Hi, my name is Noah Warren, and I coordinate Launch Pumps with Geoffrey G. O'Brien. It's my distinct pleasure to introduce Shane McCrae this afternoon. Shane has published seven books of poetry in the past ten years. I'm gonna let that sink in. It's a prodigious output and a testament both to the power of his vision and his country's appetite for it. These inventive, pained, and masterful books are line by line the record of an ongoing search for a usable past, for a present aware to but not paralyzed by its burdens for a habitable future. Even as each book strikes us with novelties, a theme, a form, and character, we recognize their continuities of sound and style. And perhaps the most characteristic feature of McCrae's verse is the effect he's perfected of imperfection. By which I mean both that flaw in the human condition and in the grammatical sense of an action whose end is unclear and may be ongoing. In his first book, 2011's Mule, he writes in lines remarkable for their motion and their curious stasis. We married in an open field, a wide and open field, a field of wild and running horses, a field of horses running through. We married in an open wide. His lines feel like they've just been written down. Which is to say their allegiance is already split, torn between an effort to capture instant by instant change and the instinct for control that print indicts. You might have heard the tightly wound, dynamic rhythms when I quoted, what's hard to capture in speech or the various ways he's developed to interrupt a standard pentameter line with spaces and slashes, or to overcharge it so that the ear is always in tension with and often outrunning the eye. McCrae's poems often feel so addictingly propulsive that we barely notice the ways they rephrase themselves as they develop. His characteristic needle skips stage the simultaneity of forward motion and its revision as it passes into history. In those lines from Mule, McCrae marries in an open wide, a space of possibility foreclosed by its absolute passness. His most recent book, Sometimes I Never Suffered, flags in its title a paradoxical time only imaginable through the condensation of McCrae's language. A corner of heaven where a recurring speaker, Jim Limber, Jefferson Davis' adopted Milano's son, is sometimes able to forget his suffering. As such, the book is frequently concerned with gaps and riffs in memory where the particulars of terror have been scrubbed into brightness. These emerge as the book's various violent or lobotomized heavens and represent on a larger scale McCrae's forceful imagination and defense of a space just a little outside history, a haunted fiefdom of the imagination. It's a space and a time that much poetry often has in mind. But one thing I find so remarkable about Shane's verse is how gaps and pauses open at the smallest level, at the line at meter, flower into the American cosmogony he is now built across his past three books. Like Dante and Milton, Duncan and Mackie, he's married a structural firmness of vision and conscience with the freedom of imagination and the fluency of alert language. It's a mode with risks, most vividly, that disconnection from the actual should untether poetry from the earth and allow the reader to ask why. But this is one of McCrae's deep themes, an exploration of how our embodied experience controls what we can imagine, even as the cordon of imagination allows us a space to repair, however tentatively, our experience.  They challenge us to see how both whiteness and blackness feed on and generate unequal mythologies. McCrae, with his divine theater, creates an arena where these mythologies can be crumpled together. And at the site of that crumple, that nexus, we find inevitably a mind waiting for us, a perspective and an experience waiting to speak itself into being. Jim Limber, or a hastily assembled angel. This is intersectionality as a cosmic principle. Shane is the recipient of too many awards to list here and an assistant professor at Columbia. Please join me in welcoming a powerful poet of the human and the divine. Thank you, Noah, for that introduction. And thank you again and thank you, Jeffrey, for putting this together and thank everyone involved for making this happen. And also all of you for coming. So I'm going to read for about 30 minutes or so. When always feels one must apologize if I'm going to read that long, but I'm going to try to not apologize, but just know it's in my head. I will apologize for how bright I am. I'm using my phone to zoom because I've never had my phone freeze, whereas it happens in my laptop all the time. So anyway, everything I'm going to read is in some sense new. I'm going to read from groups of poems that I'm in the midst of working on right now, and also from recent poems from my next book. So I'm going to start with a group of poems that is, I guess, I'd like to think I'm in the middle of working on part of the number. And this first poem is called In the Ditch where the camera finds my body. I'm splashing in the driveway in a ditch in which a corpse of rain has gathered here. A corpse is gathered. Wearing nothing, a full diaper, I am three.  The rain comes down. My mother's parents have just kidnapped me. I am the corpse in which I play. I'm dancing in the court. The clear sky sickened, watching but with no clouds in the sky, the sky can't move away.  The green has fled the leaf. Oh reader, listener, stay. You are now evident. And this is called Something Grand I Was. We must have flown. I don't remember flying. My mother's parents, me, a three year old, we must have flown. We couldn't have a food was going to drive the car from Oregon to Texas, Salem. That means feet to Austin. I think he was a soldier, Steve F. Austin. I see us sometimes in a C-130, a military plane, but big enough for us, our car and things from Oregon to Texas, Salem. That new seat. Too big for us, our car and things, but shouldn't it have been too big enormous? Something grand. I was being kidnapped. Shouldn't it have been impossible? 100,000 pounds of steel, aluminum and blood in the sky itself incredulous and mocking. Shouldn't a flock of birds have struck the props like laughter? The sky have shamed us then from its first part. This is, I always feel like I should be introducing things, but I also don't feel like I would say about them. This is after my grandparents kidnapped me. They moved to a new development. The only scenes I know are scenes my mother's parents thought to take pictures of me in the ditch. My mother's father in the yard before the fence was built before the lawn was fitted to the earth. Face like a face after a mauling. He is posing like a hunter in the dirt. He grips a hoe and kneels in the court called everywhere. A neighborhood is coming. Where an armed man kneels and grins, that man will build a house. This is, I mean, this is introductory information, I suppose. This is a sonnet, but most of the ones that have been reading it as well. This is explaining my appearance in certain pictures. In pictures now, I do not smile and didn't. Then I would laugh if I was being tickled. And sometimes one, my mother's mother would tickle me and the other would take the picture. My mother's father. And so sometimes I'm not smiling, but I'm laughing. My eyes closed and my mouth open almost like I'm screaming, but I'm laughing when I was a child. In pictures with my kidnappers, with one, my mother's mother, always. I am sitting most often in her lap, her arms around my blurred waist. She has me on Ritalin. And the trick is wait until the laughing stops. As the mouth closes, you can take the smile. I've got two more of these, the both sonnets. Two more from this group. Two more from this group. This is a window in the, well, before I say the title. I'm going to say the word GIF, not GIF, but GIF. Although maybe GIF, I don't know, but I'm going to say GIF. I always feel like, I always feel like I read this poem once before. I feel like if I'm going to read it, I should say that because I also feel like people are going to hear GIFT. So GIFT. This is called a window in the house from which I was kidnapped. The pale blinds rise and fall, a GIFT forever. The blinds move on their own. At first my father stands with the string between his fingers first and middle, pulling even after it tears into his fingers, tears the first and middle skin. Him pulling, letting go, his blood staining the length of the loop string nearest him. At first he pulls the string for years. Eventually he steps back from the window into the room. He steps back, doesn't turn now. He watches from a shadow in the room for me, his child to be returned to him. I see him watching from a farther shadow whenever I look into his eyes. The room is endless. And this is having been raised by my kidnappers. I consider the GIFT of life or a GIFT from a thief. A GIFT that disappears as it is given. A GIFT from whom whenever they give you anything, you have to ask them where they got it from. A GIFT that disappears and takes you with it. A GIFT for which you will not be forgiven.  My grandmother that I would see my father again in a few days. And the big wheel he had given me. The GIFT she gave me then. And then for 13 years I did it. You must close your eyes for the GIFT. After you open it it's stolen, but it wasn't stolen for you. No one will give you who you are. So, two books ago. Wait, that's not right, is it? Yeah, it is. This book called the Gilded Auction Block. I guess it's two books ago because I have a book from now. I published a book called the Gilded Auction Block. It has a long poem in it called The Hell Poem. Which is part of a larger project that was constituted of poems from in the language of my chapter. Three books back, the Gilded Auction Block. Two books back and the entirety of Sometimes I Never Suffered. And in a sense that project is done. But I thought it would be neat and fun. And also because I couldn't choose to do anything else apparently. To continue writing sections of The Hell Poem. And these are in some sense alternate continuations thereof. Because in a canonical sense, not that I have a comment on what that would mean, but. Considering whatever that poem is, The Hell Poem, it's finished and it's all there. But these are all imagined continuations of or alternate versions of them. So they both are and are not. And I'm going to read three of them.  And the guide to the journey is this robot bird. Who is a servant of Satan. Sort of. It's complicated. Anyway, this is the robot bird tells me how it is I am in hell. My name is Law. I do the work. The boss says he created me in the however long it was between when Cain crushed Able's forehead with a rough and the first drop of blood hit the ground. I was the voice of the blood crying out to God.    Anyway, I say that makes Cain killing Able. I say that makes Able poor dickless Able the first human and the father of all humankind. But the boss he says different. He says it's him, the boss for making the murder possible and he's not philosophical like me.   Smarter than you anyway. So listen, a couple weeks ago, we got a fact. You think there'd be a phone in hell?   At first I thought it meant the boss down here because you know, he's the boss I think things mean.   He's fucking. Next thing I know, I'm guiding your slow after health, but the boss doesn't want you to know you're getting special treatment.   Don't look at me like that. I know you're not breathing. It still works. What I think is if Abel's not your father tainted after all he had the big rock and how many times you think he saw his dad kill anything by crushing its head, not many right? Nah man, an arrow in the heart. And by the way, that's what God gave you by telling Adam he could name the animal. God told you where their hearts were. Adam never missed the shot.  But he was using a gift God had given him. So killing was like prayer for the cane. He looked able in the eye and saw himself, not in his brother's heart, but in his head and crushed his head. And yeah, where else do humans start? Cain named the animal in Abel's head. Um, I maybe should have introduced that in some other way by adding the next book that I'm going to publish is called Cain named the animal. And lately I've also been filled with, well, I'm always filled with anxious energy. I've lately wanted to point out the forms the poems are in. And so that was in quaterines. They're unrhymed quaterines. Blank. I am a tetrameter. I don't know if there's any reason to care about that, but that's what it is. This is blank. I am big pentameter triplets. Are they triplets if they don't rhyme? Not really, but that's what it is. And it's called the finger and the ditch. It uses the same characters, but they've moved on.  This one, what happened immediately before this as the, is the bird and the unnamed journeyer do into center of a mountain from the top of a mountain, top of the mountain. The bird had transformed into a large robot by this point. And the bird of course survived the jump fine, but the person on the way down because they're invisibly tethered to the bird, they're cut in half by the tether is attached to a belt that slices them in half, but doesn't kill them because they're already dead. So they grab their legs as they're falling into the mountain and they pull their legs back up to their body. When they land on, when they actually finally land, they're completely liquefied. Well, their bones, their tibias shoot out of their shoulders. It's a thing. So, but then after they liquefied, because they're in hell, all their parts return and they are reconstituted and it is the terribly painful thing. So this poem starts right after that. It's called the finger and the ditch. After my body splattered back together, or it was splattered back together by a hand or force, I couldn't see a love. I couldn't see a cruelty, re-nerving my body for more suffering, the robot bird rolling its clattering shoulders bark. If you've got bones and nerves and blood in you, why aren't you moving? And again I felt the cord, I couldn't see the cord that bound me to the bird, the cord that only minutes before had severed where it tugged me now, my upper body from my lower body, tugging me forward. Though the bird stood still, tugging me forward like the mechanism in a tape measure that erases as it winds the tape back in the thing the tape had been unwound to show. The cord had ripped me apart to show me no escaping hell. A love of the suffering of others put me back together, love stitched me together with a steel needle like a bowling pin, invisible just like the cord, just like the love. And the cord dragged me to the bird, I fell in the dirt at the first tug and the cord dragged me to the bird bouncing, a stone skipped on a lake, the puffs of dust, the puffs of mist my body would make, if it were skipped across smooth water.  The robot barked the bird, barked its beak, its beak opening and closing like a plastic head, Tyrannosaurus head on a plastic stick, operated by a child who uses it to grab small objects of foot and a half farther from him than without the head, its sharp tooth, small tooth, jaws, feet, and reach.  On the blue calm, sudden lake that was the gate through which I dropped to hell, the robot, a gall, I first thought tumbled from the sky, as if it had been thrown into my rowboat from heaven are so hard from hell it seemed to fly before it fell.   Now the bird walked. I didn't try to chew. I followed it to the verge of the boiling mountain that boiled as if it were a lake on fire. The surface of the mountain, the fir trees that leaped and sank like drunks on headless bulls, the bodies only, also leaping, sinking, spirits that can't see hell is riding them and leap to bucket, thinking hell is men and sink beneath its weight and leap again. The bulls beneath the firs and rocks like boots and snow in the dirt and in the dirty snow, maintained at the summit by enormous loud machine so hot they melted almost as soon as they made it flesh colored. They made of infinite flesh tone, no snowflake was the same color as any other, so they all melted and flowed down the mountain together and collected in a ditch at the verge through which rolled plants that looked like tumbled weeds but red and made of vein. The water shivered as the mountain boiled. The ditch was narrow. I stepped back a few steps then I ran a few steps forward and I leaped across it and the mountain boiled more furiously in the stream of flesh toned water flowing from the peak at once flooded its banks and all the mountainside at once was covered and the mountainside at once became a face but featureless and sweating off its skin. And I stood ankle deep in the skin and turned to the robot bird who hadn't leaped barked before I spoke.  Who told you to jump the ditch. The bird had been tugging his middle finger on its left.  Stopped rolling just drifted in the shallowing tan water as the water retreated from the face of the mountain and became again a stream of melted skin trickling down the mountain. And the bird then stepped across the ditch. You got to pay fucker or somebody is going to have to pay for you. You're lucky that finger was worth ten of you. The water where the finger had entered chased the finger as it sank making a whirlpool where the finger thing that slowly widened it looked like a hole in skin bloodless but opening forever that would if it kept growing would in time can seem the ditch the mountain and all hell. The bird stepped forward and began to climb. So I have one more it's shorter of those homes about health. For some reason I just decided it would be cool to scroll right like way past it and this is called the mind of health. And it comes right up the line. My ankles turned the mountain sweat back rippling one inch to with each step I take waiting up the mountain, the brown sweat flowing down. Color of every skin tone merge eddies as if it were a mind of flesh deciding not a mind of water on a mountain weather deciding at my ankles weather to turn return to the sky beach light at the summit of the boiling mountain upon which no shade falls are gathered. The climb against the effortless fall to the summit from which light is wrenched like water from the stone by heat that vaporizes raw conflicting with the mind of hell that holds the rock together. Where the vapor and the will brought me the light emerges by which hell is lit that is not everywhere lit. Or to flow around my ankles down to the ditch at the base of the mountain in which the new sweat would not rise would not raise the level of the sweat already flowing but only thicken for a moment only slow the sweat consumed by uncontested people constantly in a constant market. A mind of water seeming almost the turn from being water not to flow down the climb to change its being as with each step I take I tear it. But I have lived the life on earth and step and step and watch the water for the shimmer I make tearing. Well, I've read those poems and now I wish I hadn't. But that's okay because I'm going to read other poems. Or maybe the bummer will be compounded by me reading other poems. So a couple of months ago I wrote this poem called hex and it's going to be the last poem I read. And I was really happy when I wrote it. I mean writing generally makes me happy for a particular kind of happiness. And I wondered, well, I first wished I could continue the poem but it got to its end and it ended. And then I thought it would be neat if I could do it again but it didn't seem like possible. But then a few days ago, it's a variation on the first line of pecs occurred to me. And I just started writing another poem. This is called hex because it's in blank iambic hexameter. But also the first one was, I mean, it was actually named after the barks that closed this album, hex. But it's now also called hex, hexameter. So I'm going to read, I've written three more poems that are after hex. And I'm going to read those and then I'm going to read hex. So this is newest one, which I just finished today I guess. And it's called after hex three. One's opportunities to be unhappy are one single most inherited. All other unit is requiring acknowledgement of pendant interest. It's a miracle to whom, what person, you're still alive. The city is an alphabet of numbers. It goes past 26 a sudden never ending in boundlessness, but once so short and narrow, you sang it as you smashed fully trains together that sneering green engine smashing into the blue engine that really smile how you, but how really you reverse nostalgia of the unfamiliar grid becoming home. All comfort is decay. You're sure is not a living thing, because it gets harder as it became more fatal where's that where there's less of it until it's gone and all at once not fatal. In Hills you once imagine green Hills cushion soft upon which you imagined you would lay a gingham blanket, a wicker basket, then from the latter pool of cartoon sandwich and a cartoon slice of pie on a white plate. Life apart the world except the slice itself is black, the dogs chew toy, your dog. It matches neither world exactly not the cartoon world you when you were a child imagine, and not the world, the wrong colors in the cartoon, the texture of the colors wrong. No life in the world, no life at all. But in the cartoon, it's too much of the world and all the life of the world, the plastic eye. All comfort is decay. And you have spent your middle life searching for the turkey leg the greedy wolf old laugh from the basket in the cartoon. After watching which your imagination then developed almost without your input. You've searched passively. It's true. You've sat at the dining table in the afternoon. And who are they with family. You want to say a risen, but you want to say they manifested like moaning spirits in a ball uncertain where you've got the image from everything's giving you sat at the festooned table in the afternoon, a bib from the red lobster and the heart of the next town over around your neck knife and fork in the other and lick your mall exactly like the greedy wolf, as if your hunger were a spell you passed on food, but never has the cartoon turkey leg appeared. The perfect golden turkey leg you've hungered for since you were small. When you first saw the golden leg drawn steaming in the picnic basket like a sword drawn steaming from the entrails of your enemies. This is after hex two. One's opportunities to be unhappy are both indiscernible and too big, like the gray wall of a gropeist and fond. And as you rise the wilderness from the campus long as you are helped up from the campus long, although immediately you kneel and broke for the shoe the building not from your now wet right but first as you rise, then as you grow. But then required to state your name and name the place, you think you will be able to distinguish your warm blood from the cold accumulation of the fog. But when you touch the grass. No, it's all cool. And this is second to last poem. I'm going to read today. And this is after hex one. One's opportunities to be unhappy are dynamic, ever expanding afford Mustang chasing the sun as it sprints panic to the western limit, which was the morning you first didn't think of the riot. And for weeks afterwards, and following what once had seemed and anybody would have said so seemed to have been a sequence of events and time and only to the intelligence. Now they scurry from one Nimbus to another down the block until they disappear in dark. Then they reappear in light, then disappear again in dark. And then finally beneath the next street light they disappear in light to whom what seemed to you a sequence was a sphere of time, expanding in a space of limit. And with walls at its own, in which objects are attacked, the space pays to what authority. The sphere of the riot for what seemed likely, but it was only minutes the sphere was conveyed the polished gem from hand to hand, one representative to the next, one party to the other, and the weeks of their competitive expressions of concern in the minutes of the rolling a golden coin across scarred knuckles a magician or a criminal, but both the coin a sphere in the space between two hands, a coin in the hand. Eventually, like bullets in America, the riot passes through our heads, and we forget the riot.  This is my last poem. Thank you all again for coming. Thank you, Noah and Jeffrey for making it happen. In this poem about the pages long from letting you know ahead of time. And called hex ones opportunities to be unhappy are unlimited are limited, but only by one's own imagination, which is powerful, but friends is defenseless, but is limited only by things. As bark psychosis did it in music at the start of the new music hex itself the start of the new music after talk talk started it, who after this heat started it, who after public image limited, though john Leiden has since gone bad, or more offensively is we always will, who after public limit image limited started it, going bad, and not to mention slip, not to mention the American, Leiden and Morris be gone for our in America, America, for Trump or in Los Angeles, bad Morris was never new, except his talent was and Johnny Maher, and always the dead old art will suffer further life, if new artists, the very resist ability work to extend it. Though such artists must not seek to extend the dead old are, or they will fail, but must make only what they must make. And if it aligns with the dead, the dead will live again one day. Low string and cleaning dissonances when the strings ascend together sirens of the cops inside their wooden bodies, their brown body. Listen, first, the sirens come from nowhere in the world except for them, for them the sirens announcing nowhere, and then the lights from nowhere around the corner, red like an idea of fire, as the drums roll beneath the strings, a shopping cart from far from where it rolls beneath the city on a sidewalk in the day in the middle of the city roll beneath the city the strings from which the sirens come the lights that chase the sirens down and live as an idea of fire and nowhere no guitar, but space and stillness where guitars with stillness and space and a boy singing alone unhappiness in the midst of the raw world, to whom I would escape from the midst of the raw world. It's now oppressive stillness and it's windowless disease. It's timelessness. It's timelessness. It's nothing's happening in my life. I don't have time to wear to run from timelessness in the windowless room in the room in which you sealed yourself at the start of the pandemic hoping for more life, more time. As Bark Psychosis did it, at the start of the new music and made a sound to which one wonders from life and in which one wonders still having arrived, one's opportunities to be unhappy are unlimited, though often lately limited by the end of the world. But maybe the end of the world is ending. Maybe soon one will be in small ways sad again. One's opportunities available to one's attention. Liden, the horseman, winning himself on the fetid, floating horse, long since afraid to kick the spurs and pop it, but he makes an eager winning, hoping to sound ready. He is ready to be the last American. Winnie attack. Winnie. Hill's unfurl beneath him to the hill, beneath the surface of Lake Erie and the ice above the hill. That seems to constitute the lake from somewhere other than the lake. To be a picture of a dead lake, the surface of the thing, a picture of something else. How far we travel now to be in the now impossible presence of things to which we ride in life that touches and has never touched all things by anything, us, even in the life. How far we travel, we have traveled to, to watch the lake and moving from the parking lot, approaching the moment it, the moment was already in our minds accomplished. The long visionary gaze across the eye in the midst of which the gay, the ice infinite has no middle, no middle, but is made of middle ecum. In the midst of the gaze, the moment through which the visionary move, we will leave our bodies gazing or at least our minds for once won't trouble what we see. Such peace accomplished. We have known our peace accomplished on the drive to the lake, by the time we reach the lake we turned around already in our mind. Such peace accomplished and retreated from, except we part, except we gaze at the white expanse and sigh, not knowing which emotion demands the sigh, and the sigh leaves us. Staggering, a butterfly, our frozen breath as butterflies have staggered, you have watched that seemed uncertain where to land, upon which flower. You've watched a butterfly choosing, or if it wasn't choosing, still it seemed to choose a flower pattern like itself, or breath escaping in the haze of occasion you watchers disintegrate and do not recognize yourself. But I am watching, and I see you breathing at once. I can't see beneath the picture of awe on your face, the image of the visionary moment, and even if it isn't happening beneath the image, I forgive myself for feeling nothing, no visionary being you. And the hills roll beneath the surface of the lake. As Mogwai did it, no singing, but in guitar, and sometimes human voices singing keyboards sometimes in 1997, three years after heck, at the start of the new music, each guitar a wall and hammer bolt. If we forgave ourselves for making we have made, we would destroy what we have made before we'd let ourselves enjoy it. No, we won't release ourselves to joy with our forgiveness, never. And so we build a tower from the top of which we hope to reach forgiveness. Opportunities for one to be unhappy are unlimited. A pitch of silence in the everyday unsounding. One's opportunities belong to one, but rogue unhappinesses claim their midst in a consuming infinity that even now approaches you. As Inya did it, though you didn't notice. Listen, the songs are hit, but listening, the sure connection between all things become long. America, the sure connections fray in clouds at the Capitol, and those who scream they want you back have never seen you, and wouldn't recognize you if you think. And those who lie face down on the floor in the chamber, see the floor only. The woman on the other side of the door, wide eyed and bleeding sees no metaphor. Oh music, where have you fled? Oh music, who will make me? Thank you. Shane, thank you so much for next thing the IM to further life and for compassing so many kinds of terrain into your project. It's a great way to end this series of readings for 2021. We will certainly be back in the fall, although we will be remote despite this anguishing way embodied image that I'm not sharing the space with, because we need to make decisions long before we can never look up and we'll find take advantage of remoteness to really booked and great people who are far flung. I want to thank UC Berkeley libraries and our amazing audio visual team, and I really emphatically want to thank Noah Warren who's made the difference between theory and praxis and existing in coordinating the series. And I don't know who's coming next fall and spring yet, but I do know one of the people who's coming and that will be Noah Warren himself who has a book of poetry coming out from Copper Canyon of the complete stories. So we will we know at least one of our readers for next year. Thank you for supporting the series and see you then.


But we've made, for example, biodiversity and conservation an economical, sustainable model. Currently, it's about 6% of our GDP comes from ecoturism, which provides jobs for people all around the country. And we are leveraging on the 5% of the biodiversity that we have in our territory to produce that, not only conservation, but making an economic model out of it. So that's going directly to scale. But then, when you mentioned the word hobby, it ring a bell on me because somehow, I have just briefly a discussion with my sister. My sister studied economics and she's a specialist on economics and biodiversity. And we were talking about an anecdote for the natives Americans in Costa Rica, how they perceive the jaguar, because from the typical occidental perspective, the large feline, like Lyon, is the king of the jungle because he's on top of the food chain. For native Americans, the jaguar is important because it's at the end of the food chain. And that depends. And they have this saying that if you see a jaguar, it's because the whole chain, it's healthy. And that's what they represent. I think that analogy is what we need to use when we talk about biosphere and humanity. Our well-being, it kind of depends the well-being of the rest, because sometimes we do not see those services on water, on soil, on oceans. We take those for granted. And I believe that's part of the problem. We are not tackling what we're doing to the environment to preserve it. And we need to, as this analogy, the main problem, it's here. It's how we perceive reality. We perceive that those are for granted or that we can live comfortably without a jaguar. And I think that's the narrative we need to change. Is there something we should all be looking out for that tells us the system is really working? Well, it's a tough one. But I have to say that. Every country, I suppose, has their own jaguar, their own apex predator, whatever that could tell us that. I think we need to leverage our goals in terms of protecting biosphere in more profound narratives. It's not only about ethics, because it is about ethics. But we need to consolidate a narrative that builds upon the ethics of conservation, growth, and well-being for the people, and how we can, as humanity, not only catch up with all the legacy that we as a generation represent, but the key that our generation represents for humanity. That's why, in the case of climate change, that narrative is so important, because it's really evident. In the context of biodiversity, it's a bit more complex, because the loss of biodiversity is so fast, but many people don't even know what we're losing. So I believe we need to work a lot on communication and narrative to inspire lots of people, not only to get to the enthusiast, as I believe many of the audiences, but when we manage to reach those who are indifferent and touch their heart or touch their market, we'll get to two more profound changes.


So I want to do a video on a pretty useful tool that is actually in the a you are and it's on github on the surface It is a tool for reading the King James Bible on the command line Which is useful enough for a lot of people, but you might be asking how could that be useful to me? I don't ever read the Bible. It's a very nice little script that can parse any kind of tab separated value file and That happens to be some kind of versified text and it is a very intuitive interface So I'm going to showcase it showcase this guy's little script because I've actually forked a couple repositories from it to generate actually other Bibles Bibles a Septuagint Septuagint Bible in Greek and the Clementine Vulgate in Latin and it can probably be used not just for other things like sacred texts But any any kind of text that happens to be divided in chapters and verses So I just found it very useful. So anyway, so in the a you are it's KGV Slash or dash get you can get it on github as well It's this guy is bond to bond and the repositories KJV Now I have my fork running on my machine right now. I have it installed So I'll go ahead and show you how it works. So generally the idea is You can pretty much just give it any kind of Bible book Let's say Genesis and it's gonna open that book up all 50 chapters of Genesis You can read them straight right here. It's just gonna open in your pager and you can scroll through them pretty easily It's pretty much what you would expect. You can also select individual chapters. So let's say Genesis chapter 5 And chapter 5 will come up in only 5 or give it individual verses So let's say chapter 5 verse 10 or 10 to 20 or something like that or maybe chapter 5 to 10 or something like that It pretty much works in the way you'd expect, you know But this is pretty much literally just how you annotate chapters and verses in any kind of versified text So it's pretty easy. I should say in addition. It's pretty smart at guessing which book you want if you only put in part of the text So if I say like gin 7 it guesses gin is Genesis or they might even have GE or something Probably won't be able to guess G because there are a couple G Maybe just goes with ever whichever the first one is So it's pretty nice. And of course it has both the new and the old testament so I can do, you know, Luke 5 through 7 or something like that Now additionally one nice thing is you can search the text you can search Search the whole text for some kind of Any kind of word or something like that. So let's say we want to search the entire Bible for Jesus he's probably going to be in there somewhere and that will actually bring up every verse that has That match in it. So of course all the verses that mention Jesus are going to pop up Much better than using the index in the back of your book Additionally, you can search individual books so we can search Luke for Jesus and that'll bring up all the verses in Luke that have Jesus in it or You know Genesis we can search a Genesis for Jesus. There are none there. So as you'd expect So the other options you can give this thing Well has a little help menu if you give it H but aside from the search function the only other thing that I think is notable is You can list out the books and you can disable line wrap if you want I don't know why you'd want to but maybe if you're parsing something. I'm not quite sure but So you can list the books Now I should say I I think I mentioned a second ago. I'm not actually using this guy's repo I forked it and I added I mean really the only difference the only thing that I added is I wanted to some of the Deutero canonical books or the apocrypha. So I added those in and that's the only difference between my Repository in his but let me go ahead and pull line up because I'm gonna show you my the other things that I did with this script So you can get my fork of it here again just adds some apocryphal books doesn't change anything else But I also used his little script to Well, I'm the other changes I made it so you can pseudo make install it So you can use the make file to directly install it his I think he just makes the binary and you have to move it yourself But I'm too lazy for that but aside from that I also made a Clementine vulgate in Latin and a Greek Bible and again the only things I really changed are the tab separated value file So if I want to open this up, let me just open it up on my computer. So if I go to where my source code is For the Greek Bible, you'll see that If I open up the tab separated value file, really, it's just you know, the whole thing the book name the book abbreviation the verses and The book number and the text itself that's separated by tabs So you could take not just obviously any Bible, but any Any kind of text that's versified and you can make your own equivalent of this But anyway, let me show you the Greek interface now I've decided to for the Greek Bible you can of course, you know type in Genesis And it'll bring up, you know, the Septuagint translation of Genesis but I decided to name all the books in English and that's just because Just because I sort of assumed that not everyone has Greek input But some people have I mean everyone has English input or Latin input. So it's pretty much okay But that does cause a little confusion. I should just say if you don't know In the Greek Bible or in the Septuagint at least So for example in English we have first Samuel second Samuel first Kings and second Kings They have first through fourth Kings where their first Kings is our first Samuel So there are little differences like that. I will say the Septuagint That I got there it had a couple for example I have two books of judges and that's because there's one that's from the Alexandrinus Text I think and another one from the Vaticanus text So there were a couple codexes that might have a little differences And if I if there are some I just included them and there are a couple other things like for example Ezra and Nehemiah, that's what we call them in English, but in Greek They're second estrus, but I made it so you can access them from either one But anyway aside from that it works pretty much the same way, of course I can search, you know, I can go to the book of Luke chapter 5 verse 10 or something like that Works pretty much how you'd expect and of course as I said, I also made a Latin equivalent for it Which is specifically using the Clementine Vulgate, so you can do the same thing here So let me open up a I guess I don't really need to open up a new window for it But the Vulgate has I decided heck why not I'll just use English interface for the Vulgate as well, but I might change that later since it is Latin input, but I can say Genesis And there it is. It's pretty much everything works the same way So I definitely encourage you to check these out because I think even if you're not using some kind of spiritual text or something This little script this guy made is really useful again. His original repository is Bonta Bon I mean his github name is Bonta Bon, but I have a couple of repositories on my github if you want to check those out I think there are some forks that have like the LDS Bible. I thought about making I mean there I should say the reason I originally made the Greek Bible is a week or so ago I got a comment from or an email from someone asking if I had any tools for doing Greek Bible study on the command line And I realized I don't think there were any of those But I guess I could easily enough just fork this and make the Greek Bible here but additionally he mentioned Hebrew or You know, I mean the thing with Hebrew is I don't actually know how to do right-to-left text on the command line I've just never done it. I've never had to Maybe some of you guys will know more about that, but you might have to actually change the text around So if you wanted to do either the Hebrew Bible or you know the Koran or something like that in the original Arabic You would have to figure something like that out But you know if you have any other kind of versified text you could pretty easily just supply a Tab separated value file and that'll be it. Oh, and I should say I think I mentioned the Greek Bible is using the Septuagint I mean But the Septuagint is just the Old Testament the New Testament is the SBL Greek New Testament And the reason I chose that is not because I have a strong preference But it's just because that was the easiest text for me to parse and get in the correct format in text Which I don't know might be a little arbitrary, but it took me a while to Properly there was a lot of setting and awking and and Vim macros going on to get it in the right format But anyway, so you can check these I'll put the links to all of these repositories in the video description So if you come up with anything clever with these be sure to send it to me And I might make no good mode might make note of them But anyway, hopefully that's been enough and I will see you guys next time


Felly, gallwn i ddim yn siŵr i'n meddwl yn bwysig i gyda'i gweithio'r ffeidio ac yn dweud yn brofodi'r ddweud, felly rwy'n mynd i ddim yn meddwl i'r ffeidio'r gweithio'n meddwl. A wnaeth ym mhag, dyma'n mynd i gael ychael.  Felly, gyda'n gweithio di'n mynd i'w awl at the NHS Confederation Conference here in Cardiff today. Yr hyn yn ei lle ddechrau allu gael y ffyrdd y ffordd yn llwyddiant. A beth i'r спyn殺wn ar y cerddorol a fyddwch, cerddorol ar y gwaith yng Nghymru am eu gyrwpeth yma, ac mae yma'n ddod i gynyddu'n fyddwch dechrau arna llach gyda'r cyllid a gweithio'r amser. Mae'n byw o falsiad o'r cyhoeddau a'r cerddorol o'r gwertheau. Felly, mae'n cwestiwn o'r awdraethau'n gwneud o'r troi'r bawm o'r gweithio'n gweithio'n gwneud o'r fathau. Rwy'n cael ei bod yn cael ei gweithio'n cyffredinol. Mae'r Gwleilau Cyngor yn y gweithio'n gweithio'u gweithio. Mae'n gallu gwneud o'r ffyrdd Fyth i Gwleilau Cyngor, ac mae'n gallu gwneud o'r gweithio. Felly, y gallai cychwyn i'r llyfodol, yna'n ddechrau. Mae'r cyffredinol, i fynd yn ymwyllteidio, ym 3 miliwn aeth yna, yn ddigon, yn ymddangos. Felly, maen nhw'n gweithio i'r llyfodol yma o'r cyffredinol oherwydd y cwm Aesaf 20 yma, a'r cyffredinol a'r cyffredinol o'r cyllidol yma yn ei ddweud. Mae'n cael ei gyd yn ei ddweud. Cymru i'r cyffredinol sy'n gyda'r gyflawn amgylchau hefyd, maen nhw'n ei ddweud o'r twyllun i'w cwylun oherwydd mae'n ei ddweud i'w ddweud yn y pethau a'i ddweud yn gwneud oherwydd. Ond mae'n ddweud sy'n rhoi bod y gwasanaeth ymlaen nhw'n gwneud i'w cyfrifodol o'i ddweud oherwydd ei ddweud i'w ddweud ymlaen ymlaen nhw'n gwneud oherwydd ei ddweud i'w ddweud i'w ddweud oherwydd. ac mae'r cymhwybod y LNHS yn ystod, ond mae'n gwneud y cyd-fodol, ac mae'n gweithio'n gofyniaeth o'r gwaith a ddwylliant gyda'ch gwneud. Mae'n fwy ffrindio'n gweithio mewn gwirionedd yn y ddylch, ond mae'n ei wneud i'r ffrindio'n cyd-fawr. Felly rydyn ni wedi'u cyfreunio'n cyfodol ar y ddiolch i ddod i gyrfaethau iawn a gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. Ac mae'r cyffredig ei fod yn gallu gweld i'r cymdeithasol gweld i'r cyffredig iawn. Mae'r cyffredig yn mynd i'r llaw o'r ddweud, bryd oherwydd wrth gael. A'r cair yw'r cyfeir thati, y cyfnodau prif, ar y cyfnodau yw'r cyflogau, a'r cyflogau mwy o'r cyfnodau, a'r cyflogau'r cyflogau'r cyfnodau. A byddai'r gwrthod, wrth gwrs, lle fydd yn uch yn fwyllgor, Ond oedd y NHS wedi bod, roedd chi'n gwneud am ffordd, yn gwneud yn gweithio'r cyfnodd o'r rhaglen. Rydym ni'n gwneud ein pobl yn 3 miliwn peth, rydyn ni wedi gwneud 19 miliwn cyfnodd o'r cyfrwyngau i gyflwyngau a'r gymrys. Mae'r 4 miliwn ymddangos yn ysgrifennu i'r llwy хочwm. One million people attend A&E. We have three quarters of a million admissions, over 400,000 of which are emergency admissions. We have 700,000 optition visits. We issue 78 million prescriptions.  Incidentally, I've noted the English Department of Health's sudden apparent obsession with a seven-day NHS as everyone in the room knows the NHS is and has always been exactly that. It's not exactly news and it's not. But what really moves me are the individual stories. The individual life is improved, transformed, saved by the service. And these happen right across the NHS every hour of every day, but it's focused today on one hospital in Wales, Morriston and so on. A hospital that I have a particular interest in is where I was born. It's a hospital that gave my mother tremendous care. I was a difficult birth, as I was reminded annually on my birthday. My mother, Bessa, was alive, but certainly a high force delivery that was carried out in the 60s. Certainly, it's the case of the hospital that will save both my life and my mother's life at that time many years ago. But back to modern day Morriston. Just in the last few days, we've heard the story of seven-month-old Ruby Davis, who has literally found her feet again after three months in plaster. She was born with hip dysblaesia, which could have left. There was a lifetime of hip pain and limp. The conventional treatment wasn't effective, but consultant orthopedic surgeon Neil Price from Morriston Hospital carried out a procedure called closed reduction. Ruby was in plaster from her chest to her knees for three months. Now it's been removed. And because it was caught early enough, and through that consultant's skill, she should now have a completely normal life. Now Ruby's family can't praise the team enough, saying that they've gone above and beyond the call of duty to make sure she's getting the best possible care, both now and as she grows up. I don't know whether it's lightning or not, but I'm not going to be struck by lightning any day at the time. I suppose when I came in, actually the same sound occurred. It was like a drum roll when I came in. There we are, hopefully it won't happen again. Above and beyond the call of duty, how often do we hear that phrase used to describe RNHS staff? Also at Morriston, Stephen Power, who suffered terrible facial injuries following a motorcycle crash, became one of the first trauma patients in the world that 3D printing used at every stage of his facial reconstruction surgery. His surgeon, Adrian Sugar, says the results are in a different league from anything they've done before, and Mr Power has called the results life changing. His operation was featured at an exhibition at the Science Museum in London. So world class treatment changing lives. And of course we shouldn't forget the research going on right across the country every day within the NHS, which has the potential to transform even more lives in the future. In the same hospital that Ruby and Stephen were treated, a ground breaking group of researchers at Morriston's amazing specialist burns unit are working with engineers and scientists to develop 3D printed tissue made from human cells for the first time. And they hope that in a few years time patients who've lost all or part of their ear or nose to trauma or cancer could have reconstruction using new tissue, which has grown of course from their own cells. And real life surgical trials could start in as little as 3 or 4 years time. And this is science fiction stuff, which thanks to the NHS is becoming science fact. Now I focused on Swansea, but I could just as well have talked about the superb cardiac surgery team in Cardiff, really one of the best across the UK. Stroke services in the north of Wales are now being held up as a beacon for others to follow, thanks to minimising the time taken to assess and treat. How will our health board has won a national award for helping to improve the health and quality of life of people living with type 2 diabetes? So for many reasons I think the NHS in Wales deserves its privilege place in our national life. But of course being placed on a pedestal comes at a price and that price is unrelenting public scrutiny. Now let me be clear that the NHS in Wales like any highly complex system anywhere in the world is not perfect. And with a budget of £7 billion a year it's wholly appropriate that it should be under the spotlight. As a government we've intervened several times over the past five years to put right things we've seen are going wrong. It hasn't been easy, it hasn't been done lightly, but for me it was necessary and it's delivered results. But ask those people who know best the patients what they think and we get a clear answer. More than 9 out of 10 patients rate the care they've received as good or excellent. In the world of customer satisfaction that's a decent return by any standards. And surely it's the best antidote if I might use a medical phrase to those who would systematically run the service down for their own hands. A crisis is an easy headline to write about a system but when people face a crisis of their own as the statistics show the system is there for them. But we can't be complacent, we want that figure to be 10 out of 10 and that is the even steeper challenge we must all set ourselves in the future. But as First Minister I want to reflect on the last five years and the severe constraints we've faced in public spending. I look at the investment that we've put in to our NHS and to social care and I know that we did the right thing. Since I'm frequently faced with comparisons with England across the assembly chamber I make no apology for putting them on the record here today. At the end of this assembly spending per hand on health in Wales remains higher than England. Spending on health and social care combined is considerably higher, I mean fewer people are left languishing in hospital when their recovery could be so much quicker elsewhere. Pums and pence are important, not just to the NHS finance directors here today but there's another arguably even sharper dividing line that's opened up between us here in Wales and across the border in England. Our philosophy for the NHS is fundamentally this. It's paid for from the public purse to deliver the public good. It's accountable to ministers and citizens know where they stand. For all of the myriad of complex and technological advice treatments it now offers its basic structure is relatively simple and easy to understand. In England ministers have embarked on a reform so dizzying in its complexity, so baffling in its structure and so opaque in terms of its accountability that patients there could be forgiven for wondering who if anyone is actually in charge. I won't attempt to explain any further, only say this. On this dividing line and I expect the vast majority of people in this room share this view. We are very happy to be on the side of simplicity delivery and of course the strong philosophy that this is a public good paid for from the public purse. Now let me be very clear wholesale national top-down reorganisation is not on the agenda. The NHS has better things to do than conjure with an electric health commissioners deconstruct primary care or create a vast new health congo that would be bigger than the government itself. You need to be allowed to get on with the job, not worry about political projects. Now as many of you know the OECD have recently been carrying out a four country comparison of health services in the UK. Their report is due to be published soon so we'll have to wait to see what it says. But during the OECD's research visit to Wales last year we were able to emphasise to them time after time the commitment to quality which runs right through the NHS here. It's embedded in everything that you do. It's an essential building block of the world class health service is delivering cutting edge treatment for all. We saw similar conclusions in the last four nation health study and I very much expect that will be once again reflected and recognised in the final OECD report. The message can then go out nationally and internationally but the quality of treatment that we offer is the equal of anyone anywhere. I think it was our neighbours across all this time. In some ways the changes to the health service in England have actually been useful to us here in Wales. Why do I say that? Well they've served to illustrate the more consensual partnership approach that we've taken here. What better illustration of that is there? The images of junior doctors in open revolt in England standing outside their hospitals with placards rather than inside treating patients in Wales. Do you need doctors to stay on the wards? Why? Because we respect their profession enough to say that we won't unilaterally impose new contracts. We're not interested in macho confrontation for the simple reason that the patient and that's what this is all about. Doesn't benefit. As a Government we've had some ups and downs with the British Medical Association over the past five years. It would be strange if we hadn't given the financial pressures we've faced. But I'd like to quote the BMA Wales chair today, Dr Phil Banfield, who I see is sitting in front of me. So I hope that the quote is actually accurate. He said, I'm sure he can correct me afterwards, there is a commitment in the NHS in Wales that whatever the solution it will come from collaboration not confrontation. Just as we welcome the fact that Wales dares to tread a different policy path in the preserving Bevan's principles, we're encouraged by the Welsh Government's recognition that doctors have a key role in delivering this vision. Doctors are therefore respected partners. And that goes for doctors. Of course for nurses, consultants, support staff, managers, all those who have to run the health service and everyone else who works hard to make the system what it is today. Because if our approach shows one thing, it's that the false and dangerous dichotomy of being either on the side of the patient or on the side of the NHS has to be avoided at all costs. As the bitter dispute in England shows little sign of being resolved and confident that the Welsh spirit of collaboration based on Bevan's principles is the best and most effective way of avoiding this damaging path now and in the future. As another tangible illustration of this approach, we together with the BMA, unions and the NHS as a whole are working on a set of common values that link all of this together. They'll be launched shortly and they'll seek to lay out those things which bring us together, which inspire us and which set the direction of the NHS for the future. So what is the future? Well the next five years will be make or break for the Welsh NHS. We need to prove to the Welsh public that the model that we have of healthcare is the right one. We have to do more to put the patient voice at the heart of the NHS. We'll go further to integrate care between NHS and social care with a wholesale top-down reorganisation. We'll deliver more care closer to home improving the way health and care is delivered. We'll continue to rise to the budgetary challenges with more money than ever before for our NHS and social care despite the cuts from Westminster. There'll be a renewed focus on tackling the most stubborn of waiting times and there will be no compromise on quality. Our NHS will continue to improve results for the public. On 1 April, the well-being of future generations act one of the landmark laws passed through this assembly comes into force. Uniquely it places legal duties on 44 public sector organisations including the Welsh Government and the bodies which make up the NHS in Wales to work together to pursue seven long-term national goals. Among them is a healthier Wales and here's one of the really significant areas where all of us from individuals through to health boards, the local authorities and government have to focus our efforts in order to pursue that shared national goal. It's so simple I suppose that it barely needs restating but so fundamental to our future as a nation and to the national health service that it can't be said often enough.  Investment's risen, that's true, but the service too has risen to the challenge.  But you all know that the projections that we have make tough reading. The demography of those needing care will continue to widen and the growing issues of childhood obesity and diabetes will place an ever greater strain on services. A discussion that was made the other day, it was making the point to me that tomorrow's thing to see that statistics with regard to heart disease are improving strokes, improving as people take more responsibility for their lives and they're doing more exercise when they're younger. But same person also made the point to me that means you're going to have more hip and knee replacements in years to come. We can't actually legislate for the frailties of the human body but much better of course to have somebody who needs a joint replacement and somebody who has a serious stroke and of course needs care for the rest of their lives. The way that budgets are calculated have changed of course over time but in 1999 health spending represented 39% of the Welsh block grant. This year the equivalent figure will be 48% of our budget. Now I make no apology for making the NHS a priority and the people of Wales will rest assured that we will continue to do so. You hear some insist that we spend still more on the NHS while also increasing spending everywhere else. It's impossible given the cuts to our budget and anyone who tries to persuade the people of Wales that it's possible to increase spending in every area of government is taking a large public for fools. For the NHS we know it's about making every pound count. Being ruthless in the pursuit of inefficiency and waste and planning effectively to deliver more within the budgets available. It's about continuing to embrace Health Minister Mark Drakeford's prudent healthcare agenda which he's pioneered in fairness and driven forward with enormous energy and which I know has been welcomed right across the service in Wales and further afield. It's about working ever more closely with the social care sector, integrating when it makes sense providing an intelligently planned pathway for each individual according to their needs and removing the stubborn blockages in a system caused by one service not talking properly to another. Our record on the late transfers of care is substantially better than England because we've chosen not to slash social care budgets and we won't see the off-loaned future costs onto councils and council tax payers as the Chancellor is doing there. But there's more that needs to be done and there's more that will be done not least thanks to the Social Services and Well-being Act. This sets out an expectation about integration that should help to deliver a health and social care system that helps staff to work together. It's when I step on that, you can't see that. A health and social care system that helps staff to work across disciplines together with and for the patients. We have the intermediate care fund that's provided a blueprint for what properly integrated services should look like where a series of projects would save money but of course deliver better care in the process. And those at the front line know what the issues are. We need to listen more to them and move rapidly to replicate the success stories that we do see right around Wales. So there is a responsibility on public services across the board to increase the pace of change for the better and collaboration. There's a duty on all of us to take greater responsibility for our own health and the decisions which we make that affect our own lives. But despite the challenges facing at the NHS in Wales is a robust and resilient organisation over the past five years it's been tested by austerity, but it's prevailed. And the number of those who are out there living in Wales with calls to be grateful for its care and treatment has continued to grow. Over the last five years we've shown our commitment to the NHS and remain committed to the simple idea that it will always be there for each of Wales's three million people when they need it most. A good health service cannot be delivered by one individual or group of people alone. It cannot be delivered solely by government alone. It needs the support and expertise of so many in this room and beyond who work in our health service who deliver the care that people need and deserve. A system that has stood the test of time since the late 1940s and a system that continues to deliver the people of Wales now. And that's done to you. So thank you for your amazing work. Thank you for listening and do enjoy the rest of the day.


Welcome to JSA TV, the newsroom for tech and telecom professionals. I'm Jamie Scott Okataya here at the Chorus Communications Lounge, Channel Partners Evolution. Joining me today, Mr. Mike Oath, he's the CEO of OnSIP. Mike, how are you? I'm great. Good morning, Jamie. How are you? Good morning. Good morning. It's a pleasure to kick off this show with you. Can you tell us a little bit about what makes your channel partner program so unique? Yeah, I'd love to. I'm very excited about our channel partner program. It all starts with the people. We have just such a great team here from Helene Kaderi to Mike Curtis to Chuck Dunn, all the way through the organization. Just so, so happy and proud to be able to work with such a great team. And watching them sell shoulder to shoulder with our agents. And that's really the big differentiator for us is our team is completely involved, helping our agents to bring unique creative, innovative products to the marketplace and helping their customers to really succeed and be able to get the best product and the best solution out there and help them with anything that they need. And that's from support to onboarding to billing, really taking the entire process and helping our agents and their customers through the entire process. And you really have some proprietary assets that belong uniquely to OnSIP and a real unique offering for your customers. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, our offering is kind of the proprietary part of it is really kind of two pieces. One is our platform and one is our support. As far as our platform goes, the platform is entirely ours. So it's our software from start to finish. We're not reselling anyone else's solution. So that gives us total control over the products, the features and the billing. We have a patented solution for a distributed architecture that allows us to distribute customers across the country, across our data centers that helps with reliability, fault tolerance, and total uptime. Secondly, our support is unmatched in the industry. We have U.S.-based support. We have a 14-second average call wait time. So if you're there as an agent with your customer and you're trying to get something resolved, we're going to respect your time. We're going to get on that call. And all of our agents are basically level two support agents. So you're going to get that resolution first time. Most of our tickets are one-call resolution. You're not going to have to get escalated and you're certainly not getting anyone reading a script. So we're there to support you start to finish. That personalized customer support, you really can't get much of it these days. So music to our ears for sure. Absolutely. Now, on your website, I noticed that you really strive hard to customize these packages for your customers. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, absolutely. We realize that businesses aren't cookie-cutters. Work is not anymore. Work is not a place you go. It's a thing that you do and you can do that anywhere. So what we try to do is make packages that give each customer the best benefit. And there are certain verticals, education, houses of worship, professional services where you will have education, for example. You've got phones in classrooms that have very few minutes. We can create a package for you that will make that a very, very affordable service for you to go into the Hosted VoIP service where you may not think that Hosted VoIP is going to work for you. We can find a package that will work. And that comes down again to our proprietary software and the fact that we don't have to pay a per-seat license to anybody else. So we then have the flexibility to go and set up a service and a pricing scheme that will work for every customer that's out there. I love that. So you have that industry expertise like in the education, houses of worship, et cetera, verticals. And then you also are able to really tailor it and have that flexibility for each customer. And I definitely think that's a winning combination right there. Any other key differentiators you might want to tell our team and viewers here? The thing that we're very excited about, and we're actually launching version two here at the show, which is very exciting, is a product we've had for a little while. It's called Instacall. And it's been out in the marketplace, and so it's a mature technology. It's using WebRTC. But it allows our customers to put a button on their website so that visitors to your website can click the button and initiate a conversation. This isn't click-to-call. It's not click-to-dial. It doesn't use the public telephone network at all. It's a completely free phone call. And it turns your web visitors into conversations. And so this Instacall product with version 2.0, what we're adding is more flexibility, some more HTML access, floating buttons and so forth, but a lot more reporting so that as the website owner, you can see who's on your website. The information that they're coming with, things like what information is in their shopping cart, what their account ID is, and most importantly, their Google Analytics information. So today when someone visits your website and they call your phone number, now you have a break between the online activity and then the phone activity, and it's hard to stitch that together with Instacall that becomes one long digital conversation. And so we're very excited about that and we're looking forward to demoing that in the next couple of days. As a marketer, my mind is exploding right now because I could see how that would be extremely useful to better position your product in the marketplace and to see the success of your sales and efforts. So yeah, absolutely. Data driving everything. You guys are right on the scene with the best and the greatest. We look forward to hearing more from you. Where can our viewers go if they want more information? Great. Our website would be the best spot www.onsiponsip.com.onsip.com. Mike, thank you so much for joining us. And thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV. Happy networking.