Would you like your own unique web address on LinkedIn? In this video, I'll be showing you exactly how to do that because when you set up your account on LinkedIn initially, you just get a random series of numbers and letters for your address. So, I'll be taking you through the steps on how to create your own, which has a number of benefits that I'll be explaining in this video. I'm Jonathan Pollinger. I've been a social media trainer since 2009, helping businesses achieve their objectives using social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads, Pinterest and all the major social networks. I've also been a trainer for NILC and established an agency where we manage social media. If you're interested in learning more about the contents of this video or any aspects of social media, check out the links below. Let's get straight into the video. In this video, I'm going to show you how to create a unique public profile URL. So what does that actually mean? So it means that you get a bespoke or personalized web address that directs people to your profile. So in other words, the link in the address bar at the top of your browser. So why would you want to do this? Well, a number of reasons. First of all, it's nice and neat and tidy. So if you want to put it on a business card, let's say, or on your website, then it's going to look better than an address with a whole bunch of numbers and additional characters. And it is unique to you. Secondly, LinkedIn say that it improves the chances of people finding you on LinkedIn. So it aids discovery because you haven't got those additional characters and numbers in your web address. But not only on LinkedIn because your profile will show up on search engines like Google and Bing. So it can help people find you outside of LinkedIn as well. So this is how you create your public profile URL.  And on the top right hand side here, you'll see that mine is already customized with my name there. But to change it, I would click on the pencil symbol, put in the name I desire there. As it says, it must be between three and 100 letters or numbers. And you're not allowed to use spaces symbols or special characters. And when you're done, you can click save. Now, if your desired name isn't unique, then you won't be able to save it. If it allows you to save it, then bingo, you have got your nice bespoke customized URL that is personal to you. If for some reason you can't see this option here at the top, public profile and URL, then there is actually another way of changing it. So you can go to contact info, click on the pencil symbol within that section, click on your address there, and you're taken to the same area that we were before. So you might be thinking, well, why do I actually have to do this? Why don't LinkedIn do it? Well, the fact is that when you create an account on LinkedIn initially, you do get this randomized address that, yes, it is sort of personalized to you because it's unique, but it isn't personally branded to you. So it's not a nice neat custom URL. So you can do away with all the random numbers and letters that LinkedIn give you when you initially set up an account. So that's how you create your bespoke custom URL or web address. Thank you for watching this video on creating your own personalized, unique LinkedIn web address, which I hope you find useful. As mentioned in the video, you can use that on business cards and you're more likely to show up in search. For more hints and tips around LinkedIn, do check out the links to our videos below. Don't forget to like this video, subscribe to our channel, and for more information on NILC's courses, also check out the links. See you next time.


The library has been partnering with the League of Women Voters for seven, eight. This is the eighth year we've been in partnership with their speaker series. And it's a great partnership, but we're happy to continue it. Kate Rader is going to come up from the League of Women Voters and make the official introduction. Thank you, and I would like to welcome them behalf of the League. It looks like we're still getting used to being out in public together again. So for this program on election issues, we present Susan Clark speaking on constructive discourse. Clark is a writer and educator focusing on community sustainability and citizen participation and award-winning radio commentator and former talk show co-host. She has taught community development at the college level for 10 years. Excuse me. Clark's small-D democratic activism has earned her broad recognition, including the 2010 Vermont Secretary of State's Enduring Democracy Award. She serves as town moderator of Middlesex, Vermont, and she is a member of the League of Women Voters. Before I relinquish the stage, let me invite you to next month's program on January 10th on civics education where we will hear Secretary of State Sarah Copeland-Hanses and from the agency of education, Martha Dice. And now I will give it to Susan. Hello, little Christmasy things. Thank you so much. So thanks to everybody for coming out on this snowy night. Can everybody hear me? Is this okay? Yes. All right. I am excited to be here. I know that constructive discourse is an important topic to all of us, and maybe some of us would rather be at home having eggnog. So good for you for saying, no, actually, this one's for me. So Kate introduced me. I won't go much further. I just want to say I do work with communities across New England on effective public engagement. And researcher and writer, slow democracy tells stories of communities across the United States using local democracy to make a difference. All those in favor is a book I co-authored with Frank Bryan, who knows an awful lot about Vermont town meetings. And we sort of called this one the reader's digest version of his 30-year study of Vermont town meetings. And Freedom and Unity, not technically a book. It's a comic book. Okay. But it was so much fun to make. And I'll tell you, it came out last fall. And if you're looking for some great therapy sometime, find a cartoonist, speak your truth, and then see what happens two weeks later when they give it back to you in a cartoon. It was a really satisfying, fun experience with the Vermont Humanities Council and the Vermont Secretary of State's Office and the Center for Cartoon Studies, which we have one of in Vermont in White River Junction. So you can see from all of that that I'm a local democracy nerd. So sorry about that. I will be addressing this topic of constructive discourse primarily from that local democracy perspective. But as we will see, a lot of the issues that we're facing at the national political discourse level have parallels in our communities and in our neighborhoods and in our families and in our marriages and in parenting, because there's a common problem that runs through all of these. Anybody spotted it? Human beings, right? Human beings deeply flawed. So we're going to see what we can do about that. So I'm going to start by talking about some of the unique challenges we are facing today in terms of constructive democratic discourse. I'll touch a little bit on brain science, how our brains have gotten us here, and then putting this together, what tools, what innovations might we bring to our current situation to sort of navigate and create more constructive discourse. So let me just start with some of the current strains on our society. I don't need to tell anybody here how exhausted everybody is from the past few years. The pandemic took its toll, of course, on our individuals and families and local economies. At that same time, you will recall that America experienced and of course is still experiencing a long overdue racial reckoning. And meanwhile, climate change, the July flood experience is still very much with us. And climatologists are telling us to prepare for disasters as the new normal. So these are real pressures and we're going to need to agree on how to address them. But will our democratic skills be up to that challenge? And January 6th was just one of many visual aids showing us that we, you know, are experiencing one of the most polarized and democratically fragile moments in American history.  There was a recent survey that showed that fewer than one in ten Americans polled think that political ranker between average Americans will decrease in the next decade and nearly half think it's going to increase. So even the title of my talk today had to be carefully crafted. The League's initial impulse was to have me speak on civil discourse. Ooh, civil discourse. I can tell you right now, deliberative democracy practitioners. The word civility itself has become charged because there are activists working to dismantle racism and they reject that call for civility. They're arguing fundamental changes require confrontation. We don't want civility. We need to call people out in public and we need to disobey unjust laws in order to get elite's attention. I've seen whole events blow up and fail just over that one word of civility alone, which just kind of tells you where we've gotten to. So Democratic scholars are refining their language. There's a Harvard professor named Arshan Fong who said deliberative Democrats don't deny the need for conflict or adversarial politics, but think that a central purpose of that conflict is to establish the political conditions for fair and inclusive deliberative democracy.  What's the model we're looking for? And how do we model that? There's a UNH professor, a deliberative scholar who said, our goal now has just been to help people get to the table and stay at the table. Please stay. Because this is not sustainable. We all know that we're going to have to work together to solve our problems. So how? How do we engage more constructively when there are so many forces that keep us polarized? So there's some good news about this, but I'm just going to finish with a little bit more bad news. This is a funny slide, but humor is a way to cope with our scary reality. That is not an actual scientific study. But public engagement is increasingly inflamed by misinformation. I think we all know that. Social media and Amanda Ripley wrote a book called High Conflict, which I would really recommend and she has coined the term Conflict Entrepreneurs. Think about that. These are partisans and media outlets who make it their business to so distrust because they actually benefit from polarization. And so remember this term, Conflict Entrepreneurs. I'm going to use it a few times. Amanda Ripley, R-I-P-L-E-Y. Her book is called High Conflict. Yeah, fascinating. She goes all different kinds of conflict from wars to divorces, gangs, and what they have in common in terms of, again, the human brain. So yeah, Conflict Entrepreneurs, you might know some. From time to time, you might even be one. So we'll come back to this. So in addition, sometimes we are just our own worst enemies. Conventional participation, this is what political scientists call things like public hearings. Public hearings, by the way, the most common way that we bring people together in democracy today have, according to a lot of research, actually made things worse. Social scientists have been collecting data on that sort of two minutes at the microphone thing, that conventional participation, which are enshrined in law. They have, 50 years ago, we started doing things via public hearings. And if you can imagine life with no hearings, then you're talking smoke-filled rooms. So it's like, you get it, you get it, that public hearings were intended to make things more transparent. But the way they are formatted, public hearings are frequently neither, right? They're usually poor representation of the public, and there's very little hearing that's going on. So here are some direct quotes from, this is a textbook on public administration. Conventional participation, things like public hearings, tend to be harmful to citizens. It increases our feelings of powerlessness, decreases our political interest, decreases our trust in government. It can also increase polarization. If you think about a public hearing, usually it's like, all right, we have a proposal. If you want to speak for it, stand there. If you want to speak against it, stand there. Very little, it actually tends to exacerbate the differences rather than thinking about what they have in common. There are a number of other critiques of public hearings, but this idea that it can be hard, really hard, on the people who are involved, and it's not just, yeah. Well, ignorance comes to mind is that if you're not exposed to the public hearing and you don't know, so you're like, I'm ignorant, so everything's happy. But if I do get exposed, it might possibly create these things. So in a strange way, those bad things are more informed. Citizen, I don't know. Am I a more informed citizen if I go to a public hearing? Right. Right. I mean, maybe, although I might also be a more inflamed citizen. What I'm looking for is a better process than a public hearing. Sure. So these are for the folks in the audience, but what about the leaders? They don't like it either. It's frustrating, it's discouraging. It can actually even be dangerous to deal with a hostile, uninformed, argumentative citizens who are at public meetings. And ultimately, we're talking about outcomes. As the relationship deteriorates between the people and their public institutions, the legitimacy and the financial sustainability of the governments continues to decline. So I know that's a lot of bad news.  So the question is why? Why is it so hard to create systems where we can hear each other? And what is it about humans that makes us... It makes it so easy for conflict entrepreneurs to manipulate us. So to answer that, I'll take a little brief foray into the amazing and amazingly frustrating human brain. There was a study that was done, first done in 2006. It has been replicated many times since where researchers wired up some voters to explore exactly what happens inside our brains when we receive new information, especially when we perceive that that information does not fit our world view. So they had a group of self-described Republicans and Democrats who were subjected to unflattering information about their own party's candidates. And according to their MRIs, this is brain reading. When the subjects were confronted with information that contradicted their biases, their brains actually under-processed the information. So the prefrontal cortex that's responsible for conscious reasoning, it hardly even fired.  So basically, participants' brains used emotion to ignore information that they didn't want to hear but that they couldn't discount intellectually. And what we have to remember is this is a physiological reaction. So there are scientists like Jonathan Haidt who explain it.  Who's on my team and who isn't, it gave us a survival advantage back when we were banding together in tribes for protection. Thank you very much. Evolution, right? And Haidt explains that many of our individual characteristics, this is a really interesting book by the way, including whether we're the kind of person that gets excited about change or whether we're the kind of person who kind of prefers the status quo, that literally makes us more likely to be liberal or conservative. Those aren't simply opinions. We're talking about significantly inherited qualities and they make up our identities. And we're physiologically wired to embody them and defend them. So if we want to live in a world where people can take in new information and can find new ways to move forward together, it is easiest if we frame the conversation in ways that don't challenge those identities. And it takes patience and it takes, frankly, a lot of big-heartedness. Another great book, Catherine Schultz, the author of the book Being Wrong, has comically pointed out, and she has a great TED talk on this, when we encounter somebody we disagree with, we often react on a three-point scale. So you and I are talking, we realize we disagree. My first thought is, oh, this person just needs more information. So I kindly share my facts with you, right? But we still disagree. So then I'm going to move on to number two.  So what if that turns out not to be true? What if the person we disagree with has all the information and they turn out to be pretty smart? Uh-oh, that's really scary. We're going to have to move on to number three, right? This person is evil. They know perfectly well the truth, but they are distorting it on purpose because they are wicked. And you'll notice that this ladder leaves no room for the very most common of human realities, which is that intelligent people of good will sometimes disagree. And in fact, the only solution, uncomfortable as it may be, is to get together and to hear each other out. So this is really important, and it's especially important now, because at this moment in history, a lot of today's topics, affordable housing, school consolidation, citing wind turbines are so complex that even science can't give us one simple right answer because of competing identities and underlying values. And it sounds so hard, but here's the thing. The world is full of what's called polarities, two crucial, interdependent, but contradictory variables. That have to coexist. Navigating polarities, it's not easy. We manage it every day. Any parents in the room here? Parents have to be firm and flexible. Two competing realities, two good things, and if you'd rely too much on one or the other, you really need to have both in order to be a good parent. A good boss is both grounded and visionary. Organizations have to embrace both continuity and change. And in our home state of Vermont, since 1788, we have somehow functioned under our paradoxical motto. Anybody remember? Freedom and unity, that's right. If we were all completely free, we could never be unified, and if we were all totally unified, we would never be free. It is the ultimate motto of paradox. In New Hampshire, at least, they know where they stand, whether they're free or die. But we have been operating and understanding that these two competing things, two competing goods, need to be considered in lots and lots of decisions that we make. The trick about, if you have a polarity dynamic, but what if there are multiple poles? What if there are three things? Analysts call that a wicked problem. Anybody remember seeing signs like this? I think pinkies used to have one. It reminds me of this. We can do it good, we can do it cheap, and we can do it fast, but you can only have two. So balancing multiple poles, it's like a magic trick, but planners do this all the time when they're looking at a parcel of land and they've got one group that's really interested in environmental issues, like wildlife, you've got another group that's very interested in economic development, you've got another that's got social issues like affordable housing it's trying to work on. There's no one single solution that you're just going to pop off the shelf and it's going to please everybody every time. So the trick is, rather than thinking about solving wicked problems, we need to think about managing them, naming and understanding the underlying competing values, exploring the trade-offs together, doing that hard work of finding the best balance in each case. There's a professor at Colorado State University named Martin Carcasson who explains that most of the time, most problem-solving models that we have do not work this way. They focus on one of two tools, expertise or activism. Expertise, we bring in the scientific experts and they will tell us what to do or activism, right? Just organize a campaign, one side wins, the other side loses, boom, problem solved, right? Yeah, until the losing side comes back. Polarities and wicked problems are inherently different. They don't respond to one single technical solution. They don't respond to advocacy. What they do respond to is trusting face-to-face communication. Carcasson has said that solutions begin when we recognize that with wicked problems it's the problem that's wicked and not the people. Wonderful best-selling book, The Sum of Us by Heather McGee. She tells the story of desegregation in the American South in the 1950s and 60s where some towns were so against allowing black people to swim in swimming pools that rather than desegregate, they literally drained the swimming pools. So nobody could swim. So rather than this crazy drained pool politics, zero-sum policies where both sides lose, McGee has, her book is filled with more modern examples of deeper cross-cultural understanding and creates what she calls the solidarity dividend. I love that term.  We actually both can benefit when we figure it out together. Because the good news is that brain science tells us we can actually use our intellectual capacity better when we don't trigger that fight-or-flight-us-them response. So we need techniques to frame issues and engage people in less divisive ways so that we can honor our differences and integrate the diverse values into the solutions. So to recap, polarities and wicked problems, they never get solved. That's the bad news. The good news is they do get managed or they can be managed. And in fact, I think some of the greatest human suffering comes from treating what's really a polarity as if it were a problem to solve. It's a polarity to navigate, and if you treat it as a problem to solve, that's where we really start to suffer. So how? How do you navigate a polarity? Exactly. So we could do a months-long workshop on this. If you're interested, it's definitely worth the time. But I'm just going to do a little whirlwind tour. And this work draws on a book by Brian Emerson and Kelly Lewis who are building on Barry Johnson's groundbreaking work, Polarity Management. So what are some typical common polarities that you might see in everyday life? We mentioned some of the ones that parents see. Certainly in your relationship with friends, you're going to see something like structure and flexibility. You're taking a trip, planning a trip with a friend.  I want to make sure to see the blah, blah, blah. And somebody else is like, I want to see what happens. Let's just take life as it comes. You know, like people have gotten divorced for more, for less than that. These are some of the ones that organizations have, some of the ones you see in leadership. Things like action and reflection.  Reality and hope, that's one that we're all struggling with right now, I think. Many of us have a preference on these polls. You might see yourself up there and know exactly which one you are on candor and diplomacy, for instance. It's really natural for any individual to have a preference on one of those. And of course, none of these, if you look at the way these are framed, none of these things is bad. For example, you'll notice structure and flexibility. It's not like, if I were a person who is really into flexibility, I might say, rigidity and flexibility. But it's like, no, we're not doing that. On both sides, when we're talking about a polarity, both sides are good. And it's not one versus the other, we want them both. On the other hand, there is such a thing as taking any of these things too far. So navigating a polarity, this is what's called a polarity map. And this one is continuity and change. So two sides, and this is the kind of thing that we can do in our brains or we can actually actively do them on paper or in public forums. But the two sides represent the two poles. Over here, continuity, over here, change. The top represents a healthy use of that pole. If we could just focus on continuity and not worry about it, not worry about change, what good things would we get? What benefits would we have if we could just focus on change? And then over uses, the consequences if we overuse that pole. What happens if we focus only on continuity and neglect or ignore the other? If we take this pole too far. So I'll give you an example in a second, but there are lots of different ways you can use a tool like this. I've done it with folks where you actually have four flip charts in the room and you visit each of the flip charts and you fill it out. It can be an actual, really a physical experience. You can sense at which pole you feel the most comfortable and at which one you just kind of tense up. I had a colleague tell me one time that he was working out west with some farmers and they were talking about a continuity and change issue, I think it was, that had to do with farmland. And everybody was willing to discuss all four of the poles, but there was one farmer who would not walk to that flip chart. He was willing to throw out some ideas but he would not stand next to it. You can see how powerful it can be to experience this with a whole room. But another way to do it is through polling, you can individually have people fill these out. So here's an example that some of us may have seen or experienced. Should we renovate the old town hall or the school or fill in the bank or should we tear it down and build a new one? Continuity and change. So you can imagine if you were in your community, maybe you're even on the Planning Commission or on the Select Board, and you know that this is a hot one. You know that this is going to be about more than bricks and mortar. You sense in this case, I'm not in every case, but maybe in this case you sense that there's some values involved, maybe some old time or newcomer stuff. It could turn into an ugly fight. You'd rather have constructive discourse. So how much you use a polarity tool? I did this with a group this summer. And here are some of the responses that we saw if you think about it. What are the benefits of continuity, of sticking with the old town hall? And by the way, we took money out of the argument. Just for the sake of argument, we took money out of it. Let's say it costs the same. So here are some folks saying it's going to respect our local history. It gives us a sense of place. And it, we know how it works. Having a historic building is a draw for tourism. Oh, I should have taken out that cheaper thing. The environmental impact doesn't increase our taxes for now. These were some of the things that they were brainstorming. And they also were pretty, it was pretty easy for people who really liked continuity to think about how mad they would be if things did move too fast and what if we did just go ahead and tear down the old town hall. It disrespects long-term residents that would lose their sense of place, lose their sense of control. So some very negative things down there under that. But we also filled in the other ones as well. And so this idea that you can innovate that the town will look less run down, we could attract new families, it might be a healthier building. And start to name some things that we don't, the people over here seem a little rigid to me. These words start to sound pretty negative. They're not even innovative. In fact, we're even going to start saying that they're exclusionary and that they're equity issues here as well. Which starts to get pretty personal. Down here when we start talking about some of these negatives, it can be raised some really hot issues. And if you've ever been in one of these conversations with somebody who really was attached to their poll and it was a polarity and not a polarity to navigate, not a problem to solve, what tends to happen in these conversations if you don't pay attention is that I will tell you all the good things about continuity and the overuses of change. Whereas you will tell me all the benefits of change and all the overuses of continuity. And we will have one of these kinds of diagonal conversations where we talk past each other endlessly, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, infinity loop. Ever happened to anybody at Thanksgiving, by the way? We're talking past each other. I'm convinced that I'm right and you're wrong. And this is the way conflict entrepreneurs love to frame issues. My side wants the benefits of yellow and I will frame the other side purely in terms of its overuses. And so and it's really painful to live down here in the overuses. They may be true, but if you put me here it's going to make my brain turn off. If you start telling me that because I am in favor of continuity I am suddenly somebody who's exclusionary and I'm in favor of inequity that is going to make me extremely grumpy. And down here if you tell me that the benefits of change, all of a sudden you're going to tell me that I'm disrespecting long-term residents and I'm an elitist. I'm also going to be very grumpy.  And furthermore I'll probably start calling you these things over here. So this is called the suffering paradox if we treat polarities like a problem and try to solve them. It has some definite symptoms. You'll probably recognize some of these. We preference, we attach, we wet ourselves to one pole. Othering, we create the other. We start to be unable to see a possible compromise. The either or is so strong that we kind of neglect the idea there could be a both hand. And it results in hampered communication, damaged relationships, inferior results, bad outcomes. Oh, I have a little visual. You've all seen these, but it really brings to mind a finger trap when we start to pull apart from each other because of this. It's a trap, right? It's a trap when we pull apart from each other. We see the similarity here that we have to coexist, we're stuck together, but we're triggered and we want to pull away and it only tightens the trap. And there are a number of reasons that we might resist coming together while we might pull apart. We could be scared that we would lose part of our identity. We might anticipate judgment from other people who are on our side who have the same preferences challenging our team. We could be threatening our side's values. But there's some real strength, real power in brainstorming these lists together in an open, honest discussion. When I actually hear you, if we're really open and brainstorming, I could hear you say, well, I don't happen to believe this, but I know some people think that this could disrespect long-term residents. That's a pretty powerful thing to have me hear you say that. And we start to... Just for the sake of facts, we understand there is such a thing as an overuse of my side. I still prefer this side, but yet it can go too far. And a shift can really happen when I hear you say out loud the overuses of your way and the benefits of mine. And it siphons that energy out of the infinity loop. And I don't want to stress this. The conversation is transformed because all of a sudden we can come together, I can get my fingers out. And rather than talking against each other, yellow versus green, side versus side, we start to recognize that we are unified in wanting these good things. And we are unified in really wanting to try to figure out how to avoid these bottom things. It s a more relaxed, not the infinity loop. Everybody wants the top. And then you can start talking about the third way. What is the third way? What is the way that we are going to get something that respects our local history and also might give us a healthier building? What can we do to have a really strong sense of place and also innovate and have fresh ideas? If you start framing the question that way, you come up with different kinds of answers. So this is a tool that can be used in a bunch of different ways. It can just be a lens that you can bring. I actually use it a lot these days, especially when I'm listening to the news. But also in a conversation with your neighbors or friends, is this who framed this question? Is this being framed by conflict entrepreneurs? Is somebody just trying to push me into my corner off? Is there a polarity underneath this that maybe could be framed more productively? You can ask yourself the question. It's also one that you can use if you are actually talking with somebody, to a colleague or in the community. Somebody frames something as A versus B. You might ask them, what would happen if we step back and looked at things a little more holistically? We both recognize this tension. We value both of these two good things. How can we honor them both and find a way forward together? What might a solution look like that would honor both of those sides?  But watching out for conflict entrepreneurs, they will never frame a conversation this way. They want us to live down at the bottom with the overuses. So I mentioned that it's, if we want to help people move forward, it's easier if we frame things in a way that doesn't challenge a person's identity. I just want to mention a superpower that I think we have here in Vermont. And that is the sense of place. In the United States, you know, place isn't simple. In the United States we have centuries of place-based sins to reckon with. We've violently displaced Native American populations from our homelands to forcibly, we also forcibly relocated enslaved Africans to our shores, so place is not a simple thing. That said, whether or not by design, the United States is a nation that's full of immigrants, multicultural communities. We have refugees from across the globe. Whatever each of our personal histories, many, many people feel a strong organic sense of place in the place they now call home. So it's natural for humans to want to engage with place. And in Vermont, right here, we have some place-based advantages that helped us to understand each other. One of them, of course, is right outside your door winter. And the days are even still getting shorter for another week or two. And it makes winter feel even longer when you just lost your power as most of us did. So, when somebody tells me that they've just survived their first Vermont winter, I can share a celebration with them. Or if they tell me that they've been here for a decade, I mean, that's ten winters, right? Or that they tell me their family's been here for seven generations. Or that they are of Native American descent. Any of these statements is embedded with meaning and it's an opportunity to connect, that we can use it as an opportunity to connect with each other. Another one that we have, of course, is our scale in Vermont. Our post-colonial settlement patterns in response to the natural landscape. We are clustered in small human-scale communities. A lot of people don't know this about Vermont, but we are technically the most rural state in the United States according to the most recent census. And what does that mean? It doesn't mean we're Wyoming with these vast open areas. It means, because it's a census, it's about people, right? It's because we have by far the most people who live in communities of 2,500 or less. That's how it's defined as rural in the census. So nearly 65% of Vermonters live in these small communities. And what that means, it's how we govern ourselves, it's how we know our neighbors. It's a huge factor that gives us a sense of connection. And that's, again, superpower that we can build on. Town meetings, of course, you will hear me talk about this as an inheritance. There are over three-quarters of Vermont towns make decisions of some kind at floor meetings. They're little tiny legislatures dedicated to self-governance and direct democracy year after year, decade after decade, century after century. It changes our democratic DNA and our expectations of how we make decisions together. And, of course, shared experience over time builds social capital. It's that place-based trust and neighborliness and reciprocity. They're a powerful inheritance so that, you know, we can push together. So conflict entrepreneurs will make it their business to nationalize issues. They will name and frame things in ways that will rile up their base. But the more we can resist that nationalization, the more we can think about what we have in common with our neighbors is a canny response to what we share. And the place is our commons. So I'm just going to give a couple of examples. You know, there are a lot of there's been increased polarization. We know that. But the good news there is that there are a lot of new groups that have emerged to take on bridge building. A lot of you have heard of probably Braver Angels which facilitates conversations across a red-blue divide. I will name just a few more. Some of them are pretty fun. This one, this is Living Room Conversations. This was founded by Joan Blades. And you may not have heard of Joan Blades, but you have probably heard of another organization that she founded, moveon.org. Oh, thanks. Denied. You've been denied. So Joan Blades who co-founded moveon.org she has created a process where you have two people, you and a neighbor host a conversation on a controversial topic. But the trick is that one host has to be a self-identified liberal and the other one a self-identified conservative. So they invite over a few of their friends, but again they have to maintain that balance. And so if you Google Living Room Conversations you'll see that they have a whole host of topics from voting practices to food and health, how to talk about politics that are framed in a way that you can have these Living Room Conversations. You can have them on Zoom as well. And the idea is not to find agreement, shared beliefs or opinions, but alignment, shared intention. So a very cool process worth looking into. Here's a new one. I don't know if anybody, any of you has seen this documentary called The Abortion Talks. If you want an inspirational example there's an organization called Essential Partners and it was involved in some very unusual constructive discourse that's covered in this documentary. So in the 1990s in the aftermath of a shooting at an abortion clinic in Massachusetts they convened six women, three leaders of pro-choice groups and three leaders of pro-life groups. And these women were so horrified by the shootings at the clinics that they risked their professional lives and their personal safety, frankly, to meet secretly. And they said, yes, we will meet once secretly, as long as it can be completely, you know, just come in. They met once with a mediator from Essential Partners. We'll do it again. They met once more. And eventually, regularly, over the course of six years they kept on meeting these six women in mediated conversations. And the purpose wasn't to change each other's minds, that was never going to happen. This is like the head of NARAL and the head of pro-choice and pro-life groups. But they wanted to understand each other better. And ultimately they changed how they would speak about each other in public. Ultimately they feminized each other, which dialed back the public rhetoric which had inflamed their followers. They gained extraordinary mutual respect and they even started to engage in some cross-partisan effort. So worth taking a look at these amazing six women and the conversations that they had. This is a more playful example. It's just so wacky that it seems to be working. The Warm Cookies of the Revolution. It's a civic health club in Denver. Of course, every event they do have milk and cookies. And of course it's Denver, they always have the gluten-free cookies and the soy milk. But the idea is to help people come out of their ideological corners and also to have fun. So they have some really silly events. This is the Civic Stitching Pitch panel discussion with moderators on political topics. Things like gentrification and gun safety and legalizing marijuana. But you are required to bring a craft. You have to bring your knitting. Or if you don't have one, then your craft supplies are supplied. It helps people kind of stay human, reduces speech-ifying. They have a Thursday night football game where during half-time they have timeouts to discuss social issues that revolve around professional sports. They had an emergency preparedness event that touched on actually not just zombies. But they did include some group activities during that awareness event. And clearly just had a lot of fun. For a local example that's similarly fun, I hope some of you have heard of the Civic Standard which is a new group out of Hardwick. They call themselves a mobile cultural center. So they do, they are in the old newspaper building in Hardwick, but they also will do things at different places, whether they're hosting a harvest celebration at the Grange or free soup nights, or they've got speakers and workshops and music junkets. They did a homegrown theater production about their own community in Hardwick where the town manager played the town manager. And they're just doing very creative very exceptionally just playful and super serious work of reweaving the fabric of their community.  Peachham has an elaborate partnership between the school and the town where each grade goes through a democratic process to nominate a name for a town, Snowplow. And then the voters at town meeting get to vote on it. It's inspiring, it's unforgettable for the kids, and it's this light-hearted moment of public discourse for the adults. You probably also heard about what happened in Woodbury recently where the town moderator teamed up with the elementary school to moderate a mock town meeting. And the students got to debate several issues including whether to spend 500 real dollars on new playground or a field trip. And these little genie kids up there talking about you know, should it be long-term physical infrastructure or experiential education, what are the trade-offs. Public did a great story on this. And in the end, spoiler alert, they did choose the field trip. But the Fairbanks Museum executive director heard the radio story and was so honored that they would choose a field trip that he donated the field trip which meant that they got to get the playground equipment. I'm not sure what the democratic lesson is there. But a fantastic experience for them and for the community. So to wrap up I will just mention a little dialogue process that's called the Conversation Cafe. And this is a format I've got the little cards here. Got them with my yes, along with my finger trap. Conversation Cafe cards. They offer ground rules, things like if you're going to have a conversation with a friend, open mind, having an attitude of curiosity, speaking with sincerity, speaking from your personal experience, try to keep it brief, some ground rules like that. And my favorite part is on the back these are reminders that you can just carry with you and you're in a conversation that's on the verge of becoming uncivil. There's these questions that can help you to bring things back together. Ask your person who is saying things that you disagree with. What happened that led you to this point of view? Ask them for a story. How does this affect you personally? Which is an interesting way of getting past the talking points that you might have heard on the radio. How does this affect you personally? I'm curious, can you say more about that? Boy, we never say that when we're in arguments, do we? And then, of course, the ultimate here is what I heard is that what you mean. Which is a very, very powerful way to help people make sure that they're saying what they mean. Oftentimes, there will be a follow-up. Yeah, that's what I mean and you can dig a little deeper. I think the idea with these is to take a breath and to discover the concerns beneath stances, the interests beneath the positions. Because when we are feeling heard, it helps our minds relax. It helps our minds open and even might allow us to recognize the gaps in our own knowledge and to become curious to learn more. So the goal is not to embrace, not to validate, not to convince. It's to understand. And in the work of constructive discourse, there isn't any more powerful tool than listening. So that's it. That's for me. I'm happy to take questions. And I have more of these cards. Any thoughts on polarities? Public discourse? Snow plows? Framing. Issue framing? The worst conversation you ever had at Thanksgiving? What were you calling the people who are the entrepreneurs? Conflict entrepreneurs. Yeah. Or what about state powerhouses? Sagan. State powerhouses. They're not entrepreneurs. They're the state that has the public relations strings and is putting the story out this way and this way and this way. Yep. Things are definitely spun and that's the world of advocacy and sometimes that is a thing that advocates do but it's worth asking is this framed in a way that often times it'll be framed in a way that makes my side look good. But is it framed in a way that is actually making the other side look bad and is actually trying to inflame the narrative? That's one of the questions that we can ask I think in these situations. You can ask that question and it doesn't create more inflammation. I'm talking about asking it in my brain. When I'm trying to be in this world and I'm trying to live as a human being but I mean it certainly is a question that once an issue has gotten polarized I'm thinking of like for example that town hall example which is a pretty toned down example really compared to a lot of the things that we're fighting about these days but so that's why it's helpful to use it but once you've already had one of you've already really really gotten polarized and one side has already started name calling and those kinds of things it's really hard to do this kind of conversation. This is a much more useful tool to use upstream of the polarization because again it's like people's brains have already turned off but it's not impossible and it is at least helpful especially if you have what you might call a third way solution to say here's why I'm proposing this solution because I think that there are benefits of both of these and there can be over uses and we're trying to avoid these so it can still be useful. I want to be clear that some of the issues we're dealing with today things like racism for example, that's not a polarity it's not a well you know there's upsides but there are ways that certain issues that we are dealing with can bring in racism and can bring in even in the town hall example you can say oh those people it might not be about race but it might be about exclusion of another kind they those kinds of key issues can get brought into a polarity so it's useful to step back when we start talking about some of those issues. I'm thinking for example of when we want to rename a school mascot if you looked at a school mascot issue from the point of view of continuity and change and we're really able to step back you might see that some of the people who want to stick with that school mascot are doing it for you know I mean you'll hear an old man say I propose to my wife underneath that school mascot it's about change sentimentality about you know or a connection to place that transcends whatever that mascot image is not what it means in that person's mind it doesn't mean the mascot doesn't need to change it does mean that we can understand each other better and not just assume that the person who wants to stick with that mascot is absolutely must be racist because how could they not be if they wanted that you know instead be able to step back a little bit and start to say how are some geez maybe we need to make sure we stick with that color you know and honor the history of the number of games that were won under that mascot you know that's what it takes yeah have you heard are aware of the deep canvassing yes great example in a way it's not quite the same as what you're saying here and what what is your how's that fit together it's very very relevant so the question is about deep canvassing which is an innovative tool that I believe was in California during that was during a initiative and referendum process around maybe gay marriage I think it was and what they realized was that the organizers realized that they were if they were just going to go at it head on this issue of you know win lose there should be gay marriage well I think they lost so they started doing something called deep canvassing which is door to door talking but with listening so rather than ding dong hi my name so and so blah blah blah let me tell you all the reasons that you need to believe what I believe instead it's can you tell me what your views are on this issue can you tell me you know using some of these kinds of questions what's your experience with it you know what happened to you that made you feel that way starting to connect personally with that door to door tip much more time intensive that actually allowed people to understand that here was a human who in the course of conversation came up that they were a person who wanted to get married and they were gay and here was their story and that it's it's measurably changed minds measurably changed the way the conversation was happening so it's a very powerful listening is a super powerful social change tool it might seem when you're you know on the face of it it's like no we have to fight in fact it can be more powerful almost it's more sort of an Easter to use the energy coming at you to make the change there is a video I guess it's out of Yale that's supposed to be introducing people and suggesting trying I didn't find it all that helpful because they had the example they gave they gave a couple of examples show someone interviewing go knocking on the door and talking to them and it was like well you know that was a prime candidate they just seemed too quick as a yes they start by asking a question but the guy was really pretty ready to really believe the position the low-hanging fruit it's definitely low-hanging so I didn't really I felt that I didn't really learn much from this video I would have a little bit more challenging interaction would have been helpful I ended up leaving me with the impression you start listening until you get a sense of the emotional basis and then you go in there okay well if it starts to feel weird and manipulative then well that's why I was wondering whether it didn't seem like this was what they said the description they gave I had felt didn't quite fit the example that they even have sent you a link to this other thoughts sir I wonder between you and Michelle is there any way that all those people that are watching it on live streaming or watching a recording flater can respond to some of their ideas to you or to the library yeah up to you Michelle but I'm happy if people want to send an email with a question yeah I can respond to those all the people we sent the original notice to sure yes I'd be happy to I can't guarantee I'm going to know a lot of answers but I'll take the questions more likely know the answers than I will sure okay absolutely have you been using this in your town moderating skill set to some effect the navigating polarities yeah town meeting is wonderful town meeting is intended to have 150 or 200 people in a room at a decision making point so town meeting is the decision making moment is the end result exactly so less it's less useful in that sort of Roberts rules of order parliamentary procedure moment and in fact we are making it oftentimes in either or decision at a town meeting that said absolutely it's crucial during the year ahead of a town meeting during the time ahead of a decision that we're making a yes no decision to be able to have those rich conversations I mean it was never intended to be the only time that we get together during the course of a year so I have been working actually a lot with select boards and to some degree school boards leaders as well in looking at how this tool can be used in their work in micro situations as well as macro ones so that ultimately when we do come to one of those decisions it's been informed by these values and process like that thank you I just can't tell you how powerful it's been for me to be able to to feel like so often in public conversations I feel like there's something wrong here and when this tool came up for me some years ago I was just like this is this really helps to figure out why some of these processes are so frustrating so you know what's interesting too is that it's used a lot in I use it in public spaces as we mentioned but I think it's used even more personal coaching and even in therapy for people to be able to understand the polarities within ourselves so it's an interesting tool to think out in all different kinds of scales all right great thanks thank you thanks if you need a little conversation cafe card I've got them I would love one thank you


I think most people enjoy seeing magic tricks done. I've been interested in magic since I was a little kid. And of course, magic is very popular in our culture. We're surrounded by it. And the question is, does the Torah have anything to say about the performance of magic? So there are two chapters in the Torah that speak about sorcery, witchcraft, and black magic. And this is called, in Hebrew, kishuf. The person doing it is called a mehasef. And so the first source is in Exodus, chapter 22, verse 17, which speaks about the prohibition against kishuf. And then there's a longer passage in the book of Dvariem and Deuteronomy, chapter 18, verse 10. And I just want to read that verse for you, because it lists a whole number of prohibited things. So the Torah speaks here in the following way.  There shall not be found among you one who causes their son or daughter to pass through the fire, or one who practices divination, or an astrologer, or one who reads omens, or a sorcerer. That's the mehasef. Or in verse 11, an animal charmer, or one who inquires of ove or yidoni, or one who consults with the dead. So the Torah prohibits a whole range of what seems to be occult or superstitious practices. Now clearly, when we see magic done today, we're not seeing what we could refer to as black magic, or sorcery, or witchcraft. That's not what we're talking about tonight. What I'm going to be dealing with is what seems to be more innocuous, what we call stage magic.  These are the kind of magical performances that we're all very used to. So what about this? What about this kind of magic? So we just spoke about sorcery, kishuf. But the sages say that there is sort of a lower level of kishuf, and it's called achizat enayim, literally seizing the eyes. And this is basically creating an illusion that you did sorcery. Creating the illusion that you didn't do sorcery. You didn't do anything with witchcraft. But through sleight of hand, or through some kind of optical illusion, you created the impression that you've done something that would normally be done through sorcery. This is considered to be a serious violation of the Torah. But then there's another source, because our verse that we just read in Deuteronomy, chapter 18, verse 10, spoke about someone called, not the Mechashef, someone called the Me'onayn. Now Me'onayn is also taught in Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 26. And the basic prohibition of the Me'onayn is divining auspicious times. That's the basic prohibition. Someone that divines by auspicious times.  And if you do the activity at another time, you won't succeed. So this kind of superstition is prohibited in the Torah. However, the Talmud in Tractate Sanhedrin 65b teaches that Me'onayn includes creating optical illusions through sleight of hand. Through sleight of hand. So this seems to be a second place where the Torah touches on this issue of sleight of hand. And there's a third problem with magic, which is the Torah, as we all know, has serious prohibitions against theft, gnava. And our sages teach that there's something called gnavat dat, literally stealing someone's mind or deception. So this is not lifting their wallet out of their back pocket, but this is creating a false impression and deceiving someone, and effectively you're stealing your mind. And so this would be another problem, possibly with magic. So based upon these issues that I've just enumerated, there are numerous authorities on Jewish law that prohibit doing magic tricks or watching them. An actual outright prohibition against going to a magic show or performing magic tricks, this is according to many authorities on Jewish law. However, just about the greatest authority on Jewish law, in the 20th century by Moshe Feinstein, wrote that it's implausible that sleight of hand could be a violation of the Torah. And he writes that people who are gifted with special talents, it's obvious that they're allowed to use those talents, even if people may mistakenly assume that they are supernatural forces that are being used. For example, in the Bible, Samson had incredible strength, and yet he was able to use his strength against the Philistines.  He had this talent, he had this ability, and he was able to use it. Since I've been a young kid, I've been a chess player and one of my most greatest heroes when I was growing up was a Belgium chess player named George Kultynowski. You probably never heard of him. George Kultynowski was famous because he was able to play 50 games of chess simultaneously at the same time without looking at the boards. So he was able to keep in his mind 50 games of chess, not playing against four-year-olds, playing against adults, where there was a bit of a fight going on, and he was able to play 50 games of chess simultaneously in his head. Would the Torah prohibit that? Because he had this ability, and people might say, oh, that's not possible for human being to do that.  By the same token, the late chief rabbi of Montreal, Rabbi Pinchas Hersprunk, was someone who knew the entire Talmud by heart, and they say he was able to do the pin test, where if you took any page in the Talmud and you put a pin through it, he would know the word it hit on the other side of the page. That's mind-blowing. And yet, no one is going to say that he wouldn't be allowed to demonstrate that ability. So Ramosia Feinstein said, it doesn't make sense that if someone is skilled as a magician and can do sleight of hand, the Torah's gonna be all bent out of shape if this person does those tricks. So Ramosia Feinstein maintained that sleight of hand or other stage illusions are basically just a human skill that are permissible, but Ramosia Feinstein basically gave a caveat. He said as long as the magician makes it clear that he or she is not invoking any supernatural forces, meaning in case someone might be misled into thinking that this is a person that's using supernatural forces, the magician should make it clear that they're just doing magic tricks and don't think it's anything more than that. Other authorities, however, rule that even if the magician doesn't announce that anything supernatural is taking place, it is okay because today, we are so used to magic performances. It's not like we're living now in the 17th century where it might have been something unusual that people wouldn't know how to interpret. Now basically, we're so used to these kind of performances, no one is going to think that it's a supernatural power. Everyone is gonna know that the person is simply performing a trick and therefore it's okay, even if the magician does not announce that it's only a trick. Now commentaries point out that the problem with Achizat E'nayim, we refer to that as seizing the eyes, fooling the eye, pulling the wool over someone. So the commentaries point out that the problem with this is that the audience may come to believe that things that are totally impossible are possible, even without being a miracle from the creator. Meaning normally, if the sea splits, that's something that the creator did. But the problem with the magician that's doing Achizat E'nayim is that from the audience's point of view, they might think that, look, something that is normally impossible, it's possible. And they might assume and God didn't do anything. So what happened here? So they might come to believe that either there are powers in the world other than God, or people might even come to deny God's existence. Meaning once people see this kind of magic and they can think that maybe there are powers that are not God doing things, the concern was that people might come to the very wrong theological conclusions. However, for today's audiences, this is not going to happen because they know that magic trick can be done by anyone who learns how to do the trick. You can look up any magic trick today on the internet and there are videos being made by renegade magicians that spill the beans and tell everybody how it's done. So again, because of the time we're living in, the concerns of the past are no really, not really concerns any longer. Now let's just conclude with one final issue which I mentioned before, which is the issue of Geneva dot of deception. We're basically deceiving people and doesn't the Torah prohibit that? So the answer is that deceiving people is only a problem when the motivation to deceive is nefarious and you're not doing it for the other person's benefit. But creating a false impression in order to entertain people is perfectly okay. In addition, because no one today is being tricked into believing that the magician is employing supernatural means, the issue of deception is not really an issue. So what we saw so far tonight was that even though there are potential problems with performing and watching magic tricks based upon the issues I've mentioned, today there is certainly room to view this kind of activity leniently and it can be seen as permissible.


Hey everyone welcome to this week's video update today is Saturday November 4th So not going to go through a market recap today because well, my thinkorswim is Installing updates and it's been installing updates for about 20 minutes. So We're just going to skip over that. So we'll go straight to the trades So here's starting with zero DTE nice week for zero DTE up a little over 33,000 Let's go through the different Strategies and see how each one performed Starting with the my AM ratio trades just had one of those on Monday plus $2,600 on the Monday AM ratio And I don't think I did any DKS's this week Yeah, no DKS No ducks. I've cut my zero-day ducks from my trade plan for November I did have a couple of FOMC trades obviously with the FOMC meeting on Wednesday Both of which should have been winners But one I completely botched and mismanaged. So the first one was my FOMC iron condor that worked out well plus 1,300 the FOMC Strangle Everyone in the community we were trading this live on our live stream Everyone in our community had their profit target at 35% which is what you were supposed to do all of those hit within about 10 or 15 minutes Me I got greedy and decided to go for more. I thought the market was going to keep going I ended up getting out a half at 35% profit and then I held my remaining half of my position and it took full off. So net net minus 3400 Just a complete mismanagement on my part So not happy about that, but that's how that goes sometimes No JSP's Yeah, no JSP's power hour continues to do awesome So for power hour so Monday I Did a for trunch one. I did a ratio. That was a nice winner for plus 8100 trunch to 3400 trunch three was a loser minus 5k Tuesday all three were winners Wednesday did not trade power hour due to FOMC Thursday trunch one was a winner trunch two was a winner and trunch three was a small loser and then Friday No bueno all three got stopped out But still almost 12k for power hour for the week PM ratios been doing really well Specifically my My PM ratio credit to Tim Weiss on that one. That one's been doing awesome So for PM trades a little bit a little over 13,000 in profits on those four trades By the way, if you see any of these that are open that's because the these were Friday trades Where the longs expired and they will settle today, but like I said My thinkorswim is still installing updates for some reason. So These are closed trades, but the longs just need to settle in on the On the transaction Next trades quiet lunch I think I just had one of these this week Two of them. Yeah, so one on Monday one on Tuesday Both winners And then Rick Rick went three for four on the week Had one loser on Monday and that which very rarely sets up on Mondays, but we got a huge of all contraction on Monday So I ended up taking it ended up being a loser Tuesday was a winner Thursday and Friday were winners As far as dynamic butterflies the only thing this time flies just had one closed trade for a $2,000 profit The other couple here shown are open and then dynamic calendars rough week for calendars I saw kind of across the board as far as folks posting that Not too many calendars worked out this week and you know, obviously The environment that we had is not conducive to calendars, right? I mean, we had just a we had a massive move higher That just kind of busted out of the range of any any type of calendar double calendar Not to mention volatility just got absolutely annihilated Vicks went from like 22 down to 15 in the matter of A week so that that never works well for calendar. So Minus 3,300 on calendars. And in fact, it's actually more than that. You see this open one here This is one. I also had a vertical adjustment that'll end up expiring Worthless and so that'll that'll add to the add to the red here. So Not a great week for calendars Next up iron duck just had one duck closing For the week plus 182 on that rut duck Option selling as you can imagine with volatility contracting a really nice week for premium selling Had a tukafa winner in oil For a small profit Took off a winner in mes for a $350 profit qqq 538 profit soybeans a little over 1400 ZN Took that one off quickly for a $300 profit vxx verticals booked a little over 2,700 on that trade and then MES 325 So almost 6,000 on premium selling And then lastly portfolio margin Good week on the portfolio margin trades a lot of these are negative vega. So when volatility contracts That typically bodes well for these so plus yeah plus 18,000 for for the portfolio margin trades Uh 20,000 on a golden shark minus 500 on a shark plus 3500 on a hump d a small profit on a call swoosh $11,000 loss on that hump d $2,000 profit on a time fly 1200 on a hump d 1300 on a pm time fly Plus 1400 on a call swoosh So nice week nice week overall But I am super super light on positions. I need to get some more positions on And I really need implied volatility to expand to give me the opportunity to put a lot of positions on so Hopefully we get some of that this week or at least some two-sided action as opposed to just straight up But uh, hope everybody has a good rest of your weekend chat with you soon You


السلام عليكم و سلام الخارج أنا أنا نحن هنا في كاربلا أعمل من اللند الإمامة الحسينة عليه الصلاة و السلام و اليوم سنأخذنا مصغطة معاية لتأكد من مقامة و sièجة الرح motorcycle و العليه الأكبر عليه الصلاة و السلام سقكن الى رأينا هنا we stand in Kärb Allah و اللند الأخير و اللند الحسينة سلام الله عليه الصلاة كما ترى أنني أنا أعمل في شارع السدرة هذه هي المدينة السيدرة لأن أمامنا في المدينة الآن هي المدينة أمام حسينة عليه السلام باب السيدرة و behind me here نحن في المقام أمام صاحب العسري والزمان نحن في محقوق أكثر 200-300 ميدي من حولي حائر أبي عبدالله الحسينة سلام الله عليه وسلم now come with me إن شاء الله we will take this journey نتبقى المقام أمام أكبر سلام الله عليه as you can see we just passed down the alleyway from شارع السيدرة and here we are going now to the مقام أمام أكبر عليه السلام as you can see there's a lot of shops here a lot of people living around this area this place has a lot of history it is narrated in the books of history that this place used to be but ruins this land used to be just ruins and not that much buildings of course the enemies of Ahl al-Bait they always destroy these kind of areas because they have a problem with Ahl al-Bait عليهم السلام you can see around me it's all your old structures it is narrated that a granddaughter of one of the people who used to live here that there is about 800 meters squared of area in this area and a man by the name of Haj Qalim Al-Asdi bought this land here this land which is about 800 meters squared and from this land he gave about 20 meters squared for the مقام علي أكبر عليه السلام and he was the first person the first person in this مقام to build it and put a shabbak on it for the shrine for the Zawar to come inside and visit peace be upon you وعلي أكبر peace be upon your father الحسين ابن علي peace be upon your grandfather علي ابن أبي طالب and may the peace and blessings be upon your mother فاتنة الزهراء عليه السلام السلام وعلى الحسين وعلى علي ابن الحسين وعلى أصحاب الحسين والذين بدروا مؤجتم دون الحسين عليه السلام this مقام contains history the history in this مقام is that this is the place where علي أكبر peace be upon him was assassinated in this location here المره ابن منقد عليه اللعنة assassinated علي الأكبر now my viewers I want you to pay attention now and pretend that there is no buildings here pretend this is an entire barren wasteland a desert I told you that the مقام بعمل حسين عليه السلام is down there and the مخيم is down there علي الأكبر عليه السلام when all of the companions عمام الحسين عليه السلام were martyred and killed and assassinated الحسين عليه السلام said ألا من ناصر ينصرنا الحسين عليه السلام came and told is there anybody here to come and aid us is there anybody here to come and protect the haram the woman of Rasool الله الفاطميات علي الأكبر عليه السلام came علي أكبر 18 years old or 20 years old according to the hadith في هالي بيت علي مسلم شيخ المفيد says 20 and the lowest number 18 years old علي الأكبر came to his father he said يا أبتا oh father your companions are dead the haram here my mother say the zaynab they're in tears they want somebody to aid him to aid أبي عبد الله الحسين سلام الله عليه can I be the one to go into battle can I be the one to go and fight for you I want to see my grandfather رسول الله I want to see my father علي ابن أبي طالب I want to see my mother سيد فاطمة سلام الله عليها father give me permission give me permission to go and fight all these enemies here rewind history rewind pretend right now we are going 1400 years back to the year 60 AH on the day of ashura تنثم محرم can you hear the clashing of the swords can you hear the enemies can you hear saying with me pretend close your eyes and see the battle going on can you hear say the zaynab crying this is when عيل أكبر came into battle علي أكبر and the prime of his youth came into battle أبي عبد الله الحسين سلام الله عليه when I yearned to see my grandfather رسول الله I look at علي أكبر علي أكبر in terms of his character his speech his looks resembled رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم in every manner علي أكبر came into battle here this area right here this holy ground right here علي أكبر سلام الله عليه fought with his horse he killed many hundreds, two hundreds took them to hell and till the slain المره ابن منقد he came and he stabbed علي أكبر from the back with his spear then he came and with his head he struck علي أكبر عليه السلام علي أكبر سلام الله عليه fell on the grounds he fell on the grounds and he said يا أبتا عليكم مني السلام يا حسين إمام الحسين عليه السلام came running towards his son علي أكبر عليه السلام he held علي أكبر he held علي أكبر and he put his cheek on علي أكبر's cheek الحسين told him يا أبتا يا ابن يا علي أكبر why are you holding me with only one arm because علي أكبر the hadith say that علي أكبر was on the ground and he had his left arm around his father and his right arm on his chest where his heart was he told him move your hand move your hand علي أكبر will move his hand الحسين عليه السلام forcefully removed his hand from علي أكبر عليه السلام he removed his hand and he started the spear the head of the spear the iron was still in his chest الحسين عليه السلام pulled and his heart came out too and that is one you hear the haram say to zaynab standing at the tell zaynab where you see right now and say to zaynab عليه السلام in her eyes the entire image of ashura is in her eyes and she can see what's going on they carried علي أكبر back to the مخيم which is right down there and they just count how many steps it takes Imam الحسين had to walk from the مخيم to here and hold his severed son's body and walk all the way down to the مخيم and then say يا ليلة here's your son عليه الأكبر here's your son عليه الأكبر and that's when the haram came out say to zaynab came out the children came out and Laila came out and they all began to weep and cry my brothers and sisters my viewers this is where I'm standing right now right here in this location right here in this location right here is where علي الأكبر blood was shed in this location right here أبي عبد الله الحسين stood in this location right here this ground is holy and I can testify right now that the people living in this area have seen many miracles from this ground this is just a small percentage of أشورة here in كربلا you have the مقام of علي الأكبر you have the مقام of علي الأزغر you have the تلزيني بي you have المخيم every مقام narrates to your story put them all together and you get كربلا والسلام عليكم رحمة الله وبركاته


Notice how we can see our nested module and our main bicep visualization? This is really cool. We could use this module on its own too if we wanted it in a totally different bicep file or we could just use it straight from the Azure CLI.


Neural electrodes are essential tools for studying the human brain and its disorders. A new type of flexible electrode made of liquid metal and platinum was developed to provide better contact with the skull and more accurate recordings of brain activity. This device can be used to monitor brain activity during surgery, detect seizures, and even help treat certain conditions. This article was authored by Xilong Zhang, Bingxin Liu, Jingru Gao, and others.


So what is that loud crack or popping sound that happens with chiropractic adjustments? It has been investigated and studied using what we call cine radiography, which is a fancy word for a video x-ray. It appears that when joints are quickly separated, some of the fluid in the joint temporarily turns into a bit of a gas. So I can put my hands together and if I pull them apart, essentially what happens right after that is that joint has a little more space and moves a little bit more freely and that may be part of the mechanism by which the nervous system will send out information to your nerves and your brain and says this area moves better, it doesn't hurt as much, then that's part of the healing process.


How to Melt Cheddar Cheese. Melted cheddar has a delicious flavor, but it can be slightly finicky, sometimes it will end up being a consistency you didn't want, or it separates or even burns. You can avoid these outcomes by shredding the cheddar first, then allowing it to come to room temperature before applying the lowest heat possible. By following these three techniques, you can successfully melt cheddar in the microwave, on the stove, or even steam it using a steamer basket. Melting cheddar in the microwave. Start with mild or sharp cheddar. Cheddar cheese can be labeled mild, sharp, or extra sharp. The level of sharp indicates how long the cheese has been aged. The amount of aging increases as you go from mild to extra sharp. As the cheese ages, the texture of the cheese changes. Mild and sharp cheddar cheese have a smoother, creamier texture than extra sharp cheddar and will be easier to melt. It will require more heat to melt extra sharp cheddar than to melt less aged cheddar cheese. Mild and sharp cheddar cheese have a higher moisture content than extra sharp cheddar. Shred the cheese. It is best to shred the cheese while it is still cold. If you shred cheese when it is too warm, you will end up with mush. If you do not want to shred the cheese yourself, you can buy cheese that has already been shredded. However, the end result will be creamier and taste better if you shred it yourself. 3. If you're having trouble shredding the cheddar, put it in the freezer for 10 to 30 minutes to harden it. Bring the cheese to room temperature. Once grated, allow the shredded cheddar to remain out on the counter until it becomes room temperature. Doing this will lessen the length of time you'll have to expose the cheddar to heat before it melts. Over exposure to heat will cause melted cheddar to become unpleasantly rubbery or greasy, so the less heat you have to use, the better. Place the cheese in a microwave safe bowl. Pile the shredded cheddar into a bowl that can easily hold all of it, with room to spare. Do not place the cheese on a plate.When it begins to melt, it will run off the plate and you'll have a melted mess to clean out of your microwave. Set the microwave on low heat for 15 seconds. Place the bowl of shredded cheese into the microwave. Close the microwave door. Use the lowest heat setting that your microwave has. Cheese prefers to be melted at the lowest heat possible.  This will result in clumpy and or greasy melted cheese. 6. Continue with 15 to 30 second intervals until the cheese is melted. After the first 15 seconds, pull out the bowl and stir the cheese. Place it back in and set it for another 15 seconds. Continue in this manner until the cheese has reached the desired melted consistency. The cheese should still be somewhat stringy once melted. Overcooked cheese will be hard and crispy.


Naval Support Activity Bethesda opened a new Wounded Warrior Facility. United Service Organizations or USO held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Warrior and Family Care Center Tuesday. The facility and its staff is dedicated to supporting wounded, ill and injured troops, their families and their caregivers throughout the rehabilitation process. The USO Wounded Warrior and Family Center at Naval Support Activity Bethesda is key because it allows us to complete the 360 degree care that we want to be able to provide to our patients. The Wounded Warriors who reside here, our staff that resides on the installation, as well as all of our support staff. The Center is integrated into the Wounded Warrior sub-area plan on the hospital campus. The facility will allow Wounded Warriors to socialize with friends and family. From the Defense Media Activity, I'm Petty Officer Ian Cotter.


Millions of tons of food is thrown away each year. Even more shocking is that millions of tons of this waste of food is perfectly edible. This is not only a waste of money, but this food could have been used to help the many people who go hungry. In addition, water, energy, and space to grow food that is not eaten is an unnecessary burden on the environment. Can we afford to waste valuable resources and food? After all, it is expected that by 2050, the global population would be nearly 10 billion. Let's consider a few solutions. Authorities need to allow food banks to give away food, even if it has passed its use by or best before date, if it is still good for consumption. Community-based initiatives can be used to redistribute food with a focus on reducing supermarket food waste. Do not allow ugly food like imperfect vegetables to be sent to landfill, be willing to buy them. Support supermarkets who offer imperfect fruits and vegetables at discounted rates. The more we choose these, the more they're likely to be offered to us. Choose reduced items nearing their use by or best before dates. This saves you money and saves food from going to waste. Do not make use of unnecessary supermarket deals like buy one get one free. If you do not need the food, don't buy it because it may just end up in the bin. And now a question for you. What steps are you taking to reduce the amount of food you throw away?


Good afternoon. Thank you, Mike Thank you all for waiting for senator Romney and me We had a number of votes and so I appreciate that we're starting a little later, but hopefully I know It's a discussion that all of you have been waiting to participate in for a long time And I'm pleased to be joined by senator Romney as you heard we had the first hearing on the serious study group report this week and Hopefully it will be it is only the first of many actions that we will see in Congress and in the foreign relations committee to address Hopefully to implement the rec recommendations in the report I want to begin by expressing my gratitude for all of the amazing efforts of Michael sing and Dana Sturl Thank you both so much for your work co-chairing the serious study group and I so much appreciate all of the work of all of the members who served with you on the study group It it took nearly three years of hard work and perseverance to convince My congressional colleagues that we needed a bipartisan Objective assessment of what was happening in Syria and I want to credit my own foreign policy team and All of the other staff in the Senate for the hard work that they did to move this study, so some of them are here Thank you all very much Having just reviewed the recommendations from the report I can tell you that it was well worth The years that it took to get here. I only wish we had been able to get it done several years ago as The serious study group report makes clear the conflict represents one of the most Devastating tragedies that the world has ever seen more than five hundred thousand Syrians have been killed since the onset of the war in 2011 and according to the United Nations and additional 1,000 civilians in northern Syria have lost their lives in just over the last four months due to Syrian Russian and Iranian airstrikes and ground attacks The conflict has spurred the largest Migration crisis since World War two with over five point six million people seeking refuge in Lebanon Turkey Jordan and of course across Europe. We have seen the migration that started with the conflict in Syria That's led to so many other Unexpected consequences because of that and of course millions more have been displaced inside Syria We've also witnessed one of the worst Humanitarian crises of our time with vulnerable populations in Syria suffering from inadequate access to humanitarian assistance Basic things like sanitation and food and of course the crisis has resulted in increased rates of gender-based violence including rape domestic violence sex trafficking child marriage and child labor and While one would think that what was happening in Syria alone should have spurred international action It should have resulted in More action in the United States The path toward a political settlement Towards trying to intervene in Syria has really been marred by uncertainty and by an unwillingness of the international community to engage So working with many of my colleagues in the Senate including the late John McCain who helped bolster support for the Syria study group We worked to try and Put down a predicate that says that US leadership is essential to stability and a rules-based order across the Middle East and in Syria and time and again We've seen that when the United States seeds its leadership Those who oppose our values and that rules-based order are all too willing to step in and Syria is a perfect example of that So in 2013 along with my colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee I voted in favor of a resolution that would have authorized us military action against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in Response to his use of chemical weapons, and I think it's important to give a little of this past history Because it helps explain how we got to where we are today that vote passed in committee 10 to 7 but the resolution was never considered on the floor either in the House or the Senate and our failure to act in response to the Poisoning the chemical attack on the Syrian people was heard by both Non-state actors belligerent non-state actors and other countries After that we saw Russia move into Syria in a bigger way and we saw Iran become increasingly aggressive as it worked to prop up the Assad regime and then in 2014 we heard the devastating news that James Foley who happens to be a constituent who was raised in New Hampshire Constituent of mine that he was Beheaded by ISIS along with his fellow Americans Peter Kasig and Steven Sotloff and It was really those actions I think that brought ISIS to the attention of the world and by 2015 ISIS controlled an area roughly the size of the state of Indiana in Iraq and Syria They're caliphate and they raised over one billion dollars a year in revenue Attracting over 40,000 people for more than a hundred countries to join ISIS violent cause in Syria And of course as we know unfortunately the ISIS problem in Syria didn't stay in Syria ISIS coordinated and inspired its followers to conduct widespread assaults against civilians worldwide Including in the United States, and you know, I remember sitting in some of those classified briefings in 2013 and 2014 as we're hearing about the rise of ISIS and thinking how did Al Qaeda morph into ISIS and Become so many thousand strong without somebody blowing the whistle without somebody in the international community without us without our military blowing the whistle on that So We are here I think because of the failure of American foreign policy and because of the inaction of the international community That is what has led us to this point And it's what really gave rise to the idea of creating the serious study group. So we would have some sort of objective more objective look at what we should do and an assessment on how to respond and While I had hoped we'd have this assessment several years ago, as I said Given President Trump's announcement that he wants to withdraw from Syria last December I think this report and its recommendations have come in just the length of time I Agree wholeheartedly with the authors of this report that the United States even with its limited footprint Has achieved extraordinary gains in Syria and that it would be foolish to let all of that go now in fact Assad only controls 60% of Syria's territory with much of that territory suffering from a proliferation of criminal gangs and poverty and In fact, it may be as the report suggests that the greatest humanitarian disaster in Syria is still before us With escalated attacks since late April the Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies are threatening a population of approximately three million in Idlib province and two-thirds of those People are women and children and other parts of Syria We're seeing the emergence of a rapidly developing ISIS insurgency that we must address and to suggest that we have solved the ISIS problem and we can go home and not have to worry about it is Just not looking at the situation as it exists Some 18,000 ISIS fighters remain mobilized throughout Iraq and Syria and another 10,000 are tenuously jailed in prisons throughout Northeast Syria You know I I had the opportunity to visit Iraq last a this past April and one of the things We heard very clearly from our military leaders who were there and from the Iraqis is that ISIS fighters Are still there and they are just biding their time They are just waiting to see what we're going to do what the coalition is going to do and The Iraqis were very clear that they remain a constant threat to stability in Iraq now that's why it's so exciting to see what We were able to do working with some of our coalition allies in Northeast Syria and I got to witness the effect of our leadership in Syria first hand last summer I Visited with Lindsey Graham Syria northeastern Syria, and I actually went there because I've been working with the families of James Foley and The other Americans killed there because they want to try and bring the terrorists responsible for those murders back to justice in the United States, and we think we know who some of those terrorists are who killed James Foley they are being held in detention in Syria and The families would like to see them brought back here to justice so Senator Graham and I went over initially to try and see what we could find out about where they were being held about how Secure they are and about the potential to bring them back to the United States But what I found when I got there was something that I was not at all expecting to see and that was a northeastern Syria that Was seen a return of refugees who had left that part of the country. It was We went into Mambage. We saw walk through the marketplace without any body armor on Talked to the merchants who were in the marketplace Traveled along the road saw the farms that were beginning to come back very rich farmland and met with some of the leaders in Mambage in a restaurant Sat down and talked with the SDF commanders and with the local Arab Councils and Everywhere we went what we heard from the Syrian people that we talked to was Please stay don't let America leave make sure you stay we need you there because We are finally seeing some stability return to the country and You know, we traveled along the road and children walking along the road We're flashing V for victory signs at the American troops when they saw us So I came back Not just with information and thoughts about how to address the detainee situation but I came back convinced that the Effort that we were putting in northeast Syria the 2000 or so troops the 200 million dollars in stabilization money that is there Is making a huge impact and it would be a terrible mistake for us to leave to leave Syria to the Russians to the Iranians to Assad To the brutality of what continues to be one of the worst humanitarian conflicts that we've seen To we're not sure what will happen with Turkey along the northeastern border to abandon our allies and partners the Syrian Democratic Forces So I am in wholehearted agreement with what the report says with those recommendations and It is clear in my mind anyway that those American troops those diplomats who have been there Continue to serve as a shield against the ISIS cells that are operating in northeast Syria continue to serve as shield against total abandonment of Syria to Russia and Iran and a recognition that While the president may believe that ISIS has been defeated that Conditions on the ground in Syria and across the world paint a very different picture and If the United States diminishes its presence We run the risk of enabling a resurgence of ISIS We run the risk of the capitulation or all-out destruction of our partners in the region and the eventual loss of the resource rich territory that the United States currently helps to control and Unfortunately instead of leveraging those gains as the report suggests we can do this administration has chosen to squander them and we are again faced with uncertainty in Syria and Again, that's what I believe this report tells us that we have an opportunity again to Staying strong at the negotiating table to be in a position where all of our allies are willing to listen to us But we've got to take some definitive actions. We've got to breathe new life into the policies that got us into Syria in the first place and We should not cede those hard-fought gains to Assad to Russia and to Iran and that ultimately the United States and the president should Recognize that our leadership is essential to completely defeating ISIS and to helping to address the terrible humanitarian situation in the Middle East and in Syria and One of the lines that I like best from the report as Asserts and I quote no one argues that withdrawing US troops would make ISIS less likely to regroup or Iran less likely to entrench itself in quote Bringing an end to the horrific violence in Syria, which has put so much pressure on our allies should be our main focus working with the international community and I believe that the authors of this report have played a critical role in Helping to lay out once again the arguments for why that's in America's interest and How we can actually move the ball forward in Syria in a way that's positive because there is still time There is still room for America to achieve its aims by working with our partners and securing peace in the region The challenge now will be to ensure that we begin to implement the recommendations in this report That we heed the bipartisan call of this serious study group and its recommendations, and I can tell you that At least today not only have we had a hearing this week on the report Which I think begins to give us a blueprint for how to move forward in Congress But one of the recommendations the creation of the ISIS detainee coordinator is in the National Defense Authorization Act So that should pass as soon as we pass the NDAA this this year which should be sometime next month and We're also beginning to see some of the actions of some of our allies on addressing The issues that are raised in the report I heard this week that Germany is beginning to put on trial some of the Syrians who are in Germany for Crimes against humanity. I think that is another sign that this is an International issue it's important to the international community and that for the United States to continue to be relevant We need to stay at the table. We need to exercise leadership, and that's what this report says So congratulations again. Thank you all very much for your work and for the opportunity to speak today