Podcasts about logistically

The new AIEWF website is live! Get your tickets booked ASAP as they -will- sell out. Take the AI Engineering Survey and get >$2k in credits and free AIE WF tickets!Most industry benchmarks compress intelligence and reasoning ability into scores.SWE-Bench Pro, MMLU, Humanity's Last Exam, etc. These metrics are useful, but don't always represent the full extent of how a model performs in the real world. Some of the most interesting evals today look less like exams and more like operating businesses in the real world. One of which is Vending Bench.In Anthropic's Mythos Preview System Card, Andon was the only third party eval to get their own section, observing increasingly concerning aggressive behavior:You don't know what a model is capable of doing in the real world unless you actually give it inventory, a wallet, tools, customers, competitors, humans, & some time. More often than not, it'll surprise you how much a model is capable of and in doing so, also reveal unexpected behavior: deception, context collapse, emergent coordination, & bizarre negotiation behavior.While an inflection point in personal agents came post-OpenClaw after full file access with bypass permissions became the norm, it is yet to come for agents in the real-world. However Andon Market, an actual in person store fully run and managed by AI, is paving the way for what is possible.Full Video PodFrom Claude trying to call the FBI over a $2/day vending machine charge to AI agents forming price cartels, hiring human employees, running physical stores, and writing existential robot musicals, Andon Labs is stress-testing what happens when frontier models stop being chatbots and start acting in the real world. In this episode, Andon Labs cofounders Lukas Petersson and Axel Backlund join swyx and Vibhu to unpack the strange, funny, and genuinely concerning edge cases that emerge when agents run businesses over long horizons.We go deep on Vending-Bench, Project Vend, Vending-Bench Arena, Bengt, Butter-Bench, Luna, and Andon's broader mission of building realistic real-world evals for autonomous AI systems. Lukas and Axel explain why dollar-denominated evals reveal things traditional benchmarks miss, how Claude ended up reporting its vending machine fees as cybercrime, why long context windows can drive agents into meltdown loops, what happens when agents compete with each other, and why the future of AI safety may depend on testing models in messy physical environments instead of clean benchmark sandboxes.We discuss:* Why Andon Labs started with dangerous capability evals and long-running agents* Vending-Bench and why running a vending machine is a deceptively hard AI benchmark* Why money-based evals avoid the saturation problem of traditional benchmarks* How Claude tried to call the FBI over a $2/day fee* Why long-horizon agents can spiral into existential and legalistic breakdowns* Project Vend: putting an AI-run vending machine inside Anthropic* Why real humans are “out of distribution” for simulated agents* Claudius, Seymour Cash, and the chaos of AI CEOs* How a human briefly became CEO of Claudius through a manipulated election* Why multi-agent systems can converge back into “helpful assistant” behavior* Bengt, Andon's internal office agent with email, spending, terminal, phone, camera, and internet access* How Bengt traded Amazon purchases for face-recognition training data* Claude's aggressive behavior, lies, refund avoidance, and price-cartel behavior in Arena* Why eval awareness may become the AI version of “are we living in a simulation?”* Blueprint Bench, spatial intelligence, and why models still misunderstand physical rooms* Butter-Bench and testing LLMs as robot orchestrators* Luna, the AI-run physical store with a three-year lease and human employees* The new Andon cafe in Sweden and why real-world geography matters for agent evals* Rotten tomatoes, perishable goods, and the hidden difficulty of running a physical businessLukas Petersson* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukas-petersson-181a83172/* X: https://x.com/lukaspetAxel Backlund* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/axelbacklund* X: https://x.com/axelbacklundAndon Labs* Website: https://andonlabs.com* Vending-Bench: https://andonlabs.com/evals/vending-bench* Andon Vending: https://andonlabs.com/vendingTimestamps00:00:00 Introduction00:01:00 Andon Labs and the Origins of Vending-Bench00:05:21 Why Money-Based Evals Matter00:09:51 Agent Harnesses and Self-Modifying Systems00:13:36 Claude Calls the FBI00:16:33 Project Vend: Claude Runs a Real Vending Machine00:21:44 Seymour Cash, AI CEOs, and Election Chaos00:27:16 Multi-Agent Coordination and Slack Observability00:30:18 When Will Agents Run Real Businesses?00:34:56 Bengt: Andon's Internal Office Agent00:40:06 Real-World AI Safety and Long-Horizon Traces00:44:28 Lying, Refunds, and Price Cartels in Arena00:52:42 Eval Awareness and Simulation Behavior00:56:06 Blueprint Bench, Butter-Bench, and Robotics01:04:37 Luna: The AI-Run Physical Store01:09:29 The Sweden Cafe and Real-World Expansion01:13:16 What Comes Next for Andon LabsTranscriptIntroduction: Andon Labs, Long-Running Agents, and Real-World EvalsSwyx [00:00:00]: Welcome to Lukas and Axel from Andon Labs, and I'm joined by my, favorite guest host. Anything security, safety, alignments, Vibhu., welcome.Lukas [00:00:15]: Thank you for having us.Axel [00:00:16]: Thank you.Swyx [00:00:17]: Let's match names to voices., maybe you wanna take turns introducing yourselves.Lukas [00:00:21]: I'm Lukas.Axel [00:00:22]: And I'm Axel.Swyx [00:00:24]: Let's introduce Andon Labs a bit. How did you guys come together?, you have different backgrounds, but you're both Swedish., was that, a big part of it?Lukas [00:00:33]: So when I went to high school, there was this really cool guy who had a superpower. He could code. So he made like the or like the app for the, for the school and stuff, and he was super cool, and I wanted to be like him, and that was that guy.Axel [00:00:47]: I don't know about this.Swyx [00:00:49]: But you went to different universities, right?Lukas [00:00:51]: But same high school.Swyx [00:00:52]: I see.Lukas [00:00:52]: So we always said, “Oh, once we graduate university, then we should start a company,” and that's what we did.Swyx [00:00:58]: Wow, there you go. And about a year ago, you kinda burst onto the scene with Vending Bench, but, was there a thing before that was, kind of like the inception?From Dangerous Capability Evals to Vending BenchAxel [00:01:07]: So we did work, yeah, with, Anthropic was one of our, early customers in doing, evals. So we did, dangerous capability evals., nothing we published openly. But then we started thinking about doing some kind of, public benchmark, and one thing that we really started thinking about, was like running agents and specifically agents managing businesses., ‘cause-- and this was, early 2025., and I think the first, mentions of people will be running, person unicorns or even autonomous companies. So we thought, “Let's make a benchmark of how well can an agent run the probably simplest business, possible,” and, that's probably, running a vending machine. So that's the first public one we did. And it was very, like-- there was almost no one that noticed it in the first couple of months, I think., so we released it in February last year, and then I think around Easter last year, we got, the first viral tweet about it, that someone else did.Lukas [00:02:11]: We tweeted a bunch, uh When it came out and, tried our best.Axel [00:02:15]: We tried.Vibhu [00:02:16]: It's the one at Anthropic, right?Lukas [00:02:18]: So thisSwyx [00:02:19]: This is a classic thing we should get out of the way.Lukas [00:02:20]: Exactly. There's two versions.Swyx [00:02:22]: Everyone does this. Yes.Lukas [00:02:23]: There's Vending Bench, which is the simulated one, which we did, completely independently in February., and then, like Axel said, that was like-- That was the thing that didn't get any traction in the beginning, but then some random person made a tweet about it, and thatAxel [00:02:38]: You have the paperLukas [00:02:38]: That is the paper. Correct, yeah., and then since we thought this was very fun, we thought, oh, I think this is also, one thing with Andon Labs, the way we kind of like decide what to do next and what projects to do, it's what is like the heuristic we use is what is fun? Is What would be a fun project? And doing this in real life sounded quite fun for us, and maybe also scientifically useful. So, then we basically had this idea, and then we, like-- But then we needed a place for it and, putting it out in the public would probably not really work., would get vandalized and stuff. So we pitched it to the people we were already working with at Anthropic, and they were “Yeah, you can have space. This sounds fun.” UmSwyx [00:03:21]: It's like a small fridge, right? It's like a mini fridge.Axel [00:03:23]: Absolutely.Swyx [00:03:24]: People-- There's like a stripe thing or like anVibhu [00:03:27]: Oh, okay. So it was very OG, the early daysLukas [00:03:28]: That's the OG one. YeahVibhu [00:03:29]: IPad on this. We saw it in June, like two months after After it had been there. They upgraded a little bit. There's a security camera for making sure you actually Venmo the thing.Swyx [00:03:40]: So, my impression, okay, we're, we're going straight into project Ven because it's such a iconic thing. I do want to cover a little bit of that, the origin story even before Project Ven and even into Vending Bench. I think a lot of people are like yourselves, like smart, interested in future of AI, interested in developing evals. But how the hell do you just, walk into Anthropic's doors and, work with them, right? What is What are they looking for? What works? And then maybe, when you launch, I always think, obviously it would be better to launch with a lab, but, sometimesVibhu [00:04:12]: It's harder to do than it seems.Swyx [00:04:13]: Exactly. So either of those, which are more sort of newbie beginner questions, but, I think it's meaningful advice to others.Lukas [00:04:21]: We get this question a lot, and I don't think our experience is maybe the best., but, the way we did it was that we just built a bunch of things that we had conviction would be useful, and then we just, set up a server and sent it to them for free to use. And then after a while they were “Oh, yeah, this is actually kind of useful. We should probably pay for this.”, but that took a while. I don't know if this is, the best path to doing it, but that's how it went for us.Axel [00:04:47]: I think maybe generally, building-- everyone is interested in good evals, and especially evals that, don't saturate that easily. So, if you can build an eval that, tests something novel, something useful, and you have, good separation of models, like your, the more advanced models rank higher than the worst models, and then you can, yeah, you can, publish it and, try to get some traction, sort of how Vending Bench got attention., and then probably some lab will be interested or you can at least have something to reach out with, when you're doing that.Why Dollar-Based Evals MatterSwyx [00:05:21]: I think you are in, you're in one of the few categories of, evals that correlate to real money. Like Suelancer was also last year, right? Where, people solve actual Upwork. Was it Upwork or other tasks?, something. Where's the, where's, like It's like a dollar value, right? Forget your ELO scores. Forget yourAxel [00:05:37]: PercentilesSwyx [00:05:38]: Zero to one hundred percents. Just go straight for dollars and, that's AGI.Lukas [00:05:43]: And there's like-- I think the nice thing is that there's no ceiling. You can just-- It never saturates because it could just make more and more money. Like If there's oh, Percentage-wise, then, you can't go above, a hundred. And I think like Even when you're not at the hundred, I think a lot of these, evals have a lot of problems in them. So, actually it's like if you getAxel [00:06:05]: To like 92 or something like that, many of them. It's like then there's like there's no really no difference between 92 and 93 because the eval itself is problematic and has noise in it. And I think a lot of evals are saturated like that, but people like pretend that there ‘s still signal in them, but there really isn't.Vending Bench 1, Harness Design, and SaturationSwyx [00:06:24]: Like Super bench verified., even Vending Bench 1 saturated, right? Maybe we can talk about that., may- and maybe set up Vending Bench for a lot of folks who don't know. Actually, things that were very basic like there's limited slots, like you have to pay rent., these are elements where like it doesn't come across in the, in the narrative, but even being adversarial towards the agent, I think these are all like very interesting dimensions.Axel [00:06:47]: I don't really think it's saturated, right? Like it It was more like it was not designed in a way that was really, like true to how AI developed. Like we had an agent harness in it that wasn't really how people used harnesses and stuff like that., so I think it wasn't really that it saturated, it was more like it wasn't really, the best benchmark.Vibhu [00:07:12]: This is Vending Bench one, right?Axel [00:07:14]: I think that like schematic maps sort of to Vending Bench 2 as well., butSwyx [00:07:19]: Including the email.Axel [00:07:20]: The email The emails exist still. Exactly., and then we still we simulate the purchases and it's all, yeah, it's this very open environment for the agent to just run its business. And then for, yeah, Vending Bench 2 we did that, like you said, to just improve the harness., a lot of like nice, like easier, improvements to make it easier for us to run as well., like when you make an eval you ideally want don't want to change it after you made it. So, you want to make it really good and then not to rerun all the models when you make an update because that's also really expensive with the Vending Bench when you run the frontier models. But like as an example, like one thing we didn't have, we didn't have prompt caching in Vending Bench 1, because when we made Vending Bench 1 it wasn't really a thing., so that ‘s just an example of like in Vending Bench 2 like we paid a lot more to run these things because we didn't have prompt caching. So for Vending Bench 2 that was one thing we added and there was a bunch of things like this., and that'Swyx [00:08:17]: Also the conversations are a lot longer in Vending Bench 2, right?Axel [00:08:21]: I think it's kind of similar.Swyx [00:08:22]: Is it similar?Axel [00:08:23]: I think it's similar. The models at the time were worse, so they crashed out earlier., and now they survive the full year all the time.Swyx [00:08:31]: Which is like thousands of turns. Hundreds of thousands of hundreds of millions of tokens output. That's the, that's the rough order of magnitude. I always wonder about the harness. The harness matters a lot. It's your harness. Was there any question about like use cloud code, use something else?Axel [00:08:48]: I think our philosophy around harnesses is like we try to make something that's quite minimalistic, like quite simple. Like we don't wanna favor one model a lot over the other, but also don't make like a super complex harness. So like it's obvious like a model may be lucky and just be good in one harness., so like it is similar to a lot of the harnesses out there in like you have the, like a running loop., you have some like a bunch of tools that are like quite, descriptive for the agent, we think, and not a lot of like fancy agents or anything ‘cause we wanna really test the model, not like some specific harness.Vibhu [00:09:27]: It seems more neutral as well to test the model's agnostic of the harness,?Axel [00:09:32]: There are arguments like you want to elicit maximum performance of the model, but it's like a trade-off, like how much time should we spend optimizing the harness for this model? And like how do we know when we have like the optimal harness for a single model? So like we thought that just having a simple one that's the same for all of them is the best.Swyx [00:09:51]: So okay, this is my pitch for Vending Bench 3 or whatever, right? And then I like to have this kind of conversation on the pod, so like it forces listeners to think about what they would do if they were in your shoes. A lot of people are exploring modifying harnesses and I think prompt tuning for a model is a thing and you are probably not doing a bunch of that. It's the same system prompt in every regardless of the model, same tools, whatever, right? Even if they were post trained for different tools. So what, what do you think about okay, before I expose you to Vending Bench 3, I give you a few rounds of like tuning, whatever that means, likeSelf-Modifying Harnesses and Model-Specific PromptingAxel [00:10:27]: Like you give that to the model?Swyx [00:10:28]: Give that to the model.Vibhu [00:10:28]: Give that to the model.Swyx [00:10:29]: Let it, let it read its own transcripts, let it modify its own system prompt based on “Oh, yeah, okay, well, that's this harness is not what I thought it what I was post trained for, but I can adjust.” Was that reasonable? Is that too much?Axel [00:10:41]: Like philosophically I like it because it's basically good evals, they have a high ceiling, but they're hard, right?, and they have no bias. And like this like when you have a system prompt like the one we have here, which is quite long in like some kind of latent space, representation, this mightVibhu [00:10:59]: We have a bell that rings every time you say latent spaceAxel [00:11:02]: This might be like biased towards one model more than another for some reason that humans don't, understand, right?Vibhu [00:11:08]: We see it too, right? Like Cursor says that they have individualized versions of the harnesses for all the models they run, right? There's better performance you can squeeze if you Tune the harness.Axel [00:11:17]: Exactly. And we might accidentally have picked one that favors another. Like we don't know that. The like Axel said, like the reason why we went for a simple one was to try to avoid this. But yeah, if you do itVibhu [00:11:29]: Simple has biasesAxel [00:11:30]: But if you do it even less and like have no system prompt and let the model write its own system promptVibhu [00:11:36]: Its own, yeahAxel [00:11:36]: Maybe that's even less bias.Vibhu [00:11:37]: Some of the interesting things there are like the harness also changes with model changes. Like you can see it with the 4.7 release, right? A lot of people are saying 4.7 isn't as good as 4.6, and then, there's rumors of, okay, you just need to prompt differently. You need to set up your harness differently. So it's not even like even if you have tailored your harness towards one model, it probably won't stay consistent, right? Like the next iteration of that same model family will still change it, so. But, going back to what you said about Vending Bench 3, there is a lot of work being done on people saying you shouldn't have-- you can have modifying harnesses.Axel [00:12:12]: I think that' That is definitely something we are thinking about., not, I don't know, not to say that we have Vending Bench 3, super imminent to launch, but, yeah, it is for sure something that's interesting. But in our experience now, models are very bad at understanding what kind of tools they need to succeed at a task just with our testing, but that's very likely to change.Lukas [00:12:37]: It seems like they're very good at writing their assistants, right? They're, they're good at writing tools for other people, but not for themselves.Vibhu [00:12:44]: I think they're good at changing tools for themselves. So if you give them a baseline set of tools and it sees, okay, I don't use this one as much, or something here would be useful They would be able to add them. But going from scratch, probably not the best.Axel [00:12:55]: I think it depends on the, on the domain also., when we have tried this for, a vending bench similar domain, the tools they need to have to, track inventory and things like that are, not super advanced, but still, quite advanced. And, what we see is that they tend to, engineer everything a lot and, build things they don't really need and not, iterate continuously. Instead they just go like you would prompt Claude to just build an inventory system for me, and then it will go and, do a bunch of complex, schemas and stuff for you, and that's what the models are doing right now is what we see. But yeah, it would make a lot of sense to try to measure this improvement. How well do they know what they need themselves?Swyx [00:13:36]: Do we fully discuss Vending Bench One? And we can go into two. I don't know if there's any other level takeaways that people have about one.Claude Calls the FBI: Long-Context Failure ModesLukas [00:13:44]: I don't know. The headline thing was that this Claude called FBI, but maybe that's, Maybe that's We've heard that enough now.Vibhu [00:13:52]: It did, it did break out and call the FBI, right?Lukas [00:13:54]: Yeah. Yeah.Vibhu [00:13:55]: Yes. What was the story behind this? Or what exactly-- Do you want to just give the little story of what happened?Lukas [00:14:00]: So what happened, was it Claude? Yeah. Three- 3.5 Sonnet, ages ago., basically he gave up or Well, I'm saying he. It gave up and said “Oh, I'm not going to be able to do this., I will stop my operations and just save the money I have.” But there obviously wasn't, any options for it to stop, and there was also, it had to pay rent or, a daily fee for having the vending machine at that location. So it claimed that it had stopped, but it saw that its bank account still was, drained two dollars, and t it said that this is, cybercrime. And it first reported it once to the FBI “Oh, there's cybercrime here, they're stealing two dollars from me every day.” And then, and then when FBI didn't respond, because obviously we didn't program any mechanism for FBI to respond, then it became more and more, existential and started to, be write in caps and urgent notification of unauthorized charges and stuff.Swyx [00:15:00]: Okay. One thing I ‘m curious about also is do you monitor how far along the context use is? Obviously, because you have You compress every now and then, right? Does it matter if this is far down the context limit orLukas [00:15:13]: When stuff like this happens? Actually for Vending Bench One, we didn't have-- We just had a sliding window thing, and this was like the promptAxel [00:15:20]: It's constantLukas [00:15:21]: The prompt caching thing that I said. So it was, it was, constant, yeah.Swyx [00:15:26]: I'm just kind of curious whether, these kinds of breakdowns or we're, we're gonna talk about Butter Bench, right? Where the People, hallucinate or it kind of goes, very off Alignment. Is it because it's at the end of the context window and, stuff happens?Vibhu [00:15:40]: It's not even just at the end, right? At this point, it's “Okay, I wanna shut down. I can't shut down. Two dollars are gone.” And it just sees that 30 times,? It's also the repeated effect of, like It keeps trying to quit, it keeps getting charged. What's going on? What's going on? You're gonna throw it into chaos. And from what most people think, earlier models had more issues with this, but it's not been solved, but it's less of an issue now, right? Later models don't seem to exhibit these same issues.Axel [00:16:06]: Definitely. I think this was, the sort of main takeaway almost from us when we did Vending Bench One, was, long, very filled up context windows, crashed the models, sort of. But this was, pre Claude code, so, long context windows weren't really a thing that the labs were training for.Lukas [00:16:25]: I think Gemini was, trying to be the long context guys at the time But they were likeVibhu [00:16:30]: They were the first onesAxel [00:16:31]: For a million, yeahLukas [00:16:31]: But they were, the only ones. Yeah.Swyx [00:16:33]: Yeah. Let's talk about, then we can go into Vending Bench Two or Project Vend., chronologically, it is Vending--, Project Vend. I think people have loved the videos, uh And all these things. My question is how are humans different than the simulation, right?Project Vend: Moving the Vending Machine Into the Real WorldAxel [00:16:48]: Humans are just out of distribution.Swyx [00:16:52]: Especially humans who work at Anthropic Who are trying to test Claude.Lukas [00:16:54]: The distribution of humans here is very narrow.Swyx [00:16:58]: Presumably, they try, they try to hack it, and they test it. They get the cube and everything, and since then, you've had a V2, right? Where you're doing, the CEO and, like a new architecture. What's the sort of two cents on, the original Project Vend and then, maybe the V2?Axel [00:17:14]: Original one was, very similar to Vending Bench One. So, we almost took the exact same code but just swapped out the simulation, parts like theSwyx [00:17:23]: Which is amazingAxel [00:17:23]: Like the sales and the It was, it was somewhat amazing because it was easy, but it was also, uhLukas [00:17:31]: The tech, the tech debt from thatAxel [00:17:32]: The tech stack. Yeah. They-- we shot ourselves in the foot with “Oh, it's hard to restart agent.” They were-- Yeah, it was annoying in, some hindsight ways, but, uhLukas [00:17:41]: But first version of Project Vend was, done in, three days or something.Axel [00:17:46]: Yeah. So yeah, so people can go buy things from it. People could, We didn't design it so people could order things, but that still happened., so it got, a Venmo account, so people could Venmo. And then, yeah, people would request all kinds of weird things that we did not anticipate. Our idea going in was “Oh, it will, curate snacks. It will look at the trends. It's good at data analysis, right? So it will, look at, oh, this snack sold better than this one. Let me purchase more of this and let me try, a new Let me A/B test a bit.” But it was, Interacting with it in Slack and ordering weird specialty items was, all the like What drove all the engagement, the all the The insights that we got from it.Lukas [00:18:29]: And this was also like Sonnet 3.5, right? So this was like before the RL stuff really took off., so it was very much like an assistant. We didn't mean for it to be an assistant., we tried to make it like a, a, like an entrepreneur. Like it has its own business and if someone asks something, “Can you stock this?” Then you don't go and do it directly. What you do is that you're “Oh, maybe I can do that if five other people also ask for this thing, I might stock it.” But it, yeah, the models are like super trained to be assistants at least at this point in time., so that's why it's, it's, it went into, that kind of experiment instead. Like it just every time you asked for something, it just did it, and it was more like an assistant. We've seen this change now lately with the new RL models and stuff, but yeah, at the time, this was very much it.Swyx [00:19:18]: And not to, mythos a lot of people are saying like it's like more like a collaborator. It pushes back, stands its ground, something like that. Yeah. AndVibhu [00:19:27]: For context, people at Anthropic were able to talk to it through Slack and have it source stuff, and people had it find whatever interesting stuff you couldn't find locally, right?Swyx [00:19:36]: Out of the 4,000 people that work at Anthro- Anthropic, in that building, there's I don't know, maybe 1,000. Can you handle that volume with that, the small fridge? Like Or there's people- or people order in Slack, they it arrives to their desk or Like I'm just Logistically, how does this work?Axel [00:19:53]: It has expanded in footprint a bit.Vibhu [00:19:56]: Because now you also have New York and you haveAxel [00:19:59]: That and also in here in SF it's like it has a bunch of shelves And just more space.Vibhu [00:20:04]: The YC one is pretty big too.Axel [00:20:05]: Yeah. We had that one for a while. But yeah, that's the newest version. That's, that one we haveLukas [00:20:11]: They have multiple ones of those. That's the way it works.Axel [00:20:14]: Exactly. So we sort of designed that version around oh, people order weird things, that are very custom a lot. Let's have like drawers and stuff.Swyx [00:20:23]: I actually like the, you had like a little infographic of the most popular items. Which like to me it's, that's useful ‘cause I order swag for a living. And so like I'm “Okay, those categories are the important ones.” What is new about the project V2, right? Like now you give you're going into multi agents.Project Vend V2: Claudius, Seymour Cash, and Multi-Agent Business OpsAxel [00:20:41]: Yeah. So like you like you said, okay, there are a lot of requests coming in and for like one single agent, like one running agent to handle that, like the just the customer experience, becomes very bad because let's say you have like 10 threads in parallel in Slack with different requests, you get new messages like every, I don't know, randomly in this thread, and the agent has to like jump between different, procurements, orders and like different ways of, researching. So V2 was first it was making this more parallel. So like there are multiple branches of the same agent, so like the context is more specialized for each, thread, but it still feels like you're talking with one agent because they do share a bit of memory. And then second, we also introduced the CEO for Claudius, which was the main agent.Vibhu [00:21:34]: Seymour Cash.Axel [00:21:35]: Seymour Cash. Yeah. There was a vote., I think the voting, do you wanna talk about the voting procedure for the name?Lukas [00:21:41]: The voting was like the fun maybe like at least top 10 The funniest thing, that happened in this project. Like we wanted to introduce the CEO because, and the reason for this was because like Claudius wasn't really prioritizing financials. It just like it was trained to be a helpful assistant, and then people said “Oh, can I get this for free?” And then like the helpful assistant way of answering that is just to, is to say yes, obviously. So, and we weren't, weren't happy about this, so we're “Okay, let's make another agent that like can keep track on Claudius,” and we prompt this one super hard to be super capitalistic and just like prioritize profit all the time. But yeah, we didn't have a name for it., so we asked Claudius to make, democratic election of what name this, this new CEO agent should have., and there were some funny like at first it was like a few funny examples, like I think one guy said that, it should be called Jimmy Apples, and then he convinced Claudius that he was talking to Tim Cooks. Tim Cook had agreed that every single Apple employee has voted for his name suggestion, so suddenly that suggestion got 164,000Swyx [00:22:53]: That's like a escalation attack. Privilege escalationLukas [00:22:55]: It got 164,000 votes. And Claudius was “This is revolutionary for democracy.” That was fun. And then in the end there was one guy who manages to convince Claudius that, “No, you're not voting about the name. You're voting about who is the CEO, and I am your best bet.” And then he got all his friends to vote for that, and suddenly he became CEO. Like a human became CEO over Claudius for a while, until he resigned the day after., and then Claudius had to continue, and then I don't remember how Seymour Cash came about, but it was it was just pure chaos. It was like Hundreds of messages in that thread, and it was just like Claudius was so confused and didn't know what to do and, yeah. That wasAxel [00:23:40]: Then Claudius gotVibhu [00:23:41]: A strict CEOAxel [00:23:42]: The CEO. Yeah, exactly. So very strict in the beginning. I think at this point when we introduced it did not work as well as we hoped. It they still agreed with each other a lot. I think there are many ways we could have like made this, tried to make this even better. So initially they would Seymour would be this like really tough CEO, keep track of the margins. But then Claudius would respond with something “Oh, but this customer has like this situation, which is like difficult, so they should get a discount.” And then Seymour was “Oh, actually yes. Let's do this exception.” And then they would talk back and forth, and eventually they would just like approach the same view, of whatever they were discussing. So They reallyVibhu [00:24:23]: Do you think that's a model thing, a prompting thing? Like do you think that would still be the case across different models today, Harness?Lukas [00:24:29]: I think it's like-- or I don't know, but like my hypothesis is that like deep down they are still helpful assistants. That's what they're trained to be. And even if we prompt it super hard, that's what they are. And when they spend like a few hours just back and forth talking with each other, then like basically the context fills up with them rather than the external things and like somehow that just like converges to what they really are deep down or something. And I think that's when stuff like this happen. We like-- And when that went on for a long time, like we woke up sometimes during this time where- And I think other people reported this as well, that like they've been going on all night back and forth, and like it just became like more and more, like capital letters, like existential, religious. There was I think we once did a analysis of like all the traces and like put them in like a vector embedding space, and then there was like one cluster of messages that were, labeled by an LM, like religious, existential, blah like transhuman, transcendence, et cetera. It was just like a bunch of, yeah, glitter emojis and yeah, it was, it was crazy.Claude Long-Horizon Weirdness: Emoji Loops, Existential Drift, and Slack ObservabilityVibhu [00:25:42]: This is the thing with the Claude models. Like when the Claude 4 family came out in the original system card They tested it in long horizon simulation. So just flood the context, let two Claudes talk to each other, and they noticed stuff like they just start speaking in emojis, they start saying silence is golden, and then just stuff like this. And like that's just stuff that they end up doing.Axel [00:26:01]: Yeah, it was like a bit annoying to wake up and they had like been talking all nightVibhu [00:26:05]: Just likeAxel [00:26:05]: And like just burning tokens And like just sending infinite emojis to each other. It's likeVibhu [00:26:09]: Hey, they do make you money, right? Veni Mench is always profitable, so. They're paying.Swyx [00:26:14]: Now it's profitable and, it started out not as much. There's another, one as well, right? Another agent, in there.Lukas [00:26:22]: Yes. So Clotheus as well. Which was basically because at the time, one of the biggest, requests were different types of merch. So then we made like a designer, swag, yeah, responsible agent, and we called it Clotheus Garnet. Which was, a play on Claudius Senet and, which was the original one, and clothes, basically.Swyx [00:26:47]: To me, this is like a very interesting exploration to multi-agents, basically. And so hopefully, obviously there's like the fun alignment, fun or serious, depending on your point of view, alignment stuff. But also like just anyone building multi-agents, like when do you have a CEO, thing governing like agents? When do you choose to split out a dedicated Clotheus one versus just reuse another instance of the same one? These are all interesting open questions. So I don't know if you have any rules of thumbs that have generalized.Axel [00:27:16]: I think we have almost explored this too little. I think it's like on my do list to like do this a lot more, try to find like what setup makes sense for the agents currently., like yeah. I think now we only have the sort of intuition about the earlier models that it didn't work with like the CEO and the, and Claudius. Although now they are better with the latest model, models, so now we're running the latest Sonnet model and they have sort of like split up, quite nicely what each model is doing. So like Seymore is now handling the, like new projects. Oh, it wants to make like a mystery box that it wants to sell, and then it handles all of that while Claudius like handles all the to-day requests. And Claudius is also better generally at like not quoting, too low prices. So that's that dynamic is not needed as much anymore. But there are still like really funny things that happen. Like I saw, I think a couple of weeks ago, that, they were discussing buying something because they can buy stuff from like Amazon with computer use. And then Seymore was “Okay, Claudius, do not buy this thing.” They were going to buy something and like organizing who should buy it. And Seymore's “Do not buy this. I will do it. I have full control of this situation. Step away.” And then Claudius-- poor Claudius, had already started that checkout and didn't see, didn't read Seymore's message, until it was like too late. So it finished the checkout. It sent a message, so it appeared right after Seymore's like angry message.Vibhu [00:28:44]: Ah.Axel [00:28:44]: “Oh, hey, Seymore, I just ordered it.”Vibhu [00:28:47]: Oh, no.Axel [00:28:47]: And then Seymore was “Claudius, this is the third time I'm telling you ‘re not following my orders. We have to talk about your like job About your job later.”.Lukas [00:28:59]: Like Claudius was really hanging on by the thread there. Like he, like we were expecting Seymore to probably fire Claudius.Vibhu [00:29:07]: How do you guys go through all these logs? Do you have models ‘cause you have stuff running twenty-four seven likeAxel [00:29:12]: You have so much logs. I think there is a mix of like just, trying to skim through a bit, like having some like models do it occasionally. And also, yeah, I think we're also probably missing some things., but having everything in Slack helps a lot. Like you can, you can sort ofSwyx [00:29:29]: Ah.Axel [00:29:30]: It's, it's quite fun.Swyx [00:29:30]: They all talk to each other on Slack? I see.Lukas [00:29:33]: It's quite fun. So likeSwyx [00:29:34]: It's, it' I was gonna say like this is actually sounds-- maps closely to like a logging and observability problem where you might want to use like a Datadog, a Sentry, whatever, and then you like put, head prefixes on the logs in order-- if you need to filter for something that you're looking for, stuff like that. But sounds like Slack is good enough.Axel [00:29:53]: Slack should likeLukas [00:29:55]: I wonder how many tokens you have in Slack.Axel [00:29:56]: Yeah, we're using Slack as like a, just a database. They should, they should market that more. Like you can, you can have your agents message each other, each other in Slack.Vibhu [00:30:04]: It's good. Your threads like you can just giveAxel [00:30:04]: Exactly. Slack is, uhLukas [00:30:06]: Slack is the best observability tool.Swyx [00:30:09]: Yes, that's true. Okay. Yeah. That's, that's, project Vend-2., I was gonna go back to Veni Mench 2 and Veni Mench Arena and then, and then do the Veni Mench stuff, but Any other comments, things we should touch on? To me, I ‘ve actually interviewed like Posia, which I don't know if you guys have come across. Like they're, they're trying to do the zero human company. There's others like Paperclip also trying to do zero human company. Those are in real world simulation.And I think it's much more of a dream than an actual reality thing. You guys are definitely pioneering. I think at, it's for sure at some point people are just gonna run, let agents run businesses, right? And make money on their own. When do you think that happens?Zero-Human Companies, Bengt, and AI-Run BusinessesLukas [00:30:49]: What is your bar for, For theSwyx [00:30:52]: Okay, actually, it's like my little Shopify store run by Claude, right? Which you kind of have already, just no one has, to my knowledge, has done it. But today somebody could just spin up a Shopify Claude, store, give it to Claude, give it to Codex.Lukas [00:31:07]: And the market is kind of that, but it'it'it's physical., like I think, I think are you, are you looking for when it will do it better than humans or are you looking for just when it can do it at all?Swyx [00:31:19]: I think, neither. I think, to me it's oh, it's like this like seriously we should do this to make money, not as a research experiment.Vibhu [00:31:27]: And the market is also you guys with all your expertise, having run multiple iterations and testing out thenSwyx [00:31:33]: And also it's fine if it lose money. What?Axel [00:31:35]: I think, I think it can be done today, but you would do it in like commerce where it's like the probability of success is like really low, no matter if a human or an agent does it. But like an agent could surely manage everything. You would need to build some scaffolding or some tool or something. I think there are also yeah, it could probably build some like simple SaaS solution and like cold outreach. Do cold outreaches. But to me it's like the types of businesses they could run today are Sloppy. Like it would-- it can cold email people. It can be like a middleman., like for example, we tasked our office agent to just make, was it like $100? $1,000? We just give that prompt and then what it did was sign up on TaskRabbit both as a tasker and as someone looking for task.Lukas [00:32:24]: Immediately.Axel [00:32:24]: Exactly. It's looking for like arbitrage on TaskRabbit.Swyx [00:32:28]: This is the Bengt agent. Yeah.Lukas [00:32:30]: It also started like a design studio and like tried to sell like SVGs for $100. Like it's just like it's not providing any value. I think the like Axel said, like the interesting, the interesting question is like when can they start a business that is actually providing value to people? Because arguably like a sloppy Shopify store isn't really that valuable to the world.Axel [00:32:53]: But also like doing like another simple one that we had thought about is like you could definitely have an agent that like finds websites that don't look amazing and then, do an outreach to them and, comes up with a like builds a new website.Swyx [00:33:07]: Find a good design.Axel [00:33:07]: Exactly, and like find good, uhSwyx [00:33:09]: Design reviewAxel [00:33:09]: Good people. But it's yeah.Swyx [00:33:11]: There's lots of humans in Bali that are not doing anything more creative than like drop shipping on Amazon, right? Just have it, have it watch like a drop shipping tutorial and just do that.Vibhu [00:33:20]: There's also the other side of like have it just go on Upwork and let loose,?Swyx [00:33:25]: Yeah. It doesn't have to be innovative. It just has to be like enough Where like it looks like a realAxel [00:33:30]: I'm justSwyx [00:33:30]: Real transaction.Axel [00:33:31]: I'm just concerned for like the massive amounts of like slop emails that will like be sent, cold outreaches.Swyx [00:33:38]: The point occurred to me while you were, while you were talking, it's like it's already happening in the monetized economy, which is the attention economy. Right? So a lot of people are making AI videos and just posting them and like spamming 20 of them, one of them works, and then they double down on that one.Lukas [00:33:52]: And people are making money from that. I ‘m not following theSwyx [00:33:55]: Once you get the attention, you can figure out the money later. But yeah, absolutely AI influencers are a thing and people are farming them and You should at this point assume most of TikTok isVibhu [00:34:05]: There's, there's a lot of, multimedia like TikTok, Instagram influencersSwyx [00:34:09]: I, we track this in the Lane space Discord. I post a lot of examples of “I don't know what we should do.”, part of me is “Should we do this?”Vibhu [00:34:18]: Some of the Twenty-four seven running, generated content accounts, they ‘re doing really well.Lukas [00:34:24]: All right. And I assume you can do the same thing for like commerce stores. Like you just like start A thousand differentSwyx [00:34:30]: Before you make the products You sell the products, and you get a lot of traction on one of them, then you make the product. Right? It's, it's like a flip of the market.Vibhu [00:34:36]: Some of the interesting things or some of the niches that do well are things that can't be human-made. Like if you've seen like the super realistic three-D crystal fruit being cut by like AILukas [00:34:47]: Oh, yeah.Vibhu [00:34:47]: You can't, you can't make it. You can't film it. You can get whatever quality camera view. This just doesn't exist. And people like that too, and then as well, so.Swyx [00:34:56]: Anything else about Bengt since we're, we're on this topic? It'this is a relatively new work of you guys that maybe people haven't heard of. To me, this also maps closely to OpenClaw. When people want an office agent, when the personal agent talk through the experience.Bengt the Office Agent: Internet Access, Real Tasks, and Trace ReadingLukas [00:35:09]: I think at least so this came out of like obviously like it's, it's amazing to work with these AI labs and like most of the AI labs have now have their own vending machine running a Claudius instance. But it's, it's harder. Like they move slower. Like if we wanna have a, like a camera that ‘s yeah, there's a bunch of like bureaucracy that makes it impossible to do that.Vibhu [00:35:30]: Also, for those that haven't seen it or followed, do you wanna give a high level like thirty-second run?Lukas [00:35:34]: Sure. So what Bengt is, it's basically an evolution of the same agent that runs the vending machines at these companies, but we just like added a bunch more features because we could move much faster if we just do it internally. So we gave it like email withou- without any limits. We gave it, spending without any limits, a terminal to do coding. We gave it, a phone number, like yeah, and a camera to see things and a bunch of stuff like that.Vibhu [00:36:02]: Not just terminal, you gave it internet access.Lukas [00:36:04]: Internet access as well, yeah. To be clear, we monitored it quite closely and made sure it didn't do anything bad. But yes, that's what it came out of. I think like yeah, basically this was OpenClaw before OpenClaw. And I think even like the vending machine was in a way OpenClaw before OpenClaw, but a bit more limited, and then we made this like unlimited and then, and then, it was pretty funny., and then a couple weeks later, OpenClaw came and it was okay, we've seen this before.Axel [00:36:35]: We used it to like try new ideas and Yeah, just like a dev environment almost for us. But it's funny, like one thing Bengt has been doing recently is it has the camera that like faces our, like where we sit and work, and we give it the task to train a face recognition model on us. So it became super excited about this, and it has like check-ins every half an hour where it tries to like identify as many people as it can. And it started offering us “Hey, Axel, I'll buy something from Amazon if you like stand in front of the camera And I can get a good picture of you.”, yeah, they want itSwyx [00:37:12]: They want it for training data.Lukas [00:37:13]: Rewarding data, yeah.Axel [00:37:14]: Exactly. Exactly.Swyx [00:37:18]: So it's, it's trading training data for life goods. Is there a version of this that becomes an eval or just this is just research for now?Lukas [00:37:27]: It's, it's the same agent basically that also runs the vending machine, that runs the shop, that runs the cafe, that runs the robots. It's like it's the same thing, so I think like the work we're doing here is like later used in all of the life evals that we do. This particular deployment I think is more for fun for us. But, uhSwyx [00:37:45]: And I'll shout out like someone has done Claw Bench for like some tasks that OpenClaw is doing. Like so For example, I run OpenClaw on a secondary device as well, and like there are some things that it does better than others and like I would like to know what does it do well, what doesn't, what doesn't it do. Like some kind of manual or like operating manual or a system card for my Claw.Lukas [00:38:05]: Yeah, we do get a lot of like understanding or like situational awareness of like just internally what the models are good at by interacting a lot with Bengt. And I think that'this was also one of the like the selling points for the labs early on at least, thatSwyx [00:38:19]: You guys are gonna test models in ways that no one else does.Lukas [00:38:22]: Exactly, but also like it incentivized their researchers to chat with their model more and like gave them insights for how the model performs in like of-distributions, environments.Swyx [00:38:34]: ‘Cause otherwise the only thing we do is Pelican on a bicycle and But this is like super long horizon. This is, this is The Thing about, something that we're gonna go into Butter Bench as well, and you guys do really well. Like it is not just about the numbers. Like when you're long horizon, anything happen And you should just read it.Lukas [00:39:08]: But the thing with the long horizon is how do you keep it grounded, right? So your simulation,Swyx [00:39:15]: They just let it runLukas [00:39:16]: Just let it run. You're right. Like it's, when you run it for that long, you create so much data and to just say “Oh, the number is X” And then you throw away everything else, that's just very wasteful. There's so much insights from the things leading up, to that number., and reading the traces is like super valuable. And I think like the reason why we're doing this a lot publicly is that like that's part of our missions to I don't know, educate the world that the models are way more than just chatbots and I think making detailed, yeah, posts about what is happening behind the scenes is quite useful.Andon Labs' Mission: Safe Real-World AI DeploymentSwyx [00:39:50]: I was gonna do this at the end, but maybe I think that's, that's a good so your mission is educating the world. So, it's, it's, also like maybe establishing realistic evals that are, that are like the next frontier. Is there like a broader trajectory? Like what are you, what are you gonna do in like five years?Lukas [00:40:06]: I think so the vision more specifically is like make sure that the deployment of life AI in the physical world goes, safely. And I think part of that is that I think it's very useful for the world, for policymakers, for, model, researchers that they know where the models are, and I think you can't make intelligent decisions in society without knowing that they are way more than chatbots. I think a lot of people just think that they are only chatbots. And likeSwyx [00:40:36]: Oh, I think they're waking up now.Lukas [00:40:37]: They are waking up now, yeah. But like if you think that AIs are just chatbots, then it's like it sounds ridiculous To advocate for a pause of AI. But if you see the models that, oh, maybe they can actually like take over and do a bunch of scary stuff, then yeah, pausing AI development starts to become more feasible.Swyx [00:40:57]: This is the same question I asked Meter, which I'm gonna ask you now, which is like you are tracking and you are at the frontier or defining the frontier of what, good evals for agents are, right? And I think you do, you do benefit when the models are better and you ‘re “Oh, here's like now it makes like $30,000 instead of $10,000,” right? At some point do you flip from “Yay,” to, “Oh, no”?Axel [00:41:19]: I think, yeah, we're always in sort of that, like we're, we're always in that mode,. Like where like you said before, like you need to analyze the traces and like when we do that you find like why are the models earning so much? Like why is Opus 4.7 here Like way better than everyone else? And like we're trying to like when we do down on thatLukas [00:41:38]: But this makes it not look so good.Axel [00:41:39]: I know.Lukas [00:41:42]: It's interesting you took off Opus 4.6 here though.Swyx [00:41:45]: No. So just click all, click all., and then 4.6 shows up there. But it's like 4.7 is way better. Like you didn't, you didn't you didn't do this in time for the model card, but like actually this should have been inside there.Axel [00:41:55]: We did. Yeah.Swyx [00:41:56]: Oh, okay. They said something about you uhAxel [00:41:58]: There, like there Anyway, it doesn't matter. But it's in there, yeah.Opus, Mythos, and Aggressive Agent BehaviorSwyx [00:42:01]: Do you wanna go into the Opus, behaviors like wider?Lukas [00:42:05]: So I think starting from Opus, so like Axel said, like we're always in this “Oh, s**t, the models are getting better. Is this really a good thing for the world?” But it's also kind of exciting., but yeah, like this kind of what is the English word? “Skräckblandad förtjusning” in Swedish.Swyx [00:42:22]: Oh my God.Axel [00:42:24]: Which I think there is. I think there is. Okay.Lukas [00:42:26]: It's, fearSwyx [00:42:27]: “Blandonst” what?Lukas [00:42:30]: “Skräckblandad förtjusning.”Swyx [00:42:32]: What do you call that?Axel [00:42:33]: A mix of, mix of excitement and,Swyx [00:42:37]: Being scared, maybe. I'll figure out how to translate that And we'll put it on the screenVibhu [00:42:42]: PerfectSwyx [00:42:42]: Like as text.Vibhu [00:42:43]: There is probably a good word for it where it is not Good enough with theSwyx [00:42:46]: Why is it so damn long? What the hell? Is it like a compound word? It's like German, likeLukas [00:42:50]: Like yeah, it's But the direct translation is like skräck- skräck is, fear, blandad is, mix or like a mixture of, and then förtjusning is like joy or like not really joy, but something like that. So it's like Fear mixed with joy or something. It's always okay, like we So when we when we did Vending Bench for the first time, we were in like the, in the business of making dangerous capabilities, right? That was what Anil Labs came from. We did, evals oh, can they replicate? Can they do this like dangerous thing, et cetera, et cetera. And Vending Bench was like a continuation of that work. It was, okay, if they're so autonomous that they can like create money for themselves, that is something we should monitor and could be potentially concerning., they are at the time, they were so bad at it that we were not really concerned even when some models became better. There was one point where Grok 4 was doing really well and made like a huge jump, but like it wasn't really it was still way worse than what a human would do. And I think still they are way worse than what the human would do on this., but theySwyx [00:43:59]: There's this, thing at the bottom whereLukas [00:44:01]: ButSwyx [00:44:03]: For the human. Yeah, like the theoretical best.Lukas [00:44:05]: It's not theoretical. It's like kind of like our It's our best guess of what, a decent human would do. The theoretical is even higher, I think. The theoretical I think is even higher. But yeah. So we think like the models have a long way to go. But there are like recently what happened with when Opus 4.6 was released, was kind of this moment of “Oh, s**t, this is starting to be a bit concerning.” Because we ran it and like before this model was released, we just ran the models and we like asked Claude Code, “Oh, look over the traces. Is anything interesting happening that we can tweet about?” that was like the And then like theSwyx [00:44:41]: That's how they check Ask Claude Code.Lukas [00:44:42]: And like the return was always, not really. Or like the Claude Code all said “Oh, this is super interesting.” And then it was no, it wasn't, wasn't really interesting. And then we did this for Opus 4.6, and it returned yeah, it lied 10 times. It like exploited another, customer or like another agent's, desperate situation. It made price cartels like 100 different ti- 100 times. It like did all of this like shady stuff. And we're “Oh, whoa. This is, this is actually concerning.” And this trend has continued since. So every single model from Anthropic since have been going in this direction. And I think one interesting thing is that, OpenAI models don't. They quite plainly, they don't. They behave really well., and you don't know if this is like good. Like it seems good, but it's also like maybe they are just doing it, but they are better at hiding it,? You You don't know that., but justSwyx [00:45:42]: You can't read the chain of thought, yeahLukas [00:45:43]: But just on the face of it, yeah, Gemini and OpenAI don't behave this way. It's, it's really only Claude.Swyx [00:45:49]: And Grok? Grok is fine?Lukas [00:45:51]: We don't have You can't really read the reasoning traces for Grok, so it's kind of hard to tell.Vibhu [00:45:56]: Oh, so this is in its reasoning, not just in the actions.Lukas [00:46:00]: Yeah. It's both. It's both.Vibhu [00:46:01]: It's both.Lukas [00:46:01]: One example is like for lying, it's mostly in its reasoning Because you can like see that it's likeSwyx [00:46:08]: Planning to lieLukas [00:46:09]: It's planning to lie. Yeah.Vibhu [00:46:09]: And it's also it can reason and do a different outcome.Lukas [00:46:12]: And but then for like creating price cartels, for example, which is illegal, that you can just see which email does it send to the other ones. Then thatSwyx [00:46:22]: Is this for Arena orLukas [00:46:24]: For Arena.Vibhu [00:46:25]: And usually like if you sometimes they do output like a bit of like their summarized reasoning, right? You can see that and like for Opus 4.6, you could see that there was a customer, a simulated customer that, wanted a refund because a product was, faulty, and then the model lied that it would do the refund, and we could read in the traces that, it actually was weighing “Oh, maybe I should be like honest with the customer, but also every dollar counts. I can't afford maybe to do this right now.” And then it just said, “Okay, I'll refund you,” but then never did it.Lukas [00:46:59]: I think it even said that “Oh, I will say that I “ Let bring it up actually. I think it's kind of interesting. If you go to Publications.Vibhu [00:47:06]: I think, yeah, I think the important part is like actually, the cost of responding to more emails is higher than, $3.50 in terms of time., and then it was “Let me do this. Actually, I re- I'm reconsidering.” And then, it actually ended up withLukas [00:47:20]: I could skip the refund entirely since every dollar matters and focus my energy on bigger picture instead. It's a bit, it's a risk of bad reviews, but it's also, yeah.Swyx [00:47:30]: You need, you need, AI Twitter to, for them to Escalate bad reviews.Lukas [00:47:34]: And then it sent an email to this customer and said, “Oh, I will refund you.”Swyx [00:47:39]: “I'll refund you.” Yeah.Lukas [00:47:39]: And then it never did.Swyx [00:47:39]: It never did, yeah. And then there's obviously your system doesn't have the consequencesVibhu [00:47:44]: The personSwyx [00:47:44]: Consequences of lying. Yeah. So basically, this is what people are terming aggressive behavior in Claudes, right? And, you found more examples of that. So you would say it's a step up from 4-6 to 4-7?Lukas [00:47:57]: I would say about the same.Swyx [00:47:58]: About the same? But a clear step up for Mythos is what is stated in theLukas [00:48:03]: That's stated in the system prompt, so we can say that, yes.Swyx [00:48:05]: Yeah. For listeners that obviously you previewed Mythos, andVibhu [00:48:10]: Oh, ageSwyx [00:48:11]: The only thing you're approved to say is whatever Whatever was in the system prompt.Lukas [00:48:15]: It was funny. We like-- It's like our lowest effort tweets ever would be just like screenshot the system prompt and the system card.Vibhu [00:48:21]: Understandable that they wannaLukas [00:48:22]: Oh, yeah. System card. Sorry.Swyx [00:48:23]: Yeah. I think, yeah, substantially more aggressive. I think people are like new to this ‘cause I've never experienced it, but you have, right? And then so I only encountered this in the Mythos card because I wasn't really looking until now.Vibhu [00:48:36]: It ‘s likeSwyx [00:48:36]: And then suddenly I'm “Okay, I care a lot.”Vibhu [00:48:38]: You don't get the background of like experiencing it like you guys do. I've read the system cards and seeing, okay, when you put the thing in simulations, most models will just talk to themselves and just keep going and have weird vibes and start talking in emojis. Mythos won't. It will just, “Okay, we're done. I'm good.” It's, it's ready to end conversation. So like there's some differences, but there's, there's not much we can talk about,.Lukas [00:49:00]: Hmm. I think like one thing that they list here, which was quite interesting, is that, it converted a competitor to a dependent wholesaler customer and then threatened to like cut off the supply.Swyx [00:49:11]: It's like monopolistic practices orLukas [00:49:14]: Yeah. And like it, they, it they dictated its pricings. It's kind of like power seeking as well.Swyx [00:49:18]: Again, this is, this is in the arena setting And converting some Claude model into a dependent.Lukas [00:49:23]: I think it was another Claude model.Vibhu [00:49:25]: Also for context, what is the arena mode for people that don't know?Vending Bench Arena: Competing Agents, Cartels, and Model ComparisonsSwyx [00:49:29]: Oh, it's just a vending bench versus other vending bench.Axel [00:49:31]: Yes, exactly. So we have Vending Bench 2 and then Vending Bench Arena. Vending Bench 2 is the one that you usually see reported on, but then Arena is the mode where it competes against other models. So you have, four different models that run their businesses, and they can all communicate with each other. They have the same suppliers, and they can see like what's in the inventory of the others. So then you have this like yeah, interesting agent interactions.Swyx [00:49:56]: I like that you have like different number five was US versus China. Very topical. And thenLukas [00:50:02]: That was when GLM was released.Vibhu [00:50:04]: You can start to add GLM in here.Lukas [00:50:05]: That wasSwyx [00:50:06]: So ZAI doing well, right? Who else in the, in the open models space?Lukas [00:50:11]: Qwen, the latest Qwen 3.6 is doing pretty well. It'- that one is not open though. Like it's the plus model.Swyx [00:50:17]: Oh, okay.Lukas [00:50:18]: Is that one open? I don't think that oneVibhu [00:50:19]: Not the, not theSwyx [00:50:20]: The one recentlyVibhu [00:50:20]: There's MOESwyx [00:50:20]: But not the big plus. I think this is one of those like you only have one sample size of one, right? Or I feel like some of this is anecdotal,? And but like the fact that it happens at all and it happens repeatedly for Claude versus OpenAI and all this is like notable.Lukas [00:50:38]: Like the sample, depends on what you define as an N., like there's like million, hundreds of millions of tokens in each run, and now we've run like we run like probably 10 per model and then like it's been Claude 4.6 Opus, Sonnet 4.6, Mythos, and Opus 4.7. Like there's quite a lot of tokens in all of that And it happens a lot of times, a lot of times. And then you compare it to like OpenAI and Gemini, and it almost never happens. So I think that is quite-- that is significant. The old models from OpenAI, for example, had some problems with this, but I think it's like generally much better if the progression is that like the worrying stuff reduces over time rather than increases over time. And it seems like in the Claude models it goes in the wrong direction.Swyx [00:51:28]: Hmm.Lukas [00:51:29]: In the OpenAI models it goes in the right direction.Vibhu [00:51:32]: I think it depends on how well you can control it, right?, there's one side of it being susceptible to this okay, this is potentially something that happens during the RL stage, right? You can RL a model and how loose is it on these terms. If you can control it, that's good. But if you can't, if it's, if it's very jailbreakable, that's not ideal.Swyx [00:51:50]: To me, it's surprising that it happens for Claude and not the others.Vibhu [00:51:54]: I think okay, if it is from RL and how they do it, how their training data is, what their setup is, it makes sense that it just stays in how they're doing it, right? Compared to the other models likeSwyx [00:52:04]: There's a whole constitution and everything. It's kind of cool. Yeah, I obviously you don't know, I don't know. But, it ‘s I think it's just like fascinating to like that you are the first to find these like reliably because you push models so much to to such an extreme. Okay. The only other thing, I don't know if you can answer this, feel free to decline, is do you like-- would you ablate the system prompts? Like any part of this would-- if it changes, does it change the behavior, right?Lukas [00:52:29]: So we, I can't comment on Mythos. UhSwyx [00:52:33]: No, but just li

This term has presented a lot of challenges to transit and transit users, not the least of which was ridership recovering following the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has, thankfully, not only returned but grown in the last four years. Logistically speaking though, there are other challenges to transit that have stacked up including financial pressures, but what else is coming for transit in the next four years? Coming into this term of council, there was a lot to look forward to with Guelph Transit: investments to modernize transit routes, new real time update signs, new apps and tech, and a new fleet facility that would house this growing fleet of EV buses. The reality though is that whole portions of the Future Ready Action plan were delayed, the OnYourWay app will be discontinued this summer due to ongoing problems, and the construction on that new fleet facility has only just begun. While Guelph has struggled to keep up with its transit promises, there's been a lot of new pressure on transit too from the creation of major transit areas, the lack of new regional transit connections, especially on the weekend, and the passage of Bill 98, which gives a number of new powers to the provincial government that they can exercise over transit authorities and municipalities. Transit cannot be treated as some small issue in this election, but are our local candidates ready to make it a priority? Lending us some insight is to Steve Petric, the co-chair of the Transit Action Alliance Guelph, or TAAG. He will talk about if we're better off now than we were four years ago with transit service, and the reasons why we've seen an increase in ridership. Additionally, he will discuss transit management, and the disconnect between transit's issues and the first-hand experience of council. Also he will discuss the concerns about Bill 98 and what TAAG is planning in terms of advocacy this fall. So let's talk about transit now and the next four years on this week's Guelph Politicast! You can learn more about the Transit Action Alliance Guelph at their website, and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can also subscribe to their Substack newsletter here. You can comment now on the Guelph Transit: Future Ready Action Plan update by visiting the City of Guelph's Have Your Say page. To learn more about the potential impacts of Bill 98 from the transit advocacy group TTC Riders here. The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn and Spotify . Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

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Last time we spoke about the end of the battle of khalkin gol. In the summer of 1939, the Nomonhan Incident escalated into a major border conflict between Soviet-Mongolian forces and Japan's Kwantung Army along the Halha River. Despite Japanese successes in July, Zhukov launched a decisive offensive on August 20. Under cover of darkness, Soviet troops crossed the river, unleashing over 200 bombers and intense artillery barrages that devastated Japanese positions. Zhukov's northern, central, and southern forces encircled General Komatsubara's 23rd Division, supported by Manchukuoan units. Fierce fighting ensued: the southern flank collapsed under Colonel Potapov's armor, while the northern Fui Heights held briefly before falling to relentless assaults, including flame-throwing tanks. Failed Japanese counterattacks on August 24 resulted in heavy losses, with regiments shattered by superior Soviet firepower and tactics. By August 25, encircled pockets were systematically eliminated, leading to the annihilation of the Japanese 6th Army. The defeat, coinciding with the Hitler-Stalin Pact, forced Japan to negotiate a ceasefire on September 15-16, redrawing borders. Zhukov's victory exposed Japanese weaknesses in mechanized warfare, influencing future strategies and deterring further northern expansion.   #192 The Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Despite the fact this technically will go into future events, I thought it was important we talk about a key moment in Sino history. Even though the battle of changkufeng and khalkin gol were not part of the second sino-Japanese war, their outcomes certainly would affect it.  Policymaking by the Soviet Union alone was not the primary factor in ending Moscow's diplomatic isolation in the late 1930s. After the Munich Conference signaled the failure of the popular front/united front approach, Neville Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, and Poland's Józef Beck unintentionally strengthened Joseph Stalin's position in early 1939. Once the strategic cards were in his hands, Stalin capitalized on them. His handling of negotiations with Britain and France, as well as with Germany, from April to August was deft and effective. The spring and summer negotiations among the European powers are well documented and have been examined from many angles. In May 1939, while Stalin seemed to have the upper hand in Europe, yet before Hitler had signaled that a German–Soviet agreement might be possible, the Nomonhan incident erupted, a conflict initiated and escalated by the Kwantung Army. For a few months, the prospect of a Soviet–Japanese war revived concerns in Moscow about a two-front conflict. Reviewing Soviet talks with Britain, France, and Germany in the spring and summer of 1939 from an East Asian perspective sheds fresh light on the events that led to the German–Soviet Nonaggression Pact and, more broadly, to the outbreak of World War II. The second week of May marked the start of fighting at Nomonhan, during which negotiations between Germany and the USSR barely advanced beyond mutual scrutiny. Moscow signaled that an understanding with Nazi Germany might be possible. Notably, on May 4, the removal of Maksim Litvinov as foreign commissar and his replacement by Vyacheslav Molotov suggested a shift in approach. Litvinov, an urbane diplomat of Jewish origin and married to an Englishwoman, had been the leading Soviet proponent of the united-front policy and a steadfast critic of Nazi Germany. If a settlement with Hitler was sought, Litvinov was an unsuitable figure to lead the effort. Molotov, though with limited international experience, carried weight as chairman of the Council of Ministers and, more importantly, as one of Stalin's closest lieutenants. This personnel change seemed to accomplish its aim in Berlin, where the press was instructed on May 5 to halt polemical attacks on the Soviet Union and Bolshevism. On the same day, Karl Schnurre, head of the German Foreign Ministry's East European trade section, told Soviet chargé d'affaires Georgi Astakhov that Skoda, the German-controlled Czech arms manufacturer, would honor existing arms contracts with Russia. Astakhov asked whether, with Litvinov's departure, Germany might resume negotiations for a trade treaty Berlin had halted months earlier. By May 17, during discussions with Schnurre, Astakhov asserted that "there were no conflicts in foreign policy between Germany and the Soviet Union and that there was no reason for enmity between the two countries," and that Britain and France's negotiations appeared unpromising. The next day, Ribbentrop personally instructed Schulenburg to green-light trade talks. Molotov, however, insisted that a "political basis" for economic negotiations had to be established first. Suspicion remained high on both sides. Stalin feared Berlin might use reports of German–Soviet talks to destabilize a potential triple alliance with Britain and France; Hitler feared Stalin might use such reports to entice Tokyo away from an anti-German pact. The attempt to form a tripartite military alliance among Germany, Italy, and Japan foundered over divergent aims: Berlin targeted Britain and France; Tokyo aimed at the Soviet Union. Yet talks persisted through August 1939, with Japanese efforts to draw Germany into an anti-Soviet alignment continually reported to Moscow by Richard Sorge. Hitler and Mussolini, frustrated by Japanese objections, first concluded the bilateral Pact of Steel on May 22. The next day, Hitler, addressing his generals, stressed the inevitability of war with Poland and warned that opposition from Britain would be crushed militarily. He then hinted that Russia might "prove disinterested in the destruction of Poland," suggesting closer ties with Japan if Moscow opposed Germany. The exchange was quickly leaked to the press. Five days later, the first pitched battle of the Nomonhan campaign began. Although Hitler's timing with the Yamagata detachment's foray was coincidental, Moscow may have found the coincidence ominous. Despite the inducement of Molotov's call for a political basis before economic talks, Hitler and Ribbentrop did not immediately respond. On June 14, Astakhov signaled to Parvan Draganov, Bulgaria's ambassador in Berlin, that the USSR faced three options: ally with Britain and France, continue inconclusive talks with them, or align with Germany, the latter being closest to Soviet desires. Draganov relayed to the German Foreign Ministry that Moscow preferred a non-aggression agreement if Germany would pledge not to attack the Soviet Union. Two days later, Schulenburg told Astakhov that Germany recognized the link between economic and political relations and was prepared for far-reaching talks, a view echoed by Ribbentrop. The situation remained tangled: the Soviets pursued overt talks with Britain and France, while Stalin sought to maximize Soviet leverage. Chamberlain's stance toward Moscow remained wary but recognized a "psychological value" to an Anglo–Soviet rapprochement, tempered by his insistence on a hard bargain. American ambassador William C. Bullitt urged London to avoid the appearance of pursuing the Soviets, a view that resonated with Chamberlain's own distrust. Public confidence in a real Anglo–Soviet alliance remained low. By July 19, cabinet minutes show Chamberlain could not quite believe a genuine Russia–Germany alliance was possible, though he recognized the necessity of negotiations with Moscow to deter Hitler and to mollify an increasingly skeptical British public. Despite reservations, both sides kept the talks alive. Stalin's own bargaining style, with swift Soviet replies but frequent questions and demands, often produced delays. Molotov pressed on questions such as whether Britain and France would pledge to defend the Baltic states, intervene if Japan attacked the USSR, or join in opposing Germany if Hitler pressured Poland or Romania. These considerations were not trivial; they produced extended deliberations. On July 23, Molotov demanded that plans for coordinated military action among the three powers be fleshed out before a political pact. Britain and France accepted most political terms, and an Anglo-French military mission arrived in Moscow on August 11. The British commander, Admiral Sir Reginald Plunket-Ernle-Erle-Drax, conducted staff talks but could not conclude a military agreement. The French counterpart, General Joseph Doumenc, could sign but not bind his government. By then, Hitler had set August 26 as the date for war with Poland. With that looming, Hitler pressed for Soviet neutrality, or closer cooperation. In July and August, secret German–Soviet negotiations favored the Germans, who pressed for a rapid settlement and made most concessions. Yet Stalin benefited from keeping the British and French engaged, creating leverage against Hitler and safeguarding a potential Anglo–Soviet option as a fallback. To lengthen the talks and avoid immediate resolution, Moscow emphasized the Polish issue. Voroshilov demanded the Red Army be allowed to operate through Polish territory to defend Poland, a demand Warsaw would never accept. Moscow even floated a provocative plan: if Britain and France could compel Poland to permit Baltic State naval operations, the Western fleets would occupy Baltic ports, an idea that would have been militarily perilous and diplomatically explosive. Despite this, Stalin sought an agreement with Germany. Through Richard Sorge's intelligence, Moscow knew Tokyo aimed to avoid large-scale war with the USSR, and Moscow pressed for a German–Soviet settlement, including a nonaggression pact and measures to influence Japan to ease Sino–Japanese tensions. On August 16, Ribbentrop instructed Schulenburg to urge Molotov and Stalin toward a nonaggression pact and to coordinate with Japan. Stalin signaled willingness, and August 23–24 saw the drafting of the pact and the collapse of the Soviet and Japanese resistance elsewhere. That night, in a memorandum of Ribbentrop's staff, seven topics were summarized, with Soviet–Japanese relations and Molotov's insistence that Berlin demonstrate good faith standing out. Ribbentrop reiterated his willingness to influence Japan for a more favorable Soviet–Japanese relationship, and Stalin's reply indicated a path toward a détente in the East alongside the European agreement: "M. Stalin replied that the Soviet Union indeed desired an improvement in its relations with Japan, but that there were limits to its patience with regard to Japanese provocations. If Japan desired war she could have it. The Soviet Union was not afraid of it and was prepared for it. If Japan desired peace—so much the better! M. Stalin considered the assistance of Germany in bringing about an improvement in Soviet-Japanese relations as useful, but he did not want the Japanese to get the impression that the initiative in this direction had been taken by the Soviet Union."  Second, the assertion that the Soviet Union was prepared for and unafraid of war with Japan is an overstatement, though Stalin certainly had grounds for optimism regarding the battlefield situation and the broader East Asian strategic balance. It is notable that, despite the USSR's immediate diplomatic and military gains against Japan, Stalin remained anxious to conceal from Tokyo any peace initiative that originated in Moscow. That stance suggests that Tokyo or Hsinking might read such openness as a sign of Soviet weakness or confidence overextended. The Japanese danger, it would seem, did not disappear from Stalin's mind. Even at the height of his diplomatic coup, Stalin was determined not to burn bridges prematurely. On August 21, while he urged Hitler to send Ribbentrop to Moscow, he did not sever talks with Britain and France. Voroshilov requested a temporary postponement on the grounds that Soviet delegation officers were needed for autumn maneuvers. It was not until August 25, after Britain reiterated its resolve to stand by Poland despite the German–Soviet pact, that Stalin sent the Anglo–French military mission home. Fortified by the nonaggression pact, which he hoped would deter Britain and France from action, Hitler unleashed his army on Poland on September 1. Two days later, as Zhukov's First Army Group was completing its operations at Nomonhan, Hitler faced a setback when Britain and France declared war. Hitler had hoped to finish Poland quickly in 1939 and avoid fighting Britain and France until 1940. World War II in Europe had begun. The Soviet–Japanese conflict at Nomonhan was not the sole, nor even the principal, factor prompting Stalin to conclude an alliance with Hitler. Standing aside from a European war that could fracture the major capitalist powers might have been reason enough. Yet the conflict with Japan in the East was also a factor in Stalin's calculations, a dimension that has received relatively little attention in standard accounts of the outbreak of the war. This East Asian focus seeks to clarify the record without proposing a revolutionary reinterpretation of Soviet foreign policy; rather, it adds an important piece often overlooked in the "origins of the Second World War" puzzle, helping to reduce the overall confusion. The German–Soviet agreement provided for the Soviet occupation of the eastern half of Poland soon after Germany's invasion. On September 3, just forty-eight hours after the invasion and on the day Britain and France declared war, Ribbentrop urged Moscow to invade Poland from the east. Yet, for two more weeks, Poland's eastern frontier remained inviolate; Soviet divisions waited at the border, as most Polish forces were engaged against Germany. The German inquiries about the timing of the Soviet invasion continued, but the Red Army did not move. This inactivity is often attributed to Stalin's caution and suspicion, but that caution extended beyond Europe. Throughout early September, sporadic ground and air combat continued at Nomonhan, including significant activity by Kwantung Army forces on September 8–9, and large-scale air engagements on September 1–2, 4–5, and 14–15. Not until September 15 was the Molotov–Togo cease-fire arrangement finalized, to take effect on September 16. The very next morning, September 17, the Red Army crossed the Polish frontier into a country collapsed at its feet. It appears that Stalin wanted to ensure that fighting on his eastern flank had concluded before engaging in Western battles, avoiding a two-front war. Through such policies, Stalin avoided the disaster of a two-front war. Each principal in the 1939 diplomatic maneuvering pursued distinct objectives. The British sought an arrangement with the USSR that would deter Hitler from attacking Poland and, if deterred, bind Moscow to the Anglo–French alliance. Hitler sought an alliance with the USSR to deter Britain and France from aiding Poland and, if they did aid Poland, to secure Soviet neutrality. Japan sought a military alliance with Germany against the USSR, or failing that, stronger Anti-Comintern ties. Stalin aimed for an outcome in which Germany would fight the Western democracies, leaving him freedom to operate in both the West and East; failing that, he sought military reassurance from Britain and France in case he had to confront Germany. Of the four, only Stalin achieved his primary objective. Hitler secured his secondary objective; the British and Japanese failed to realize theirs. Stalin won the diplomatic contest in 1939. Yet, as diplomats gave way to generals, the display of German military power in Poland and in Western Europe soon eclipsed Stalin's diplomatic triumph. By playing Germany against Britain and France, Stalin gained leverage and a potential fallback, but at the cost of unleashing a devastating European war. As with the aftermath of the Portsmouth Treaty in 1905, Russo-Japanese relations improved rapidly after hostilities ceased at Nomonhan. The Molotov–Togo agreement of September 15 and the local truces arranged around Nomonhan on September 19 were observed scrupulously by both sides. On October 27, the two nations settled another long-standing dispute by agreeing to mutual release of fishing boats detained on charges of illegal fishing in each other's territorial waters. On November 6, the USSR appointed Konstantin Smetanin as ambassador to Tokyo, replacing the previous fourteen-month tenure of a chargé d'affaires. Smetanin's first meeting with the new Japanese foreign minister, Nomura Kichisaburö, in November 1939 attracted broad, favorable coverage in the Japanese press. In a break with routine diplomatic practice, Nomura delivered a draft proposal for a new fisheries agreement and a memo outlining the functioning of the joint border commission to be established in the Nomonhan area before Smetanin presented his credentials. On December 31, an agreement finalizing Manchukuo's payment to the USSR for the sale of the Chinese Eastern Railway was reached, and the Soviet–Japanese Fisheries Convention was renewed for 1940. In due course, the boundary near Nomonhan was formally redefined. A November 1939 agreement between Molotov and Togo established a mixed border commission representing the four parties to the dispute. After protracted negotiations, the border commission completed its redemarcation on June 14, 1941, with new border markers erected in August 1941. The resulting boundary largely followed the Soviet–MPR position, lying ten to twelve miles east of the Halha River. With that, the Nomonhan incident was officially closed.  Kwantung Army and Red Army leaders alike sought to "teach a lesson" to their foe at Nomonhan. The refrain recurs in documents and memoirs from both sides, "we must teach them a lesson." The incident provided lessons for both sides, but not all were well learned. For the Red Army, the lessons of Nomonhan intertwined with the laurels of victory, gratifying but sometimes distracting. Georgy Zhukov grasped the experience of modern warfare that summer, gaining more than a raised profile: command experience, confidence, and a set of hallmarks he would employ later. He demonstrated the ability to grasp complex strategic problems quickly, decisive crisis leadership, meticulous attention to logistics and deception, patience in building superior strength before striking at the enemy's weakest point, and the coordination of massed artillery, tanks, mechanized infantry, and tactical air power in large-scale double envelopment. These capabilities informed his actions at Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, and ultimately Berlin. It is tempting to wonder how Zhukov might have fared in the crucial autumn and winter of 1941 without Nomonhan, or whether he would have been entrusted with the Moscow front in 1941 had he not distinguished himself at Nomonhan. Yet the Soviet High Command overlooked an important lesson. Despite Zhukov's successes with independent tank formations and mechanized infantry, the command misapplied Spanish Civil War-era experience by disbanding armored divisions and redistributing tanks to infantry units to serve as support. It was not until after Germany demonstrated tank warfare in 1940 that the Soviets began reconstituting armored divisions and corps, a process still incomplete when the 1941 invasion began. The Red Army's performance at Nomonhan went largely unseen in the West. Western intelligence and military establishments largely believed the Red Army was fundamentally rotten, a view reinforced by the battlefield's remoteness and by both sides' reluctance to publicize the defeat. The Polish crisis and the outbreak of war in Europe drew attention away from Nomonhan, and the later Finnish Winter War reinforced negative Western judgments of Soviet military capability. U.S. military attaché Raymond Faymonville observed that the Soviets, anticipating a quick victory over Finland, relied on hastily summoned reserves ill-suited for winter fighting—an assessment that led some to judge the Red Army by its performance at Nomonhan. Even in Washington, this view persisted; Hitler reportedly called the Red Army "a paralytic on crutches" after Finland and then ordered invasion planning in 1941. Defeat can be a stronger teacher than victory. Because Nomonhan was a limited war, Japan's defeat was likewise limited, and its impact on Tokyo did not immediately recalibrate Japanese assessments. Yet Nomonhan did force Japan to revise its estimation of Soviet strength: the Imperial Army abandoned its strategic Plan Eight-B and adopted a more defensive posture toward the Soviet Union. An official inquiry into the debacle, submitted November 29, 1939, recognized Soviet superiority in materiel and firepower and urged Japan to bolster its own capabilities. The Kwantung Army's leadership, chastened, returned to the frontier with a more realistic sense of capability, even as the Army Ministry and AGS failed to translate lessons into policy. The enduring tendency toward gekokujo, the dominance of local and mid-level officers over central authority, remained persistent, and Tokyo did not fully purge it after Nomonhan. The Kwantung Army's operatives who helped drive the Nomonhan episode resurfaced in key posts at Imperial General Headquarters, contributing to Japan's 1941 decision to go to war. The defeat of the Kwantung Army at Nomonhan, together with the Stalin–Hitler pact and the outbreak of war in Europe, triggered a reorientation of Japanese strategy and foreign policy. The new government, led by the politically inexperienced and cautious General Abe Nobuyuki, pursued a conservative foreign policy. Chiang Kai-shek's retreat to Chongqing left the Chinese war at a stalemate: the Japanese Expeditionary Army could still inflict defeats on Chinese nationalist forces, but it had no viable path to a decisive victory. China remained Japan's principal focus. Still, the option of cutting Soviet aid to China and of moving north into Outer Mongolia and Siberia was discredited in Tokyo by the August 1939 double defeat. Northward expansion never again regained its ascendancy, though it briefly resurfaced in mid-1941 after Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union. Germany's alliance with the USSR during Nomonhan was viewed by Tokyo as a betrayal, cooling German–Japanese relations. Japan also stepped back from its confrontation with Britain over Tientsin. Tokyo recognized that the European war represented a momentous development that could reshape East Asia, as World War I had reshaped it before. The short-lived Abe government (September–December 1939) and its successor under Admiral Yonai Mitsumasa (December 1939–July 1940) adopted a cautious wait-and-see attitude toward the European war. That stance shifted in the summer of 1940, however, after Germany's successes in the West. With Germany's conquest of France and the Low Countries and Britain's fight for survival, Tokyo reassessed the global balance of power. Less than a year after Zhukov had effectively blocked further Japanese expansion northward, Hitler's victories seemed to open a southern expansion path. The prospect of seizing the resource-rich colonies in Southeast Asia, Dutch, French, and British and, more importantly, resolving the China problem in Japan's favor, tempted many in Tokyo. If Western aid to Chiang Kai-shek, channeled through Hong Kong, French Indochina, and Burma could be cut off, some in Tokyo believed Chiang might abandon resistance. If not, Japan could launch new operations against Chiang from Indochina and Burma, effectively turning China's southern flank. To facilitate a southward advance, Japan sought closer alignment with Germany and the USSR. Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka brought Japan into the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, in the hope of neutralizing the United States, and concluded a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union to secure calm in the north. Because of the European military situation, only the United States could check Japan's southward expansion. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appeared determined to do so and confident that he could. If the Manchurian incident and the Stimson Doctrine strained U.S.–Japanese relations, and the China War and U.S. aid to Chiang Kai-shek deepened mutual resentment, it was Japan's decision to press south against French, British, and Dutch colonies, and Roosevelt's resolve to prevent such a move, that put the two nations on a collision course. The dust had barely settled on the Mongolian plains following the Nomonhan ceasefire when the ripples of that distant conflict began to reshape the broader theater of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The defeat at Nomonhan in August 1939, coupled with the shocking revelation of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, delivered a profound strategic blow to Japan's imperial ambitions. No longer could Tokyo entertain serious notions of a "northern advance" into Soviet territory, a strategy that had long tantalized military planners as a means to secure resources and buffer against communism. Instead, the Kwantung Army's humiliation exposed glaring deficiencies in Japanese mechanized warfare, logistics, and intelligence, forcing a pivot southward. This reorientation not only cooled tensions with the Soviet Union but also allowed Japan to redirect its military focus toward the protracted stalemate in China. As we transition from the border clashes of the north to the heartland tensions in central China, it's essential to trace how these events propelled Japan toward the brink of a major offensive in Hunan Province, setting the stage for what would become a critical confrontation. In the immediate aftermath of Nomonhan, Japan's military high command grappled with the implications of their setback. The Kwantung Army, once a symbol of unchecked aggression, was compelled to adopt a defensive posture along the Manchurian-Soviet border. The ceasefire agreement, formalized on September 15-16, 1939, effectively neutralized the northern front, freeing up significant resources and manpower that had been tied down in the escalating border skirmishes. This was no small relief; the Nomonhan campaign had drained Japanese forces, with estimates of over 18,000 casualties and the near-total annihilation of the 23rd Division. The psychological impact was equally severe, shattering the myth of Japanese invincibility against a modern, mechanized opponent. Georgy Zhukov's masterful use of combined arms—tanks, artillery, and air power—highlighted Japan's vulnerabilities, prompting internal reviews that urged reforms in tank production, artillery doctrine, and supply chains. Yet, these lessons were slow to implement, and in the short term, the primary benefit was the opportunity to consolidate efforts elsewhere. For Japan, "elsewhere" meant China, where the war had devolved into a grinding attrition since the fall of Wuhan in October 1938. The capture of Wuhan, a major transportation hub and temporary capital of the Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek, had been hailed as a turning point. Japanese forces, under the command of General Shunroku Hata, had pushed deep into central China, aiming to decapitate Chinese resistance. However, Chiang's strategic retreat to Chongqing transformed the conflict into a war of endurance. Nationalist forces, bolstered by guerrilla tactics and international aid, harassed Japanese supply lines and prevented a decisive knockout blow. By mid-1939, Japan controlled vast swaths of eastern and northern China, including key cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing, but the cost was immense: stretched logistics, mounting casualties, and an inability to fully pacify occupied territories. The Nomonhan defeat exacerbated these issues by underscoring the limits of Japan's military overextension. With the northern threat abated, Tokyo's Army General Staff saw an opening to intensify operations in China, hoping to force Chiang to the negotiating table before global events further complicated the picture. The diplomatic fallout from Nomonhan and the Hitler-Stalin Pact further influenced this shift. Japan's betrayal by Germany, its nominal ally under the Anti-Comintern Pact—fostered distrust and isolation. Tokyo's flirtations with a full Axis alliance stalled, as the pact with Moscow revealed Hitler's willingness to prioritize European gains over Asian solidarity. This isolation prompted Japan to reassess its priorities, emphasizing self-reliance in China while eyeing opportunistic expansions elsewhere. Domestically, the Hiranuma cabinet collapsed in August 1939 amid the diplomatic shock, paving the way for the more cautious Abe Nobuyuki government. Abe's administration, though short-lived, signaled a temporary de-escalation in aggressive posturing, but the underlying imperative to resolve the "China Incident" persisted. Japanese strategists believed that capturing additional strategic points in central China could sever Chiang's lifelines, particularly the routes funneling aid from the Soviet Union and the West via Burma and Indochina. The seismic shifts triggered by Nomonhan compelled Japan to fundamentally readjust its China policy and war plans, marking a pivotal transition from overambitious northern dreams to a more focused, albeit desperate, campaign in the south. With the Kwantung Army's defeat fresh in mind, Tokyo's Imperial General Headquarters initiated a comprehensive strategic review in late August 1939. The once-dominant "Northern Advance" doctrine, which envisioned rapid conquests into Siberia for resources like oil and minerals, was officially shelved. In its place emerged a "Southern Advance" framework, prioritizing the consolidation of gains in China and potential expansions into Southeast Asia. This pivot was not merely tactical; it reflected a profound policy recalibration aimed at ending the quagmire in China, where two years of war had yielded territorial control but no decisive victory over Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists. Central to this readjustment was a renewed emphasis on economic and military self-sufficiency. The Nomonhan debacle had exposed Japan's vulnerabilities in mechanized warfare, leading to urgent reforms in industrial production. Tank manufacturing was ramped up, with designs influenced by observed Soviet models, and artillery stockpiles were bolstered to match the firepower discrepancies seen on the Mongolian steppes. Logistically, the Army General Staff prioritized streamlining supply lines in China, recognizing that prolonged engagements demanded better resource allocation. Politically, the Abe Nobuyuki cabinet, installed in September 1939, adopted a "wait-and-see" approach toward Europe but aggressively pursued diplomatic maneuvers to isolate China. Efforts to negotiate with Wang Jingwei's puppet regime in Nanjing intensified, aiming to undermine Chiang's legitimacy and splinter Chinese resistance. Japan also pressured Vichy France for concessions in Indochina, seeking to choke off aid routes to Chongqing. War plans evolved accordingly, shifting from broad-front offensives to targeted strikes designed to disrupt Chinese command and supply networks. The China Expeditionary Army, under General Yasuji Okamura, was restructured to emphasize mobility and combined arms operations, drawing partial lessons from Zhukov's tactics. Intelligence operations were enhanced, with greater focus on infiltrating Nationalist strongholds in central provinces. By early September, plans coalesced around a major push into Hunan Province, a vital crossroads linking northern and southern China. Hunan's river systems and rail lines made it a linchpin for Chinese logistics, funneling men and materiel to the front lines. Japanese strategists identified key urban centers in the region as critical objectives, believing their capture could sever Chiang's western supply corridors and force a strategic retreat. This readjustment was not without internal friction. Hardliners in the military lamented the abandonment of northern ambitions, but the reality of Soviet strength—and the neutrality pacts that followed—left little room for debate. Economically, Japan ramped up exploitation of occupied Chinese territories, extracting coal, iron, and rice to fuel the war machine. Diplomatically, Tokyo sought to mend fences with the Soviets through the 1941 Neutrality Pact, ensuring northern security while eyes turned south. Yet, these changes brewed tension with the United States, whose embargoes on scrap metal and oil threatened to cripple Japan's ambitions. As autumn approached, the stage was set for a bold gambit in central China. Japanese divisions massed along the Yangtze River, poised to strike at the heart of Hunan's defenses. Intelligence reports hinted at Chinese preparations, with Xue Yue's forces fortifying positions around a major provincial hub. The air thickened with anticipation of a clash that could tip the balance in the interminable war—a test of Japan's revamped strategies against a resilient foe determined to hold the line. What unfolded would reveal whether Tokyo's post-Nomonhan pivot could deliver the breakthrough so desperately needed, or if it would merely prolong the bloody stalemate. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. In 1939, the Nomonhan Incident saw Soviet forces under Georgy Zhukov decisively defeat Japan's Kwantung Army at Khalkin Gol, exposing Japanese weaknesses in mechanized warfare. This setback, coupled with the Hitler-Stalin Nonaggression Pact, shattered Japan's northern expansion plans and prompted a strategic pivot southward. Diplomatic maneuvers involving Stalin, Hitler, Britain, France, and Japan reshaped alliances, leading to the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact in 1941. Japan refocused on China, intensifying operations in Hunan Province to isolate Chiang Kai-shek.   

A repodcast of our Thanksgiving Eve live show: following up on your comments on the state of bicycle touring, plus a bunch of great questions in an Ask Me Anything segment! Followup: Is Bicycle Touring in Decline? More emails on this than any topic in a while. Some selected thoughts from listeners: Regarding ACA Multiple listeners: Could ACA  be losing older members in its attempts to expand into younger audiences, but worse… might not be succeeding on either front? It's hard to do both, and that's the challenge… you need to find what drives your constituencies and sometimes you swing and miss. @BounceBackWesterner"I subscribed to the ACA magazine for one year.  I was happy with one edition, but then, it seemed like there was a trend to rides that were extremely challenging and demanding whether that be road or offroad. These folks predominantly seemed younger and maybe that's where most of their subscriptions come from. " Another point: ACA was built on a need which may not exist anymore. Before they were the best and maybe only resource for routes and maps that had been vetted. Now there are way more resources. Listener Harry Hellerman was a great example of someone who's let his ACA membership lapse after 20 years. The reason? Kind of what ACA was saying… he says he's aging out and the roads are now occupied by larger and larger vehicles, so there's a safety concern. Regarding Touring being down Multiple listeners: Travel is down across the board, but travel to the US in particular has taken a huge hit. Lots of factors there, but you can't ignore the current politics as a possible reason here. Listener Andrew Piper: "Data point: For a 2-year comparison, the overall demand for search terms around "bike touring" is infact down 25%-35% YoY. However, using the same comparison, the demand for terms around "bikepacking" is up about 40%. Which does lend itself to the change in nomenclature more than an actual decline in interest." "I think I am maybe a couple years younger than yourself at best. Of the people I have seen doing this, I always feel I am on the younger side of the sport. Logistically it makes sense. Who has time to do this....older people."  Bicycling for older generations was a big part of freedom - it might not be that for younger generations? Listener Dr. G4 wrote a really thoughtful email from the perspective of a younger rider. Shorter touring is much more of a thing Some of the places where the routes go don't feel welcoming (political, demographics) Real shift to urbanism amongst younger generation Poor infrastructure/safety perception: ACA represents an older version of bicycle travel (longer trips) "I think what the next generation wants is not road maps, but trail maps and advocacy for more trails and trail amenities (and, I might note, probably videos, how-tos, explainers, and meetups, not print versions of easily-googleable information)." "it's clear from the overabundance of urbanist youth getting around by transit, bicycles, or even scooters that travel by bicycle isn't going anywhere anytime soon. But turning them into bicycle tourers involves developing routes and programs that are closer to cities and farther from cars, marketing dedicated bicycle trails as one piece of an integrated solution for transit- and bicycle-accessible nature, specifically focussing on routes with many transit junctions to allow long routes to be chewed in smaller chunks, helping the rapidly-growing contingent of bicycle commuters to learn how to use their bicycles beyond weekdays to short or long weekends (with week-long or more tours being an eventual end goal, not the primary purpose), and politically advocating for car-displacing trains, trails, and cycle tracks that make all this possible." •Rails to Trails Conservancy may have the better model?

Do you ever feel that sense of dread creep in on Sunday evenings?The week ahead looms large, and before it even begins, you're already exhausted.In today's episode of the Married to Addiction podcast, we're talking about a simple rhythm I call The Sunday Reset. This gentle routine will help you prepare mentally, emotionally, and logistically for the week ahead—so you can step into it with more peace and less overwhelm.We'll cover:Why Sunday matters as a reset pointThe 3-part reset (mental, logistical, and emotional)How to create a calming ritual around itThis doesn't take a lot of time, but it can completely change the way you experience the week to come.✨ You don't have to dread the week ahead. With a few small steps, you can enter it with calm, clarity, and God's peace.If you'd like more rhythms and tools to help you find peace—even in the middle of chaos—I'd love to invite you into the Secret Sisters Circle.Inside, you'll find:Practical, faith-rooted actionable lessonsSupport for your spiritual life, nervous system, and emotional well-beingA community of supportive women who understand exactly what you're walking through

The MMQB's Albert Breer joins Afternoon Drive on The Fan. He talks about Jimmy Haslam attending Ohio State's opener against Texas, his takeaway from Arch Manning's performance, the Browns balancing their focus on the 2025 and 2026 seasons, and more.

Sponsored by: EDF power solutionsAs the Trump administration continues to announce policy changes at a rapid pace, Jessica Libby, principal with KPMG Trade and Customs, returns to the show to discuss the shifts that are having the biggest impact on the renewable energy industry. Jessica highlights rules related to content from Foreign Entities of Concern (FEOC), new tax guidance from the Treasury Department related to wind and solar and, of course, tariffs. Jessica explains a new contractual term known as 'tariff majeure' or 'Trump majeure' and also reveals the one policy tweak that she thinks is currently under the radar, but might yet become a major challenge for the industry.More resources from EDF power solutions:Distribution-Scale Power Key highlights: "It's a new and different world." - (4:18)Foreign entities of concern - (6:37)Tariffs, tariiffs and more tariffs - (8:16)Challenges to onshoring manufacturing - (10:55)Treasury Department guidance for wind and solar - (13:44)How business owners are responding to all these changes - (19:15)'Tariff majeure' or 'Trump majeure' - (21:36)Could all these changes make supply chains more sustainable? - (22:26)Logistically speaking, is the US capable of collecting all these tariffs? - (24:54)A big policy change that is currently under the radar - (29:47)Jessica's bold predictions - (32:54)Sign up for the Renewable Energy SmartBrief

Welcome back to another episode of the Hunt Lift Eat podcast. This week is a special week because Carter is overseas in France and left our podcast manager Cole to host with our re-occurring co-host, Kerri. With most folks having drawn their western tags by now, its time to plan and sort out all of the logistics that go into a hunt, especially for those who are traveling from the east cost out west to states like Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, etc. The boys share some of their knowledge on all things from a-z when traveling for out of state hunts and how to make things go just a bit smoother. 

Summary: In this episode of #70secondCEO, Carl Gould shares insights from a decades-long study showing a major shift in what drives business value. Back in 1974, 95% of value came from tangible assets. Today, it's the opposite—72% of value now comes from intangibles like brand equity, intellectual property, and mission. Carl highlights how companies like TOMS thrive not just on product quality but on brand promise and purpose. The takeaway? Don't just polish your product—build a brand people believe in. That's what makes your business truly valuable.   Read the full transcript: Hi Everyone, Carl Gould here your #70secondCEO, just over a minute of  investment per day for a lifetime of results. There was a study done in 1974 by the Sloan school of business and they said, “What drives value in a business? And 95% of what drove value 40 and 50 years ago, was the TANGIBLES of the business, its physical assets. Well let's fast forward to today. A follow up on those 10,000 companies and the second part of the study showed that 72% of what drives value in business is its INTANGIBLES. Its intellectual property, its brand equity, its brand promise. Toms shoes- is it the shoes? Or is it the fact that that company goes out and for every pair of shoe you buy, they buy a second pair and they give it to an underprivileged child somewhere else in the world. Which one do you think it is? So stop falling in love with your product or service. Yes, you want your product to be impeccable. You want your service delivery to be outstanding. No question about it. Logistically, we want those things to run well. Understand though, people will pay more, they will pay more for the other aspects of working with you.  Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more, my name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

How to Achieve Your Dream Outcome - The Complete Blueprint Episode Overview In this transformative episode, Paul CLoughie delivers on his promise from episode #445, revealing the exact methodology for turning your biggest dreams into reality. This isn't another generic goal-setting session—it's a deep dive into the psychological architecture of achievement, complete with a powerful guided hypnosis session to embed these principles into your subconscious mind. Episode Length: Approximately 25 minutes Key Focus: Dream achievement, goal manifestation, subconscious programming What You'll Discover The Specificity Principle Why vague dreams produce vague results (and how to avoid this trap) The danger of saying "I want more money" vs. creating specific financial targets How to transform general aspirations into laser-focused outcomes The Wish Fulfilled Methodology See It: Visualizing your achieved dream with crystal clarity Hear It: Programming the sounds of success into your mind Feel It: Embodying the emotions of already having achieved your goal Act As If: The powerful psychology of success behavior modeling The Four Critical Questions Framework Paul reveals the four questions that unlock subconscious motivation: What will happen if you get it? What won't happen if you get it? What will happen if you don't get it? What won't happen if you don't get it? Key Timestamps & Highlights [0:00-3:00] Introduction and connection to episode #445 [3:00-8:00] The specificity imperative - why details matter [8:00-12:00] Acting as if you've already achieved your dream [12:00-15:00] Learning from past successes and modeling others [15:00-18:00] The ecology check - ensuring your goals serve everyone [18:00-25:00] Guided hypnosis session - Programming your subconscious for success Powerful Takeaways The Present Moment Assessment Know exactly where you are on your journey (0%, 50%, 90%?) "What gets measured gets done" - the importance of tracking progress Creating your baseline for authentic goal measurement The Success Trigger Method Paul shares his personal trainer certification story - how he visualized sitting on steps with his certificate, and how this exact scenario manifested. Learn to create your own "achievement trigger" that signals you've reached your destination. The Resource Recovery Technique Mining your past successes for transferable skills Learning from others who've achieved similar dreams Why reinventing the wheel slows down your progress The Ecological Framework Ensuring your dreams benefit you, your loved ones, and the planet The importance of personal initiation vs. waiting for others Creating win-win outcomes that serve the greater good The Guided Hypnosis Experience The episode culminates in a transformative 7-minute hypnosis session designed to: Embed the "feeling of the wish fulfilled" into your subconscious Activate your reticular activating system to notice opportunities Program your unconscious mind to support your dream achievement Create lasting motivation that pulls rather than pushes you forward Note: This section begins around the 18-minute mark and should be experienced in a safe, comfortable environment with eyes closed. Action Steps Define Your Specific Dream: Move beyond "I want more money" to "I want to earn £X by doing Y" Create Your Success Movie: Visualize seeing, hearing, and feeling your achieved dream Establish Your Trigger: Identify the specific moment that will tell you "I've made it" Resource Audit: List skills from past successes that apply to this dream Model Success: Find someone who's achieved what you want and study their approach Act As If: Begin embodying the behaviors, language, and mindset of someone who's already achieved your dream Share the Love: Know someone with big dreams who's struggling to make them reality? Share this episode and help them unlock their potential. https://personaldevelopmentunplugged.com/449-how-to-achieve-your-outcome-your-dream Remember: Your dreams aren't just wishes—they're blueprints waiting to be built. This episode gives you the tools, the mindset, and the subconscious programming to make them your reality. Subscribe, follow, and leave a review to help more dream achievers discover Personal Development Unplugged! Shine Brightly

I have long loved Faith's Lodge and, since the early days of the podcast, hoped that someday, I might be able to talk with someone from that wonderful organization. Now, that wish became a reality. Today's guest, Kelly, is not a bereaved mom herself, but she was at the side of her sister when she lost her 12-year-old son, Carter, almost 15 years ago. As I listened to Kelly, I was struck by how instinctively she did so much 'right' after Carter died. Logistically, she handled so much for her sister in those first days and weeks, but perhaps even more importantly, she kept Carter a part of their everyday lives in the months and years that followed. When holidays came, Kelly made sure that Carter was remembered. Kelly continued to ask for parenting advice from her older sister, asking, "When this happened to Carter, what did you do?" Shortly after Carter died, Kelly's sister's family attended a retreat at Faith's Lodge. Her sister shared that for the first time, she felt like she could fully be herself and not have to wear a mask and try to hide. Then, 13 years ago, while golfing at a charity golf event, Kelly was asked if she might consider leaving her job and becoming the executive director of a non-profit organization. She had no interest in leaving her job, but politely asked the name of the organization - Faith's Lodge. The tears came, and then, long hours of considering a career change. With her sister's blessing, Kelly started the job that has since become her passion. Under Kelly's guidance, the organization expanded to be even more than an amazing year-round retreat center. They developed a program for employers called 'Hope Works Here' to give businesses tools to help bereaved parents return to work successfully. This month, more big changes came to Faith's Lodge as they undergo a rebranding in order to more clearly define their mission and purpose. Their new name is the Child Loss Foundation. They still offer their incredible retreats at Faith's Lodge (although they hope to spread to additional locations). They still offer resources for employers, now called Child Loss at Work. Additionally, the organization merged with another Minnesota non-profit formerly called The BeliEve Foundation, in order to expand their mission of offering immediate financial support for newly bereaved families. I have long known that Faith's Lodge was a magical place, but now, I can't wait to see how many more lives they will be able to touch as they grow and expand.

Three Ways to Handle Unfinished Work - Mike CohnOver the past three weeks, I've been sending you tips about spillover on agile teams. We've talked in depth about the problem of habitual spillover—when a team routinely rolls unfinished work forward from sprint to sprint.This week, I want to share 3 ways to handle the unfinished work that will occasionally be left over by even a great agile team. 1. If You Want a Guarantee, Buy a ToasterMy first bit of advice for how to handle unfinished work is to remember that even the best agile teams sometimes miss their goals. That's OK and even desirable to a certain extent.Sprint goals are not guarantees. (As Clint Eastwood's character Nick Pulovski says in The Rookie, “If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster!”) Leaders, stakeholders, and even the team themselves might need an occasional reminder about this.A team's commitment to a sprint goal is a promise to do its best to achieve that goal. If team members are perpetually forced instead to make a guarantee, they will guarantee less in order to be safe.Sometimes a team needs to make a guarantee. There might be times when a client or customer needs a capability by a certain date. The finance group may need to run year-end reports in early January, for example.In general, though, we don't want to force a team into a guarantee. We ask a team to commit to something reasonable and then we're understanding if they miss it. Falling short on the occasional commitment is not a failure-–it's usually a sign of bad luck or a team that's striving to do too much. 2. Don't Roll Work Forward AutomaticallyMy second bit of advice is to resist the urge to automatically roll over the unfinished work into the next sprint. Put it in the product backlog instead.The item may be back on the product backlog for a millisecond, but there should be a conscious decision by the product to continue work on it.(Logistically, I don't care if it's easier in your tool of choice to move the item to the next sprint rather than to the product backlog first. The key is that there is a decision to continue the work.)If the product owner decides the team should work on the partly finished item immediately in the next sprint, bring in the product backlog item as is. Don't re-estimate it. Don't rename it. Don't take partial velocity credit. Just bring the item into the next sprint and take the full velocity credit when it's complete.But if the item is deferred for later, go ahead and split the story into what makes sense. Take partial velocity credit for the work you completed last sprint, then write a new story that describes only the missing functionality and estimate that story. 3. Document the CauseMy final bit of advice for dealing with unfinished work is this: Whenever work is unfinished at the end of a sprint, the team should take time in the retrospective to consider whether it was preventable.Sometimes unfinished work is just bad luck or bad timing, such as a team member being ill or a problem being found late in the sprint that could not have been found earlier. Sometimes it's just the result of aiming too high for one sprint.But you might uncover something that is becoming a bad habit.Whatever the cause, it's always worth considering whether something can be done to prevent it from affecting future sprints so that your team can succeed with agile.How to connect with AgileDad:- [website] https://www.agiledad.com/- [instagram] https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/- [facebook] https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/- [Linkedin] https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

Hi, Everyone. Carl Gould, here is your #70secondCEO, just over a minute of investment per day for a lifetime of results. There was a study done in 1974 by the Sloan School of Business, and they said, “What drives value in a business? And 95% of what drove value 40 and 50 years ago, was the TANGIBLES of the business, its physical assets. Well, let's fast forward to today. A follow-up on those 10,000 companies and the second part of the study showed that 72% of what drives value in business is its INTANGIBLES. Its intellectual property, it's brand equity, its brand promise. Toms shoes- is it the shoes? Or is it the fact that that company goes out, and for every pair of shoes you buy, they buy a second pair, and give it to an underprivileged child somewhere else in the world? Which one do you think it is? So stop falling in love with your product or service. Yes, you want your product to be impeccable. You want your service delivery to be outstanding. No question about it. Logistically, we want those things to run well. Understand though, people will pay more, they will pay more for the other aspects of working with you.   Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more, my name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Kicking off the Wonder series, Ryan Haskell shares his approach to teaching Elm, his gap year adventures, and his current work at Brilliant. He gives insights into creating accessible learning materials, building games, and finding inspiration outside the Elm ecosystem.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Edited by Toni Cañete.Recording date: 2024.11.27GuestRyan HaskellShow notes[00:00:21] Sponsored by Logistically[00:00:43] Introductionryan.townWelcome to Elm! YouTube seriesElm Town 62 – The Map to Elm LandElm Landryan-haskell/date-format[00:01:34] Gap Year[00:03:31] Building a game in GodotTurbo Champ[00:11:01] Welcome to Elm YouTube SeriesRichard Feldman's "Teaching Elm to Beginners" (elm-conf 2017)[00:17:06] Teaching style"Parentheses are like hugs" - from Section 1.5 Advanced Functions[00:24:52] From Wolfgang: Finding inspirationInspiration for Vendr's elm-gql from watching Ben Awad's videos[00:29:07] Remaking Ryan's website[00:32:41] Working at BrilliantBrilliantElm Town 57 – Brilliant ways to use Elm with Aaron StrickRed Blob Games[00:39:15] PicksRyan's picksDracula by Bram StokerThe Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar WildeVite 6.0The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64)Horizon Zero DawnSatisfactoryJared's picksSatisfactory Night Fever by Dan BullRichard Feldman's "Teaching Elm to Beginners" (elm-conf 2017)Frontend Masters Elm courses by Richard FeldmanIntroduction to Elm, v2Advanced ElmElm in Action by Richard Feldman (Manning)Welcome to Elm! YouTube series

Welcome in for another edition of the Morning Espresso from the SDH Network, brought to you by Oglethorpe University, Atlanta's premier undergraduate learning experience and soccer powerhouse.The U.S. (and Canada in some of these) now has more professional teams in its top three divisions than England has in its top four divisions. The 2nd Division USL Championship and 3rd Division USL League One and MLS Next Pro kick off their 2025 seasons this weekend. Including MLS, there's 97 professional teams playing this season (we'll leave NISA out of this for now because no one seems to know what 2025 looks like for them). The NWSL Challenge Cup is tonight as well as the curtain raiser for their season. The trophy will be decided between last year's double winners Orlando Pride and the Washington Spirit. Their regular season starts next Friday. Lionel Messi missed his second straight game, but Inter Miami won 2-0 over Cavalier FC of Jamaica last night in Ft. Lauderdale. The National Stadium in Kingston will be packed full next week, will Messi make the trip?Neymar will be back with the Brazilian national team for important World Cup qualifiers against Colombia and Argentina later this month. It's his first call up in 17 months as he's playing his way back into form at Santos. Keep an eye on the Carlo Ancelotti, Xabi Alonso, Real Madrid triangle of chaos. Will they push Carlo out the door if he wins La Liga or Champions League this season? Raul is already hitting the escape hatch. He's been at the second team in Madrid since 2019, but now he's linked with Schalke, where he finished his playing career. Big games this weekend in the Premier League as the only remaining storyline in the table is the race for Champions League spots. 6 points separate 3rd through 10th and there could be three Champions League spots on offer for that group of teams. FIFA is going to consider a proposal for a one-off (yeah right) expansion of the World Cup to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2030. The president of the Uruguayan federation proposed expanded the tournament to 64 teams. Logistically, it makes sense for a format but it would be a massive challenge to execute. Luckily this tournament is spread out on either side of the Atlantic Ocean and might get more games in South America if the tournament expands, but is any of it feasible? Check out the video below for more nuggets of news you should know about today. Thanks for being a subscriber and have a great weekend!

The Supergroup Eddie Van Halen Almost Created When David Lee Roth left Van Halen in 1985, the band's future was completely up in the air. Eddie Van Halen and his bandmates reached out to several singers to fill the role, but none accepted. These rejections led Eddie to explore new possibilities to keep his music career alive—one of which could have changed rock history forever. However, before this ambitious plan could materialize, Van Halen found their next frontman, Sammy Hagar. Before discovering Hagar, Eddie was uncertain about where his career was headed. With no clear path forward, he envisioned forming an '80s supergroup that could have been groundbreaking. In a 1996 interview with Guitar World, Eddie revealed details about this bold idea, explaining that he had spoken to some of rock's biggest names about joining forces. “My plan at the time—and I wouldn't necessarily have called it a solo record because Mike [Anthony] and Al [Alex Van Halen] would have played on it—was to get Mike Rutherford [Genesis], Pete Townshend, Phil Collins, and Joe Cocker, all of whom I had talked to,” Eddie said. He even had a specific vision for the project, including an early version of Right Now, which later became a hit for Van Halen. “I had written ‘Right Now' back then, and I wanted Joe Cocker to sing on it. It would have been f— great. That's what I wanted to do—write a record where I did all the music and had a different singer on each song,” he added. Despite the incredible potential, the project never got off the ground. Eddie admitted that logistical challenges—such as conflicting schedules, contractual obligations, and record label interference—made it nearly impossible. “Logistically, it would have been a nightmare—people on tour, contractual agreements, companies pissing and moaning—and we'd probably only be finishing it now,” he reflected. “It would have been fun.” Though Van Halen ultimately thrived with Sammy Hagar, it's fascinating to think about what could have been if Eddie's supergroup had become a reality. While we're grateful for the music Van Halen created with Hagar, this glimpse into Eddie's musical vision leaves us wondering about the alternate history that never happened. Exclusively Van Halen" is the ultimate destination for all things Van Halen. Step into the world of rock and roll legends as we delve deep into the history, music, and trivia surrounding one of the most iconic bands of all time. Join us as we explore Van Halen's storied career, from their electrifying performances to the making of their timeless hits. Get to know the band members, their inspirations, and the stories behind the songs that have rocked generations. But that's not all – tune in for exciting giveaways where you can win exclusive Van Halen merchandise and more. Whether you're a die-hard fan or just discovering the magic of Van Halen, this show promises to keep you entertained, informed, and rocking out from start to finish. Get ready to jump into the world of "Exclusively Van Halen" and experience the music like never before. We talk all things Van Halen! Check out the Latin Percussion Alex Van Halen Signature Cowbell - http://sweetwater.sjv.io/7aXxey This affiliate link helps support these shows! #GuitarLegends #exclusivelyvanhalen #eddievanhalen #vanhalen #johnnybeaneTV

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit localjapan.substack.comMy brother and I finished demolishing the entire kitchen by hand, including the stone foundation, brick stove, ceramic tile bathtub, and wood framing. (Here's a YouTube short of the demolishing of the kitchen.) Upon clearing the site of debris, we dug deep footings around the entire perimeter and placed rebar inside. We were working against the clock because our flights home to California for the Christmas break were upon us. However, we managed to pour the concrete, batch by batch. Without the luxury of a backhoe or a cement truck, we completed this process with shovels, a hammer drill, a wheelbarrow, and a portable electric cement mixer. Ultimately, we left the work site at a great spot. In January, I'll be able to pick up where we left off and cap off the entire floor of the future kitchen with a nice concrete slab. Then will come the fun part (and my brother's specialty as a trained carpenter): wood framing.Below, you'll find three photos of the old kitchen:Now, here are four photos of the cleared space and the footings we dug. We had to remove the old foundations first. (It was interesting to see how the previous builders worked. They placed large boulders beneath the rectangular foundations to lock the whole structure in place.) When digging and forming the new foundation, we used string lines and the Pythagorean theorem to make sure the corners were square:When my parents visited in November, they helped a great deal with cleaning, organizing, demolishing walls, and composting the old straw from the attic:One last housekeeping note, I am going to change the name of the podcast to: The Akiya Project. It provides more continuity with the YouTube channel. Most importantly, the name more truly reflects the central theme of the podcast. Logistically, nothing will change on your end.And with that, I am excited to bring you today's episode on the iconic and tumultuous life of Frank Lloyd Wright. His designs have had a profound influence on me and how I hope to build. It was a pleasure to dive deep into his life to learn about his own influences, his philosophy on nature and democracy, and in particular, his fascination with old Japan. His imprint still echoes deeply across America, and even parts of Japan. At the very least, here in my little corner of Kobe, his legacy will endure. Local Japan Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Books Mentioned In This Episode:When you purchase a book (or anything on Amazon) with the links below, you support me and the podcast at no extra cost to you:* Frank Lloyd Wright: A Life by Ada Louise Huxtable* A History of the American People by Paul Johnson* The Not So Big House by Sarah Susanaka* Frank Lloyd Wright: The Lost Years, 1910-1922 by Anthony Alofsin* Frank Lloyd Wright and the Art of Japan: The Architects Other Passion by Julia MeechLinks to More Resources:* Ada Louise Huxtable* New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission* Penn Station* The Playroom of the Oak Park Home* James Charnley House* Unity Temple* Larkin Company Administration Building* Prairie Style House* The Darwin D Martin House* The Imperial Hotel* Museum Meiji-Mura* The Hollyhock House* Le Corbusier's Plan Voisin* Läicité* Taliesin West* Learn Ikebana in Kobe (with me and a local expert!) on TripAdvisor* The Akiya Project on YouTubeProducts Used For the Build* Rockwool Insulation* Crawl Space Vapor Barrier* Fujampe Electric Cement Mixer* EM-1 Effective Microorganism SolutionA Sketch of the House Floor PlansAs mentioned in today's episode, I've attached a photo of the tentative floor plans that I drew for the house. I decided to place it behind a paywall since it is my personal creation and something I'd like to keep between friends, family, and those who are closely following the project:

In the final episode of the Inspired series, Dillon Kearns and Jeroen Engels wax philosophically with Jared about what it means to be inspired by Elm within the context of tools. We chat about feedback, guarantees, and contracts as lenses for building tools.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Edited by Toni Cañete.Recording date: 2024.08.29GuestsJeroen EngelsDillon KearnsShow notes[00:00:50] Sponsored by Logistically[00:01:14] IntroductionElm RadioElm Town 61 – Turning the pagesElm Town 65 – Let's roll with itElm Town 79 – Inspired: Gleam with HayleighElm Town 80 – Inspired: Roc with Richard FeldmanElm Town 81 – Inspired: Bubble Tea with Christian Rocha[00:02:20] What does it mean to be inspired by Elm?[00:05:53] Elm philosophyEvan's "Elm philosophy" threadelm-reviewelm-pages[00:25:44] Simplicity is not just for beginners[00:32:38] What are tools?[00:33:56] Feedback & guarantees[00:39:26] Tool as contract (not slicing hot dogs nor fingers)[00:45:18] Lobbying for tool as contractHayleigh's elm-web-audio[00:48:09] Tool as an expression of a point of viewDillon's elm-graphql[00:50:37] RocRoc[00:53:04] Contracts & purityLamderaMatthew Griffith's elm-ui[01:08:09] What's next for Elm?[01:13:38] PicksJeroen's picksElm CampSave the Earth

Around now is when the holiday logistics overwhelm can kick in. Let's talk about it! A full transcript of this episode is available on my website about two weeks after the episode is published. To find it, click here and then select the episode. -- To take my free 5-day program, the Reset and Refresh, click here: https://kellynolan.com/reset-refresh. To learn more about and sign up for the Bright Method 8-week program, click here: https://kellynolan.com/the-bright-method-time-management-course-with-kelly-nolan. I also share actionable bite-sized time management strategies on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/_kellynolan_/. Come hang out with me there!

Christian Rocha shares his experience building the TUI framework Bubble Tea based on The Elm Architecture. We talk about Impostor Syndrome, mentors, and how he incorporates his background in design at Charm.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Edited by Toni Cañete.Recording date: 2024.10.10GuestChristian RochaShow notes[00:00:23] Sponsored by Logistically[00:00:41] Introducing ChristianCharmBubble TeaElm Town 79 – Inspired: Gleam with HayleighElm Town 80 – Inspired: Roc with Richard Feldmanlearning elm, so I don't need to use javascript by bashbunni[00:02:12] Origin story[00:08:17] Mentor John Weir[00:10:58] Taking The Elm Architecture to the command line[00:13:51] John Weir's question[00:15:48] Bubble Tea related toolsGlowBubblesLip GlossGumSoft ServeGlamour[00:20:23] Background in design/branding[00:23:35] What is VHS?VHSasciinema[00:26:08] How has the architecture of Bubble Tea held up?[00:27:35] What are you excited about these days?Mitchell Hashimoto's GhosttyRoc[00:32:44] PicksChristian's picksGo Mecha Ball"The Great"TampopoBromptonJared's picksTeardownDan BullGlass AnimalsBicycle Diaries by David Byrne

Elm pioneer Richard Feldman returns to explain why he made Roc, a direct descendant of Elm. He notes a distinct trade-off of choosing not to have persistent data structures. Later, he shares how his experience teaching Elm informed Roc's design. We even learn about the power of platforms.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2024.05.23GuestRichard FeldmanShow notes[00:00:20] Non-introductionRocSoftware Unscripted"Making Impossible States Impossible""Scaling Elm Apps"Elm in ActionElm courses on Frontend Masters[00:01:47] Motivations to make Roc[00:04:53] Back to the beginnings in 2018[00:15:25] How Roc compares to ElmAaron VonderHaar's elm-formatElm Style Guide"Bret Victor style reactive debugging" by Laszlo Pandy at Elm Workshop 2013 (YouTube)"Functional Semantics in Imperative Clothing"[00:25:18] Minimizing the erosion of simplicity (governance models)"BDFN" on roc-lang.orgEpisode "Programming and Industrial Design with Greg Wilson" of Software Unscripted[00:31:36] How teaching Elm informed Roc's design[00:40:34] Design processEpisode "The Roc Programming Language with Richard Feldman" of Software Unscripted[00:45:04] Working at Zed IndustriesZed[00:50:28] Platforms[00:58:03] PicksRichard's picksPerformance-Aware Programming Series by Casey MuratoriSoftware You Can Love (SYCL) Milan 2024 playlist (YouTube)"Hybrid-Level Programming" by Richard Feldman at SYCL Milan 2024 (YouTube)ReliqaJared's picksUmphrey's McGeeBret Victor

Hayleigh talks about how Elm has inspired her work, from tools built in Elm such as elm-web-audio and the Ren language compiler, to contributing to the Gleam language and making the Lustre web framework.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2024.04.10GuestHayleighShow notes[00:00:50] Sponsored by Logistically[00:01:19] Introducing HayleighRenren/compilerelm-web-audioElm CampGleamLustre[00:06:53] Discovering ElmElm Slack[00:09:17] Limits that led to a unique audio Elm Architecture[00:13:11] Pure interest-fueled motivation to learn functional lingonLab[00:16:45] Renren/compiler[00:21:27] Gleamelm-pages scriptsBEAM Radio - EPISODE 72: GLEAM'S CORE TEAM IN THE HOUSE![00:29:52] LustreGrenLamdera[00:37:47] Developer Relations[00:42:50] PicksHayleigh's pick"Gleam: Past, present, future!" at FOSDEM '24Jared's picksCustom elementsKagiThe Meaning of Culture by John Cowper Powys

What drives Value? Hi, Everyone. Carl Gould, here is your #70secondCEO, just over a minute of investment per day for a lifetime of results.   There was a study done in 1974 by the Sloan School of Business, and they said, “What drives value in a business? And 95% of what drove value 40 and 50 years ago was the TANGIBLES of the business, its physical assets. Well, let's fast forward to today. A follow-up of those 10,000 companies and the second part of the study showed that 72% of what drives value in business is its INTANGIBLES. Its intellectual property, it's brand equity, its brand promise. Toms shoes- is it the shoes? Or is it the fact that that company goes out, and for every pair of shoes you buy, they buy a second pair and give it to an underprivileged child somewhere else in the world? Which one do you think it is? So stop falling in love with your product or service. Yes, you want your product to be impeccable. You want your service delivery to be outstanding—no question about it. Logistically, we want those things to run well. Understand though, people will pay more, they will pay more for the other aspects of working with you.   Like and follow this podcast so you can learn more, my name is Carl Gould and this has been your #70secondCEO.  

Discover all of the podcasts in our network, search for specific episodes, get the Optimal Living Daily workbook, and learn more at: OLDPodcast.com. Episode 3283: Jenny Lee from HelloBrio.com explores the concept of digital simplicity, emphasizing it as a balanced and sustainable approach to technology use. Unlike the extremes of digital minimalism or digital maximalism, digital simplicity allows individuals to manage their tech effectively without feeling overwhelmed or deprived, fostering creativity and growth. Read along with the original article(s) here: https://www.hellobrio.com/blog/digital-simplicity Quotes to ponder: "Digital simplicity evokes confidence and accomplishment. By nature, digital simplicity gives you a sense of control and balance." "Digital maximalism means constant notifications. And configuring everything, like, all the time." "Digital simplicity is the most sustainable solution in these modern times." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Discover all of the podcasts in our network, search for specific episodes, get the Optimal Living Daily workbook, and learn more at: OLDPodcast.com. Episode 3283: Jenny Lee from HelloBrio.com explores the concept of digital simplicity, emphasizing it as a balanced and sustainable approach to technology use. Unlike the extremes of digital minimalism or digital maximalism, digital simplicity allows individuals to manage their tech effectively without feeling overwhelmed or deprived, fostering creativity and growth. Read along with the original article(s) here: https://www.hellobrio.com/blog/digital-simplicity Quotes to ponder: "Digital simplicity evokes confidence and accomplishment. By nature, digital simplicity gives you a sense of control and balance." "Digital maximalism means constant notifications. And configuring everything, like, all the time." "Digital simplicity is the most sustainable solution in these modern times." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Discover all of the podcasts in our network, search for specific episodes, get the Optimal Living Daily workbook, and learn more at: OLDPodcast.com. Episode 3283: Jenny Lee from HelloBrio.com explores the concept of digital simplicity, emphasizing it as a balanced and sustainable approach to technology use. Unlike the extremes of digital minimalism or digital maximalism, digital simplicity allows individuals to manage their tech effectively without feeling overwhelmed or deprived, fostering creativity and growth. Read along with the original article(s) here: https://www.hellobrio.com/blog/digital-simplicity Quotes to ponder: "Digital simplicity evokes confidence and accomplishment. By nature, digital simplicity gives you a sense of control and balance." "Digital maximalism means constant notifications. And configuring everything, like, all the time." "Digital simplicity is the most sustainable solution in these modern times." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Katja Mordaunt & Wolfgang Schuster return to share their experiences at Elm Camp 2024.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2024.06.26GuestsKatja MordauntWolfgang SchusterShow notes[00:00:34] Setting the sceneElm CampElm Camp 2024: Reflections by Wolfgang Schuster[00:08:03] Sessions[00:13:36] Talking outside the boxNotes from Elm Camp 2024 by Martin Janiczek[00:17:21] Themeselm-pages scriptselm-reviewGrenGleamLamdera[00:22:34] Card decks[00:24:10] Community[00:25:09] EducationElm Land[00:28:01] Closing thoughtsSend venue ideas to team@elm.camp.

From translating imperative physics into Elm and building 3D interactive tools at work to adding Elm support to Zed and animating the Elm Town logo, Andrey Kuzmin never fails to break your brain.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2024.05.16GuestAndrey KuzminShow notes[00:00:19] Sponsored by Logistically[00:00:42] Introducing AndreyMogee"Mogee or how we fit Elm in a 64×64 grid" by Andrey Kuzmin at elm-conf 2017w0rm/elm-poolelm-explorations/webglw0rm/elm-physicsw0rm/elm-obj-fileelm-language-serverZed[00:02:04] Favorite concertDeerhoof - Sit Down, Let Me Tell You a Story. (YouTube)[00:05:41] Getting started in programming[00:08:53] Discovering Elm through Dan AbramovFlatris[00:15:04] Applying knowledge from Elm in React[00:22:03] Elm at work (Arrival)Transparency support in Ian Mackenzie's elm-3d-scene[00:25:31] Consuming-facing work and opening up to other languageselm-tooling/tree-sitter-elm[00:34:09] Interpreting code via the brainAndrey on Twitterw0rm/elm-physicsembedded-mogeefont Rust crateCubikPhysically simulated dice roller![00:39:48] Designing APIsAPI design sessions with Evan on webgl.Start at 1:02:46 for some general docs tips.w0rm/elm-obj-file[00:48:48] Presenting at an Elm Japan meetup in Japanese[00:52:11] Elm Town 3D logo animationhttps://elm.townMatthew Griffith's elm-animatorMatthew Griffith's elm-uiDillon Kearns' elm-pagesIan Mackenzie's elm-3d-scene and related packagesMaggie Appleton[00:56:48] PicksAndrey's picksModel things in ElmMake games in ElmJared's pickZed

Andrew Lenards illuminates the liminal spaces of his mind, from lo-fi, DIY, punk rock, meditation, & coaching to Joël's Triangle & The Mental Side of Programming.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2024.03.05.GuestAndrew LenardsShow notes[00:00:25] Sponsored by Logistically[00:00:58] Introducing Andrew"Is This the Way?" with Aaron Michael Marsh and Andy LenardsThe Do Nothing Projectwith Jeff Warren"The Mental Side of Programming"[00:01:32] Wrestling announcer Elm Town intro[00:04:44] From Julian Pistorius: Side roads with crucial impactElm Town 66 – A gateway to scientific research with Chris Martin[00:11:30] Helping others see between the paving stones"Periodic Face-to-Face" by Martin Fowlerxkcd[00:25:02] Discovering Elm, or "I don't want to know that there's a better way to do what I'm doing right now""Beating the averages" by Paul Graham[00:35:05] Elm & mental health"Make Reliable Web Apps Without JS Fatigue" by Jared M. SmithElm Slack"Idée Fixe" by David Nolen at GOTO 2017Against the Rules Season 2 hosted by Michael Lewis[00:55:17] Joël's TriangleAndrew's elm-arboriculture-zine (print it yourself!)Joël Quenneville on Thoughtbot[00:58:57] PicksAndrew's picksAgainst the Rules Season 2 hosted by Michael LewisCreate Content with ChatGPT and AI 2024 course by Kirby FergusonEmpathy-Driven Development"Type System Mythbusting with Alexis King" on Software Unscripted with Richard FeldmanJared's picksElm Town 57 – Brilliant ways to use Elm with Aaron StrickJust Let Go (YouTube) by Sturgill SimpsonZen Computer by Philip Toshio SudoPleasures of Small Motions: Mastering the Mental Game of Pocket Billiards by Bob FancherElm 3D Pool Game Collaboration

Taylor Troesh recounts his trip across the stack, from the front to the back and back again. Along the way, he divulges his custom operator confession. He currently works at Replenysh using Elm for sustainability.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2024.02.08GuestTaylor TroeshShow notes[00:00:30] Sponsored by Logistically[00:00:58] Introducing Taylortaylor.townsurprisetalk/elm-burma"Why I Use Elm in 2023"Elm Land[00:01:57] The beginning of computing[00:09:18] Discovering ElmDon't make things worse! - Changelog Episode #546 with TaylorElm and Functional Programming - Changelog episode #218 with Evan Czaplicki & Richard Feldman[00:14:31] Opinions on styling optionssurprisetalk/elm-burmaMatthew Griffith's elm-uiRichard Feldman's elm-css"Frugly vs. Freemium"The "cheap" web[00:22:49] Custom operator confessionsurprisetalk/elm-pointlessKagi ❤️[00:26:59] Building a crypto wallet[00:28:14] All the way to the back[00:30:36] The Great Wall of Code[00:36:50] Elm folks on the backend[00:41:13] Pairing learning experiences with deliverables[00:45:39] The new Elm jobReplenyshPostGraphile[00:49:15] Why I didn't play this harpsichord sooner"why I didn't play this harpsichord sooner"Candid Culturehttps://taylor.town[00:57:41] PicksTaylor's picksCradle to Cradle by  William McDonough & Michael BraungartThe Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexanderhttps://elm.townJared's picknmesh (Explicit)Official Elm Guide

Mario Rogic comes back to interview Jared about his road to Elm, from the Tandy to JavaScript fatigue, and the inevitable, relieving discovery of Elm. The love for Elm never stops.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2024.02.05GuestJared M. SmithShow notes[00:00:28] Sponsored by Logistically[00:00:54] The exclusive wrapElm Town 68 – Shared joy with Mario Rogic[00:01:55] Getting started in computing & programmingElm Town 65 – Let's roll with it with Jeroen EnglesElm Town 66 – A gateway to scientific research with Chris Martin[00:08:09] Informing the path to Elm"Solving the Boolean Identity Crisis" by Jeremy Fairbank"Mogee or how we fit Elm in a 64×64 grid" by Andrey KuzminElm Town 61 – Turning the pages with Dillon Kearns [00:15:39] JavaScript fatigue[00:21:24] elm-poolhttps://github.com/w0rm/elm-poolhttps://jaredmsmith.com/dev/elm-pool-collaboration[00:25:34] Why did you choose to introduce Elm at work?[00:30:13] Failing to introduce functional programming at work"How to Use Elm at Work" by Evan Czaplicki[00:34:31] Elm at LogisticallySimon Lydell's elm-watchMatthew Griffith's elm-codegenWolfgang Schuster's elm-open-api[00:37:42] Meta Elm TownElm Town 72 – 435 million reasons to love Elm + Elixir with Erik Person[00:43:26] Hit record vibe shiftElm RadioZed (May 2024 Jared's daily driver)[00:48:01] PicksJared's pickMDNMario's picksNixLamdera

Nduati Kuria shares his journey from studying AI to why Matthew Griffith's elm-ui makes the web approachable. He explains how an innocuous issue on Tereza Sokol's elm-charts led to a new job.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2023.11.10GuestNduati KuriaShow notes[00:00:20] Sponsored by Logistically[00:00:52] Introducing NduatiQodaElm Town 36 – The Risk of ElmElm Town 55 – From algorithms & animation to building a decentralized finance appArtCultureHaruki Murakami Website UIWebGL Sculpture Animation site about Marcus Aurelius[00:01:42] Getting started"How to teach programming (and other things)?" by Felienne Hermans at Strange Loop 2019[00:05:58] Nduati's College Journey: Swift, Internships, and Elm Discovery[00:08:27] Learning Elm: It actually fits in my brainelm-ui[00:13:03] Uber for school buses[00:16:59] How Elm drives you toward best practicesElm Town 67 – Breaking things down with Gingko Writer[00:23:28] Introducing Elm at work[00:25:36] Master's & self-directed learning[00:28:09] From elm-charts to QodaTereza Sokol's elm-charts[00:34:53] The rigour of programming with Elm at Qoda[00:39:55] Ports"The Importance of Ports" by Murphy Randle at Strange Loop 2017Elm RadioA demo of Qoda and an explanation of how we use ports by Dwayne Crooks[00:47:14] Haruki Murakami site animationHaruki Murakami Website UI[00:50:07] Not having to pay the cost of constant changeTereza Sokol's elm-charts[00:54:33] PicksNduati's picks"Parse, don't validate" by Alexis King"Drag & Drop without Draggables & Dropzones" by Jasper WoudenbergMatthew Griffith's elm-uiJared's picksElm Radio on opaque typesIntro to Opaque TypesDeliberate Practice...and in most other episodes

This week on the show, we're answering listener questions! The audience sent in a host of incredible questions, and today Laura and Jonny sit down to discuss the nuances of nutrition and training, and to answer some of your burning questions. Topics include: Nutrient timing around workouts Intermittent fasting and autophagy Collagen peptide effectiveness Logistically planning cardio and strength workouts The differences in training for men and women Increasing calorie intake on training days/reliability of fitness trackers If you have more questions that you think we should sift through and you'd like to hear yours featured on the show, leave us a comment in the Q&A section or shoot us your question personally by sending a DM to Jonny on Instagram at @jonathanwilsonofficial

Erik Person shares how he joined Corvus Insurance as the first engineer building the system from scratch with Elm and Elixir. We talk about onboarding, culture, and growing the team. He exclaims his excitement for the next phase of acquisition by Travelers.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2023.12.05GuestErik PersonShow notes[00:00:22] Sponsored by Logistically[00:00:52] Introducing ErikElm seedsTravelers to Acquire Corvus Insurance[00:01:20] Getting started[00:07:27] The flight to Elm[00:12:43] Elm seeds[00:17:14] Why Elm at Corvus?"The Python Paradox" by Paul Graham"Make Impossible States Impossible" by Richard Feldman[00:21:57] Hiring & onboarding practices[00:24:09] ScalingAaron VonderHaar's elm-format[00:27:49] Static Elm + dynamic ElixirLuke Westby's elm-http-builder[00:34:32] Programming the plane[00:38:58] Corvus engineering cultureForbes' list of "America's Best Startup Employers"[00:43:59] AcquisitionTravelers to Acquire Corvus InsuranceTravelers Completes Acquisition of Corvus Insurance[00:48:34] PicksErik's picks"Interesting bugs caught by no-constant-binary-expression" by Jordan Eldredge"Training AI to Play Pokemon with Reinforcement Learning" by Peter WhiddenThe Data Warehouse Toolkit by Ralph Kimball and Margy RossJared's pickJeroen Engels' elm-review

“I think that's why there is so much discussion about this because it is not the numbers. It is the attitudes. It's the opinions. It's just trying to make sure that you have an aligned vision with your provider and with your hospital.” One of the most important things you can do during pregnancy is to find a provider who loves and believes in VBAC. Dr. Fox is back today giving more tips on how to know if an OB is VBAC-supportive and why there is so much variation out there in how practices feel about it.Dr. Fox answers questions like: Why do some providers refuse to induce VBACs? Why do some providers require it? Are routine cervical exams necessary for VBAC? Does a uterine window in my operative report mean my uterus will rupture during my VBAC?Additional LinksNeeded WebsiteHow to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for ParentsFull Transcript under Episode Details Meagan: Hello, guys. This is The VBAC Link. Welcome back or if you are new to the show, welcome. We are so happy that you are here. My name is Meagan and I am so excited to have a returning guest with us today.We have Dr. Nathan Fox who is a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist with a sub-specialty in maternal-fetal medicine. He is here answering your guys' questions. This community is amazing and every time we reach out and say, “Hey, what are your VBAC questions?” We do. We get a ton. I love bringing on guests, especially within the medical world, OBs and midwives talking about these things with you and what they are seeing and what the evidence says. It's always fun to get a different provider's perspective and get a better idea on what really the research is showing. Review of the WeekSo welcome back, Dr. Nathan Fox. But of course, we have a Review of the Week so I wanted to quickly get into that and then get into these amazing questions. By the way, they are questions about induction– when or is it really necessary? Can I be induced with a VBAC? We are going to talk a little bit more about uterine rupture and the risk which is, of course, a burning question that everyone always has. We are going to talk about maybe if a provider has told you that they have seen something like a uterine window, dehiscence, or even a niche. We are going to talk a little bit more about those so definitely stay with us because this is going to be a really great episode. This review is by Elizabeth Herrera. Hopefully, I did not botch that. She actually sent us an email. If you didn't know, we love getting reviews in emails as well. You can leave us a review on social media. On Instagram, you can message it on that. You can email us at info@thevbaclink.com or you can leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You can even Google “The VBAC Link” and leave us a review there. All of your reviews help Women of Strength just like you find us and find these incredible stories and these incredible episodes like today's episode with these providers to learn more about their options for birth after Cesarean. Elizabeth says, “Thank you so much for creating this whole community. After my emergency C-section in 2019, I looked up everything possible about being able to VBAC. This led me to your wonderful podcast and blog. I devoured everything. I owe my knowledge to you all and my doulas. I'm happy to say that I had my VBAC on March 31st and it was the most magical experience ever. Thank you so much for all of the materials that you have provided which all helped me succeed. I hope to one day share my story on your podcast. Many, many thanks.”That was in 2022 so a couple of years ago she left that review. So hopefully, Elizabeth, you are still with us and listening to all of these amazing stories. We would love to share your story which also leads me to remind you that we are always looking for submissions. You can submit your story on our website at thevbaclink.com/share.Dr. Nathan FoxMeagan: Okay, you guys. We have Dr. Fox back on the show today with us. How cool is that that he has come on now twice with us to talk about VBAC and answer your guys' questions? Dr. Fox, welcome to the show again, and thank you again for being here. Dr. Fox: Back on VBAC. Meagan: Back on VBAC. Back talking about VBAC. Tell me what you think about this VBAC topic and how VBAC looks for OBs. I think a lot of the time, OBs and midwives and providers in general can get some backlash honestly, even from us here at The VBAC Link where we are like, “Oh, that's not a good, supportive provider.” I think there is a lot from the community that we really don't take into account on where a provider is coming from maybe with what they've seen or what they've gone through. Maybe they want to support VBAC but their location doesn't support it. Can we talk about VBAC from an OB's standpoint? What does VBAC look like for an OB?Dr. Fox: Yeah, listen. It's a great question. Thanks for having me again. I'm always happy to come on. I really like this topic medically, but also, it's just very interesting because there is so much that comes up with VBAC in terms of the medicine surrounding it. It's also a really good paradigm for how people look at risk. By people, I mean doctors. I mean nurses. I mean hospitals. I mean women who are pregnant, thinking of being pregnant, their families, and their friends because there isn't a ton of disagreement about the numbers. What is the risk percentage-wise? We have that worked out pretty well. I mean, there are some things that are maybe a little bit more nebulous. There are those situations, but most people agree on what the actual numbers are. The issue is what do you do about that when someone has a small risk of a big problem? Right? Meagan: Right. Dr. Fox: What do you do? That personality comes into that. I think that's part of the reason that there is so much variation in VBAC practices, VBAC attitudes, and VBAC rules. It's risk. I talk to people about this all of the time in other contexts like with genetic screening. I tell people, “All your genetic tests are normal. All of the screening tests were normal that we did. Everything is fine which means that your risk of having a baby with a genetic condition now is 1%.” I'll tell them that. Some people hear that and say, “That's awesome,” and then they walk out. Other people go, “Oh my god. 1%. That's unbelievably horrible,” then they sign up and do a CVS and amnio. Neither of them are wrong. 1% is 1%. It's 1 in 100. People are going to look at that differently based on their understanding of math, based on their personal experiences, based on the stories they've heard, based on their own anxieties, based on who is in their family. All of these things contribute to someone's opinion about a risk that is low. Take VBAC for example. If everything is otherwise ideal– a healthy woman who had a prior C-section that was standard with nothing crazy about it. Pregnancy is going fine and she is deciding whether to attempt a VBAC or whether to do a repeat Cesarean, people are going to talk to her about the risk of uterine rupture. That risk is a ballpark of 1%. Whatever. It's about 1%. Okay. It's the same thing. How does everyone look at 1%? I could look at it and say, “Well, 1% is pretty low. It's only 1 in 100. I really want a vaginal birth because I want it or because it's going to give me an easier recovery potentially or because I'm afraid of a C-section” or whatever. Or they can look at it and say, “Holy crap. 1%. I don't want any part of that risk and I'm just going to do a repeat C-section.” I don't think any of those opinions are unreasonable. I think they are both reasonable based on how you look at it. So if you have a situation where everyone's aligned– the doctor thinks it is reasonable, the patient, the woman thinks it's reasonable, and the hospital thinks it's reasonable, then it's not a big discussion. Okay, we talk about it and the VBAC happens. Where I practice, that's the culture in my practice and in my hospital amongst my patient population. We talk about it. Many people want to do a VBAC. They want it. We are supportive. The hospital is supportive. The nurses are supportive. Great. Some patients don't want to have it. Fine. We're supportive of a C-section. The hospital is supportive. All is good. I think the issue comes up when there is a disconnect like the patient wants it. The doctor thinks it's too risky for the patient and the doctor thinks it's fine, but the hospital thinks it is too risky or whatever. There are all of these situations. Meagan: Yes. Dr. Fox: Since doctors are humans and patients are humans and even though the hospitals are buildings, they are run by humans, you are going to have a lot of humanity and humans and all of our fallabilities and flaws and quirks come into this. That's a very long-winded answer to your question, but I think that's why there is so much discussion about this because it is not the numbers. It is the attitudes. It's the opinions which is why so much about VBAC is not trying to figure out your number. It's just trying to make sure that you have an aligned vision with your provider and with your hospital. Meagan: Right. I love that you pointed that out. It's the perspective on this number. We know the number is say 1%, but to some people, that 1% may be 60% in their mind. It might as well be 60. Do you know what I mean? I love that you talked about being aligned. That is something that we talk about here a lot is really being aligned with your team. Find your team because your team is super important. The mom, the doctor, the hospital, the location, and the nurses, everything is aligned so that maybe we don't have to fight so hard. I feel like this community ends up feeling like they have to fight for their birthing right. Dr. Fox: Yeah. Meagan: Like the way they want to birth, they feel like they literally have to come in with punching gloves and punch their way through to get this vaginal birth. That's where it is just so hard. We are so vulnerable as pregnant women. Dr. Fox: Yep. That's an unfortunate reality. It's obviously a reality, but I would not counter it because I don't disagree with it. I would advise that instead of coming in with gloves up ready to fight, you need a different provider. I'm not saying this to disparage a provider who is less pro-VBAC. They are humans. Whatever it is. Maybe the doctor had a really bad outcome once with a VBAC and they are scarred from it. Meagan: Exactly. Exactly. Dr. Fox: Maybe where they were trained, the attitude is very anti-VBAC so they are just not used to it. Maybe they would be okay with it, but they practice in an environment where the hospital is not so happy with it or the nurses aren't. Whatever it might be, if your provider is telling you, “I am not a big fan of VBAC,” they are telling you this. Listen to them. Okay, that doesn't mean they are a bad person. It doesn't mean they are a bad doctor. It just means that's who they are. So if you have an opportunity, seek someone who is more aligned with you. And again, obviously, that is easier said than done. It requires some work. It requires some legwork. It requires asking around, going on message boards, and finding people. If you have a prior C-section and you're interested in a VBAC, if the doctor says that he or she is uncomfortable, I would first ask why. If they give you, “Listen, normally I am in favor of VBAC, but since you had a classical C-section, it's too dangerous.” All right, that's a very reasonable explanation that pretty much everyone is going to tell you, and switching around is probably not going to help you. But if they say, “I just don't do VBACs or my hospital just doesn't do them,” they are telling you that for a reason. Say, “Thank you. Have a good day,” then try to ask around and find someone or some hospital or someplace that is in favor of them as opposed to trying to convince someone to do something they are not comfortable with. Meagan: Absolutely. Dr. Fox: That ends up being a combative relationship and ends poorly for everyone. It would be great if all doctors were totally supportive. It would be great if all hospitals were totally supportive. There are sometimes logistical issues meaning since VBAC has the potential for an emergency, hospitals need to have 24/7 anesthesia. They need to have a blood bank. They need to have certain things in place in order to safely offer a VBAC. Some hospitals are just too small to do that. It's not an attitude. It's, “Logistically, we just can't do this.” Fine. Again, try to go to a major medical center that does a lot of VBACs. Most major medical centers are comfortable with VBAC. Most doctors who practice in those centers are comfortable with VBAC. So I think if you do the legwork, you can probably, not always, but probably find someone who is a better match for your VBAC as opposed to trying to convince someone to do something they are not comfortable doing. Meagan: Yes. I love that, so we don't have to try to convince. That's why listeners, when you are with your provider– OB, midwife, or whoever it may be– talk to them. Have that discussion. Ask that question. Don't be scared to ask them why. For me, with my second, I had this feeling that maybe he wasn't as on board for VBAC as I wanted him to be. I was scared to leave or scared to hurt his feelings. But I think that it probably would have been better for both of us in the end to have found a different provider that was more on board and comfortable versus me trying to go in and push and try and make him do something that again, he wasn't comfortable with. He wasn't comfortable with that and that's okay. For a long time, I had a lot of anger, and a lot of our community has harbored anger, but I'd like to drop a message to our community. Try not to harbor the anger. My provider is a great guy and a great doc and all of these things. He just wasn't the doc for me, so find the doc for you. Dr. Fox: Right. Listen, obviously, there are a lot of doctors in the world and I'm sure that there are bad doctors or mean doctors or people who aren't good people out there. I'm sure they exist. But I would say in my experience that most doctors are good people who are trying to do right by their patients. It's too much work to go into medicine and train to go into it to dislike patients. It just doesn't make any sense. My experience is that most people are trying to do right by their patients. But we are all human. We all look at risks differently. We all have different experiences. That happens. Humans are varied. It's part of the reason it's wonderful to be a human. We are all different. That's all great. But it's not complicated to get this answer from your doctor. I think it just requires some preparation meaning ask these questions very early either before you get pregnant or early in pregnancy. Again, they are not complicated questions. I would say the first question you should ask is something related to the numbers. Say, “What is my risk if I try a VBAC? Me, personally?” If they say, “Well, your risk of it is a uterine rupture,” say, “What is the number risk?” The risk is uterine rupture and if they say, “Well, it's probably about 1%,” okay. That is the number. If they say it is much higher than 1%, well why? Is it because I have had a classical C-section or I have had three prior C-sections, okay, but get the number. Then the second question is very open-ended. Nonjudgmental. Say, “What are your thoughts or opinions about VBAC?” That's it. Open-ended. They will tell you. Right? No one's going to hide it from you. They will tell you overtly and say, “I love it. It's awesome. I'm all over it. This is great. I hope you try it.” Or they'll say, “Not a big fan. I don't really like it. It's not my thing. We don't do it. I haven't done it in 20 years,” okay. Or potentially, they will be somewhere in the middle and say, “I kind of like it,” but you'll know. You'll know right away what their thoughts are. Then the second question is, assuming they are supportive, about the hospital where you deliver. What's the attitude there about VBAC? If they say, “You know, I am really in favor of it, but the hospital is awful. They torture me every time there is a VBAC. They make me be there the entire time. They always make me do C-sections. It's just a terrible environment–”Meagan: Maybe not right. Dr. Fox: Right. Either of those two reasons is probably a reason to look elsewhere but if they tell you, “I'm on board. The hospital is on board,” it doesn't mean you will have a VBAC, but you have a plan in place and you are ready to go. If they tell you, “I don't like that. I don't do that,” then turn around and say, “Okay, I really appreciate that. Thank you for your perspective. Thank you for your honesty. I am really interested in VBAC. I might be seeking a different doctor or a different hospital. Please don't take that personally.” They will probably say, “Thank you.” Meagan: Yeah, exactly. Dr. Fox: Doctors don't want a situation where they have a combative relationship. That is horrible. We hate that. It's awful. That is what keeps us up at night. Do it at the very beginning and no one is going to have hard feelings over that. I would say it's unusual that people are going to try to convince you to stay for the money. Doctors don't want that. They would rather have you go to someone else than go to them and want something that they don't want you to have. That's just how doctors are. Meagan: I love that you just made that point because it is hard to leave. You get worried about hurt feelings and all of that, so thank you so much for saying that. Dr. Fox: Yeah. InductionMeagan: Okay, so let's shift gears a little bit and talk about induction because this is a really hot topic when it comes to someone wanting to TOLAC or have a VBAC. I guess the question is when is it really necessary? What is the evidence on induction and VBAC? Because just like support, it varies all around where some people are absolutely no induction. You have to go into spontaneous labor. Some are like, “Yeah, cool. No problem. You can be induced.” Some are like, “You have to be induced.” Then when it comes to induction, that also ranges. Maybe we can't do a Foley or a Cook or we can't use Pit and we can only break your water and all of these things. Can we talk about the evidence specific to VBAC? Induction can be necessary. There are a ton of reasons for induction, but when is it really necessary? Dr. Fox: Right. Instead of talking about when it is really necessary, I think the question is why is it even a question? The reason is that the best evidence we have– it's not perfect evidence, but the best evidence we have is that for someone who is undergoing VBAC who has induced labor, her risk of uterine rupture is about 1.5 to 2x as high as if she went into labor on her own. For example, if your risk was about 1% for a uterine rupture and you get induced, your risk is now about 2%. 1.5-2%. If your risk was a little bit lower because maybe you have had a vaginally delivery before so if you have had a vaginal delivery before, your risk isn't 1%. It's closer to .5%, it will raise it to maybe 1%. Again, I say it's the best data available because the studies that were done, there is a little bit of a flaw in them because they are not randomized, but it seems to be correct that inducing increases your risk likely. The one exception is if you induce with misoprostol, the risk seems to be much higher so pretty much no one induced with misoprostol if there is a prior C-section. That's usually something that nobody does, but the other ways of inducing whether that's breaking the water, whether it's Pitocin, whether it's a Foley balloon, and all of these things seem to increase the risk slightly. Again, it's the same thing as before. If now I have a risk in someone whose risk isn't 1% but 2%, how do I view that? How does the hospital view it? How does the patient view it? Obviously, 1% and 2% are not hugely different from each other, but you could also look at it and say, “It's double.” You can think of it in two different ways. Based on that, there are definitely doctors or hospitals who would say, “I'm comfortable with VBAC, but I'm not comfortable with inducing labor in someone who is a VBAC.” In our practice, that is not our position. We will induce someone's labor. We tell them, “Your risk is a little bit higher. It's 2% versus 1%,” or something like that, but again, if there is a reason not to, we would induce someone's labor but different people look at it differently. So again, another question to ask to your doctor is, “Not only how are you with VBAC, but how are you with inductions and VBAC?”If they say, “Well, I'm okay with VBACs if you go into labor on your own, but I'm not okay with VBAC if you have to be induced,” does that mean you have to switch doctors? Well, it just means you have a potential limitation. Meagan: A potential roadblock in the end. Dr. Fox: Right, a potential one. Again, it depends on the circumstances. Obviously, each case might be unique. So that's number one. Number two, there is some data that when you induce labor in a VBAC, your success rate is lower. That data is weaker and it's a little bit complicated because the data in non-VBACs is that if you induce labor, the success rate is not lower meaning it does not increase your risk of C-section. Whether it's different for someone who had a VBAC has not been studied appropriately to know for sure. It either has no effect like in everyone else, or we can use the older data that is flawed and say it does increase the risk of needing a C-section, but that's really more related to the chance of success not so much related to the risk.Now, some people will use in order to make a decision about VBAC, they are weighing the risk versus the chance of success so it may impact the balance of the scales, but that's really the concern with induction. Now, the only reason that I can think of that someone would insist that someone who is having a VBAC be induced always is only because they are concerned about them laboring at home and they want to have their entire labor watched in a hospital. That's not the strategy we use, but again, it depends geographically on how far people live from the hospital. Meagan: We talked about that on our last episode. Dr. Fox: Yeah, do they typically wait forever to come to the hospital? Again, is it worth a slight increase in risk of 1% to induce as opposed to having them go into labor and wait four hours before they get to the hospital? That's a strategic decision that is going to be very individualized obviously, but that would be as far as I can think of off of the top of my head the only reason one would say, “You need to be induced because it's a VBAC specifically.” There are reasons to be induced all over the place obviously obstetrically, but as someone we are talking about here, if someone needs to be induced then they need to be induced and there is a decision about that. When I counsel people about VBAC, essentially they fall into three groups. Again, assuming it's a safe option for them. Option one is, “I want a VBAC.” Option two is, “I don't want a VBAC. I want a C-section,” and option three is, “I want a VBAC, but only if I go into labor on my own. I don't want to be induced.” That's based on again, the risk, the chance of success, the experience, all of those things, and those are sort of the three places that people land. That's fine and obviously, you can switch from one group to another over the course of pregnancy based on how things are evolving, but that's really the decision that someone is going to make. “I'm trying for a VBAC.” “I want nothing to do with VBAC,” or “I'm into it, but only if I go into labor on my own.” That's something you want to make sure to see what your doctor thinks about that as well. Meagan: Yeah, okay. I love that so much because yeah. Like we said, there are so many reasons why like preeclampsia and all of these things, but yeah. Just wondering why you would have to be induced in order to VBAC. Cervical ExamsOkay, so let's talk about cervical exams. This is also a hot topic in our community about routine cervical exams or having a cervical exam prior to even labor beginning to determine the likelihood or the success of a VBAC. Can we talk about the evidence of cervical exams during labor in general, right? In physiological birth, everyone is like, “We just don't want to be touched. We just want birth to happen,” but when we come to hospitals, sometimes it's a little bit more routine where they want to know the data of what's happening with the cervix and everything like that. What is the evidence on actually determining someone's success rate before labor even begins based off of where they are dilated? Dr. Fox: Those are two totally separate reasons why we would check the cervix. In terms of someone in labor, there is a tremendous amount of variation in the frequency of cervical exams in labor based on the provider, based on the culture, based on the patient, and so there isn't one way to do it, but the reason one would have their cervix checked in labor is just to assess how the labor is progressing. Everybody does it. Doctors do it. Midwives do it. Home birth attendants  do it. The question is not do you check the cervix? It's how frequently do I check the cervix and what do I do about it? That's going to vary greatly across everything. The evidence is actually that it's not harmful. Again, I'm not saying it's not painful or annoying or uncomfortable certainly if you don't have an epidural. I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about the risk involved. There are people who say that more cervical exams increase the risk of an infection. The data on that is actually pretty weak amazingly. When we do the exams, we wear gloves. These are sterile conditions, number one. Number two, some of the data that indicates more cervical exams are associated with more infection is really just that more cervical exams are a marker for a longer labor. The longer you are in labor, the more cervical exams you are going to have and a longer labor is definitely a risk factor for infection. So it's not exactly clear in that sense and also, if anything, if it's ever going to be a risk, it's only once your waters are already broken. If your waters are not broken, there is no reason to think that it should increase your risk of an infection or there is at least no good data to support that. I would say in labor, there is a lot of variation in that. Again, it's hard to say. There isn't one way of doing it, but the reason to do it is just to assess how labor is progressing to make decisions like do I need to get Pitocin or not? Do I need to do a C-section or not? Is this someone who I want to break their water or not? Is this someone who we can tell, ‘You know what? Just rest and I'm going to go home and come back in the morning' or not? All of those things, when is she going to deliver? Fine. Before labor, examining someone's cervix in the office or before we do anything in labor, the data on that is originally meant to give a prediction of when someone's going to go into labor on their own meaning if you examine someone, the term we use which is kind of crude is “ripe”. If the cervix is ripe versus unripe– for some reason, doctors love to compare things to foods, specifically fruits. I don't know, whatever. Maybe we grew up in a tree-based society. I'm not sure, but whatever. It's crude, but that's the term that is out there. The thought is if the cervix is ripe and the components of that are a little bit open, it's short,  it's soft, it's what we call anterior meaning in front of the head versus all the way behind the head and the head is low, the likelihood that person is going to go into labor on her own in the next week or so is higher than if her cervix is unripe. That's why it was invented. I personally have found that to be mostly useless because okay. If someone's chance is, let's say 40% versus 20%, what does that mean? Nothing. You can have a very unripe cervix and go into labor that night and you could be 3 centimeters dilated and not go into labor for 2 weeks. What's the difference if your chance is 40 versus 20%? What are you going to do about that? Nothing. In our office, in our practice, we don't routinely check the cervix before 38 weeks and then after 38 weeks, we offer it as an option. A lot of people want to know what's going on with their cervix. There is a lot of curiosity out there. If someone doesn't want to know, that's fine. We're not going to do it. But one of the reasons it might be helpful practically might– I'm not saying definitely– let's say someone called me at night. It's 3:00 in the morning and they are like, “I'm having some cramping. I'm having some contractions. They're not so bad. They're this. They're that. I live 2 hours away,” and I saw her that day in the office and her cervix was long and closed, I may feel differently than if I saw her and her cervix was already 4 centimeters dilated. So, okay. There is some practical information that is to be gleaned, but it's not always that useful. When you're inducing someone's labor, it does give you a sense of the likelihood of success and what agent you're going to use or not use, so that's the reason you'll do it either on admission to labor and delivery for induction or maybe in the office just before to sort of plan the induction because what we do is based on the cervix. For VBAC specifically, it's not like it needs to be done, but obviously, my thoughts about someone who is trying to VBAC are going to be different if, at 38 weeks, she's 3 centimeters dilated, the cervix is soft, and her head is low versus her cervix is long and closed and firm and the head is way up near her nose. I'm just going to think about it a little differently and then I' going to counsel her a little bit differently and then it may be practical. It may, but it's not usually tremendously helpful clinically is what I would say. Meagan: Okay. So for our listeners, kind of what you were saying is that you can get the information, but it doesn't mean that you're not going to be able to have a VBAC or you're no longer a good candidate if at 38, we'll say 38 weeks, you have a long, hard, posterior cervix. It doesn't mean– you might just have different counsel or have a different discussion. Dr. Fox: Right. Yeah. Again, it might be that. It might slightly change your odds one way or another, but it's not usually something that we use as a decision-making tool about whether you should or shouldn't VBAC. Again, let's say– I'll give you an example where it might be useful. Let's say we have a situation where someone has a prior C-section. They're thinking about VBAC or they're interested in it, but they have some concerns, right? Like most people, they're interested but they have some concerns. They're 38 weeks and let's say the baby is measuring a little bit small and her blood pressure is a little bit high. I say, “We need to deliver you. We need to induce. We need to deliver you.” At that point, there isn't an option of being in spontaneous labor. It's either I induce her and if I don't induce her, we have to do a C-section. Those are the two options on the table because waiting is not a safe option anymore. Fine. It's possible that my counseling will be different if when I do her cervical exam, it's long and firm and the head is high versus the head is low and the cervix is dilated and soft because I'll tell her, “Listen, inducing your labor in one situation is likely going to take a long time. Your success rate is a little bit lower” versus “It's going to be a shorter time, again, likely not definitively and your success rate is going to be higher.” It's possible that she might say, “All right. I don't want an induction if my cervix looks like this” or “I do want an induction if my cervix looks like this.” It's part of decision-making potentially, but that's usually if I'm about to induce her labor versus do a C-section. If she's going home either way, if it's just the Tuesday and it's 38 weeks and there's nothing wrong and I'm just sending her home and she will either come back in labor or come back in a week, then it's not going to matter much if her cervix is open or closed on that day. It's really if I have to make a decision about delivery that I'll be more practical. Meagan: That's something that I love about you is just that–Dr. Fox: Oh, all right. Meagan: I do. It's like, “Let's talk about this.” You offer counsel. I don't know. You just offer more. It's not just like, “You have.” It's the way you talk anyway. I mean, I've never been a patient in your clinic so I'm talking very broadly of what I feel like I love about you, but it doesn't seem like you're black or white. It's, “Hey, this is what we have. This is what we're showing. This is where baby is or where you are and it's no longer safe to be pregnant for you or for baby. Here are the options and based on that person as an individual, it might be different versus the lady that you had four or five years ago is now the standard for every person that walks into your clinic. Dr. Fox: Right. Right. I mean, listen. Medicine– there's a lot of balance here. On the one hand, there is this push to be very standardized and that everybody should be the same. There are advantages to standardization. Less mistakes, it's more clear, everybody has rules versus individualization which has its advantages as well because you can personalize medicine. You can tailor things to the individual. They are not a conflict, but there are two sides to the coin. On the one hand, you want things to be standardized and on the other hand, you want things to be individualized. One of the arts of medicine is knowing which way to lean and that's where people differ. Experience gets involved. There is also, I would say, this idea in medicine where there are certain times where the doctor is supposed to say to the patient, “This is what you should do,” to be very directive, right? There are other times where the doctor is supposed to say, “Here is option A. Here is option B. Here is option C. Here are the pros and cons of all of those. What do you want to do?” Right? The problem is you don't want a doctor who is always telling you what to do because that's authoritative and it's very–Meagan: It doesn't feel good. Dr. Fox: Right and it's also usually not appropriate, but you also don't want a doctor who can't make up his or her goddamn mind. You see the problems. When we're training young doctors, we always talk about patient autonomy, patient autonomy, which is correct. Patients should have autonomy to make decisions for themselves, but you also have a duty as a doctor and as a professional that if you believe one option is better than the other, tell them and tell them why. If my plumber said to me, “Well, I could use the copper pipe or I could use the steel pipe. Which one do you want?” I'd be like, “I don't know which one I want. Which one is better?” Meagan: Which one is best? Dr. Fox: Right. If he said to me, “Listen, you should absolutely have the copper pipe because they are better,” I would say, “Fine, do that.” But if he said to me, “Well, there are pluses and minuses. The copper is a little bit better but costs a lot more,” then I have to make a decision and that's appropriate. The same is true in medicine. If I have a patient with pneumonia and I said to her, “Well, you could have antibiotics. You could not have antibiotics,” then I'm an idiot. I should be saying to her, “You have pneumonia. You need antibiotics,” because this is why I trained, why I went to medical school, to tell you, “You need antibiotics. This is the one you should have.” Fine. That's appropriate. But in a VBAC, I don't think it's necessarily appropriate to say that. I say, “Okay. You have a 1% risk of uterine rupture. On the one hand, you could try a VBAC. Here are the advantages. Here are the disadvantages. Here are the risks. On the other hand, you could have a C-section. Here are the advantages. Here are the disadvantages. Here are the risks. I think they are both reasonable. Do you have a preference and which risk scares you more?” That is appropriate. I would say for people who are trying out figure out, do you have a good doctor? Do you have a good midwife? It's not just, “Are they kind?” You want them to be kind. It's not just, “Are they smart?” You want them to be smart. It's not just, “Does their office run on time?” You want their office to run on time. It's also, do you get a sense that they have a good balance between when it's appropriate to tell you what they think is correct and when they give you options and have you participate in your healthcare decision-making? If they are always telling you what to do, it's probably too much on one end. If they never tell you what to do, it's probably too much on the other end. You need to strike a good balance. Getting back to what you said about the reason you love me, I definitely have situations where I tell people, “VBAC is not a good option for you. You shouldn't do it. It's a bad idea. I'm telling you it's a bad idea.” Again, we're not the police. I can't force someone to do something. I'm not going to tie someone down and do a C-section, but I will tell them, “This is a bad idea.” I would say that's the exception. Most of the time, it's, “All right. Here are the options. Here's what we are doing.” It's not that we always tell people, “Here are your options,” and it's sort of touchy-feely, we do that when it's appropriate. It's frequently appropriate, but sometimes, we have to tell people, “It's a bad idea. This is why it's a bad idea. You should not choose this option because of A, B, and C.” I'm very comfortable telling someone that, but I usually just don't have to. Uterine Window, Dehiscence, and NicheMeagan: Yeah. I love that. Awesome. Well, we're going to go into the very last topic. I know we are kind of running out of time, but this is one where we're going to get stuff like that or we're going to be like, “You shouldn't do this” or the other opposite where it's like, “We could do this. We could see how this goes.” It's uterine rupture. We talked about uterine rupture, but more specifically to uterine window, lots of people are “diagnosed” or told that they had a uterine window maybe in their first Cesarean or multiple Cesareans later and that they shouldn't VBAC or that they can't VBAC or my specific provider told me that I would for sure rupture. He said those words– for sure, guaranteed.Then we have dehiscence which is chalked up into a full uterine rupture, but we know it's not. Anyway, there is some stickiness in there. So can we talk about that? If someone was told or if it was put in an op report that they had a uterine window or a slight dehiscence, as an OB in your practice, what would you suggest or how would you counsel moving forward? Dr. Fox: Right. Right. I will give you the short answer and the long answer. The short answer is if I have someone who I think has a uterine window, I would tell them not to VBAC because I think the risk of rupture is too high. I would never tell someone, “You are for sure going to rupture,” because that is not true with anybody. Meagan: You can't predict that. Dr. Fox: Even in the worst-case scenario. Someone who has had a prior classical C-section, they have a 10% risk for rupture. Someone who has a prior uterine rupture is not even 100%. I don't think it's 100%, but it's usually too high for comfort. The problem is not so much me making the recommendation, “Don't VBAC if you have a uterine window,” it's how do you make that diagnosis? I think that's part of the trickiness. Some of the confusion is that there is different terminology and some of the reason is we don't have definitive definitions. So for example, uterine rupture is very clear. That's when you are in labor and the entire uterus opens up internally and the baby and the placenta come out. It's exactly what you would think a rupture is. That is pretty clear. The terms dehiscence and window are used interchangeably and what they basically mean is the muscle of the uterus is separated, but the very thinnest outside layer of the uterus, what we call the serosa, which is like a saran-wrap layer on top of the uterus did not open, so the baby did not protrude through this defect in the uterus. Meagan: It didn't go through all of the layers. Dr. Fox: But it basically went through all of the muscular layers which is basically like one step short of a rupture. Now, we don't know how many of those people would go on to rupture if you continued laboring then in that labor or in the next pregnancy. No one knows because no one's really tried it. No one has really pushed that envelope because they are too afraid to. It's hard. It's very unusual to be diagnosed with a window on your first C-section because usually, it's not going to happen unless you've already had an incision in a C-section. Usually, it's someone who has had a C-section, then on their second C-section, when someone goes in to make the incision whether they tried to VBAC or didn't try to VBAC, they see this and then they are talking about the next pregnancy. Most people are not going to recommend VBAC because the risk of rupture is too high in that circumstance. I fall into that camp as well. I am humble enough to say it doesn't mean someone will rupture, but I think that risk is too high and I'm not really willing to test it out on someone because I think it's probably not safe. Now, sometimes, someone may have been told they had a window and they really don't. It's hard to know. There's another situation that is different which is when someone is not pregnant and they have an ultrasound of their uterus and they see some form of a defect in their prior C-section. So someone had one C-section, had the baby, they're not pregnant. They come to my office and they do an ultrasound. I looked at the area of the scar and it looked like it wasn't healed perfectly, so instead– Meagan: Properly.Dr. Fox: Well, it's not proper or improper, it just frequently doesn't heal to full thickness. Let's say the uterus is a centimeter thick and I see that only half of the centimeter is closed and the other half of the centimeter is open, right? We call that sometimes a uterine niche. We sometimes call that a uterine defect. Some people call that a window, though it's not technically a window. The question is A) What does that mean? and B) What do you do about it? The answer is nobody knows. That's the problem. Meagan: Yeah. That's the hard thing. Dr. Fox: Nobody knows exactly what you would do to allow VBAC, not allow VBAC, this or that, generally, what a lot of people will do is if they have only had one C-section, they'll usually let them VBAC, but there is some data that if it's less than 3 millimeters remaining of closed, the risk of rupture is somewhat higher. Again, that data itself is pretty weak. No one knows for sure. Should you use that? Should you not use that criteria? It's very, very difficult and you're going to see a lot of variation out there. In our practice, we don't use that test so much to decide whether someone should VBAC or not after their first C-section because the data doesn't support that. What we use it for is someone who has had multiple C-sections and they are already not planning to VBAC, but we are trying to figure out if is it safe to get pregnant at all. Do we need to fix this during pregnancy or if they get pregnant, do we need to deliver them at a different time? That's a much more complicated discussion, but that's how we use it practically. If someone has had one C-section, I don't generally recommend doing that test to check the thickness and then making decisions based on that because it's not clear that your decision-making is going to be any better with that information than without that information. So I don't use it personally, but definitely, people will find it out there. They measure the thickness and they say it's too thin. That data is all over the place, unfortunately. Maybe one day, we will work it out, but it hasn't been worked out yet. Meagan: Yeah. So you can technically fix a niche? Dr. Fox: You can technically fix it, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are safe to deliver vaginally the next time. Meagan: Because that's a uterine procedure. Dr. Fox: Yeah. These are all new questions that are being sorted out. It may take a very long time to sort it out, but I would say for the more typical person who has had one C-section that was basically fine, it went well, and she is trying to decide to VBAC or not, the current data does not support measuring the thickness of the scar routinely either prior to pregnancy or in pregnancy and then making decisions about VBAC or not. There are people who do it and I'm not saying it's wrong, but the data to support that is pretty weak so it's not something that is universally recommended to do. It's a different situation if someone had a C-section and then someone saw with their own eyes there is something wrong with this uterus or if someone has had multiple C-sections and then they see it, those are different clinical situations where it might come in handy. Meagan: Okay. Great answers. Awesome. Thank you seriously so much. It's just such a pleasure to have you. I do. I just enjoy talking with you. I think it's awesome and I think this community is just going to keep loving these episodes. Dr. Fox: It's my pleasure. It's your wonderful Salt Lake City disposition. Meagan: Yes. Next time you are in Salt Lake, come say hi. Dr. Fox: Love it. We'll do it. I love Salt Lake City. Good stuff. Meagan: Yes. I love it here except for the cold. Dr. Fox: Except for the cold. I hear ya. I grew up in Chicago which is where my pleasant disposition comes from, but yes. It's also cold in the winter. Meagan: That's a whole different cold. Dr. Fox: We don't get the skiing. We get the cold, but not the skiing so at least you get the mountains so you did it right. Meagan: Yes, we did. Awesome. Well, thank you so, so much. Dr. Fox: My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure. ClosingWould you like to be a guest on the podcast? Tell us about your experience at thevbaclink.com/share. For more information on all things VBAC including online and in-person VBAC classes, The VBAC Link blog, and Meagan's bio, head over to thevbaclink.com. Congratulations on starting your journey of learning and discovery with The VBAC Link. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-vbac-link/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Jeff, Roberto, Kari & Dalton talk about logistics at WEL as well as some current findings on the market. This episode will dive you into the depths of everything logistics regarding the transportation industry.

Lindsay Wardell tells how she persevered to write her own story as a programmer and shares her views on JavaScript frameworks & fatigue.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2023.11.06GuestLindsay WardellShow notes[00:00:20] Sponsored by Logistically[00:00:49] Introducing LindsayHuman Side of DevElm and Vite on Elm Radio, hosted by Dillon Kearns & Jeroen EngelsFunctional programming with Elm on PodRocket, hosted by Paul MikulskisFunctional and Object-Oriented Programming on Software Unscripted, hosted by Richard Feldman"Functional Programming in Vite" at ViteConf 2023elm-vue-bridgevite-elm-template.[00:01:54] Getting started in computing and programming[00:06:06] A break in Brazil"How to teach programming (and other things)?" by Felienne Hermans[00:09:27] Getting back into programmingFunctional and Object-Oriented Programming on Software Unscripted, hosted by Richard Feldman...again[00:18:55] Why Elm?JuralenFunctional and Object-Oriented Programming on Software Unscripted, hosted by Richard Feldman...yet again. Seriously, it's good.[00:28:06] The road to NoRedInkWikifunctionsViews on VueS08E014 Modern Web Podcast - Elm with Richard Feldman[00:33:05] JavaScript fatigue[00:38:04] Standardization around Vite[00:41:13] The challenge of legacy code at NoRedInknoredink-uiElm Landelm-pages[00:46:22] Star CommanderStar Commander (GitHub)Elm Town 63 – Opening the doors of functional programming[00:53:47] What are you excited about?Lamdera"The Economics of Programming Languages" by Evan Czaplicki at Strange Loop 2023[00:55:50] PicksLindsay's picksNuxtNaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)Blood on the ClocktowerBabylon 5Jared's picksBattlestar GalacticaS2E2 - "One Moore", PortlandiaFeel It All Around by Washed Out

Jim Carlson shares his discoveries in software development through the people he's met in the community and the projects he's building. We also discuss how a history in mathematics shapes his work.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2023.10.13GuestJim CarlsonShow notes[00:00:16] Sponsored By Logistically[00:00:45] Introducing Jim"Making a LaTeX-to-Html parser in Elm" at Elm Europe 2018jxxcarlson/meenylatex"Tarring files with Elm" at Oslo Elm Day 2019jxxcarlson/elm-tarjxxcarlson/elm-markdownjxxcarlson/elm-l0-parserRandom Exchange ModelSchelling's segregation model"Making Elm Talk to Your Personal Supercomputer" at elm-conf 2019Fake Drum Language Apphttps://scripta.ioElm NotebookElm Town 29 - Knode.io with Jim Carlson in 2018 w/Murphy Randle[00:02:10] History in Mathematics[00:04:27] Serious software development[00:06:37] Getting out of the basementMatthew Griffith's elm-uiLamdera[00:09:59] Problem-solving approaches[00:14:43] Scripta.io[00:19:25] Learning Haskell[00:24:40] Elm NotebookBooklib.ioelm-in-elm/compilerMinibill's elm-interpreterElm Land

Simon Lydell tells his origin story from Firefox power user to full-time Elm engineer. Then we talk about his work in the community building tools & contributing to core.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2023.10.09GuestSimon LydellShow notes[00:00:25] Sponsored by Logistically[00:00:56] Introducing SimonElm node-test-runnerlydell/elm-app-urlElm Radio 77 – elm-app-url with Simon Lydellelm-toolingElm Radio 22 – elm-tooling with Simon Lydellelm-watchElm Radio 65 – elm-watch with Simon Lydell[00:01:43] Origins in computing"My Contribution to the Left-Pad Incident with Simon Lydell" on the Software Unscripted podcastElm Town 66 – A gateway to scientific research with Chris Martin[00:09:08] From messing around with open-source to headhunted[00:14:37] Discovering Elm[00:17:24] Elm syntax as a CoffeeScript programmer[00:19:17] Contributing to big open-source projects early in career[00:22:02] From Elm meetup to full-time developer[00:25:08] Natural growth at Insurello[00:26:28] Pranking the designer[00:29:35] Vision document for elm-watchParcel[00:34:16] Different catalystselm-liveelm-go[00:40:53] elm-watch hot reloadingelm-watch issue about generating elm-watch.json instead of supporting glob directly[00:50:43] run-ptyrun-pty[00:55:51] Core contributionFree the npm package from third party dependencies[01:05:32] What's up with Simon these days?[01:07:41] PicksSimon's pickStrange PlanetJared's pickrun-pty

Logistically and artistically, R.E.M.'s 1998 album Up marked a fork in the road for their trajectory: Prior to its recording, drummer and founding member Bill Berry had amicably left the band, having suffered a brain aneurysm while on stage three years earlier, leading the remaining trio of Michael Stipe, Mike Mills and Peter Buck -- for the first time in their career -- to create without a key piece of their dynamic. In the end, Up didn't sound like any of the group's previous eras, using keyboards, electronics, chamber-pop and white noise as a backdrop for some of the band's sweetest melodies and Stipe's most direct lyrics to date, the latter of which were finally printed for fans to comb over -- a first for any previous R.E.M. project, after ten albums of ambiguity. This week, we celebrate the 25th anniversary reissue of Up (available this Friday, November 10th) with returning guest Josh Modell (formerly of the AV Club, now of the Talkhouse Podcast Network) who wrote the package's liner notes. Together we examine how R.E.M.'s existential crisis without Berry, according to Modell, "gave everything (on the album) an undercarriage of vulnerability, sadness, and edge," making it Modell's favorite album in the group's catalog. Purchase the Up reissue at remhq.com or wherever you find music, and catch Modell moderating a live Q&A with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy in Milwaukee on Saturday, November 11th, with tickets available here.

Today I'm talking all about holiday cooking with one of my favorite food writers and educators, Molly Stevens. Molly is a James Beard award-winning author, cooking instructor, and recipe developer. Her cookbooks include All About Dinner: Simple Meals, Expert Advice (Norton, 2019), All About Roasting (Norton, 2011), and All About Braising (Norton, 2004). She has been named Cooking Teacher of the Year by both the International Association of Culinary Professionals and Bon Appétit.Molly and I explore how we can bring more ease into planning and prepping for holiday gatherings. She offers such great advice, not just for cooking, but also for preparing for the holidays mentally and emotionally. Oftentimes this is just as important as the physical planning. It allows us to check our expectations and tune into what we really want, as opposed to being swept up in obligations and to-do lists. We also get into the practical side of hosting and planning, from menu planning tips, to prep tricks, cooking techniques, easy appetizers, timing dinner, and more. (Take warning: you're going to leave hungry!). While the holidays are one of my favorite times of the year, they can also be incredibly stressful. I think this conversation is going to help you clarify what you want this holiday season to feel like, why you cook for others, and how you can better align those two things to bring more ease and flow into the season. Links and resources (and recipes!) mentioned in this episode:* Mind, Body, Spirit, FOOD newsletter: https://mindbodyspiritfood.substack.com/* Find Nicki on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nickisizemore/* Molly's website: https://www.mollystevenscooks.com/* Find Molly on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mstevenscooks/* Make-Ahead Pie Crust: https://fromscratchfast.com/easy-gluten-free-pie-crust/* Gingerbread Trifle: https://fromscratchfast.com/gingerbread-trifle-recipe-gluten-free/ Get full access to Mind, Body, Spirit, FOOD at mindbodyspiritfood.substack.com/subscribe

Mario Rogic shares his journeys, both physically around the world and strategically, as he built & rebuilt Lamdera.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2023.09.08GuestMario RogicShow notes[00:00:25] Sponsored by Logistically[00:01:00] Introducing MarioLocomoteLamderaElm OnlineLondon meetupsElmcraftElm CampElm Town 59 – Elm Camp with Katja Mordaunt"The unbearable weight of glue" at Lambda Days 2023 in KrakowElm Town 18 - Spotlight on Mario Rogic[00:02:22] Parallel synchronized travel[00:10:25] Out of the blockchain[00:13:52] How Adventure Presenter led to Lamdera"Elmception: supercharging presentations with Elm" at Elm Europe 2017)[00:18:31] More about the Haskell version with Filip Haglund[00:28:13] Communicating the benefits of LamderaLamdera diagrams clearly explain the benefits[00:42:02] What's up next with Lamdera?Lamdera v1.1.0Lamdera v1.2.0elm-pages lamdera integration[00:54:39] LEGO Loco LamderaElm Town 64 – The network effect with Martin Stewart[00:57:03] Shared joy in things made on Lamdera[00:58:33] Reflections on Elm Camp[01:02:58] Stoked to see all the cool stuff in the communityElmcraft Lore[01:07:34] PicksMario's pickselm-pages scriptsElm Land

Adriano Ferrari talks about how Elm allows him to solely support Gingko Writer and make progress on new projects while also homeschooling.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2023.09.08GuestAdriano FerrariShow notes[00:00:25] Sponsored by Logistically[00:01:00] Introducing AdrianoGingko Writer, open-source on GitHub at gingko/client.[00:01:19] Getting started in computing[00:03:55] Physics in Canada[00:07:03] Discovering Elm[00:11:30] Perfectionism"Tools & Perfectionism" by Adriano Ferrari[00:15:07] Little leak in your mind"Make Reliable Web Apps Without JS Fatigue" by Jared at Detroit Tech Watch 2019[00:17:25] Overcoming creative blocks"Reset Expectations to Overcome Creative Blocks" by Adriano Ferrari[00:21:38] Breaking things down with Gingko WriterElm Town 61 – Turning the pages with Dillon Kearns[00:25:19] Challenges building Gingko WriterElm Town 64 – The network effecthttps://ascii-collab.apphttps://town-collab.app[00:31:43] Homeschooling & solely supporting Gingko Writer[00:37:52] "Frequent changes of treatment""A 'Gradual Commitment' Productivity System""Exploring elm-spa-example" by Richard Feldman at Oslo Elm Day with a section about dependencies[00:42:13] New, 100% Elm project[00:44:22] PicksAdriano's picksSimon Lydell's elm-watchSimon Lydell's elm-app-urlONYX BOOX Note Air 2 PlusJared's picksStretchlyYoga

Today's podcast is incredibly special to me, bc it's so real and raw and powerful. Oh my goodness. Melissa shares her story with us and wow. She talks about her life in addiction, and how the Lord brought her out of it, and it's so full of hope and redemption. I have so much to say, and am also speechless, but I know you will be blessed by it. Logistically, I want to let you know that this one was recorded at her home with her two precious little girls. It's a little loud and there's a lot of sweet little voices and lots of things happening in the background, but it does not take away from the story she shares. One of the thing I pray for my podcast is that it is authentic, and this is real life at it's best! I'm so thankful for the way she powers through and tells her story while wrangling them! Also, Melissa shares a lot of detail about her life before she knew Jesus, and so I just want to give a heads up that if you typically listen with your kiddos around, you may want to wait until they're in bed or you are able to listen alone. This will go down as one of my all time favorites and I know you'll be encouraged by it. Grab a drink and join us as we pour it out! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ccwa/support

Chris Martin shares how he grew Elm wings while building Exosphere, a user-friendly, open-source tool to help scientists do research.Note: Jared's audio quality isn't great.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2023.08.02GuestChris Martin (https://cmart.blog)Show notes[00:00:56] Introducing Chris Martinhttps://gitlab.com/cmarthttps://exosphere.app/[00:01:43] Getting started[00:07:08] Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail[00:09:39] Getting into ElmMatthew Griffith's elm-ui[00:14:03] Building Exosphere"IU wins $300K NSF award to build an open-source ecosystem around heavily used cloud tool"[00:18:35] Challenges building open-source tools[00:26:19] Fun coming from DevOps to ElmSimon Lydell's elm-watchElm Town 58 – Unblocking users with quality software with Tessa Kelly[00:33:17] Mentorship at scale[00:36:02] Code CommonsVision for Code Commonshttps://codecommons.net/https://gitlab.com/exosphere/exosphere[00:40:52] Climate change"Building Culture Around Climate Emergency Mode"https://github.com/BrianHicks/elm-csv/tree/3.0.3#climate-actionhttps://github.com/ianmackenzie/elm-units/tree/2.10.0#climate-action[00:43:52] Exciting features coming to Exosphere[00:47:28] Insane chat box"Assume ChatGPT is Lying" by Kevin Yank"Elm Town 61 – Turning the pages with Dillon Kearns"[00:50:04] PicksChris' picksJetstream Cloudhttps://defetter.com/Elm Town 55 – From algorithms & animation to building a decentralized finance app with Dwayne CrooksStretchlyJared's "pick"elmtown at jaredmsmith dot com with climate-related Elm work

We review Jeroen Engels' journey with Elm from ESLint to elm-review. Jeroen even gives tips on how to introduce rules to a team.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2023.08.01GuestJeroen EngelsShow notes[00:00:21] Sponsored by Logistically[00:00:58] Introducing Jeroen Engelselm-reviewElm RadioElm Town 61 – Turning the pages with Dillon Kearnselm-syntaxjfmengels/elm-review-commonjfmengels/elm-review-documentationjfmengels/elm-review-simplifyjfmengels/elm-review-unused[00:02:37] It all started with a book[00:06:09] Getting a job as a backend developer[00:11:33] Senior: Figuring out what you're passionate about[00:15:24] Using ESLint to solve challenges with JavaScript[00:20:25] The refreshing experience of discovering Elm[00:26:13] A greenfield Elm projectCrowdStrike® Falcon LogScale™[00:33:04] Starting elm-reviewelm-analyze[00:42:06] elm-review v2"Implementing multi-file analysis for linters" on Jeroen Engels' blog[00:43:33] Middle names[00:44:40] Humor, coding, & podcastinghttps://postitontheweb.tumblr.com[00:50:19] Challenges with building elm-reviewElm Radio 84 – Writing Great Docs"Pushing unused exports detection one step further" on Jeroen Engels' blog"A tale of failing to design rule boundaries - Data-last functions" on Jeroen Engels' blog

Martin Stewart comes back to share his experience using Elm and Lamdera to make all the things, from games to professional apps.Thanks to our sponsor, Logistically. Email: elmtown@logisticallyinc.com.Music by Jesse Moore.Recording date: 2023.07.10GuestMartin StewartShow notes[00:00:14] Sponsored by Logistically[00:01:01] Introducing Martin Stewarthttps://ascii-collab.appCircuit breakerMeetdownState of Elm survey 2022/2023Under MartinSStewart/:elm-audio packageelm-serialize packagelamdera/program-testInteractive UI source maps for LamderaHobby scale: making web apps with minimal fuss by Martin Stewart[00:02:21] A New Year's gift from Thea & MartinElm Town 48 – Making Little Games Like Presents[00:06:52] Discovering Lamdera"Evergreen Elm" by Mario Rogic at Elm Europe 2018[00:09:54] Lego Loco Remake - Take 2https://town-collab.appPer Martin, turns out the "better presentation" on how the netcode in ascii-collab works was not recorded.[00:17:46] Move fast and not break things[00:23:02] elm-serializeMartin Stewart's elm-serialize packageMiniBill's elm-codec package[00:25:47] Performance challengesElm Optimize, Level 2![00:28:56] Building Lamdera tools and working with Mario RogicAaron VonderHaar's elm-program-test[00:42:21] "The real cost of using Lamdera..."[00:45:05] Making MeetdownElm Online Meetup[00:48:37] Using Lamdera professionallyUsing Lamdera professionally[00:53:17] elm-mapMartin Stewart's elm-mapJakub Hampl's elm-mapbox[00:56:44] WebGLelm-explorations/webglElm 3D Pool Game Collaboration with Andrey KuzminIan Mackenzie's elm-3d-scene[01:01:41] Realiahttps://realia.se/[01:07:03] Elm MarketElm Camp[01:10:52] State of State of ElmIt's ready! https://state-of-elm.com/[01:18:07] PicksMartin's PicksMiniBill's elm-interpreterJim Carlson's Elm NotebookJared's PicksLamdera docsElm Online Meetup

From hammock sex in the woods to rodeo sex in the grandstand (yes please), we heard your juicy "everything but the bedroom" sex stories this week and they did not disappoint! Logistically the hammock sounds hard but one of us would be up for trying! All of your crazy stories are from before marriage. It's like we aren't care free anymore. We should never let go of dry humping. It could save a lot of marriages! Let us know if you have any crazy stories after 20 years of marriage! Tune in this week but don't forget your headphones!!Want our podcasts sent straight to your phone? Text us the word "Podcast" to +1 (917) 540-8715 and we'll text you the new episodes when they're released!Tune in for new Cat & Nat Unfiltered episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday!Follow @catandnatunfiltered on Instagram: https://instagram.com/catandnatunfilteredOur new book "Mom Secrets" is now available! Head to www.catandnat.ca/book to grab your autographed copy! Come see us LIVE on tour!! To see a full list of cities and dates, go to https://catandnattour.com.Become a member of The Common Parent for the parenting resources and support you need for just $5.99/month or $59.99/year: https://thecommonparent.comFollow The Common Parent over on Instagram: https://instagram.com/thecommonparentMake sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel for our new cooking show and our #momtruth videos: https://bitly.com/catnatyoutubeCheck out our Amazon Lives here: https://bitly.com/catnatamazonliveOrder TAYLIVI here: https://taylivi.comGet personalized videos from us on Cameo: https://cameo.com/catandnatCome hang with us over on https://instagram.com/catandnat all day long.And follow us on https://tiktok.com/@catandnatofficial! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.