Yeah, yes. All right Okay, hey everybody, we're live with Stefano talking about ML apps. What's what's going on with that? Take it away, sir. All right. Yes. Thanks everybody. Wow exciting So let me go immediately and share my screen so you can see some of the slide in the meanwhile I say hi everybody. This is fascinating ML and DevOps are quite interesting combination There is a lot of talking recently about optimizing learning It's the fun.  I Cannot see it. Let me try it again. Okay There we go Thank you so much. Yeah One final thing could you close a little window on the upper right-hand side? Yes Yeah, just close it Yeah, thank you Awesome So yes, so why not the best of the two words the DevOps and machine learning together so I Won't just to share some experience and see how we can combine together Use the best of our machine learning operation or ML Ops or as it is called Right, so ML Ops is a way to recognize a Way of automating all the experiments that we build in machine learning This doesn't have to be necessarily as your machine learning studio It can be any application of machine learning So what actually means in a nutshell is bringing your machine learning code into production today If you have worked with machine learning before that the scientists typically They start Working on their own laptop. They beat an experiment and they like to experiment a lot and because machine learning is great Obviously, then it's really hard to find don't that specific Experiment that you're looking for that the solution that the business needs if everything is Consolidated on the data scientists laptop. So we really want to make a way of continuously delivering any improving The process all the good stuff that they've also brings but apply specifically to machine learning. So You may stay now on your laptop as a data scientist for some time and then before you get a formal dev environment Or a staging environment or you at T Eventually bring in operation now the reality is that from my experience a lot of data scientists that they Work in isolation or in their own team because you know, that's the environment They know the best and they do stuff like are or Python Which is typically a bit different from other mainstream the programming languages that you find for web or mobile application and They work all the experiment and also machines. They're running some GPU for example that are specific for deep learning also for some advanced machine learning and At the end that what happens? They just throw over the wall this code Straight into our production environment. There is very little Management around it, you know, it violates all the best practices when it comes to good software engineering There is where ML Ops comes in so ML Ops or ML operation or DevOps for ML call it the way you like it brings machine learning to great software best practices now ML Ops gives you really a ton of advantages and I can speak now for hours about it, but just to give you some ideas is all about Being able to reproduce and audit your process, you know When a model a machine learning model is built from You want to have some sort of verification or audit ability On it making sure that you're using the correct data set making sure that when there is a change this change is probably tracked and a New version of the model is created and then when you go into a production There is a pipeline that is followed rather than just taking the model throwing all the way around and making Hopefully sure that it works correctly Then because we are using the option basically you'll be able to automate this validation I'm checking that the code and the model itself is a correctly profiled and version and At the end you have also the possibility to measure the performance of it and feed that is back to the original code to the original And the region model to improve the accuracy of the model itself This is the advantage of automating this process Not only you train the model you deploy into different environments but you're actually making improving over time with collecting feedback and Retraining the model over and over again until your accuracy improves over time So what happens? This is no typical scenario in a In a Context of a dev process that is not particularly Automated from a machine learning side. Maybe the developer on the the traditional app developer on the top left corner Is already using a strong DevOps pipeline So they build the application in Visual Studio VS code they deploy it they deploy automatically with DevOps pipeline and all works well, but your data scientists, you know, which is just down there in the corner Maybe they're using something different like a Uptemnet and Notebook or a machine learning studio. They don't really fit into the typical scenario of Context of Development of the mobile of the web Developers so what happens we want to make it better right? So we want to make the data scientist first-class citizen developer in all our DevOps practice so we're looking into No, starting making this process be more Reproducible so now you want to reproduce these over and over again and making And automated as much as possible. So instead of just throwing away the the code from all the Laptops of your data scientists straight into production and you know, if you ever work with machine learning studio, that's what happens Machine learning studio is fantastic because you can build your machine learning experiment with low code or with UI that simplifies your machine learning experiment and then just with that one click Publish into production publishes a rest API. You have a public endpoint to completely serverless hosted in Azure and Protected with a token so high availability high scalability is perfect It just that it goes directly from the dev environment Which is in the browser in Azure machine learning suite or with a click and controlled into a public endpoint So where is the DevOps in there? Where is the auditing? Where is the control that we want to have to make sure that the correct version is deployed that the model is Properly trained that what the any changes version and so on and this is where the the operation on ML comes into action. So instead of just throwing the code Into production straight away, you want to check your model into a model store. That's the difference and also is like a Source code repository, but it's specifically for models for all your train data set and What does this model store does? Well, it compares models against the different models Variation of the models over time so you can add a validation step You can you know, you want to validate not just after you check the modeling But after you roll it out into production you make sure that the things haven't changed and finally after you roll it out into production you want to use Sophisticated the deployment tools like a bit testing or canary and they all feed this information back So collect the limetry collect performance of the model and use it for retraining Improving the accuracy as I mentioned before and then you carry on with the process of publishing these over and over again This is where ML Ops helps in bringing the power of automation in DevOps to machine learning as well In Azure, this is extremely simple and extremely integrated This is the beauty about it because we are talking about Azure machine learning studio We are talking about machine learning virtual machines or containers running in Azure But we are doing this also in the context of Azure DevOps So the two tools really talk together in a very very nice way Now there are a lot of Combination of tools that can be used But you know to make ML Ops easier in some way already today you can start with your DevOps pipeline and You know automate the deployment of machine learning training services There are a few things that I want to mention from this slide, which I believe are quite important First of all, you don't have to do everything necessarily in the cloud Meaning with the machine learning studio as a low code environment you can also use any SDK Python SDK or R SDK and Use ARM templates For building your infrastructure as code So whatever you're using is a CPU or a GPU for some specific framework It's all completely automated and it's part of the deployment The build and release pipelines So speaking of the pipelines You may be familiar already with the Azure DevOps pipelines the support of a play through our languages the platforms any cloud extensible with different frameworks and also support obviously for containers the like AKS for example now in this context As we'll see in a moment yet the possibility to Build the tasks that deploy your infrastructure for running a specific GPU that contains a specific framework in Azure or to build a Release pipeline that publish a specific endpoint that you have a previously Built with the Azure machine learning studio and Moving forward going to the most specific. I have just a couple of slides and I'll show you this in action There is a Sort of creating an awareness of machine learning into DevOps. So think of Azure DevOps being really ML aware and All these elements are now part of the different releases the different stages and like you would normally do with any code like in Node.js in C sharp in In JavaScript whatever programming language you use for your web or mobile application It will do a subtly the same for a machine learning Experiment and model. So that's probably The the advantage and the difference from the traditional DevOps to the ML Ops Not only you're controlling the code itself You're also controlling the models the versioning of the models into this model store All right, I Mentioned before let's make the data scientists like our first-class Developer so they can also benefit of the automation tools. This is what happens with Release pipeline so the pipeline that can capture all your All your infrastructure requirements unit testing code reviews and any Any tasks that you really want to automate and there are tasks that are specific to machine learning like training the model itself and Scoring it evaluating it retraining it if you are familiar with Typical workflow of a machine learning experiment You know that there is an initial step where you load the data set and then you split the data set into what is meant for training and what is meant for Prediction so of for testing then you have the training process itself for the scoring Which is the prediction part of it and the evaluation which compares one? Algorithm one train model to another one and look for what is the best result in terms of accuracy in terms of recalls in terms of Other factors that identify the performance of an algorithm over another one so all these Conditions that are typically done by a data scientist Looking into a tool like Azure machine learning studio that provides all this information on screen But they are a manual task. You can automate as part of a release pipeline and and publish these also as a Release note. So this is the the benefit that you get into these automation part of it and Yeah, so this is some way summarize what I just mentioned that you know you package your model and you can also Use containers. So there is a very strong integration with the cloud infrastructure as well If you are on a path or completely serverless platform Absolutely fine to use the publish endpoint in a machine learning studio but if you're running some Custom code or some specific frameworks like pytorch or tensor flow then you may want to run this into a specific container and Obviously you have all the benefit of Azure in managing your own container cluster Starting from an image that is already pre-configured can publish the model validate and and run all the other steps from for for deployment and Monitoring on AKS on Azure Kubernetes services so at the end from From a lifecycle perspective You have your automated deployment You can package it you can You know you start with with your board with with your product backlog item with your code you build it deploying publish into operations environment into containers into Serverless and have a Monitoring capability all across it. So you really have an end-to-end Solution for your DevOps also on machine learning So all the tools that you are already familiar you can totally use them as In a machine learning experiment with the addition that some specific pipelines for build testing and release are optimized for machine learning and code and models because Besides having the traditional build and release pipelines you also have a training pipeline and a model management as mentioned before so the possibility to manage the a model version and All the changes in the model store and the possibility to train Retrain the model all part of the same pipeline and this pretty much summarize what I mentioned from End-point perspective all this information is also in GitHub. I'll send you the The URL the GitHub repository at the end in my last slide. You have the entire ML Life cycle managed. So let me go now and show you Very quickly some of these Inaction I have MLops demo starting with a video anomaly Detection code this code is all on GitHub on the Microsoft repository So it's all public open source free to use it. I have a bit of a Python code I mean to mean a bit here, you know, you can do a few things like Make splitting the images Recognizing some specific components of the image itself. So after I get all the different split also basically Subsection of the image I can do a bit of optimization Unfortunately, we don't have the time to go into all the details of the code I just want to show you a few things like the training part of it Here is where you start the training and then after doing the training configure a bit of parameters there for Optimizing the performance of your train model and these are all documented on the GitHub repository and Then go into the execution itself of the pipeline So now I want to define the pipeline that I start coding and look at this may be a bit Overwhelming if you've never done Python before but your data scientists, I promise you they will know where to put hands This is an ordinary code for a data scientist that is able to write Python code But you see the steps so initialize the model run the the training process itself and then at the end Monitoring also the performance with some matrix that Understand the weather the model is performing the way is expected to perform And then if I keep on scrolling here, here we go we go into the pipeline itself. So No, sorry, that was the matrix once I go to that I find the pipeline Yes, here is where I registered my model and then I so once the model is registered Is added to the pipeline and I can start deploying whether it's a GPU or a CPU or a container with specific configuration. This is all part of the The config the the configuration of the pipeline itself Which is deployed infrastructure as a code. So for example here I'm also storing some video data in a blob store. So I procure a provision of some additional Infrastructure in in Azure and I can control access Completely from code. So I have the possibility not to automate these Pipeline of a build and release using Python in this case. You can do the same also using our Although Python is getting a particularly popular Lately in the machine learning studio and here we are at the end. I run the pipeline So the pipeline is built I can validate and I can run it and they will run in My source code repository. So I'm here. I have a list of all the experiments that I built And the pipelines that they have so if I dig into one of these I can see the performance of of each execution So I need to dig into that see all the steps that have been completed and By step and see what happened each parameter each stage of this step Gonna go a bit quicker here. So back to my experiment. I Can show you basically how the performance is represented on a graphical level and How the execution of the pipeline can also optimize the deployment of Resources so pipeline Let me be the new pipeline here The first thing that I need when I build a pipeline is to define obviously the resources of the artifact that I need in this case I am building a Machine learning experiment. So I configure my service endpoint and after that I can add another artifact which is the Where the code is the repository itself all is in Azure DevOps, so it's all integrated. So it looks easy to configure If you are familiar with the process, you know, you select the source code repository You select the branch and then you just add this artifact to the pipeline And after the artifact there are different tasks that you can execute to the one that I need There is the Azure CLI because with the CLI I can run command directly on my Azure portal so I can use these CLI command extension for creating any resource as the Python code was As implemented before There are some initialization script that contains some Some parameters that I need to provide and again this will be all provided into the The the GitHub repository, so I'm doing a bit of copy and paste here to make it a bit quicker and once I have my deployment Pipeline I'm basically ready to go just save it and I can then Release it and and the release will carry on in the usual way I have the pipeline I define the artifact and this will Start will spin off for some Containers because in this case Remember in the Python code. I have allocated some containers or the blob storage and it will run Very quickly and hopefully will show It is will show how all the containers have been deployed. So not Not extremely sophisticated way of working. It's very Linear if you are familiar already with With DevOps and the only thing is that you have to control these Azure resources with the CLI so using Python or are From a code perspective, but this will help you to automate the process itself now On GitHub repository, you will find this diagram that basically Represent in one picture everything that I just said and this is a great resource to start I know that not all the boxes may be Readable from here. So let me zoom in in and go step by step The first part as I mentioned is the training part of it part of it So it's a data scientist that you want to know update the code and publish into your repo and Then then build your pipeline and this is all about training your model and after that There is the process of evaluation and registration of the model That is then published to a pipeline a release pipeline So before it was a big pipeline and then the second part is the release pipeline Where you have an opportunity to decide which environment? Which infrastructure on whether he's a container so whether he's going on a KS or Completely pass is completely up to you completely automated you define the steps and then it just go one by one So get started. There are two GitHub repository on the Microsoft account ML ops and ML ops Python, which is more optimized obviously if you are familiar with Python where you can find all this information and That's it. It will help you get to start all open source plenty of documentation and if you need obviously any support any guidance, I'm really Available to help reach out to me social coordinates on screen my Twitter and Thank you very much. Hey, Stefano, can you hear us over there? I'm gonna switch to Q&A. Can you hear us? Okay? Oh We can't hear it. Can everybody hear Stefano out there? We're trying. No, you're fine. I we're trying something on our side of here and someone on the chat Say we're confirmed that you can hear myself and Stefano We can't hear him. That's what I was afraid of. All right, so we're gonna get the echo back here Hey, can go ahead and speak Stefano now. Yes. Perfect. Now we can hear him, right? Yeah, I guess where do you guys hear the echo still? la la Yes, sweet. So we're gonna wrap this up. There weren't any questions. So I think everybody was scared It was great content Thank you so much for for sharing this from sharing the slides everybody. We are going to be putting this on On a github repository with all the slides for all the speakers or the for the conference So if you want to go look at some of that later on, uh, we'll well, that's where we'll find it We'll post it on twitter and I think I'm sure we'll probably blog about it. Oh, yeah, definitely. Yep So Stefano, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us and sharing your knowledge Everybody we're gonna get we're gonna hang up here Stefano and get david up and going. Thank you so much


Hello everybody! This video will help you to restore access to WMKeeper WinPro after reinstalling Windows or formatting the hard disk. After starting WMKeeper WinPro, the program suggests you to enter WMID and the POS word as well as the location where POS key files are kept. As it is the first attempt to enter the program from this computer, or it happens after reinstallation of the operating system, WMKeeper WinPro cannot find the utility file and suggests selecting the possible cause for it, as well as the situation with availability of a key file. It asks you to specify the file path and enter the file password. Step 1 is recovering the key file. In order to recover a key file, KWM, start Hetman Partition Recovery and scan the flash drive or hard disk where you used to keep the key file before reinstalling Windows or formatting the disk. If the key file was kept on the computer's hard disk, it would be fine if you remember the folder where it was saved. It will make the search easier. Select the file you need and save it to a convenient location. And then you can proceed with entering your WebMoney account using WMKeeper WinPro. Step 2 – recovering WMID transaction history and internal correspondence The description of restoring access to WebMoney wallets will be incomplete if we don't mention one more thing – how to restore WMID transaction history and internal correspondence. If you are using WMKeeper WinPro, the entire history of your WMID is kept in the wallet file on your computer. This file has the name of your WMID and the extension PWM. Keeper creates it automatically when working and saves it by default to the user's profile on disk C. In addition to that file, there are three other files in the user's WebMoney folder. WMKeeper WinPro creates and uses them when starting and loading the transaction history. Here they are. Certainly you can see the transaction history on your wallets with the help of a report service on the WebMoney site, but you can also try recovering it in your Keeper. To do it, start Hetman Partition Recover and recover the lost wallet files of your WMID and the contents of the folder C, users, username, app data, roaming, WebMoney, using full analysis. Then copy all recovered files into the folder C, users, username, app data, roaming, WebMoney, then start WMKeeper again and enter the password to your WMID. As a result, WMKeeper will load with the history files you have recovered. Thank you for watching. We'll be glad to answer any questions and comments. If you liked this video, click the Like button below and subscribe to our channel to see more.


science. Science has given us social media. We're going to talk about that today. Hi, Ethan. Hi, Jay. But let's not blame social media strictly on science here. It's a creature of the culture, you know. Thank you. It's a creature of humanity. Right.   It's the way it is. And it is the way it is with the human species, too. We do collaborate and sometimes our collaboration goes off the track. We don't always collaborate well, you know. Right. Although it has gotten us this far, our question is what happens now. Right.  And so we made a little list of the branches of government to see how they were doing. The executive is turning into an authoritarian dictatorship. Some people call it a sole proprietorship, not a government. You know, where he's running everything and his departments are inconsequential and he's got this technique of making people do exactly what he wants and not talking back or he punishes them. Look at this new investigation into the, you know, the creation of the investigation, the mother investigation. That's punishment, you know, what it is. So what you have is a kind of dictatorship emerging and that branch of government is compromised, changing in front of our eyes, as a matter of fact, and we can't seem to do anything about it. The legislature, the Congress is also, it's dramatically changed, profoundly changed, and it is non-functional. Wait till September, when we get back to the money issues and the budget issues, it could be the biggest disaster in American history. Yeah, finally, on the ground, it seems to be lost. Yeah, and Congress has not done any real business for at least two years now. So we're in deep kimchi about the legislative branch. It's non-functional. Okay, then we get into the judicial. You know, this has been coming for a while through a couple of public administrations where, you know, the people in the constituencies that surround the president have had a big effect on his appointments of judges, and we have had a serious, you know, shift to the appointment of conservative judges. And Obama's judges, they couldn't even get a hearing. So now we have lots of federal courts, which are really turned to the right.  Some of them may, may, you know, find a better way, but a lot of them are stuck in this kind of Republican conservative ideology, which does not include preserving the Constitution, which means, you know, following the Donald Trump's view of the world, which is really not, not what the founder's intended, and following his, following his, you know, view of things and his agenda.  We don't realize that there's a huge number of judges that would be appointed and quietly confirmed by the Republican Senate without, without any discussion at all. They just rubber stamp whoever he appoints. This is really problematic. Okay, and okay, then you get, you get other, those are the three branches of government. And the department heads have become obedient or non-existent or appointed on a, you know, what do you call it, an acting basis. So we don't hear much from them except we hear how bad they are. The, my goodness, the press is losing ground. You know, he says the failing New York Times, he says, and you know, I'm not, I'm not sure what that means, but I noticed that CNN just did early outs for a hundred of its news staff. So some of the press may not be making enough money to continue the, the fight, so to speak, against the failing government. Then we have education. Education has not been right in this country for decades. And we have the product of it of people who are really not educated or do critical thinking or read the newspaper to the extent there are still newspapers. 2,400, you know, was it journalists or newspapers that disappeared in the last couple of years. So the public getting educated. They should, they should watch Think Tech. We can help. There we go. So that, and you know, the inability of the public to actually engage on, on political issues and on, you know, national issues is, is becoming a real impediment to the national decision process. Yeah. And so you're blaming all these ills on social media? No, I'm not. But I'm saying one of the other elements in this pie, which we talk, we should talk about today is social media. It has emerged. It has replaced the press in many ways. It has had a huge effect on the executive who uses it to communicate directly to the public without, you know, any real thought process, whatever, whatever he does in the morning, whatever hamburger he has for breakfast at three in the morning, you know, whatever, whatever his immediate inclinations are, bingo, it's on, it's on Twitter. And other politicians are doing that too. He's not the only one. Social media has a huge effect among the electorate who may not be educated or reading papers because there aren't so many papers. They are getting their information from social media. And then you have foreign countries coming in and trying to affect our elections and our thought process and divide us and neutralize our political will. Okay, they're using social media. It's important we should understand some of why social media has this kind of influence and impact, right? That's it. Right.  It's very timely, right? You can something can go wrong and literally six out of seven people in the planet can know about it in moments.  Two, it's short and catchy. Typically, social media things are a few words, a sentence, one picture, right? You don't have to spend 20 minutes reading through six pages of detailed texts. You don't have to decipher complex graphs. You don't have to deeply think about it.  That's very appealing. And then there's a really the subtle but underlying problem is basically bad news is something we pay a lot of attention to people. And that's built into our DNA because our ancestors who didn't pay attention to potentially bad news didn't survive. You can afford not to pay attention to good news, you could afford miss a meal, miss out on a mating opportunity, whatever, that really didn't hurt you too badly. But you missed out on the rustling in the bush that was, you know, a lion, you didn't reproduce. So we are we come by this ability to pay attention to, to hear, to focus in on bad news exorbitantly, way out of balance. And those things that it's short, it's, it's pithy, easy to remember, and it's negative. That's what social media is so good at doing, right? Now, you could argue they should be able to do that with good news, but they have to do it twice as hard to make it work. Now, it's a weapon. I mean, you want to assassinate somebody in public social media will help you do that. Right. Right. You want to you want to tell lies, social media will will extend your opportunities globally to tell lies. You know, any lie that's repeated often enough, some people begin to believe it. You could you could start saying sunrise in the West. And if Donald Trump tweeted that zillion times, there'd be a fair number of people who would agree this unrises in the West. Right. So it confuses things, it un clarifies things. Right. And at the end of the day, it's divisive. I think by its nature, it's divisive. You don't have to be a Russian, a Russian misinformation person to, to make social media divide people. It has an inherent ability to divide people. Right. I would argue that it has that same ability to be used to bring people together. That's not what's happening, though. But it's not being used that way. It is a technology that's not relatively neutral, but is being used more to insert those wedges to help make people think opposite ways, drive them into one camp or another rather than helping us understand our commonalities. Right. So you you can create create little communities that are distinguished themselves from all other communities. And these communities are divided in these communities cannot. Well, they they stand in the way of national will. Right. They stand in the way of positive developments, because they're always arguing with each other. Right. And then you throw into social media little threats. Again, this is negative stuff. And so you pay a lot of attention. You pretend you put some message out about your community being under siege under threat from some other community. And sort of fear monitoring. Yes, people hear it. They retweet it. They remember it, spread it. And the next person who hears it remembers it to spread it. Yeah, it tends tends to go big. Hey, let's talk about hate. Yeah, social media is a natural for hate. Right. I mean, it is it's a channel. Yeah, opens itself up to spread that right. And it's too bad because it could be used to help. You know, I mean, really, to help us all see our common ground, right? You see the person in outer Mongolia is facing the same problems as we are, you know, they want to survive they want to happy, healthy family, you know, they want to get along in the world.  All of us want those same things, right? And social media could be reinforcing that message. But that doesn't really suit a lot of people to do that. So when Zuckerberg was, you know, an undergraduate at Harvard, and he wanted to help people get dates. Really? He never he never envisioned that this would happen. And he's the leader and he's picking up steam as a matter of fact. And the notion of trying to, you know, satisfy governmental concerns and, you know, congressional inquiries and all that. That's not going to happen. I don't think I don't think Facebook is going to change materially. I don't think it's going to happen. It's going to continue. It's going to expand. It's driven, at least as far as the owners and Zuckerberg are concerned by money and power. You know, it must give them a certain psychic benefit to know that they have a platform that is universal, ubiquitous everywhere in the world. Just a couple of decades, he's just moving, move this whole new introduce this whole new vehicle for communication that is now so widely used that literally, you know, six sevenths of the Earth's population, you know, has access to it. It's going to continue. Right. You know, one of the things about it is that you and I may have a computer at home, or a television, a cable television where you listen to certain news. But you know, a lot of people in the world, they only have phones. And phones are the perfect device, the perfect platform. Social media is so effective. You know, for a few bucks, you can have, you can be part of this huge global community. Right.  You have, you have education that isn't really so good. You have, you have social media, you have social media that all these things create a kind of intellectual vacuum among people. They need to be part of a larger, a larger group. They need information. They need to be told what to do. They need to, you know, need to satisfy those fears talked about. And social media to the rescue, it comes and it sort of fills the void for them. Right. And it actually reinforces the failure of government and the failure of positive institutions that can actually work together for, you know, effective and constructive political will. So I think what's happening in the US is a, is a sort of, it runs a parallel to what's happening in many other places. Oh, yeah, we see, we see very similar things happening in the Philippines, various parts of Europe these days. Venezuela. Yeah, Venezuela.  It's also subject to misinformation. And there are people out there, it's not just Putin, by the way, there are people out there would love to see these governmental institutions crumble, be confused and crumble. They would love to see chaos. Because if somebody else is in chaos, you're better, you're better off. And you have leverage over that. Yeah, it's classic zero sum thinking, right? You know, somebody else for me to gain somebody has to lose, right? And that's, that's unfortunate. We don't, we don't have to play that game, right? We can all realize that we can all rise together and become better, better people and better countries, do better things, help one another, create good stuff by working together by really collaborating as we do have, we do have a very fundamental instincts to do that. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. We would not have survived as a species if we were not collaborating. So far, so far, so good. But maybe there are too many of us. Maybe we're at a tipping point in the species and in human history, where we cannot support, you know, eight billion people anymore. And what we have built is is going to come apart and, and leave the world able to support only x billion less. I will I will have to say in sort of opposition to your rather dark trend analysis here that you're making, you're making a convincing case. If you read Steven Pinker's book, Enlightenment Now, he presents a massive array of data. It's a big book, a massive data set after data set after data set that says basically, no, we're doing really well. Okay, violence is down, education is up, lifespan is up, health is doing better. All these things were really doing much better. And it's a very consistent trend around countries all around the world for decades, if not centuries. Yeah, once he's smoking, let's take a short break, Ethan, we'll come back and we'll come around to these positive things that he talks about that you talk about. And we'll see if we can sort of make a little list of all the things that are positive, and all the things we need to do to achieve a positive result or save ourselves, if you will, there we go in the in our lifetimes in the years coming coming soon, we'll be right back. I can hardly wait.  Aloha, I'm Cynthia Sinclair, and I'm Tim Appachella, we're hosts here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to thinktechhawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks so much. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My show is based on my book, also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership, and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports, and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11am. Aloha. Okay, well, Ethan Allen and I, we have we have joined issue, if you will, on the failure of customary, you know, developing institutions in our world today in our global village today. We have tried to paint, you know, try to figure out where social media fits in all of that. And he has pointed out that going forward there may be a better picture available to us and social media will definitely be involved in that picture. And since this is lackable science, the first thing we should do before we figure out, you know, the affirmative steps to take is we should evaluate where this science is going.  And the first question, of course, is the platform itself? Because if I tell you that of the 8 billion people, it won't be long before all 8 billion people, and maybe more, have the platform and they are therefore are involved in social media. So the question is, what is science and technology going to do? First thing is, well, 5G is coming. It's inevitable. It's going to come to all of those devices. And everybody is going to have the benefit of that. But I think there's more social media in terms of software, it will become more sophisticated. I don't think, as I said before, I don't think that Mark Zuckerberg is really going to fix the problems that ale us. But he will advance the advanced the technology will have, you know, more magnetic and highly leveraged function functionality with social media. Right. So, so yes, I'd like to know what we can do. But first, can you tell me how this is going to become more powerful in the years to come? Well, I mean, I think if you simply look at the trends over the past years, you know, more people are using more social media more often for more things now. And we see no reason I see no reason why that's going to change. People can just say, Oh, no, I don't want to do that anymore. At least I don't, I don't believe that's going to happen. So yes, the question then becomes, is it going to materially change direction some sense is is social media going to become more of a force for unification for good for education for learning or before us? First of all, I mean, one of the things that came up maybe 90 days ago was when Trump said he was establishing a national social media system, where he could speak to the nation about national issues, maybe national emergencies, for example, where he would get on the horn, so to speak, he would get on his Twitter account or some other social media. And he would talk to us all 320 million of us right now today, him to us mano a mano talk to all of us and that's perfectly doable, especially for a president who sees the benefit of having social media connections with everyone in the country. He doesn't need no no legislature. He doesn't need no department heads. He doesn't need no courts. He wants to talk to us. After all, he's doing a soul, a soul enterprise, a soul, a soul proprietorship type government. So I see that coming in the future, where a person in political power will control social media in some way like that, and will be able to talk to us, all of us, and give us comments, news, lies, instructions. Gosh, I don't know what. Don't you think that's coming and how would that affect things? It might well be coming. I guess I'm maybe a little more of an optimist than you. I think there are probably enough people in the legislative and judicial branches who are power hungry enough themselves that they will resent being squashed down and made into nobodies, and they will stand up and say, no, you can't do this. We have a constitution that says there are three co-equal branches of government, and we insist upon having our say. That wouldn't be in the US Senate, but maybe in the House. House so far, right? Yes, and that's our big hope, I agree. And so, yeah, I mean, that is frightening. If he can co-opt, if anyone in authority can co-opt that much bandwidth, basically, of that many people that often they can insert a very powerful message that they can tell whatever message they want and tell often enough enough people that some percentage of people will absolutely believe it, even if it's completely ridiculous. That's happening now. Oh, yeah. But let me take my tongue-in-cheek suggestion even further. So, okay, he is the master. This one leader is the master of social media in this country. Social media is ubiquitous. It's in every country, and to the extent that he can leverage the ability to speak to every country, then he would do that. And we could conceivably get to a point where one person, through social media, and degrading all forms of representative government and all that, can speak to the world and tell them what to do and tell them the truth, or maybe not. Isn't that in the cards with social media? Isn't that the cards the way humanity works? Isn't that the cards with the evolution of the species using this kind of technology? How can we moderate that? How can we stop that? I don't see any significant steps being taken to restrain that possibility. No, I mean, I suspect, if it doesn't happen from a central authoritarian government figure, I could see it happening sort of on the dark side of things. Some, now to the blue, some voice is talking to us all. And yes, big brother. Yes, we're co-opting all of our channels and telling us whatever it wants to tell us. Right, and people are following. You know, it's like in China, Xi Jinping has this social quotient thing, where everything you do, everywhere you go, you're being watched and rated measured. And then you have a very complicated algorithm that gives you a social quotient. And that determines whether you can get on a train or a plane, whether you have advantages in your business or a personal life. Financing possibility, the whole thing, is determined by this algorithm. And people in China, now not everybody agrees, but people in China go along with it, because they feel that it helps raise the level of obedience of conduct that is constructive to support Xi Jinping and Xi Jinping and the country in general. So they have been, I don't want to say brainwashed, but they have come to the point where this works for them and they'll support it. Even though in the US, at least theoretically, not a lot of people would go for that. So, you know, it's the same thing here, isn't it? There are people who support what Trump does, even though it's ridiculous what he does, it's irrational what he does, it's obviously not helping anyone, but they support it anyway. It's helping a few people, a lot of them will ask them to help. It's helping a few of his friends, but not helping the poor guys in the south, for example, who are losing the social safety net, but continuing to support him anyway. So, you know, there's a kind of hypnotic trance involved in all of this. And I think social media includes that. It's a weird thing. It's a weird part of that DNA you spoke of. Yeah, and this is why I think that there really should be a conversation like this happening more on national level. And what do we want social media to do? You know, do we really want it to become a vehicle for an authoritarian figure to brainwash the whole population? I don't really want that. You don't want it. And I actually suspect most people don't want it. You want it to be a forum for dialogue and to share our common wishes, our better desires? Yes, I think, again, most people would say we do, you know. So, let's let's do that. Let's help make it. Let's essentially tell the people who are in charge of social media, Mark Huckerberg and his pals, that no, we don't really want hate speech on there. We don't want people urging violence. We don't want people posting videos of school shootings.  This is the Enlightenment you talked about. Exactly. Well, you know, I wonder if there's a way to measure if we're going there or not going there. I mean, I think there's a lot of people in the world who are well-intentioned, who want to do the right thing, who believe in decency and fairness and future fellow man well and all that, right woman. But you know, but the question really is where was the drift? I don't know if this is something we can get metrics on, but there's a possibility, and I would entertain it as a possibility, that more and more social media is a weapon against all of that. It's to hurt people. It's to spread disinformation. It's to manipulate people. It's all the wrong things. And as you said before, I mean, there's a certain thing in the human DNA that is afraid and that seeks bad news because bad news is threatening in some way and the human species needs to know bad news and so we've formed little communities and we are so angry with the other community. I mean, I see social media as an essential element in the divisiveness that he, Trump, is suggesting. And so if you look at some of these shootings, for example, right, you find that people were motivated by social media to do these horrendous crimes. That's very significant in terms of the way it works. Absolutely. And that is, I think it's, again, it's a technology, it's sort of neutral, but because of human nature, it's being commonly used more in a negative sense than a positive sense. So it means there needs to be a concerted effort on all of our parts, basically, to turn it around. He use it, make it an instrument for social good. It's not going to happen overnight. It's not going to happen just because you say it or I say it.  We don't want, we don't want bullying. We don't want, you know, mayhem and violence to become our daily diet. We really want to, we want social media to help us be the best we can be and make the world the best place. I certainly agree that would be wonderful, but I feel it's a kind of race. It's a race between the good and the bad. It's a race between, you know, water crats and the good guys and the query whether the good guys have a leader that will lead them in that direction. The jury is out. Right. But I think we're starting off with a lot behind, the good guys are somewhat behind in this race. Well, I'm, I'm comforted, but only to a limited degree. This conversation has to continue. Yes.  We have to look back later and see how it all worked out. True. True. Will you come back? I certainly do. Come back and join you. All right. Sounds excellent. Thank you, Ethan. Take care. So science is not always likeable.


The Queen's Saifo Manzani, I'm nothing like Mjekajík. Veteran actor Saifo Manzani may have captured the hearts of Mzansi TV fans with his role as Mjekajík on The Queen, but he says he and his character are nothing alike. Mjekajík is a simple man that is often bullied by his wife Petronella, but Saifo says that he is not a pushover in real life and has often stood up to authority if he felt it was needed. I guess people see me on screens and think that I am like Mjekajík but I can be very assertive if needs be. I am married and love my wife but she does not treat me like Petronella treats her husband. I wouldn't stick around for that. Still, he says it is fun to get into character and play someone completely different. That is the joy of acting, for hours a day you are someone else. But the good thing is you can step away from it at the end of the day and be yourself. I love Mjekajík and I think a lot of people can relate to him. It is a great character to play. Saifo said he prepared for the role by watching the likes of Joe Mofflin's Guds Nacy. He was an incredible actor with so much talent. He made it look so effortless. I watch him and others like him and tried to put myself in the same space. He said the biggest lesson he had learned from playing Mjekajík was patience. I think some of the things he goes through are crazy. He literally has to have the patience of a saint to not lose his cool. I am a calm man but I had to step into a whole new space to play his he added with a laugh. And despite their troubles on screen, Saifo said he was in awe of actress Thambsi Matu, who plays Petronella on the show. She is an incredible actress with so much depth and so humble. You know, she is just as fun on set as her character is on the show. I have learned so much from her.


Upgrade your smartphone with Appalachian Wireless. Get $300 off selected models. Capture memories. Stream and stay connected. Put the latest technology. Visit one of our stores or AppalachianWireless.com right now. This is the first art exhibit I have ever done. I've never done anything like this before. Tia Bentley completed her first digital art piece in 2012 and her passion has flourished ever since. A lot of these art pieces really reflect the things that I love. Animals, environments, landscapes. Visitors to the Appalachian Center for the Arts will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in Bentley's imaginative world. There's a section that has dinosaurs. There's a section that has northern lights, kind of like this one here. There's one where I've got stuff for games that I've made, stuff for neon mob, which is a trading card collecting game. I'll make sets for those so you can actually go and collect my art. One of the focal points of Bentley's exhibit is her mastery of gaming graphics. Her digital creations capture the essence of video game landscapes, characters, and adventures. Some of them are just pieces that I've done in my spare time when I wanted to practice. This one is actually for a game, Phil Varks. Most of these are actually for Phil Varks in here. The exhibit will open its doors to the public on July 7th with free admission and will remain open for a limited time. If you guys want to come out, it's going to be from 6 to 8 at the Appalachian Center for the Arts. I'll be here. I can answer questions. I can walk around. Come say hi. Reporting from Mountain Top News, I'm Ethan Miller.


What we read was, when you come in here, if you come to the Himba village, as he just explained, a man can give the wife to a friend, my brother, okay, yo, take care of him, sexually. Is that true? Yes. Fu-teh! Yes. Fu-teh! Wise man once said, The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn or learn and relearn. I just want to know what you guys think of the Himba people. On my end, I think there, I don't know much about the Himba people except what I was told, because there's this stigma around them that they are feared, you know, like because of the witchcraft or whatever, who do they take part in. So you never really get a chance to interact with them. It was always like as kids, if you see them in the street and they ask for anything of yours, don't fight them, just give it, or else when you go home, your family member is dead, or stuff like that, so we just fear them like that. Let me understand, who made you believe that the Himba's got witchcraft and all of that?  I'm not here to blame them, neither their parents, but colonisation made so many Africans hate their own and I believe it's time to unlearn, re-learn and embrace our own. Look fresh, I think so, welcome to the Himba village, which is 40 kilometres away from Opo, I hope I'm mentioning it right, but hey, do you know the meaning of Opo? Opo means the end from the Hiro language, I mean the people of Himba are definitely Hiroro, so that's the language that they speak. We drove like 750 kilometres away from Vindu just to get here, I mean most of you will be wondering, Maya, why are you doing this kind of videos? I want to tell you that it's time for Africans to take control of their own narratives, it's time for Africans to tell their own stories. You know, I've always wanted to take Africa to the world, but I want to show you the positive aspect of Africa that no one shows you, but I also realise that stories like this are missing. Each time you see stories like this on social media, it's always told by Caucasians, people that don't look like us and I feel like these are our own people and we just have to come in here and live just like them, know the way they live their own life, that is why it's very very important and I'm not here to tell the our story for them, they are going to tell their own story, I'm just here to learn, I'm just here to educate myself and I will use my platform to educate you, so this is what I want you to do for me, like the video, very very important and don't forget to share because this video is going to be very entertaining, informative and also educated. It's so cold man, it feels so warm here man, I must work out for this time. Hi, so it's okay now, yeah? Okay, morrow, morrow, morrow, okay. We are going to sit there at the holy place and then we can talk stories, so everybody will be coming here, all the men will be coming to join us at the holy place, even the boys that will join us at the holy place, so we can sit here, we can sit here. Okay, let me throw one. He's so close to the fire. He's going to move when the fire starts to light up. So in most cases here it's only for men, women don't sit on this stone, so what do women sit on? This holy place, they only sit around the men, so in men here they have to share stories about what happened, what are we going to do, so most of the stories we keep it very secret from women because we believe that women do not have secrets, because they share too much. They share the gospel a lot. Yeah, the gospel is true. Maybe we need to go and we need to go to the place, we need to move from here to move all our animals from here to another village, yeah, but then we have got like temporary two villages, we've got a permanent one and we've got a temporary one, so a permanent one is like this one, yeah this is a permanent one, but a temporary village, we only go there because of the grazing, yeah. Oh, so you've got cattle in here? Yeah, when we have cattle and goats, any type of animals you have you're farming with, but especially the goats, and then we move them to that temporary village and when we have to move them, women are not always friendly with that, they always complain about moving, they don't like to move because they always stay here with the children and things, but when you decide that I'm going to take this and this, so you must keep it secret from them because you don't negotiate with them, you only tell them that we need some girls and maybe they can be who, can gather now, you know, like that, and then they can make a choice, if they are five or six, they can make their own choice to move to goat, which one will go to the temporary village, so and then you always, when you move to that temporary village, you always don't want them to split the news, that's why you keep it secret, because when your boyfriends come in the night, or friends come in the night, they will tell because they talk, women say talk, and then they will say, no, no, no, we hate that our father is going to move to a temporary village, to that area, to maybe to a Chinungua temporary village, and if you mention a Chinungua, then before you move, then the other homestead or the other village will move before you, so and then they will, their animals is going to finish the whole vegetation, so it's always good as a good farmer to be the first one together, yeah, and then you discover all the vegetations and then they eat, I guess this is for the animals, yeah, this is, yeah, we do that for the animals, do you guys worship animals, no, I think it's so important to you people, yeah, animals are important that we use them to our, during our ceremonies, we do now, like in our days, but mostly our animals are important not to sell, but to do lot of our ceremonial activities, like waiting, like different age of the children, the boys, the girls, the boys, mostly they go through circumcision, so we slaughter animals, the girls, they go through different stages when they are, for the first period, for their first time, when they are on period, they, you slaughter animals, when they have to change different hairstyles, you, we slaughter animals, what if your son is getting married, yeah, do women in here need animals or cattle that's dairy or something, yeah, we need, we need three kettles and two sheep when your, when your boy has to get married, is there any lady in here who is willing to get married, he's laughing because he knows that I'm shooting my shot, because, because you know, like two carers, two sheeps, it's not expensive, so definitely I can get a wife here, no, there are a lot, there are a lot single women, I don't know, maybe you have to talk nicely with them, it depends, okay, as the rooster crawls, everyone gets ready to start their daily morning routine, also the men sit and wait as the women prepare our bathroom ready for shower, I mean shower without water, can you believe that, it's all that happens here in the Himba village, everything off, yeah, oh my god, I want to change, as the saying goes, when you go to Rome you do what Romans do, so since I found myself in the Himba village, I need to dress and look like them, and this is what is happening right now before I take my shower with them, the Himbas don't wear pants under their costumes, so I had to remove my boxer shot, it was a funny moment, that's where I've been doing it, guys see, it's gonna be a good day, everybody is coming here now for shower, oh okay, shower together, shower together, oh wow, all of us, this is okra, okra here, and okra is this red stone, it's digged out of the ground, and it's coming in the form of this, I mean it's a stone, and then it's not a very hard rock, it's a very soft one, and then we crush it between stones and to make powder, yeah, and this powder is a one we wash with, yeah, we take bath, and to ask to take bath means to paint ourselves with okra, you don't use water too, we don't use water, this is our material, because I've no shower since morning, you know, because team has to have no shower, now you are going to shower, we are all going to shower, all the men are going to shower now, it's going to be a shower time now, yeah, so they are going to prepare it, all the ladies are coming here for shower as well, oh okay, yes, and what are they sitting on? They are sitting on the gold skin, gold skin? Yeah, on the gold skin, yeah, it must always be gold skin? Yeah, sheep, cow skin, oh yes, wait wait wait, one second, Wendemaya, you don't sit on that skin, on the backside skin, you don't sit, yeah, you have to do it like when you're sitting you have to do it like this yeah look look at me yeah we sit like this oh yeah yeah yeah and this one you have to cover the front okay yeah and then this one touch there yeah this is for this is butter yeah yeah so these people the Himba group or the Himba tribe is a nomadic group so they live from their animals their animals are the only source of living so they have no much influence or they had no influence of modernizations what do they migrate from? they migrate from southern west of Agola when they came in here who are the people that were present in here? they were bushmen which are sand people the bushmen left and gave them the land? they leave a place because of the pressure as they handed the cows of the Himba people and the Himba they were so mad at the bushmen because they were killing cows so they had a little bit of fight then bushmen they were a bit defeated they moved in the south and in the eastern part of the country they remain they settle the over Himba are polygamus with an average of two wives at the same time but oldest man in this village has only one wife he said oh so many years so many years he doesn't know the exact number he doesn't know my my years is one thousand and um he's married right? yes i'm married i'm married how many? one wife it's polygamy allowed in here yes it's allowed even even three three why are you doing my three? he said the other one he said he's unwanted the people of Himba also practice early marriages like if you want a wife you see this one you can marry her you see and then you go through the ceremonial activity and then you have to wait you must be patient to wait but then if you marry her when she's like that okay then the only last fight you have to do now is that you must win her so as we don't do anything with H's but we do things with H's so by this by his H then this is a time as a husband you I you go there and then you you have a chat so she she she gets to know you that ah I was married by this guy and this is the one that shocked me the most we read on the internet like if you're a visitor and come and visit the Himba village they have to give you a virgin like especially oh what come a virgin has to welcome you into the community is that true? okay for the beginning I haven't I haven't understood the rule but it's happened it's not a virgin if you come as in a visitor and you are my friend you got no place to sleep and I have as I have got married to three wives or two wives or maybe one so I can tell my wife that that's my brother or my cousin tonight go prepare a blanket for her for him it's happened no I mean in the house I don't understand how can I say it can I can I go go wrong bro listen like I read it and I couldn't believe it that's why I want you to say it for me you know you can't believe everything that you see on the internet right so that's why I want to know okay let me go wrong what we read was when you come in here if you come to the Himba village like as he just explained a man can give the wife to a friend my brother okay yo take care of him sexually is that true yes man but that's your wife yeah you were alone that's your that's your wife him but him but culture is so different because this is made is make the lady not to start cheating you know I want to know what really influenced the way of life of the people of him because when I came in here I'm not seeing men wearing shirts and I'm not seeing even the women not wearing bra everything is exposed what really influenced that yeah actually us as nomadic people our main source as I said it's animals we get everything from animals we wear skin from animals we get milk from animals we get food from animals we get butter from animals so animals is the whole source of our living yes so even the clothes that everyone is wearing is from an animal yeah yeah yeah so this what they're building a new house yeah they are building actually they are constructing a new roof okay yeah yeah and what are the materials that is used for building the material we use for building is this is actually more pane branches and then after that they they put on the cow dung they on it yeah on on on this on the roof okay yeah they will put the cow dung on the whole house they will put cow dung and then um and this is what they have yeah and this is the material this looks like clay mix with cow dung yeah actually yeah they mix the clay with cow dung with cow dung yes yeah so you can live in the house so that's why you said your whole life is around animal even your house is built with cow dung yeah with cow dung not to go waste in the village so what is he doing so what he's doing now he's cutting those branches okay so those branches we use it as plates for meat plates for meat yeah those are our plates we eat even men sometimes they sit on those branches and then they eat meat wow yeah so that it cannot get the soil you know we don't have plates oh okay yeah that's unique yeah and and our meat is being served in big pieces as well and it's being cooked in big pieces as well yeah yeah why are we doing this so where we're doing this is this is a holy place okay where we're communicating with our ancestral okay so it is always important that you put fresh leaves fresh branch of fresh leaves uh to show life anytime you slaughter a goat yeah a goat or cattle or ship that to put a fresh yeah branch yeah so I can count yeah you guys have been slaughtered one two three okay my one is four what this this gonna be lunch because they will cook it they will cook it for the oh almost like for three hours it will be prepared nice cooked him by way wow yeah yeah they're going to prepare the him by way we don't put salt we don't do anything we only cook until the meat is well nice cooked you don't put salt we don't put salt we don't put pepper what do you put then nothing water only only water yes just watch while the food is on fire and getting ready to be served they all come together to play and this kind of game deserves a lot of energy so now you have to take your plate we sit over there and then we eat okay well same table they used to slaughter the goat you see it's just to protect the things from dusty you know that's what's important can we get water to wash our hands man yeah water is here water is here wash wash no but I wash my hand is the red that is coming out okay oh my goodness you see that the okra is not it's still on my hand okra is healthy man it's healthy are you sure about that yeah yeah and why do I have to wash my hands then no no you just to take off the dusty bit yeah but okra itself is healthy you see when you see when children are sick oh the babies we put okra in water we let them drink and then they are okay in the summer so okra is so this was cooked just with water yeah with water only water only yeah yeah and this is popper yeah that is pop okay yeah i'm gonna taste it i'm gonna tell you guys how it tastes like yeah no just just have a bite come on no pepper bro no salt ah okay okay this is a new thing you just have to get used to it man yeah and that is healthy man pepper baby make you sick and no okay yeah yeah they make you sick but this this one original cooked one is doesn't make you sick you know man on their own man and how often did they eat this food so every day every day this is like a daily meal yeah for the people of him yeah amazing every day so where are we now so we are here at umongunda cave okay yeah is it about it's about singing and dancing that's all that's where the name is coming from because the bass or because of the bass that reflect down from the ground when people are singing and dancing so the dancing make the sound the clapping of the hands and the sounds make the echo so that's what we call if you the whole combination we call it umongunda umongunda yes oh more than 400 years ago because we do have paintings of the bushman as well they existed here before yes for the himba people came yes yes yes and the paintings existing more than 400 years ago most of the rock art and paintings they exist for those years oh okay yeah dancing here yeah okay dance all of them go back to their village this is how it is in the himba village yeah i mean this is such a beautiful experience i'm so glad that i really experienced this and all i want to tell each and every african out there i mean get to know your own people get to know your own people's culture and believe me nothing is beautiful than african culture i'm so glad i came to the himba village say bye bye today bye bye


Well, good afternoon and welcome. Naval War College colleagues to this lecture of opportunity about the Coast Guard cutter Healy and Arctic soft security with Captain Michelle. Shell up. My name is for Andrea Cameron for those who don't know me and I'm the director of the climate and human security group at the Naval War College. The group is composed of faculty, staff and students interested in engaging on nontraditional and transnational security threats. If you're interested in joining the group, please email me at Andrea Cameron at usnwc.edu. Now today's lecture of opportunity. We host Captain Michelle shall up commanding officer of the US CGC Healy. We're honored to host her and have her bring this incredible work of the Coast Guard cutter to our audience. For those watching watching this presentation will be recorded, but we will stop recording at the end and open the floor for questions from the audience. Captain shall assume command of the Healy in June 2023 as commanding officer. She is responsible for the overall safety of the ship and crew, as well as successful completion of assigned missions. She is a 2021 graduate of the Naval War College where I had the pleasure of meeting her as student one of my classes. And I've kept in touch with her as she went on to Coast Guard headquarters and now in charge of the ship. Thank you so much for joining today. The floor is yours. Thank you very much and thank you to the climate and human securities group and the Arctic studies group for hosting me today. I'm very excited to be here to talk to you about how Healy contributes to soft security in the Arctic, particularly with our most recent deployment, which just ended after 159 days at sea about three days ago. And if I can ensure everyone in the room is able to hear me. Okay, please. Loud and clear. All right, great. A few imagery pieces. I'll go over those in just a moment, but an overview of some of the things I'll talk about today. The so what of course those of you who attended this lecture know what the so what is, but just an overarching view of that. I'll talk a little bit about Healy in particular and her capabilities. Talk about research support that we've done over the past two years. International engagement that we were able to have this past summer. And then I look forward to your questions at the end. So the pictures that you see before you in the top left corner is Healy coming through a lead in the ice. The top right corner is a picture of the group of not only scientists but crew who pitch in together to help install equipment on the ice flows and the high latitude. The bottom left corner shows a picture of our computer lab on board. Give a little more detail about that in a little bit. And then the picture at the bottom right is the marginal ice zone as of a few weeks ago. So as you can see, winter is quickly setting in and the ice is continuing to cover the Arctic Ocean. Again, this is not unknown to you. I did a similar presentation at Georgetown University last week. So I wanted to give them a little different perspective. This is the perspective I like to look at from the globe centered on the Arctic Ocean. Of course, the eight Arctic States and then the regional coordinating group for the area, the Arctic Council. And we do, of course, our scientific research based on the international agreements in that body. All right. Am I back on? Yes. Great. All right. Thank you. So overview of Arctic nations and then, of course, the Arctic Council, which I'm sure you are very familiar with. If not, there's the website, a lot of really great information Norway chairs the council as of earlier this year. These were just published by the National Ice Center overview that includes the year 2023 ice average. Of course, that's changing because we just have a few more weeks left in 2023, but updated as of a few weeks ago. So over time, you can see that the general trend is on the decrease. That brings, of course, increased interest in the region for not only access to the resources, but also for eco tourism for shipping and many other maritime interest in the region that was previously unaccessible. So why is the Arctic important to national security? Of course, we are an Arctic nation, so we have an Arctic border. So we have an interest in it being a peaceful and stable region. It is known to have a lot of economic value, particularly in the American Arctic and the other nations are conducting research in the region as well so that they can understand what resources are available to them. The middle section there with the Arctic region statistics is from our 2019, the Coast Guard Arctic strategic outlook. And then October of this year, the Coast Guard has released our Arctic strategic outlook implementation plan that gives more detail into our lines of effort that go to support the national security strategy in the Arctic region. Overview of Healy. This is a picture of Healy taken just outside Reykjavik earlier this year. She is the Coast Guard's largest vessel. We are about two feet longer than the national security cutters and in size beam, et cetera, as well. We're 16,000 long tons, so a very heavy ship. Our hull plating is two inches thick, which allows us to break through the ice, particularly with an assistance of an ice knife. We can break four and a half feet plus continuous steaming. We do need to back and ram when it gets more than that but very capable can go 12 and above feet, which in multi year ice can get noisy and challenging but it's one of the favorite parts of being conning officer and ice pilot on the Healy is to go on the very top of the cutter with good view and look for open leads or to look for places where Healy can break through the ice to get to the areas where we need to conduct our operations. We are able to carry helicopters. We have helicopter bays. We don't normally deploy with helicopters, but we do exercises with US and partner nation helicopters. I have a picture of that later in the presentation. We have seven cranes that were able to lift myriad pieces of equipment to support science or logistics as needed. And then we have a multi beam sonar for those who have operated in the Arctic on the surface. You know that a lot of the soundings are sparse and very old. While we cannot contribute directly to charting in the Arctic, what we are able to do is provide that information to NOAA Office of Coast Survey so that they see an area that has a large anomaly in it. They can focus on that area or provide awareness to other mariners who may operate there to understand that there may be something that's not otherwise charted. So Healy was commissioned in 2000 and has done, for the most part, annual trips to the Arctic in support of research. I'd like to just cover the past two years of note and happy to do the best I can answering other questions as they come up. In 2022, the Healy made her fourth trip to the North Pole. The first time was in 2000 with the German research vessel Polar Stern again a few years later with the Swedish icebreaker Odin. Since then Healy's made two unaccompanied trips to the North Pole one in 2015 and one in October of 2022. During this research, she gathered information on physical oceanography, atmospheric drivers, marine life and various data collections. So in that picture you can see some of the cranes that we use to to collect data. We also have on the right hand side is what we call as a conductivity temperature and depth or CTD rosette. That piece of equipment can go 4000 meters down and collect information in the water column which is extremely valuable to the scientists to understand everything from how the density of the water changes to the temperature of the water in the water column. So that is pretty much the bread and butter of most research vessels. Those that are ice capable or not but Healy spent a lot of time on the North Pole mission conducting research generally unavailable to most of the research vessels. And then the center picture is just what I just a beautiful picture of kind of some of the rewards that you get for operating in such a region. That's a sunrise sunset pretty much in the same hour during during science. 2023 we just as I mentioned just return from that mission I took command about three weeks before we deployed. It was just a fantastic journey we had two particular science missions. The first one is Amos or the Arctic mobile observing system and that on our funded Office of Naval Research Naval Research funded research looks at increasing the capability of collecting data over time and really some harsh conditions. The unmanned vessel you see to your left is is deployed and will spend about a year underneath the ice just going up and down in the water column gathering data. It will come to the surface transmit its information and then return to work. It's pretty amazing. I've worked. This is my second tour on Healy. So I've worked with the gliders quite a few times and it is just an impressive technology that they have so in that first mission we deployed and recovered several of those. Another bit of the science that we did on that first mission was to go on to ice flows and we put equipment onto the ice flows that would then spend the rest of that life of the ice flow collecting everything from weather data to understanding the water column beneath it. So the picture in the center was a visiting scientist that we had joined us at about two o'clock in the morning one day. He kind of checked out a lot of our science equipment. Unfortunately he did break a little piece of that one but we were able to return and quickly repair it. So I was standing next to the lead scientist on that particular endeavor and for him it was a it was a little hard to watch his science equipment be torn apart by the polar bear. But on the other side it was really neat to be able to see the animals that we're working so hard to understand their changing climate. And then he could also see how the polar bear interacted with his equipment so that when he went back out on the ice the next morning he was able to repair it in a way that made it a little bit more resilient to the polar bear. The second science mission is depicted on the right of your screen and that's really what made this journey this year a little bit different with Healy. The second mission was led by the Coast Guards Research and Development Center which did science of opportunity on our transit. But the leg that took us on that route was the Nansen and a Mudson basin observational system or Nabos. In 2021 the science equipment, I'll talk about that in a moment, the science equipment was deployed to collect data in the East Siberian and Laptev seas and they were deployed by a Russian research vessel. And given geopolitics that wasn't possible to reuse that vessel this year. So he was chosen to take this very important mission. The equipment that's deployed has about a two year life cycle. So if it's not recovered and serviced and returned, they lose that data for the two years and all the equipment that's associated with it. So for the international science community, it was very important that Healy go and service those nine moorings in the region. Talking about Arctic security and one of the key components to civility is predictability. Healy was very transparent about the track line that we were going to be taking. We were at times about four nautical miles outside the Russian EEZ. Our track line was published well in advance. Senior leaders discussed the tracks that we were going to take and and we had transmitting on our automatic identification system or AIS for the entirety of that mission. So what that particular research focused on was how the Atlantic water flow that comes into the Arctic region affects the ice coverage. And so the scientists, this was the first time they had been able to recover this data that collected over a two year panel and very exciting. All of the equipment we recovered had full sets of data. So it was a very successful mission from the scientists perspective. The research and development center that I mentioned earlier worked on, as I said, some research of opportunity. This included ice observer tools and how AI can help contribute to that 3D printing in an at sea environment. So understanding how the movement of the ship might affect how emergency parts or tools are made at sea and how to counteract that as well as high latitude communications and global distress equipment at the high latitudes as well. So it was a very successful mission. I talked a little bit about the science equipment that we worked. The scientists use underwater mooring arrays to collect the data over a two year time span. They do this using pieces of equipment that are held vertically by buoyancy. You can see the buoys there in the center and left picture that keep them upright in the water column. And so when Healy or other science vessels arrive on scene, they send a code down the code releases it from the mooring. And if we are lucky and have done our physics calculations correctly, the buoy floats up in an open area of the ice. We hook into it and then begin what can be a very long recovery time. Sometimes these moorings are 40 meters, about 135 feet. Sometimes they can be 2000 meters, which is well over a mile. So it's a very long and delicate process, but really the information that's gathered makes it very valuable. So you can see in the far right hand column there, that is the actual piece of equipment that was used to collect the data over that time span. Healy is a floating laboratory. So all three of these pictures are scientists from various universities actually conducting the research on the water or some of the equipment that we're using underway. So it's really neat to go in these different missions and each one of them has it set up in a different way and to see what they're all involved in. The crew, we are active duty Coast Guard, so we're not scientists. We are there to support the scientists. When the scientists come on board, there's all these different bits of research going on. So once a week, we also do our lectures of opportunity on board and invite the scientists to share with us a little bit about what work they're doing. So that way the crew gets a good sense of kind of the bigger picture of what they are, what they're contributing to. Once the science was complete, we were able to do a lot of international engagements. So this gave us opportunity to meet with like-minded nations doing personality changes, live exercises, etc. So the first one that we were able to meet at sea was the Sir Wilford Laurier. It was off of Point Barrow relatively early in our deployment. We hosted on board the assistant commissioner for the Arctic region, as well as the Coast Guard's district commander for Alaska. So it was a great opportunity to have conversations. The crews, we sent 10 to Sir Wilford Laurier, 10 came over to Healy. So it provided opportunity at the very tactical level for us to see the capabilities of the other ships. So if there were a situation, we would at least have a basic understanding of how to work together. So it's a very good way to start our international engagements. For the second mission, we had two Norwegian Coast Guard officers on board. One is, one had previously been on Svalbard. One is currently on Svalbard, and that is the Svalbard in the picture there. We rendezvoused in the high latitudes and ice covered waters and steamed in formation for a few days once we got over to the European side of the Arctic. So a great opportunity to work with Svalbard with their crew on board for five weeks. They shared with us their ice navigation tools, operations on board, and it was a good interaction with them as well. Once we got in ice free waters, we did a crew exchange similar to what we did with the Sir Wilford Laurier. Again, an opportunity to go over, meet with their crew, understand how their ship works and some of their, their capabilities as well. Just of note, we talk about international cooperation in scientific research. In 2020, Healy suffered a main motor fire, which rendered her inability to or unable to go do the work that she was supposed to go do that summer, which involved recovering those underwater mooring arrays that expire basically after two years. Svalbard was then tasked by Norway to go over and recover those moorings in some very challenging ice covered conditions. I had the opportunity to meet with the commanding officer of Svalbard from that time period and just an impressive feat. It's always challenging to work in the high latitudes late in the season. And that Svalbard was able to successfully recover those moorings just is shows their, their ability to operate in that type of environment and their dedication as well to the scientific international community. As we got closer to Trump said we did an international search and rescue exercise with various Norwegian partners. The picture on the right hand side is our landing signals officer. Signaling in rescue helicopter we did an exercise where we simulated a person in the water and Healy small boat went recover the person in the water we bought him on board with simulated injuries. We brought Svalbard's medical officer and other personnel on board to simulate a joint response to that and then eventually medivac the Oscar via the search and rescue helicopter so a great opportunity to work within our regions. Following our trip to Norway we went to Denmark and had opportunity to host the US ambassador to Denmark on board as well as many of his staff so that they could see Healy. This was Healy's first time in Denmark so it was very exciting for our visit there. The bottom left hand corner it's for those of you who may be familiar it's actually Charleston and not Copenhagen Denmark, we signed a joint letter of intent with the joint Arctic command or jaco from Denmark. Unfortunately the way schedules work out with senior leaders that just we weren't able to do it in Copenhagen, but we were in Charleston for a scheduled port call not long after so we were able to host jaco and the deputy Atlantic area commander Admiral more on board for the signing of that letter of intent so very exciting again showing the cooperation of the Coast Guard in the region. And our final stop was in Reykjavik Iceland, the picture on the left is the Icelandic Coast Guard vessel for as you can see pretty similar in size to the Healy. Again, we were able to do passenger exchanges and have opportunity for some really great photo opportunities as well. And on the right hand side is the Icelandic Coast Guard operations officer for all of the Coast Guard as well as the captain and first officer on the floor, who gave us a tour and just an incredibly capable ship and it was really interesting to get on board and to see to see its maneuverability and then to host them on board at sea as well to share with them the capabilities of Healy as well. While I was in or while we were in Iceland, excuse me, the Arctic Circle Assembly just happened to be going on at the same time and I was provided an opportunity to sit on a panel on North American Arctic Security implementation so much like this discussion. I was able to talk about how Healy operationalized a lot of not only Coast Guard policy documents but the broader United States and regional ideals of cooperation in the Arctic region. And this is a fun picture. This was the Healy Wardroom from our second mission as you can see pretty diverse group there. And then on the right hand side is listed. All who came along on the deployment with us, the Army, Navy Air Force and Space Force were all part of the research and development teams. So scientific research from that aspect as well but Healy supports not only the international science community but the interagency science as well. So it was a great opportunity in the Wardroom. We had a lot of really good discussions and learned a lot about each other's organizations. And that concludes my overview of Healy's operations in the Arctic. So Healy continues to be a capable surface platform for contributing to Arctic Security regional science and regional scientific cooperation or as is referred to in the Newport Manual for Arctic Security Science Diplomacy. So as a Coast Guard vessel, Healy remains ready to support search and rescue, marine environmental response, communications and logistics as we work together with our partner nations to be ready to respond to emergencies in the region as interest in human activity increases. And then for some bonus pictures because you can't have enough polar bear pictures I don't think. To polar bear that we saw top right corner, the polar bear on the right is actually walking over brash or broken ice just very impressive animals. Some great ice imagery on the left side the bottom left is an Arctic fox who was hundreds of miles from the nearest land. And then the bottom right hand picture is the crew and science team photo from from the last little bit of our deployment. So with that I look forward very much to taking your questions. Thank you again for having me here today. Thank you, Captain Charlotte. I'd like to ask you two questions before we finish the recorded portion. First, I want to just give you the opportunity to say if there was one key takeaway about what these students could could learn from Arctic soft security what would that be the key takeaway is that it is very remote. It takes Healy about two and a half weeks to get to the Arctic from Seattle. So if there is a search and rescue response that's needed or marine environmental response that's needed. There will be logistical challenges to getting resources there and as leaders in policy or in other parts of our organization just to be preparing for what that might look like in advance. I'd also like to ask since you are alumni of the Naval War College and we have some students here in the room. What was your greatest experience or takeaway or thing you learned while you were here that you've used since you left. What I got more out of than I thought I would expect to get at the Naval War College you understand you have the the the academics piece of it but even though as you mentioned earlier I attended in a zoom environment. Just learning about not only how the other services approach of national security, but how other nations to that was really impressive to I had several classes with foreign students and that was impressive to hear their perspective so I think just hearing different different approaches to the same issues was was my my favorite experience at the Naval War College. Excellent. Well on behalf of the Naval War College thank you for coming back, and we really appreciate your time here. So, once again captain shell shell up thank you, and we're going to conclude the recorded portion of this lecture of opportunity.


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