm always, like, spending time with other entrepreneurs, architects, and engineers, sharing what I learned, what I know, and learning from them. There is also a [community open channel 00:37:04]. And just send me a mail at ab@min.io and I'm always interested in talking to our user base.Corey: And we will, of course, put links to that in the [show notes 00:37:12]. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.AB: It's wonderful to be here.Corey: AB Periasamy, CEO and co-founder of MinIO. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this has been a promoted guest episode of Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice that presumably will also include an angry, loud comment that we can access from anywhere because of shared APIs.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

Welcome to this week's episode of The Atheist Experience. Host Jim Barrows is joined by Talk Heathen regular Secular Rarity. It's going to be a great show, so let's get onto the calls.Unbeliever discusses the difficulties and the benefits of coming out as an atheist in a Muslim family. How do we navigate these conversations and in the long run, is it worth having?What does an open or closed universal system show there is a God? Our hosts and John debate the flaws in this concept, that solipsism cannot be proven or disproven, and adding assumptions where we don't have answers doesn't solve anything.Caller Roland asks if having faith in a God the more reasonable explanation for everything vs. the skepticism atheists have. Does existence have a purpose?Romeo is curious, have our hosts heard any “good” arguments for God? Romeo,Jim, & Secular Rarity discuss what is convincing evidence for a God and how does one move from being an atheist into a believer? Are those reasons valid? Ehh, probably not. Also, an evolution argument..again! Science Time! Eli calls in and asks “where does energy and mass come from?” Jim patiently explains the science and how to avoid the argument from ignorance fallacy. Eli admits to having some doubts as well while our hosts how we become more skeptical. Ni and the hosts explore what absolute truth is, the standard for it, scientific proof, and what standard of evidence would be sufficient to prove God is real. Slave of Christ explains what sin is and how it is a “good” standard of immoral acts. Our hosts pushed back against this argument followed with a discussion of ethics, morality, and the areas of gray the bible does not provide answers for. Also biblical slavery defended again—ugh!

Show Notes Dan and Kris recap Sony's latest State of Play. There was some fun stuff for sure, but 15 minutes on Suicide Squad? Ehh….. Plus, Akka Arrh looks fantastic, Kris dives into a Kid Icarus series replay, everyone loves Metroid Prime Remastered, and more! Useful Links Support us on Patreon StoneAgeGamer.com Safe at Home Rescue theGEEKwriter Karen's Etsy Store Tales of Cape Fear SAG's theme Song “Squared Roots” by Banjo Guy Ollie Social Stuff Join us on Discord! Stone Age Gamer YouTube Twitch Geekade Facebook Stone Age Gamer Facebook Geekade Twitter Stone Age Gamer Twitter Geekade Instagram Stone Age Gamer Instagram YouTube Geekade Contact Us Break Music Metroid Prime - Menu Select Street Fighter IV - Theme of Guile

No Rock? No Problem? Listen to Erin, Shamad, Andi, and Kam as they hit on topics like Mardi Gras, Love Languages, and...Ginger Rolls? Ehh you'll understand later, just stick with me now lol. This is a episode that might just educate or ruffle some feathers. So hold on tight and PRESS PLAY ALREADY!!!!!!! We enjoy feedback as well. So if you have a Rocky Situation or response to things you've heard on this episode and future episodes, please email us at offtherockpod@gmail.com. Follow us @offtherockpod on all platforms listen to us every 1st and 3rd Sunday on NSpireU On Air online radio app. On Google and Apple App Stores. 

The first PLE back on the road for NXT, did it live up to the hype? Ehh maybe. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nodisqualificationspod/support

Turnayı Gözünden Vurmak Herhangi konuda uzun süre suskun ve hareketsiz kalındıktan sonra gerek tesadüfen, gerekse bilinçli olarak büyük bir başarı elde edildiğinde "Durdu, durdu da turnayı gözünden vurdu." deriz. Tecrübeyle değil de zamanın akışıyla ölçülen hemen hemen bütün başarılar bu deyimin değişik zaman kiplerindeki bir versiyonu ile açıklanmaya çalışılır. Deyimin ortaya çıkışı bir avcı mübalâğasına dayanmaktadır. Avcılığın yaygın olduğu yörelerde genellikle avcılar kulübü gibi işleyen bir mekân bulunur. Bütün avcılar buraya gelip bol palavralı hikâyeler anlatırlar. Anlattıkları da konuştukları da saçma olan bu tip avcıların yalanlarına ve mübalâğalarına diyecek yoktur. Pek çoğu hayal ürünü olan bu hikâyelerden birisi şöyledir: Avcılar meclisinin en yaşlı ve güngörmüş üyesi olan Şikarizade Sayyad Ağa bu mecliste anlatılanların hepsini sessizce dinler, hepsine aferinler okur; ama kendisi hikâyesini anlatmazmış. Bu hâl diğer avcıların dikkatini çekince aralarında karar alıp demişler ki: -Sanatına aşk olsun ey büyük avcı! Bunca yıllık bir ömrün ve av peşinde geçen bir hayatın var. Lütfeyleyip, bir hatıra da sen anlatsan da dinleyip faydalansak... Hep bizler konuşuyoruz ve hep senin sustuğunu görüyoruz. Şikarizade bir süre nazlanmış, " Olmaz, bunu benden istemeyin lütfen!" gibi mazeretler ile geçiştirmeye çalışmış. Nihayet ısrar ve merak iyice artınca şöyle derinden derine bir iç geçirip: -Aaaah!... demiş. Ne olursunuz beni konuşturup meclisinizi yasa boğmayın ve beni gençliğimin en hazin hatırası ile yeniden yüzleştirerek derdimi tazelemeyin. Zaten ne zaman bu yürek parçalayan hatıra aklıma gelse ciğerimdeki ateş çevremdekileri yakıyor. O gençlik günlerinin utancı beni boğuyor... Şikarizade Sayyad Ağa'nın bu sözleri meclise bir alev topu gibi düşmüş. Herkes merak ve heyecan içerisinde "Demek ki ortada çok duygusal ve acıklı bir av hikâyesi var." diye geçirmişler içlerinden. Ona bu hikâyeyi anlattırmak için ısrarları artırıp bin dereden su getirmişler, teselli sözleri söylemişler. Avcılar meclisinde herkes tek kulak olup Seyyad Ağa'nın ağzına dayanmış. Çıt yok. Bizimki önce bir yutkunmuş, eski meddahlar gibi oturuşuna yeni bir çeki düzen katarak başlamış anlatmaya: -Efendim, avcılığımın ilk günlerindeydi. Toy bir delikanlı sayılırdım. Bir gün tüfeğimi omzuma, tazımı gölgeme alıp şöyle tek başıma ava çıktım. Bir sigara çekimlik mesafe gittikten sonra gökte bir turna gördüm. Baktım yolu doğrultmuş; aheste aheste süzülüyor. İçimden "Şunu, dedim, zararsız bir yerinden, ayağından vurayım." Ben bunları düşünürken turna biraz uzaklaşır gibi oldu. Tam sağ ayağına nişan alıp çektim tetiği. İşte ne olduysa o anda oldu. Zavallı turna, gagasıyla ayağını kaşımaya yeltenmez mi?!.. Ciğerim yandı gitti; ama elden ne gelir!?.. Kuşcağız şöyle iki yüz - üç yüz metre kadar ileriye düştü. Tazım aldı getirdi. Baktım, tam da düşündüğüm gibi zararsız bir atış idi. Saçmalarımdan yalnızca biri, ayağına isabet edecek yerde, başı siper olduğu için sağ gözünden girip, sol gözünden çıkmış? Kuşcağızın başka hiçbir şeyi yok. Fakat iki gözü iki çeşme kanıyor. Ben hayatımın en büyük pişmanlığı ile ne yapacağımı şaşırdım. Tabi biraz toyluk da var. Kan tutmuş gibi donakalmışım. Kuş çırpınıyor, benim içim sızlıyor. Böyle ne kadar zaman geçti bilmiyorum; asıl hazin sahne o zaman yaşandı... Sayyad Ağa sözün burasında bir ara verip önce iki kez bağrını yumruklar ve ağlamaklı bir eda ile iç geçirerek bir bardak su içer; sonra da acıyla yutkunup anlatmaya devam eder: -Nasıl geldiler, nereden geldiler, ne kadar zamanda geldiler, bilemiyorum, baktım çırpınan kör turnanın üstünde bir bölük turna dolanıp durmakta. Bana doğru öyle kanat çarpıyorlar ki hayatımda öyle dehşeti başka bir gün yaşamadım. Af dilesem, hangisinden dileyeceğim. Konuşsam ne diyeceğim!... Tam bir şaşkınlık hâli sizin anlayacağınız. Birden onların kendi dillerinde anlaştıklarını gördüm. Hayret ki hayret! Kör turnaya bir şeyler anlatıyorlardı. Sonra onu aralarına aldılar ve yıldırım gibi havalandılar. Dinleyenlerin şaşkın ve hayret dolu bakışları arasında Sayyad Ağa sözlerini bitirdi: -İşte yârenler!... Turnalar, katar halinde uçmaya o günden sonra başladılar. Aralarına aldıkları kör turnaya ses vererek istikametine yöneltmeyi o gün keşfettiler. Şimdi turnalar sırf o uğursuz günü bana hatırlatmak ve benden intikam almak için katar halinde uçmayı alışkanlık haline getirdiler. Hatta bu haber dünyadaki bütün turnalar arasında yayıldı ve onlar benim yüzümden katar teşkil eder oldular. Böylece bir yerde anadan doğma bir kör turna var ise seslerine gelip yollarını bulabilsin. Geçenlerde o kör turna ki, epey yaşlanmış, rüyama girdi ve bana dedi ki: -Ey bütün zamanların en büyük üstadı! Biz senden sonra bu cihanda böyle nazik düşünceli ve hassas bir üstad avcı görmedik. İki gözüm senin sanatına feda olsun! Şikarizade Sayyad Ağa'yı dinleyenlerden biri hayretinden patlar ve: Ehh!.. Üstat, der. Durdun, durdun; ama sonunda turnayı da gözünden vurdun. Pes doğrusu!..

Ehh. ----------------------- Intro: Queenadilla Spotify: --------------------- Outro: Lilliehouse Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6UhsGixnp4N85lyojg4N5u

Ehh. Whatever. --------------------------- Intro: Del Perro Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/14HLcLz2Xix6RRfhJY5mlW ---------------------------- Outro: Lilliehouse Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6UhsGixnp4N85lyojg4N5u

EHH, THAT'S DEBATABLE In this episode, we discuss topics people looOoOvE to debate and our feelings and opinions. Our opinions and thoughts may change, but it is time to peel back the curtain and talk openly and honestly about things - like we all should be able to! We talk about social justice movements, the death penalty, breast feeding or formula feeding, bathrooms with no gender restrictions and more! It was freeing to get so many messages and responses on so many things that are hard to talk about! This is a safe environment where we always want to talk about the hard things... but with chill vibes - so happy listening! Follow us on Instagram @somethingsunnypodcast

Alright, it's the podcast you've all been waiting for: For all, three of you who listen, anyway. Today I'm going to name call and gush on my top films of 2022, so let's get right to it. The bottom of my list and number 17 is Joradn Peele's Nope. I believe it's his third movie. He made Get Out, which I wasn't a fan of, but I know I need to rewatch, and Us, a movie that I absolutely adored. So Peele was already batting 50% with me. When I saw he was tackling aliens, I was all in. So, before I go on, I want to give a disclaimer that I may be biased against this film because, well, I wrote it. You heard me. Years and years ago when I was striving to become an author, I came up with a concept and wrote the first several chapters of a book where flying saucers descended upon a Western-type ghost town. Yup, with the flying horse and people getting beamed up, and even the rain water cascading down around the flying saucer to create the illusion that you were inside a circular waterfall. Except in my version, there was going to be literally thousands of spaceships that covered the face of the earth, blocking out the rain and the sun while the alien residents lived above us where their saucers formed a sort of landscape for them to live their lives on while the rest of us died from lack of sunlight and earth essentially became their underground sewer system. So, Peele's movie didn't go quite the way I planned the story, but there were enough similarities that I kept being taken out of the movie. I'm not saying he stole my idea or whatever, because I realize there's only so many good ideas floating around in the ether for us to grab hold of. He just got the idea and made a movie about it. So I say good on him. Though this isn't may favorite film of the year, it's still an enjoyable watch, and I'll probably revisit it one day. Number 16 is Lost City. This one stars Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum, but I'll be honest, it was Brad Pitt who was the true star in this movie. My gripe with it is that it did that thing that most comedies do, where the first half is really funny, like it knows it wants to be a comedy, but then the second half completely forgets to tell the jokes. So this is a half-and-half movie for me. I recommend watching the first half, for sure, at least everything with Brad Pritt, but if you turn it off halfway through, you're really not missing much.Number 15 is Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers. That's right, it's the Roger Rabbit sequel we never got, but it's certainly a good companion piece. I remember I laughed quite a bit toward the beginning, and the mystery element held my attention throughout. Also, kudos to Disney for not pumping this cute little film with any woke crap. None that I saw, anyway. I think if you never saw the original cartoon it's based off of, some of it will be lost on you, especially the nostalgic scenes, but I think overall it was a creative, out-of-the-box concept that was executed quite well from people that clearly, CLEARLY loved and embraced the original source material. Father Stu is a movie that I think had a theatrical release, but you can catch it now on Netflix. It's number 14 on my list. This one's got Mark Whalberg and my very own Mel Gibson. These two respectable gentlemen are men of faith in real life -- you can keep that anti-semitism crap to yourself, I won't hear it -- and so they were able to pull from real life experiences to tell this true story of a boxer-turned-priest. It's low on my list because it was filmed in the most conventional of ways where it felt like I'd seen it all before, but I still respect it for what it is, and I love that faith-based movies can still be made accessible to the general public.  Number 13 is Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. I did not want to see this movie, but the reviews convinced me otherwise. That's probably what's going to happen with Avatar: Way of Water. But this movie was a pleasant and unexpected surprise. It was pleasant because the characters were special and life-like, and it was unexpected, because this wasn't the same Pinocchio story we've been told a million times. There are several deviations from the source material that don't compromise the source material's intended morals or values, or even the story itself. So if you're a fan of the Pinocchio story in any way, but want something different from the characters, this is definitely the right movie for you. Nic Cage stars as Nic Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and this is movie number 12 on my list, though honestly, I could have thrown this movie anywhere below my top 5 and be happy where it landed. I just kind of stuck it in there at random. And though Nic Cage is why you go see this movie, Pedro Pascal is why you stay. Pedro Pascal, you'll remember him as Mando from the Mandalorian, is the true star and heart of this movie. I'd even go so far as to say he delivered one of the best performances of the year, because he just won you over with his sweetness and charm. It was like watching a cute cat video and you can't take your eyes from it. Go into this movie blind, like I did, and I think you'll have a lot of fun, especially if you're familiar with a lot of Nic Cage's work. If not, you'll still have a good time, because you'll just assume that they're referencing another one of his movies. Also, Face/Off is his best film ever. The Adam Project is another one of those films that's 50/50 for me. This one's number 11 on my list. It ought to be much lower because the fighting and sci-fi stuff I didn't care a lick about, but the stuff between Ryan Reynolds and his younger self and his parents was really emotional for me. It's been a long time since I've seen this movie, but the parts that they were trying to be sentimental really hit me deep. I just wish they stretched that stuff out more than the action stuff, because it would have brought it from a good movie to a great movie. Ryan Reynolds is, as usual, wonderful and charming. Number 10 is Where the Crawdads sing. Like The Adam Project, you can find this on Netflix. This movie had me guessing the whole time. I thought the lead actress, Daisy Edgar-Jones was astonishing as Kya, a girl who is suspected of having murdered a man. She had many hats to wear as that character, from hopeless romantic to a reclusive hermit to a woman staring at death row. I loved the story and the setting as it had a very Harper Lee vibe to it. And man, oh man, was it great to see David Strathairn again! You'd recognize him from Memphis Belle, A League of Their Own, and one of my favorite suspense movies: The River Wild. He really hit it out of the park as a lawyer anyone would trust. Oh, and yes, the ending of this movie surprised me, so that gave it some extra points.Weird: The Al Yankovick Story lands at number 9. Honestly, I could have interchanged this with Where the Crawdads Sing as I liked both the same. But this movie was so ... brave in doing what it did. They sold it as one type of movie, but then you get something else entirely, and for once, that wasn't a bad thing. The movie lives up to its title as it is weird, but it's a good weird. It had me smiling all the way through. And Danielle Radcliffe -- way to shed the Harry Potter image, my man! He's no longer JUST the boy who lived. He's now the boy who lived who can also sing and do a really go impression of Weird Al. This next one I'm going to get some flack on because you're probably going to insist I move it much higher up on my list. But number 8 is Everything Everywhere All at Once. This is a film I highly respect for its ambition, its daring, and it's originality. This is also a film I would never have wanted to edit - can you imagine that monumental task? It was just so smart how it was told, and of course it was great to see Short Round back at it. But I've got to say, I'm watching this movie not knowing Short Round was making a comeback, and until I finally looked it up on my phone, I though it was Jackie Chan, but they'd de-aged him. And no, that's not because I think all Asian actors look the same - so don't even. I mentioned Memphis Belle earlier, I get all those guys mixed up too, so it goes both ways. Anyway, if you haven't seen this movie I highly recommend it just so you can experience having your senses assaulted in the best possible way. The only reason it's not higher up on my list is because the themes just didn't apply to me, that's all. And damn, those rocks. When the rock thing happened, I thought I'd be the only one moved by it, but it turns out, everyone talks about those two rocks. So I'm glad I wasn't alone there. Michael Bay is BACK!! You know, The Rock, Armageddon, Bad Boys, that director! Ambulance is number 7, and I'm so glad it was good. I mean, I knew it would be. I cannot be any happier that Michael Bay seems to be done with the Transformers and Ninja Turtle crap. I weep to think of what could have been if he didn't make so many of those stupid movies. He was may favorite director all through high school and college, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Yes, shit gets blown up, the camera never stops, and the action is over the top. Uhhhhh.... Who became king of Movies and said that was a bad thing? Ambulance was a great heist movie, that has a to-the-point bank robbery scene, a fantastic setup for an unintentional hostage situation, and it all pays off. It might be a little bloated time-wise, but that's part of the package of a Michael Bay film. The three leads, Jake Gyllenhall, Yayhya Abdul Manteen II, and Eiza Gonzalez gave it their all in a silly action film, and the whole thing was just a blast to watch. Now we're at the portion of the list where the following six movies are just so good that they could really be shuffled and I'd be okay with the outcome, because these are the standout movies of the year for me and I'll tell you why. But first, a word from my sponsor. Number 6 on my list of best movies of 2022 is A Christmas Story Christmas. When I first heard this movie was coming out, I was cautious. And they didn't start advertising for it until a month or so before Thanksgiving, which was all the more reason to worry. Sure, it's a dumb title, but what are you going to do when the knockoff sequel stole the tittle "A Christmas Story 2"? Peter Billingsley reprises his role as Ralphie Parker, and it's shocking to see how much like the little boy he still looks, especially when he's gazing upward indulging in a daydream. I love how this sequel wasn't a cookie cutter remake of the original (though some can argue that it was), but it followed a storyline that was appropriate for the aging characters. I'll be honest, this movie had me tearing up more than once. As a father, the dad is my favorite character in the original, and he's not in this one because he passed away, but you can still feel his presence in almost every scene in this very special Christmas movie that I'll be sure to revisit with my kids every year from now on. And side note: How crazy is it that it's been almost 20 years since we got a Christmas movie worth its salt (I'm referring to Elf being the last one)? Jackass Forever made number 5 on my list. Is this a masterpiece? Ehh... part of it were, actually. Is it award-winning? It should be. But most importantly: Is it funny? No, it was hilarious. These guys set out with one job and one job only, and they pulled it off. Their job was to make people laugh harder than anyone has in a very long time. The laughs came in quick and hard. There were part of this movie where I was in so much pain. Only The Office and Dumb and Dumber can do that for me. Do me a favor: Set aside your supposed maturity for 90 minutes and just indulge in some low-brow sophomoric pranks and stunts. Allow yourself that treat. We're all so freaking uptight most of the time, and this movie asks if it's really worth it to be that way all the time. Four is Fall. This is another one that's not a masterpiece by any means, but it's the second scariest movie I've ever seen, period. The first scariest movie for me is United 93 because that stuff actually happened and the tension through that movie is just tight as a belay. Speaking of belays, Fall is the second scariest movie I've seen. Like, now I know what some people feel like when they watch a shark movie. It finally clicked with me! See, I don't scare easily. Horror movies often bore me, so it's one of my least favorite genres. And to be clear, this movie isn't meant to be a horror film. And when I say it scared me, what I mean is that it kept me in a state of perpetual queasiness. I wasn't necessarily scared for the girls trapped on this 2,000 foot tower in the middle of nowhere - I kept imagining myself up there and how often I would just freeze, or maybe even black out. I can handle heights as long as I'm strapped in, like in a plane, or hell, I'd even go hang-gliding. But my wife and kids will tell you, I can't even climb up a ladder without coming really close to peeing. I think that's just a significant amount of lack of trust in my body and its ability to hang on. So if you're scared of heights, this movie will definitely scare the shit out of you, and may even make you puke. It follows the lines of The Shallows and my personal favorite, 127 Hours, where you're just stuck with the main character in one spot for over an hour. Oh, and Phone Booth, let's not forget about that one - I love Phone Booth. But a word of warning: I was planning on showing this to my daughter because she loves climbing so much, but then as I'm watching it, I realized, this movie's rated R. A soft R, because of several uses of the F-word and some pretty intense gross-out scenes and lots of blood toward the end. Well, it's not actually rated R, but it's PG-13. That's just a head's up for you parents. I guess they're allowed to show blood and say the F-word more than once now and still get a PG-13 rating? It's not a complaint, I'm just passing the information on. Oh, boy! We're down to my top three best films of the year. You might remember an Adam Sandler film coming out on Netflix earlier in the year. You may or may not have watched it. You might have heard about it and saw that it was about basketball, and you were like, "There's never been a good basketball movie made, except for Hoosiers." And you'd be right, at least until Hustle hit the screen. I am not hard pressed to call Hustle one of the best sports movies ever, and I know that's a really high bar. But you've got to watch it! It's a lot more positive and happier than Uncut Gems, another Adam Sandler winner. And yeah, it's another one "of those" sports movies, but it's just so damn good, it hit me in all the right places. Number 2 is Top Gun: Maverick. If you're one of the two people who haven't seen it yet, stop everything in your life and watch it right now. At this point, there's no excuse. This is Tom Cruise at the top of his game like always. And the funny thing is, I wasn't even looking forward to it because the original Top Gun is so ... meh, expect for the soundtrack. If you haven't seen it, believe the hype, because it's one of those extremely rare movies that lives up in every way. I've seen the movie three times already, and I can watch it again right now. I'll probably show it to my kids next summer. So as surprising that it is that Maverick isn't my number one pick, you must be wondering what is. My number one movie of the year is one that was made just for me. Like, I firmly believe the filmmakers and everyone involved were thinking about me through ever step of the moviemaking process as they executed this film from start to finish. And if you look at all the movies I've brought up prior to this, we've been in the jungle, visited World War II, and saw the future. We've ridden on swamp boats, been slung out of giant sling shots, climbed the highest towers and took our jets beyond Mach 10. It seems like the only thing we haven't ridden is a train. And that's what my number 1 movie is all about: Bullet Train. Brad Pitt is his usual charming and hilarious self in this heist/mystery/comedy/action film. It's directed by David Leitch. Imagine the director of Deadpool 1 & 2 making a Quentin Tarantino film, more accurately, a volume of Kill Bill, with Brad Pitt thrown in. The dialogue is so sharp, the situations are extremely funny, and the action is eye-popping. I film never bored me - the only emotion I didn't feel while watching it was sadness, because there's just nothing sad or depressing being offered here. This movie is the highest of recommends, so much so, that David Leitch, who also brought us John Wick and Hobbs and Shaw, is quickly becoming one of my favorite directors. Now I'm going to go watch Atomic Blonde. Thank you for joining me on my super-long diatribe as I gushed over my favorite films from this year. I never got to Avatar: Way of Water, though I was planning on it and things got kind of complicated. Marcel with Shoes On was another one I missed, I'll be watching Sonic the Hedgehog 2 with my kids shortly (I got it for them for Christmas). Other films I missed but wanted to see were Moonfall, Confess Fletch, The Fablemans, Glass Onion, Violent Night, and The Whale. But I think I still saw a pretty good number of films. Thanks for listening and may your new year be filled with love, spiritual health, and blessings. Email me your favorite films of 2022, especially if there's one that I missed that you think should be on my list. But also feel free to argue with me on any of my choices. Not maliciously, of course, because I have a fragile ego. Keep it spirited. My email address is author.andrewtoy@gmail.com, or message me on Instagram where you can find me at LifeThroughBigScreenPod. Happy New Year! Follow Life Through the Big Screen on these following pages:InstagramFacebookTwitterThis episode was sponsored by Spur Creative

God what was I supposed to write? Something about today's episode. Something about Christopher Nolan. Ehh well whatever it was I guess it wasn't all that important.

Omg! We've reached our season finale. *cue bullhorn!!! Yaya and Monie kick off this episode by checking in prior to playing This or That during their Ice Breaker segment. Next, the ladies share "Transition", a collab poem they've never recited before and explain the purpose behind the lines they wrote. Yaya and Monie then head over to the Cafe to discuss having a 9 to 5 whilst pursuing entrepreneurship. Ehh do both? What are the pros and cons? What keeps them motivated? Lastly, Yaya and Monie head over to their Dorm Story segment to read and chat about tips they found on the web for transitioning into entrepreneurship. Grab your drink and enjoy the Season Finale

Ehh, Why Not?

Simple question - do you have to go to church?Simple answer - but we sure wanna make it more complicated than it is. Listen to this week's episode and hear Townsend and Preacher Man's take on whether or not you "have" to go to church as a faithful follower of Jesus. Maybe learn something? Ehh... who knows. ;)Got a question you want answered or a topic you'd like to hear Townsend and Preacher Man muse on? Let them know at mtpm.podcast@gmail.com !Intro music: "Royalty Free Music from Bensound" 

We like to remember the swinging sixties fondly - the music and the fashion and the dancing. The exploitation, murder and neon-soaked blood splatter? Ehh, maybe not so much. This week, the crew geeks out about the Texas switches in Edgar Wright's glamourous neo-giallo. Also, Taiwan's biggest horror movie is headed to Netflix and Laotian ghosts are dropping soon on Shudder. Motion Picture Terror Scale: 3. Quality: 5. Enjoyment: 5. Articles mentioned in this episode: "For Diana: Last Night In Soho's Opening Tribute Message Explained," by Sarah Moran for Screen Rant "What Is a Texas Switch and How Can You Use It In Movies?" by Jason Hellerman for No Film School "What is giallo, really?" by Noel Murray for Polygon "Last Night in Soho's Edgar Wright doesn't want to give you homework… but he will," by Tasha Robinson for Polygon "Inside Last Night in Soho's breathtaking trick dance sequence," by Tasha Robinson for Polygon "LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (2021) | Behind the Scenes of Anya Taylor-Joy & Thomasin McKenzie Horror Movie," on YouTube

Links to topics spoken about during the show: Ehh! Who cares about no stupid link to those stories anyways.... Right?!

It's the end of an era... as we (finally) wrap-up XLADOW (xlaydo/xlahdo)!  After all the build up, does this issue knock it out of the park... or, end with a thud?  C'maaaaahn, you've read Marvel events before... what do YOU think? As underwhelming and unsatisfying a conclusion this might be -- it does give us some opportunity to reflect.  Is that a good thing?  Ehh, listen and find out! -- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/xlapsed X-Lapsed Voicemail: 623-396-5375 (or, 623-396-JERK) Twitter: @acecomics / Instagram: @90sxmen weirdcomicshistory@gmail.com chrisandreggie.podbean.com The All-New, All-Different chrisisoninfiniteearths.com facebook.com/groups/90sxmen

We're back for another thematic episode - do superheroes hold people back from doing things for themselves? Do we stay on topic? Well... you'll have to listen to find out! Issue 153- Holding Out for a Hero Intro Background Holding Out for a Hero. Not just the single-most overused song on movie soundtracks in the 21st century, also the name of a trope denoting the tendency of individuals, governments, and entire societies who exist in worlds where there are superheroes fighting crimes and averting disasters all over the place to become overly dependent on them, to the point where heroes actually breed a degree of learned helplessness at best, and breathtakingly casual recklessness at worst. Do I need to take the time to check that my safety harness is properly fastened before I climb up this building's spire to do maintenance? Ehh...if I fall, there's someone out there who will save me. Do we need to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to install Positive Train Control throughout our rail system? Why? It costs nothing for a superhero to just save everyone whenever there's a derailment. If they're a super-strong superhero, they'll even put the train back on the track for us. Should the government seek a diplomatic solution in this international conflict? Are you kidding? Look at all these superheroes we have on our side. We'll do whatever we want and you can take it up with them if you have a problem with it. This is one of my favorite story mines of the superhero ethos. The conflict between helping people and making their lives better versus doing so much for them that they lose the ability or the will to do anything for themselves. Probably because it's extremely relatable here in the real world. Sociological interactions from the individual level of parent-child all the way up to the global level of government-citizen have always involved a need to strike that kind of balance. Guaranteeing people's safety, security, and relative prosperity has a tendency to lessen the responsibility people feel for providing it to themselves and one another on an individual level. Superheroes intervening to solve dangerous situations as they're happening can create a type of bystander effect that dissuades anyone else from even trying to help out, especially if it's something that's an everyday occurrence. Man oh man, does this have a lot of real-world parallels that we'll get into. But first, as always, some comic book examples. 1) Elliot S. Maggin's classic Must There Be A Superman? The Guardians of the Universe let Superman know that one of the tenets of the Green Lantern Corps is to handle the much larger, world-threatening crises and not do everything for sentient races, because it can actually stagnate evolution itself. When Superman gets back to Earth, he tests the assumption out by landing in a random small town, where the citizens ask for his help with EVERYTHING, including fixing a leaky roof.  2) During Mark Waid's first run on The Flash, a recurring theme is that part of the reason that the scientific community of Central City is so groundbreaking in its work is that they can push the boundaries of safety in their experiments well beyond what would normally be considered acceptable. They view having The Flash around if anything goes wrong as the only safety measure they actually need.  3) Ultimate Spider-Man Annual 2. After Peter's ninth or tenth run-in with The Shocker, he is shouting at the top of his lungs in frustration as to how he's still not in jail after all the times he's been caught. Thankfully, Foggy Nelson happens to be nearby and tells him straight up: dude, you have to get someone to hang around and give a statement to the police afterwards, or a first-year law student could get any criminal charges dropped. When there's a big crowd of people who just watched a superhero battle, every individual person is going to assume someone else is handling that, and go about their day. 4) Watchmen. President Nixon doesn't even try to reach a detente with the Soviet Union or China at the height of the Cold War. America has Dr. Manhattan as the ultimate trump card against anything the Communist world could ever do. As a result, they wipe out the North Vietnamese Army in a heartbeat and behave aggressively on the world stage throughout the 70s and 80s. This bites them back in a major way when Manhattan decides he doesn't want to be a part of humanity anymore and leaves Earth.  5) Red Son. A villain-ish example. Superman creates a utopia in the Soviet Union largely by solving all of the problems that arise himself. But he's cognizant of the fact that he's doing it, and tries very hard to get his citizens to start stepping up and following his example. He also could simply take over the world and install communism upon all of humanity by force. But it's critically important to him that humanity makes the choice to adopt it themselves, or the ideology won't have triumphed, only he would. Real-world examples? You want real-world examples? I've got real world examples for you. Seat belts. Introduced in the 1940s, it took over 5 decades for them to become mandatory in all 50 states, and the public fought against them every step of the way. One of the reasons why, that we've all just forgotten about, because it's been decades now and people just accept it? Studies done at the time laws were being implemented showed clear evidence that drivers disregarded safety behind the wheel more readily, they drove at unsafe speeds more frequently, and engaged in carelessness and negligence more often, viewing their seat belt as the ultimate form of protection. As recently as 2001, a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study conceded the likely possibility that the presence of seat belts were a contributor to more frequent accidents even as they decreased fatalities. (21:53) In economics and political science, as you know, we call this the Moral Hazard. Safety rails in public policy meant to provide government help to people and institutions in hard times can increase the likelihood that they will engage in behavior more likely to bring about said hard times, as the fear of the consequences is taken out of the equation. Nowhere is this more prevalent today than in the world's financial industry. It has just become accepted now as a matter of course that the world's governments will always step in with currency support, quantitative easing, and outright bailouts when there is an economic downturn, allowing the large investors of the world to socialize the risks of their operations among the entire population whether they're a customer who's opted in to do so or not. Because of the interconnectedness of the global financial markets, the costs to the world's economies of a full-scale collapse of large banks and investment houses is seen as much higher than the occasional large payments it takes to keep them afloat. (36:42) On a micro, individual level, there's the bystander effect and the diffusion of responsibility. The tendency of individuals being less likely to offer help to someone in need when there are a large group of people present, figuring someone else will handle it. The Kitty Genovese case that first brought these terms to the lexicon in the 60s has largely been discredited, but for my money, you need look no further than any instance where there's someone in some kind of dangerous situation anywhere in a public place, what is the first thing almost anyone does? Do they step in and help? Call 911? Scream for someone else to call 911? No, they take out their freaking cell phones and start recording it to post on the Internet, as if the 300th camera angle is going to document what's going on in a way the other 299 won't. It. Drives. Me. Freaking. Nuts. (50:39) So as a superhero, how do you use that light touch, and do for people what they can't do for themselves without taking away their ability to do anything for themselves? Ending Recommended reading: Everything we talked about Next episodes: Wanda Maximoff, Beast Boy, Sue Storm Plugs for social References: Naked Gun - “That's my policy” - Doc (40:10) Apple Podcasts: here Google Play: here Stitcher: here TuneIn: here iHeartRadio: here Twitter Facebook Patreon TeePublic Discord

Many in our tradition take a pretty hard line—we're in, everybody else, out. Ehh. Maybe no. Slides The post For Sure, Buddhists Go To Hell. Right? appeared first on Common Thread Church.

RISE AND GRIND… right? Ehh, we're not completely sold. While there are plenty of good things that come from the “hustle culture” that we live in, there are also a lot of downfalls that can be detrimental to our home life if we aren't proactive in setting those boundaries. We've been made to feel like if we aren't up every morning at 4am and hitting the gym before working 12-hour days, we just aren't doing what it takes to be successful. In reality, though, if we're measuring success by the amount in our bank account, we've missed the point. Tune in as we discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly behind hustle culture. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/themillionairemarriage/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/themillionairemarriage/support

(3:00) Mixed thoughts on the schedule release social media video (8:00) FSU entering 2022 with virtually no new voices on either side of the ball...bold (16:00) Florida on a Friday? (23:00) Two byes, cool....but one after the 2nd game? Ehh. (28:00) Wake biggest game again? (33:00) A sneaky game that might make or break the season? (38:00) The case for 10 wins (46:00) Lot of 1st year coaches on the schedule and other turnover (50:00) Thoughts on freshman DBs McCall and Thomas Music: Bloc Party - The Girls Are Fighting Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever wondered how social media influencers make money? They just post pictures and videos online and *POOF*! Famous and rich, right? Ehh... not so much. There is much more money to be made outside of just the social media platforms. For example, investing it into real estate or cryptocurrency. Ways to increase your income are limitless and in this week's episode of "We Love Our Kids, But..." Justin and Ami jump right into it all. From new inventions they are working on to how they got started in investing in the stock market, they spill it all. If you are looking for advice into how to multiply your money, don't miss a second of this episode! For more Mighty McClure content, follow us on a journey into the lives of the best family in entertainment: msh.ke/weloveourkidsbut