Okay, so officially let me say welcome to this webinar on the SEDEP MSE in Climate Change and Development. What's going to happen this afternoon is that I'm going to talk you through just a little bit about SEDEP primarily, about the program, how you might study it, how it works, and take as many questions as we have got time for during the course of the afternoon. So I should just take us onto our first slide and let us get started. Okay, so a little bit about SEDEP first. SEDEP is one of three online programs that is postgraduate programs run by SOAS. We are actually the largest postgraduate online provider within the University of London system. I think it's more than three and a half thousand students are studying online with SOAS at the moment of whom slightly more than a thousand study with SEDEP. And SEDEP has been doing distance learning programs that weren't originally online within the University of London for about 30 years. So we have quite a lot of experience of supporting study distance for master's level. So we have this large number of students. Their climate changing development program is actually fairly new. We're just in our third study session now. So it's been running for just under 18 months. That and a new MSE sustainable development use the teaching model, which I'm going to talk to you about this afternoon. But let's say we have this much longer experience of offering distance and line programs in other capacities. So I guess you're all interested in the climate change and development program at least I hope so. I should say a little bit first actually about myself. I am the program director overall for the SEDEP program. So I've been responsible for bringing this program into being but I'm not actually the program convener. We're actually between two program conveners at the moment. We have a new convener for the program starting in a couple of weeks time. Somebody called Dr. Tom Tanner who has 15 years or so of experience of working in this area with DFID and then with Idea Sussex. He's currently a research associate at ODI and he's a brilliant person to head up this program. He happens to be the author of the textbook of our core module, the climate change environment. So really excited that Tom is joining us but before he starts I should be able to answer most of your questions on the program. I'm sure you're all aware of the magnitude of a challenge posed by climate change and the program is looking at all of those interactions with development processes and then with line programs this changes everything. Certainly it changes a lot. We have to think about what climate change means for development trajectories in the middle income countries. As we adapt to changing climates what are the implications for the nature sorry nature development trajectories and the costs of those trajectories and then conversely as countries economies develop we have to think about how to mitigate the impacts of that on climate what the low carbon development trajectories look like and how are they achieved thinking for example well bank estimates it may be 1.3 billion people still don't have access to electricity. Twice that number rely on traditional biomass, cooking and heating as people come to rely more on modern electricity that has its benefits but it also is going to have huge implications for greenhouse gas emissions as they demand more and more electricity as they come to have a lifestyle more like ones that we have. So how do we get those balances between department and poverty, energy and emissions right? Also of course huge international dimensions to this with the interests of high income and middle income and low income countries very different in this regard and how do they negotiate their relative commitments and responsibilities internationally and how do they work with each other to support development in a changing climate. Okay so the aims of the program in a way I've already covered some of those and what does the challenge of climate change imply for development efforts development trajectories do we have to completely rethink where we're going do we have to do what we've conceived of as development in the past somewhat better is it reform or is it revolution we want to help students develop analytical skills to address problems of adaptation but also identifying feasible low carbon development options so we see that this problem is clearly not going to go away and we're looking to contribute to producing the next generation of environment and development professionals working on climate policy and also practice and we hope that this MSc will also provide a route into PhD studies in the same topics for some students as well after they've finished their MSc program like this gives you specific academic training it also helps you with more general professional skills and dissertation is a core part of this program as with most MSc's so you'll be helped in research design project management and literature writing skills more generally at MSc level critical thinking skills are one of the core skills that we're looking to help students develop reflective independent learning taking on board complex idea thinking your way through them then being able to communicate them all of these are our skills that we're looking to offer networking skills as well you can study with SEDEP for three levels of qualification a postgraduate certificate is the most basic there are two modules that you have to take for that if you want to take four modules but you're not sure that you want to do a research component you can do a postgraduate diploma if you want the full MSc with the research components as well then it's four modules plus the dissertation you do there are two study sessions in a year and you take one module per study session so that is why we suggest a postgraduate certificate that requires one year but you could take up to three if you really were doing it very slowly lots of students would like to do an MSc in two years that is certainly possible within our programs but when we look at the workload and we know that many of our students are also working and have full family lives and other commitments that you might want to think about a sort of three-year time scale and that just means that within those three years there are some periods where you think okay I'm just too busy at work at the moment I can't really study intensively over the next two or three months so I'll take a break if you have a three-year time frame in mind that allows you to have a couple of those periods during the course of your studies where you're just less active with your studying but if you have two years you can intensively to your studies in and around other things and it's certainly possible to finish MSc within two years. With SEDEP you pay as you go so at the moment an MSc costs 9,500 pounds there may be small sort of inflation increases in that over overcoming years but it's not going to depart hugely from that figure over the next two or three years but you don't pay the full 9,500 pounds up front and you pay it module by module and it's five modules including the dissertation and those modules are 1,900 pounds each so each time you register for a module you pay 900 pounds okay Hannah first question how far in advance do you need to register for a module good question so our study sessions start in the middle of October and the middle of April and I think it is late September and late March I think I actually have figures I have actual dates in my last slide but sort of broadly late September and late March is when you register for the next study session so probably only sort of three weeks or so in advance of the study session itself it says here about scholarships there are no well we have one scholarship specifically for this program for the coming study session but that's specifically for South African women students otherwise you're in competition for more general scholarships there's information on the SOAS page I would say most of our students are funded either by themselves or by their employers rather than through scholarships okay how does a how does a study session work so that actually just before I do that let me just take the next question well would it be possible to pay all MSc fees at one go yes it is perfectly possible to to do that all at one go if for some reason you have the money and you'd like to pay it all up we will certainly we can certainly do that but actually you know you don't need to do that you can wait until you've passed a particular module and then register for the next one and actually I think we'd encourage you to pay as you go just in case something comes up during the course of your MSc and for some reason whatever you change your mind so pay as you go is is our preferred option I'm sure if you want to pay everything up front we could arrange that can you get this George can you get a student finance loan for the course yes UK students can get a a loan for this University of London have negotiated with the office for students and it's a slightly complicated arrangement for online students and I think that you actually have to pay for the first module yourself as a way of sort of showing that you're actually committed to the program and then you get the money back from the student finance company as part of your loan so I think you have to find a little bit of capital upfront but essentially you can then get a student student finance loan for this program okay how does a study session work so I've said that there are two 16 week study sessions per year starting in October and April the one that starts in October does have a two week break for Christmas the one that starts in April just goes straight through 16 week flat and we reckon that that complete a module you should be trying to set aside about 15 hours per week during that study session so that's quite a significant study commitment if you think about in terms of available hours in your weekends or evenings or early mornings whenever you whenever you study best but that's the sort of time commitment that will be necessary to work your way through the materials our materials are quite text-based that is likely to evolve over time but at the moment they're quite text-based and they comprise two main elements there are course guides which have been written by sedep staff who are experts in their particular fields and then those are complemented by a series of key readings to read around topic you basically do one topic per week for the 16 for the 16 weeks and all your materials are accessed online via our so-called virtual learning environment so it's as simple as clicking a link to get to the materials there you are in groups of about 15 students on your particular module if we had 30 students studying a particular module at once then we would have two tutors so a dedicated tutor for a group of about 15 students and the tutor's job is to answer your questions and to try and stimulate the discussion during the course of the 16 weeks and during each of the topics that you are studying on so that's a sort of asynchronous interaction and everyone goes on in their own time and contributes to discussion threads but we find that on these new programs that works very well as an online student you have full access to the online resource of the SOAS online library which are very rich resources for this program and so in addition to the key readings that we ask you to read you are free to go on and look at anything else that you have time to look at there are additional readings suggested as sort of options associated with each unit also when you're doing your dissertation obviously you need to be familiar with the SOAS online library in order to be getting materials for your dissertation there's a hundreds and hundreds of journals available through the online library. Each module is assessed via one or two assignments plus an exam so several of the modules including the climate change and development core module have a short initial assignment after about three weeks where you reflect critically on a particular reading you post some comments and then everyone is asked with commenting constructively on a couple of other people's comments just as a way of getting students familiar with with debating with each other online you do get a mark and feedback on that assignment there's then a more substantive assignment of I think 3 000 words which comes in week nine of the study session and then at the end of the study session so about 10 days after the official end of the study session there is an exam and the exam is one bit of the program which in some ways is a bit inflexible in that you have to go to a designated University of London exam centre to sit the exam it's a two-hour exam and it's on a specified morning or afternoon University of London have exam centres in 100 plus countries of world and they have multiple centres in many countries so there should be one near you but it you do have to be able to turn up on that particular morning or afternoon to take that exam okay let's have a look at some of the modules on the climate change and development program uh so you'll see that there's one core module we recommend all students start with that core module which sort of gives some coverage of the the breadth of topics within the program as a whole and showing how they sort of fit together so you can then take aspects that you've studied in that core module and study them in more depth via the list of optional modules and we require you to take one or more of the List A modules the slide here is actually not quite correct you can choose anything from one to three of the List A modules but you have to do at least one and then you top that up with modules from List B so you can choose Upt two modules from list B each of these modules has been prepared by uh so our staff who you know have that particular expertise in these areas climate change development actually is prepared by a team of us climate change adaptation was prepared by our colleague Andy Neucham who's now in the studies department here low carbon development and energy and development and we're prepared by Dr Franca Urban who is who was the convener of the program at that point is now moved to Stockholm I've just finished the understanding poverty module which I'm quite excited about and I'm about to get started on the food security and social protection module our colleague Professor Lauren Smith is an expert in water catchment management and water management issues has done the water and land management for sustainable development then we have a couple of modules from our colleague Dr Ben Daley who's also the convener of the MSc sustainable development and in our list we have one or two modules other so as programs so the global public policy module is a module that's actually produced by our colleagues at the Center for international studies and diplomacy and their human and critical security module comes from our development studies department there one module I need to just flag up on the list in front of you as a gender and social inequality module which is probably a year off being ready yet I'm still finalizing the plans for producing that one so if that's one of your the ones you particularly like it might have to be one of the last ones that you take in your set of choices for those of you who are interested in doing the full MSc including the dissertation let me say a few words about how the dissertation works within this model so each year there are two main study sessions where you should probably be focused on one of the modules I've just shown you and then in between those sessions there are little spaces for dissertation study and so the dissertation is split into four stages in the first stage you think a bit about what makes a good research question and about processes of research and the output at the end of that is you produce a topic form with some suggested research questions and what you're interested in and doing doing your dissertation on and on the basis of that we then identify a suitably qualified supervisor who will then work with you for the rest of your dissertation and in the second part of your dissertation they will work with you to take your initial ideas from your topic form and those into an assessed proposal which really sets out what you're the design of your research is what are the what's the question that you're interested in and why what's the gap in the literature you're looking to contribute to filling what information might you need to come up with an answer to that question how will you get it what will you do with it when you've got it that's the sort of content of an assessed proposal and if you can do a good assessed proposal you're then well set up for the rest of the dissertation so the assessed proposal carries 20 percent of the dissertation marks once you've got your mark and your feedback on that you're ready to actually do your data gathering which could be literature based for some students but for other set up students as our students all over the world it might involve some form of primary data collection so you do that in the block three stage three of the dissertation and then stage four is the write up analysis and write up leading to the submission of the final dissertation I should have mentioned that when you are in phase two and you are developing the assessed proposal there are also a whole set of research methods resources that we make available to you and with your supervisor you can identify which ones of those would be useful to you given your topic and the type of data you're working with and you can use those materials to help you develop your ideas on what you're going to do in your dissertation so if you are looking to finish an MSc in two years then you would register for the first stage of the dissertation at the same time as you register for your first module and as soon as you'd finished the 16 weeks of the study session for the first module you'd go into the first stage of the dissertation and if you're if you are going to finish in two years then you have a fairly tight schedule of talk module stage of dissertation talk module stage of dissertation and so on through the two years if you have a three-year time perspective as I mentioned earlier you have a couple of breaks in that cycle when you might decide that you haven't got time to do any study at all due to other commitments or you might decide actually I'm not going to do a talk module in the next four months but I'm going to use time to make more progress on my dissertation take it a bit more on my own pace and just work on it a bit more deeply than I than I can in just the eight to ten weeks of the dissertation stage so you have a certain amount of flexibility as to how quickly you proceed through the program okay I think I've got two or three more slides this is just a sense of where SEDEP students are located as I mentioned we've got over a thousand students and this reflects the whole of the SEDEP student body we probably have seven well actually we have precisely 74 students on the climate change and development program at the moment so we've got just over a thousand on some older programs using a different format which we are still running until 2022 and as you can see you're including UK which accounts for about 20 percent of our student body Europe and the UK is just over 50 percent and then we've got people spread elsewhere around the world our students vary slightly across the programs that we run and but we have first thing to say is the majority of our students are already in some form of work we have a very small proportion who have done an undergraduate degree and haven't gone into work yet but that's less than five percent of our students probably two thirds to three quarters are already in a job that is related to the subject that they're studying we have plenty with international organizations UN World Bank we have at least a similar at least that number or more who are working for a range of NGOs both international NGOs national NGOs and I would say quite a lot of them are people who are working their way up through to their country offices of some international NGO and are seeking to upgrade their skills as as they progress in their careers we also have probably I would say somewhere quarter to a third of our students who are coming from a wide variety of backgrounds need to get into something slightly more development orientated we have a really pleasing number of people with a pure commercial background who are looking either to get into understanding greater understanding of sustainability or perhaps to establish social enterprises so mixing development expertise with their commercial background we have got a lot of people who've got a background in education maybe teaching now moving into development but there are lawyers there are people from all sorts of backgrounds looking to move into development oriented professions as well as those who are already in there I had a question earlier about when you have to enroll so our next study session starts 16th of April so about two months away it says here that you should have your application put in by the 8th of March you've then got another three weeks or so after that to actually enroll which involves paying selecting your module and paying your money if you're starting the program the selection module will be the climate change and development core module but three weeks also to pay the money and then just a couple of weeks after that the study session will start and then after April the next study session is in the middle of October so September is the time to get your applications in okay I think it's time to open things up to you now and see what questions you have for me I hope that was the sort of information you were looking for but now please do fire in any questions on anything that you do you have for me either things I've covered or things I haven't covered George can you give me an example of a dissertation research project okay so I guess if you're thinking about the climate change and development MSC you might therefore focus on what does adaptation mean in a particular area you might for example if you were based in a low or middle income country you might look at some sort of development project and you might examine what the implications of changing climate might be for that project how do things have to be done differently you may not look at a project you may just if you've got you're able to collect primary data you may look at the livelihoods of people in the area and think about what the changing climate might mean for their livelihoods and how they respond to that that would be if you had a primary data collection possibility if you didn't and you were doing a dissertation that was based on literature that you might take a country that you're interested in and you might in some way critically examine national development strategies and the extent to which climate is thought about in those and what difference it makes for the strategies and if you're somebody who's done the global public policy module you might also be thinking about what are the drivers of those strategies and what are what are the politics around embedding consideration of climate more fully into those strategies some you could something like that there's a there's a wide range as long as there's a focus on both climate and development in your in your ms in your dissertation topic there's quite a wide range of things that you could think about Hannah is it possible to take two modules simultaneously um right so I think if you were not working um would certainly be something that could be contemplated um two modules would be something like 30 hours a week so that would be a lot to do for somebody in a in a full-time job so you know perhaps if you could show you had a part-time job or possibly you were not working for a while then yes uh we certainly wouldn't recommend you to start the program asking to take two modules simultaneously uh if you hadn't seen how you got on doing one first unless as I say you could show it you were taking time off work to do this so I would um I would go in with the expectation that it really is a module at a time um and then if you really want to make the case to try to add the sorts of things I've talked about are the sorts of things you'd have to try and persuade us of that makes sense okay well what mechanism do we have for exams if there's no specific university in country um okay so the way the exam book uh university of London maintain relationships with exam centres in over a hundred countries around the world and as I say um there are often multiple exam centres in a given country probably the biggest single provider of exam centres is our bridge council offices around the world um and they're um yeah so probably more than half of our students are actually doing their exams in British council exam centres so the way the system works is um you have to go to one of the exam centres which is registered with University of London so there is a list of them on the University of London website and that shows you what your possibilities are so you select according to the city you live in that's probably the biggest single determinant of which exam centre you go to um and and you take it from the list of options that are available um what I would say is it's very flexible so you don't have to take all your exams in one centre so you might take your first exam uh in a centre uh in Germany for example because you're working there and then you might uh move to India so you might find that actually your next couple of exams uh you are taking in India and then it may be you end up uh when it's the fourth exam and you're on leave and you're in Dubai and you might take your fourth exam in Dubai basically you just register for a centre of your choice every time you come to do an exam and they can they can be all around the world okay um well you've asked about Afghanistan so we do have students in Afghanistan and I am therefore confident that there is a university of London exam centre in in Kabul I can't tell you what it is without looking on the University of London website to look at the list of exam centres um but I am almost certain that you would be able to take your exams in country in Afghanistan George um so you're currently studying geology particularly enjoying climate change you're not planning to work next year and instead do a master's full time this is a kind of course for you so uh let me give you two reflections on that um so the first one is that our modules are essentially social science modules with uh an element of natural science where necessary to understand the processes involved but we're really looking at the human interactions around the around the process of climate change so I think in the climate change and development module there's probably one maybe two units out of 15 which just give you some of the basics of climate science and if you were to do the global environmental change module which is one of the modules that in option b again there'd be more of the natural science and then some different implications but much of the program is is social science so there will be some economics some politics um other things like some anthropology some law it's very much a multidisciplinary program but in the social sciences so the first thing is to decide if that's really what you want to to do um we do take people with a variety backgrounds so geology background would not be an obstacle to you registering for this program if you have a two one equivalent uh in in your geology then we would certainly take you on if you decide this is what you wanted to do um if you wanted to do it full time um there is still the challenge the minimum completion time for the msc is two years there's a two-year cycle for the dissertation um so if you're looking to do the masters in one year and do it full time you might want to consider an on-campus masters we really set up to um providing which work well for people who are studying alongside other things so hope that's helpful to see Helen's typing so i'm just waiting for the next question to come in um please feel free to fire in any more questions you have as well excuse pause i'm watching the chat and expecting a couple of messages to come in at any point okay hannah from an admin perspective are we registered as students like a normal university i.e email addresses etc um yes you are um you are registered as a uh so as student so although ultimately the program is credited by university of london and university of london will appear on your degree certificate the lead college of university of london which provides that study is so as and you're therefore a so as student with a so as email address and password um you will use that for accessing the library for example um you are welcome if you have the opportunity not all our students do but you're welcome to come to the campus as well and use the the library facility physically if you want to um there are some students uh UK based students who can use a scheme called sconal which is a system whereby different universities allow their students to share each other's library facilities so you get your sconal card as a so as student and you take it to your the university in town or city where you live and you present that and you're able to use their library facilities as a visiting student from so as um so there are one or two things where science still doesn't quite support it's uh on its online students uh in quite the same way as on campus um so we haven't quite got that level of career support for our students that we have on campus but these things are gradually being uh worked on and changed and effectively the distinction between online and on-campus students is uh being blurred all the time and so as is working to the towards the objective of one day offering blended uh learning where you take some modules on campus and some modules at distance we're not quite there yet so don't bank on that for this program but that's our direction of travel and therefore you will hopefully feel like a so a student as if you were here on campus still see one message looks like it's on its way to me oh brilliant okay hello um so let me see your so Helen you um you have a background in branding and marketing um you're thinking about uh how developing a reputation for sustainability can be good for for the brands that you you work with you're particularly interested in climate change with a particular interest in energy um and you've noted the similar modules on the msc sustainable development um okay uh so first of all let me just comment on the msc sustainable development and the climate change and development program you're right Helen that they're quite a lot of the same modules are offered on both programs at the moment if you were doing an msc in climate change and development as opposed to sustainable development um the the two things that would differentiate your degree at the end would be the foundational core module that you take so climate change and development as opposed to understanding sustainable development and then your dissertation in climate change and development that's very much what the dissertation has to focus on something within that area in an msc in sustainable development it would be a broader range of topics that you might want to take your focus your dissertation on um i think as the programs go on um we are looking also to offer additional modules from some of the other programs this last move we'll be looking to do further differentiation between the programs by the moment it's the it's the foundational core module and the focus of the dissertation which are the main differentiators between the two programs at the moment now you wanted to know um about if modules will help uh okay people in the private sector building solutions to tackle climate change challenges so i think it's fair to say that our modules um look at the look at questions of climate change adaptation and mitigation uh in general terms and then there is scope for people whether they're thinking of things from a public policy perspective or from an NGO advocacy perspective or from a corporate perspective to take that information on the the challenges of climate change and development and to then start reflecting what does that mean for me um and tutors will be there to sort of facilitate that discussion there will certainly be people on the course from all of those backgrounds so hopefully there'll be the opportunity to bounce ideas um of other people thinking about things from a similar angle um and then again when it comes to your dissertation with your supervisor that's also a very good time to think about things particularly from the angles that you're interested in so there certainly are opportunities through the program to take the material and digest it from a particular perspective and think so what does this mean for me and hopefully within the program we will support you to do that so i hope that that's the best answer i can give to your question i hope that's helpful okay brilliant we've had a lot of uh okay thanks another question about carbon credits to what extent will the modules talk about it okay so uh they are mentioned in the climate change and development core module um they don't go into they're not going to in great depth at that point because the core module is introducing the sort of breadth of interest across the program i imagine they must therefore be gone into in more depth in the low carbon development module but Helen if you wanted to uh ping min email i can check that out for you so i'm sure the answer is yes that they've addressed actually i'd have to look into those module materials just to absolutely confirm that for you so let me also use this opportunity for everybody here to say if you have uh questions for me afterwards um my email address is cp31 at sellas.ac.uk and you can also find me on the sedet website where my email address um is also available so that's cp for carbon poulson cp31 at sellas.ac.uk and i'd be very happy to answer any other questions that you have that come up great all right we've got about five minutes till the hour is up so um opportunity if you have any final questions to to send them in um george does the program teach us about the uk's climate change and development strategies so no we uh don't specifically teach about that what we do in the core module is we think about what the challenge of climate change means for countries at different income levels with different historic emissions uh and different future aspirations um we think about challenges of uh no growth or even degrowth uh for high income countries not saying that that's what we have to go for but we get students to think about what might that mean um if that was the only way for us to uh reduce our emissions so that there is still scope for um economy to historically have emitted far less than us uh to still fulfill some of their growth aspirations which inevitably will involve greater emissions and historically so we do think about the challenges at that sort of level uh for high income countries um we do inevitably think about uh development assistance and development finance and i'm i suspect that comes into the climate change adaptation model and probably the low carbon development and energy and development modules as well so that will be possible uh to think about those sorts of assistance strategies there given the development finances an important part of the international climate change discussions um poorer countries saying um well we'd love to go for this low carbon trajectory um but you know where's the money to invest in uh in renewable energy or the other other investments that we need to make in order to go into a more low carbon trajectory so development finance is very much uh featured in the program and again if you have a particular interest in uk's climate change and development strategies that is a valid topic for a dissertation so that's something that you could think about in your dissertation if you particularly wanted to focus on that uh well this is a course program linked climate change with conflict countries where vulnerability is relatively high so again yes if you select your options you can think about that in particular so again in the core module um there is one unit on that the nexus between change conflict migration it's definitely something we're going to ask students to think about us um that's going to be part of future scenarios then if you took the human and critical security optional module which was on the list that i mentioned earlier that thinks very much about conflict um how climate change interacts with that so you would have the option uh the possibility to think about letting more depth through that module um Hannah are the exams essay based um yes so the way our exams are structured Hannah is that they are two hour exams uh and certainly at the moment you in the first hour or so because obviously your time is your own in the exam uh you do what three short questions out of a choice of four so that tests a bit of breadth of knowledge and your grasp of key concepts um that come up in that particular module and then in uh the second part of the exam is one longer essay question where you'd be expected to spend roughly an hour on that um out of a choice of four essays so basic answer yes but one is a longer essay and there are three that are shorter answers so essays are such um the assignments um should have said when i told you about how our modules are assessed where there's an initial exercise after about three weeks it takes 10 percent of the marks um the first the assignment in the middle of the module carries 40 percent of the marks roughly in the exam the final 50 percent so those assignments are 3 000 words and um i guess if you haven't got a background in writing essays then your assignments are also opportunities to get practice and good feedback on uh on writing more essay style things so hopefully that's helpful brilliant okay um we've got to four o'clock um thank you for all of your questions and your engagement i hope you've found that helpful um let me just once again say that if you have further questions that you think of afterwards then my email address again is cp31 at soas.ac.uk and i would be very happy to answer any more questions that you have at that point


Patriot Prime Reviews is a channel for adult collectors and may not be suitable for children under 13 years of age. Viewer discretion is advised. Hey, what's going on guys? Patriot Prime here once again with another video. But before I get started with the subject of this video, I want to give a huge shout out to my sponsor toyhacks.com. Toyhacks is a company that provides upgrade decals for modern transformer figures along with reproduction decals for the vintage ones. While visiting Toyhacks, make sure and check out the Toyhacks Armory to see their line of Transformers weaponry in multiple collars. And toy stages for awesome display backdrops. Each purchase from Toyhacks earns you Robocents that you can use for future purchases. You can check your balance anytime in your cart. Toyhacks is a company run by collectors for collectors. So make sure and check out toyhacks.com and tell them Patriot Prime sent you. Now, on to the review. The featured button in this video is the brand new Transformers Vintage Beast Wars Reissue Scorponok. And I got to give a huge shout out to my friend Brad, the Texas toy hunter for finding this guy for me. I have always wanted an original Scorponok figure. He was one of my favorite characters in the show.  Scorpions are badass. So I am so happy to have this guy in my collection. Brad, thank you so much. Now, let's take a quick look at the packaging. We got Transformers Beast Wars and some fantastic art of Scorponok firing off his Cyberbee. Everybody raves and raves about G1 box art. But man, Beast Wars was fantastic as well. I would love to get an art book of Beast Wars box art like I do with the G1. And let's see, you got Scorponok here behind the plastic. This is so cool. I love this vintage look. This is actually going to be my first vintage Beast Wars figure review. So I am excited to check these out. Anyway, on the side of the box, you got the reptilian eye, the same artwork right there. Back of the box, you got a file car and all kinds of words and stuff. This side of the box, the same thing as the other side. And on the top, more of the artwork and the conversion. So now, without further ado, let's get this bug out of the box and check him out. And welcome to Patriot Prime Reviews. Now, once you get Scorponok all opened up and out of the packaging, you'll see he does come with a vintage style instruction booklet. It's been a long time since I've seen the instructions from an original Beast Wars figure. But I do recall they looked a lot like this. And as usual, these are very well illustrated and easy to follow. He also comes with his two mega missiles and both of those are exactly the same. And then, of course, you've got Scorponok himself. Now, one of the first things I noticed when I opened up Scorponok is that his collar is off from the original. The original Scorponok from all the pictures I've seen was black, where this Scorponok is a gunmetal gray, which I think looks really good. This Scorpion mode is badass looking. This by no means is a realistic looking Scorpion. This is more of a sci-fi Scorpion, which works. I love the molded detail on this guy. All the textures and spikes just look so good, especially down here on the claws. You can see all the bumps and indentations. And man, that just looks awesome. You know, especially for a toy made back in 1996. Now, the legs, well, let's go ahead and go into articulation first. Articulation with the arms, they can rotate there to shoulder, a complete 360. There is a elbow bend there and a wrist rotation. Now, this claw here, if I open it up, see this is the claw where the missiles will go. I'll show that off in robot mode. So with this claw, you have articulation mainly here with the bottom claw because when you open the top claw, this is going to fire the missiles. So really good articulation here. He can do a very wide grip to grab some maximals. This claw, on the other hand, the arm has all the same articulation, except when you get to the claw, because this claw holds one of his gimmicks, his Cyberbee, which will also go over more in robot mode. So you can't move this claw pincher at all. The mouth, surprisingly, has articulation. Now, this is due to transformation, but still it's pretty cool. You can move these mandibles up and down. So I dig that. The scorpion legs here on the back, they can move up and down once again for transformation.  But, and I guess, you know, the 90s, they had to do what they had to do. The tail, the tail can rotate here. It can go forward and it's got a really cool gimmick. If I can get it to work, you get this little trigger right here. You push forward. There we go. So he has this striking motion and that's slick. I like that. And I love the details on the scorpion tail. I like the serrated blade tip. That is awesome. Now, this is a very, very large scorpion. Let me bring in Kingdom Scorponok for a comparison. And the only thing I really like about Kingdom Scorponok is he is based on a realistic scorpion. So you can definitely see the difference there. So a really nice comparison from 1996 to 2021. So now let's go ahead and get Scorponok transformed into his beast mode. Fairly simple transformation. You're going to take the head and push down. Those are actually going to be the robot legs. Bring those all the way around here. And then you've got the robot tail, excuse me, the scorpion tail. You're going to bring the head out right there at the base of the tail.  So bring that around. And there's a peg right there that you're going to match up to that center hole right there. Bring that up. Make sure you get the legs out of the way. So you're going to bring that up. Make sure the neck pegs into the chest. Get that pressed in. You're going to rotate the tail around like so.  Make sure you get your thumb right there and grab it by the base. Make sure you don't break this guy. Now the tail's in place down here with the legs.  Scorponok's toes were actually the mouth of the scorpion. Now you're going to take the scorpion legs, fold those along his back, rotate the arms down. And there we have Scorponok in robot mode. And I am going to have to zoom out because this is a tall figure. In robot mode, Scorponok looks awesome and very imposing with the scorpion tail up over his back in those big massive claws for hands. Now the one thing I don't like is when you rotate his arms around, all these screw heads show. You've got six screw heads right there at his shoulders and one at the biceps. But there's just, there's no way you can flip that to make it look good. All the molded detail comes through in robot mode as well. I love the chest, which was the back of the Scorpion before. Looks really good. Now you will notice the head is a little off from what we're used to. And that's because Scorponok, being a wave one character from Beast Wars back in today, came with a mutant head. And the mutant head is very alien, very insectoid and actually looks really cool to reveal the head that we're used to from the cartoon show. You just split this in half and there we go. Of course, trying to get it to line up, his head sits down in this recess. It's kind of hard to get that just right. There we go. There we go. So now there is the Scorponok head we're used to with the gold visor and the helmet. But the mouth, I don't like the mouth on this guy. As you can see, he's yelling. He's got one of those yelling faces that I thought Hasbro just introduced with Dirge and who was the other one, Skywarp. And I'm not a big fan of that, but it is pretty well sculpted. You can see his teeth in there. So, you know, it is what it is. I'll probably, yeah, I'm going to have to leave him displayed like that because I do like how he looked from the cartoon show. But the mutant head, that's a pretty cool option and looks really good. Now articulation for the robot modes, arms are exactly the same as in Scorpion mode. Legs now, the hips are on a ball joint so they can rotate just like so. They can go forward. They can go back. They can go out. They can go in. There is a knee bend, no knee rotation and the toes can move up and down and that's due to transformation.  These ball joints have a difficult time holding up Scorponok because the top of this bot is heavy. You've got the gimmick right there for the tail, the heavy claws, but once you get him in position, he sticks pretty good, but be aware there is some looseness with the hips. Nothing some floor polish can't fix. Now let's show off Scorponok's gimmicks in robot mode. The tail gimmick is exactly the same. You grab the little lever here, push forward and he can strike. It's just a shame you have to really hold him just right to get that to work. But still, that's pretty cool. He's in a melee fight with somebody. Wham! Just spikes him right in the head. The missiles, we'll go ahead and show those off. Go in the left hand, make sure this top claw is down because when you push the top claw back all the way, that's what's going to fire the missiles. Let's see if these hold into place. I've seen some people say that their missiles don't and they fire out really easy. Mine look like they lock in place really good and they actually hide really well in the claw. If you can remember to use the bottom claw only. Now to fire the missile, let's go ahead and get this bottom claw out of the way.  One, two and they fire with some force. I love that. That's so awesome. I miss gimmicks with my transformers. The right hand is Scorponox Cyber Bee. You can probably see a little bit of the bee right there. How this fires is you have this little trigger right here. Just pull it back and the bee launches. When he launches, he opens up and there is your Cyber Bee. It looks like a yellow jacket or some kind of wasp. This actually looks really good. I love the face sculpt on this guy and underneath. He even has little legs and his stinger so he can come at somebody swooping down. Boom. Take him out. This is pretty slick. I like how that turns into a claw. Now I do wish the wings had a little bit more articulation to kind of fold those back because the wings are the only thing that looks off on this. But still that's a pretty cool gimmick. Now I did have an issue when I got Scorponox straight out of the packaging. When I took the rubber band off this Cyber Bee, he kept popping off. He would not stay connected. I'm going to see if I can zoom in on this. This here was the problem. See the trigger? The tip that has that little catch, it was molded round. It barely fit into this slot right here. This is where the trigger goes. This little square area right there. That's where the trigger catches. And straight out of the package where this was so rounded, it wouldn't. So what I had to do was very carefully. I got my Xacto knife. I was able to take the claw apart. There's two screws right there. You can pop that little lever out and I whittled a catch right there that locks into that bee so much better. So now I don't worry about him popping off whatsoever. Once again, some other reviewers I've talked to say when they opened up Scorponox out of the packaging, let me show you how to fold this bee back up to claw mode, is you take the little leg area in the head, bring that up, bring the claws up around, and bring the stinger forward. So there's the top of the claw. So how that works, you've got this round section here. It goes in the center with the spring and then the catch goes in the little rectangle hole. Like I said, mine works perfect now. And it's not a hair trigger anymore. A lot of reviewers say they barely look at their Scorponock and the Cyberbee falls out. But even after I had to do some minor corrective surgery on the guy, I still think he's a great figure. And now for some quick size comparisons, here is the Transformers Beast Wars Vintage Reissue Scorponock with the original 1996 Beast Wars Megatron, Kingdom Scorponock, and Transform Element Stinger Warrior. The Transformers Beast Wars Vintage Reissue Mega-Class Scorponock was a great trip down memory lane for me. Even though I never had the original Scorponock figure, it was so cool once again holding that vintage Beast Wars style box, the vintage instructions, the gimmicks really took me back to 1996. I love the gimmicks on this guy, even though I had to do a little bit of surgery to get one to work correctly. It is just so cool having a figure that launches missiles, spring-loaded gimmicks, the extra added features, stuff we just don't get today that I know with modern technology, they could knock it out of the park. So there you go guys, the Transformers Beast Wars Vintage Reissue Scorponock. So does the Transformers Beast Wars Vintage Reissue Scorponock belong in your collection? Well, if you're a Beast Wars fan or never had the original, absolutely, I love this toy. He looks badass in robot mode, he looks badass in scorpion mode, love the gimmicks with the striking tail, the missiles that actually shoot all the way across my office, and the Cyber Bee. Though I was a little myth that I had to perform surgery right out of the box to get the Cyber Bee to work. Now I posted about that on Facebook last night and a few people told me that the original Beast Wars Scorponock that I really have never touched, its Cyber Bee wouldn't stay in as well. So maybe the little rounded catch isn't as much the fact that this is an old mold, maybe that's how it was originally molded.  So I'm going to say that right now, if you screw your figure up, not my fault, just be careful. And I want to give another huge shout out to my buddy Brad for picking this guy up for me. Thank you so much because who knows when I would have seen this guy in my area. So yeah, vintage Beast Wars Scorponock, awesome figure. Now guys, if you enjoyed the video, don't forget to like, don't forget to subscribe and don't forget to click that bell icon to get notified when I upload new reviews. Also if you're in any position to help out the channel, I do offer channel memberships here on YouTube and I want to give a huge shout out to all my current channel members because it's support like yours that helps keep this channel growing. Once again guys, this is Patriot Prime, signing out.


The wire is a visceral depiction of a society failing and it zooms into the most vulnerable and the hand that they've been dealt. The story of bubbles as one of the series' focal points is so necessary because we often avert our eyes to the homeless. We often avert our eyes to those at the bottom because it's easy to do so. It's easy for us to have clear cut heroes and villains in stories, but it's hard to sympathize with the canard or the stringer, even Marlowe. The wire forces its audience to grapple with these moral qualms.  They all stem from one place, capitalism and the greed of man. In this vein, this is a series that deconstructs the American dream. Crater David Simon believes that it's two myths that their series breaks down. The first myth that America preaches is anyone who innovates in some way, anyone who improves on an already existing product will be rich, as America is the land of opportunity. And the second is that even if you cannot innovate, if you work hard and are committed to being a decent, family oriented person, there is a place for you. It's a story, as Simon writes, about the decline of American society and the prospect of two Americas that are bonded under one general reality. It's capitalism and how the failures and the false promises of capitalism, or the gain, exist in these two realities, this division between the permanent, often black, underclass, and the rest of the world. In the fifth season, Dookie asks Cutty, how do I get from here to the rest of the world? This idea could be explored through D'Angelo Barksdale. D's story opens up with his release from prison. The way D'Angelo is spoken of and how he acts upon his introduction, there is a sense of recklessness to him, childishness even. He talks about business in the car when he's not supposed to. He gets bailed out by his uncle when he killed a man. He seems like just another heartless criminal, a monster even. But as we learn more about him, like when he sheds tears for Gant and his family, or his kindness to Wallace, there is a level of vulnerability that D has walled up in order to be a player in the game. However, when D' gets further caught up in the schemes of the game and gets arrested, he's forced to take a 20 year prison sentence for a mistake that Avon made. D' had been nothing but a loyal soldier, a loyal servant to the family, and this is his reward. Though before he can accept the sentence, the police offer him a way out. The entire season, D' has yearned for a chance to start over, to start fresh. He wants to breathe, he says. D' claims that he was freer in jail than he was outside of it. We learn that D'Angelo is the grandson of Butch Stamford, a big time Baltimore drug lord. His uncle, of course, is the Avon Barksdale. His own mother introduced him to the organization from such a young age. He was born into all of this, sentenced to it from birth. D'Angelo never had a chance or a choice, and now he wants what Wallace wanted, a fresh start, and a chance to breathe. Though before anything could happen, he is persuaded by his mother to stay loyal to the family, and he accepts the 20 year sentence. In prison, D' begins his journey towards his new path, accepting his past sins and actually being able to breathe, only to get murdered, a hit ordered by his own uncle's right hand. Time and again, D'Angelo was led to believe that his loyalty, his hard work, his commitment to his family would bring him somewhere. There's that myth, right? But there is no redemption for D'Angelo. From birth, he never had a real chance. These myths trick us into believing that there aren't any forces greater than an individual. This idea of the permanent underclass chokes those at the bottom. It strangles their dreams and their desires. Eric Olin Wright writes that underclass as a segment of society marginalized by the capitalist economic system, which excludes people economically, leaves people structurally disadvantaged due to their limited access to stable employment and resources. William Julius Wilson takes a different approach to this idea, emphasizing the importance of social and spatial factors in the emergence of the underclass. Where concentrated poverty in urban areas, coupled with a decline in job opportunities in inner cities, led to the social isolation and deprivation experienced by people living in this class, the underclass. Together, these forces leave many American and urban centers trapped in the cycle of poverty. Not by their own doing or moral failings, but due to the many systemic pressures that continue to allow these people to suffer. From Marx's labor theory of value, poverty exists only because of the quote, exploitation and the impoverishment of larger sections of labor. The very concept of class must be seen as a dynamic and antagonistic relation of production between capital and labor, not a static category of income, education, occupation and lifestyle. What has happened to the black people of America is more than just a division, it is a calculated attack. It's not happenstance that unemployment in black youth has plummeted, in fact it's that semi-skilled and unskilled jobs relocated to the suburbs out of the inner city. The few jobs that are given do not pay enough to survive, so essentially it becomes unpaid labor. It's not happenstance that drug and crime rates grew, no, it's that those who live in poverty must have the money to buy food, clothes, child care and health care to become moral upstanding citizens. They must be given the opportunity. One of the reasons the wire works so well is because it accurately depicts morality in this series as something that can easily be warped through desperation. Through the quote material reality, Frank Zabotka is another of these tragic characters. Characters who have this desperation that poverty brings. Frank only joins the drug trade to try to save the port and uses that money to help out those in need in their union who are slowly losing their jobs to the city's development. In this second season opens the world up to the larger matters at play here. The Greeks are smuggling these drugs through the ports, the very drugs that the streets are killing each other over, and yet they are never pursued, not by the police or the FBI. Frank feels as though he has no choice but to quote accept the dominant systemic logic, using the proceeds of the smuggling operations to bribe politicians to save their ports. And all of this comes crashing down, Zabotka fails and ends up sacrificing himself for his nephew, all because he wanted to help.  That was a lie. Frank was forced to look to outside sources to save his people, and he failed because of it. In the grand scheme of things, people are numbers. They are tools to produce and to create. Once their worth can be replaced, once they are no longer needed, they will be shelved and discarded, like garbage. Just like the children of Baltimore, just like the port workers, just like the homeless. These are all people to be exploited. Only those who understand that the game is the game will survive. It's a game of compromise, right? You sacrifice your own values and morals to climb the ranks, or you remain knee-deep in the quicksand that is capitalism. You'll fall slowly and slowly until there's nothing left but the greedy upper class feeding on the carcasses of the poor. Stringer Bell is another victim to American myths. The first myth in his case, the myth of creation and innovation. Stringer desires to ultimately leave the drug game, leave the streets, and invest in properties and legitimate businesses. Have his money work for him, he says. String goes to college, takes economics classes, and he uses that to try to improve and further understand the business. And he also uses it to make plans for the future. In the words of Flamend, he tries to quote, rationalize the drug game by applying orderly rules of governance and market logic. I believe red, you believe green. That would ultimately be his undoing. His belief and trust in the system, in an American myth that capitalism, that innovation, will make him rich, has him trust people like Clay Davis. People who steal his money. Stringer is one of the few who's had a glimpse of the rest of the world. And he is trying to reach it, but he doesn't recognize the larger forces at play. The more and more these characters place their faith in capitalism as an honest, clear cut path to get where they desire, the quicker they end up losing everything they once had. They've placed their faith in the American myth of pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps in the drug world and in the world of capitalistic institutions, two worlds that don't follow any rules to begin with. Stringer believes the game in the underclass is the same as the game within the rich. Capitalism has no such rules, and Stringer found that out personally. The game once had rules, a level of respect and community. Rules that Omar and even Avon followed. East and West Siders being able to put their differences on hold for community events like basketball tournaments or barbecues. They had the Sunday packed. To quote Bunk. As rough as that neighborhood could be, we had us a community. But this sense of community is lost as the violence in these neighborhoods worsen. Marlowe is a byproduct of the game. These rules of the game are slowly disregarded because people have become increasingly more desperate. And kids of the street now grow up seeing the game as the only way to live and survive. They see the bark stales, the prop joes of the world and glorify them. No one sees Avon and Stringer as victims of the game. Marlowe sees the iconicity, the weight these legends carry, the weight their names carry. Everybody knows Omar or Avon. He wants Marlowe to be added to that list. He wants to wear the crown. This life is all he knows and he doesn't see anything past it.  Marlowe is but a creation of capitalism. His laser focused mission on the money, even if it leaves a trail of fire behind him, is a consequence of the world he was raised in. It's what makes him a, quote, natural businessman. His brutality and lust for the crown is a consequence of society's neglect. Him, Chris, Snoop, they are a new generation of men, of people without a code. There is no code for the corrupt. There is no code in capitalism. That is why they win. Marlowe understands that. As much as we can point to the newer generation lacking a sense of decorum, there isn't any honor in the way any of these institutions operate. The legal system, the police system, in many ways, they are worse than the criminals they pursue. Ethridge writes that in this series, the police and the drug organizations are similar in the way that they nurture and then consume and destroy individuals. McNulty is often juxtaposed with D'Angelo throughout the first season. I find McNulty to be a fascinating character in this series. He has an incredibly long list of flaws, but what I am most interested in is the anger that he often talks about when he works with the homicide unit. It's an anger that he can barely understand or explain, and to me, I've always seen it as this growing frustration towards the institutions. By the time the fourth season rolls around and McNulty is working as a beat cop, he's instantly happier because he rarely has to interact with the judges, the feds, or any external system. There's a sense of comfortability in being a complicit cog in the machine. And at that level, he's able to turn a blind eye to it all. His home life improves tremendously. He stops drinking. He settles down with Beatty. But in homicide, he is not only hands on with all the different corrupt services, but he also has to face down the consequences of these greedy organizations. He looks eye to eye with kids like Wallace, with Bodie, people like Omar.  McNulty has been nurtured by this work and then destroyed by it. He, Lester, Bunk, Daniels, Bunny, Colvin are juxtaposed with Rawls, Valcek, and Burrell, two sides of the same coin. They are all rough around the edges and each have their own motives. The former, though, have a moral anchor that grounds them. A moral obligation to the people and to the communities they live in. And even if it forces them to make harder decisions, if it forces them to do extra work, they are dedicated to being decent police. They are the ones trying to make actual change happen. They are mortals trying to take down gods. Whereas the latter have proven that they have the capability to be decent police, but instead they are self-interested. Climbing the ranks are their only goals. The entire third and fourth season is the Baltimore police and their attempt to quote Juke the Stats. With Rawls at the head of this operation, the reasoning for being such selfish individuals is rather simple. These lawyers, policemen, politicians, even the drug kingpins, all of these institutions prey on violence and poverty and actively encourage it because it brings them money. The institutions are the real winners. For the rich to exist, they must exploit the unpaid labor of others. Of the poor, that's the game in a nutshell. Everybody's got their hand in someone else's pocket, Frank Zabarka says. Burrell himself says that this is Baltimore. The gods will not save you. You have to find a way to fight them. This is the very same quote that Omar has. But the game is out there and it's either play or get played. That is why Burrell, Rawls, Valchik, Royce, do what they do. The game becomes especially cruel once characters become aware of its presence, when they become aware of their own powerlessness in it. When they become aware of who they are and their complicity in all of its evils, their potential questions about their own morality evaporates when compared to what these institutions have done. The power of the system is far too grand, far too embedded into society for any individual to have a real impact on it. So individuals become twisted and warped to reap as much as possible materialistically, even if it costs them their own morals and values. That's the only way to win in this game. Think about the winners at the end of this series, Herc, Clay Davis, Rawls, Levy, Vandes and the Greek, Karketti. They've all won, but look at the type of people they are. One scene that will always stick with me is the cross examination between Levy and Omar. Omar is called a parasite of society, leaching off the drug game. To it, Omar replies, I've got my shotgun, you've got your briefcase. It's on the game though, right? Everyone loves Omar. He is lauded among fans as a mythical hero. I love Omar, my favorite character by far. His moral complexity is one of my favorite aspects of his character. His morality is created through desperation, but he also has a code. The wire will always ground those who fly too close to the sun. It will always remind its audience of the true gods. He, much like Burrell and others, understands that in order to survive, and in his case, carry some sort of code with him, he has to become a parasite, profiting off the drug game that has killed so many others. He is both victim and offender, and his death is a consequence of his own doing. Of his own creation. Omar's livelihood, his schemes, his plans. Had Tasha killed. He had Brandon killed, and ultimately created Canar. Things that were never his intention of course, but his morality is not without question in this series, much like every single character. But ultimately for Omar, like so many others, capitalism has created his environment and it has fostered his desperation. He is lauded because of his humanity, despite his environment. His unremarkable death just shows us that even the mighty Omar is not bigger than any institution. And speaking of institutions, there's one more demographic, one more institution, that is highlighted in the fourth season that ended up being my favorite season of the wire, the children and the schools. In the fourth episode of The Wire, after Wallace tips Stringer about Omar's boyfriend, we see Wallace's life in a squad or apartment. The 14 year old is the oldest in their home. The way they live is jarring. Five kids to a room.  Wallace doesn't even go to school anymore. Once he steps outside, he sees the tortured body of the boy he ordered to kill. This is what these kids are born into, the reality of their everyday lives. A few episodes later, Wallace is gunned down inside the very apartment we watch him wake up in. On a different show, Wallace would have gone down to his grandmothers, he would have transferred schools, and he would have gotten that chance to breathe, to live, to be brilliant as he saw him. But this is The Wire, in this America, making it to the rest of the world is rare. Your fate is essentially sealed from the day you're born. By the end of this series, the only corner kid who still stands from the beginning of the series was Pute. Capitalism has made it so that the road to the quote, rest of the world, the road to the other America is a road that feels like it doesn't even exist on their side. These people are abandoned at every level, and The Wire's fourth season, with Dukie, Michael, Randy, and Naaman, really hammers home this feeling of determinism that starts from their birth. Dukie is a brilliant kid, and with confidence instilled into him by prez, he even gets bumped to the ninth grade. At home, though, all of his family are either drug addicts or alcoholics, who use everything that belongs to him, and they even sell his clothes. By the twelfth episode, his family gets evicted, forcing him to stay with Michael. And later in the series, he becomes homeless when he can't stay with Michael anymore. Michael Lee is forced to take care of his younger brother, while his mother, an addict, uses all the money they have for groceries on drugs. Michael is a very intelligent kid, but this is his reality. When his sex-offending stepfather shows up, he turns to the street for help, which ends up being his indoctrination into Marlowe's gang. Michael becomes a stone-cold killer. Randy is the orphan, living with a strict foster mother. His naivete gets him to expose to the police information about Lex's murder, information that he was given involuntarily. As revenge, his house gets burned down and he is later put into a group home, because of the failings of that system. Naiman's mother pressures him into becoming the man that Webe was. When he shows that he isn't built for the game, he begins to cry over it. Delanda challenges his masculinity constantly. She sees him as the man of the house now, and for him to prove to her, and to his father, and to himself, that he is indeed a man. He has to go and sell drugs, to be a corner kid. He has to provide for his family at 14 years old. On top of all that, these kids have to go to school. These classrooms are overpopulated, the schools are underfunded, the teachers are underpaid, and they are forced into moral conundrums created by the system. Either they sacrifice their jobs, and genuinely socialize, and teach these kids real, applicable lessons, or they follow the inapplicable curriculum, bore these kids to death, and ensure they reach the passable score of 30%, so they keep their livelihood, 30%, so the state can say these schools are improving. Leave no child behind, right? Moreover, this season introduces a social work program that Bunny Colvin's a part of, where the kids who are potential violent offenders are segregated from the rest of their peers to socialize them to the point of being in a classroom once again. The fact that these kids need to even be taught these things means that at home, they are not getting the attention or the love required. Their needs from the get-go are not being met. A lot of these kids are physically, sexually, and mentally abused, or they have to deal with addiction plaguing their home. They then disrupt the classroom because of their troubled home lives, and the teachers then neglect these kids because they can't spend entire days reprimanding a few students. As a result, many of these children gain a harsh view of themselves. They know their teachers have no faith in them, so they lose faith in themselves, and their value in the world. In this show, many of these kids feel as though they'll be dead in a few years or at most become corner kids or soldiers for local gangs. And the saddest part about it all is that they are not wrong. Randy, Michael, and Dukie all forfeit their youth in order to adapt to their newfound realities. The rest of the world is absolutely foreign to them. How sad is that? And Bunny Colvin, or Lieutenant Carver, or Prez can't save all these children. Hell, Carvin Prez can't even save one. All of these kids were talented or adept at something. Dukie and computers, Michael and his great street smarts, Randy the natural businessman, Naaman the talker, only one made it out. Naaman is simply one of the lucky ones. The permanent underclass is so restrictive that the only way to truly escape that sector is either by being supremely talented at something that can take you out, sports being the most common, or by being given a lifeline. Naaman had that in Bunny Colvin. Every child deserves this opportunity. Cuddy's response to Dukie is that he has no idea how to get to the rest of the world. We go through five seasons of Baltimore drugs, Avon, Stringer, Marlowe, Prop Joe, all off the streets, yet the drugs continue to flow as if nothing happened. Homicides will be back up, Michael is the new Omar, Dukie is the new Bubbles. It's cyclical at this point. There is no growth, no improvement because that is the game. Simon likens this series to a Greek tragedy in which the gods are the institutions, gods who are indifferent to those who are simply caught in the crossfire. The wire is not a drama about individuals rising above institutions to triumph and achieve redemption and catharsis. It is a drama where those institutions thwart the ambitions and aspirations of those they perpetually exist to serve. It is a drama where individuals with hubris enough to challenge this dynamic are invariably mocked, marginalized, or crushed by forces indifferent to their efforts or to their fates. It is a drama where truth and justice are often defeated as deceit and injustice are rewarded. McNulty, Lester, Bunny Colvin, Frank Sabatka, Karketti, even Stringer and Prop Joe, they all have the hubris, the belief that maybe they could break through, maybe they could change or innovate the system, maybe they could help, whether it was by solving the big case, bolstering the power of the working class, or even having the right intentions and goals as mayor. None of them were even able to dent the system. Some of them got caught up into the myths and lies of America. Lester once said, a case where you show who gets paid behind all the tragedy and fraud, where you show how the money routes itself, how we are all vested, all of us complicit. I could die happy. But in this series, like in life, the institution will always overpower the individual. Lester, McNulty, Daniels, Colvin, again, they were mortals trying to take down God. They are never able to ride off into the sunset, exposing the greedy underbelly of their city. They instead ride off into the sunset without their jobs. Omar will never get his revenge or his peaceful ending, his own livelihood gets in the way of that. He ends up as a misidentified body in the coroner's office. Bodhi's loyalty as a soldier is all for naught in the end. In the second last episode of this series, Dukie asks Michael if he remembers throwing piss balloons at the terrorist boys. For us, the audience, this happened just a season ago, maybe a year or two years have passed in the series, but his innocence is lost. One could question, given the circumstances he was born into, did he ever really have it? Did any of these kids ever really have a chance? That's the game. At least in the end, the one consolation we do have is that Bubbles made it out the basement.


My life's kind of boring, but I'll film it anyway. No one else for this. Oh my God, please never let me do that again. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to another vlog, vlogmas number four, I think. I'm coming at you fresh in the AM. All I've done is feed Layla and take her outside. I fell asleep with partially wet hair last night, but my dad actually came in yesterday, so it's been really fun to have him here. He hasn't been in LA, like actual LA, in like probably 20 years or so. Yesterday, like during the day, like before he landed was really chaotic and crazy because we brought Layla and Mu both to the vet. They haven't been to the vet yet since we moved back here, and they're going back to the old vet that they used to go to, so it was kind of just like getting them back in the system, and then Layla also has like an eye infection that's popped up over the last couple of days, so she's on like antibiotic drops for that now and stuff, but yeah, it was just like, they were there for like three plus hours. It was like really chaotic, so we're back in the swing of things, we're ready to go again, and actually I know this is already like the fourth Vlogmas, but we've been doing advent calendars, and mine finally just arrived yesterday, so I thought we would, you know, open some advent calendars today. I know that's like a fun thing that people like to do for Vlogmas, so Layla has one, Mu has one, Drew has one, and I have one, so let's open them up. Yay, it's time. It's time, here's the lot, so this is obviously Mu's, this is obviously Layla's, this is mine, I just chose a random one. I actually had another one, but it got like back ordered or canceled or something, and then this is Drew's, so should we start with them first? Yeah, let me get them all. Okay, hey, Wei was, do you want to do advent? There she is, okay, what'd you get? These are both from Trader Joe's, both Layla's and Mu's by the way.  There is nothing, this dog gets more excited about than food. Do you want to sit? Go ahead and sit, go. Oh, hey, it's kind of hard for me to stay at mom. There you go, enjoy Merry Christmas. These are Mu's. Okay. And he ran away. Mu's feeling a little antisocial this morning, which is fine, we've all been there. My advent calendar that I chose this year is just like a 12 day one, and it was from Macy's, and it just had like a bunch of random beauty stuff, so I already opened day one, and it was a, oh, we got him, hold on. Enjoy, Mu. These are really big for him. Merry Christmas, yeah. Layla usually gets the other one. I broke it in half, buddy. Get the dough. Oh, where's my big kitty? Oh, I'm a cat, I like cat tweets. So I already opened day one, and it was a benefit to professional primer thing, so I'm gonna open day two. Oh, I think it's hair stuff. Oh, unite, I've heard of this. Oh, the sec, I've heard of this too. Seven seconds detangler, it's like a leave-in conditioner. Cute. And then Drew's advent calendar, I got him actually is like a 30 day calendar, and it's from this retailer called Segoi Mart, and they make a lot of like Japanese stuff, right?  Yeah, so this advent calendar has like candy, games, stuffies, anime stuff, all sorts of things, so. So we're on set. Yeah, we've kind of been opening a lot because we're not going home, like we're not gonna be here for Christmas, and then also it's 30 days, so. All right, here we go. What'd you get today? This is, oh, Tokyo Revengers. I don't watch anime, but it's okay. This one actually has like really big gifts. Is this a bath bomb? It's a bath bomb. Oh, okay, that's fine, does it smell good? It's really like grape. Are you sure it's not candy? No, it's just a bath bomb. A grape bath bomb, there we go. When you get like a stand, like a rule. Oh, cute. Nice, do you want to open another one? I need nine. One more, one more. Seven, a plushie. Which one? It's a rabbit. Cute, you love rabbits.  It's like a rabbit girl. Kind of looks like, back here it looks like it's like a sushi or something. She's cute. Advent. Nice. All right, we've gotten ourselves ready, but like in a casual way. We're basically like going down to the beach. We're going to have some brunch, hang out a little bit. So I've got this airy tank top on, my airy leggings, and then this thrifted flannel, my fake Birkenstocks. I thought these were the ones I thrifted, but they're actually not. I bought these on Kohl's. What's your OOTD? I got Uniqlo, Uniqlo. Uh-huh. Lulu, Ro, Lula Ro. Lululemon. I'm just kidding. Lululemon. And then my new hocus. Okay, girlies, rise up. Let's go to breakfast. Oh, I have glasses on so I can drive and then sunglasses on my head for the fashion later. Look who it is. The man himself. It's JD, everyone. We're in Venice. We're going to get some brunch. And I don't know if we're allowed to park here, so we're going to find out. Cute purse. It's a Mars. Oh, nice. Grab my dad's phone and look what his log screen is. A picture of us from last night. So cute. So we just got into grade white and ordered some banana bread to start. I also ordered a latte.  My dad got a filtered coffee. I don't remember what Drew got. And I think I might do like a breakfast burrito or some avocado toast that sounds really good. So we'll see, but it's so cute in here. If you're ever in Venice, I would definitely recommend coming. Really good. I love the sea cap. Look at this breakfast sandwich. I already ate half of it, but it is phenomenal. Just finished up brunch. It was absolutely lovely. Definitely recommend the breakfast sandwich if you go there. They're setting up for like a Christmas thing right now. And now we're going to walk down to the beach. What a lovely morning. Have you liked Venice beef so far? I love it. It's still just kind of the service. They have been here in like 30 years. 40. 40 years. My friend Jim Plattis lived here in the early 80s. And he said his rent was $4.50 a month for his house, right? Just a couple blocks up the beach. Unbelievable. That'd be four grand now. It is many hours later. We have come home, napped, regrouped, and now we're back out for this evening. We have so many fun plans tonight. Well, we're going to be seeing so many cute things tonight, but first we're going to get gas, pick up my dad, get something to eat, and then we're going to head to Calabasas, which is like really an area of LA I've never been to before. It's like where all the Kardashians live and stuff, but they do a really cool Christmas light show every year. I think you just like walk through and so I'm just in the mood to do something like really wholesome and festive tonight. I want to get like a hot cocoa and walk around and see some lights. And I thought that would be a fun thing to do when my dad was here. So we're going to pick him up, probably go to like the grove or something because it's close to his hotel and then go do our festive activity of the day and I can't wait. And I'm just so happy having my dad here in LA. It's been so lovely and like I don't want him to leave tomorrow. I'm sad. Here is my very casual outfit of the night. I have this long sleeve gray shirt on from ASOS. I have these jeans from Abercrombie, I think and my converse because I wear them every single day. And then I'm also bringing this corduroy jacket and this like kind of jade green color. Actually thrifted this when I was in England. So I brought it all the way back from England with me and I'm going to wear it for the first time. And I can't wait. Let's go. Made it to the grove. My favorite tree. God, I love her. I love the grove at Christmas time. I come alive. Gotta take pictures and video of the Apple store. Of course. This is definitely a very boomer moment. And we love him for it. Got a vlog at the Apple store. Boomer moment, I like that. Everything I do is boomer. Hey, all of Gen Z makes fun of me for being a millennial now. So it's fine. I kind of chose Gen Z. Yeah, exactly. It's fine. It's why I don't own a house. All right, we made a quick stop to get some dinner at Elecran Hero. We've had this place a couple of times. My dad's never had it, so. Oh, it's so cute in here. I love the decor. So we got some guacamole on the way. I'm potentially gonna get some feria tacos to see. And then we're gonna go see some Christmas lights and I can't wait. And the people who we just were chatting to, random strangers, said that they went to the place that we're going to tonight when it was Halloween and it was really cool. So it should be really cool during Christmas. So we're excited. Seems like it's super late, but it's really actually just before 7 p.m. And we're in Calabasas at the King Gillette Ranch. It's called Holiday Road. I can't remember if I said what it was called earlier. We're about to walk up.  I need to find a hot chocolate ASAP, but I do have my cute coat on. You can't see that. You can't see it at all.  Just walked in. There's so many cute little areas. There's like Santa. You can sit on Santa's lap over there. There's little gift shops. There's even like little like light up things you can buy. So cute. He loves the stage. We have located the hot chocolate truck. It is called Dreamy Creations. And I am excited. I've been thinking about this all day long. Hello. Can I please do three hot chocolates? Thank you so much. Thanks. Have a good night. Cheers. Cheers. How's the hot chocolate? Good. There's like a little area where there's a Christmas village. Are you joking? Look at this. This is the cutest thing I've ever seen. He even goes with the music. So cute. I am feeling so festive. It's not even funny. I'm gonna do a taste test for the hot chocolate. Oh, sorry dad. Haven't had it yet. Mm. Tastes like swiss mess. Yeah, it's chocolate water. Yeah. Chocolatey. It's delicious. I can taste a little marshmallow in there. It's nice. Oh my God. Three little corner is my new favorite. This is my new favorite. It's snowing. There's a candy cane lane. Stop. Look how pretty this is. Wow. It's got both of my favorite guys. I am so happy. Does anyone else just lose their parents, specifically their dad, and he just like walks away and starts talking to people? The ding fries are done. Speak of the devil, it's Drew's favorite song. Sing your favorite song. He hates this song so much. Get it dad. Get it dad. He's feeling his oats. Oh my God, you guys. It's snowing. I think it's foam. It's foam and I'm happy. I don't get to soap in your eye. Oh, it's on my lens. I didn't really think this through and I'm covered in soap now. I stayed in there for a little too long. Literally. Look. Oh yeah. So what were your thoughts? We did it. Was it fun? It was really fun. It was kind of far away. It was fun to drive by all. Yeah but did you enjoy it?  I loved it. He did say it was a longer walk than he thought. Well yeah, it's a bargain really when you get to see it.  All the different sites for kids. All the attractions and distractions. Yeah, lots of ages. The little kids are eating it up. Yeah, it's accessible too. Like you can push strollers, wheelchairs, whatever. So it's cute. I would recommend it. Yeah, you can go at your own pace. You can stop. There's drinks, there's food. Yeah, hot chocolate with marshmallows. Yeah, tons of food trucks. We loved it. So festive. All right and we're back home. It's like 9.30 p.m. Dropped my dad off at his hotel and we are heading to bed. It's been such a fun festive day. It's been a long day. We've been going for a good 13 hours at this point but so much fun. I'm just like, I'm so happy to have my dad here. I won't be vlogging tomorrow and his flight leaves tomorrow. So I'm gonna enjoy my last day here with him and I hope you enjoyed seeing him. I don't show a lot of my family but it's just been really fun to show you like little bits of my mom, little bits of my dad and it made it feel like extra festive for this time of year. So hope you enjoyed it. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for watching and we will see you very soon for Vlogmas number five. Bye.


some people even have specific stems for specific emotions. For example, I flap my hands whenever I'm happy or excited. I twirl the right side of my hair whenever I'm anxious about something. If I'm on the edge of a panic attack, I will either bounce my right leg, pace back and forth, or repeat certain phrases to myself until I calm down. A lot of times, I won't even notice that I'm doing these things until they're pointed out to me. The reason why I stopped is because of the social aspects of school, you know, like people looking at you, drawing attention to yourself.