today about trash. More specifically, I know this is exciting, how to work with zero waste. So starting January 1st of this year, I committed myself 100% to trying to live zero waste. This is basically the only New Year's resolution I have ever kept. When I am not talking about trash, I work as the owner of the happy owner, I should say, of Brightspot Studio, which is my freelance graphic design firm. So I do brand identities and corporate websites for clients across North America. But my real passion, as of late, is trash. And so about six months ago, I started Tiny Trash Can, where I share simple ways to reduce waste.  So what is zero waste? Can you guys, I've been throwing this term out already a few times. Does anyone know what it is? Can anyone define it for me? What they think it means? Okay. Does anyone else have a guess? It's not that hard actually. That's an idea.  When I said I was gonna talk about trash, I meant it literally. It literally means trying not to throw anything away. So I don't know about you guys, but these work conferences are some of the most wasteful things that I as a freelancer encounter in my work activities, especially when there's food involved, right? So this year, we have about 400 attendees, actually more than that. Yeah, at WordCamp this year, I think 425 tickets were sold. So we have 400 attendees and we've all spent half of, roughly half of our waking hours yesterday and today here, so I'm gonna call that one day, right, over the course of the weekend.  So that adds up to a lot of trash. That means that this conference potentially throws away 800 kilograms of trash in just one weekend. That's nearly a metric ton. Just like kind of wrap your head around that. Now, I don't know if you realize this, but you guys have all been part of a little experiment this weekend. You've been my little guinea pigs. WordCamp has put into place a lot of green initiatives this year, an effort to reduce our waste as much as possible. Somebody's got two stamps. So if you were here last year or previous years, you may be familiar with what lunch used to look like. We had catered boxes that had a plastic tray inside with food.  And this year, lunch looked like this. Isn't it? It's beautiful. I was super excited that we were able to pull this off. Real plates, real silverware, fabric tablecloths.  And then somebody cleared the table for me. I was like, are you done with that? I was like, well, in fact I am. I didn't even have to worry about figuring out what went in the compost bin and where to find trash.  So before, after. Beautiful, right? And this wasn't hard. I mean, how have you guys felt about the greening of word camp this year? Has it been painful? Hopefully not too painful. So how do we move towards zero waste? Well, it turns out there are five steps, five very simple steps, and they all start with an R. So can anyone guess as to what some of these steps might be? Recycle, yes. Reuse. Ooh, refuse. Someone's an A student. Anybody else? Reduce, yep. So oftentimes we think of these three, right? I mean, we've been sort of, this has been drilled into our heads for decades now. Reduce, reuse, recycle. But when it comes to zero waste, there's two more that we add. We add refuse and we add rot, which is just another word for compost. And these need to be done in this order to make a difference. So you refuse what you don't need. You reduce the things that you do need as much as possible. You reuse what you have and you reuse what you can. Think secondhand. And then you recycle or compost the rest. Now, I don't know if you realize this. Not only is it something that's intended to be done step by step in a chronological order, it's actually a hierarchy. Now, what I've noticed is that so often our environmental efforts start here. We start with recycle, right? Oh, we want to be green. We're going to recycle more. Zero waste is actually about recycling less. If you notice, if you start with recycling, your impact, your potential beneficial impact is very limited. But if you start way up here, you have the potential to make some really big gains. That's because recycling, once an object has been created, it's been extracted, it's been made, it's been put into your hands, 95% of the environmental damage of that product has already occurred. So recycling isn't going to really save that much. What I realized is that there's something missing here, right? Unfortunately, not everything. It's impossible right now to live 100% zero waste, which is why I advocate for something called tiny trash. And hopefully after you've gone through this whole process, what's left is a very small amount. And that's the part that goes to landfill. To me, that's a very realistic way of thinking about zero waste at this place in time. So why is that the case? Well, we basically exist within a linear economy, right? We extract things, we make things, and then we dispose of them. Material goes in, trash comes out. A recycling economy is a little bit like this. We extract things, we make things, then we remake things, we make things, and eventually though, after some flips and somersaults, it ends up as trash anyway. What zero waste advocates for is a circular economy. In other words, there is no waste. No waste is created. What's created is reused for materials, and you kind of have this nice circular pattern. This is what you see in nature. There's no waste in nature, right? Everything is used for something else. So let's talk trash. The biggest problem that we have is that we are consuming way too much. Like I said before, the average Canadian produces two kilograms of trash per day. It's about 720 kilograms a year. That's a lot of trash, like three-fourths of a ton of trash per person. And cities don't make this any easier. In fact, they sort of almost incentivize it. The standard trash can is really big. I just moved a couple of years ago to a new city, and I had the option of purchasing either a 360-liter trash can or a petite 240-liter trash can. I opted for the smaller of the two, but still, it's gigantic. And what that does is that it normalizes consumption and it normalizes waste. You feel like, you know, this is kind of what's expected for me to throw away, and you don't think anything of it. You think I'm doing what everyone else is doing. Has anyone ever heard of Earth Overshoot Day? Yeah, I got the A student. Yes, can you tell me what Earth Overshoot Day is? We've over-consumed Earth's resources. Yeah, no, no, no, you're exactly right. So just to sort of summarize, Earth Overshoot Day, which just, we just passed. I hope none of you were celebrating August 1st this year because it's nothing to celebrate. It's the earliest that this date has ever fallen. So the people at the Global Footprint Network, they calculate Earth Overshoot Day every year. And what they do is they take Earth's biocapacity, right, how much the Earth can provide in one year in resources, as well as in absorbing some of the stuff that we do, and they divide it by human's demand on those resources. And it turns out in 2018, we would need 1.7 Earths to sustain current global consumption, hence August 1st. So basically, we're on borrowed time, right? And if you think that Canadians are good, we're not so good. In fact, we're among the worst. There's Canada right there, so I have if you can see that right here. If everybody in the world lives like a Canadian, Earth Overshoot Day would have been March 18. I don't know about you, I find that terrifying. It's sort of like if you had a $100,000 salary that you were given every year, and on March 18, you had just used it all up. In the first two and a half months of the year, you burned your salary, and the rest of the year, you're actually pilfering in your child's savings account. That's kind of what this is like. So where does our trash go, right? Landfills stink, literally and figuratively. So landfills do a few things that are all very terrible. One, they house a lot of hazardous waste, which then poisons soil and groundwater. They produce this toxic soup called leachate. It's the stuff that leaks out of the landfill when material in the landfill tries to decompose, and then rainwater kind of goes through it. And this toxic soup pollutes land, groundwater, and waterways. And then last but not least, we have methane. This is how landfills are connected to climate change. Greenhouse, I'm sorry, landfills create methane when organic materials, so stuff that could have been diverted to the compost pile but aren't, for example, food scraps, yard waste, things like that. When those go in the landfill, they try to decompose, but they can't because there's no oxygen. So they can't go through their normal decomposition process. So what happens instead is an anaerobic or no oxygen process and that creates methane. The problem with methane is that it's 25 to 100 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So we're speeding up global climate change when we put too many things in landfill. The other villain in this story is plastic. Have you guys heard about this plastic crisis? We're in the midst of a plastic crisis. I found out about this about a year or so ago, and my eyes were open. I was shocked. Some of you may have seen pictures like this. National Geographic just did this wonderful reportage, I guess, of plastic. And the problem with plastic is that it's very persistent, right? It doesn't go away. The most optimistic estimates are that plastic will degrade in four to 500 years. But the more realistic, pessimistic view says a thousand or more. And the truth is we don't really know because plastic hasn't been around that long. It's only been around for a handful of decades. These are all just guesses. But what scientists do know is that plastic doesn't biodegrade. In fact, all it does is break down into smaller and smaller pieces, but it's still plastic. Microplastics are in our oceans. Animals are ingesting them all the way from the very most basic animals, zooplankton, and it's working its way up the food chain. There's a picture that's missing here. Our picture. We are ingesting plastic. If any of you, I see lots of reusable water bottles. This is great. But if you have recently drank from a, recently drank from a plastic water bottle, 94% of those are contaminated with microplastics. If you like seafood, you're ingesting microplastics. And if you use salt, sea salt has been shown to be contaminated with microplastics. So the problem is we cannot recycle our way out of this problem. For one, plastics can only be recycled once, maybe twice at best. I don't know about you guys, but I used to think that like, oh, I'm going to throw this plastic water bottle in a recycling bin. It'll just magically pop out at the store as another water bottle, right? No harm done. Well, that is not the case. Plastic, like that come in water bottles, when you go through the, when plastic goes through a recycling process, it actually gets ruined. It kind of gets destroyed and it can no longer make the original item. So what happens is that plastic is often recycled plastic material. It's often mixed with other things like cotton or wood fibers to make decking or it's used to make clothing. And then those items aren't easily recyclable. So guess what? It ends up in the landfill or the ocean anyway. And this is the lucky plastic. Only 9% of plastic that's created ever gets recycled. That means the other plastic is either getting put in landfill or incinerated, which is not that great either because then it flutes the air. So what can you do about it? Right? It seems like, oh my God, this is so dire, but what can an individual do about it?  I mean, this is awesome. And you know, you probably, over the course of the weekend would have refilled it a couple of times. So just think about the number of water bottles that you just saved from going into ultimately the ocean. So let's take something, you know, the beloved daily coffee habit. You know, a lot of times we'll have a coffee on our way into work, maybe there's a coffee break, maybe you're meeting with a client, right? And so potentially you are using five disposable coffee cups a week. And let's say you're lucky enough to have two weeks vacation and you work for 40 years, right? You start this habit when you're 25, you retire at 65. One person then, oopsie, showing you that, could create 10,000 disposable coffee cups. Right now, 7 billion cups are distributed a year, disposable coffee cups. Less than 1% are ever recycled. The problem with these cups is that they're made with virgin, even though they're paper products, they're not made with recycled paper. Trees are cut down to make these cups because of contamination concerns. So very little recycled material is used in these cups. And then to make them waterproof, they're lined with plastic. Because they're lined with plastic, it makes it very, very hard if not impossible to recycle because you can't separate the plastic easily from the paper. So by replacing, by kind of cleaning up your coffee habit, one reusable mug, whether it's a to-go cup or a mug at your desk, that creates magical math and results in zero disposable cups at the end of your career. Pretty cool. So this is what I did. At my home, I decided to live zero waste. And that was my original trash can. It's a 10-gallon kitchen trash can. And over the course of weeks and months, I slowly started reducing my trash. And I did that. One of the first things I did was I looked in my trash can. Right before it was time to take it out to the curb, I took a look to see what was in there. And what I found is that 75 to 80 percent of it was related to food packaging. So it was stuff around produce, like the plastic wrap around a cucumber. It was the bag that my cheese came in. It was the bag that my tortillas came in, right? It was all this not easily recycled plastic packaging. So I decided that I would have to learn a new way of shopping. And so I looked for alternatives. So I found a zero waste grocery store. There are many of them in Montreal. They're popping up everywhere. This is Loco, Episerie, Loco and Verdun. And I also started going to Bulk Barn, which are everywhere. And both these places, I can use my own containers. So right away, I eliminated all the plastic packaging from my groceries. And this is what they look like now. And then I put systems in place to make this easier. I created what I call my bulk shopping kit. I put four mason jars in there. They're the same size. I know what the weight is, 460 grams in case you're interested. Don't have to worry about getting them weighed. I have my egg carton. I have contained like an olive oil. When I ran out of my store bought olive oil, I kept the container. I use that to refill. And I put this all in the back of my car because for me, Verdun is driving distance. I can't get there any other way because I live on the south shore. But I put this all in my car and that way I'm always prepared. If I ever have to run into a store, I know I have my grocery bags. I've got jars. If ever I'm at a restaurant and I forget to, I'm not able to eat all of my food and I needed to go bag, right? I'm only a short walk to the car to pick up a container and fill it up. So I never have to take single use plastic. I also learned a lot of really cool things along the way that you can buy literally anything in bulk, including wine. This is in Montreal. Super fun. There's tasting involved. I don't know why this keeps coming up anyway. So I'm going to talk to you today about how we can apply these zero waste principles to work waste. So first step, you got to know what you're throwing away, right?  What do you see the most in your trash? Can anyone tell me like what do they see in their trash at work? Yeah. Cups of like coffee cups as well as coffee cups. Okay. Yeah. Oh, the straw. Yes. Delivery boxes. Coffee stirs like the plastic ones. Is it like bags? Okay. So are you guys noticing a trend? So much of this is around food. So I, because I hadn't taken a survey before I started building this, I had to sort of guess at what some of these things might be. But once you brainstorm, I'm sorry, once you see what's in your trash, you can start brainstorming ways to eliminate and there's always an alternative. Plastic is relatively new invention. It's only been around about 60 years or something like that. There's a way to do it differently. So I assume that some of this waste in offices might be around coffee.  So, you know, seeing if you can switch to a regular coffee maker or switch to reusable k-cups, coffee makers can be found very easily secondhand. This doesn't have to be expensive. Providing secondhand coffee mugs in the kitchen for employees to use. If you've got a sink and you've got a coffee maker, chances are you have a way to like wash and these can all be bought at a thrift store. Somebody could just go and buy a dozen mugs and you'd be set. And then providing sugar and cream and bulk rather than individual packets, very similar to what wordpressed it this year. Another place that I think it can be wasteful are parties. And so throwing guilt-free parties for your colleagues on their birthdays or retirements, things like that, you know, instead of bringing in the disposable plates and silverware and cups, providing secondhand plates, cups and silverwares that people can use in a common area would be another way to remove and eliminate that sort of that waste stream, basically. So, my second tip is to replace your trash can. So, so often at work our trash is mostly like paper related, right? There's a lot of paper management involved at work.  They give every employee a trash can. But what if that were recycling bin instead? Because so often we have it's so easy to throw it away because under your desk, but where's the recycling bin? It's like by the copying machine, it's in the mail room, you have to like go and trek over your recycling, right? We're making the environmentally friendly choices hard on ourselves and we're making trashing our planet super easy. It's like the default.  That's what I did at home. So that trash can over there on the left, I decided that that was going to be my new compost bin. Why? Because I had a compost bin on my counter. It was small. It got stinky really fast. I had to like empty it every two days into my backyard and come January, February, this is not necessarily fun to do. You have to put on your boots. You got to get on your heavy coat. You got to go outside. You get snow all over the house. I said, forget this. I'm turning that into my compost bin. So I have to empty it out a lot less. And I went and grabbed my waste basket for my bathroom and I decided that that was going to be my new trash can. Yeah. Well, I'm able to balance it better. So compost doesn't smell if there is a good balance of green and brown materials. So like nitrogen rich material and carbon rich material. So when it's a small bin, it fills up so fast with like, you know, you cut up a watermelon, the whole thing's full with like the rinds, right? Or banana peels. It fills up really fast and it's all the kind of like stinky stuff, the greens. But when I have a larger compost bin, I layer that whenever I have shredded, I put shredded paper in there. And so it doesn't actually smell because I'm able to keep a balance because it's, yeah, but it's so small that it fills up so fast. Like literally every day or two, I would have to take it out. So this just makes composting easier and makes throwing away trash. It just makes me a little bit more sensitive to it. So another tip I have is to go paperless. This saves trees, it saves postage, it saves time, right? And it's so much more convenient not just for you, but also your clients or coworkers and it's really professional. How many of you are freelancers? Okay, some of you. So I have started sending and signing contracts digitally. I always liked it when I was a was I was on boarded with a client and I could just sign my documents online and not have to print it out, sign it, mail it back, or photograph it back. This is just so much easier. So I use a WordPress plugin called WPE sign. I did a lot of research. This is the only one I could find that actually produces a legally binding contract that will hold up in court. It passes all its compliance, let's say it's like, I have all the initials, UETA, eSign and GDPR compliant. But I can create contract templates, work proposal templates, and I send these to clients and I can get my contract signed very quickly, paper-free. I also like to send my invoices digitally as well. I love fresh books. I'm an affiliate, but you know, I've been using them for years. I do all my time tracking everything through them. What's great is I don't spend a lot of time making the invoices. They kind of make themselves. It really takes just a few minutes. And what I love about them is that they have an agreement with PayPal. So I can get my invoices processed by PayPal for a 50 cent fee as opposed to a percentage of my invoice. And because some of my invoices are pretty hefty, having a 3% invoice fee tacked onto my invoice really cuts into my profit. So this is wonderful. I get paid so much faster because I have a PayPal button on my invoices. My record so far is six minutes from the time I hit send on my invoice to when I get paid. So tip number four, use both sides of every sheet. This is sort of like self-explanatory, right? We all know we should be doing like double-sided printing. Saves trees, saves money, reduces recycling. But another little like bonus tip if you want to like take it to the next level is rescuing paper that's one-sided printing. Ah, look at that we have. You're going to be in competition now for A plus status here. So what I do, inevitably you've messed up. You tried to print something. It's not what you wanted. Or you have files that you have to clean out at a certain time of the year. Just take the extra few seconds to look and see if the other side is blank. I just have like a little drawer at my desk where I put all this like one-sided paper that can be reused. And then when I need paper, I just go in there and I like to cut it out and half I find it's a more reasonable size. I put reusable of course binder clips and I have that next to my phone so that when I'm in my meetings I can easily take notes. I don't think I will ever have to buy another notebook again. There's always paper coming in that's one-sided whether it's junk mail, bills, whatever. So another tip I have for you is skip the business cards. And this pains me because I really love designing business cards. I do brand identities for clients. That's usually the first thing they want is like oh I can't wait to see my new business cards. And lately I've been saying well what if we did something else? Like what if I applied the branding to your website or I designed social media profiles and graphics for you. And they've been taking me up on that. So skipping the business card saves trees and reduces recycling. A lot of business cards actually aren't recyclable depending on the kinds of finishes are on them anyway. And it saves money to skip the printing. So these are my business cards and it took me years to come up with a business card design that I actually liked because I'm super picky about my own stuff. And I bought a box and I still have over half the box just sits there because I just don't have enough opportunities to give them out. And even when I do have opportunities to give them out nobody really takes them. You don't need them. In fact if you really want to stay in touch with somebody the best way is to exchange an email, to exchange a phone number, text them something, look them up on LinkedIn, stalk them on Facebook, right? These are essentially single use disposable paper things.  I've had a few people offer me business cards this weekend. I don't know if any of them are here. But you'll know that I took pictures of your business cards. That's another thing. So if you don't want to be rude, I would say I would love to have a business card. Do you mind if I just take a picture of it so I can keep it? And then that way you can save it and give it to somebody else.  But these are simple things that you can refuse that make a difference in the long term. A lot of times you start a new job and it is super exciting to get like a business card with your title on it, right? But how many do they give you? It's like the minimum quantity is like 250 or something? Are you ever going to use those? So preemptively say you don't need to get me business cards. So tip number six, buy plastic free office supplies. This reduces plastic which is evil, reduces recycling and it reduces trash. So here are just some examples. I'm hoping we'll have enough time at the end so we can kind of brainstorm together scenarios that you guys run into. But instead of plastic pens, you know, refillable fountain pens, it's going to be really cool, old school and very luxurious. For pencils, opt for eraser free pencils, you know, have a separate eraser one that you can add. And that's because pencils are compostable. But if you have an eraser, then you've got the metal, you've got the eraser thing. So this just makes the end of life disposal of a product a lot easier. Instead of plastic highlighters, you can get a highlighter pencil. If you do a lot of like packing, shipping in your workplace, look for paper tape instead of plastic tape. And Amazon uses this. So you've probably seen the paper tape. What's great is that it can stay on the box and be recycled. Address labels. Instead of stickers, stickers are evil too because they also have a plastic backing. Instead of stickers, opt for a stamp, reusable. And don't affect the ability for the item that you're placing the sticker on of being recycled. Air pillows, you know, those things that they put in boxes, these bags of air. Instead, use shredded paper. I'm sure we all have exposure to that. Binders are usually cardboard. They're wrapped in plastic. Look for cardboard binders. These actually exist. You can buy them on Amazon. Or aluminum ones like metal binders. And these cardboard ones are cool. You can actually remove the spine so you can recycle the cardboard and then you can buy a replacement cover. When you do buy printer paper, look for paper that's ideally post-consumer waste recycled. Not just, you know, 100% recycled paper, but post-consumer waste. A lot of times they say it's recycled paper if they're just reusing their own business waste, but it never really went through the cycle. So it's better post-consumer waste and that it's packaged in paper. It sort of defeats the purpose if it's packaged in plastic. And if you're looking for anything else around the office, like this is just one example like a desk organizer, you know, you could repurpose glass jars that you have around the house. Let's say you buy pasta in a glass jar.  I like organizing crafts this way because they're super visual. So this isn't exactly like landfill waste related. It's not zero waste in the classic term, but telecommute. How many of you guys work from home? Yeah, isn't it awesome? How many of you wish you could work from home? Right? Like could you? Like is your job something where it's technically feasible to work from home? I know they don't allow you, but is it a job where you could? That's the thing. And so what I would encourage you, I saw some like really amazing statistics. Like if everybody who could work from home worked from home one day a week, like that could be like the the starting point, worked one day a week. It would save so many gallons of gas and so many and so much pollution. Oh yeah.   So yeah, work from home.  And for the planet, I think we should try to do more of it. Maybe you could go at it from that angle. I started working from home, back when I worked in a newspaper actually, and most people would never think that you could work from home working for a newspaper, but it would be a deadline day. I was the person that was putting out the section, and I would be sick, but I'd be willing to work from home to get the stuff done if I knew that I could kind of like lounge around and bring pajamas and drink lots of Benadryl. And it worked, and they realized, oh, well, yeah, so it wasn't that big of a deal to start working from home more often. Whether you work from home or not, video conferencing is something that is great. It limits onsite meetings, and I think it also saves a lot of time. What I love about video conferencing is that you have to set an appointment so you don't have like these surprise meetings that come up that start chewing up a lot of your time. And you can limit onsite meetings with clients with video conferencing. I use Skype, Google Hangouts and FaceTime, because that's what my clients generally have access to one or more of those platforms. I've also tried some of these other things, and these are great. Go-to meetings, Zoom and WebEx are more robust video conferencing platforms. Yeah, they allow, let's say you work in the medical industry where you have to worry about HIPAA compliance, or you work with people in multiple cities that all have to call into a common number, or you need a transcript. Some of these other services might be more up your alley. Share office space. Montreal has some really amazing co-working spaces available. This reduces consumption, reduces utilities. So working from home is great, but let's say you can't work from home, maybe your roommates are really annoying, or you can't concentrate there, or it's just not conducive to work, you can consider a co-working space. These often have free Wi-Fi, you have access to printers, office supplies, so you don't need to buy any of this stuff. Furnishings, yes. No, they're usually subscription or membership-based, and if you want a private office or a private desk within that space, it costs more than if you just want to, yeah, I don't know, I don't know, yeah. So a lot of times they have free coffee, you also have the added benefit of community. A lot of these startup places, it's a great way to sort of incubate ideas, and if you become a member at one of these bigger office co-working spaces, they have a network of offices around Canada, so when you travel, you can use their services there as well. So here is just like some of the few co-working spaces that are in Montreal. I go to St-Chien, when I have to meet with like a developer on a project, it's right above Apicery Locos, and it's a zero-waste cafe and workspace, so that's great, but some of these other ones also are really nice. Tip number nine, so borrow and rents instead of buy, always think secondhand first, I think so often we go, oh, I don't have something, I need to buy it, that's our default, but what if we didn't, right? This is thanks to SiteLock, Adam at SiteLock, thank you. I've been wanting one of these forever, but I don't want to buy it, I've refrained from buying anything new, so by borrowing this, what was great is I had a really great conversation with somebody and I'm reusing. So here are just some of the things, occasional use items, I need this once or twice a year, so it's easier for me to borrow it, but there are so many things that we might not need on a regular basis that just make more sense financially and also consumption-wise to just borrow or rent, and then don't forget your lunch. Bringing your lunch to work, it reduces disposables, it reduces food waste, which is a big contributor to greenhouse gases, saves money and it's so much healthier for the most part. So anyway, this is a lunch that I packed for my kid. Packing leftovers from the night before is a great way to just clean out stuff in the fridge. Now if you like to go out to eat or you know you're going to meet somebody or you want to be able to accept an invitation at the last minute, I recommend putting a zero-waste kit in your office. Like today, just grab some utensils that maybe are like mismatched utensils you have around the house, Tupperware and a bottle and you just keep it at your desk. That way, if ever the boss asks you out for lunch, you're prepared. So anyway, I hope that this has given you some ideas and maybe even inspired you to start your own zero-waste journey. If you do, I'd love to see pictures of your trash cans. If you could tag them, hashtag Tiny Trash Can, I'd love to see the progress that you're making and cheer you on. If you want to learn more about zero-waste issues and other waste management issues, I recommend these things. Story of Stuff is like a 20-minute YouTube video that really explains sort of manufacturing process and circular economy stuff like that. Plastic Ocean gets into plastic from every angle imaginable, not just ocean. Trash is a great documentary. There's a Montreal Zero Waste Festival coming up in November where you could find out what's happening in our local community and, of course, follow Tiny Trash Can. So anyway, I hope what you take away from this talk, question everything, plastic sucks, make one change, just one change today and less is more. So if you want to get in touch with me for branding website stuff, go to Tiny Trash. I'm going to Brightspot Studio and if you want to talk to me about zero-waste consulting, anything like that, Tiny Trash Can. And my slides are at tinytrashcan.com zero-waste work. Do you guys have any questions? Yeah. My cat's name is Milo. How do I reduce his waste? So food, I, yeah, so I buy food that comes in recyclable packaging. Almost all food that I can find comes in a plastic bag. I went to the TerraCycle website, T-E-R-R-A Cycle. It's all one word. They have a lot of recycling programs for hard to recycle stuff and there's a couple different pet food companies, so if you have a cat or a dog, that take back their packaging for free for recycling and one of them is wellness. So I decided to go with them for the food. For what comes out the other end, I use a compostable litter that's called Yesterday's News. It's made with recycled newspaper. They make to turn into little pellets and then I compost it. So I created a separate area in the far, far end of my backyard, which is essentially I dug a hole and I dispose of his litter there and then I cover it up when it's kind of full and I let it compost, decompose naturally as opposed to putting it every week or every few days in a plastic bag, putting it into my trash in a plastic bag and taking it to the landfill. So that's how I do that. Any other questions? So this is awesome. So like the first question, everything, this is exactly like look it up. Like I'm surprised sometimes like is there residential composting in my area? So if it's not provided by the city, do you live in an apartment or a freestanding an apartment? You can compost in your own unit. It's called like worm, you can have a worm composting bin, which sounds kind of scary, but it's not. And you could look into that. I think it's called Verma, Verma compost. There's special ways to do that so that you can do it in your home. You might also look and see like if the apartment like the property manager would be willing to have a designated space on the property for compost that all the residents could contribute to. But there are services at, I don't know exactly where you live, but there are services if you looked it up where you could do it privately. You could have like a private composting service. I did that when I lived at a place that didn't have city recycling. And there was a private company, I know there's a private company that would take my recycling once a week. So I'm sure where there's a will, there's a way. I'm sure that it exists. It's just a matter of looking for it. And if you happen to know somebody who has a garden, they might be very happy to take your compost. Like you can store it in the freezer, like you can have like a bag or container in your freezer. It doesn't smell when you freeze it. And then you can take it to whomever who might use it and they could contribute it to their compost bin. So any other, yeah. So it's food scraps. And then I have a paper shutter in my office and I work from home. And so when my compost starts to get a little bit too wet and a little bit too, there's too much of an aroma. I go over to my paper shutter and I put the paper shredding in there. And the reason I do that is because paper, like shredded paper, is very difficult to recycle. You can't just like throw that in your blue bin. It makes a mess at the recycling plant. Like if you want to properly recycle shredded paper, it has to be like in a paper bag marked shredded paper so that they can pull it off the assembly line and recycle it properly. Yes. So most inks are vegetable based inks. These days. And so I'm hopeful that what I'm shredding is okay. I shred very little because I'm reusing the other side of the paper. And so it's only when the only parts that I shred now are the parts that actually have my name on it, right? Like the part that I'm concerned about for privacy reasons that have some sort of identifying information. I cut that part out and I shred that. The rest goes to recycling. And then what I do shred, I put it in my compost bin to kind of balance it out. Thank you. I think that's just a beautiful note to end on. So thank you very much. And if you guys want to hit me up with questions later, like if you have specific questions, maybe not work related, like home related, I'm happy to answer brainstorm with you guys. So thank you.


We're sure you're looking forward to coming out in 2024 space jam 11 low. Ooh, we're sure you're looking forward to coming out in 2024. The military blue Jordan force. We're sure you're looking forward to coming out in 2024. Honestly, I don't know that many coming out, but the one that comes to my mind is at Pearl KD 16. Ooh, okay. I didn't know that was Oh, that is dropping.


Welcome back to the tea of the day Today, I've got another Morgan's brew tea company one. This is the green Valley fruit tea Which is green tea, but it's also loaded with apple hibiscus mango papaya sunflower is another little bitties and Let's see how it is. Give it a shot Alright, okay. I'm definitely getting the foodie this and I think the papaya and the mango are kind of standing out But the hibiscus has a nice little back end on the flavor pretty cool but It's not like oh Because of the green tea it asks it to only be brewed at like 80 85 degree degrees Celsius and For only like three minutes normally with a fruit tea you can go a lot longer So in this case, it's a lighter fruit tea Which you know some people like that and just to add in a little bit of something about one of these bitties Sunflower petals are supposed to be good for arthritis They're actually supposed to be good for various things with the throat like sore throats cough inflammation of the throat because it's an anti-inflammatory and it's also supposed to be good for like digestion The sunflower is actually also high in vitamin E Which means that it can help with your energy levels and strengthen bones and other things along those lines It's also supposed to be a bit of an analgesic. So lots of different interesting things with sunflower petals


Hello and welcome to this presentation of the ARM Cortex-M4 core which is embedded in all products of the STM32G4 microcontroller family. STM32G4 microcontrollers integrate an ARM Cortex-M4 core in order to benefit from the powerful performance of its 32-bit processor architecture and particularly high level of deterministic processing. All Cortex-M CPUs have a 32-bit architecture. The Cortex-M3 was the first Cortex-M CPU released by ARM. Then ARM decided to distinguish two product lines, high performance and low power, while maintaining the compatibility between them. The Cortex-M4 belongs to the high performance product line. The processor core implements a Harvard architecture because it supports concurrent instruction fetch and data load and store transactions. The instruction pipeline features three stages, fetch, decode and execute. Conditional branch execution is accelerated by early fetching the target instruction. SIMD techniques operate with packed data. For instance, two 12-bit samples acquired with the ADC can be stored in the two half-words of the same 32-bit register. In the example described in this slide, two pairs of samples are multiplied and then accumulated into a destination register. Since data signal processing is based on some of products, SIMD instructions contribute to increase the performance with regard to regular scalar fixed point instructions. The Cortex-M4 present in the STM32G4 implements the optional single precision floating point unit, which is compatible with the IEEE 754 standard. Add, subtract and multiply instructions, take one clock to execute. Multiply and accumulate instructions, take three clocks and divide and square root instructions, take 14 clocks. The Cortex-M4 has neither a cache nor internal RAM. Consequently, any instruction fetch transaction and data access is steered to the internal bus matrix. This bus matrix selects the output AHB light masterport according to the address and the access type, instruction or data. Three AHB transactions can be in progress at a time, for instance, an instruction access from flash memory using the icode masterport, a constant data access from flash memory using the decode masterport and SRAM access using the system masterport. The Cortex-M4's bus matrix is connected to STM32G4 MCU's AHB bus matrix, enabling the CPU to access memories and peripherals. Since transactions are pipelined on AHB light, the best throughput is 32 bits of data or instructions per clock with a minimum two clock latency. One of the output of the Cortex-M4's bus matrix is the private peripheral bus or PPB, which is internal to the CPU. It's used to access memory mapped registers present in NVIC, MPU and debug units. In the Cortex-M4 core, the memory protection unit, or MPU, is used to protect address ranges according to the configured access permissions. When enabled, it intercepts any access initiated by the processor core. The MPU in STM32G4 microcontroller offers support for eight independent memory regions with independent configurable access permissions for access permission allowed or not read or write in privileged or unprivileged mode, execution permission, executable region or region prohibited for instruction fetch. The MPU is also in charge of assigning attributes to regions called normal, device and strongly ordered. Normal is used to map memories. Device and strongly ordered are used to map peripherals. The difference between them is the capability to buffer data. The device memory attribute enables write posting while a store to a strongly ordered region stores the pipeline until the response is received from the targeted peripheral. The NVIC and debug units are described in separate presentations. For more details, please refer to these application notes and the Cortex-M4 programming manual available on www.sd.com website. Also visit the ARM website where you will find more information about the Cortex-M4 core.


Welcome to Drinks Made Easy. The summer heat is right around the corner, which begs the question, was this you last year? Well, here's a great twist on a classic cocktail that's sure to help you beat the summer heat. The pink painkiller. To build the pink painkiller, you'll start with two cups of ice. Now if you want it a little bit more slushy, you can always cut back on that. And if you want it a bit more dense, you can always add more ice. Next, we'll add four ounces of pineapple juice, two ounces of white rum, one ounce of orange juice, and one ounce of coconut cream. Cap that off and blend until everything's integrated. Now we're going to fill the hurricane glass up half full with our drink. Set that aside, and return your blender to its base. Add one ounce of grenadine. Put a cap on it and blend to integrate the grenadine into the rest of the cocktail. We're going to spoon in the second mixture to try and help create a bit more of a defined layer. If you don't care though, you can always just pour it right on in. Garnish with a little bit of nutmeg, an orange slice, a cherry, and last but not least, an umbrella straw. And there you have the pink painkiller. Thanks for watching. Please be sure to like, subscribe, and click on the bell icon so you'll be notified anytime we release a new video. And you can help us make at least a dollar a day to help cover Mike's e-harmony expenses.


A film in three minutes. Blade Runner. Incept Date. June 25th 1982. Designation. Runner. Blade. Function. Cult. Science Fiction. Masterpiece. Just a few of the many words that could be used to sum up what is easily one of the greatest and most impactful science fiction films from the 20th century. A movie whose legacy can be seen in countless spiritual successors, tributes and homages from cinema, print, music, video games and beyond. That explores the very question of what it means to be human whilst dazzling all with its incredible visuals, stunning art direction and terrifying depiction of the future. The story follows Detective Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford. A Blade Runner tasked with hunting down escaped replicants, artificial human beings who live for only a few years, created by the all-consuming Tyrell Corporation. Whilst working the case, Deckard meets Tyrell employee Rachel, played by Sean Young, who challenges his sense of purpose and very own existence whilst the leader of the escaped replicants, Roy Batty, played by Rutger Hauer, attempts to confront Tyrell's CEO and demand more life from his maker. Based on the novel by sci-fi master Philip K. Dick do android stream of electric sheep, it's virtually impossible to summarize the artistry and complexity of the cinematic experience that is Blade Runner. It's lengthy and troubled production from crew walkouts to financial difficulties and post-production script free rights has led it to becoming one of the most revisited, analyzed and reassessed movies of all time. Director Ridley Scott released what was promoted as the final cut of the film in 2007, the most artistically and narratively complete version that also kept his intended original ending. The story's debate about the meaning of reality, the future of humanity, man's relationship to the environment and ever-advancing technology solidify Blade Runner's groundbreaking reputation over three decades after release, with the film's dark vision of the future arguably more relevant in today's world than the one of the early 1980s whilst also cementing Ridley Scott's reputation as a true visual visionary director. Everything from the costumes and set design, the awe-inspiring cinematography by Jordan Cronenworth, to the instantly recognizable score composed by Van Gelis, to the depiction of a barren, polluted, acid rain version of Los Angeles' future, cements Blade Runner's reputation as one of science fiction's all-time greatest cinematic achievements. Its impact on the cyberpunk genre is totally undoubted, with many other movies copying or paying tribute to the film's trailblazing style and tone for years to come. But no imitations come close to capturing the lightning in a bottle that was Blade Runner, a film, a world and a story so vividly original that it makes all other contenders appear lost in time, like tears in rain.


Not sure what that is to do with J-Walking, but okay. What? Congress people in bed with lobbyists. Uh, maybe these guys? Oh, okay. That didn't... Alright. Congress people taking dark money. Uh, I mean... Okay. It keeps going. Alright. I'm just gonna click everything. Select all the squares. Congress people who spend half their time fundraising. It's... It's all of them. It's gotta be. Uh... Alright. Okay. I didn't want unlocking anyway.


Convertibles currently are at the height of their power, having access to all types of different hardware, with both efficient and powerful chips. The 2022 version of the 14-inch Yoga 7i from Lenovo is solely based on Intel processors with Alder Lake, U-Series and V-Series operands. Lenovo takes a new approach to the design, with both the lead and the base has rounded corners and edges, which really soften up the appearance. What isn't soft is the device itself, as the aluminum chassis is as durable as ever with no flex from the entire laptop. Also for a 14-inch form factor, we have a thin 17mm profile and a weight of only 1.45kg. The laptop foregoes a numpad, but the keyboard that it has is one of the best that we've tested on the Convertible. With decent heat travel for its sickness, clicky feedback and the backlight typing is as pleasant as ever. The touchpad is covered in glass and has a light surface along with all the accuracy and responsiveness you want. The base also features a fingerprint reader and two speaker cutouts, with two more on the bottom. The I-O here is well selected, so that you are hardly missing anything of importance. There are two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one Type 8 3.2 Gen 1 port, an HDMI 2.1 port, a microSD card reader and a 3.5mm audio jack. Only 2 per 100 people watching this video are subscribers. If you decide to just start following us, we'll be able to reinvest more in our laboratory thus making even more helpful videos for you. Thank you, you're awesome. It's a big hope that the upgradability is totally sacrificed with all of the memory being soldered to the motherboard. Storage-wise, there is only one M.2 PCI-EX4 slot, but it fits the ultra-fast Gen 4 drives. The display selection has high quality panels with either a 2.2K IPS panel or a 2.8K OLED panel. For a 14-inch laptop, the 2.2K panel seems pretty fitting, so that is why we picked it. The IPS display caps add 332 nits of big brightness and an usually high contrast ratio and 97% sRGB coverage. The accuracy gets pretty good with our design and gaming profile, making the laptop a great option for creator work. The 71Wh battery pack offers balanced battery life, especially with the 28W P-series CPU. You get 10 hours and 50 minutes of web browsing or 9 hours and 5 minutes of video playback. We tested a configuration with the Core i5-1240p which has 12 cores and 16 threads and is much more powerful than any ULV CPU that Intel or AMD could offer from their Tiger Lake and Zen 3-series. With only integrated graphics, you might feel disappointed, but the laptop will still be able to handle plenty of image and photo editing along with other creator work. The two heat pipes on the inside are enough for a laptop with integrated graphics. There is also a further latch fan and a metal heat spreader on VRMs. The stress test showed that the CPU throttles down in the final stage, but the temperature at the end was only 68°C, which is pretty low. The outside was cool and quiet as well, with the hotspot not going over 40°C. Obviously, if you need the best possible performance, you won't find it here. However, the portability aspect is important for many people and this is where the Yoga 7i shines. It can be very useful both as an office device or a photo editing station for the road. While also being great for consuming media is its convertible design. Of course, we've done a lot more tests and you can check out all the results in our in-depth review on laptopmedia.com. You'll find the link in the description below the video. If you think that our reviews are helpful, hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. Thank you!


Hi everyone Sean with Jaspies case breaks calm here doing 2020 Panini prison WNBA basketball hobby two box break random teams number three So 12 spots 12 teams take the customer's names randomize them all card ship Chasing Sabrina Inescu as well as Brianna Stewart autos Alana Elena Deladon quite a few other WNBA legends as well. So here is this is the first year that they've ever done prism WNBA so Same old WNBA stuff, but in the prism format that everybody knows and loves So here are the customers from Sinyin down to Mark Haraki last spot mojo and the teams from the Atlanta dream down to the Washington Mystic dice roll randomized both lists and paramount Two into two four times. Good luck One and fourth and final time. So Carlos down to Sinyin four times on the teams And fourth and final time from the Chicago sky down to the Seattle storm Cool. So Carlos with the Chicago sky, Anthony Winston with the Minnesota Lynx Barry LaFranco with the Washington Mystics Patrick Cologne with the Los Angeles Sparks Sinyin Y with the Atlanta Dream Rashid Grant with the Indiana Fever Patrick Cologne with the New York Liberty. Congrats Nick Koba with the Connecticut Sun Mark Haraki with the Las Vegas Aces Mark Nozleski with the Dallas Wings Jason Eisenberg with the Phoenix Mercury and Sinyin Y with the Seattle storm Trade window open if anybody would like to Crick trade window We've also got our uh Instagram crew here watching along with us Get over here. So no talks on trades Cool. Well, let's get going Uh, is mark in here. I don't think mark is mark. Yeah, mark is in here Mark, would you want to trade uh, Las Vegas Aces? No No talk, okay No trade Time to break So here's our two boxes Oh for Minnesota I don't know Brad Oh, okay. So we're so good You're saying that curling is bigger in Canada than hockey is for women. I don't know if I Believe that so far Barry, I think you're uh, I think you're not live Somebody let Barry know Trade window closed. I don't think he's watching live right now. I might be delayed The Scotties is huge. Is the Scotties like a women's league or what is that? Scottie Scottie's tournament of hearts Curling bon bon spiel. What's a bon spiel? Am I even saying that word right or did you make that up? Good luck guys Lauren Cox Atomic or cracked ice there for the fever Didn't even burn out. There's our finalist Bon bonne spiel Bonne spiel. I feel like you're just making me say weird things Brad Uh for the indiana fever. That's Rashid Teyesha Harris rookie silver for the wings Uh, that is dallas mark noslesky So like some of the stars asia dur new york liberty There you go How about a red wave sabrina ianescu for the new york liberty patrick cologne Congrats Kia nurse red also for the liberty and patrick cologne That's numbered 219 out of 275 diana terrasi Brianna stewart for the storm sen yen jasmine jones hyper rookie for the liberty as well That'll be going to patrick cologne Sue bird silver for the seattle storm sen yen That's a couple hundred bucks nice Apparently that uh red wave, uh Sabrina ianescu a couple hundred dollars makia herbert harrigan for the links 52 out of 65 links going to anthony winston and auto tina tomsen gold auto for the comments That is not a team anymore houston comments no longer a team. So this will actually get randomized to everybody in the break That is numbered 8 out of 10 So everybody will be ran in that randomizer britney griner jordan canada red wave for the seattle storm That's sen yen natalie asha noah silver for the fever rashid Sabrina ianescu base for the liberty patrick cologne I think those are going for a couple a little decent amount right now Kayla thornson hyper For the wings mark nosaleski tyosha harris purple for the wings mark nosaleski That's 56 out of 125 katie luce samuelson modern day high school here in san anna That's going to the wings mark nosaleski alicia gray hyper for the wings mark nosaleski again And courtney williams The dream atlanta dream sin yen y blue That's numbered 148 out of 149 Lashia clarendon cracked ice for the liberty that's for patrick cologne loren cox rookie silver for the fever rashid grant tiara mcowen red wave for the fever rashid grant and damaris dauntas For the links anthony winston That's number 229 out of 275 And loren cox auto for the indiana fever That's going to rashid grant Who'd you get berry? Oh the mystics Well, he still got one full box to go elizabeth williams hyper for the dream sin yen damaris dauntas links silver For anthony winston arca ogle ogbon walle She's the one from the national champions at connecticut. Really good Candace parker for the sparks chicina stricklin purple For the atlanta dream out of 125 going to sin yen alana delladon for the mystics berry Let's see if we can find something for her for you silvia fowls red wave for the links anthony winston Lashia clarin don silver for the liberty patrick cologne There's box one Uh, no joey. I'm on i'm still over here We have we had one more case break go Is loren cox the next mvp Or you're you're saying you hope she is Cool box too. I mean In all likelihood, it's probably gonna be supreme is Sabrina i and s2 or uh, I mean It'll always be alana delladon more and more phoenix mercury I think you've got diana terrassi, right jason. We still got a whole box to go Let's find you guys some color. I don't know mark Let's find out apparently the aces are coached by Somebody said earlier. What's his name? bill lambir Uh joey, we're doing a case break or a two-box break Then why are we on these two because I started I brought it over here to do personals and then we sold this out That's why so I thought I'd just leave it on And we can do both There you go See box number two. Good luck everybody Handbie for the aces nixie daniel robinson red wave for the aces uh mark haraki Nekka ogle mic for the sparks patrick cologne silver alana smith hyper for the mercury and jason tiara ruffin pratt For the sparks patrick cologne That's number to 125 emma messman cracked ice for the mystics berry diana terrassi silver For the mercury.  Brianna or brianne january red wave for the phoenix suns not phoenix suns the Connecticut sun nick coba Lauren cox red For the indiana indiana fever rashid grant The reds numbered 18 out of 275 And our auto first auto nice little mojo auto Can't even read her name capy pondexter for the indiana fever and rashid numbered eight out of 25 asia durr hyper for the liberty patrick cologne jocelyn willoughby silver rookie for the liberty patrick cologne Candace parker sparks Remember all-card ship Sabrina ian escu blue ooh New york liberty patrick cologne That's pretty clean That's numbered 15 out of 149 pondexters number two overall pick What do you think of that blue? Elena delad on for the mystics berry. Let's see if we can find you some silver or color of her bet nisha lanie for the dream senyan white red wave glorie johnson for the dream silver senyan Sabrina ian escu base going to the liberty patrick cologne She's a vet auto. Well, there you go, Nick Well, yeah, no that that it would have had the rookie logo on there Megan walker hyper rookie for the liberty patrick cologne diamond the shields fireworks. Is this a gold? chicago sky carlos katnack And it is seven out of ten There you go, carlos nice gold diamond the shields for you. She's a big name alana smith cracked ice for the mercury jason Courtney van der sloot silver for the sky carlos Which card the blue carlos that blue uh or that that uh that gold out of ten That'd be pretty nice because that would give you two out of the ten brianna stewart for the storm dianna to rossy red wave for the mercury and jason and Alayna delad on red For the washington mystics two-time MVP berry Numbered seven out of 275 Some nice stuff coming out of here crazy boxes evan turner Hyper for the mercury going to jason eisenberg rené montgomery silver for the dream senyain tamara young orange for the aces That's numbered 19 out of 65 And how about this For the los angeles sparks and mojo patrick cologne lisa lesley otto Not numbered that was a nice two boxes Not bad at all Uh, we got a randomizer to do There is a w mba hall of fame. I'm pretty sure I mean i'm i guarantee there is right Actually, I think it's part of the mba hall of fame Okay guys, so we have a randomizer to do For this tina thompson gold auto From the houston comets who are no longer part of the w mba no longer in the league. Uh, it is numbered eight out of ten So tina thompson eight out of ten Gold auto. I think she would be part of the uh basketball hall of fame. Wouldn't she I told you jason I told you not to not to worry All you guys ended up hitting on the second box Uh, so here's the names all in the break. Everybody has a chance at this senyan back down to mark Dice roll name on top after A two and a five seven times One and seventh and final time. Congratulations carlos Carlos catnack getting himself that tina thompson gold auto From the now defunct houston comets But she's a big name from w mba Four time champion nine time all star tina thompson gold auto out of ten Going to carlos. There you go carlos. Congratulations guys Hell of a break nice two boxes um 2020 punini prism w mba basketball hobby two box break random teams number three as far as I know That's the last boxes for case breaks. That might be our total last boxes total, but Sean jaspyscasebreaks.com. Thanks for hanging out We'll see you next time


ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third-party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Welcome Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode, it's Thriller Thursday and this week I'm bringing you a tale of horror fiction from one of our Weirdo family members. It's a story from Rob Funkhauser called The Daemon Wood. If you're new here, welcome to the show. While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to enter contests, to connect with me on social media. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com.  Part 1 I've lived in the current area for roughly the past 10 years. It's in eastern Baltimore County, straddling the salt-pepper tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. The community I live within is private. Not even the police can come within its bounds without being called. There are no fences around it, only a quarter mile stretch of road that leads into its center and carries the residences to their various courts. It's pretty much your average suburban scene, with most of the people there being your average Joe's. I've never had any problems living there. However, behind our neighborhood is an entirely different story altogether. Directly across the street from the back of my house is a parcel of land that stretches for 140 acres to the north, east and south, surrounding the outer edges of the community. Being here a decade and being no more than a 35-year-old sucker for exploring woods, especially those which I haven't recently seen, I'd gone into the forest only a mere year after I'd gotten settled into the home. For the most part, there's not much to the woods, not until you get into the deep areas which I won't venture into myself. Every time I've even gotten close to these seemingly forbidden parts, I would turn back after several dozen cautious footsteps. Then I would stare at the area I wanted to see, but wouldn't dare step foot on it, as if I were trying to see something which would eventually reveal its otherwise hidden form. After I would stare for what seemed maybe a couple of minutes, I would receive that all-too-familiar sensation of being watched. I wouldn't bolt just yet. I wanted to let whatever thing I had imagined to get to notice me that I wasn't deeply afraid of it, that I noticed its presence and that I wasn't going to be intimidated, even if I was all alone.  I make no mistake about the presence I felt viewing me, had I stayed there any longer, I felt as though it would have attached itself to me, and I wasn't about to have that. To sidetrack for a short moment, I had always believed in the paranormal slash predator supernatural. It wasn't that I was actively looking for ghosts, demons and poltergeists on any kind of basis, but I knew better than to not believe and then be sorry later on. Of course, I had seen and experienced my fair share of odd happenings on canny events, inexplicable actions. All of this peeled in comparison to what would later years down the line I would see with my own two eyes, and yet my brain would try to neglect any and all of what had happened.  Back in my formative years of late teens and early 20s, I would hold these amazing parties in my basement which would attract all kinds of young people from several neighborhoods in the vicinity. I'd hold them every two or three weeks, just enough time for our bodies to detox from the hundreds of beers and dozens of liquor bottles we'd consumed from the prior party. It was during one of these reverie moments when I suddenly had an epiphany. Have one of these parties in the woods. The teenagers in the area supposedly did it a lot on certain weekends.  Fortunately, about a year ago, somebody had cleaned up that area, which was a small peninsula that reached out into the Salt Peter Creek, a beautiful spot on those not-so-hot summer days. And so, for the first time in nearly 15 years, I put out the idea to my friends on social media and whatnot. Dozens of comments flooded my page about what an excellent idea it would be to have a party in the woods. So I set the date, May 7, 2016, and told everyone to not get too drunk on Cinca de Mayo, which was, of course, two days earlier. As time seems to do to all of us as we get beyond that certain age, where it suddenly speeds up at least 15%, those 10 days went by in a relative flurry of no time at all. Being the one throwing a party, I had to make sure the area was going to be set up and ready for who knows how many people. Even though it was private property, the owning company was based in Florida, so there wasn't any real danger of us getting caught, locked up or having the cops called on us, as long as we kept the noise limit to a minimum and the bonfire below 2-3 feet. May 7, 2016, that night will forever haunt the hell out of me. By this time, years after I had first taunted whatever that thing was in the wood, I had casually forgotten about it all. I knew there was something not quite right about whatever dwelt there, but I had set up the party in a different area from the deep wooded places, so I was confident that there would be no trouble at all. It wasn't that the party had gone wrong. Quite the opposite. The party started off great with everyone in attendance performing a waterfall drink of a tall-boy beer, you know, at the buzz going for the night. Then those who hadn't spilled their beer all over themselves puked up and trying to chug the big can all at once, or simply whisked out and went on to take a shot of various liquors. For the first four hours, everyone was having a blast. Someone had brought an amp and hooked up their phone and played great tunes all night long. The next few hours after that, however, were a pure nightmare. Sometime around 2.30 in the morning, about 60% of the crowd had gone home, which left my closest friends still partying with me, even though not too many people were still drinking at that point. I was walking around the site making sure there wasn't too much trash to be cleaned up the next day when my foot caught on an unseen root. Down I went into a tangle of thorn vines that just so happened to grow everywhere in this forest. Fortunately, I had had enough to drink that the half-inch-long thorns hadn't caused too much agony as I thrashed around trying to get out of the mess and back onto my feet. A split second later, there was an explosion from the dying fire. The flames had suddenly leapt into the night sky as if someone had tossed in a propane tank, but none of us had anything like that. We had lit the fire with paper kindling in some lighter fluid and the lighter fluid had run out two hours ago, so there was nothing to explode in that fire and yet it did explode all the same. I remember covering my eyes from the brightness of the 12-foot pillar of fire, felt the heat as it radiated outward and upward and then was rolled over by the shock wave of the blast. I was out of the bush, but I stumbled as I tried to find my footing and fell down a slightly slanted hill. I kept rolling for a few seconds, then nothing.  Those last few sentences I had been told about after the fact. I remembered none of it except the fire erupting into the early morning sky.  What I was told next chilled my soul and heart to their chorus. Part 3 In the presence of my family, some friends and the police who had questions for me about what had happened with the fire, I had been filled in about what had taken place during my ill-timed head meeting the rock. Supposedly, most of those in attendance had seen some kind of form of substance within the flames. It had rushed upward from the fireplace so quickly a mushroom-shaped form of fire spread across the tops of the smaller trees that then morphed into what appeared to be wings. These flame-licked appendages opened up to reveal an entire body of flames, no apparent facial features with the exception of horns that could be seen against the night. Then the real horror began. The cops present began to tell me what happened, at least what they gathered had happened from my party guests. As this demon of fire rose from the pit, those of my friends who hadn't fled in terror were struck dumb at the awesome site, unable to move. They just watched as one by one of these staring bystanders were lifted into the air by an unseen force which obviously the flaming form was controlling that incinerated their bodies to char within seconds. Altogether, four of my closest friends had died that night from what the police termed as a freak happenstance of unknown origins. My mind reeled with what I had just been told. If I hadn't been in a thorn bush a few seconds before, more than likely, I would have been counted among the deceased. But I knew it wasn't an accident or a freak occurrence.  The Daemon Wood by Rob Funkhouser continues in just a moment. Are you a member of the Darkness Syndicate? The Darkness Syndicate is a private membership where you receive commercial free episodes of the Weird Darkness podcast and radio show behind the scenes video updates about future projects and events I'm working on. You can share your own opinions on ideas to help me decide upon Weird Darkness contests and events. You can hear audiobooks I'm narrating before even the publishers or authors get to hear them. You also receive bonus audio of other projects I'm working on outside of Weird Darkness. You get all of these benefits and more, starting at only $5 per month. Join the Weird Darkness Syndicate at WeirdDarkness.com slash syndicate. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash syndicate. I became obsessed with getting back at whatever the hell took for my friends. Those who knew of what happened, which happened to be everyone in attendance who had survived, or those fortunate enough to have left earlier in the night, the latter through the grapevine that is the online community. My email was inundated with people asking me if I had really seen a demon made of flames or was it all crap. I replied to as many choice emails as I could until my reserve and my resolve crumbled and I had to find the strength to fight on anew. I doubt that most, if any, I had responded to had believed my story of hitting my head on a rock and going unconscious, but that doesn't matter. I have the actual scar to prove that story. With answering the emails out of the way, I took a walk back to the site in blinding daylight, lest any untoward being tried to test my resolve. The yellow police tape was still up, but everything else had been cleaned up by some of my friends who had come back the next day. Sitting against a larger oak tree was already some candles, a cross, pictures of my four friends who had passed, and a carved piece of wood that read, Rest in Peace, about three feet above the makeshift altar of remembrance. I looked at their pictures and silently apologized for their deaths one by one.  I couldn't let them die in vain, not without them being avenged for their lives being taken under my watch. Grief and heartbreak were soon replaced by anger, an unquenchable anger that threatened to spill over into doing something violent. But that's what the thing wanted. It wanted me to act out in a flurry and fury of emotions, to not think clearly and go off half-cocked like some hormone-ravaged teenager. Oh no, not this time. I left the forest shrine, walked back to my house, and began researching any and everything on demons, elementals, and pretty much anything that dwelt in dark forested areas. Most of these things seemed to be either held back or weakened by salt, iron, silver, holy water, etc. I would pack a little goodie backpack full of nasty stuff for the demon, if that's what it was. I would come out victorious against this thing, till I had beaten it to its weakest form and sent it back to hell, whatever messed up place it had come from. I wouldn't let it shake my perseverance. Every day I would go into those woods and scream and curse while whipping around a mixed cocktail of holy water, black salt, and iron filings. This behavior went on for nearly two weeks after the incident, with nothing really reacting to what I was doing. Had I gotten rid of whatever had killed my friends? I doubted it, even though I very badly wanted to believe it. I think it was just something from afar in order to bide its time to attack at the exact right moment. It wanted me out of sorts, remember? A demon can play the long game, wait for years to get revenge, if that's what it took. But I doubt it wanted to wait long at all. On my last planned visit to the deep woods, I did my thing with the previously mentioned items and had finished up.  I could at first feel my body go cold, then completely numb, but not from the cold. This was an even pressure against all surfaces of my body, simultaneously. It happened so quickly that my breath caught in my throat and my eyes were wide. Looking at my feet, I willed them to move, but they didn't. I silently cursed at them for not working, for failing me when I needed them, and lastly for bringing me back to that location of recent demise. All for naught, it had me in its invisible grasp and wasn't letting go. From somewhere off to my left and behind me came a very low, throaty grumble that seemed to vibrate my chest cavity. The grumble was closely followed by the sensation of being licked by a very long, slimy tongue against my left ear. That's when my paralysis broke. My feet suddenly worked, and I was gone out of there as quickly as my feet could carry me. As I ran, I could have sworn, I heard it laughing at me, mocking my gestures to my murdered friends with a laugh barely audible above the light breeze blowing at the time. As I looked back one last time before being out of eye-shot, I saw the cross, pictures, candles and flowers all go up in flames. That's when I knew I was nearly ready. Part 5 To be honest, I had taken a reprieve from dealing with the thing in the woods. I had realized that I was becoming dangerously close to being obsessed, which had begun to affect many aspects of my life. I had become detached from the outside world, only going to work and then home, barely taking the care of myself I needed. I'd skip eating a couple of days at a time, the same with bathing and other personal care subjects. I wanted nothing but to get back at that coward, that murdering, thieving demon. But I had hit a dead end. There were no more things to learn about symbols, blessed holy relics, salts, herbs, oils, etc. I had tried them all in every combination imaginable, but nothing was effective. Nothing got rid of my newest enemy, and this fact alone is what inspired me to keep going. It had been a week after I had begun searching when one of the emails I had sent out had come back with a hit. It was the first glimmer of hope I'd felt in weeks. A friend of my mother's boyfriend, being a professor of ancient Israeli studies in Israel, had contacted me, explaining that he might have something that could help with my problem. He said that, biblically, King Solomon was supposedly given a ring which could control demons. He had received this ring from God himself and it was adorned with nine stones of certain type. Skipping over most of the blather that I couldn't keep my eyes on long enough to care, I finally found the meat and potatoes of the email. He said he believed that he'd found one of the second generation rings, of which there were twelve for each tribe of Israel. And according to this professor, these rings were all made from a small portion of the original King Solomon ring. What I read next kick-started my heart with happiness as I read that he would loan it to me for a week in order to help me with my problem. I was ecstatic to say the least. I could barely wait the two days it took to get from Israel. The professor had expressed it to me. When I opened up the solid wooden container that was inside of the large cardboard box, the ring sat beautifully in a velvet holster. Its gold content was unquestioned as I felt its heft when I picked it up to give it some scrutiny. In the ring center was a green stone that almost seemed to glow with an inner light. The longer I held the ring, the better I felt about the next confrontation. The better I felt about myself and my friends' deaths didn't seem like such a big concern. That's when I realized I was being affected by whatever positive energy this ring held and would soon care about nothing but the ring and its sensation. Quickly I set the ring in its container and closed it. I had my atomic bomb equivalent of a mystical artifact and I was more than ready to use it. I can't exactly say why my mother's boyfriend wanted to help me out so graciously by allowing me to use such a rare and archaeological gem like he did. Maybe he had once had a similar problem? Or maybe he simply could relate to my hopelessness. I suppose the reasoning behind the loan was to use it for what it was made for, banishing and controlling demons. But would it be enough? What if all nine stones had to be on the ring in order for it to work?  Of course there was always a possibility, but that was a chance I had to take. If I didn't take the stand now, this thing would keep doing whatever it had been doing for what I suspect had been a very long time on the order of thousands of years. Well, if there's one thing I could never stand, it was a bully and this bully was going down. It was the day after I had received the ring when I decided to take this demon down. I had my bag of tricks, the various other avenues I had tried against the thing without much success. Why? Simply put, everyone needs a backup plan when stuff goes sideways. I still doubted the ring's ability to affect the demon as greatly as it would if all the stones were on it, but I had no other choice. I had come up against this thing several times and each time it won. Not this day. I could feel the ring's aura, ambience, whatever it was. The sensation was growing stronger the closer I got to the spot where my friends had died.  Suddenly, I was there at the spot. My nerves were on edge, my senses were turned up to 11 and everything around me seemed to emanate its own inner light. I looked around at the area with new eyes for the first time in nearly a decade and I could feel the inherent goodness of nature all around me. Think of it as pins and needles being gently electrified but a hundred times stronger. My body felt like it was vibrating, humming with some unknowable energy that coarsed stronger with every breath I took and I had yet to put on the ring. I knelt down, opened the bag, brought out the ring and put it on. The sensation I had been feeling grew exponentially as soon as it was on my hand. That's when I saw it. A black blemish on the glowing vibrance of the wood's life force and it was growing bigger by the second. So that's how you arrive. I spat venomously at the thing while its hole was growing. I clenched my hand tighter feeling the ring's power working in me as I watched a crimson shade grow in the inky blemish of reality. Then it stepped through from its world into mine. There was definitely a humanoid outline to the thing where as before I had never seen it, only felt its presence. It was massive, a good 10 or 12 feet tall. Its wings were equally just as massive as it stretched them out to let me know what I was dealing with. When it was entirely out of its jet black portal, I suddenly raised my hand without really knowing why I had done it. Some things just feel more right when you let your actions speak. The demon had been taken a few steps toward me when it paused immediately, then quickly turned toward its portal which had just vanished into nothing. Your door is closed until I keep you there with this. I raised my right hand letting the ring shine its supernatural light. The swirling dark gray almost nearly invisible physicality visibly stilled at seeing the ring. Then came the thing's voice. It was low, guttural and barely audible due to its inhuman nature. The demon roared, wings opening wide as he made a defensive posture.  My voice was suddenly filled with authority that was beyond me. The demon complied immediately. His mouth was suddenly shut. But not only that, the mouth had disappeared entirely. The thing's eyes narrowed at me, staring daggers dipped with venom. Time to pay up. I said evenly without much emotion. I'd gone cold, numb to everything but the mission at hand and I was going to wax the floor with his mother. With no more words left to be spoken, we charged at one another simultaneously. I remember thinking that I wasn't sure what I was going to do once if we locked up in a physical fight. But that was an unfounded concern. The ring was controlling my actions through a combination of knowing the beast's weaknesses and knowing and enhancing my strengths. The demon swung at me with a huge clawed hand, what had missed as I dodged the attempt and slid between its open legs. I stood up just in time to be whipped at with the tail but no blow fell on me. I realized the ring had stopped its action instantly. I liked this ring. I leapt into the air to attempt to steam at the thing's vulnerable back, but I was battled aside by a wing. I collided with a large tree but sustained no injuries. The ring was playing defense and offense for my body during the fight. By the time I landed on the ground, I was set upon again by the fiend. He slammed both huge fists on top of me, burying me below ground level and knocking over the tree in one swoop. I raised the ring again and a powerful green hue to light erupted from the gem. It forced back all the debris and the attacking foe long enough for me to recover. I stood there, staring at the horrid hellspawn. It seemed to be waiting for me to make the next move, but before I could I heard a voice, a still small voice speaking to me, to inside of me to my soul. The demon knew it immediately, narrowing its sulfurous eyes at me while I stood there with my head tilted to one side, listening. What did the voice say? It told me to not use anger because anger alone wouldn't defeat it. Use the love for your friends, of your friends you've lost to battle the enemy. That sweet voice said as we felt each other intermingled for the first time. It was the greatest sense of peace I had ever felt. It was as if everything would be okay. Nothing would touch me, let alone hurt me. I reveled in this sensation and then embraced it, and that's when things got interesting. My turn. Those were the only two words I spoke before what came next. I let my guard down because the ring protected me, enclosed my eyes and did exactly what the small voice told me to do, embrace the love of my late friends. In an instant, so quickly gone and yet somehow it stretched on for an eternity, I relived every memory I had ever had with my friends. The sensation of the ring grew even more powerful, lifting my body from the ground while the eyes were still closed. I could hear the demon in my head screaming every negative abomination it could think of, but it was muted and seemed far off. Then I heard other voices, my friends. I could perceive each of their voices individually and simultaneously. They were thanking me for remembering them and going out of my way to slay the demon. Let us finish this then. My mouth moved, but it wasn't my choice. It was a combination of all the voices the demon had ever stolen or cheated. I lifted my arm into the sky, still hanging in the air and the ring led off a spear of green energy into the sky. What came back, however, was not from the blue sky. A portal so intensely white, opened seemingly between the clouds and immediately shot down to the earth like a sentient laser beam. The intense white ray of light immediately disintegrated the demon's physical body, burst through the ground beneath what remained of the demon, its essence I suppose, and opened a hole into a very hot and dark place. The near invisible demon's essence was powerfully forced into the hole, which immediately collapsed and the ray of light from the sky receded. Epilogue, three days after I had battled the demon and won, I called my mother's boyfriend to thank him for getting me in touch with the Israeli professors who had loaned me the ring. He had the oddest reaction ever when I told him this. Uh, I don't know anyone in Israel. I'd never known him to be a practical joker, but I had laughed then. That's a good one, Paul, I said, exhaling after having laughed, but his voice hadn't changed a bit. I'm serious, I've never known anyone in Israel. Wait, then what about the email from you and the professor? I only received them last week. I'm sorry, Greg, he said. I really don't have any idea what you're talking about. In an email, I had the internet service cut off a year ago at my house, and I've never had an email address. My mind reeled at what he told me. If he hadn't sent an email or received one, then how on earth did I receive them? And where did the ring come from? If not sent by a professor somewhere in Israel, I looked at the black box that contained the ring which was sitting on my desk ready to be sent back. I could see a little sliver of its green light seeping out of the cracks of the box, and then it faded. I hung up without another word to my mother's boyfriend. My life just became infinitely more interesting. Paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. And please, leave a rating and review of the show in the podcast app you listen from. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. WeirdDarkness.com is also where you can find all of my social media, listen to audiobooks I've narrated, shop the Weird Darkness store, sign up for monthly contests, find other podcasts that I host, and find the Hope in the Darkness page if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or dark thoughts. Also on WeirdDarkness.com, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. You can find all of that and more on the website. The fictional story The Daemon Wood was written by Rob Funkhouser. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Proverbs 8, verse 13, To fear the Lord is to hate evil.  And a final thought. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. Nelson Mandela. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.