What happened last week? Where did things go wrong when you were able to maybe take it in and watch it with the defense? Well, I think when it comes down to it, it's kind of a broken record. But in order to be great on third down, you've got to be good on first and second. Unfortunately, we had some negative plays, had some penalties as well, which caused us to be in third and long situations, and those are tough to convert. Arthur was talking a little bit on Monday about the fine line between extending a play and pressing to force a play to happen. What's kind of an example of that that you've seen maybe over the course of the last few games? Well, I think specifically, there was a couple of plays, whether it was the interception in the last game of Thursday night, also a couple of third downs were taking a sack. We talk about all the time, in order for this offense to continue to hum and to be in rhythm, I've got to be efficient. And sometimes being efficient means throwing the ball away. It means scrambling, getting in a few yards, getting down. And I can do a better job of that. And I can help this offense kind of get in a rhythm, get going, and continue to move the chains. To follow up on Tori's question, though, you are so creative and have the ability to extend plays, but you've talked about the decision making on some of those. How do you separate those two things? Can you get one without the other, I guess? Yeah, absolutely. And I think when it comes down to it, if my initial reaction is to scramble and throw it, I think more times than not, those have been good decisions. I think when I start to extend it and I start getting pushed out to the sideline, sometimes those plays become negative and bad decisions. So just being smart, once the play is done and over, really just either dirt in it or trying to get a few yards, if I can. So how do you reinforce that with yourself? Is it a film study or through practice, or is it just having that mentality out there on the field? How do you do that? Well, I'm a practice guy. I'm going to work at it. Those are things that I've always kind of prodded myself on is just continuing to work. So those are things that I'll do out on the practice field. And as time progresses, those things will carry out on the field. When there's negativity outside this building around you, how do you approach that? How do you handle that? How do you avoid that? Well, I mean, yeah, I think at the end of the day, I just control what I can control. I try to be the best version of myself here for these guys and try to win games. What other people think or those opinions, I have no control over. I have no say in that. So the more that I can just focus on doing my job and being the best I can be for these guys, everything else will take care of itself. I mean, when it's a lot of attention on social media that starts as we move, do you then, I mean, do you have to talk to your family in some ways? Do you have those conversations? Because they're probably seeing the brunt of it on social media that you're not necessarily seeing. Right, yeah. I think that's kind of the nature of the beast, right? Especially at the position. Unfortunately, family members, friends, they do see those things. But at the same time, it is what it is. And the people that support me, that love me, that I've always been by my side, they take it for a grain of salt and move on. And that's what you have to do. People are entitled to their opinions. People can say what they want and believe what they want.  I just gotta go out there and play better. Would you say, though, at this point in your career, maybe that you were more equipped to maybe dealing with that negative noise versus maybe your rookie season or things like that? Oh, no doubt, no doubt, no doubt. You know, obviously the situation I had in Tennessee, you know, I didn't, as much as I am as a people pleaser, you know, that did hurt when I was going through the situation that I did in Tennessee. At the same time, you know, I understand it is the nature of the business and it's a merit-based business and you gotta perform and going through the situation that I did in Tennessee, I think has ultimately prepared me for things like this. And understanding that, you know, at the end of the day, I just gotta do what I can to be the best version of myself for these guys. Was there something that you did to kind of focus on you, whether I don't know, talk to a therapist or a sports psychologist because the outside noise and being a people pleaser itself, you know, I know, too, it can be tough. So what did you do to come? I went down that path for sure. Some people at work, some it doesn't.  But for the most part, at the end of the day, people that love me, that support me, that's all that I care. That's all that I really matter or think about. And when it comes on to it, I love the game. I love being out here with these guys and I'll do whatever I can to help them win. Courtney, you talked about being the fastest. You were a little too robotic. Did you feel like Sunday, you maybe got into your past? I don't know, that's hard to say. You know, obviously I really pride myself on being creative, creating plays. You know, I think conversations that Art and I have had, I've always felt like when there's a lull on offense and we're not playing very well or we're not converting and you know, there's not many points, I've always been the guy that like, I'm gonna go make a play. And I think sometimes that gets me in trouble. So just learning from those experiences, understanding that at the same time, I can just allow the game to come to me, just take what they give me, be efficient and this office can roll. Arthur kind of encouraged you to be that guy, to go make a play, especially when offense is in the lull. He encouraged me to be efficient. You know, I think it's just being smart, situationally, you know, taking care of the football, making plays when they're there and when they're not, you know, just getting this out of bad stuff. What do you see in the Bears' defense since they changed a couple of people up over there?  A former team, Nick Morrow is playing linebacker there. He's been playing great, I think, from the tape that I've watched. You know, obviously Eddie Jackson's been performing well. He's been a guy that's been doing that for a long time. Cornerback Janon Johnson has also played well. So weekend and week out, you got to play your best football and this is no different. Can you go have room to lean more on the Russian attack here? As it gets cold, you're not outside or anything. It helps that we play in a dome. You're right. Yeah, well, I have to see.  And as it gets later on in the year, it is helpful. But at the same time, we still got to make plays in the past game. Going back to, like, do you have to actually talk to your family or your friends because they are running your account to you to just say, don't tell me about this stuff? I just want to try to understand how you approach it. Yeah, I mean, honestly, like I said, because I've experienced it before, I don't, I take a lot of that stuff as noise and I don't even really think about it. So conversations I have with my family is more just like, hey, it is what it is. And, you know, we'll move forward. Did you have to kind of train them in some ways for that? I mean, yeah, a little bit. It's hard, right?  And at the same time, you know, people are going to have their opinions and it is what it is. And I think we've grown to learn that at the same time, you know, you're always going to have people that support you. You're always going to have people that are going to be negative. You can't really control those things and move on and do what you can to be the best version of yourself. Anything else? Yeah, the quarterback, Sam Bourne, how's he playing to take it over for, I guess, where he's going? Yeah, again, he's coming and he's played well. I think, you know, they're scheme-wise. They do a lot of different things with movements. You know, they create problems for guys up front and he's created a lot of tackles just because of how they scheme things out.


Hello, my name is Sophia Schellhut and I'm a postdoc and data scientist working in David Miller's lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. David is a medical oncologist, dermatologist, and clinical informaticist and he's the director of the Merkel-Soll-Karsinoma Center at Mass General. He'll be delivering the second half of our talk today and we're both really excited to share some of our latest work here. So briefly, we oversee the Harvard Cancer Center Merkel-Soll-Karsinoma patient registry and often we work towards developing data science solutions for pretty much every aspect of this program, so from trying to come up with ways to automate the data capture from the electronic health records to developing data science tools to aid in the analytics and outcomes research. So today we're really excited to discuss one such product that we use in our multi-institutional patient registry and that's genetics, a genomics report text mining our package and Shiny app designed to capture real-world clinical genomic data. So we have no relevant disclosures for today's talk. I'll start with an overview. First I'll discuss the unmet need genetics was designed to address. I'll provide details on the accompanying red cap based genomics instrument, essentially the instrument is used to house the structured abstracted data. We'll review the genetic schema and provide a demonstration of the application and then we'll finish off with limitations and solutions. What is the unmet need? So clinical genomic data obtained from routine clinical practice can greatly increase our understanding of clinical oncology, but there are a number of barriers that impede capitalization of these critical real-world data, for example, prolonged time to analysis secondary to the difficulties of actually capturing the data from the heterogeneous sources are the challenges of attempting to process the vast amounts of genomic information. So these hurdles increase the time to insight from real-world data and threaten our ability to fully maximize on advances in molecular and information technologies. So there are a number of sources of clinical genomic data. So we like to break them down into two, the first one being commercial vendors. So PDF documents and reports are often provided by the commercial vendors for their respective test results. So here I'm showing Garden 360's report and Foundation One's report in PDF formats. More commonly though, clinical genomic data is often found in text files in pathology reports from the institutions embedded in the electronic health records. And so most institutions these days have their own institutional next generation sequencing platform and they often result those sequencing reports in these text files or embedding them in pathology reports in electronic health records. So moving on to the genomics instrument, we've previously published the Redcat-based genomics instrument on our website, themillerlab.io. Here we provide the data dictionaries a CSV file, so downloadable CSV file. Once downloaded, it can then be uploaded into Redcat and the genomics instrument can then accompany the genetics, our package, and Shiny app. It's essentially designed to house the mind structure data. So to get access to details on how we optimize the user experience and user interface as well as obtaining the data dictionary, you just have to find the post. This is the title of the post, Genomics Electronic Data Capture Instrument under our Optimizing Real World Data Collection of Posts. So this instrument was designed to capture relevant clinical metadata and of course the sequencing and genomics results. So here, for example, in the first field, you can place a string to describe the tissue that was biopsied and sent off for sequencing. We call it a lesion tag. So in this example, we perform next generation sequencing on a right-to-interior thigh skin primary merkle. The metadata is obviously very important. Some of our patients have, say, 20 lesions and we send off primary lesions and metastatic lesions for sequencing as well as maybe blood samples for liquid biopsies. So the metadata is obviously essential here. We specify the primary cutaneous tissue, provide the data of acquisition, the sequencing platform used, for example, here, Foundation One. And then obviously, the instrument is designed to capture that rich genomic data and potential biomarkers, so mismatch repair status and the tumor mutation burden. So like I said before, we've tried our hardest to optimize the instrument for UXUI with the manual data abstractor in mind as well as to accompany the genetics app. So for example, a manual data abstractor need only to start typing the beginning of the gene variant name and an autofill drop-down menu appears. This helps navigate the full comprehensive Hugo gene name list, makes it easier, helps streamline data capture. So we obviously are here today because we appreciate that there are data science tools that can help circumvent the need for, say, a purely manual, labor-intensive, time-intensive data capture method. Thus, we designed and developed genetics to augment data capture. So here I'm providing just a scheme of how genetics works. Briefly, as I mentioned, the sequencing results and reports are often contained in the electronic health records. So whether the results are from PDF reports, from those commercial vendors, or institutional pathology text files from the institution's next generation sequencing platform, either way, genetics takes that input, imports, parses, tokenizes, wrangles, and transforms the data and then ultimately uploads and imports it into the genomics instrument in RedCap. So now I'll hand it off to David Miller to explain how exactly genetics accomplishes this alongside with a demo. Thank you for that introduction, Sophia. What we want to do now is provide an overview of some of the natural language processing techniques that the genetics package utilizes. NLP is simply a discipline of making human language understandable by computers. Ultimately, we want to convert unstructured data into structured data. We use a variety of techniques in the package while highlighting tokenization and regular expressions. This is an example of a corpus of text presented this way as free text. It is a challenge for data scientists to perform analysis on it. Another way to make it more simplified is to tokenize the text, take each individual word, and place them into a specific cell. In a data frame, this is an example of tokenized text as tidy data. In addition to tokenization, we made use of regular expressions, which are a sequence of characters that specify a search pattern. We created a variety of regular expressions to help us capture genames, nucleotide sequences, and amino acids. By pairing both tokenization and regular expressions, we are able to target specific elements of clinical genomic reports to abstract. Now let's go ahead and provide a demonstration of the genetics application. First what we're going to do is show you how to install it, make it available at our GitHub repository, the Miller Lab, where we provide a readme page, it provides an overview and the code to install using the DevTools package. On the repository, we also have the code for the shiny application, which you can copy and paste into our studio project, such as here. Then you can run this code, which will pull up a web browser that is the genetics application. We're going to go ahead and open this into our browser. This is what the user interface looks like for the genetics package. We have a variety of imports, import boxes, and drop-down menus that allow us to direct this information into RedCap. This is a good segue. Let's talk briefly about RedCap. RedCap, their research electronic data capture system, is a widely used platform that I think many of you are familiar with. Here we have a project called Genetics that we're going to be using for demonstration purposes. In this project, we only have one record, and we're going to be adding to this project using the genetics application. We're going to be capturing data from a sample report that we see here. This is a sample report of an on-co-panel report. This is genetic analysis on a primary tumor from a myocardial cell carcinoma patient. This is a fictionalized patient. This is a synthetic patient. There is no actual patient-protected health information here. This is a good example of the data that might be contained in an on-co-panel report, where we have a series of information that would be desirable to capture. We have a number of actionable findings, such as tumor mutation burden, mismatch repair status, as well as a number of genetic variants that are found in this tumor. There's a lot of data here, a lot of data that we want to capture, but also a lot of data that is extraneous and stuff that we do want to capture. You can capture this clearly with classical abstraction, capturing this information manually. But to make it more streamlined, you can just copy this information to the clipboard and paste that information into our Genetics application browser and paste that information here, and then you can add other information to the browser, including the subject ID. Here we'll call it 2, the instrument instance that you want to put the data into. So if you have a series of lesions that are sequenced, you can put them into repeating instruments. You're going to select the genomics platform that you used to capture that data. Here's an example. We used on-co-panel, and we have an input box that allows you to put in metadata about the lesion itself. This is optional. For example, let's say we captured a right arm primary. Next, you have a dropdown to select the lesion type. This is of interest in our Mercosile Registry, adding specificity to the type of tumor that's being captured. Is it a primary tumor? Is it a metastasis? Is it a local recurrence of blood biopsy? And for this example, we are going to be capturing a primary tumor. Next, you can enter the date the tissue was obtained. Here, for example, January 1st, 2021. Now we're going to put in information that directs the application to a specific red cap project. So you need to enter the red cap address for your project, which we'll do here, and you need to enter your API token. This is a specific password that each user has, and as a result of it being private, we've hidden it. But this is essential for the package to know where to send the information, and we're using built-in under the hood as the red cap, our package, to direct this information directly into red cap. So now we've captured all the information that is relevant and necessary, so we click the Run Genetics to the red cap button. Now I'm going to take your attention over to our sidebar. We have three tabs. The first tab is the Inputs tab, which we are using to enter the data. The next is our Report tab, which shows us an exact facsimile of the report that we just captured. This is an important quality control step where you can look at the report and make sure that what you paste it into that input box is exactly the report of interest. And then finally, you click on the third tab, which is the Data tab, and this calls the Function Genetics to Red Cap, which does the text mining. The output is a data table of two columns. We have a column of the Variables of the Genomics Instrument, and we have a column that is the results, and that's the information that we either entered into that initial browser, but more importantly, the information that was abstracted by the genetics application. And here's another step where we can do a quality control measure where we can look at our report and we can also look side by side with the genetics report from the data table to make sure that the information that we captured is indeed accurate. Now, after we have captured that and run genetics to Red Cap, we can go to our Red Cap project and we see it after we refresh the browser that we instead of having one record now have two records that information was just sent through the API into Red Cap. Then information that we saw in that data frame has now been transmitted to our Genomics Instrument in our Genetics Package. And you see the information that we captured. We had a right arm primary lesion that was captured on January 1st, 2021. And we see the type of lesion genomics platform that was used on CoPanel. And importantly, we see all of the genes that were captured, the genetic variants that were captured. And again, you could use this step as a as another measure, another time and opportunity to do quality control. And then after you've gone through and confirmed the information is accurate, you can go ahead and save and exit the form. So that's our demonstration. It's important to note that we have the ability to capture text files and also PDFs because many of the platforms use PDFs. And we want to be able to capture from both platforms. So now we've seen the package, we want to make a comment about its integrity. So we analyzed the time to capture and the accuracy of the information. We had two data abstractors capture seven genomic reports and have the genetics package capture those same seven. And we found, as you might imagine, that it was much more efficient to capture using the genetics package. And importantly, we also found good agreement rates. We had greater than 99% agreement with abstractor one and genetics and abstractor two with genetics. So genetics was fast and also quite accurate. Finally, we want to touch upon a few limitations and potential solutions of the package. The first limitation is that the optimal functionality of genetics requires a REDCAP project. Importantly, genetics can still perform text mining on clinical genomic data and create structured data tables. But without a REDCAP project to import that data into the project, the data itself can be analyzed. But it clearly, the overall application was designed to take that information and store it into a REDCAP as part of a broader registry. As we mentioned, GenX currently only supports four genomic platforms. However, importantly, the code is open sourced and developers can add code to support other platforms as needed. And finally, genetics is for research purposes only and clinical decisions should not be made on the output. With that, we want to conclude by acknowledging the Linux Foundation and the R Medicine organizers for inviting us to give this talk. We want to thank Project Data Sphere, the American Skin Association, and ECOG Akron for funding this research. And we also want to thank the Project Data Sphere program manager, Ravi Kumar Commander, who helped with some thoughtful edits for our manuscript. Finally, I want to thank all of you for your time and attention, and we'll be happy to take questions. Thank you.


Hi everybody! I didn't expect so many people to come. Good. Okay. So I'm here today to talk about new perspectives for design thinking and tell you the ten best ways to fail as the designer designing for other people. Now there's a bit of a content warning. There's a really bad German accent involved and some coarse language. Very good. So I'm Heike. I'm a producer and UX designer for Sparks Interactive and I'm also the product owner for the sector Drupal Distribution which happens to be nominated for today's awards. I just thought I'd drop this in. I'm also known as Minow Freitag. I am an artist, a sculptor, painter, printmaker. I do absolutely everything and because life should never be boring. I also write post-apocalyptic dystopian fantasy science fiction novels under the same name and have published my first book in 2022. Now, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate that this is a somewhat strange talk with no Drupal in it. So that was it for Drupal. The talk also somewhat evolved. When I submitted the talk three months ago, I had just returned from a two-year sabbatical just doing art and writing and life was really good. Then I came back to work. My old boss took me back on.  So I just blame the pandemic for everything now. So in the three months since I really have to say, I calmed down somewhat. So this talk actually meanders between despair and hope, between cynicism and civil linings and I tried for a happy ending. So my career has been somewhat nomadic. I've been an architect. I actually studied it and I have a diploma. I've been an interior designer, an illustrator, a graphic designer, a game designer and developer, a multimedia and interaction designer and content creator. In short, I've been the person designing for other people for more than 30 years. And as I said, I've come here to tell you a cautionary tale about how to fail at it. I will link all the ways to fail back to UX design.  When I'm talking about failure here, I'm not talking about the kind of failure that is so celebrated today.  I see this more cynical and it's actually not, I'm not so jaded about it. But what happens is you fail, you grow, rinse and repeat. Because what success is, you define for yourself. And growth is actually a really good success factor. So, but I'm not even talking about this kind of failure. I'm talking about the soul-crushing realization that the project you just have pouring your life into and a bit of insanity now is a washed out compromise that makes mediocrity look brilliant. You will not show it to any of your friends and you will not list it on your CV until it's good for name dropping. So, as you might have noticed, designers can be somewhat dramatic. If design is anything, design is an emotional occupation. You can learn how to deal with your emotions but you can't send them away. Designing for other people requires empathy and without emotions, there's no empathy. It just doesn't work. But let's start at the beginning.  You can do so by ignoring the three out of five rule. Let me tell you a story about a famous architecture and a city council. This story might be an urban mass. Everybody knew it when I was an architecture student but I could actually not find any reference to it online. But then the internet was like so big at the time, so it might be true. It went something like this. In the 1990s, a German city council invited Tatau Ando to discuss a very prestigious project. The world famous architect flew all the way from Japan, halfway around the world, arrived with his entourage, listened to the council for five minutes, then spoke to the translator, stood and left. The translator looked somewhat apologetic and said that the architect felt that this was not a project for him. Even as students we all wanted to be Tatau Ando when we grew up. The creative industries are highly competitive. Walking away from a project is not always possible or wise. By taking on a project that does just not feel right from the start is even a higher risk. So my suggestion is to make a list of five things that you value most in any project and ignore the three out of five rules at your own risk. So the items on this list will very widely from person to person. That is something that is really important to you. There might be your career on it or something like that or internet fame or whatever. Whatever is important to you. These are the things that are important to me. So project should allow me to grow as a designer, artist or writer or just as a person.  So just go for it. To me it's also important to work with people I feel comfortable with and that I can bring something to the project that allows me to contribute in some kind of meaningful way. Money for me is not such a priority but I feel that reasonable reimbursement for my time should be on the table as well. However if this would be the first time I wouldn't write or do art. The last question I asked myself is does the project seem feasible? Have these people already set them up for failure? Can I do something? Can I turn this around? And what are the consequences if you say no? There is a good reason to say yes to something. If there is something you can work out with these people and it turns into something bigger. Finding projects that take five out of my three is actually not as easy as it seems. It depends on how much money you need or on how much you need the money or the job. But a project that doesn't take three out of five you can and maybe should walk away from. Another good way to fail is to lose sight of your audiences. Let me tell you the story about the presentation that never happened. So in the 1990s again the German car manufacturers decided that to sell car they needed to sell the experience of buying the car. And the first autostart was born. It was a V-dub scene park. If you have ever seen it just imagine Disney World with cars. It's absolutely I think crazy. So in the mid 1990s the Bavarian competitor realized that they needed to do something about this. So people actually came to Wolfsburg to pick up their car. So they needed to do something about it. So the marketing team decided to pitch the idea to the board. At the time I was working as an architect involved in the project and he knew that I was dabbling in the fledgling art of digital interaction and animation design and video architect and asked me to work on a presentation. So I went to the marketing company and the marketing team and we sat together. We made a storyboard and we built this thing. It was amazing. We also didn't sleep because at the time you needed to wait a night to render 10 seconds of video. Then on a day before the presentation we demoed the presentation to the board's advisor. He looked at it and said it was amazing. He had never seen anything like it. Which was the reason why he couldn't present it to the board in this form. He then continued to tell us we needed to do a text-only PowerPoint presentation instead. The silence in the room stretched to an uncomfortable length. So eventually the advisor finally broke my little heart by adding that we of course get paid. So what's the problem?  We were so in love with all the digital tools and the possibilities and everything was just exploding around us. It was just a totally new world. But we weren't there to impress our peers. We had to do a presentation for a very large corporation where innovation happened in a basement not on a senior management level. Looking back the only thing I'm really surprised with instead of surprises me sorry is that the architect or that neither the architect nor the marketing company actually picked this up and gave us a warning. They wanted all the bells and whistles. However in the end they took this with professional grace. I didn't. So the same applies to Hickstein design today. Design is persuasion. Yes you need to work with your end users. You need to charm them and figure out what they need and what they want and what is the difference.  It's a good way to fail if you forget that.  So we work in a relatively young industry. However if you would, if my dad would be here, he's 86, he would actually disagree. So it's really funny. My dad worked in the IT industry when there were still punch cards and when we have sometimes a chat he has encountered many of the same challenges I did in a way that is absolutely eerie. So however old the industry is, it is caught in a maelstrom of ever-changing technology. This is just what we have. It's just spinning and spinning and spinning. The world around us is changing and changing and changing. So our reaction is to throw methods and methodologies until it, until words become too big and too empty. And this happens in a highly competitive landscape forcing its inhabitants to work under the imperative to stay ahead at all costs. Or maybe it's just that. Software people like making six up and can't help themselves.  So somebody identifies a problem. They come up with an incredible clever solution that works in their specific content. Somebody puts a label on it. Then the solution is oversimplified as a marketable skill. Then somehow those solutions turn into belief systems and can no longer be questions. And somewhere in this process a disconnect between the problem, the context and the solution occurs. In short, an illusion of authority or expertise is created without providing meaningful substance or value, lacking assentities, sincerity or integrity. Just don't get hung up in it. Advocate for imperfect, for impactful change instead. Now sorry, I need to linger a tiny bit more on the bullshit topic because actually I wanted to stop here but things aren't as easy as that because sitting on a high house doesn't pay the bills either. So let me tell you a story about what's really going on much of the time. So in the early 2000s there was like the design and the development compartments. They were really angry at each other.  So a lot of methodologies come up to actually try to change the industry and the way we work. So it was behavior-driven development, data-driven development, test-driven development, user-driven development and then agile development. So a lively online exchange occurred when the exchange got a bit heated. Then in 2007 Scott Bakun joined in writing that if we are going to have dozens of models we might as well have some that are honest, however cynical, to what's really going on much of the time. And then he went on to current the term asshole-driven development. Any team where the biggest jerk makes all of the decisions, all wisdom, logic or processes goes out of the window when Mr. I added the Mrs. We want to be fair here.  There are a couple of things in your life that you will never forget.  I was sitting there and I thought I'm seeing somebody sees me. And I wanted to be Scott when I grew up. But in my experience nobody hires you to change the beliefs unless you're Scott.  So be careful with that high horse. And if Mr. or Mrs. Asshole is in charge, practice serenity. Number five, it's also a really good way to fail, thinking that you're not a therapist. Let me tell you the story about my first day at the TV production company. So as a very, very green screen designer, I got a job on a series of edutainment cities. These round sinks with the mirrored surface. The series had won quite a few awards, as had the art director under whom I was going to work. I never understood how I got the job really. So on my first day, the script writer welcomed me and invited me to sit at a desk next to her. She told me how excited she was to work with me. She also warned me about the art director and told me not to listen to him. The art director walked in three hours later and told me that I needed to sit with the designers and not to listen to any single writer said. And he did all that before he said hello. I was trying to remember if he ever said hello. I don't think so. This story repeated itself so many times throughout my career and it's still going on. Even the job, you're really excited. This is going to be amazing. This will get you on the map and you meet the team and they are excited. Yay. Everything is going to be okay. Okay. And then you meet what I call now the shadows team and things might not be going so easy in this project. Now let me just clarify something. Let's go back to this art director. Yes, he was the Mr. A Scott Bakun was talking about. He came in late every day and he was stoned most of the days. He also was an incredibly talented digital designer and animator. One of the very rare people that made you a better designer just by being in the same room with him, which we usually try to avoid. And then there was the series producer. She had been working in the film industry for years and she had an area ability to work with all kinds of crazy while making everybody feel that they are the most important person in the room. And everything went like a well oiled machinery. And she did this every single day without being bitchy or disingenuous.  We finished the project in six weeks. I came back for two more installments and learned more than maybe at any time other time of my life. Most I learned from her. If you facilitate or lead design projects and want to get anywhere, you need to run group therapy with anybody noticing it. This is our favorite. We all know this. Designing for people for who people want to be. This actually happens a bit maybe more in our own lives than in our professional lives. So there once was a couple that wanted a light filled minimalist studio apartment. They made mood beds and Pinterest, bought a one room apartment, hired an interior designer and they got it all done and it was beautiful. Then one of them unpacked their gamer stash. Three mega size displays, four blue blue led keyboards, 12 consoles and 300 kilometers of cables. And that I asked to lower the blinds because all the slide was too bright for the display. Now on the other end of the spectrum is the couple making a list of absolutely everything they own. They count their socks. They model everything They model everything in 3D and order the cupboards custom made to match their stuff. They live heavily after until the puppy arrives or the child or the cat or the new coffee maker that is now 10 centimeters higher and doesn't fit in that nice coffee niche anymore. We all learned those lessons or similar one in many aspects of our lives over and over again. You can come up with solutions. You can get a partner that matches your interior design. You can have a game pod. You can have all kinds of things. You can move into another apartment. You can leave all the stream stuff behind and actually get realistic by the two room apartment with the door to close. User interfaces are like these apartments. You need to assemble the past and plan for the future. You need to be you need to clear out and sort and label and shift stuff around and then you do it all over again in continuous improvements. Perfection is not going to help you in this process. Don't try to anticipate and design everything to the end's degree. Let it go. Watch from a distance and improve it over time. It's really hard. Designing for how you want people to be. That's even harder. Let me tell you a story about the right-wing politician and the close lines. In Italy, people traditionally dry their clothes on lines hanging between houses. Italians are very big on traditions. So when the people of Gino were told by a right-wing politician to bring in their clothes washing before a G8 summit because it crept her style, they reattaliated by hanging out even more and most of it was underwear. In urban planning, we often talk about desire lines, the pathways that people actually want to take, usually cutting across our amazing grass. Desire lines are often used as a metaphor in UX design and A-B testing when we aim to identify pathways the user prefers. Because on a screen, the user can't shortcut and trample down the grass, so we somehow need to narrow it down until we find an optimal path balancing user needs with business objectives. Dismantle your biases. Accept the close lines, find the desire lines, rinse, repeat. And the same applies, the same thing about perfectionism applies from the last slide. So you can do all of this, but if you never challenge the status quo, you will fail as well. Sorry, bear with me, a bit more garden design. I love the marionnering paths in Japanese gardens. For me and I make impatience and art form, these parts create the desire to be taken. I want to walk there, I want to listen, I want to breathe. So maybe your idea for a design, me and us along such a path. Maybe it's a path not taken before. If you want your users to come along to change behavior, you need to create an experience that invites that new behavior naturally. And maybe do a shortcut for people in a hurry, just in case. If you want to challenge perceptions, both users and clients, and bring something new, put in the work first and make sure that your idea is desirable, feasible and sustainable, then go for it. Ignoring the five-year rule. Let's assume you have done the best job you could in a given context. But the project as a whole goes down a path that your experience tells you is doomed. What do you do? Ask yourself if any of these matters in five years, or three, or one. We are working with shorter and shorter life cycles for design and products, and the cool new kit on a block is only half a block away on every and any single day. Ask yourself, will your project change people's lives in an impactful matter that has a lasting effort? If you can, if this is a case, and you can advocate to remove complexity and love for continuous improvements, if nobody is listening, be pragmatic, get it done, move on. Number 10, and I'm almost in time, thinking that everybody else has this all figured out. When we talk about imposter syndrome, we often talk about the inner critic telling us that we are not good enough. Behind this is a belief that everyone else has figured it out. There's not a single design school approach that has figured it all out.  There's not a single golden goose methodology. It yields perfect results all the time. Think about the software you are using regularly. How many of them bring you joy? How many websites do? And then how big are the teams they are working on? They're working on both sides. How much budget do they have? How much time? Design is scary. You might want to change the way people do things. People don't like change. Change is scary. Fear and doubt are contagious. You need to feel this fear, and then you need to be fearless.


It's really it's interesting. It seems to be doing well. I saw the preview with the they go to Japan That was kind of an interesting turn It's full house was so like Iconic it's so 90s that trying to translate it to The modern era is is strange because it was so wholesome. I think it worked so well in that time It's interesting to see them pull it off now I don't think it's for me personally if I'm being honest, but it seems to be doing very well Which is awesome It's it's it weirds me out seeing the like there's like dirty jokes, which I understand you have to have some You know compromise and like bring it into a modern era, but it's interesting like it's a it's a unique Show that I don't think is I haven't seen Not there's nothing quite similar to floor house and what it's trying to do and doing right now It seems there was even some other thing that was like in new window that I think the parents would get that the kids Wouldn't get that maybe I'm not remembering it fully, but I don't think the original full house would have done it was it's a very like I Don't I wouldn't have guessed that you could get away with the show That doing it like that today But I think the nostalgia factor and how they're spinning it, you know from the original They're they're able to pull it off, and they got an interesting concept working right now I don't know if I blame them for not returning to the show It might be cool, and I'm sure the fans will love it, and I'm sure they do great but They don't need to and maybe they feel like that chapter is behind them I don't know. I don't know them, you know, I haven't seen them since then, so I can't say what's in their heads Maybe they will someday maybe season 3 4 You know who knows like maybe something will will spark that I know a lot of people have asked if My character and some of the other like friend characters are gonna come back And I haven't heard anything from that and I kind of didn't expect it because we were friends of Michelle Michelle's not on the show Kind of doubtful, but yeah, it's interesting to to imagine what How that would play out like how the characters would be different or grown up or how they would be presented in the show in modern times, but Yeah, I can't I can't blame them. I mean they're living life They're doing their thing and as long as they're happy like that's cool if they come back cool if not rock on


The Equitable Life Assurance Society presents, this is your FBI. This is your FBI, the official broadcast from the Files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Presented transcribed as a public service by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States and the Equitable Society's representative in your community. Those three letters, EEF, have helped make it possible for thousands of bright, ambitious boys and girls to equip themselves to lead happier, more successful lives. EEF stands for Equitable Education Fund. An Equitable Education Fund is the painless way to pay for a college education. It's the way for a parent to make sure that his boy or girl will enjoy the advantage of a college education. In about 14 minutes, I'll give full information on this Equitable Educational Plan created by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. Tonight, the subject of our FBI file, larceny, it's titled, The Adopted Thief. In making the decision to broadcast this series as a public service, your FBI had several objectives. One of the most important was to focus the spotlight of publicity on what goes on behind the scenes in the underworld. For the more thoroughly, you the people are alerted to the stratagems and techniques of criminals. The better able you are to recognize a crime in the making, to take steps for self-protection, to make the moves that help bring criminals to justice. There comes a moment in many criminal acts when, if the intended victim is on guard, the whole plot will fall to pieces. Tonight's FBI file illustrates such a case. Tonight's FBI file opens in a fashionable suburb of a large Midwestern city. In the living room of an attractive home, a well-dressed middle-aged woman rises from a chair to answer the phone. Hello? I'd like to speak to Mrs. Fulton, please. This is Mrs. Fulton. Mrs. Grace Fulton? Yes. I wonder if you'd mind giving me some information. What is it? It's your maiden name, Thompson. Why, yes. Then in 1926, you married a man named Harper. What? You went to Charleston the next year to have your baby and put it up for immediate adoption. Am I right? Who is this? Your son. You want to see me? I'm in room 719 at the hotel central. You're the young man who called me? Yes. I'm Ralph Putnam. Were you telling me the truth? Are you... I'm your son. It's true. But how? Well, you see, I... I was adopted by people named Putnam. They both died this year. Mr. Putnam left me a letter telling me for the first time that I wasn't their own son. He said they'd gotten me from the White Star home in Charleston. Well, I was very curious to find out who my parents were. So I wrote to the home, but they wouldn't give me any information. Well, then how did you manage to find out? Oh, Mr. Putnam's lawyer arranged that. He got a court order and had the home open their records. I got your name, came here, and the rest, you know. There, there. Come over here and sit down. I sent down for some tea. Would you like some? Yes, please. Well, you just sit there. No, just plain, dear. You said your name was Ralph. That's right. I see you're in the Army. Yes. I go overseas next week. Oh, but we've only just found each other. Well, the Army is not very sentimental. Here, Mother. Oh, thank you. Would you sit here beside me? Surely. Son, I want you to know one thing. Sometime after I gave you away, I realized what a mistake I'd made. But the adoption home wouldn't tell me where you were. What happened to my father? He died several years after you were born. His name was Harper. Yes. What did he do? Well, nothing. We were very young. Does the man you're married to now know anything about me or the marriage? No. Would you prefer that it remain that way? Well, yes. Hi. Oh, hi, Artie. Oh, sorry. I didn't know you had anyone here. It's okay, Mrs. Fulton. This is my roommate, Sergeant Worth. How do you do, sir? Mrs. Fulton's an old friend of the family. Oh? Maybe you two want to talk some more. No, that's quite all right. I have to be getting along. Lovely nice to have met you, Sergeant. Same here, Miss Fulton. I'll walk you to the elevator. Oh, thank you. I gather you didn't tell the Sergeant about us. Oh, no. No outside of the lawyer. No one knows. Well, here we are. When will I see you again, son?  Meanwhile, at an FBI field office about 100 miles away, Special Agent Jim Taylor approaches the desk of Agent Leo Graham. Hello, Leon. Hi, Jim. I was by looking for you a couple minutes ago. Oh, I just got back from the music hall. I think I've got a lead on that stolen car. I haven't had a chance to crack that file. Can you fill me in? Sure. There's not much to it yet, though. Well, where does the music hall fit in? Well, after the place closed last night, the manager noticed a car in the parking lot, and was still there this morning. He called the police. Turned out of a stolen day before yesterday near Pittsburgh. The owner says he gave two soldiers a lift near the entrance to the turnpike. Another hitchhike job? Yeah. When he stopped to make a phone call, they took off and stranded him. He can't give us a description of either man. All he remembers is they called each other Ralph and Artie. What's the lead? I found a car and found a couple of things. Book of matches from the Chelsea Motel in Pittsburgh and some empty beer bottles in the back seat. Did you check the motel? Yeah, the motel gave me the names of two soldiers who stayed overnight just before the car was stolen. I sent them to Washington along with some prints. Where'd you get prints? Off the beer bottles. The owner says they weren't in the car when it was stolen. Well, with names and prints, we might have a quick eye down. Well, minute ending comes in, I'll pass it along. Hi, pal. Oh, hi, Artie. Sit down. Yeah. What are you drinking? We said no whiskey till this was over. You can't call Mrs. Fulton when you're mulled. We have something to celebrate. What do you mean? I've been doing some research. Waiter. Yeah? What'll you have? Scotch. Two scotch and water. Aye. I got a complete background on Mr. Harper. Harper? The man Mrs. Fulton was married to. Guess what he did for a living? What? He was a bootlegger. Yeah? Two weeks after the wedding, her family got the whole thing annulled. That's why she went to Charleston to have the baby. That's why she put him up for adoption. That's very interesting. I also got a background on Mr. Fulton. The guy she's married to now. He's trying to be the next mayor. He's also very rich. Scotch and water. Oh, thanks. Well, let's drink to dear old mom and her nice, rich husband. From Washington? Yeah, Leo, but I don't understand it. Iden says those prints belong to two men named Paul Clark and Arthur Worth. Well? Well, they're not soldiers, and the owner of that stolen car said the men called each other Artie and Ralph. Maybe Ralph's a middleman. Iden says Paul Clark has no middle initial. I guess we'd better concentrate on Worth. If we find him, we might get both of them. We have any pictures? They're on the way. We've got complete descriptions. How about records? Clark was arrested three years ago for car theft. Worth was convicted last year for posing as a collector for a couple of charities. And now they're both posing as soldiers. That's it. Teletype also has a note that Worth's brother's in the army of Fort Andrews. That's their Pittsburgh, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. They may have gone there to see him, so I've wired the Fort Andrews MP outfit. Covered all the local angles? No, not completely, Leo. Let's clean them up and then meet back here. Speaking. Oh, hello, mother. This is Ralph. Hello, dear. I have some bad news. What's that? I'm leaving. What? My orders came through this morning. What? But you said you'd be here till next week. Well, the army changed its mind. Oh. I guess maybe I'd better not be writing to you. Why not? If Mr. Fulton sees Mayo from a soldier overseas, wouldn't he start asking questions? Well, I suppose he would. Will you write to me, though? Surely. I had a picture taken for you. Oh, I'd love it. Can I come down and see you before you go? Oh, no. No, I'm leaving the hotel as soon as I hang up. Oh. But Sergeant Worth isn't going till tonight. I'll give him the picture and my overseas address. Well, where can I see him? Oh, he's keeping the room, the one you were in yesterday. If you want him to, he'll wait for you. Oh, yes. Please, dear. Ask him to wait. I'll be right there. Just a minute. Sergeant. Would you come in? Thank you. Has Ralph gone? Yes. He left almost an hour ago. I hurried over here hoping that somehow I might still see him. He felt very badly about not seeing you. He said he'd leave his address. That's right. I've got it right here. Oh, thank you. And he also mentioned a picture. All right, so over here. I'll get it. Here you are. Oh. Wonderful. I'm so glad he left this. There's a real family resemblance. Huh? He looks just like you. Oh, you must be mistaken. I'm...  What? Ralph told me all about it. Oh. That's quite a story. Thank you for the picture, Sergeant, and the address. Don't go, Mrs. Fulton. At least not until you hear what I have to say. About what? About you, your husband. Both your husbands. Sit down, Mrs. Fulton. I'd rather not. Okay. Ralph tells me that Mr. Fulton wants to get to be mayor. Now, it seemed to me that anything in the way of bad publicity would make it a little tough on that ambition, wouldn't it? What are you talking about? I also know about your first husband, Ralph's father. He was quite a character in his day. Racketeer, bootlegger. It wouldn't do anybody much good if people knew you were once married to him, huh? Or if they found out about the annulment. Or putting up your baby for adoption before it was born. Where did you learn this? From Ralph. He did a lot of research. He's my son. He wouldn't use any of it against me. But he's gone overseas. I'm running the store now, Mrs. Fulton. I put a very high value on the merchandise. You mean you want money? That's right. Well, I... I have about $80 with me. $80? This isn't bargain day, Mrs. Fulton. My price is $10,000. We will return in just a moment to tonight's exciting case from the official files of your FBI. Now let's pay a quick visit to the home of George Peaserson, who's recently become the proud father of an eight-pound boy. This morning, George called up his equitable society representative, Fred Barton, and asked him to drop in. George has a question he wants answered. Look, Mr. Barton, my kid's only six weeks old. Is that too young for me to start one of those college education insurance policies for him? My wife and I both think it's a good idea. If it doesn't cost too much... Well, it is a good idea, Mr. Peaserson. And the sooner you start, the lower the yearly cost will be. My advice is to begin an equitable education fund right now. Well, tell me how it works out. Well, in an equitable education fund, you have an endowment life insurance policy that's paid up. By the time your boy's ready to enter college, the cash is there, ready and waiting for him. Actually, it's about the most painless way of paying for a college education ever invented. Well, it sounds pretty much like buying an automobile or a TV set on the installment plan. Except that in this case, you save up the money in advance. That's right. But don't forget that an equitable education fund has one big advantage over ordinary saving plans. You get life insurance protection.  The policy is paid up in full. The equitable society holds the money and pays interest on the full amount until he's ready to use it for his education.  Well, let's get down to brass tacks. How much would a plan like this cost me? Well, there's no fixed amount, Mr. Peterson. Some fathers set up a $2,500 fund for their boys. They know it probably won't pay the entire cost of a college education, but it will be a big help. The price goes high as $4, $5,000 or $6,000. It's just a question of how much you can afford to put into it. Well, suppose we figure on one for $4,000. Well, let's see. At your age, that's going to cost only. If you have children of your own, why not get the cost of an equitable education fund from your equitable representative? These equitable men don't go in for high pressure methods. They give you the information you need and let you make up your own mind. Get in touch with your equitable representative soon. Or write care of this station to the Equitable Society. That's E-Q-U-I-T-A-B-L-E. The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. And now back to the FBI file, The Adopted Feet. It's our senses and our thinking. And the stock in trade of extortioners and their ilk is fear of exposure. This thought paralyzing fear prevents their victims from facing one very obvious fact. This fact is that very few blackmailers or extortionists are ever satisfied with just one payment. Once these criminals have made their first move, the most dangerous for them. They become bolder. They are sure to come back for more. Finally, many victims do go to the police, but only after they've been bled nearly white. So once again, your FBI urges all members of this audience never to give in an inch to a blackmailer or an extortionist. Report any attempt at intimidation to the police immediately. It may mean personal embarrassment, but sooner or later this must be faced. Tonight's case might never have been in the FBI files in its present form had Mrs. Fulton acted promptly and courageously. Tonight's file continues later that day at the FBI field office. Leo, we might have a break in that stolen car case. What have you got? Do you remember the owner reported that the soldiers called themselves Ralph and Artie? There was no Ralph in the record. Well, there is now. I think Paul Clark's masquerading is somebody named Ralph Putnam. Where'd you get that? The Fort Andrews MP's just interviewed Worth's brother. The brother reported to them that the two fugitives had a letter in their possession belonging to a GI in his outfit named Ralph Putnam. This letter contained some information about the Putnam boy's real mother. This Putnam had been raised by foster parents and he got a lawyer to check his adoption records, but he was shipped overseas two days before this letter came for him. How'd Clark and Worth get hold of the letter? That worst brother didn't know. He's clean. He also says they told him they were going to make a big score with the letter.  Clark uses the name Ralph Putnam and moves in on the mother. Yeah, that's it. Well, let's get there first. Well, worst brother doesn't remember the name of the lawyer who wrote the letter. Did he see it? Yeah, he says it was from Charleston. The lawyer's first name was William, but he doesn't remember the last name. I told the SAC about it and he wants me to make the trip, so I'll see you when I get back. Mrs. Fulton, you're early. I'm anxious to get this over with. Oh, sure, I understand. Can I get you something to drink? No, thank you. You brought the money? Yes. Before I give it to you, I want to know something. What's that? Was my son telling the truth when he said you were leaving probasees tonight? Yeah, that's right. I leave in an hour. Well, I want you to promise you'll never ask for any more. Mrs. Fulton, you're doing business with a very reliable concern. I promise. Here you are. 10,000? Yes. Count it if you wish. Oh, I take your word. Well, soon our business has ended. Yeah, I guess it has. Then I'll be going. Oh, Mrs. Fulton, I want to thank you. You're one civilian who really knows how to keep up a soldier's morale. Hello? Hi, aren't he any news? Yeah, he just left. What about the money? I got it right here. Where are you calling from? The motel. Well, stay there. Why? The alterations weren't finished on your suit. I told the store to deliver it out there. When will that be? This afternoon. Oh, okay. I'll meet you at the ferry. Madison, I finally look at it, lawyer. How'd you find it? Well, I went to the courthouse this morning from through every adoption regular. That lawyer's name was William Hughes. He gave me a copy of the letter. Madison, where the mother lives? Yeah. Her name is Mrs. George Fulton. Think we ought to call her? I did, Leo, but she was out. The maid had no idea when she'd be back. What time's our plane? Ten minutes. So unless we hit bad weather, we'll be in Madison by noon. Yes. We're special agents of the FBI. Here are my credentials. Please come in. Thank you. Mrs. Fulton, this is Agent Graham. How do you do? How do you do? We'll get right to the point. Have you been contacted by anyone calling himself Ralph Putnam? Oh. Well, that's our answer, I guess. Yeah. Leo, will you show Mrs. Fulton those pictures? Over. Are these the menu, son? Yes, but I... I don't understand. Well, they're not soldiers at all, ma'am. This may come as a shock to you, but the young man calling himself Putnam isn't your son. Isn't my... His name's Paul Clark. Well, then how did he know about me? He and that man in the other picture there intercepted a letter to your son, and used that information. Oh, no. Your boy didn't get the letter because he's on his way to Korea. Oh, that is terrible. I gave Sergeant Worth $10,000, so he... so he wouldn't tell my husband about Ralph. I... I knew I was wrong. I... Well, where did you give him that money? Oh. Please, Mrs. Fulton, every minute may be important. Help. In his room at the hotel's central. Thank you. Come on, Leo. 19's to the left. Mm-hmm. See, that ought to be, uh, third room down. How long ago did the manager say worth check done? Two hours, but they haven't cleaned the room yet. Here it is. Yeah. I'll take this side. Okay, Jim. Nothing in the desk. The closet's empty, too. Well, let's check the wastebasket. Oh, Ed, I'll give the dresser a quick look. All right. They didn't even leave beer bottles in this place. There's not much in the basket either. That thing a letter? Yeah, it's the one from the lawyer department. Any phone messages? Mm-hmm. And so far, but... Wait a minute. What's that? It's a sales slip from Smith Brothers' department store. White shirts, silk neckties, argyles. Hey, they're switching to civilian clothes. That'll make them even tougher to look at. Maybe yes, maybe no. Let's use that phone and find out. I just got here. Where's the money? Got it right here in this package. A full 10,000? Yeah. That's real sweet. Come on, we better make the ferry. Okay. Hey, I'm not used to seeing you in civilian clothes. Did you count the dough? Yeah, yeah, it's all there. Hey, you got changed? Uh-huh. Go ahead. Did you have any trouble with her? She made me promise we'd never come back. So I promised. You're pretty good at breaking promises, aren't you? Yeah. Hey, they're closing the boat gates. Let's hurry. Just a minute, sir. I'm afraid you'll have to miss that ferry. Who are you? We're special agents at the FBI. They're both under arrest. Clark and Arthur Worth were each convicted of violations of the statutes covering interstate transportation of a stolen motor vehicle and also illegal wearing of an army uniform. Each received a five-year sentence. Special agents Taylor and Graham were able to find the two deserters at their motel because Taylor realized that along with white shirts, silk ties, and Argyle socks, Clark and Walker would need new suits. A check at the clothing department of Smith Brothers Store revealed that the alterations had been completed and also the address to which they were delivered. And so your FBI was able to close another case. After the arrests, most of Mrs. Fulton's money was recovered and returned to her. But not every victim is that fortunate. Sometimes the loot is gone before the criminals are apprehended. So remember, there is only one answer to a threat of this nature. Call your local police immediately. A quick review of the advantages of an equitable education fund. First, it's the painless way to pay for a college education. You spread the cost over many years instead of taking a beating in four. Second, it's sure.  So why delay?  Or write care of this station to the Equitable Life Assurance Society. Next week, we will dramatize another case from the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Its subject, organized crime, its title, the bogus hijacking. Used in tonight's Equitable Life Assurance Society's broadcast, are adapted from the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. However, all names used are fictitious. And any similarity thereof to the names of places or persons living or dead is accidental. Tonight the music was composed and conducted by Frederick Steiner. The author was Jerry D. Lewis. Your narrator was William Woodson and special agent Taylor was played by Stacey Harris. Others in the cast were Burbellas, Terry Kilburn, Irene Tedrow and Tom Tulling. This is your FBI is a Jerry Divine production. This is Larry Keating speaking for the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States and the Equitable Society's representative and your community. And inviting you to tune in again next week at the same time, when the Equitable Life Assurance Society will bring you another thrilling transcribe story from the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The bogus hijacking on This is your FBI. Stay tuned for A Life in Your Hand starring Lee Bowman which follows immediately. This program came to you from Hollywood.


So like everyone who has a Netflix subscription, I have been obsessed with arcane for the last few weeks. I watched it once, felt like my life was meaningless because I would never be able to create anything that beautiful, and then watched it a second time. And usually when I consume something twice in a row that's enough to get it out of my system, and yet arcane has stuck with me. And there are many reasons for this, but I think the main one is because of the way arcane masters tragedy. Now if you haven't seen the show yet, please go watch arcane now because this video is not spoiler free. It will give details about who lives and who dies, so consider yourself warned. Arcane is a series that takes place in the world of League of Legends following two of the destinations on the map. The advanced utopian city of Piltover, and the repressed poor city of Zorn, or under city. The relationship between these two is that they are theoretically the same city ruled by the same government, however one side is incredibly privileged, and the other one is suffering for their progress. With the people being very poor, there is a lot of crime, there is a lot of pollution, which comes from the progress of the Piltover side. In each of these cities we have different characters we follow who end up tangling with each other as the unrest rises. Now as I said, I think one of the things arcane does really well is tragedy, and there are multiple tragic characters in this story. The ones I'm going to focus on are Jinx slash powder, Vi, Vanda, Silco and Jace. So let's start with Jinx or powder. In the first episode we meet a group of kids from the under city who are planning a heist in Piltover. They want to steal some materials and make some money. The children are Vi. Vi is the leader of the group, the strategist, the muscle. We have Milo and Klager. Milo is the lockpicker. Klager is the demolitions expert, and then we have powder who's the youngest of the group, only about 10 years old, and she is the misfit. She is Vi's younger sister, and they all live like siblings. They've all been sort of adopted by the de facto leader of the under city. Powder is in a very difficult position with this group because she is so much younger and smaller. She often isn't ready for the missions they go on. She can't really fight against larger opponents, and she's also called a bit of a jinx. Things tend to go wrong when she goes with them. At the beginning of the series they plan a heist in Piltover.  She drops one as they're making their escape, and it explodes causing the wall of the building to blow out, and the enforcers to almost catch them. They run from the enforcers, they make it back to the under city, they tangle with a street gang. Powder is given the backpack with all of the goods they stole, and tries to escape with it, but ends up throwing it into the river so she can escape from her pursuer. So they're on this heist together.  She loses their reward as well, and we hear a lot of criticism after this, which implies that this is typical. Every time powder goes along something goes wrong. So she's this little girl in a group of kids who are much older than her, who desperately wants to prove herself. She's also afraid of being alone, she's afraid they're going to abandon her if she doesn't prove herself soon, and Vi is the only one who believes in her. So this is the setup we have for this group of friends. Now this turns into a tragedy when their foster father, Vanda, gets taken in by Silco who is sort of a criminal underlord at this stage in the story, and they have history, which I will get into later when I talk about them. So Vanda gets taken, and Vi wants to go and save him, and she tells the powder that she can't go along for this mission, she's too young, she's not ready. And powder feels this incredibly deeply. After the older kids go off on their mission, we come back to powder, and she is sobbing and snotty and messy on her bed, and just distraught at having been left behind. She throws her things in anger and sees the gemstones that she stole from the highest react, and they spark. And she realizes that's what caused the explosion at the previous heist. And she realizes, oh maybe I can help this time, because powder has always tried to make these bombs which never work. It's another one of the reasons why she has this reputation for things going wrong, because even when she tries to help she can't. So now she has this really powerful fuel to use in a bomb, and she thinks she can help her older siblings get their father back. So she follows them to where Vanda is being held, where the older siblings are having a confrontation with the goons who are trying to stop them from saving him. So she sets up her bomb, this little clockwork monkey toy, puts the gemstones in it, prays that it'll work, winds the cog, and sets it walking towards where Vi is fighting this mutated goon. It walks, it walks, it claps its symbols back and forth over one of the gemstones, and then everything explodes. And powder gets flung back from the wall where she was waiting.  What she doesn't know though is that inside the warehouse where these explosions are happening, everything's falling apart. So her family, Vi, her foster siblings, her foster father, they were almost out, they were almost free, they knocked a hole through the wall, but now because of her explosion, the walls caving in, Klager gets crushed, Milo gets a rod through his shoulder, then also gets crushed, Vi gets stuck under a plank of metal, and Vanda ends up having to fight this mutated goon to survive, and almost dies in the process. He ends up taking shimmer, which is this performance enhancing addictive drug, so he can fight back and hold off death for a little bit, he saves Vi, they make it out, and he dies on the street with Vi looking over his body. Then powder comes out from around the corner, smiling and excited because her invention worked, she helped.  And this takes us to Vi as a tragic character, because as part of this same story, she has her own tragic conclusion. So Vi, as I mentioned, was the leader of the gang. She's always been the leader, and it's her job to keep the family together and to be a role model. She is treated as Vanda's oldest daughter, and he tries to impart wisdom on her so that she can grow into a good leader as she grows up. When he is lying on the street dying, the last thing he says to her is to take care of powder.   And I don't think it's anger that makes her take herself away, it's that she is the leader, she is responsible even though she's young, and she knows she is grieving and hurting, and she can't be what she needs to be to powder at that moment, she needs to grieve or else she's going to take it off on powder so she gets out of there to protect powder as well as herself. So Vi leaves, she doesn't go far, just a bit further down the street, collapses in an archway to grieve, and then she sees Silco, the villain, the person who stole their father, approach powder, and she stands up, she wants to go back to save powder from this villain, but the moment she stands up and starts stepping towards them, and enforcer catches her, he chloroforms her, she goes unconscious, and she is imprisoned for years. So in the same instance, you have the tragedy of powder who thought she was doing the right thing, she thought she was going to help, she unwittingly killed her family and then was abandoned by her sister, and the worst thing that could have possibly happened to her being abandoned, being alone, being a failure happened. But it's also a tragedy for Vi because her father's dying wish was for her to take care of powder, and after she had a moment to grieve, I think she would have done that, and that chance was taken away from her. So obviously this is tragic, but why is it tragic? And I don't think it's because something bad happened, because bad things happen in most stories, it's what creates drama. But I think it's three things. First is that the bad thing was a result of a good intention. Both powder and Vi wanted to do the right thing, powder wanted to help her sibling, she wanted to save Vanda, Vi wanted to protect her sister, she wanted to take herself away from her sister when she was in a volatile, destructive state. The second thing is that there are also these glimpses of hope that keep you on the edge of your seat where you think things might be okay. So when Vanda, Vi, Klager, and Milo are all trapped in this room, it looks like they're going to get out. Like Klager has broken a hole into the wall for them to escape. Milo has freed Vanda from the manacles that had him attached to the chair. Vi managed to pull the door shut before the guy she was fighting broke through. And yes, his banging at the door, we know he's going to break through soon, but there was a hole in the wall, they could have gotten out. And then there was this explosion that destroyed everything. The next thing is that there's no good that came out of this bad thing. It didn't serve a greater cause or purpose. I think often in fiction we see bad things happen, and it's either someone thinks the ends justify the means. So even if from the audience perspective they shouldn't be doing the bad thing they're doing, it's not a tragedy from the character's perspective because they're doing it with a goal in mind. The other approach is if bad things happen, but then you have your happily ever after. So the suffering and the sacrifice was worth it. In this case, there was no good to come out of these bad things. They didn't serve a greater cause. They weren't a sacrifice for the greater good. It was just destructive and painful for no reason. And finally, there is no coming back from this. There is no way this situation can be salvaged. There's no hope of redemption. And I think this is something that a lot of creators struggle with. We struggle to go that far because we love our characters. We want them to be happy. We don't want to hurt them too much. So it's really ballsy for Arcane to do this where there is no way powder can ever come back from this. She is never going to unkill her family. Similarly, when Vi gets taken away in that moment, there is no way she can save her sister from Silcoe. When she wakes up in a prison cell and can't get out, there is nothing she can do to erase that. And maybe, maybe a fight can get taken and she and Powder were able to walk away from the event. Yes, obviously there's still pain and still grief, but they would have been together. There would have been some hope that they could have helped heal each other, but there was no hope. And the thing about Arcane is, first, this is just the first three episodes. This is Act One, three acts, so there's much more tragedy to come. But the second thing is that these aren't the only tragic characters. The reason why I feel Arcane has mastered tragedies is because there are so many tragic characters. But what's interesting though is that where the story ends for each character determines whether or not it's a tragedy for that specific character or not. So next, let's look at the two father figures in this story, Vanda and Silcoe. You can argue that for them, their stories don't end in tragedy because they both end up dying for their children, which means there is meaning to their sacrifice. The tragedy then is for the characters who live on who ultimately see that the deaths were meaningless. So Vanda used to be a fighter for the independence of Zorn or the undercity, and he gave up on that dream when he took in Vi, Powder and his other kids. And we see this back and forth in his life in the first couple of episodes where he is the unofficial leader of the undercity. He keeps things in line. He even works with the enforcers from Piltover, so the enforcers from the more privileged part of this world, to help keep things in balance because he now knows what the cost of war is, and he cares about the cost because he has children who he could lose. So in the first two episodes, we see him time and time again protecting his children and choosing his children over the city of Zorn. He lies to enforcers, he doesn't stand up to the enforcers when they undermine his authority, and we can see this is starting to cost his reputation in front of his people. But ultimately, he has decided that some things are more important than fighting for his city's freedom and independence, and for him, it's his children. So his tragedy starts when there is this heist at the beginning of the first episode where the four kids break into a Piltover apartment and start stealing all of these things, including the gemstones the power ends up using for her mom. Now the enforcers know that the children were involved in this, but Vander won't hand them over, he keeps hiding them. And because they stole from such an important family member's home, so it was actually a member of the governing council who owned the apartment where they stole the goods, the enforcers can't let this go. The council doesn't want to let this go. So Vi ends up deciding to turn herself in to bring it into the current problem. Now remember Vi is the leader of the group and Vander has instilled this moral code in her which is that it's as the leader it is her job to take care of the others. So as the leader she decides to turn herself in so that the others can go free. But Vi is his daughter, he can't bear the thought of her being turned in, so when he discovers her plan he goes after her, locks her in a room so that when the enforcers come to the meeting point he is waiting there for them and he turns himself in in their place, choosing his children over leading the under city again. This is where the tragedy starts, so the enforcers are taking him away and they end up getting killed. He is taken away by Silco, the villain, and so what it means is this sacrifice was for nothing. He was sacrificing his city, Zaun, or his children. What has happened now is that Zaun has lost his leadership and his children might not be protected either because he's been taken away. So we know that the children go after him to save him, we have these glimpses of hope where it looks like they're going to get away and then powder's bomb goes off and the bomb destroys everything. Vanter is nearly killed in a fight and he gives himself enough shimmer to be able to protect and save Vi. He fights, gets Vi out of the warehouse where he's been trapped and he dies with his last words being to protect powder. So from Vanter's perspective we could argue that his story is not so tragic. Yes he died but he died after having saved one of his kids with the instruction to protect the other one, so this is an example of a bad thing happening but in service of a greater good. It becomes a tragedy in the moments after when Vi empowered to realize what has happened and Vi unwittingly abandoned her sister. So Vanter's sacrifice ultimately didn't protect the undercity because it falls to Silco, it didn't protect his kids, two of them are dead, one is imprisoned and one goes to Silco and there is no coming back from it.  Following this arc there is a timeskip and when we catch up with them we see that Vi has been physically locked up for years while powder is in a mental prison and has never been able to get over the trauma of that day. Now let's look at Silco who's the villain of the story. Now he originally fought by Vanter's side to liberate the undercity and Vanter betrayed him after deciding that the cost of revolution was too high. We don't get into the full details of this but the impression we're given is that Silco would stop at nothing for independence which Vanter couldn't do anymore now that he had a family to protect. So Silco hates Vanter for working with the enforcers to keep the current system in place and he still wants to rise up against Piltover. For a lot of the story things are going in Silco's favor, maybe not smoothly but they're going his way, so at the end of act one he defeats Vanter and becomes the new leader of the undercity and his main challenge from this point is actually how he manages Jinx, formerly powder, who has turned into chaos incarnate due to the combination of being incredibly traumatized from the previous events as well as not really having any discipline or structure from the look of it but being given weapons and bombs to play with. So like when she was a child she often does more harm than good now but there's no one reigning her in and he doesn't reign her in because he loves her like a daughter. Things change when Vi gets out of prison and Jinx learns that she is alive. Before now Silco had told her that Vi was dead and now Jinx doesn't know who to trust and her inner self is fragmented between powder who she was before everything went wrong in act one and she killed her family and Jinx, who she became after Silco took her in. Vi represents the past and an opportunity to return to being powder while Silco represents who she is now. Now what's interesting is while Jinx is conflicted, Silco isn't. He still prioritizes Jinx over everything, he even gets the opportunity to achieve his dream of making Zorn independent but only if he hands her over which he refuses to do. So like Vanda, he ultimately ends up choosing his child over his dream. On Jinx's side the conflict culminates in the final confrontation of the show where Jinx sets up a tea party with Silco, Vi, and Caitlyn all tied to their chairs.  Caitlyn manages to escape from her chair and get a weapon and Jinx lowers her gun to the table. Then Silco picks it up and aims it at Vi. Jinx then gets Caitlyn's weapon and shoots Silco instinctively to protect her sister. This then mirrors the earlier scene where she accidentally killed her family with her bomb. In this scene she acted on instinct and only realizes the consequences of her actions after it's too late. She kneels before Silco in tears wanting to undo what she's done. In this moment Silco seems to be at peace. He tells Jinx that she's perfect, he loved her as she was, chaotic and flawed with so much potential and you could make the argument that this love was twofold. On one hand it's the love of a father for a daughter and on the other she represents Zorn, chaotic and flawed but with so much potential and even though he sacrificed his dream of Zorn's independence for her, the dream lives on through her embodied by her. So on one hand Silco is a tragic character because he died not having achieved the dream he'd wanted for so long. On the other though he dies at peace. His vision now lives on in his daughter. The tragedy here is for Jinx who once again acted out this time isn't quite the same as the first incident years ago because she wasn't trying to help and she didn't think she'd saved everyone. She also hadn't intended to kill, she acted on instinct and only discovered the consequences of her actions too late. So it's a tragedy for her, she shot her father and it doesn't matter how much regret she feels because nothing can be done to change it. The final tragic figure I wanted to cover is Jace who might have the most classic arc of any of the characters because he rises too close to the sun before falling. When we first meet Jace he is a student who wants to find a way to combine magic and science to make the world better. In act one he has a breakthrough discovery and after the time skipped to act two we see him as the golden child due to how his technology has helped the world. He's even given a seat on the governing council of Piltover and a chance to make a difference. As he comes to power he gains a deeper understanding of the struggles of and threat of the undercity and alternates between wanting to fight them and wanting to grant them independence. Initially he wants to fight them to both get revenge and stamp out their will after Jinx carried out attacks on Piltover and this culminates with him going with Vi to destroy Silco Shimmer factory. It's only when he's there that he sees the true cost of violence because the factory is staffed by children and he accidentally kills one of them. So for the first time he understands what the cost of a war might be on both sides and this is something that most people from Piltover will never understand because they're not the ones doing the dirty work, they don't go to the undercity, they don't see the conditions that the people live in, they just get to enjoy their privilege. So this leaves Jace to consider a peace deal. First he offers to grant Zorn its independence but only in exchange for Jinx because Jinx has caused a lot of damage and injured a lot of people. When Silco refuses the council vote to grant the undercity independence anyway, recognizing that they have treated the undercity too badly for too long for any peaceful cooperation to work. As they are voting on this though, voting on what both Silco and Vanda always wanted, Jinx has fired a missile at the council after Silco's death. She and Silco didn't know the council meeting would be voting on giving Zorn its independence and by taking this action she is probably triggering an outright war between the two factions. It could be something she realizes later, once again when it's too late to turn back. It's also a tragedy for Jace though because the moment he decided to move ahead with a peaceful path, the moment he convinced the council to vote with him, it is a moment too late.  There are things that you do, there are mistakes that you make, there are choices you make and there is no coming back from them and sometimes you don't see the damage until after the deed has already been done and there's no going back. So those are some initial rambling thoughts on Arcane. I hope you enjoyed this video, it is my first attempt to do an essay like this, so if you liked it please give me a thumbs up and let me know if I should do more content like this and I will see you next time, bye.


Item Number SCP-173 Object Class Euclid Special Containment Procedures Item SCP-173 is to be kept in a locked container at all times. When personnel must enter SCP-173's container, no fewer than three may enter at any time and the door is to be relocked behind them. At all times, two personnel must maintain direct eye contact with SCP-173 until all personnel have vacated and relocked the container. Description Moved to Site-1993, Origin is as of yet unknown. It is constructed from concrete and rebar with traces of Krylon Brand spray paint. SCP-173 is animate and extremely hostile. The object cannot move while within direct line of sight. Line of sight must not be broken at any time with SCP-173. Personnel assigned to enter the container are instructed to alert one another before blinking. Object is reported to attack by snapping the neck at the base of the skull or by strangulation. In the event of an attack, personnel are to observe class 4 hazardous object containment procedures. Personnel reports sounds of scraping stone originating from within the container when no one is present inside. This is considered normal and any change in this behavior should be reported to the acting HMCL supervisor on duty. The reddish brown substance on the floor is a combination of feces and blood. Origin of these materials is unknown. The enclosure must be cleaned on a bi-weekly basis.  John Avery, personally known as D5933, shouted at the other D-class in the cell. SCP-173, what the f**k are you looking at? came to reply. This worried John as he was staring intently at SCP-173 and the other D-class was standing behind John facing the other direction. Then John heard the worst sound any human being has ever heard, a sneeze coming from six inches behind his head. For a second John remembered an episode of Mythbusters he had seen before being arrested. Before coming here, were they tested to see if someone could sneeze with his eyes open. He never saw the end.  F**k! John managed to get out. SCP-173, Addendum 1. Some data expunged, SCP-173, appeared to multiply, producing two identical copies. Two D-class personnel were killed. It is unknown how this process occurred. Each instance of SCP-173, now labeled SCP-173-1 and SCP-173-2, is to be moved to individual cells each following original containment procedures, SCP-173 Addendum 2. When data expunged, a second multiplication event occurred, SCP-173-1-4, are to be each contained as per original containment procedures, objects reclassed as Keter, SCP-173-3. Security breach occurred on data expunged. Assuming a simple geometric regression, at least 61 copies of SCP-173 are as of now unaccounted 4. It is unknown how they replicated so fast, or how they replicate at all. Video evidence of the containment breach shows multiple instances of SCP-173 working in unison across multiple cells to achieve the breach. Most of the instances still in captivity appear to have formed a rear guard, blocking Foundation agents from pursuing other instances. It is theorized that SCP-173 has a Hive Intelligence, where intelligence scales with the number of nearby copies. See revised security procedures for containing SCP-173 copies. Revised Special Containment Procedures. All copies of SCP-173 are to be contained in form-fitting metal containers, and sent using SCP-173-2 to the now abandoned Foundation facility on the Moon. They are to be fitted with tracking colors that will detect if any of them leave the Moon. SCP-173 Addendum 4. SCP-173 has caused a breach in secrecy for the SCP Foundation. Estimates at this time are roughly 500,000 civilian deaths across North America in the last 48 hours due to SCP-173, and hundreds of thousands of sightings and pieces of video evidence. Computer television news programs have obtained video of SCP-173, and are providing instructions for avoiding instant death. Dr. Bright is in charge of the containment. SCP-173 Addendum 5. SCP-173 has besieged and destroyed four Foundation facilities near simultaneously in the last 24 hours. Each instance shows the characteristic strength exhibited in the original, and thousands working in unison are capable of ripping open concrete bunkers and compromising foot-thick steel doors. Research is ongoing to find a way to combat this threat. Personal log of Dr. Bright. Date expunged. I've been killed 37 times in the last week. They can smell me somehow, regardless of what body I'm in. The majority decision of the remaining O5s is that this is an XK, and they're gonna deal with the problem. Or the Russians are. They're evacuating this base, which means there won't be a single Foundation scientist anywhere in the new world. They say they're gonna try to evacuate the surviving civilians, but I doubt it. There can't be more than a couple hundred people in all of North America. The only good news is that about 150 of the bastards teamed up and ripped SCP-682 apart. Brought a smile to my face. Revised Special Containment Procedures. Containment Zone X1, formerly North and South America, is to be denied access. Following saturation nuclear bombing on date expunged, number of SCP-173 instances has been reduced. All available Foundation resources are to be redirected to monitoring the ocean to ensure the integrity of Containment Zone X1. Foundation adjuncts from national navies are to perform around-the-clock patrols and sonar sweeps. Detected instances are to be contained and removed to SCP-173 for transport to the lunar containment site. SCP-173, Addendum 6. Right-sighting of SCP-173 in... Wales, the United Kingdom. Nuclear bombardment authorized and executed. No survivors. End of file. To learn more about the SCP Foundation, subscribe to SCP Orientation today and turn the notification bell on so you don't miss any of our videos.