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SailGP racing on Auckland's waterfront will likely be faster than ever. The event's expected to draw more than 25 thousand to Waitematā Harbour across the weekend. An 8,000 seat grandstand has been purpose-built for the event, and a large screen will be up at the Viaduct for those without a ticket. Global Communications Director Nat Fortier says they're debuting new high-speed foils. She says the last speed record was just under 100 kilometres an hour and they're seeing the boats hit over that. D'Arcy catches up with Nat at the media centre on Auckland's waterfront. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Discussing alleged election irregularities with Conservative MLA Peter Milbar. Continuing coverage on the LA wildfires! What's the holdup on the viaducts replacement? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A footbridge linking Auckland's Viaduct to a once-humming restaurant district overlooking the harbour has finally been fixed, after nine months stuck in the upright position. The final tally's not in yet but fixing Wynyard Crossing Bridge is estimated to have cost close to 11 million dollars - more than it cost to build. Some businesses that rely on the bridge to bring them customers want rent reductions from their landlord - the council arm in charge of fixing the bridge. Amy Williams took a walk-about.

Auckland business owners in the CBD are breathing a sigh of relief that a pedestrian bridge connecting Wynyard Quarter to the Viaduct could reopen on Friday. Maia Ingoe has more.

A sigh of relief for businesses at Auckland's Wynyard Quarter. The footbridge between the Viaduct Harbour and Quarter has reopened to pedestrians this morning. It had been closed for repairs since March. The Conservatory owner Tricky Hartley told Heather du Plessis-Allan it's been an extremely tough nine months. He says business has been down 60% since the bridge closed, making the tough winter period even tougher. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take an audio walk through a park in the sky above Manchester. We'll walk a route that spans 130 years of history; where once there were trains now there are plants and pedestrians. We perhaps associate the National Trust with stately homes, grand gardens and stretches of countryside but this episode may make you think again.And how does the Castlefield viaduct link with an iconic structure in a famous British seaside town? Kate Picker from the National Trust is our guide.Our Plant Stories is presented and produced by Sally FlatmanThe music is Fade to Black by Howard LevyMentioned in this episode:Buy Me A Coffee

In this podcast we look at Holborn Viaduct, a small piece of road and a flyover that links the West End with the City of London Join us for it's history....

Who doesn't love hosting a good party? Who hasn't enjoyed the buzz that comes from having people from all over the world heading into town intent on having a good time? Even if you can't afford the price of the tickets to the Rugby World Cup, or through fee for Women's World Cup, or you haven't got a gin palace to head out on the water to get up, close and personal to the America's Cup racing, you can still share in the good times and the positive vibes that are generated when a marquee event is set up in New Zealand. Attention, of course, is now turning to whether New Zealand can mount a defence of the America's Cup and New Zealand waters. Of course we can do it, we've done it before, it's whether there's a willingness to do it. Former Prime Minister and patron of Emirates Team New Zealand Helen Clark says the case for public funding to host a future America's Cup is as strong as when her government was a significant financial backer. Clark's Labour-led coalition backed hosting the 2003 event in Auckland and sponsored the team in Valencia and San Francisco for the 32nd to 34th iterations of the America's Cup. She said it was all-round a hard economic case of what is good for New Zealand. But right now, in this time, can we afford it? And really, when you crunch the numbers, could we even afford it back then? The Government says it's open to a discussion about hosting the Cup in New Zealand, but any government support would need to be assessed against many other competing priorities in these tight economic times and demonstrate clear value for money and economic benefit. When you have got the sort of infrastructure spending that we need, when you've got community groups that are crying out for funding, which has been cut or has been cut back, can you really make a case that hundreds of millions of dollars taxpayer dollars should go to a defence of the America's Cup? How you work out whether it will indeed be profitable depends on which report do you want to commission and which report you want to read. Helen Clark says Barcelona used the hosting of the cup as a catalyst for reviving its economy, and it's absolutely thrilled with the outcome of it. Five years from now, you'll probably read a report saying poor decision. When we last defended the America's Cup, it was extraordinary times. We're in the middle of lockdowns, open for business and then we were not. It was very odd times. And not nearly as many people as organisers had hoped made their way to New Zealand (who can blame them) for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and getting their boats redesigned and rebuilt and refurbed by skilled New Zealand Craftsman. All of the cases made for hosting the America's Cup fell a bit short and a fell a bit flat. And if you look at other countries around the world too, they say it cost them an awful lot, a bit like hosting the Olympics. Conversely, you look at the FIFA Women's World Cup that appears to have been a success, again depending on the reports you read, but it appears to have been a success both in terms of the profile of the sport, support of the sport and turning a buck. In these times, where we've all been told and I've said and you know, that things are tough. Right now, most of us are dealing with the have to haves, not the nice to haves. We're trying to find money for the essentials, the necessaries of life. Not the frilly, gorgeous, good time of fun things of life. Is now the right time to be saying hold it here, because Emirates team New Zealand won a lot of money? They have to have a lot of money. It's an expensive sport. These are expensive sailors. There are a lot of rich men who want the kudos of being the one that won the America's Cup. They're willing to spend billions to do so. And they will pay any price. And I think we've all grown up and got past the whole New Zealand sailors should simply sail for the love of their country. Remember the BlackHearts campaign? Just about tore ZB apart. So it costs and Emirates Team New Zealand will make whoever wants to host it pay through the nose for the privilege of doing so. Is now the right time? Doesn't appear to be. The only thing I'd say in its favour is that we've got all that infrastructure there at the Viaduct. It's not being used. It would be at about 40 percent capacity, which is a damn shame. Everything was built and nobody came because of the extraordinary times. So it would be nice to see that that investment could be used, could be capitalised upon. But right now I would say hosting a defence of the America's Cup would be in the nice to have category, not in the is absolutely imperative that we do so category. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this electrifying episode of Connecting the Dots, I sat down with Jon Jeter—two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, former Washington Post bureau chief, and Knight Fellowship recipient—who pulled no punches as we unraveled the hidden dynamics of America's class war. Drawing from his explosive book Class War in America, Jeter revealed how the elite have masterfully weaponized race to keep the working class fractured and powerless, ensuring they stay on top. He delves into the ways education is rigged to widen inequality, while elite interests tighten their grip on public policy. With gripping personal stories and razor-sharp historical insight, Jeter paints a vivid picture of the struggle between race and class in America and leaves us with a tantalizing vision of a united working-class revolution on the horizon. This is an episode that will shake your understanding of power—and inspire you to see the potential for change.   Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Patreon and YouTube!   Hey everyone, Dr. Wilmer here! If you've been enjoying my deep dives into the real stories behind the headlines and appreciate the balanced perspective I bring, I'd love your support on my Patreon channel. Your contribution helps me keep "Connecting the Dots" alive, revealing the truth behind the news. Join our community, and together, let's keep uncovering the hidden truths and making sense of the world. Thank you for being a part of this journey!   Wilmer Leon (00:00:00): I'm going to quote my guest here. We've been watching for a while now via various social media platforms and mainstream news outlets, the genocide of the Palestinian people, what do the images of a broad swath of Americans, whites and blacks, Latinos, Arabs and Asians, Jews and Catholics and Muslims, and Buddhists shedding their tribal identities and laying it all out on the line to do battle with the aristocrats who are financing the occupation. Slaughter and siege mean to my guest. Let's find out Announcer (00:00:40): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history Wilmer Leon (00:00:46): Converge. Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon, and I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which many of these events take place. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader historic context in which they occur, thus enabling you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode, the issue before us is again, quoting my guest. When the 99% come together to fight for one another rather than against each other is the revolution. Na, my guest is a former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post. His work can be found on Patreon as well as Black Republic Media, and his new book is entitled Class War in America. How The Elite Divide the Nation by asking, are you a worker or are you white? Phenomenal, phenomenal work. John Jeter is my guest, as always, my brother. Welcome back to the show. Jon Jeter (00:02:07): It's a pleasure to be here. Wilmer. Wilmer Leon (00:02:10): So class war in America, how the elites divide the nation by asking, are you a worker or are you white? You open the book with two quotes. One is from the late George Jackson, settle Your Quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation. Understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying, who could be saved that generations more will live. Poor butchered half lives. If you fail to act, do what must be done. Discover your humanity and love your revolution. Why that quote? And then we'll get to the second one. Why that quote, John? Jon Jeter (00:02:50): That quote, really that very succinct quote by the revolutionary, the assassinated revolutionary. George Jackson really explains in probably a hundred words, but it takes me 450 pages to explain, which is that the ruling class, the oligarchs, we call 'em what you want. Somewhere around the Haymarket massacre of 1886, I believe they figured out that the way that the few can defeat the many is to divide the many to pit it against itself, the working class against itself. And so since then, they have a embark on a strategy of pitting the working class against itself largely along, mostly along racial or tribal lines, mostly white versus black. And it has enveloped, the ruling class has enveloped more and more people into whiteness. First it was Italians and Germans and Jews, or Jews really starting after World War II and the Holocaust. And then it was gays and women, and now even blacks themselves have been enveloped in this sort of adjacency to whiteness where everyone sort of gets ahead by beating up, by punching down on black people. And so George Jackson's quote really sort of encapsulates the success that we, the people can have by working together. And I want to be very clear about the enemy is not white people. The enemy is a white identity. (00:04:48): Hungarians and Czech and the Brits and the French and the Italians are not our enemy. They are glorious people who have done glorious things, but the formation of a white identity is really the kryptonite for working class movements in this country. Wilmer Leon (00:05:07): In fact, I'm glad you make that point because I wanted to call attention to the fact that a lot of people listening to this and hear you talk about the Irish or the Poles or the Italians, that in Europe, those were nationalisms, those were not racial constructs. Those were not racial identities. And that it really wasn't until many of them came to America and or post World War ii, that this construct of whiteness really began to take hold as the elite in America understood, particularly post-slavery. That if the poor and the working class whites formed an alliance with the newly freed, formerly enslaved, that that would be a social condition that they would not be able to control. Jon Jeter (00:06:11): It was almost, it was as close to invincible as you could ever see. This coalition, which particularly after slavery, very tenuously, (00:06:24): But many, many whites, particularly those who were newer to the country, Germans and Italians and Irish, who had not formed a white identity, formed a white identity here. As you said in Europe, they were Irish Italians. Germans. One story I think tells the tale, it was a dock workers strike in New Orleans in 1894. I read about this in the book, and the dock workers were segregated, black unions and white unions, but they worked together, they worked in concert, they went on strike for higher wages, and I think a closed shop, meaning that if you worked on the docks, you had to belong to the union and they largely won. And the reason for that is because the bosses, the ship owners tried to separate the two. They would tell the white dock workers, we'll work with you, but we won't work with those N words. (00:07:22): And many of the dock workers at that time had just come over from Europe. So they were like, what are you talking about? He's a worker just like me. I worked right next to him, or he works the doc over from me or the platform over from me. He's working there. So what do you mean you're not going to work with, you're going to deal with all of us? And that ethos, that governing ethos of interracial solidarity was one that really held the day until 20 years later, 20 years later, by which time Jim Crow, which was really an economic and political strategy, had really taken hold. And many of the dock workers, their children had begun to think of themselves as white. Wilmer Leon (00:08:06): In fact, I'm glad you referred to the children because another parallel to this is segregated education. As the framers, and I don't mean of the constitution, but of this culture, wanted to impose this racial caste system, they realized you can't have little Jimmy and little Johnny playing together sitting next to each other in classrooms and then try to impose a system of hierarchy based on phenotype as these children get older. What do you mean I can't play with him? What do you mean I can't play with her? She's my friend. No, not anymore. And so that's one of the things that contributed to this phenotypical ethos separating white children from black children. Jon Jeter (00:09:01): Education has been such a pivotal instrument for the elites, for the oligarchs, for the investor class in fighting this class war. It's not just been an instrument, a tool to divide education in the United States. It's largely intended to reproduce inequality, and it always has been, although obviously many of us, many people in the working class see, there's a tool to get ahead. That's not how the stock class sees it. (00:09:35): But beyond that even it is the investment in education. This is a theme throughout the book from the first chapter to the last basically where education, because it is seen as a tool for uplift by the working class, but by the investment class, it's seen as a tool to divide. And increasingly really since about really the turn of the century, this century, the 21st century, it's been seen as an investment opportunity. So that's why we have all of these school closures and the school privatization effort. It's an investment opportunity. So the problem is that we're fighting a class war. We've always been fighting a class war, but it's something that is seldom mentioned in public discussions in the media, the news or entertainment media, it's seldom mentioned, but schools education, you could make an argument that it is the holy grail of the class war, whoever can capture the educational system because it can become a tool both by keeping it public or I guess making it public now, returning it to public. And so much of it is in private hands by maintaining its public nature, and at the same time using it to reduce inequality as opposed to reproducing inequality Wilmer Leon (00:11:08): And public education and access to those public education dollars is also an element of redistribution of wealth because as access to finance is becoming more challenging, particularly through the neocolonialist idea using public dollars for private sector interest, giving access to those public education dollars to the private sector is another one of the mechanisms that the elite used to redistribute public dollars into private hands. Jon Jeter (00:11:49): One of the things that I discovered and researching this book was the extent to which bonds sold by municipalities, by the government, those bonds are sold to investors. That is more and more since really the Reagan era, because we've shipped manufacturing offshore. So how do you make money if you are invested, if you've got surplus money laying around, how do you make money? You invest it, speculate. Loan tracking essentially is what it is. One of the ways that you can make money. One of the things that you can invest money in is the public sector. So schools become an instrument for finance. And so what we see around the country are schools education becoming an investment vehicle for the rich and they can invest in it and they're paying higher and higher returns. Taxpayers. (00:12:57): You and I, Wilmer, are paying more and more to satisfy our creditors. For as one example, I believe it was in San Diego or a school district near or right outside San Diego, this was about 20 years ago, but they took out a loan to finance public education there, I believe just their elementary schools in that district. And it was something like a hundred million dollars loan just for the daily operations of that school district. And that had a balance due or the money, the interest rate was such that it was going to cost the taxpayers in that district a billion dollars to repay that loan, right? So that is an extreme example. But increasingly what we've seen is public education bonds that are used to pay for the daily operations of our municipalities are the two of the class war are an instrument of combat in the class war because the more that cities practice what we call austerity, what economists call austerity, cutting the budget to the very bare minimum, the more investment opportunities it creates for the rich who then reap that money back. (00:14:15): So they've got a tax cut because they're not paying for the schools upfront, and it becomes an investment opportunity because they're paying for the schools as loans, which they give back exorbitant interest rates, sometimes resembling the interest rates on our credit card. So a lot of this is unseen by the public, but it really is how the class war being waged in the 21st century speculation because our manufacturing sector has been shipped offshore, and that's how we made the elites made their money for more than a century after World War ii, after the agrarian period. So yeah, it's really invisible to the naked eye, but it is where it's the primary battlefield for the class war. Wilmer Leon (00:15:00): The second quote you have is Muriel Rukeyser. The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. And I know that that resonates with you particularly because as a journalist, one who tells stories, why is that quote so significant and relevant to this book? Jon Jeter (00:15:26): This book is really, it took me almost a quarter of my life to write this book from the time that the idea first occurred to me, to the time I finished almost 15 years. And it's evolved over time. But one of the biggest setbacks was just trying to find a publisher. And many publishers, I think, although they did not say this, they objected to the subject matter. And my characterization, I have one quote again from George Jackson where he says, the biggest barrier to the advancement of the working class in America is white racism. So I think they objected to that. But I also faced issues with a few black publishers, one of whom said that after reading the manuscript that it didn't have enough theory. I would say to anyone, any publisher who thinks that theory is better than story probably shouldn't be a publisher. But I also think it's sort of symptomatic of today's, the media today where we don't understand that stories are what connects us to each other, Right? The suffering, the struggle, the triumphs of other people of our ancestors, Wilmer Leon (00:16:48): The reality Of the story Jon Jeter (00:16:51): reality, yes, Wilmer Leon (00:16:52): Juxtaposed to the theoretical. Jon Jeter (00:16:56): That's exactly right. Wilmer Leon (00:16:57): In Fact, Jon Jeter (00:16:59): The application of the theory, Wilmer Leon (00:17:01): I tell my students and when I was teaching public policy that you have to understand the difference between the theoretical and the practical, and that there are a lot of things in policy that in theory make a whole lot of sense until you then have to operationalize that on a daily basis and then have it make real sense. Big difference between the theoretical and the practical. Jon Jeter (00:17:26): No question about it. And you see this over and over again throughout the book, you see examples of, for instance, the application of communist theory. And I'm not advocating for anyone to be a communist, just that there was a very real push by communists in the United States encouraged by communists and the Soviet Union in the 1930s to try to start a worldwide proletarian revolution, the stronghold of which was here in the United States. And so the Scotts Corps boys, nine teenage boys, black boys who were falsely accused of rape, became the testing ground for communism right now, communism. It was something that sparked the imagination of a lot of black people. Very few joined the party, but it sparked the imagination. So you found a lot of blacks who were sympathetic to communism in the thirties and the forties. Wilmer Leon (00:18:21):  Rosa Parks's husband Rosa. Jon Jeter (00:18:23): That's correct. Wilmer Leon (00:18:24): Rosa. Rosa Parks's husband, Rosa Parks, the patron saint of protest politics. Jon Jeter (00:18:31): Yes. Coleman Young, the first black mayor of Detroit. I write about very specifically. It was a thing, right? But it was the application of it. And ultimately, I think most of the blacks, many of the blacks certainly who tried to implement communism would argue not only that they failed, but that communism failed them as well. So I don't, again, not an advocacy for communism, but that idea really did move the needle forward. And I think our future is not in our past. So going forward, we might sort of learn from what happened in the past, and there might be some things we can learn from communism, but I think ultimately it is, as the communist say, dialectical materialism. You can't dip your toe in the same river twice. So it is moving like it's gathering steam and it's not going to be what it was. Although we can take some lessons from the past, from the Scottsboro boys from the 1930s and the 1940s. Wilmer Leon (00:19:29): You write in your prologue quote, I cannot predict with any certainty the quality of that revolution, the one we were talking about in the open, or even it's outcome only that it is imminent for the historical record clearly asserts that the nationwide uprisings on college campuses' prophecy the resumption of hostilities between America's workers and their bosses. I'm going to try and connect the dot here, which may not make any sense, or you may say, Wilmer, that was utterly brilliant. I prefer the latter. Just over the past few days, former President Trump has been suggesting using the military to handle what he calls the enemy from within, because he is saying on election day, if he doesn't win, there will be chaos. And he says, not from foreign actors, but from the radical left lunatics, he says, I think the bigger problem are the people from within. And he says, you may need to use the National Guard, you may need to use the military, because this is going to happen. Now, I know you and Trump aren't talking. You're about two different things. I realize that different with different agendas, but this discussion about nationwide uprisings, and so your thoughts on how you looking at the college protests and what that symbolizes in terms of the discontent within the country and what Trump is, the fear that Trump is trying to sow in the minds relative to the election. Does that make any sense? Jon Jeter (00:21:18): It makes perfect sense. You don't say that about warmer Leon, all that all. Wilmer Leon (00:21:21): Oh, thank you. You're right. Jon Jeter (00:21:22): It makes perfect sense. But no, and actually I would draw a pretty straight line from Trump to what I'm writing about in the book. For instance, Nixon, who was a very smart man, and Trump was not a very smart man, it's just that he used his intelligence for evil. But Richard Nixon was faced with an uprising, a nationwide uprising on college campuses, and he resorted to violence, as we saw with Kent State. Wilmer Leon (00:21:52): Kent State, yes. Jon Jeter (00:21:53): Very intentional. Wilmer Leon (00:21:54): Jackson State, Jon Jeter (00:21:55): Yes, it was Wilmer Leon (00:21:56): Southern University in Louisiana. Jon Jeter (00:21:58): Yes, yes, yes. But Kent State was a little bit of an outlier because it was meant white kids as a shot across the bow to show white kids that if you continue to collaborate with blacks, with the Vietnamese, continue to sympathize with them and rally on their behalf, then you might get exactly what the blacks get and the Vietnamese are getting right. And honestly, in the long term, that strategy probably worked. It did help to divide this insurgency that was particularly activated on college campuses. So what Trump, I think is faced with what he will be faced with if he is reelected, which I think he very well may be, what he's going to be faced with is another insurgency that is centered on college campuses. This time. It's not the Vietnamese, it's the Palestinians, and increasingly every day the Lebanese. But it's the very same dynamic at work, which is this, you have white people on college campuses, particularly when you talk about the college campuses in the Ivy League. (00:23:13): These are kids who are mostly to the manner born. If you think about it, what they're doing is they are protesting their future employer. They're putting it all on the line to say, no, no, no, no, there's something bigger than my career than me working for you. And that is the fate of the Palestinian people. That's very much what happened in the late sixties, early seventies with the Vietnamese. And so Mark Twain is I think perhaps the greatest white man in American history, but one thing he got wrong. I don't think history rhymes. I think it does indeed repeat itself, but I think that's what we're seeing now with these kids on college campuses, that people thought that they dismantled these campus, these encampments all across the nation during the summer, the spring semester, and that when they came back that it would be over squash. (00:24:07): That's not what's happening. They're coming back loaded for bear. These college students, that does not all go well for the establishment, particularly in tandem with other things are going on, which is these nationwide, very likely a very serious economic crisis. Financial crisis is imminent, very likely. And these other barometers of social unrest, police killings of blacks, the cop cities that are being built around the country, environmental issues, what's happening in Gaza that can very much intersect. We're already seeing it. It's intersected with other issues. So there is a very real chance that we're going to see a regrouping of this progressive working class movement. How far it goes, we can't say we don't know. I mean, just because you protest doesn't mean that the oligarch just say, okay, well, you got it, you want, it doesn't happen that way. But what's the saying? You might not win every fight, but you're going to lose every fight that you don't fight. So we have a chance that we got a punch a chance like Michael Spinx with Mike Tyson made, but we got a shot. Wilmer Leon (00:25:26): And to that point, what did Mike Tyson say? Everybody can fight till they get punched in the face. Yeah, Jon Jeter (00:25:32): Everybody's got to plan until they get punched in the nose right Wilmer Leon (00:25:35): Now. So to your point about kids putting everything on the line and the children of the elite, putting it on the line, there was a university, a Bolt Hall, which is the law school at University of California, Berkeley, Steven David Solomon. He wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that the law firm of Winston and Strawn did the right thing when it revoked the job offer of an NYU law student who publicly condemned Israel for the Hamas terrorist attacks. Legal employers in the recruiting process should do what Winston and Strawn did treat these students like the adults they are, if a student endorses hate dehumanization or antisemitism, don't hire 'em. So he was sending a very clear message, protest if you want to, there's going to be a price to pay. Jon Jeter (00:26:30): Yeah, I think those measures actually are counterproductive for the elites. It really sort of rallies and galvanizes. What we saw at Cornell, I'm not sure what happened with this, but a few weeks ago, they were talking about a student activist who was from West Africa, I believe, and the school Cornell was trying to basically repatriate, have them deported. But I think actions like that tend to work against the elite institutions. I hate to say this because I'm not an advocate of it, although I realize it's sometimes necessary violence seems to work best both for the elites and for the working class. And I'm not advocating that, but I'm just saying that historically it has occurred and it has been used by both sides when any student of France, Nan knows that when social movements allow the state to monopolize violence, you're probably going to lose that fight. And I think honestly speaking, that the state understands that violences can be as most effective weapon. People don't want to die, particularly young people. So it becomes sort of a clash between an irresistible force and an immovable object. Again, that's why I say I can't predict what will happen, but I do think we're on the verge of a very real, some very real social upheaval Wilmer Leon (00:27:54): Folks. This is the brilliance of John Jeter, journalist two time Pulitzer Prize finalists. We're talking about his book Class War in America, how the Elites Divide the Nation by asking, are you a worker or are you white? As you can see, I have the book, I've read the book, phenomenal, phenomenal, phenomenal writer. Writer. You write in chapter one, declarations of War. And I love the fact you quote, Sun Tzu, all warfare is based on deception. Jon Jeter (00:28:24): That's Right. Wilmer Leon (00:28:25): You write on the last day of the first leg of his final trip abroad, his president with Donald Trump waiting in the wings, a subdued Barack Obama waxed poetic on the essence of democracy as he toured the Acropolis in Greece. It's here in Athens that so many of our ideas about democracy, our notions of citizenship, our notions of rule of law began to develop. And then you continue. What was left unsaid in Obama's August soliloquy is that while Greece is typically acknowledged by Western scholars as the cradle of democracy, the country could in fact learn a thing or two about governance from its protege across the pond. What types of things do you see that we still could learn from them since we're being told in this election, democracy is on the ballot and all of those rhetorical tactics? Yeah, a minute, a minute, a minute. Especially in the most recent context of Barack Obama helping to set the stage of a Kamala Harris loss and blaming it on black men. Jon Jeter (00:29:43): Yeah, that's exactly what he's doing. He's setting us up to be the scapegoats, Wilmer Leon (00:29:48): One of the does my connecting the dots there. Does that make sense? Jon Jeter (00:29:52): It makes perfect sense. And one of the themes of this book that I guess I didn't want to hammer home too much because it makes me sound too patriotic, but in one sense, what I'm writing about when I talk about the class war, what I'm writing about is this system of racial capitalism, right? Capitalism. Capitalism is exploited. Racial capitalism pits the workers against each other by creating a super exploited class that would be African-Americans and turning one half of the working class against the other half, or actually in the case of the United States, probably 70% against 30% or something like that. Anyway, but the antidote to racial capitalism is racial solidarity, which is a system of governance in which black men are fit to participate in, because we tend to be black men and black women tend to be the most progressive actors, political actors in the United States, the vanguard of the revolution, really, when we've had revolution in this country, we've been leaders of that revolution. And so what I was really trying to lay out with that first chapter where I talk about this interracial coalition in Virginia in the late 1870s, early 1880s, is that this was a century before South Africa created the Rainbow Nation, right? Nelson Mandela's Rainbow Nation, which didn't produce the results that the United States. Wilmer Leon (00:31:32): There was no pot of gold. There was no pot of gold. Jon Jeter (00:31:34): Yeah, not so far, we've seen no sight of it. And Brazil hadn't even freed its slaves when this readjust party emerged in Virginia. And so what I'm saying is that this interracial coalition that we saw most prominently in Virginia, but really all across the nation, we saw these interracial coalitions, political coalitions, were all across the Confederacy after the Civil War, and they had varying degrees of success in redistributing wealth from rich to poor, rich to working class. But the point is that no country has really seen such a dynamic interracial rainbow coalition or racial democracy, such as we've seen here in the United States, both in that period after the Civil War, and also in the period between, say, I would say FDRs election as president in 1930, was that 31, 33? 33. (00:32:36): So roughly about the time of Ronald Reagan, we saw, of course there was racism. We didn't end racism, but there was this tenuous collaboration between white and black workers that redistributed wealth. So that by 1973, at the height of it, the working class wages accounted for more than half of GDP. Now it's about 58%, I'm sorry, 42% that the workers' wages accountant for GDP. So the point I'm making really is that this racial democracy, this racial democracy has served the working class very well in the United States, and by dissipating that racial democracy, it has served the elites very well. So Barack Obama's plea to black men, which is really quite frankly aimed at white men, telling them, showing them, Hey, I've got the money control. His job is to sort of quell this uprising by black men, and he's trying to tell plea with black men to vote for Kamala Harris, knowing that the Democratic Party, particularly since 1992 when Bill Clinton was elected, has not only done nothing for black men, but in fact has sought to compete for white suburban voters, IE, many of them racist has sought to compete with the GOP for white suburban voters (00:34:04): By showing they can be just as hard on black people as the GOP. People think that the 1995, was it 1994, omnibus crime Bill 94, racial 94, the racial disparities were unintended consequences. They weren't unintended at all. They weren't in fact, the point they wanted to show white people, the Democratic Party, bill Clinton, our current president, Joe Biden, and many other whites in Democratic party want to show whites, no, no, no, no. We got these Negroes in check. We can keep them in control just like the GOP can. And that continues to be the unofficial unstated policy today, which is why Kamala Harris says, I'm not going to do anything, especially for black people. It's why, for instance, nothing has changed legislatively since George Floyd was lynched before our eyes four years ago. Absolutely nothing has changed. That's an accent that is by design. So there's some very real connections that could be made. There's a straight line that can be made from the read adjuster party in Virginia in the 1880s, which had some real successes in redistributing wealth from rich to the workers and to the poor. And it was an interracial collaboration to Barack Obama appearing, pleading with black men to come vote for Kamala Harris, despite the fact she's done nothing for black men or for black people. Wilmer Leon (00:35:31): And to your earlier point, offering nothing but rhetoric and the opportunity economy where everybody, what in the world is, how does that feed the bulldog? So we've gone from, at least in terms of what they're, I believe, trying to do with black politics. We've gone from a politics of demand. We've gone from a politics of accountability to just a politics of promises and very vague. And this isn't in any way, shape or form trying to convince people that Donald Trump is any better. No, that's not what this conversation is about. But it's about former President Obama coming to a podium and telling black men how admonishing black men, how dare you consider this. But my question is, well, what are the specific policies that Vice President Harris is offering that she can also pass and pay for that are going to benefit the community? Because that's what this is supposed to be about, policy output. Jon Jeter (00:36:55): And that's the one thing that's not going to happen until the working class, we, the people decide, and I don't know what the answer's going to be, if it's going to be a third party, if it's going to be us taking control of the Democratic Party at the grassroots level, I don't know what it's going to be. But the philosophical underpinnings of both political parties is black suffering, right? Black suffering is what greases the wheel, the wheel, the political wheel, the economic wheel of the United States, the idea that you can isolate blacks and our suffering. What Reagan did, what Reagan began was a system of punishing blacks in the workplace, shipping those jobs overseas, which Reagan began, and very slowly, Clinton is the one who really picked up the pace, Wilmer Leon (00:37:44): The de-industrialization of America. Jon Jeter (00:37:47): The de-industrialization of America was based on black suffering. We were the first, was it last hired? First fired. And so we were the ones who lost those jobs initially, and it just snowballed, right? We lost those jobs. And think about when we saw the crack epidemic. Crack is a reflection of crises, (00:38:12): Right? Social crises. So we saw this thing snowball, really, right? But you, in their mind, you can isolate the suffering until you can't. What do I mean by that? Well, if you have just a very basic understanding of the economy, you understand that if you rob 13% of your population buying power, you robbed everybody of buying power, right? I mean, who's going to buy your goods and services if we no longer have buying power? We don't have jobs that pay good wages, we have loans that we can't repay. How does that sustain a workable economy? And maybe no one will remember this, but you've probably heard of Henry Ford's policy of $5 a day that was intended to sustain the economy with buying one thing, the one thing Wilmer Leon (00:39:07):  wait a minute, so that his workers, his assembly line automobile workers could afford to buy the product they were making. There are those who will argue that one of the motivations for ending slavery was the elite looked at the industrialists, looked at this entire population of people and said, these can be consumers. These people are a drag on the economy. If we free them, they can become consumers. Jon Jeter (00:39:45): You don't have to be a communist to understand that capitalism at its best. It can work for a long time, for a sustained period of time. It can work very well for a majority of the people. If the consumers have buying power. We don't have that anymore. We're a nation of borrowers. Wilmer Leon (00:40:07): It's the greed of the capitalists that makes capitalism consumptive, and there's another, the leviathan, all of that stuff. Jon Jeter (00:40:19): Yes. And again, black suffering is at the root of this nation's failure. We have plunged into this dark hole because they sought first to short circuit our income, our resources, but it's affected the entire economy. And the only way to rebuild it, if you want to rebuild a capitalist economy, and that's fine with me, the only way you can rebuild is to restore buying power for a majority of the Americans. As we saw during the forties, the fifties, particularly after the war, we saw this surge in buying power, which created, by the way, the greatest achievement of the industrial age, which was the American middle class. And that was predicated again on racial democracy. Blacks participating in the democracy. Wilmer Leon (00:41:10): You mentioned black men and women tended to be incredibly progressive, and that black men and women were the vanguard of the revolution. What then is the problem with so many of our black institutions that, particularly when you look at our HBCUs that make so many of them, anything but progressive, Jon Jeter (00:41:42): That's a real theme of the book. This thing called racial capitalism has survived by peeling off more and more people. At first, it was the people who came through Ellis Island, European Central Europeans, Hungarians checks, and I have someone in the book I'm quoting, I think David Roediger, the labor historian, famous labor historian, where he quoted a Serbian immigrant, I think in the early 1900's , saying, the first thing you learn is you don't wanna be, that the blacks don't get a fair chance, meaning that you don't want to be anything like them. You don't want to associate with them. And that was a very powerful thing. That's indoctrination. But they do. They peel off one layer after another. One of the most important chapters in the book, I think was the one that begins with the execution of the Rosenbergs, who were the Rosenbergs. Ethel and Julius Rosenbergs were communists, or at least former communists who probably did, certainly, Julius probably did help to pass nuclear technology to the Soviet Union in the late forties, early fifties. (00:42:52): At best. It probably sped up the Russians. Soviet Union's ability to develop the bomb sped up by a year, basically. That's the best that it did. So they had this technology already. Ethel Rosenberg may have typed up the notes. That's all she probably did. And anyway, the state, the government, the US government wanted to make an example out of them. And so they executed them and they executed Ethel Rosenberg. They wanted her to turn against her husband, which would've been turning against her country, her countryman, right? She realized that she wouldn't do it. I can tell you, Ethel Rosenberg was every bit as hard as Tupac. She was a bad woman. Wilmer Leon (00:43:40): But was she as hard as biggie? Jon Jeter (00:43:41): I dunno, that whole east coast, west coast thing, I dunno. But that was a turning point in the class where, because what it was intended to do, or among the things it was intended to do, was the Jews were coming out the Holocaust. The Jews were probably, no, not probably. They certainly were the greatest ally blacks. Many of the communists who helped the Scotsboro boys in the 1930s, and they were communists. Many of them were Jews, right? It was no question about, because the Jews didn't see themselves as white. Remember, Hitler attacked them because they were non-white because they were communists. That's why he attacked them. And that was certainly true here, where there was a very real collusion between Jewish communists and blacks, and it was meant execution of the Rosenbergs was meant to send a signal to the working class, to the Jewish community, especially. You can continue to eff around with these people if you want right, Wilmer Leon (00:44:43): but you'll wind up like em. Jon Jeter (00:44:44): Yeah. Yeah. And at the same time, you think right after the Rosenbergs execution, this figure emerged named Milton Friedman, right? Milton Friedman who said, Hey, wait a minute. This whole brown versus Board of Education, you don't have to succumb to that white people. You can send your kids to their own schools or private schools and make the state pay for it. So very calculated move where the Jews became white, basically, not all of them. You still have, and you still have today, as we see with the protest against Israel, the Jewish community is still very progressive as a very progressive wing and are still our allies in a lot of ways. But many of them chose to be white. The same thing has happened ironically, with black people, right? There is a segment of the population that's represented by a former president, Barack Obama, by Kamala Harris, by the entire Congressional black office that has been offered, that has been extended, this sort of olive branch of prosperity. (00:45:40): If you help us keep these Negroes down, you can have some of this too. Like the scene in Trading Places where Eddie Murphy is released from jail. He's sitting in the backseat with these two doctors and they're like, well, you can go home if you want to. He's got the cigar and the snifter of cognac, no believe I can hang out with you. Fell a little bit longer, right? That's what you see happening now with a lot of black people, particularly the black elite, where they say, no, I think I can hang out with you a little bit longer. So they've turned against us. Wilmer Leon (00:46:13): Port Tom Porter calls that the NER position. Jon Jeter (00:46:17): Yes. Yes. Wilmer Leon (00:46:19): And for those that may not hear the NER, the near position that Mortimer and what was the other brother's name? i Jon Jeter (00:46:28): I Can't remember. I can see their faces, Wilmer Leon (00:46:30): Right? That they have been induced and they have been brought into this sense of entitlement because they are near positions of power. And I think a perfect example of that is the latest election in New York and in St. Louis where you've had, where APAC bragged publicly, we're going to invest $100 million into these Democratic primary elections, and we are going to unseat those who we believe to be two progressive anti-Israel and Cori Bush in St. Louis and Bowman, Jamal Bowman in New York were two of the most notable victims of that. And in fact, I was just having this conversation with Tom earlier today, and that is that nobody seemed to complain. I don't remember the Black caucus, anybody in the black caucus coming out. That article came out, I want to say in April of this year, and they did not say a mumbling word about, what do you mean you're about to interfere in our election? But after Cori Bush lost, now she's out there talking about APAC, I'm coming after your village. Hey, home, girl. That's a little bit of aggression, a whole lot too late. You just got knocked out. (00:48:19): Just got knocked the F out. You are laying, you are laying on the canvas, the crowd's headed to the exits, and you're looking around screaming, who hit me? Who hit me? Who hit me? That anger should have been on the front end talking about, oh, you all going to put in a hundred million? Well, we going to get a hundred million and one votes. And it should have been exposed. Had it been exposed for what it was, they'd still be in office. Jon Jeter (00:48:50): And to that point, and this is very interesting. Now, Jamal Bowman, I talked to some black activists in New York in his district, and they would tell you we never saw, right? We had these press conferences where we're protesting police violence under Mayor Eric Adams, another black (00:49:11): Politician, and we never saw him. He didn't anticipate. In fact, one of them says she's with Black Lives Matter, I believe she says, we called him when it was announced that APAC was backing this candidate. He said, what can we do? Said they never heard back. Right? Cori Bush, to her credit, is more from the movement. She was a product of Michael Brown. My guess is she will be back, right? That's my guess. Because she has a lot of support from the grassroots. She probably, if anyone can defeat APAC money as Cori Bush, although she's not perfect either. Wilmer Leon (00:49:44): But my point is still, I think she fell into the trap. Jon Jeter (00:49:51): No question. No question. No question. No, I don't disagree at all. And that again, is that peeling off another layer to turn them against this radical black? That's what it really is. It's a radical black political tradition that survived slavery. It's still here, right? It's just that they're constantly trying to suppress that. Wilmer Leon (00:50:10): And another element of this, and I'm trying to remember the sister that they did this to in Georgia, Congresswoman, wait a minute, hang on. Time out. Cynthia McKinney. The value of having a library, Cynthia McKinney. (00:50:31): Most definitely! (00:50:33): They did the same thing. How the US creates S*hole countries. Cynthia McKinney, they did the same thing to her. So it's not as though they had developed a new strategy. It's that it worked against Cynthia and they played it again, and we let it happen. Jon Jeter (00:50:57): Real democracy can immunize these politicians though, from that kind of strategy. Wilmer Leon (00:51:01): Absolutely. Absolutely. In chapter six, the Battle on the Bay, you talk about 1927, you talk about this 47-year-old ironworker, John Norris, who buys this flat, and then the depression hits and he loses everything. You talk about Rose Majeski, Jon Jeter (00:51:24): I think I Wilmer Leon (00:51:26): Managed to raise her five children. You talk about the Depression. The Harlem Renaissance writer, Langston Hughes wrote, brought everybody down a peg or two, and the Negro had but few pegs to fall. Travis Dempsey lost his job selling to the Chicago defender. Then you talk about a gorgeous summer day, Theodore Goodlow driving a truck and a hayride black people on a hayride, and someone falls victim to a white man running into the hayride. And his name was John Jeter. John with an H. Yours has no H Jon Jeter (00:52:13): Legally it does. Wilmer Leon (00:52:14): Oh, okay. Okay, okay. All right. Anyway, so you make a personal familiar connection to some of this. Elaborate, Jon Jeter (00:52:26): My uncle, who was a teenager at the time, I can't remember exactly how old he played in the Negro Leagues, actually, Negro baseball leagues was on this hayride. And I know the street. I'm very familiar with. The street. Two trucks can't pass one another. It's just too narrow, and it's like an aqueduct. So it's got walls there to keep you. Oh, (00:52:52): Viaduct. I'm sorry. Yeah. Not an auc. Yeah, thank you. Public education. So basically what happened is my uncle had his legs sort of out the hayride, like he's a teenager, and this car came along, another truck came along and it sheared his legs off, killed him. I don't think my father ever knew the story. I think my father went to his grave not knowing the story, but we did some research after his death, me and my sister and my brother, my younger brother. And there was almost a riot at the hospital when my uncle died, because the belief, I believe they couldn't quite say it in the black newspaper at the time, but the belief was that this white man had done it intentionally, right? He wasn't charged, and black people were very upset. So it was an act of aggression, very much, very similar to what we see now happening all over the country with these acts of white, of aggression by white men, basically young white men who are angry about feeling they're losing their racial privileges or racial entitlement. (00:53:52): So anyway, to make the story short, I was named after my uncle, my father, my mother named me after my uncle, but I think it was 1972. I would've been seven years old. And me and my father were at a farmer's market in Indianapolis where I grew up. And this old man at this time, old man, I mean doting in a brown suit, I'll never forget this in a brown suit. He comes up to us and he just comes up to my father and he holds his hand, shakes his hand, and I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And my father's said, no, it's okay. You didn't know. It wasn't your fault. Nobody blamed you. And come to find out that he was the driver of that hay ride, right? I think a dentist at the time, he was the driver of that hayride in which my uncle was killed. (00:54:38): And he had felt bad about it, I guess, the rest of his days. So yeah, it's really interesting how my life, or at least the lives of my parents and my grandparents, how it intersects with this story of the class war. And it does in many, many aspects. It does. And I suspect that's true of most people, I hope, who will read the book, that they will find their own lives and their own history intersecting with this class war. Because this class war is comprehensive. It's hard to escape from it. It is all about the class war to paraphrase Fred Hampton. And yeah, that story really kind of moved me in a lot of ways because I had personal history, personal connection. Wilmer Leon (00:55:25): You mentioned when you just said that there was almost this riot at the hospital. What a lot of people now today don't realize is how many of those incidents occurred during those times. And we know very little, if anything about 'em, we were raising hell. So for example, you listened to some kids today was, man, if I had to been back there, I wouldn't have been no slaves. I'd have been out there kicking ass and taking names. Well, but implicit in that is a lack of understanding that folks were raising hell, 1898 in Greenwood, South Carolina, one of my great uncles was lynched in the Phoenix Riot. Black people tried to vote, fight breaks out, white guy gets shot, they round up the usual suspects, Jon Jeter (00:56:23): Right Wilmer Leon (00:56:23): Of whom was my great uncle. Some were lynched, some were shot at the Rehoboth Church in the parking lot of the Rehoboth Church, nonetheless. And that was the week before the more famous Wilmington riot. It was one week before the Wilmington Riot. And you've got the dcom lunch counters. And I mean, all of these history is replete with all of these stories of our resistance. And somehow now we've lost the near position. We've lost. We've lost that fight. Jon Jeter (00:57:02): We don't understand, and I mean this about all of us, but particularly African Americans, we don't understand. We once were warriors. And so one of the things I talk about in the book I write about in the book is the red summer of 1919. Many people are familiar with 1919, the purges that were going on. Basically this industrial upheaval. And the white elites were afraid that blacks were going to sort of lead this union labor organizing movement. And so there were these riots all across the country of whites attacking blacks. But what people don't understand is that the brothers, back then, many of them who had participated in World War, they were like Fred Hampton, it takes two to tango, right? And they were shooting back. And in fact, to end that thought, some of these riots, which weren't really riots, they were meant to be massacre, some of these, they had scouts who went into the black community to see almost to see their vulnerability. And a few times the White Scouts came back and said, no, we don't wanna go in there. We better leave them alone. Wilmer Leon (00:58:12): I was looking over here on my bookcase, got, oh, here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Red summer, the summer of 1919, and the Awakening of Black America. Yeah, yeah. Jon Jeter (00:58:24): I've got that book. I've got that same book. Yep. Wilmer Leon (00:58:26): Okay, so I've got a couple others here. Death in the Promised Land, the Tulsa Race Riot in 1921, and see what a lot of people don't know about Tulsa is after the alleged encounter in the elevator Jon Jeter (00:58:44): Elevator, right! Wilmer Leon (00:58:45): Right? That young man went home, went to the community, went back to, and when the folks came in, the community, they didn't just sit idly by and let this deal go down. That's why, one of the reasons why I believe, I think I have this right, that it got to the tension that it did because it just came an all out fight. Jon Jeter (00:59:12): Oh yeah, Oh yeah! Wilmer Leon (00:59:12): We fought back Jon Jeter (00:59:14): tooth and nail. Wilmer Leon (00:59:16): We fought back, Jon Jeter (00:59:16): Tooth and nail. Yeah, no, definitely. Wilmer Leon (00:59:18): We fought back. So Brother John Jeter, when someone is done reading class War in America, how the elites divided the nation by asking, are you a worker or are you white? And I'm reading it backwards anyway, what are the three major points that you want someone to take away from reading? And folks I've read it, it's a phenomenal, phenomenal. In fact, before you answer that question, let me give this plug. I suggest that usually when I recommend a book, I try to recommend a compliment to it. And I would suggest that people get John Jeter class war in America and then get Dr. Ronald Walters "White Nationalism, Black Interests." Jon Jeter (01:00:13): Oh yeah. Wilmer Leon (01:00:14): And read those two, I Think. Jon Jeter (01:00:18): Oh, I love that. I love being compared to Ron Walters, the great Ron Walters, Wilmer Leon (01:00:23): And I would not be where I am and who I am. He played a tremendous role in Dr. Wilmer Leon. I have a PhD because of him. Jon Jeter (01:00:33): He is a great man. I interviewed him a few times. Wilmer Leon (01:00:36): Yeah, few. So while you're answering that question, I'm going to, so what are the two or three things that you want the reader to walk away from this book having a better understanding of? Jon Jeter (01:00:47): Well, we almost end where we begin. The first thing is Fred Hampton. It is a class war gda is what he said, right? It's a class war. But that does not mean that you can put class above race if you really want to understand the battle, the fight, Wilmer Leon (01:01:09): Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Lemme interrupt you. There was a question I wanted to ask you, and I forgot. Thomas Sowell, the economist Thomas Sowell. And just quickly, because to your point about putting class above race, I wanted to get to the Thomas Sowell point, and I almost forgot it. So in your exposition here, work Thomas, Sowell into your answer. Jon Jeter (01:01:30): Yeah, Thomas. Sowell, and I think a lot of people, particularly now you see with these young, mostly white liberals, although some blacks like Adolf Reed, the political scientists, Adolf Reed posit that it's class above race, that the issues racial and antagonisms should be subordinate to the class issue. Overall, universal ideas and programs, I would argue you can't parse one from the other, that they are connected in a way that you can't separate them. That yes, it is a class issue, but they've used race to weaken the working class to pit it against the itself. So you can't really parse the two and understand the battle that we have in front of us. The other thing I would say too, because like the Panthers would say, I hate the oppressor. I don't hate white people. And it really is a white identity. But as George Jackson said, and I quote him in the book, white racism is the biggest barrier to a united left in United States. That which is true when he wrote it more than 50 years ago, (01:02:43): It was true 50 years before that is true today. It is white racism. That is the problem. And once whites can, as we see happening, we do see it happening with these young, many of them Jewish, but really whites of all from all walks of life are forfeiting their racial privileges to rally, to advocate for the Palestinians. So that's a very good sign that something is stirring within our community. And the third thing I would say is, I'm not optimistic, right? Because optimism is dangerous. Something Barack Obama should have learned talking about the audacity of hope, he meant optimism and optimism is not what you need. But I do think there's reason for hope, these young students on the college campuses who are rallying the, I think the very real existential threat posed to the duopoly by the Democratic Party, by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden's complicity in this genocide. I think there's a very real possibility that the duopoly is facing an existential threat. People are understanding that the enemy is, our political class, is our elite political class that is responsible for this genocide that we are seeing in real time. (01:04:03): That's Never happened before. So I would say the three things, it is a class for white racism is the biggest barrier to a united left or a united working class in this country. And third, there is reason to hope that we might be able to reorganize. And in fact, history suggests that we will organize very soon, reorganize very soon. There might be a dark period in between that, but that we will reorganize. And that this time, I hope we understand that we need to fight against this white racism, which unfortunately, whites give up that privilege. History has shown whites give up that privilege of being white, work with us, collaborate with us. But they return, as we saw beginning with Ronald Reagan, they return to this idea of a white identity, which is really a scab. Wilmer Leon (01:04:50): Well, in fact, Dr. King told us in where we go from here, chaos or community, he said, be wary of the white liberal. He said, because they are opposed to the brutality of the lash, but they do not support equality. That was from where we go from here, folks. John Jeter class War in America, how the elites divide the nation by asking, are you a worker or are you white? After you read that, then get white nationalism, black interests, conservative public policy in the black community by my mentor, Dr. The late great Dr. Ronald Walters, and I mentioned the Dockum drugstore protests. He was Dr. Ron Walters was considered to be the grandfather of, Jon Jeter (01:05:40): I didn't know that Wilmer Leon (01:05:41): of the sit-in movement. Jon Jeter (01:05:42): Did not know (01:05:43): The Dockum lunch counter protests in Wichita, Kansas. He helped to organize before the folks in North Carolina took their lead from the lunch counter protest that he helped. (01:06:01): I did not know that. Wilmer Leon (01:06:02): Yes, yes, yes, yes. Jon Jeter (01:06:03): I did not know that. Wilmer Leon (01:06:04): Alright, so now even I taught John Jeter something today. Now. Now that's a day. That's a day for you. John Jeter, my dear brother. I got to thank you as always for joining me today. Jon Jeter (01:06:16): Thank you, brother. It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure. Wilmer Leon (01:06:19): Folks, thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wimer Leon, and stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe, lie a review, share the show, follow us on social media. You'll find all the links to the show below in the description. And remember that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Because talk without analysis is just chatter. And we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. And folks, get this book. Get this book for the holidays. Get this book. Did I say get the book? Because you need to get the book. We don't chatter here on connecting the dots. See you all again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Woman Leon. Y'all have a great one. Peace. I'm out Announcer (01:07:15): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.  

David Nyika claims he feels like a different boxer after over two years under trainer Noel Thornberry.  The Kiwi cruiserweight's set to fight American Tommy Karpency in Auckland tomorrow night, after original opponent Aussie Blake Caparello tested positive for elevated testosterone levels 10 days out from the fight.  Nyika says he's reverted to his natural strengths, notably endurance and the ability to break opponents down.   D'Arcy Waldegrave catches up with former All Black Liam Messam who is fighting on the undercard.   LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An opium den on the first floor? Prison cells in the basement? The Viaduct has seen all sorts of strange and unusual activity over the ages. There appear to be ghosts here at the Tavern even attracting the likes of the Ghost Club to investigated here. Join Anee & Renata to discover what resides in the Cellar of this most haunted spot in the city of London. The spirits are calling! The Terror of the Viaduct Tavern - A True Hauntings Podcast SUPPORT THE ADVERTISERS THAT SUPPORT THIS SHOW This Show is Sponsored by BetterHelp - Visit www.BetterHelp.com/P60 for 10% off your first month. Mint Mobile - To get your new wireless plan for just15 bucks a month, and get the plan shipped to your door for FREE, go to www.MintMobile.com/P60 Rocket Money - Start saving money and reclaim control over your finances with www.RocketMoney.com/P60 Haunted Magazine - https://bit.ly/hauntedmagazine Tarot Readings by Winnie - https://www.darknessradio.com/lotus-love-tarot Follow Anne and Renata: Facebook: @AnneAndRenata Instagram: @AnneAndRenata YouTube: @AnneAndRenata TikTok: @AnneAndRenata Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Flying Scotsman crash report – the Rail Accident Investigation Branch releases its findings into last September's collision at the Strathspey Railway, which injured two people…. We speak to recently-retired HM Chief Inspector of Railway Ian Prosser CBE – and I ask him for his views on West Coast Railways and the Jacobite steam train And… Britain's longest railway viaduct deck is completed as Richard witnesses the final segment being put into place on HS2's Colne Valley viaduct Membership: If you want to see even more from Green Signals, including exclusive content, become a member and support the channel further too. YouTube - ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@GreenSignals/join⁠ Patreon - ⁠https://www.patreon.com/GreenSignals⁠ Green Signals: Website - ⁠http://www.greensignals.org⁠ Newsletter - ⁠http://www.greensignals.org/#mailing-list⁠ Follow: X (Twitter) - ⁠https://twitter.com/greensignallers⁠ LinkedIn - ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/green-signals-productions-ltd⁠ Instagram - ⁠https://instagram.com/greensignallers⁠ Credits: Presenters - Nigel Harris (@railnigel on X) & Richard Bowker CBE (@SRichardBowker). General Manager: Stef Foster (@stefatrail)

fWotD Episode 2682: Wolverton Viaduct Welcome to Featured Wiki of the Day, your daily dose of knowledge from Wikipedia’s finest articles.The featured article for Saturday, 7 September 2024 is Wolverton Viaduct.Wolverton Viaduct is a railway bridge carrying the West Coast Main Line over the River Great Ouse to the north of Wolverton, part of Milton Keynes, in south-eastern England. Built in 1838 for the London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) to the design of Robert Stephenson, it was the largest viaduct on the L&BR's route. It is in the centre of Wolverton Embankment, itself the largest on the line. It has six brick arches and covers a distance of 660 feet (200 metres), reaching a maximum height of 57 feet (17 metres) above the river, and terminating in substantial abutments which contain decorative arches. The viaduct and embankment feature in drawings by John Cooke Bourne. Several contemporary commentators likened Stephenson's bridges to Roman aqueducts. Some modern engineers and railway historians have suggested that Wolverton Viaduct is not as innovative or impressive as some that followed but nonetheless praised its visual impact.The cutting caught fire during construction and suffered from slips and settlement problems for several years. The viaduct was widened to take four tracks in the 1880s with a blue-brick extension, in contrast to the red-brick original; the new structure was not bonded to the original and the divide can be clearly seen from underneath. Masts for overhead electrification were added in the 1950s but otherwise the bridge is little changed since it was built. It has common features with several other L&BR viaducts and is now a Grade II listed building.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:55 UTC on Saturday, 7 September 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Wolverton Viaduct on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm neural Emma.

Summer gardening reaches it's peak this month as Peter Brown and Chris Day discuss the latest stories in the world of horticulture, must-visit events and a run-down of those essential tasks to keep your garden productive and colourful in the weeks to come. What's on 31st July - 4th August: RHS Garden Hyde Hall Flower Show, Essex. 2 - 3rd August: Taunton Flower Show, Somerset.Until 4th August: 2024 Big Butterfly Count – have you got involved yet? There's still time!3 - 11th August: Singapore Garden Festival at Suntec, Singapore. 9 - 10th August: Shrewsbury Flower Show, Shropshire. 15 - 18th August: Southport Flower Show at Victoria Park, Southport. 16 - 18th August: RHS Garden Rosemoor Flower Show, Devon. 30th August - 1st September: BBC Gardeners' World Autumn Fair at Audley End House & Gardens, Essex. NewsNew YouTube short film filmed at the RHS Urban Show in May featuring Cloudscape and creating 7 amazing gardens. Trees for bees at Wakehurst Wakehurst is using citizen science to help discover the trees most favoured by pollinators. A unique flower shaped Cyclamen Illusia picks up top New Houseplant Award. RHS Tatton Park Show celebrates its 25th anniversary by actively promoting awards for new designers, plants people and contractors aged 31 or over. Scottish topiary artist wins major award for their Moby Dick inspired design. Gardeners urged not to plant or purchase Rhodendron ponticum as The Woodland Trust says its invasive nature is creating problems. Native vegetation does no impact insect biodiversity in small urban gardens. Rare ‘Puya sapphire tower' blooms outdoors in Scotland for the first time. Dianthus breeding specialist Whetman Pink changes hands. War against poaching succulent plants in South Africa. Manchester's Castlefield aerial garden Viaduct gets green light to develop from National Trust. OBE awarded to Horatio's Garden founder Dr Olivia Chapple. Rittershausen family orchid nursery celebrate 75 years. Dr John Grimshaw appointed Editor-in-Chief of Curtis's Botanic magazine. Head of horticulture at Garden Organics and former Blue Peter gardener Chris Collins has been named a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Horticulture. Natural History Gardens are now open and free to visit. Olympic Dahlias shine at Paris 2024 games. The 2025 rose of the year is announced. Plants, and product mentions: Hardy geraniums, Chrysanthemum, Lavender, Lupins, Delphiniums, Blueberries, Strawberry, Wisteria Amethyst Falls, Leeks, Potato/Tomato blight proection, Taylors Seed Potatoes for growing for Christmas, Sow the seeds of Basil, Borage, Dill and Fennel, Mint. Summer pruning top fruit trees, dahlias, Lilies and Gladioli staking and feeding. Children seed sowing projects for the school holidays. Cut flowers from the garden. Continue with slug, snails and earwig control. Miracle-Gro, Tomato fertiliser, garden twine and canes. Our thanks to Chiltern Music Therapy for supplying the music. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hugo speaks with Shreya Shankar, a researcher at UC Berkeley focusing on data management systems with a human-centered approach. Shreya's work is at the cutting edge of human-computer interaction (HCI) and AI, particularly in the realm of large language models (LLMs). Her impressive background includes being the first ML engineer at Viaduct, doing research engineering at Google Brain, and software engineering at Facebook. In this episode, we dive deep into the world of LLMs and the critical challenges of building reliable AI pipelines. We'll explore: The fascinating journey from classic machine learning to the current LLM revolution Why Shreya believes most ML problems are actually data management issues The concept of "data flywheels" for LLM applications and how to implement them The intriguing world of evaluating AI systems - who validates the validators? Shreya's work on SPADE and EvalGen, innovative tools for synthesizing data quality assertions and aligning LLM evaluations with human preferences The importance of human-in-the-loop processes in AI development The future of low-code and no-code tools in the AI landscape We'll also touch on the potential pitfalls of over-relying on LLMs, the concept of "Habsburg AI," and how to avoid disappearing up our own proverbial arseholes in the world of recursive AI processes. Whether you're a seasoned AI practitioner, a curious data scientist, or someone interested in the human side of AI development, this conversation offers valuable insights into building more robust, reliable, and human-centered AI systems. LINKS The livestream on YouTube (https://youtube.com/live/hKV6xSJZkB0?feature=share) Shreya's website (https://www.sh-reya.com/) Shreya on Twitter (https://x.com/sh_reya) Data Flywheels for LLM Applications (https://www.sh-reya.com/blog/ai-engineering-flywheel/) SPADE: Synthesizing Data Quality Assertions for Large Language Model Pipelines (https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.03038) What We've Learned From A Year of Building with LLMs (https://applied-llms.org/) Who Validates the Validators? Aligning LLM-Assisted Evaluation of LLM Outputs with Human Preferences (https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.12272) Operationalizing Machine Learning: An Interview Study (https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.09125) Vanishing Gradients on Twitter (https://twitter.com/vanishingdata) Hugo on Twitter (https://twitter.com/hugobowne) In the podcast, Hugo also mentioned that this was the 5th time he and Shreya chatted publicly. which is wild! If you want to dive deep into Shreya's work and related topics through their chats, you can check them all out here: Outerbounds' Fireside Chat: Operationalizing ML -- Patterns and Pain Points from MLOps Practitioners (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zB6ESFto_U) The Past, Present, and Future of Generative AI (https://youtu.be/q0A9CdGWXqc?si=XmaUnQmZiXL2eagS) LLMs, OpenAI Dev Day, and the Existential Crisis for Machine Learning Engineering (https://www.youtube.com/live/MTJHvgJtynU?si=Ncjqn5YuFBemvOJ0) Lessons from a Year of Building with LLMs (https://youtube.com/live/c0gcsprsFig?feature=share) Check out and subcribe to our lu.ma calendar (https://lu.ma/calendar/cal-8ImWFDQ3IEIxNWk) for upcoming livestreams!

Glenfinnan Viaduct, one of the world's most iconic railway viaducts, is having major repair work carried out. The Director of Engineering for Scotland's railway talks to us about repairs to the iconic structure on the route of the Jacobite Steam Train The Government launches its first piece of railway legislation in double quick time – but we ask where (Shadow) Great British Railways has got to? A vast number of train tickets on Britain's railway are sold by third parties. We speak with Anthony Smith, the new Chair of the Independent Rail Retailers Association about the opportunities and challenges in the sector. In good news, HS2's Old Oak Common station reaches a major milestone – and the head of the project tells us all about it! And Nigel gets all misty eyed over 1970's Prog Rock.......

Transport Infrastructure Ireland has been asked to carry out a study to establish if a rapid bus transit system could be set up in East Cork due to continuing traffic congestion along the N25 We hear about the Healthy Age Friendly Homes initiative a first-of-its-kind programme to enable older adults in Cork to continue living independentlyWould you miss the radio in your car – newer car models are not looking to include the car radio !We look ahead to this year's Make your Mark on Cancer walk from the Viaduct to BandonOur Movie Review with Mark Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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We're releasing episodes from our mini failure library while we're on production hiatus. This week's Mini Failure is about the Cypress St Viaduct. A double decker freeway that served as one of the approaches to the San-Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the viaduct collapsed during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Original Air Date: March 5, 2023 Episode Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_Street_Viaduct https://www.in2013dollars.com/ https://www.engineering.com/story/cypress-street-viaducts Ways to get in touch with us Email - thefailurologypodcast@gmail.com Website - www.failurology.ca

We have a young producer working on this show called Jack, who's recently moved over from London. He asked us today why we're all so worked up about this one shooting on Ponsonby Road - and why if you open any of the local newspapers' websites today, it's right there at the top of the front page.As Jack says, this happens all the time in London, it's no big deal. He even watched a guy get knifed in a park in front of him while he was out having a durry not long before he moved here. He then went back inside to work at the radio station - and the knifing wasn't even worth putting in the bulletin.I can answer that question for Jack - the reason we are so worked up about this is because this is still new to us. We can all remember a time when this kind of thing didn't happen in nice places like Ponsonby. And it wasn't that long ago - five years ago, maybe?But then in the last few years, there was the shooting in Dr Rudi's on the Viaduct in Auckland, and the shooting in the Sofitel lobby in Wynyard Quarter, and there was the guy on the scooter who shot the other guy on Queen Street, and then the guy who took a gun to work and shot his co-workers on the construction site in Auckland CBD.And it's still rare enough that the significant shootings in Auckland can still be recalled and counted on a hand - but I think we suspect that those, by contrast, innocent days are over. We now have guys going out for a drink on a Sunday night with a firearm in a Guess manbag draped over their shoulder.And I think we know why this has happened - because the Australians have deported hundreds, if not thousands of criminals, that are way harder and way more trigger happy than the ones we've gotten used to. And unfortunately for us, they like going to the bars we go to. Nice people go to those bars - and so do these guys with the guns in their manbags. It's a bit freaky, isn't it? And the most honest amongst us will admit it's probably only a matter of years before we have the same reaction as Jack - and don't find it scary or interesting anymore. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hundreds of people from the LGBTQI community gathered in Auckland on Thursday night to celebrate the opening of the first ever Rainbow Games. Over the next few days, more than 600 athletes from home and abroad will compete in 12 sports, including football, badminton and ten-pin bowling. Reporter Lucy Xia was at the Viaduct.

The owner of one of Auckland's most prominent waterfront bars has described the moment armed police stormed in to arrest a pair accused of violently kidnapping a woman on Auckland's North Shore. Police descended on Headquarters Bar on Auckland's Viaduct to apprehend and handcuff the man and woman, who had just ordered drinks. Leo Molloy suspects the police were given intel- as it was a very quick arrest. "They had access somehow, because they knew. As soon as those two settled in, about two minutes later I saw two cops walk down marketplace- they were clearly together...they circled round the outside of the building."   LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gather round the hearth for the first of our (still live!) festive episodes... This time we are exploring the story of the Torksey Viaduct, a tale which navigates the intertwining histories of railway companies, engineers, bridge design, competency, Megawatt Valley and more besides. Grab a mince pie, pour a port, and listen in! Enjoyed this? Please do consider supporting #Railnatter at https://patreon.com/garethdennis or throw loose change at me via https://paypal.me/garethdennis. Merch at https://garethdennis.co.uk/merch. Join in the discussion at https://garethdennis.co.uk/discord.

Vehicle quality issues that lead to recalls and lawsuits cost automotive OEMs tens of billions of dollars in cost and lost revenue each year. Given the explosion of connected vehicle data, one might expect that this data could be leveraged to reduce this cost. Things are rarely that straightforward. Why is that?I invited David Hallac, CEO of Viaduct to the AI in Automotive Podcast to find out more. David's 5-year old startup finds patterns and relationships amongst billions of connected vehicle data points, and delivers two powerful, commercially sound use cases to automotive OEMs. One, it helps automotive OEMs proactively identify and address quality issues, saving hundreds of millions of dollars in warranty costs and recalls. Two, it helps predict failures, call vehicles in for proactive maintenance, and helps bump up up-time - a god-send, especially for fleet customers. The big penny drop moment for me during my conversation with David was that connected vehicle applications don't have to be bold, visible and sexy, delivering massive incremental revenue at near 100% margin. In fact, the connected vehicle applications most likely to succeed in the near-term are those that deliver commercial value today, often by way of substantially reduced costs. Viaduct's quality management and maintenance prediction use cases check those boxes, and how. Listen to my chat with David to find out more.If you enjoyed my chit-chat with David Hallac, please give the AI in Automotive Podcast a solid five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify - I am always thankful for your support.#ai #automotive #mobility #technology #podcast #machinelearning #unsupervisedlearning #warranty #recalls #maintenance #qualityAI in Automotive Podcast

Jeremy Howard (Fast.ai), Shreya Shankar (UC Berkeley), and Hamel Husain (Parlance Labs) join Hugo Bowne-Anderson to talk about how LLMs and OpenAI are changing the worlds of data science, machine learning, and machine learning engineering. Jeremy Howard (https://twitter.com/jeremyphoward) is co-founder of fast.ai, an ex-Chief Scientist at Kaggle, and creator of the ULMFiT approach on which all modern language models are based. Shreya Shankar (https://twitter.com/sh_reya) is at UC Berkeley, ex Google brain, Facebook, and Viaduct. Hamel Husain (https://twitter.com/HamelHusain) has his own generative AI and LLM consultancy Parlance Labs (https://parlance-labs.com/) and was previously at Outerbounds, Github, and Airbnb. They talk about How LLMs shift the nature of the work we do in DS and ML, How they change the tools we use, The ways in which they could displace the role of traditional ML (e.g. will we stop using xgboost any time soon?), How to navigate all the new tools and techniques, The trade-offs between open and closed models, Reactions to the recent Open Developer Day and the increasing existential crisis for ML. LINKS The panel on YouTube (https://youtube.com/live/MTJHvgJtynU?feature=share) Hugo and Jeremy's upcoming livestream on what the hell happened recently at OpenAI, among many other things (https://lu.ma/byxyzfrr?utm_source=vg) Vanishing Gradients on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_NafIo-Ku2loOLrzm45ABA) Vanishing Gradients on twitter (https://twitter.com/VanishingData)

As punters filled t he bars and restaurants along Auckland's Viaduct to watch the Melbourne Cup this afternoon, a group of animal rights activists was making their opposition to the event clear. A dozen or so protestors from the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses chanted through a megaphone and held signs reading "is the party worth it?" and "horse racing kills". Reporter Jordan Dunn was there and spoke with protest organiser Nick Hancock.

Christopher Luxon was one of multiple All Blacks fans out supporting New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup final. The Prime Minister-elect watched the All Blacks lose 12-11 to the Springboks from the comfort of Coops Corner Bar on Auckland's Viaduct. Luxon says the mood was pretty respectful when walking around the Viaduct. He says we're all disappointed, but the fans he encountered were all proud of the teams' efforts. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Send us a Text Message.Episode 4 of Making Tracks looks at the new Double Fairlie Loco built at Boston Lodge and now in service on the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railway .We also look at another Railway investment, this time on the mainline and the £30M refurbishment of the iconic  Barmouth Viaduct.You can view the animation of Barmouth metallic viaduct construction methodology here. https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/video-successful-test-lift-of-160-tonne-metallic-span-marks-countdown-to-final-stage-of-barmouth-viaduct-restorationThere's also some more up to date photos and info from Network Rail here. https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/one-step-closer-latest-video-and-pictures-show-movement-of-new-spans-onto-the-iconic-barmouth-viaduct-north-walesIn this episode we also here from Rebecca Butcher of ‘Wales on Rails' and the Cambrian Partnership You can also download the free Window Seater app: Window Seater - Audio guides for train travel.Peter Johnson's book on the Cambrian Railway and his other titles are available through Amazon.Cambrian Railways: A New History: Amazon.co.uk: Peter Johnson: 9780860936442: BooksThis podcast is produced by Laura Raymond and presented by Alasdair Stewart Our 'Making Tracks' music is with kind permission of composer and musician Richard Durrant. It is a unique piece inspired by the rhythm of the historic rolling stock on the Ffestiniog Railway on the scenic journey from Harbour Station to Tan y Blwch. You can listen and download the full 'Tan y Bwlch' Ukulele Quartet here: Ukulele Quartet No. 1 "Tan y Bwlch" Ukulele Quartet No. 1 "Tan y Bwlch" Richard Durrant · Single · 2019 · 3 songs.

In episode 89 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Shreya Shankar.Shreya is a computer scientist pursuing her PhD in databases at UC Berkeley. Her research interest is in building end-to-end systems for people to develop production-grade machine learning applications. She was previously the first ML engineer at Viaduct, did research at Google Brain, and software engineering at Facebook. She graduated from Stanford with a B.S. and M.S. in computer science with concentrations in systems and artificial intelligence. At Stanford, helped run SHE++, an organization that helps empower underrepresented minorities in technology.Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here or reach us at editor@thegradient.pubSubscribe to The Gradient Podcast:  Apple Podcasts  | Spotify | Pocket Casts | RSSFollow The Gradient on TwitterOutline:* (00:00) Intro* (02:22) Shreya's background and journey into ML / MLOps* (04:51) ML advances in 2013-2016* (05:45) Shift in Stanford undergrad class ecosystems, accessibility of deep learning research* (09:10) Why Shreya left her job as an ML engineer* (13:30) How Shreya became interested in databases, data quality in ML* (14:50) Daniel complains about things* (16:00) What makes ML engineering uniquely difficult* (16:50) Being a “historian of the craft” of ML engineering* (22:25) Levels of abstraction, what ML engineers do/don't have to think about* (24:16) Observability for Production ML Pipelines* (28:30) Metrics for real-time ML systems* (31:20) Proposed solutions* (34:00) Moving Fast with Broken Data* (34:25) Existing data validation measures and where they fall short* (36:31) Partition summarization for data validation* (38:30) Small data and quantitative statistics for data cleaning* (40:25) Streaming ML Evaluation* (40:45) What makes a metric actionable* (42:15) Differences in streaming ML vs. batch ML* (45:45) Delayed and incomplete labels* (49:23) Operationalizing Machine Learning* (49:55) The difficult life of an ML engineer* (53:00) Best practices, tools, pain points* (55:56) Pitfalls in current MLOps tools* (1:00:30) LLMOps / FMOps* (1:07:10) Thoughts on ML Engineering, MLE through the lens of data engineering* (1:10:42) Building products, user expectations for AI products* (1:15:50) OutroLinks:* Papers* Towards Observability for Production Machine Learning Pipelines* Rethinking Streaming ML Evaluation* Operationalizing Machine Learning* Moving Fast With Broken Data* Blog posts* The Modern ML Monitoring Mess* Thoughts on ML Engineering After a Year of my PhD Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe

Wat zit er in De 7 vandaag?Een maagverkleining kan je in ons land enkel nog laten uitvoeren na een wachttijd van minstens 3 maand. De overheid hoopt daarmee het aantal operaties te beperken want sommige mensen met overgewicht zouden te snel onder het mes gaan.De Belgische tienjaarsrente piekt. Wat betekent dat voor de staatskas en voor jouw en mijn portefeuille?En vandaag starten aan het viaduct van Vilvoorde werken die acht jaar zullen. Waar zal je moeten aanschuiven? Host: Bert RymenProductie: Job Van NieuwenhoveSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What is the end game, and what happens between now and then with respect to the Providence I-95 Viaduct Northbound?  DOT Director Peter Alviti explains. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Heartland Labor Forum talks with Shelley Waggener, President of the SAG-AFTRA Local in Missouri Today's labor quote: Executive Order 9981 Today's labor history: The Battle of the Viaduct @wpfwdc @AFLCIO #1u #UnionStrong #LaborRadioPod @Heartland_Labor @sagaftra #SAGAFTRAstrong Proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network

We are excited to feature our first academic on the pod! I first came across Shreya when her tweetstorm of MLOps principles went viral:Shreya's holistic approach to production grade machine learning has taken her from Stanford to Facebook and Google Brain, being the first ML Engineer at Viaduct, and now a PhD in Databases (trust us, its relevant) at UC Berkeley with the new EPIC Data Lab. If you know Berkeley's history in turning cutting edge research into gamechanging startups, you should be as excited as we are!Recorded in-person at the beautiful StudioPod studios in San Francisco.Full transcript is below the fold.Edit from the future: Shreya obliged us with another round of LLMOps hot takes after the pod!Other Links* Shreya's About: https://www.shreya-shankar.com/about/* Berkeley Sky Computing Lab - Utility Computing for the Cloud* Berkeley Epic Data Lab - low-code and no-code interfaces for data work, powered by next-generation predictive programming techniques* Shreya's ML Principles * Grounded Theory* Lightning Round:* Favorite AI Product: Stability Dreamstudio* 1 Year Prediction: Data management platforms* Request for startup: Design system generator* Takeaway: It's not a fad!Timestamps* [00:00:27] Introducing Shreya (poorly)* [00:03:38] The 3 V's of ML development* [00:05:45] Bridging Development and Production* [00:08:40] Preventing Data Leakage* [00:10:31] Berkeley's Unique Research Lab Culture* [00:11:53] From Static to Dynamically Updated Data* [00:12:55] Models as views on Data* [00:15:03] Principle: Version everything you do* [00:16:30] Principle: Always validate your data* [00:18:33] Heuristics for Model Architecture Selection* [00:20:36] The LLMOps Stack* [00:22:50] Shadow Models* [00:23:53] Keeping Up With Research* [00:26:10] Grounded Theory Research* [00:27:59] Google Brain vs Academia* [00:31:41] Advice for New Grads* [00:32:59] Helping Minorities in CS* [00:35:06] Lightning RoundTranscript[00:00:00] Hey everyone. Welcome to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio partner and CTM residence at Decibel Partners. I'm joined by my co-host, swyx writer and editor of Latent Space. Yeah,[00:00:21] it's awesome to have another awesome guest Shankar. Welcome .[00:00:25] Thanks for having me. I'm super excited.[00:00:27] Introducing Shreya (poorly)[00:00:27] So I'll intro your formal background and then you can fill in the blanks.[00:00:31] You are a bsms and then PhD at, in, in Computer Science at Stanford. So[00:00:36] I'm, I'm a PhD at Berkeley. Ah, Berkeley. I'm sorry. Oops. . No, it's okay. Everything's the bay shouldn't say that. Everybody, somebody is gonna get mad, but . Lived here for eight years now. So[00:00:50] and then intern at, Google Machine learning learning engineer at Viaduct, an OEM manufacturer, uh, or via OEM analytics platform.[00:00:59] Yes. And now you're an e I R entrepreneur in residence at Amplify.[00:01:02] I think that's on hold a little bit as I'm doing my PhD. It's a very unofficial title, but it sounds fancy on paper when you say[00:01:09] it out loud. Yeah, it is fancy. Well, so that is what people see on your LinkedIn. What's, what should, what should people know about you that's not on your LinkedIn?[00:01:16] Yeah, I don't think I updated my LinkedIn since I started the PhD, so, I'm doing my PhD in databases. It is not AI machine learning, but I work on data management for building AI and ML powered software. I guess like all of my personal interests, I'm super into going for walks, hiking, love, trying coffee in the Bay area.[00:01:42] I recently, I've been getting into cooking a lot. Mm-hmm. , so what kind of cooking? Ooh. I feel like I really like pastas. But that's because I love carbs. So , I don't know if it's the pasta as much as it's the carb. Do you ever cook for[00:01:56] like large[00:01:57] dinners? Large groups? Yeah. We just hosted about like 25 people a couple weeks ago, and I was super ambitious.[00:02:04] I was like, I'm gonna cook for everyone, like a full dinner. But then kids were coming. and I was like, I know they're not gonna eat tofu. The other thing with hosting in the Bay Area is there's gonna be someone vegan. There's gonna be someone gluten-free. Mm-hmm. . There's gonna be someone who's keto. Yeah.[00:02:20] Good luck, .[00:02:21] Oh, you forgot the seeds. That's the sea disrespects.[00:02:25] I know. . So I was like, oh my God, I don't know how I'm gonna do this. Yeah. The dessert too. I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna make everything like a vegan, keto nut free dessert, just water. It was a fun challenge. We ordered pizza for the children and a lot of people ate the pizza.[00:02:43] So I think , that's what happens when you try to cook, cook for everyone.[00:02:48] Yeah. The reason I dug a bit on the cooking is I always find like if you do cook for large groups, it's a little bit like of an ops situation. Yeah. Like a lot of engineering. A lot of like trying to figure out like what you need to deliver and then like what the pipeline[00:02:59] is and Oh, for sure.[00:03:01] You write that Gantt chart like a day in advance. , did you actually have a ga? Oh, I did. My gosh. Of course I had a Gantt chart. I, I dunno how people, did[00:03:08] you orchestrate it with airflow or ?[00:03:12] I orchestrated it myself. .[00:03:15] That's awesome. But yeah, we're so excited to have you, and you've been a pretty prolific writer, researcher, and thank you.[00:03:20] You have a lot of great content out there. I think your website now says, I'm currently learning how to make machine learning work in the real world, which is a challenge that mm-hmm. , everybody is steaming right now from the Microsoft and Googles of the word that have rogue eyes flirting with people, querying them to people, deploy models to production.[00:03:38] The 3 V's of ML development[00:03:38] Maybe let's run through some of the research you've done, especially on lops. Sure. And how to get these things in production. The first thing I really liked from one of your paper was the, the three VS of ML development. Mm-hmm. , which is velocity validation and versioning. And one point that you were making is that the development workflow of software engineering is kind of very different from ML because ML is very experiment driven.[00:04:00] Correct. There's a lot of changes that you need to make, you need to kill things very quickly if they're not working. So maybe run us through why you decided as kind of those three vs. Being some of the, the core things to think about. and some of the other takeaways from their research. Yeah,[00:04:15] so this paper was conducted as a loosely structured interview study.[00:04:18] So the idea is you interview like three or four people and then you go and annotate all the transcripts, tag them, kind of put the word clouds out there, whatever. There's a bunch of like cool software to do this. Then we keep seeing these, themes of velocity wasn't the word, but it was like experiment quickly or high experimentation rate.[00:04:38] Sometimes it was velocity. And we found that that was like the number one thing for people who were talking about their work in this kind of development phase. We also categorized it into phases of the work. So the life cycle like really just fell into place when we annotated the transcripts. And so did the variables.[00:04:55] And after three or four interviews you iterate on them. You kind of iterate on the questions, and you iterate on the codes or the tags that you give to the transcripts and then you do it again. And we repeated this process like three or four times up to that many people, and the story kind of told itself in a way that[00:05:11] makes sense.[00:05:12] I think, like I was trying to figure out why you picked those, but it's interesting to see that everybody kinda has the same challenges.[00:05:18] It fell out. I think a big thing, like even talking to the people who are at the Microsofts and the Googles, they have models in production. They're frequently training these models in production, yet their Devrel work is so experimental.[00:05:31] Mm-hmm. . And we were like, so it doesn't change. Even when you become a mature organization, you still throw 100 darts at the wall for five of them to stick and. That's super interesting and I think that's a little bit unique to data science and machine learning work.[00:05:45] Bridging Development and Production[00:05:45] Yeah. And one one point you had is kind of how do we bridge the gap between the development environments and the production environments?[00:05:51] Obviously you're still doing work in this space. What are some of the top of mind areas of focus for you in[00:05:57] this area? Yeah, I think it. Right now, people separate these environments because the production environment doesn't allow people to move at the rate that they need to for experimentation. A lot of the times as you're doing like deep learning, you wanna have GPUs and you don't wanna be like launching your job on a Kubernetes cluster and waiting for the results to come.[00:06:17] And so that's just the hardware side of things. And then there is the. Execution stack. Um, you wanna be able to query and create features real time as you're kind of training your model. But in production things are different because these features are kind of scheduled, maybe generated every week.[00:06:33] There's a little bit of lag. These assumptions are not accounted for. In development and training time. Mm-hmm. . So of course we're gonna see that gap. And then finally, like the top level, the interface level. People wanna experiment in notebooks, in environments that like allow them to visualize and inspect their state.[00:06:50] But production jobs don't typically run in notebooks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean there, there are tools like paper mill and et cetera. But it's not the same, right? So when you just look at every single layer of the kind of data technical stack, there's a develop. Side of things and there's a production side of things and they're completely different.[00:07:07] It makes sense why. Way, but I think that's why you get a bunch of bugs that come when you put things in production.[00:07:14] I'm always interested in the elimination of those differences. Mm-hmm. And I don't know if it's realistic, but you know, what would it take for people to, to deploy straight to production and then iterate on production?[00:07:27] Because that's ultimately what you're[00:07:29] aim for. This is exactly what I'm thinking about right now in my PhD for kind of like my PhD. But you said it was database. I think databases is a very, very large field. , pretty much they do everything in databases . But the idea is like, how do we get like a unified development and production experience, Uhhuh, for people who are building these ML models, I think one of the hardest research challenges sits at that execution layer of kind of how do.[00:07:59] Make sure that people are incorporating the same assumptions at development time. Production time. So feature stores have kind of come up in the last, I don't know, couple of years, three years, but there's still that online offline separation. At training time, people assume that their features are generated like just completely, perfectly.[00:08:19] Like there's no lag, nothing is stale. Mm-hmm. , that's the case when trading time, but those assumptions aren't really baked. In production time. Right. Your features are generated, I don't know, like every week or some Every day. Every hour. That's one thing. How do, like, what does that execution model look like to bridge the two and still give developers the interactive latencies with features?[00:08:40] Preventing Data Leakage[00:08:40] Mm-hmm. . I think another thing also, I don't know if this is an interface problem, but how do we give developers the guardrails to not look at data that they're not supposed to? This is a really hard problem. For privacy or for training? Oh, no, just for like training. Yeah. Okay. also for privacy. Okay. But when it comes to developing ML models in production, like you can't see, you don't see future data.[00:09:06] Mm-hmm. . Yeah. You don't see your labels, but at development time it's really easy to. to leak. To leak and even like the seeming most seemingly like innocuous of ways, like I load my data from Snowflake and I run a query on it just to get a sense for, what are the columns in my data set? Mm-hmm. or like do a DF dot summary.[00:09:27] Mm-hmm. and I use that to create my features. Mm-hmm. and I run that query before I do train test. , there's leakage in that process. Right? And there's just at the fun, most fundamental level, like I think at some point at my previous company, I just on a whim looked through like everyone's code. I shouldn't have done that , but I found that like everyone's got some leakage assumptions somewhere.[00:09:49] Oh, mm-hmm. . And it's, it's not like people are bad developers, it's just that. When you have no guard the systems. Yeah, do that. Yeah, you do this. And of course like there's varying consequences that come from this. Like if I use my label as a feature, that's a terrible consequence. , if I just look at DF dot summary, that's bad.[00:10:09] I think there's like a bunch of like unanswered interesting research questions in kind of creating. Unified experience. I was[00:10:15] gonna say, are you about to ban exploratory data analysis ?[00:10:19] Definitely not. But how do we do PDA in like a safe , data safe way? Mm-hmm. , like no leakage whatsoever.[00:10:27] Right. I wanna ask a little small follow up about doing this at Berkeley.[00:10:31] Berkeley's Uniquely Research Lab Culture[00:10:31] Mm-hmm. , it seems that Berkeley does a lot of this stuff. For some reason there's some DNA in Berkeley that just, that just goes, hey, just always tackle this sort of hard data challenges. And Homestate Databricks came out of that. I hear that there's like some kind of system that every five years there's a new lab that comes up,[00:10:46] But what's going on[00:10:47] there? So I think last year, rise Lab which Ray and any scale came out of. Kind of forked into two labs. Yeah. Sky Lab, I have a water bottle from Sky Lab. Ooh. And Epic Lab, which my advisor is a co-PI for founding pi, I don't know what the term is. And Skylabs focus, I think their cider paper was a multi-cloud programming environment and Epic Lab is, Their focus is more like low-code, no-code, better data management tools for this like next generation of Interfa.[00:11:21] I don't even know. These are like all NSF gra uh, grants.[00:11:24] Yeah. And it's five years, so[00:11:26] it could, it could involve, yeah. Who knows what's gonna be, and it's like super vague. Yeah. So I think we're seeing like two different kinds of projects come out of this, like the sky projects of kind of how do I run my job on any cloud?[00:11:39] Whichever one is cheapest and has the most resources for me, my work is kind of more an epic lab, but thinking about these like interfaces, mm-hmm. , better execution models, how do we allow people to reason about the kind of systems they're building much more effectively. Yeah,[00:11:53] From Static Data to Dynamically Updated Data[00:11:53] yeah. How do you think about the impact of the academia mindset when then going into.[00:11:58] Industry, you know, I know one of the points in your papers was a lot of people in academia used with to static data sets. Mm-hmm. , like the data's not updating, the data's not changing. So they work a certain way and then they go to work and like they should think about bringing in dynamic data into Yeah.[00:12:15] Earlier in the, in the workflow, like, , how do you think we can get people to change that mindset? I think[00:12:21] actually people are beginning to change that mindset. We're seeing a lot of kind of dynamic data benchmarks or people looking into kind of streaming datasets, largely image based. Some of them are language based, but I do think it's somewhat changing, which is good.[00:12:35] But what I don't think is changing is the fact that model researchers and Devrel developers want. to create a model that learns the world. Mm-hmm. . And that model is now a static artifact. I don't think that's the way to go. I want people, at least in my research, the system I'm building, models are not a one time thing.[00:12:55] Models as views on Data[00:12:55] Models are views that are frequently recomputed over your data to use database speak, and I don't see people kind of adopting that mindset when it comes to. Kind of research or the data science techniques that people are learning in school. And it's not just like retrain G P T every single day or whatever, but it, it is like, how do I make sure that I don't know, my system is evolving over time.[00:13:19] Mm-hmm. that whatever predictions or re query results that are being generated are. Like that process is changing. Can you give[00:13:27] a, an overview of your research project? I know you mentioned a couple snippets here and there,[00:13:32] but that would be helpful. . I don't have a great pitch yet. I haven't submitted anything, still working on it, but the idea is like I want to create a system for people to develop their ML pipelines, and I want it to be like, Like unifying the development production experience.[00:13:50] And the key differences about this is one, you think of models as like data transformations that are recomputed regularly. So when you write your kind of train or fit functions, like the execution engine understands that this is a process that runs repeatedly. It monitors the data under the hood to refit the computation whenever it's detected.[00:14:12] That kind of like the data distributions have changed. So that way whenever you. Test your pipelines before you deploy them. Retraining is baked in, monitoring is baked in. You see that? And the gold star, the gold standard for me is the number that you get at development time. That should be the number that you get when you deploy[00:14:33] There shouldn't be this expected 10% drop. That's what I know I will have. Made something. But yeah, definitely working on that.[00:14:41] Yeah. Cool. So a year ago you tweeted a list of principles that you thought people should know and you split it very hopefully. I, I thought into beginner, intermediate, advanced, and sometimes the beginner is not so beginner, you know what I mean?[00:14:52] Yeah, definitely. .[00:14:53] The first one I write is like,[00:14:57] so we don't have to go through the whole thing. I, I do recommend people check it out, but also maybe you can pick your favorites and then maybe something you changed your mind.[00:15:03] Principle: Version Everything You Do[00:15:03] I think several of them actually are about versioning , which like maybe that bias the interview studying a little bit.[00:15:12] Yeah. But I, I really think version everything you do, because in experimentation time, because when you do an experiment, you need some version there because if you wanna pr like publish those. , you need something to go back to. And the number of people who like don't version things, it is just a lot. It's also a lot to expect for someone to commit their code every time they like.[00:15:33] Mm-hmm. train their model. But I think like having those practices is definitely worth it. When you say versioning,[00:15:39] you mean versioning code.[00:15:40] versioning code versioning data, like everything around a single like trial run.[00:15:45] So version code get fine. Mm-hmm. versioning data not[00:15:48] as settled. Yeah. I think that part, like you can start with something super hacky, which is every time you run your script, like just save a copy of your training set.[00:16:00] Well, most training sets are not that big. Yeah. Like at least when people are like developing on their computer, it. Whatever. It's not that big. Just save a copy somewhere. Put it ass three, like it's fine. It's worth it. Uhhuh, . I think there's also like tools like dvc like data versioning kind of tools. I think also like weights and biases and these experiment track like ML flow, the experiment tracking tools have these hooks to version your data for you.[00:16:23] I don't know how well they work these days, but . Yeah, just something around like versioning. I think I definitely agree with[00:16:30] Principle: Always validate your Data[00:16:30] I'm. Super, super big into data validation. People call it monitoring. I used to think it was like monitoring. I realize now like how little at my previous company, we just like validated the input data going into these pipelines and even talking to people in the interview study people are not doing.[00:16:48] Data validation, they see that their ML performance is dropping and they're like, I don't know why. What's going on ? And when you dig into it, it's a really fascinating, interesting, like a really interesting research problem. A lot of data validation techniques for machine learning result in too many false positive alerts.[00:17:04] And I have a paper got rejected and we're resubmitting on this. But yeah, like there, it's active research problem. How do you create meaningful alerts, especially when you have tons of features or you have large data sets, that's a really hard problem, but having some basic data validation check, like check that your data is complete.[00:17:23] Check that your schema matches up. Check that your most frequent, like your. Most frequently occurring value is the same. Your vocabulary isn't changing if it's a large language model. These are things that I definitely think I could have. I should have said that I did say data validation, but I didn't like, like spell it out.[00:17:39] Have you, have you looked into any of the current data observability platforms like Montecarlo or Big I I think you, I think you have some experience with that as[00:17:47] well. Yeah. I looked at a Monte car. Couple of years back, I haven't looked into big eye. I think that designing data validation for ML is a different problem because in the machine learning setting, you can allow, there's like a tolerance for how corrupted your data is and you can still get meaningful prediction.[00:18:05] Like that's the whole point of machine learning. Yeah, so like. A lot of the times, like by definition, your data observability platform is gonna give you false positives if you just care about the ML outputs. So the solution really, at least our paper, has this scheme where we learn from performance drops to kind of iterate on the precision of the data validation, but it's a hybrid of like very old databases techniques as well as kind of adapting it to the ML setting.[00:18:33] Heuristics for Model Architecture Selection[00:18:33] So you're an expert in the whole stack. I think I, I talk with a lot of founders, CTOs right now that are saying, how can I get more ML capabilities in, in my application? Especially when it comes to LLMs. Mm-hmm. , which are kind of the, the talk of the town. Yeah. How should people think about which models to use, especially when it comes to size and how much data they need to actually make them useful, for example, PT three is 175 billion parameters co-pilot use as a 12 billion model.[00:19:02] Yeah. So it's much smaller, but it's very good for what it does. Do you have any heuristics or mental models that you use when teams should think about what models to use and how big they need it to be?[00:19:12] Yeah I think that the. Precursor to this is the operational capabilities that these teams have. Do they have the capability to like literally host their own model, serve their own model, or would they rather use an api?[00:19:25] Mm-hmm. , a lot of teams like don't have the capability to maintain the actual model artifact. So even like the process of kind of. Fine tuning A G P T or distilling that, doing something like it's not feasible because they're not gonna have someone to maintain it over time. I see this with like some of the labs, like the people that we work with or like the low-code, no-code.[00:19:47] Or you have to have like really strong ML engineers right over time to like be able to have your own model. So that's one thing. The other thing is these G P T, these, these large language models, they're really good. , like giving you useful outputs. Mm-hmm. compared to like creating your own thing. Mm-hmm.[00:20:02] even if it's smaller, but you have to be okay with the latency. Mm-hmm. and the cost that comes out of it. In the interview study, we talk to people who are keeping their own, like in memory stores to like cash frequently. I, I don't know, like whatever it takes to like avoid calling the Uhhuh API multiple types, but people are creative.[00:20:22] People will do this. I don't think. That it's bad to rely on like a large language model or an api. I think it like in the long term, is honestly better for certain teams than trying to do their own thing on[00:20:36] house.[00:20:36] The LLMOps Stack[00:20:36] How's the L l M ops stack look like then? If people are consuming this APIs, like is there a lot of difference in under They manage the, the data, the.[00:20:46] Well,[00:20:46] I'll tell you the things that I've seen that are unified people need like a state management tool because the experience of working with a L L M provi, like A G P T is, mm-hmm. . I'm gonna try start out with these prompts and as I learn how to do this, I'm gonna iterate on these prompts. These prompts are gonna end up being this like dynamic.[00:21:07] Over time. And also they might be a function of like the most recent queries Tonight database or something. So the prompts are always changing. They need some way to manage that. Mm-hmm. , like I think that's a stateful experience and I don't see the like, like the open AI API or whatever, like really baking that assumption in into their model.[00:21:26] They do keep a history of your[00:21:27] prompts that help history. I'm not so sure. , a lot of times prompts are like, fetch the most recent similar data in my database, Uhhuh, , and then inject that into the pump prompt. Mm-hmm. . So I don't know how, Okay. Like you wanna somehow unify that and like make sure that's the same all the time.[00:21:44] You want prompt compiler. Yeah, . I think there's some startup probably doing that. That's definitely one thing. And then another thing that we found very interesting is that when people put these. LLMs in production, a lot of the bugs that they observe are corrected by a filter. Don't output something like this.[00:22:05] Yes. Or don't do this like, so there's, or please output G on, yeah. . So these pipelines end up becoming a hybrid of like the API uhhuh, they're. Service that like pings their database for the most recent things to put in their prompt. And then a bunch of filters, they add their own filters. So like what is the system that allows people to build, build such a pipeline, this like hybrid kind of filter and ML model and dynamic thing.[00:22:30] So, so I think like, The l l m stack, like is looking like the ML ops thing right in this way of like hacking together different solutions, managing state all across the pipeline monitoring, quick feedback loop.[00:22:44] Yeah. You had one, uh, just to close out the, the tweet thread thing as well, but this is all also relevant.[00:22:50] Shadow Models[00:22:50] You have an opinion about shadowing a less complicated model in production to fall back on. Yeah. Is that a good summary?[00:22:55] The shadowing thing only works in situations where you don. Need direct feedback from. The user because then you can like very reasonably serve it like Yeah, as as long, like you can benchmark that against the one that's currently in production, if that makes sense.[00:23:15] Right. Otherwise it's too path dependent or whatever to.[00:23:18] evaluate. Um, and a lot of services can benefit from shadowing. Like any, like I used to work a lot on predictive analytics, predictive maintenance, like stuff like that, that didn't have, um, immediate outputs. Mm-hmm. or like immediate human feedback. So that was great and okay, and a great way to like test the model.[00:23:36] Got it. But I think as. Increasingly trying to generate predictions that consumers immediately interact with. It might not be I, I'm sure there's an equivalent or a way to adapt it. Mm-hmm. AV testing, stage deployment, that's in the paper.[00:23:53] Keeping Up With Research[00:23:53] Especially with keeping up with all the new thing. That's one thing that I struggle with and I think preparing for this. I read a lot of your papers and I'm always like, how do you keep up with, with all of this stuff?[00:24:02] How should people do it? You know? Like, now, l l M is like the hot thing, right? There's like the, there's like the chinchilla study. There's like a lot of cool stuff coming out. Like what's. U O for like staying on top of this research, reading it. Yeah. How do you figure out which ones are worth reading?[00:24:16] Which ones are kind of like just skim through? I read all of yours really firmly. , but I mean other ones that get skimmed through, how should people figure it out?[00:24:24] Yeah, so I think. I'm not the best person to ask for this because I am in a university and every week get to go to amazing talks. Mm-hmm. and like engage with the author by the authors.[00:24:35] Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, I don't know, I feel like all the opportunities are in my lap and still I'm struggling to keep up, if that makes sense. Mm-hmm. . I used to keep like running like a bookmark list of papers or things that I want to read. But I think every new researcher does that and they realize it's not you worth their time.[00:24:52] Right? Like they will eventually get to reading the paper if it's absolutely critical. No, it's, it's true, it's true. So like we've, I've adopted this mindset and like somehow, like I do end up reading things and the things that I miss, like I don't have the fo. Around. So I highly encourage people to take that mentality.[00:25:10] I also, I think this is like my personal taste, but I love looking into the GitHub repos that people are actually using, and that usually gives me a sense for like, what are the actual problems that people have? I find that people on Twitter, like sometimes myself included, will say things, but you, it's not how big of a problem is it?[00:25:29] Mm-hmm. , it's not. Yeah, like , I find that like just looking at the repos, looking at the issues, looking at how it's evolved over time, that really, really helps. So you're,[00:25:40] to be specific, you're not talking about paper repos?[00:25:43] No, no, no, no. I'm talking about tools, but tools also come with papers a lot in, um, databases.[00:25:49] Yeah. Yeah. I think ML specifically, I think there's way too much ML research out there and yeah, like so many papers out there, archive is like, kind of flooded. Yeah.[00:26:00] It's like 16% of old papers produced.[00:26:02] It's, it's crazy. . I don't know if it's a good use of time to try to read all of them, to be completely honest.[00:26:10] Grounded Theory for Problem Discovery[00:26:10] You have a very ethnographic approach, like you do interviews and I, I assume like you just kinda observe and don't Yeah. Uh, prescribe anything. And then you look at those GitHub issues and you try to dig through from like production, like what is this orientation? Is there like a research methodology that you're super influenced by that guides you like this?[00:26:28] I wish that I had. Like awareness and language to be able to talk about this. Uhhuh, , . I[00:26:37] don't know. I, I think it's, I think it's a bit different than others who just have a technology they wanna play with and then they, they just ignore, like they don't do as much, uh, like people research[00:26:47] as[00:26:47] you do. So the HCI I researchers like, Have done this forever and ever and ever.[00:26:53] Yeah. But grounded theory is a very common methodology when it comes to trying to understand more about a topic. Yeah. Which is you go in, you observe a little bit, and then you update your assumptions and you keep doing this process until you have stopped updating your assumptions. . And I really like that approach when it comes to.[00:27:13] Just kind of understanding the state of the world when it comes to like a cer, like LLMs or whatever, until I feel like, like there was like a point in time for like lops on like tabular data prior to these large language models. I feel like I, I'd gotten the space and like now that these like large language models have come out and people are really trying to use them.[00:27:35] They're tabular kind of predictions that they used to in the past. Like they're incorporating language data, they're incorporating stuff like customer feedback from the users or whatever it is to make better predictions. I feel like that's totally changing the game now, and I'm still like, Why, why is this the case?[00:27:52] Was were the models not good enough? Do people feel like they're behind? Mm-hmm. ? I don't know. I try to talk to people and like, yeah, I have no answers.[00:27:59] Google Brain vs Academia[00:27:59] So[00:27:59] how does the industry buzz and focus influence what stuff the research teams work on? Obviously arch language models, everybody wants to build on them.[00:28:08] When you're looking at, you know, other peers in the, in the PhD space, are they saying, oh, I'm gonna move my research towards this area? Or are they just kind of focused on the idea of the[00:28:18] first. . This is a good question. I think that we're at an interesting time where the kind of research a PhD student in an academic institution at CS can do is very different from the research that a large company, because there aren't like, There just aren't the resources.[00:28:39] Mm-hmm. that large companies compute resources. There isn't the data. And so now PhD students I think are like, if they want to do something better than industry could do it, like there's like a different class of problems that we have to work on because we'll never be able to compete. So I think that's, yeah, I think that's really hard.[00:28:56] I think a lot of PhD students, like myself included, are trying to figure out like, what is it that we can do? Like we see the, the state of the field progressing and we see. , why are we here? If we wanna train language model, I don't, but if somebody wants to train language models, they should not be at uc.[00:29:11] Berkeley, , they shouldn't .[00:29:15] I think it's, there's a sort of big, gets bigger mentality when it comes to training because obviously the big companies have all the data, all the money. But I was kind of inspired by Luther ai. Mm-hmm. , um, which like basically did independent reproductions Yeah. Of G P T three.[00:29:30] Don't you think like that is a proof of, of existence that it is possible to do independently?[00:29:34] Totally. I think that kind of reproducing research is interesting because it doesn't lead to a paper. Like PhD students are still like, you can only graduate when you have papers. Yeah. So to have a whole lab set.[00:29:46] I think Stanford is interesting cuz they did do this like reproducing some of the language models. I think it should be a write[00:29:50] a passage for like every year, year one PhD. You[00:29:53] must reproduce everything. I won't say that no one's done it, but I do understand that there's an incentive to do new work because that's what will give you the paper.[00:30:00] Yeah. So will you put 20 of your students to. I feel like only a Stanford or somebody who like really has a plan to make that like a five plus year. Mm-hmm. research agenda. And that's just the first step sort of thing. Like, I can't imagine every PhD student wants to do that. Well, I'm just[00:30:17] saying, I, I, I feel like that there will be clouds, uh, the, the, you know, the big three clouds.[00:30:21] Mm-hmm. Probably the Microsoft will give you credits to do whatever you want. And then it's on you to sort of collect the data but like there of existence that it is possible to[00:30:30] It's definitely possible. Yeah. I think it's significantly harder. Like collecting the data is kind of hard. Like just like because you have the cloud credits doesn't mean like you have a cluster that has SREs backing it.[00:30:42] Mm-hmm. who helped you run your experiments. Right, right. Like if you are at Google Rain. Yeah. I was there what, like five, six years ago. God, like I read an experiment and I didn. Problems. Like it was just there. Problems . It's not like I'm like running on a tiny slur cluster, like watching everything fail every five.[00:31:01] It's like, this is why I don't train models now, because I know that's not a good use of my time. Like I'll be in so many like SRE issues. Yeah. If I do it now, even if I have cloud credits. Right. So, Yeah, I think it's, it can feel disheartening. , your PhD student training models,[00:31:18] well, you're working on better paradigms for everyone else.[00:31:21] You know? That's[00:31:22] the goal. I don't know if that's like forced, because I'm in a PhD program, , like maybe if I were someone else, I'd be training models somewhere else. I don't know. Who knows? Yeah. Yeah.[00:31:30] You've read a whole post on this, right? Choosing between a PhD and going into. Obviously open ai. Mm-hmm. is kinda like the place where if you're a researcher you want to go go work in three models.[00:31:41] Advice for New Grads[00:31:41] Mm-hmm. , how should people think about it? What are like maybe areas of research that are underappreciated in industry that you're really excited about at a PhD level? Hmm.[00:31:52] I think I wrote that post for new grads. . So it might not be as applicable like as a new grad. Like every new grad is governed by, oh, not every, a good number of new grads are governed by, like, I wanna do work on something that's impactful and I want to become very known for this.[00:32:06] Mm-hmm. , like, that's like , like a lot of, but like they don't really, they're walking outta the world for the first time almost. So for that reason, I think that like it's worth working on problems. We'll like work on any data management research or platform in an industry that's like working on Providence or working on making it more efficient to train model or something like.[00:32:29] You know, that will get used in the future. Mm-hmm. . So it might be worth just going and working on that in terms of, I guess like going to work at a place like OpenAI or something. I do think that they're doing very interesting work. I think that it's like not a fad. These models are really interesting.[00:32:44] Mm-hmm. and like, they will only get more interesting if you throw more compute Right. And more data at them. So it, it seems like these industry companies. Doing something interesting. I don't know much more than that. .[00:32:59] Helping Minorities in CS[00:32:59] Cool. What are other groups, organizations, I know you, you're involved with, uh, you were involved with She Plus Plus Helping with the great name.[00:33:07] Yeah, I just[00:33:08] got it.[00:33:10] when you say it[00:33:10] out loud, didn't name Start in 2012. Long time ago. Yeah.[00:33:15] What are some of the organizations you wanna highlight? Anything that that comes to?[00:33:20] Yeah. Well, I mean, shva Plus is great. They work on kind of getting more underrepresented minorities in like high school, interested, kind of encoding, like I remember like organizing this when I was in college, like for high schoolers, inviting them to Stanford and just showing them Silicon Valley.[00:33:38] Mm-hmm. and the number of students who went from like, I don't know what I wanna do to, like, I am going to major or minor in c. Almost all of them, I think. I think like people are just not aware of the opportunities in, like, I didn't really know what a programmer was like. I remember in Texas, , like in a small town, like it's, it's not like one of the students I've mentored, their dad was a vc, so they knew that VC is a career path.[00:34:04] Uhhuh, . And it's like, I didn't even know, like I see like, like stuff like this, right? It's like just raising your a. Yeah. Or just exposure. Mm-hmm. , like people who, kids who grow up in Silicon Valley, I think like they're just in a different world and they see different things than people who are outside of Silicon Valley.[00:34:20] So, yeah, I think Chiles West does a great job of like really trying to like, Expose people who would never have had that opportunity. I think there's like also a couple of interesting programs at Berkeley that I'm somewhat involved in. Mm-hmm. , there's dare, which is like mentoring underrepresented students, like giving research opportunities and whatnot to them and Cs.[00:34:41] That's very interesting. And I'm involved with like a summer program that's like an r u also for underrepresented minorities who are undergrads. , find that that's cool and fun. I don't know. There aren't that many women in databases. So compared to all the people out there. ? Yeah.[00:35:00] My wife, she graduated and applied physics.[00:35:02] Mm-hmm. . And she had a similar, similar feeling when she was in, in school.[00:35:06] Lightning Round[00:35:06] All right. Let's jump into the lining ground. So your favorite AI product.[00:35:12] I really like. Stable diffusion, like managed offerings or whatever. I use them now to generate all of my figures for any talks that I give. I think it's incredible.[00:35:25] I'm able to do this or all of my like pictures, not like graphs or whatever, .[00:35:31] It'd be great if they could do that. Really looking[00:35:34] forward to it. But I, I love, like, I'll put things like bridging the gap between development and production or whatever. I'll do like a bridge between a sandbox and a city. Like, and it'll make it, yeah.[00:35:46] like, I think that's super cool. Yeah. Like you can be a little, I, I enjoy making talks a lot more because of , these like dream studio, I, I don't even know what they're called, what organization they're behind. I think that is from Stability. Stability,[00:35:58] okay. Yeah. But then there's, there's like Lexi there. We interviewed one that's focused on products that's Flare ai, the beauty of stable diffusion being open sources.[00:36:07] Yeah. There's 10[00:36:07] of these. Totally, totally. I'll just use whichever ones. I have credits on .[00:36:13] A lot of people focus on, like have different focuses, like Sure. Mid Journey will have an art style as a focus. Mm-hmm. and then some people have people as the focus for scenes. I, I feel like just raw, stable diffusion two probably is the[00:36:24] best.[00:36:24] Yeah. Yeah. But I don't do, I don't have images of people in my slides . Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That'd be a little bit weird.[00:36:31] So a year from now, what do you think people will be most surprised by in ai? What's on the horizon and about to come, but people don't realize. .[00:36:39] I don't know if this will be, this is related to the AI part of things or like an AI advancement, but I consistently think people underestimate the data management challenges.[00:36:50] Ooh. In putting these things in production. Uhhuh, . And I think people get frustrated that they really try, they see these like amazing prototypes, but they cannot for the life of them, figure out how to leverage them in their organization. And I think. That frustration will be collectively felt by people as it's like it's happened in the past, not for LLMs, but for other machine learning models.[00:37:15] I think people will turn to whatever it, it's just gonna be really hard, but we're gonna feel that collective frustration like next year is what I think.[00:37:22] And we talked a little bit before the show about data management platforms. Yeah. Do you have a spec for what that[00:37:27] is? The broad definition is a system that handles kind of execution.[00:37:33] or orchestration of different like data transformations, data related transformation in your pipeline. It's super broad. So like feature stores, part of it, monitoring is part of it. Like things that are not like your post request to open AI's, p i, , .[00:37:51] What's one AI thing you would pay for if someone built.[00:37:54] So whenever I do like web development or front end projects or like build dashboards, like often I want to manage my styles in a nice way.[00:38:02] Like I wanna generate a color palette, uhhuh, and I wanna manage it, and I wanna inject it throughout the application. And I also wanna be able to change it over time. Yeah. I don't know how to do this. Well, ? Yeah, in like large or E even like, I don't know, just like not even that large of projects. Like recently I was building my own like Jupyter Notebook cuz you can do it now.[00:38:23] I'm super excited by this. I think web assembly is like really changed a lot of stuff. So I was like building my own Jupyter Notebook just for fun. And I used some website to generate a color palette that I liked and then I was like, how do I. Inject this style like consist because I was learning next for the first time.[00:38:39] Yeah. And I was using next ui. Yeah. And then I was like, okay, like I could just use css but then like, is that the way to do it for this? Like co-pilot's not gonna tell me how to do this. There's too many options. Yeah. So just like, let me like just read my code and read and give me a color palette and allow me to change it over time and have this I opera.[00:38:58] With different frameworks, I would pay like $5 a month for this.[00:39:01] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's a, you know, the classic approach to this is have a design system and then maintain it. Yeah. I'm not designing Exactly. Do this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is where sort of the front end world eats its own tail because there's like, 10 different options.[00:39:15] They're all awesome. Yeah, you would know . I'm like, I have to apologize on behalf of all those people. Cuz like I, I know like all the individual solutions individually, but I also don't know what to recommend to you .[00:39:28] So like that's therein lies is the thing, right? Like, ai, solve this for me please. ,[00:39:35] what's one thing you want everyone to take away about?[00:39:39] I think it's really exciting to me in a time like this where we're getting to see like major technological advances like in front of our eyes. Maybe the last time that we saw something of this scale was probably like, I don't know, like I was young, but still like Google and YouTube and those. It's like they came out and it was like, wow, like the internet is so cool , and I think we're getting to see something like that again.[00:40:05] Yeah. Yeah. I think that's just so exciting. To be a part of it somehow, and maybe I'm like surrounded by a bunch of like people who are like, oh, like it's just a fad or it's just a phase. But I don't think so. Mm-hmm. , I think I'm like fairly grounded. So yeah. That's the one takeaway I have. It's, it's not a fad.[00:40:24] My grandma asked me about chat, g p t, she doesn't know what a database is, but she knows about chat. G p t I think that's really crazy. , what does she, what does she use it for? No, she just like saw a video about it. Ah, yeah. On like Instagram or not, she's not like on like something YouTube. She watches YouTube.[00:40:41] She's sorry. She saw like a video on ChatGPT and she was like, what do you think? Is it a fad? And I was like, oh my god. , she like watched after me with this and I was like, do you wanna try it out? She was like, what ? Yeah,[00:40:55] she should.[00:40:55] Yeah, I did. I did. I don't know if she did. So yeah, I sent it to her though.[00:40:59] Well[00:40:59] thank you so much for your time, Sreya. Where should people find you online? Twitter.[00:41:04] Twitter, I mean, email me if you wanna directly contact me. I close my dms cuz I got too many, like being online, exposing yourself to strangers gives you a lot of dms. . Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, you can contact me via email.[00:41:17] I'll respond if I can. Yeah, if there's something I could actually be helpful with, so, oh,[00:41:22] awesome.[00:41:23] Thank you. Yeah, thanks for, thanks for. Get full access to Latent Space at www.latent.space/subscribe

We pay tribute to Chris Boucher by reviewing the 4th Doctor story “Image of the Fendahl”. Listen/download on iTunes Stitcher.com …Continue reading →

Morocco's history-making run at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar has fans abuzz even in Auckland, nearly 15-thousand kilometres away. Twenty-five minutes into the semifinal match with defending champions France were already in the lead, 1-nil. Reporter Mohammad Alafeshat spoke to Corin Dann from The Fox bar on Auckland's Viaduct.  

For years Seattle residents and visitors have had a hard time getting from the downtown streets to the city's waterfront.  In November, 2019, one of the biggest impediments to access, the double decker elevated Viaduct highway, came down, making way for a new surface street, pedestrian and bicycle trails, a 20-acre park, and a slew of new public artworks. Seattle was one of the first cities in the country to implement a law that requires one percent of public works projects to fund art to be locate at the project. In the case of the waterfront redevelopment, that money will pay for everything from art installations focused on the sea itself, to works that highlight the history and culture of the Indigenous people who have called the area home for many centuries. Ruri Yampolsky is in charge of stewarding the creation and installation of these public artworks. She talks with Vivian Phillips and Marcie Sillman about what we'll see when the dust finally settles at one of the biggest redevelopment sites in Seattle history.

In this episode, we celebrate the importance of accessing green space and consider the historical actions of others and how these actions made it possible for us to enjoy the ability to ramble in the countryside.These conversations were recorded over the Kinder Mass Trespass 90th anniversary weekend in the High Peaks of Derbyshire in Hayfield village hall.I want to thank Joss Underwood from the Tent People, who organised a fantastic pop-up event on the village green in Hayfield and generously introduced me to today's guests, Helen Darby, Dorothy Collins and  Kate Ashbrook. Ninety years ago, members of the young communist league gathered at Kinder Scout here in Derbyshire, to highlight the fact that walkers were denied access to areas of open country. When the group reached the plateau of Kinder Scout, there were violent scuffles with gamekeepers. As a result, six ramblers were arrested. They received jail sentences ranging from two to six months for offences relating to violence involving the keepers.According to the Hayfield Kinder Trespass Group website, this act of civil disobedience was one of the most successful in British history. It arguably led to the passage of the National Parks legislation in 1949[8] and helped pave the way for establishing the Pennine Way and other long-distance footpaths. Walkers' rights to travel through common land and uncultivated upland were eventually protected by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act (CROW Act) of 2000. ReferenceReach Helen Darby  on Instagram @helenlouisedarby or at their website www.helendarbypoetry.com Follow Kate Ashbrook's blog here: https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/Castlefield viaduct: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/castlefield-viaductFind out more about the Tent People:  www.thetentpeople.co.ukHayfield Kinder Trespass Group: https://kindertrespass.org.uk/  

Mask mandates are scrapped, the borders are open, and the buzz and busy-ness is back for restaurants in Auckland's viaduct. With tourists returning and more people coming in for a night on the town, many restaurant owners say they're back to pre-Covid levels. Our reporter Finn Blackwell went to see what's cooking.

Street racers have performed stunts, donuts, and burnouts on the 6th Street Viaduct, drawing the attention of the LAPD and national news outlets. Mark Finchem, a member ​​of the Arizona House of Representatives and the far-right Oath Keepers, is now the Republican nominee for secretary of state. New texts from Alex Jones' phone indicate he may have withheld evidence during his defamation case against the families of victims in the Sandy Hook shooting. Critics review new film releases: “Bullet Train,” “Easter Sunday,” “Sharp Stick,” and “Bodies Bodies Bodies.” The repertoire of raw or lightly-cured fish on offer in Southern California restaurants is epic and includes crudo, sashimi, poke, ceviche and aguachile.

In this Sunday edition: People who gave birth early in the pandemic reported elevated stress and anxiety levels. We'll speak with some new parents about their experience during a frightening and difficult time. Then, you may be following the chaotic opening of the impressive new bridge connecting Boyle Heights and downtown L.A. It's fair to say the first weeks of the 6th Street Viaduct have not gone smoothly.  Brian De Los Santos – who's the host of our upcoming weekday podcast How To LA....went to check it out – and came away with the question: Who's the bridge really for?  This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.  Support the show: https://laist.com

Here's what we're watching today: Sixth Street Viaduct closure Monkeypox vaccine supply limits A ballot measure for removing an elected sheriff for misconduct The fate of an abandoned Boyle Heights hospital More apartment complexes for unhoused families The Oak Fire in Mariposa County A NYC museum celebrating Jackie Robinson  This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.  Support the show: https://laist.com

COVID may have caught public health officials by surprise when it broke out more than two years ago but they've had time to learn lessons and prepare for future outbreaks of different diseases. Now, monkeypox cases are growing to the point where the World Health Organization just declared it a global health emergency. We go In Depth into whether public health is ready for monkeypox. A top Russian official now says the goal is to get rid of Ukraine's government. But is Russia capable of doing that? It seems the Christmas shopping season starts earlier and earlier. Well, the same thing is happening when it comes to the Fall like Halloween and your favorite pumpkin-flavored drink or food. The new Sixth Street Viaduct just opened and police have already had to shut it down a few times because of crazy antics and street takeovers. We go In Depth into why people just can't behave on the bridge. A new poll suggests people might be losing faith in our justice system. Is the Supreme Court to blame for that? #Grandmaera. It's a new hashtag as younger women adopt the hobbies traditionally taken up by grandmas such as crocheting and knitting.   To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

COVID may have caught public health officials by surprise when it broke out more than two years ago but they've had time to learn lessons and prepare for future outbreaks of different diseases. Now, monkeypox cases are growing to the point where the World Health Organization just declared it a global health emergency. We go In Depth into whether public health is ready for monkeypox.  A top Russian official now says the goal is to get rid of Ukraine's government. But is Russia capable of doing that?  It seems the Christmas shopping season starts earlier and earlier. Well, the same thing is happening when it comes to the Fall like Halloween and your favorite pumpkin-flavored drink or food.  The new Sixth Street Viaduct just opened and police have already had to shut it down a few times because of crazy antics and street takeovers. We go In Depth into why people just can't behave on the bridge.  A new poll suggests people might be losing faith in our justice system. Is the Supreme Court to blame for that?  #Grandmaera. It's a new hashtag as younger women adopt the hobbies traditionally taken up by grandmas such as crocheting and knitting.   To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An opium den on the first floor? Prison cells in the basement? The Viaduct has seen all sorts of strange and unusual activity over the ages, and if you're looking to discover what London's original Gin Palaces might have looked like then it is a perfect example. The Viaduct is an authentic survivor of Gin Palace style of the Victorian Era in England. The Viaduct Tavern opened in 1869 and it is Protected by law by a Grade II listing, the corner tavern features a ceiling of hand-beaten copper plating, painted a deep burgundy. Mirrors are decorated with 24-carat gold gilding and the walls are adorned by paintings of the four “Ladies of Holborn Viaduct”. There are ghosts here and the Tavern is a popular haunt for Ghost Hunters.Even the Ghost Club has investigated here.Join us to discover what resides in the Cellar of this most haunted spot in the city of London.The spirits are calling!#london #viaducttavern #oldlondontown #weirdlondon #hauntedlondon #ghostsoflondon #spookyisles #hauntedlondontavern #oldbailey #newgateprison #exploringlondon #paranormallondon #historyoflondon #ghostsoflondoncity See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.