All right. So this is a Pick Jury's Brain Call with Scott Moran. We've known each other for a while. Scott is a co-conspirator in Open Global Mind and sent me a lovely, lovely, the kind of email, like if you think it's an honor to help humans figure out what to do with their life energy, and I fall in that camp, then the email that Scott sent me like a couple of days ago was just fantastic and perfect. And so this is a call to sort of focus on what was in that message and where you were aiming and try to help you steer and aim and think creatively about how you spend the rest of your life energy. And I'll ask you to sort of maybe go back into it in a second, but I recently heard of and installed a mental health app called 29K. It's at 29K.org. And the number 29K is just the average number of days a human has on earth. And I was like, oh, that's a really good name. That's like how to remind you of like the preciousness of our time together and all of that. And also I'll say as caveat in, as we can enter this conversation, I am no expert on maximizing the usefulness of everyday I have on earth. One of my problems is figuring the same thing out. So I'm hoping we sort of figure this out in some sense together. Yeah. So, and I'm happy to dive into a bunch of things that you wrote, but anything you'd like to sort of think about, talk about, put on the table as we start. Well, this will not be my first conversation like this. It's kind of a theme having conversations like this with like thinkers, people who are interested in helping others provide frameworks on what you want to be when you grow up sort of thing. The other thing about it that I've noticed is once I put this on a calendar, the next several days gets me closer to an answer is I'm trying to prepare and think about it and that kind of thing. So I'm 56, I'm noticing that I'm more aware of the 29K than I have been. And perhaps that's because I've been able to say, no, not this. Whereas normally I'm, oh yes, and, and, and, and, and now I've been able to be a little more aware that no, I can't do all of those. And that then takes me down the path of, okay, well, if I can't do all of them, which ones can I do? And then it turns into which ones must I do? And, you know, and then, so, so that's kind of the general framework that I've been, it's an echo of all conversations that I've had before. And what I'm realizing that I'm trying to come to grips with is I make stuff. And I make stuff because I'm curious and I want to package it up and put it into a, I don't know, put it into something that's, that makes sense for me. Okay, I've made this little reminder poster of this idea I heard about. I think this is really interesting. And now that I made it, I look at it and I think, huh, well, I'm part of this little group that might like this. So then I share it with them. And more often than not, I get good feedback, which is one of the reasons that I continue to do it. It's not the primary motivator, but it's not, well, it's not the impetus. The impetus is, oh, this is interesting. Hmm, wow, the more I look at this, this is really interesting. Oh, this fits my rules. It's an 80-20 solution. It's not a deep dive into every corner of complexity. It has parts that can be combined in different ways. So if I identify the key parts and you get those, not only do you have 80-20 for what you're looking at, but you also have ways that you can recombine it. And that sort of thing. And they tend to be, learn once, use many, like, oh, okay, if I learn this, I can apply it in lots of different ways. And so that drives me to say, oh, these are really interesting things. I see people struggling, but mostly I see myself wanting to integrate these things I've learned or something that sounds interesting to me. And then I have this thing when I'm done. And okay, well, what do I do with this? Okay, well, I don't know. So here, you know, I share with people. And what's one of the other themes that I've just noticed, we'll tack this on. So themes of what those products tend to be, I've already described. Themes of who they're for is something I'm realizing. I would classify myself as an introverted thinker. I enjoy ideas, I enjoy talking about ideas with other people. That's how I like to be most socially is discussing ideas. And I would use to say that I hate to say this, but this is just the truth. The things I make are who I spend the most time with.  Anyway, so I realized, well, maybe who I'm making this for is other people like me, people who are novices in a field who want to get to a, not to a high level, but to get to a comfort level where they understand the basic tools of system thinking or the basic tools of how to make a presentation or, you know, whatever it happens to be.  A lot of it is solo stuff, things that you can use with other people but that you develop yourself so that when you're in a situation, you now have a tool or many tools, ideally, that's kind of what I've built over 30 years, 25 years, is all these little tools because I'm a little awkward in social situations and I feel way more confident when I feel like, oh, I have all these things I could potentially contribute. And so that's exciting to me. And the last thing that I'll offer up is now there's a bunch of different categories that these fall in frameworks, toys, tools for students, things like that. But what I've noticed in the part that I really started to come to terms with over the last several days was I keep asking people how to monetize this. I keep asking people if I should monetize this. Now I'm asking myself like, why is that? And the answer that I came to was, well, I've built 25 years worth of stuff and I have other things that I'm deep in right now that are valuable. Okay, well, what does that mean? It means it's useful for other people but does that mean that I'm missing an opportunity here that's just kind of a duh? Well, of course you should be having a pay-to-play model on this or no, that ties you up with a commitment and an obligation and now you have to develop a community and a sales funnel and do your market and all this other stuff. And it's like, no, this is not what I wanna do. And so I guess at this point, I'll throw out pinball machines. I'll throw out the pinball metaphor that happened in the last couple of days. I am very fortunate to have had decent education to grow up in a situation where I wasn't struggling. I've struggled before, but never in any significantly serious way. So this is a problem of overabundance in a sense, but trying to think where I'm, oh, I know. So I will, the next 10, 15, 20, whatever years, I'm not worried about generating enough income. What I'm worried about from the pinball side is that you can get 100,000 points, but you can also get a bonus multiplier, which is two X, five X, and it's like, I scored the same, I made the same shots. I did the same stuff, but now my points are twice or five times. And I think, okay, well, all of these things here, I have spent the last 25 years being fine with not selling them, part of me trying to, but not really, because I guess I would have done it. That's kind of what I'm trying to come to grips with. And so is that where I need to go? Is it just accept, hey, you know what, just keep making these things and maybe one of them, someone's gonna say, hey, I wanna turn this into something.  Because on the income side, I have a very good partnership with a very good friend and that provides enough to get by, we're kind of developing a, it's a printing business. I do the design work, he does all the printing and production work and I basically am a contractor in a sense, but we're friends and partners and nothing formal, but I trust him 100%. And it's growing. Okay, well, that's something that I can hitch my wagon to. I grabbed a freelance gig a couple of months ago and I realized very quickly that it was probably a bad idea because now I had three legs. I had, okay, this thing with my friend that I'm investing in, I had this freelance short-term thing and then I had these other things that were always kind of subconscious back in my mind.  I really need to do this thing. And I would dive into it, but I didn't have to. It was just, it had percolated long enough and then it popped up and said, hey, work on me today. And the freelance thing turned into, wow, context switching all the time. Now I'm working on the main thing, that is generating income. But then when I need to jump over to this little hourly other thing, it's like, okay, it's all these new people, it's different systems, it's different vendors, everything is different. And I get my head wrapped around it. And what I realized was that I was, now that was my subconscious. And I didn't care for it. And so I'm still in the middle of that. And so I'm getting ready to, you know, have that conversation again to say, I'm not sure that this is for me. Oh, if you can hear that bell, the 15 minute, it'll go off every 15. Oh, good. Is that to remind you to stay on task? Or what is it? Or is it just a grandfather clock?  And that 15 minutes felt like an interesting scene. And scene. Love that. Love that. Okay. It's like a Takodoro. Yeah. It's a Pomodoro for conversation. Right, right. I like it. Yeah, it's the first time I've used it. But I found it in one of my little sound makers and it's just one minute, five minute, 10, 15. And I thought, well, let's try, let's put that on because what I noticed when I had it on was that I could choose to switch tasks or choose to not, you know, just remind me, oh wow, that little email that you wrote, you're still working on it. It's end, you know, and move on to the next one. So anyway, that's kind of the framework for this. And so I'm, I guess I'm, that's, I think that's pretty good for now. Cool. Very tiny thing before moving into some of the things you said. I've seen you in this background, in this setting for multiple times and I only just figured out because I knew you do pinball art that on one side of you are pinball machines. And on the other side, those are actually sort of decks or whatever you call them of pinball games, right? Yes, these are, this is the main product that we have been developing and we're doing other things now, but the gist of it is pinball machines that we're helping are 20 to 30 years old and it's a stainless steel ball bearing rolling around on ink. Just wears it off. Yeah, exactly. You know, they don't make any more of these. So, well, they're making new ones, but they're, the old ones, that's just what you have. And so we've created a product that helps preserve the fun for decades more, we hope. Love that. So let me screen share for a second because as you might expect, I created a thought for this call. So there's a pictures being called with you and I connected it up to pinball art and pinballs, which is where I realized, oh my God, in the background, those are pinball machines, et cetera. Did you know that Fiorello LaGuardia got pinball banned because he saw that it was eating all of kids' time? No, did not know that. Just the tiny side note. Yeah, no, we knew that it was gambling for a while. Yeah. Oh, interesting. So a couple of different things occurred to me and one was I created sort of finding your upward spiral and I was like, what if you created activity boxes for kids? I was just like, what because you're constantly creative because you're constantly inventing stuff and I think you really like doing stuff for young people. What if you were the heart of a sort of subscription system for those kinds of things? And that I found my way around to different kinds of subscriptions to monthly surprises. And then I found my way to Birchbox and I realized that Katya Boschal and Haley Barnard, the founders of billionaires that's completely ate their lives. This is a big deal.  Like is there a way you could create a very small scale thing like this, for example, that where the surprises actually build where they're modular and reusable, where now that you, so you've got this thing over here and if you need it later, we'll send it to you as a backfill or a backup kit. But then you can use it in new ways or different kinds of ways.  But it feels to me like one of the things you love about systems thinking is kind of this systematizing modularizing slice among the chaos of what systems do. That there's kind of systems thinking is about all kinds of forces and you're playing. But if you can snipe some of them, label and represent them well and connect them to others in a way that's functional, educational, useful, something like that, that's really good. And that helps people think. And I think one of your skills and life goals is helping other people think critically and figure things out. And there's like a joy of figuring things out and figure sort of prominently for me and you. Let me offer an addition to the theme that might be helpful. Something I realized pretty late in life was that my first child was the first child of all of my friends. My wedding was the first wedding I'd ever attended. The college. Oh, wow. It was the first wedding you'd ever been to. When I went to college, that was the first college campus that I'd ever been on, et cetera. I had never been to my, to a corporate workplace before. I was, you know, before I had my first job there. And it was just this realization that, wow, all these things would have been, when you're packing to go camping, you make horrible mistakes. And the second time you pack, you're not just a little better. You're like mostly there. And then every time after that, you can incrementally change it. And I feel like that's sort of the case with a lot of things. Your first experience teaches you so much and what I sensed is like, wow, I'm a pretty good teacher to beginners. And one of the reasons is I know, I know what's important to know now. And what's, what can wait? What can wait until later? And I realized that, you know, a lot of that was based on my inexperience in a lot of situations. Like I just didn't know. And I had sort of wished like, wow, all these things I'm learning. I had just known that ahead of time. It would have made such a difference. Like, you know, this is a really big decision right now. You're not gonna know that for 15 years, but this decision is critical. And so yes, I agree with you in the systems thinking side of things that it's the reason I was drawn to the work of the Cabrera's and I'm interacting with them almost daily now. And the reason is that the way they teach it is literally for anyone. It's not for policy changers and, you know, massive organizations and, you know, global complex problems. It's like, how do I improve the way we get the kids out the door in the morning?  And it scales up. But what's fascinating to me is I'm always on the lookout for the things that work and work kind of every time. You know, it's not just the one thing in the one situation which you can collect millions of little tips and tricks on. I like it. It's reliable, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's the ones that really apply across domain. So this is fascinating looking at the things that you've come to this idea of activity boxes for kids that stack. I think that's a really fascinating thing. Yeah, I had a wonderful set of conversations with a woman over in the UK. She and her husband were neuro-scientists and she had seen my wooden toy and she said, we would like to use that as a way to teach other concepts. And so various things happened. We didn't take that anywhere further but we did have multiple conversations on it. It's just a really interesting idea. And so I could see how the things I have could stack if they were in the hands of one person over time. And can we, is there, let's just as an exercise, fold that back on the Cabrera research and DSRP and some of the frameworks that come out of their work. Yep. Because a narrow way of looking at that is that, hey, maybe the Cabrera's would love to have a venture into education for young humans. I don't know if they've already done that but maybe they'd be really interested and you could just say, hey, I'll go do that as a venture and I'm saying this gingerly because I think you're trying to avoid one thing, eating your entire life and becoming the, well, now we need a business plan and a logo and all of that kind of stuff. But I know that you have this passion for systems thinking and that their flavor, their take on systems thinking really, really rings your bell. So I'm trying to figure out, can you carry that into young people in a way that sits in their world persistently over time and builds? So- And can that even be like an educational venture without saying that in some sense? I have, so they developed, so very quickly, they had the theory, Derek had the theory, Laura had the translational research so how to make it practical and they went and took his theory which they were teaching to grad students and took it into elementary school classrooms for 10 years and said, can we do this? And they came out with, yes they can and the end result was a book called Thinking at Every Desk. So yes, that's aligned with what they're doing and they play in both levels. They teach at West Point, they teach at Cornell, they also have, their stuff is systems thinking daily which is the most mundane problems, just use it every day. So that's really interesting and my strategy, if it is a strategy, again, it's always curiosity, Led. I noticed that if I just kept my little systems thinking social network open, I was happy. That was plenty of social media for me, which is in this one area. And over time, I've continued to build a reputation in that group as exactly what I've described. Newbies come in, I'm the one who, I'm a good person to ask about certain things that are like, how do I get started with this? And I've developed a little bit of cloud in that area which is really, wasn't the intention, it's just kind of what happened. I'm enjoying it. And what I'm kind of doing is just playing in that space. I don't know if formalizing it is, right now they're, I'm being asked to test, can you test this little set of classes, mini classes of me and things like that? Yeah, yeah, sure I can. And I don't know, I don't know where it's going to go. And I don't know if there's any formal plan there, but it's something that I definitely enjoy. And I have these books that I'm writing, systems thinking kids books, and those are for really young ones. Those are definitely elementary school. I'm enjoying that. And... Small, small tangent, but please. Some of these kids that go out are basically just flat pack kids.   And... That's what I build all day. I mean, obviously, like anything printed or cut or produced in a, like if you would go to a high end printing shop, and I can print on plastic, I can print on, we can cut, we have a laser cutter, so those sorts of things I can make. And you're saying that, like for example, I was goofing around on the lake, and it's like, oh, here's my DSRP mobile. I've got distinctions. I've got systems, I've got relationships and I've got perspectives. And it's like, okay, well, there's one. You know, that's just like, there's only one of these. I made it for fun. It took me a couple hours and it's done. So like, all right. Now what, you know? Well, and so I think you and I share this like curiosity thing, like really, really strongly. We're both extremely curious people. You're probably more of a maker than I am. I think you've turned things into material objects a bunch. That's just because, well, my degree is in graphic design. Yeah. I stumbled into the maker space simply because of my, because of that. So it's, and I like words, I like writing. And so the combination of those two things, you know, I can make things that seem magical to other people. It's like, well, that's just because I have some design skill and I can write. I am not electronics genius. So I'm not, you know, any of that stuff. I just make visuals and they look like, they look good because, you know, that's what I do. But it's, they're funny because I remember some of my friends in college had went into careers that were much more, I'll just use the word lucrative or impactful or anything, but they didn't have anything you could show. And my career is very showy, you know?  So like, look, here's the thing. Here's an object. Yeah. I love that.  But is there a way that you could even just take a short video of things that you've done and post them on Instagram and see who's subscribed and things like that just to see what's out. I mean, certainly easy enough to test the market in some sense, but I'm kind of playing with names. Like, could you be the guide for curious system makers or something like that where you bring kids of a particular age group that your favorite, favorite age group along and it's funny. One of my inspirations here are the vlog brothers, Hank and John Green. Do you any familiar with them? You probably know them. One of them is a composer, the other one writes novels, The Fault in Your Stars is one of the novels that got turned into a movie that one of these brothers did, but they started out just as like very early YouTube celebrities. I learned about them because a friend's daughter came and joined one of our meetings and told us about nerdfighteria, nerdfighting. And nerdfighteria is not fighting nerds. It's nerds fighting world sock. Yeah, I've heard about, okay, I'm familiar with that. Yeah, and so Hank and John Green now put, I don't accountless really good videos now about science and literature and they're almost like their own Khan Academy off to the side, but they kind of, they focus on helping tweens and teens sort things out and make sense of the world and live better lives and all of that. It's just, it's lovely.  Oh, DFTBA. Don't forget to be awesome. And so things like that just pop out of their community and they're memorable and you're like, wow, okay. Yeah, this is really interesting. And also, since you're kind of an introvert, maybe it's not Google or Flag to Carry to be the leader of this, but maybe you find something like Vlogbrothers or somewhere else and you expand their offer into the spaces that you're good at, I don't know. But you know, you have a gig right now that causes you to do a massive cranial context switch every time you have to sit down and start doing their work, right? Whole new set of software and relationships and tools and the thing. You almost have to like replace your head, plop in the other head to do this work. And could you replace that work with a project that pays as much, but is like really, really nicely aligned with everything else that you're doing in your curiosity and your instincts? The only thing about that is that I have those and I have multiple ones of those, they just don't pay anything. And that's, I don't know if that changes it qualitatively or if it is just something that I've been hesitant to dive into. It's like, what's the difference between having this done and having this done in a way that other people could buy? And I think, okay, I don't know. Maybe it completely changes it and it turns into birch box in a negative way. Or maybe it doesn't change it at all. And it actually, why didn't I do this 15 years ago? Cause now I have all these people who are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is great. And I don't feel like a shrub for marketing because they're saying, no, this is great. I want more of it. So somebody in the spirit of testing the market and figuring things out, somebody sent me a link to five minute logos, which is a Tumblr account. Yeah, it was me. Oh, that was you. Okay, good. I'm like, wait, where'd that come from? It's a brilliant idea. Yeah. And it's like, okay, so what could you do this like that? Well, I do it already. I just don't charge for it. And it's also, it's not in such a tight niche. Yeah. You know, he doesn't do five minute headlines. You know, he just does five minute logos, right? And so that's one of the things that I'm hesitant to constrain. Simply because what I'm finding is that the older I get, the more these things enhance each other. You know, I'm finding that it's not turning into these, like it continues to go like that. It's like all these things, it's more like this, you know? Totally hear ya. Yeah. And I'm drawn to things like, don't forget to be awesome and nerdfighteria and that sort of stuff. I've made a play pledge, you know, play every day. You know, it's just a thing, you know? All right, there's my play pledge.  And my, about the introversion side, this connects in here. I volunteered to be a hockey coach a number of years ago and I did that for, geez, was it eight years maybe? Something like that? I don't know. And my approach was always on the ones who were on the cusp of learning how to just get competent. You know, they weren't the ones who were going for the varsity first line. They were the ones who were trying to go from, this is hard to this is fun. And that's just, that lit my fire. I loved seeing that. And one of the things was, you know, I just noticed that my optimism, it's like, I have 100% confidence you can do this and that comes through. And I think that's part of my brand, if you will, you know, is that I've tested it, I've tried it. I've worked really hard to pick just these five, all these 45 over here, you don't have to worry about. Just these five, trust me, if you just do this and I'm going to help you get from I can't to I can. And then you're going to see if you can on those five. Wow, now you're playing hockey. Look at that, you know. Exactly. And I think you're having a similar problem to what I have, which is, these are labors of love for you. Like you really love doing this, it comes naturally and you enjoy doing it. And you're afraid of what would happen if you monetized it because if you suddenly turn something into a subscription, on the one hand, if it takes off and becomes really successful, you become a prisoner to it. On the other hand, it changes the nature of the interactions because now it's pay for play or whatever, which is different. And I totally, that resonates strongly with me as well. But I'm trying to figure out how might you take these things that you're just gifted at doing and make subscription services out there.  But you don't need a whole bunch of people paying you something to equal the money you're getting for your third gig right now. Yeah, yeah. I think you're right there. That's one of the things I'm afraid of. I have had situations where I was at working a regular job because I've been consistently in that space and I was doing lunch and learns. And then the lunch and learns, people started to tell other people, hey, you need to do this, and it started to grow. And now I couldn't just take a long lunch and go do this and I stopped doing it just completely. Because I thought this is getting popular and that's a problem that I can't address right now. And I couldn't address it because I couldn't leave. It wasn't big enough for me to leave. It was, yeah, labor's the love for sure. And I think like, do you have any context on this? So, I think 100 years ago or 200 years ago, all the way back, things have been very maybe similar. So many things have changed in the last even 50 years where I can actually have a global market, right? Okay, so on the flip side of that, most people through most time have just had hobbies and things that they did. They made one toy for their grandchild, which I did. And then their next thought was not, how can I kickstart this? Right, right. Yeah. It was just, they just did that. And that's my on the fence struggle is like, okay, it's okay to offer that up because people would love it. What does that, is that, am I then just gonna let them down? Cause it's like, okay, well, I started doing this. I just can't anymore. I don't want to make any more of those.  I don't even know what that means, but it's like, yeah. All right, let's do that.  I want to figure them out. So this may be inspiring to you. It's really crazy sounding to me, but very inspirational. George Carlin threw out his material every year. He insisted on like inventing new comedy and he just got better. Louis C.K. for better or worse, who got himself stuck in Me Too in terrible ways, but did the same thing inspired by George Carlin. I appreciate Louis C.K.'s humor. Kind of humor too, yeah, Me Too. So what I'm kind of saying by this is, what if the thing that we, me as a potential subscriber, customer, backer of your venture, was realized that periodically, you're just going to take a left turn and you're going to shift and do something else and that something else is going to follow your interests and passions. And because I know your intentions and your direction, I'll be like, and it's going to be cool. And so that would give you the breathing space to just follow something until it peters out on its own or until you know you've explored it and then pick up the next thing that you know is interesting and useful and do that for a while. But still, and then second thought and not charge your buddies and your close intimates for this project or the stuff that you do, but rather take the work products of your passion and your friends and your community, which remains free and then charge someone else for them. Throw them over the fence into a place where they get a lot more exposure, a lot more people get to benefit from them.  Yeah. Okay, cool, I will find it because... Yeah, I just, because what I realized was that when I first made my website, which was, I don't even know if it was five years ago, maybe it wasn't more than that. Yeah. It was because I realized that I was sending emails to individuals, a very one-on-one communicator. And I would say, hey, here's this Play Pledge thing that I came up with, no, no, no, no. You know, and then I find somebody else and I'd go look at my email, I'd copy it, I'd paste it and I'd send it to another person. And I thought, it'd be really nice if I could just send a link and that maybe other people might stumble on them. And then what I realized is, okay, wait a minute, everybody I send the Play Pledge to might be interested in think inside the box, the creative model, but they'd never know about it because, right, and so, and then I just put it all on my site and I don't do anything with it other than put it on the site. Right, exactly. You know, now I can share a link. Okay, there, there's the Play Pledge. And I just Googled it, it was the second result for me in the Google search. The first one was the genius of Play Play Pledge. Don't know what that one is. So here you are. And then I added it to my brain under more better. And under play is essential to well-being, which I should connect to well-being. What I realized, I just have learned some stuff about Piaget and how his work was how play is how we develop our morality as we're growing up. Because you realize that fair play is a thing and you learn that by playing with others. And it's just really interesting. I just lost you. I'm gonna stop the recording for a minute. Good idea. Okay, now we're back after a little bit. So let me finish the rat story. I don't know how far we got. So when rats play, they do rough and tumble play and they kind of pin each other. And the big rat always wins, can win because it's bigger and stronger. And what Piaget discovered was that the little rat initiates the play.  Now the big rat doesn't have the benefit of the play. And so it's a mutual thing. And it's a morality of fair plays actually built in to the circuits. And you can see it with a dog and the dog will play rougher or gentler with, it doesn't have to be taught that. It just, it knows that, well, I guess it's taught in the sense that it plays too rough and then there's a little yelp and okay, well, that's too far. And it's just fascinating to me, but understanding those kinds of things, I think play is just, well, it's just critical. It's like, when you look at the little hierarchy of needs which I'm not sure I totally bought into. I'm not a big fan of it, yeah. Yeah, but what I've noticed is at the top of the hierarchies of almost everyone I know is playing. And it's like, well, really? Well, I thought it was money and power. It's like, yeah, well, what are they doing with all that? It's so they have leisure time so they can play.   I'm gonna get a, people play in all kinds of different ways, but to me it feels like that's what people are ultimately trying to go after. And I think it's just make things, I don't know, I'm a big prevalent on the top. And what you just said factors strongly in this conversation for me, because I'm trying to figure out what could you assemble that has multi-purpose, but that feels like play, that keeps you in that state of play with people you really love to play with, right? How do we find a combo of activities which then let you just keep doing that without eating your time? I mean, a friend of mine started the company that's pretty well known around the world. He tried 15 different business models and we had dinner like 15 years ago where he said, Jerry, I'm a prisoner of my company. I have to give this seminar like 200 times a year. And if it's not me at the front of the room, nobody shows up to the seminar. And none of the other revenue streams generate enough lift that I can kind of hand this over and retire out. And I was like, I don't want that. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And I am fortunate. And I said this at the beginning and I'll repeat it again that I'm not in a position of, oh, I'm losing my house. I need to make these products work. And I understand every day that I'm lucky, that I'm not in that situation.  I can't hold them down. They just, they'll pop up on their own. And if I'm gonna do that, should I bother trying to come up with a model that you're describing, which sounds really interesting. So the model we're talking about would be very easy to prototype. Like there's 15 different subscription platforms. You could pick one, you could, and I wouldn't go with an advertising-based platform where you need to get a massive audience because that suddenly plots you into a completely different place. I would fall into some place where you have kind of, it's sort of like what Substack is doing, but I'm not sure Substack or Ghost are right for you. But Substack is cool because for most Substack writers, you can subscribe to them without paying them or you can pay them. And if you pay them, they've got some extra goodies that sort of come behind the paywall in some sense. And it's really simple. It's easy to understand. The platform supports the repeated broadcast of stuff to the audience that's busy signing up. And again, it wouldn't take a lot of people signing up to what you're generating for you to equal or exceed one of your revenue streams. And I think it would take less time in some sense and you would avoid the context switching. So the question I'm drawn to is what keeps you from experimenting with that border zone of, okay, I'm gonna take some of these best things that I've done and then put them into behind some kind of subscription. Okay, well subscription to me. Well, on the good side, if I'm gonna post them somewhere, I'll post them there.  And I'd like you to be able to generate more. Yeah, subscription to me means regular, timed, consistent deliverables. And I don't know how these subscription platforms work. And that makes me wonder, like, okay, because I can't predict these things happen. And the one thing that is consistent is when I am on one, I don't, I lose my sense of time. Like I'm just, it's the middle of the winter and I'm out using the saw next to the car, and I don't care that it's cold. I'm on a mission to get this thing done. And it's the same way in negative ways as well. If I have money-driven projects from my real work, I'll set it aside because I feel like this thing is just, it's here and it's asking me to play with it. And I have to have to do it. I mean, I'll wake up at five in the morning because I have this thing I want to get done. And so it's that the subscription side of it is, it's like that feels, it feels like the typical social media marketing kind of cadence, okay, well, you need to have your blog post every day and you need to have all this, right? And I do have a continuous output, but it is all over the place kind of. Yeah. So what you're saying about consistent, fresh content, et cetera, et cetera, like in caps and in quotes is true of a particular approach toward media, social media and building audiences and all of that. And it's probably very true if you're trying to build a mass audience and you're trying to like go bake or go home or whatever. Yeah, that is not my goal. And it may not be true of a quirky, yet fascinating stream of interesting stuff. So that's the first thing. But the second thing is, if you look at the things you have lying on the table already, you could queue those up and very likely have a stream of interesting things to do for a year or two. I have a feeling that you've got enough things around in particular if you spent a month on a thing and said, here's a different way of thinking about it or using it. Hey, here's a systems thinking approach to it. Hey, we went out and played and here's a video of what we did, whatever. But if you sort of stood around an artifact that's in the stream here and played with it, that would work great. So, and that would take the pressure off of doing something new now for the next monthly episode, which is due on Tuesday, right? Which is the thing I think you and I both don't like and are trying to avoid. Yeah, yeah, there's the pressure of doing it and then it becomes, I get my own way. Yeah, I hear you. It's like now it has to be good. Which is silly because the feedback I get says that the other stuff is good. Yeah, and you have personal quality standards that mean it's gonna be good. So set that one aside, right? Yeah, set that worry aside. But it's gotta be better for me to post it for pay. You know, that kind of stuff. It actually doesn't, yeah, exactly. So is there a way to explore that space or to help you get past that?  And there's plenty to choose from. But there's something in your head is keeping you from trying that. One of them is these things are really simple. And I know they're simple on the side of complexity, which is the value. But it's hard for me like, well, yeah, it's just these things here. Well, that seems pretty simple. You know, at least that's the way I think about it. That's one challenge. And then the idea of finished, you know, this is something that's like a finished model or something like that is... So to build on what that means to me, maybe your rhythm is instead of, hey, here's a simple thing I finished and good luck with you. And then here's another simple thing I finished and good luck to you. Instead of that, what your rhythm could be is I'm going to tell a story right now about how this thing showed up that looks pretty simple. And you record yourself telling the story in whatever form you want with friends and some hot coffee or by yourself or what, I don't know. But the first piece is the introduction about this is how messy it was at the start. And this is what some of the thinking I went through and then it showed up as this thing. Then here's the thing. And then there's this post script. There's this epilogue that says, by the way, this thing's kind of half finished. It's first, it's a component in these other things. And here's how it connects to this and this and this and this. But then also here are the open questions that left in my head. And here's how it's in some sense incomplete in a way that you can help me complete or whatever. And so instead of dropping completed objects you're actually telling stories around them and leaving open questions and things like that. And it becomes this rhythm that people get used to. It's like, oh, okay, good. So now we're done with the Mobile for DSRP. So now we're starting a new thread and a new journey and a new story into a different thing that's going to show up. And by the way, when Dickens and others were writing their books a lot of these things were serialized in magazines and the early magazines. And people were dying for the next month because there'd be a cliffhanger at the end of the first chapter, the first delivery. And a lot of these writers were busy writing the book as the magazine went to press. So there's some pressure but some excitement and some like serialization is a good thing. Like it creates a dramatic arc. It creates a background where you can do all kinds of cool stuff. Yeah. Oh. So, and I'm noticing you're looking down and not at me very much. No, I'm writing notes. Okay, good, good. Cause I'm worried that I'm like adding pressure that you don't want or don't need. I'm trying to like just really be helpful and listening with care to what has passion for you where your life energy feels like it is and also what your natural gifts are, which are plentiful and fun and always. Like when you make things, they're full of joy. They're just like little joy gifts. And that's great, but they're also not joy gifts. Like, hey, look, I carved an ivory elephant. But rather, hey, look, here's a component of systems thinking and here's how it might help you in the world and all that. Cool. I think you are, you have the idea that they're joy gifts in the best way. I think they're, it's sappy, but it's a little flame. And it's like, here, here, I can light your candle. You know, that's what it feels like to me is it's like, it's not just an object I want you to buy. It's a thing I want you to know because, wow, this could really, this, look at how happy this made me understanding that thing. This is the best kind of learning.  So for me, it's so much about learning. But you're like a great coach, teacher, exposer, fellow student of life. And you're exposed to stuff that matters and you're busy translating into simple stuff that makes it more accessible, more useful. Like, that's just awesome. Yeah, that last sentence is that, yeah, that last sentence is, that's it. Yeah. Yeah, it's defense against the dark arts in the real way. Since, because for me, if I know these things, I can go into an environment that feels, well, I go into fewer and fewer environments where I feel like, oh, I don't know what I'm gonna possibly do here. I've never been here before.  And this is the phrase I've been, I don't know if I coined it or not, but competence builds confidence. And what I noticed is that, especially in my hockey coaching, it was like, as soon as you learn a skill, then you're more confident. It's not about, oh, you can do it. Oh, I believe in you. You know, that's a good environment to have, but actually learning a skill, even a tiny one creates confidence and that stacks. You learn more things and that's where you now have the ability to go off and do new things, enter the realm of chaos and not be afraid and come back with something great. So, all right, I've gone over our little hour here. Well, I'm unclear how long these sessions should be because should they be 60 minutes, 90 minutes? I don't know. We're friends, so I would stay on for a really long time except I had a call with Pete Book to catch up. We have a standing call. By the way, there's a confidence, competence loop by Kevin Eichenberry, which Googles first when I Google for competence builds confidence. And I'll add that to my brain.  So, what's in your head or what's in your heart or what was this helpful? What did it open any new questions? Did it turn over new soil? Because you've been working on this for a long time. I feel like this is a very nice but constant quest in your mind. Yeah, well, and you know about my thinking skills for kids that started a little while ago which then turned into a grid of stuff which then sitting out on a picnic table with a pair of scissors turned into a card deck. And what it was was a way to take all of my things that I had been working on and they all like they integrated. System thinking was the last piece. Because it was thoughts, what is the nature of the thought which was the systems thinking, then there was memory. There was creativity. So design thinking and scientific process and all that sort of stuff. Games, which is the play portion, stories, the narrative portion. And then there's an experiential like how is perception work, attention, perception balance, et cetera. And then at the top is you, the unique bundle of potential that we all are. And what I thought was like, this makes my whole life make sense. My whole curiosity pursuit life. Well, we'll say that. All of the things that I was going after, it's like it puts them all into one thing. And it's a structure that makes sense. And you can enter it at any point and it's, I don't know, it's about a hundred cards. And they all, you can mix and match them but there is kind of a framework for it and how they belong, at least in my mind. And I think, you know what, this is like my magnum opus. Like this was, it just happened. And now I think, okay, now, like... Are the cards in the world? Can I buy a deck? Well, you can't, but you know. I mean, I'm sure you made a deck of cards, but... Yeah, there they are. You can turn this into a thing because people could buy. I have a small collection of decks of cards. I do too. Yeah.  Yeah. You know, they're just nice because they're modular. And they, you know... What do you call these? So it went through a number of iterations and they were, they were the cogs. And you put them all together and become a metacog. And it was, you know, it was all these thinking tools. And they were basically the cogs of thinking. And then I went on to the latest iteration of it was take the word symphony and replace the last two letters with me as in I, like me, symphony.  And it's the multi-pattern style. And the symphony just made sense to me because it's multi-layered. It's happening over time. You know, you go through it once. It's all, it's just, I don't know, but it's still a name that I struggled with. But then I think, well, who cares if it's just for me? You know, it's just, that makes sense to me. And if you're gonna put these out for other people to buy, then they need a simple name that works, that resonates somehow. And that's it's own little explorations. It's own little task. But I like that. And... I have a lot of Google wax, by the way. I have a lot of words that came out of it. That's cool. And there's also like people like Alanda Bhutan who does the School of Life. And there are now lots of people online doing philosophy manuals, how to live your life advice, et cetera, et cetera. But again, you're really not interested in, I don't think you're interested in mass market at all. I think you're really interested in finding the niche you really love. And that's kind of more tribe and less audience. And if you treat them as tribe and co-inhabitants in this journey to understand how to live better, there's no reason you can't make a living doing that and not feel like, oh my God, I need fresh content tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah, the people that I thought were most relevant to this were independent schools and homeschoolers. Mm-hmm. Oh my God. Yeah, because of the way the framework works.  Mm-hmm. But I think that there's tools that help you figure that out on your own. Like you can use these, if you understand systems thinking, I don't care what system you think about, but now you can. Exactly. So here's a query I have open, which is, and I haven't put this in my brain yet, so I roll when we're done talking, but I'm a member of ASD, the Alliance for Self-Directed Education. And under lockdown, I was pretty sure when lockdown first happened that a self-directed learning or unschooling or homeschooling, whatever you call it, would just explode. Sure. Would explode like Zoom exploded. Yeah. It has not. It has not at all. Yeah, parents are busy. Well, no, but parents are looking for great things to do with and for their kids.  It's like, okay, do you want more misery and a system that's trying to replicate itself online or can we create some new environment? And a thing I'd love to know is, I'm willing to bet that there's a couple of unschooling initiatives that have gotten a lot of traction during lockdown. I just don't know about them. I'd love to know what they are and if they have platforms and if you'd like to join some of that because there might be some really, really fun energy in those crowds and they might have enough people that it works, that it works as a community, as a tribe of learners. And that would be really fun to figure out. So I'll do a little bit of searching, but I think that would be a thing you would enjoy doing as well. Yes, I think you hit on something that is interesting to me. You can set up your site that is here's your platform, here's my symphony platform. And everything on the site is that. And then I'm responsible for all the mail lists and all the other stuff that goes with it. Or you have this system where someone else has developed this platform and it's like teachable or it's like anything like that where they're looking for people to be part of the, to create things that go on there. And they're not, like if I don't do it for two months, it doesn't matter because there's a bunch of other people who are doing it. And that's an idea that is interesting. And I don't know why I didn't, why, I've been considering it, but I don't know why I haven't actually made, maybe it's the formality of a class. It's interesting. These platform choices make a difference. Like, Substack versus Khan Academy versus Vlog Brothers and what they do. And I don't know how most of them work. I mean, I don't know how the Vlog Brothers make money. And I think they're doing fine because the brothers are published authors and make movies and other sorts of things. But somewhere in there, there's a lot of work that they're doing. They produce excellent media and large quantities of it. So it's amazing. So there we are. Yeah, there we are. Thank you. Thank you for this. I'll send you a summary afterward. Welcome to open this conversation up again as we go. But it's been really fun. Thank you. I think the biggest takeaways for me were this subscription idea, which then whatever that looks like, I don't know if that's the right word, but that it creates a channel to deliver the things that I've been interested in and I've been making to a group of people who are interested in them for no other reason than the same reasons that I am. Alignment of passions. Yeah. Alignment of passions and where those passions are really serving, there are lots of parents out there who'd like their kids to grow up as good critical thinkers.  And you're just perfectly equipped to be a thinking partner on that journey. Yeah, especially because I really want to focus on this thing here instead of, okay, if you take my 40 week class in critical thinking skills. Exactly. I was like. Please God. Yeah, that's not it. And so finding, like you said, the platform is critical. Yeah. Where bite size and stackable. That's me, it was very intriguing. And elaborated. Like, don't think of the bite size as just the object, but there's a story that explains how the object came to being. There's questions the object leaves in the world. There's what Joe Bob did and Sally did with the object. There's a whole bunch of stuff around each object that makes it richer, more interesting, more useful, a better learning experience. Yes. And that fits with what's happening in my own life as I work with these tools and start to see how they integrate. Yeah. So. That makes sense to me. Thank you, Jerry. Cool. Thank you. This has been beautiful. I really appreciate it. Well, I'm the receiver here. So thank you. Until soon. All right. Thanks. Bye bye.


Here's a quick taste of what's new in the web IDE. I found this simple to-do app on Code Sandbox that uses Vue.js. We can preview it in the web IDE using client-side evaluation live preview, which is powered by Code Sandbox. Items can be added to the to-do list using the input box and removed with the X button. The X button makes it feel like I'm deleting items, and I want it to feel like I'm getting stuff done. Maybe a button with the word done would be better. We need to edit the to-do list item component, which is easy to find with the fuzzy file finder. Look at the preview. It's been updated in real-time. Let's see what it looks like with a tick or a checkmark icon. First, I'll create a new button component and use an SVG from the GitLab icon library. Now I need to import the new button component into the to-do list item. Hmm, looks like I messed something up. I think I need to specify a height or width in the SVG. Hmm, that's better. I'll commit this. Client-side evaluation makes it possible to preview JavaScript applications in the browser, including library loading. This is great for making quick fixes and testing they work, or experimenting with new libraries. All you need is a package.json with a main entry to get started. Try it today and let us know what you think.


Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Becky Anderson, the Managing Editor and Bureau Chief for CNN in the Gulf and Anchor of Connect the World with Becky Anderson. I'm delighted to be moderating this panel today. We'll do about 15-20 minutes and then I'll open the floor for questions that should give us about 10-15 minutes towards the end of this. Thank you both. Y Llyfrgell yn fawr i'ch cynllun ymddangos a'r angen, a'r Rysgwrdd Type 10 yn allu gan gael ar y llyfr aros fynd, ar rhan o'r ddysgu'r cyhoedd. Dyma'r disgynnu, y dyma'r angen er mwyn i'r llyfrgell yn ddiogel yma i'r llyfrgell yng nghymru eu cyfrannu Llyfrgell. Yn y tyd, yr Ylensgyr Prysyn, yna'r angen i'r angen i'r hyn o'r cyfrannu, o bobl, phrosio yr un, a byblanwch y cyfreith ffordd mwy. Day byddwch ar y ocondmwyllfa hwnnw i'ch cwrnod. Mae'r glifer y gyfer hynny ymweld yw, yma y cwrddol yn ynddo, yw'r ymgylch yn roedd y gwrthon i fwyfyr rhagorol a'r llwyddo cyflwydd. Mae cyflwyr gwir yng Nghyrch i bobl yr ysafodd gwrthon yn ymgylch gan Ygdiani Gwyr Nesafolau ac mae'r gweithio'r llwyddoedd yn bwysig i gyrfa'r llwyddoedd. A mae'r prosbyg yw'r cyfnod, yw'r llwyddoedd. Rwy'n gweithio'n gweithio'r Llywodraeth David Cameron, yng nghymru, yng nghymru yw'r llwyddoedd yng nghymru o'r Unedig Cymru, ac Dimitro Kulaba, yng Nghymru o'r Ffarae Llywodraeth i'r Ynwchryn. Rwy'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. Yn y glwyddoedd Minister Kulaba, rydych chi'n go fo'r pleif ystod o Peir Llywodraeth i'r Llywodraeth. A gweld yn cyceptio'n cyhoedhau, fel y Chyfodd Pwylltyn, mae'r prosbyg ar hyn yma, a'r Cymru o fod yw'r llwyddoedd ym Llywodraeth? Rwy'n ei ddylen, ac yn olygu'r llwydoedd hynny. Rwy'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. os rydyn ni'n ffas y mynedd, rydyn ni'n cael ei wneud. Roeddwn ni'n rhoi'n gweithio ar gyfer hyn yn siaradau ar gyfer hwnnw, sy'n ymgyrch chi'n siaradau ar gyfer hwnnw, rydyn ni'n gwneud ar gyfer hwnnw i Ukrainian a'r ëydydd ar gyfer o'ch cyfnodol yn y cwyrtio i'r ysgolwyd, o'r gyfer y gallwn gwahoddau ar gyfer hwnnw i'n gweithio ar gyfer hwnnw. Rydyn ni'n gwneud ar gyfer hwnnw o'r ddaethau ar gyfer hwnnw, wynaeth. Maen nhw'n dod i mae'r hyn yn iawn o'r bod yn mawr ymlaen i gynhyrchu'r yma i losbyddgo'u'r cyffrede yma. Rwy'n dda i, rwy'n dda i'r gyfarcheb gyttwch achod. Mae'r 10 hynny arddangos, rydyn ni'n gallu bod yw ddau, dda i'r gyflyniad. Wrth fyfaf ymddych chi, rydyn ni'n defnyddio ar gyfer gyda gwagodau hilyn sy'n ei ddau'i gyda'r rai cyntaf ar y cael bachon yma. A'r hyffordd yn cael bachon'n amser sydd yn ymddangos ar y cyhoedd. Ond yw'r yn cyfrifio'n amser? Ac rwy'n dweud am y Unedol? Oherwydd, yn ymddangos y gael ar gyfer y llef, mae'n gweithio bod yna'r best strategiaeth gydag yma yn ymdweud i'w ddweud. Felly we have now approached one bridge and trying to cross it, which is this package. When we approach the next one, then we will be working on that. And frankly, I do not know when we will reach that bridge. But 2024 seems to be certain and we understand the timeline of developments. But I doubt any capital in the world has a clear vision for 2025. Foreign Secretary Cameron, what's your sense of whether Ukraine will receive the military support it needs to turn the tide in its favour this year? I think it will. And I just take an incredibly clear view about this. Putin's invasion of Ukraine provides the challenge of our generation. This is the most naked example of one state illegally invading another. A full member of the United Nations, a country that should have its independence, its sovereignty and its borders. And if you look at the allies that back Ukraine, and back Ukraine not just with money and diplomatic support but also with weapons, our GDPs combined are 25 times the size of the Russian GDP. We just got to make our support count to help the Ukrainians in their brave struggle. And I'd also challenge a bit the sort of current narrative.  I mean, since the start of the war, he has lost half of the land that he took. He's had 300,000 casualties. He's been cut off and sanctioned by a good part of the free world. And those sanctions can only get tougher. And yes, of course, things have become quite stuck on land. But on sea, on the Black Sea, he's faced another catastrophe where over 20% of his navy has been sunk by a country Ukraine that only has a very small navy. And we talk about the support we need to give to Ukraine, and rightly we do. But also it's worth saying that with the Black Sea open, not thanks to the magnificence of Putin or the action of the UN, but the Black Sea open because of the action the Ukrainians have taken. They're exporting again, ships are sailing again, grain is leaving their ports again. And so I take a different view, look at the big picture, and actually Ukraine has done well, is doing well. And our job is to support Ukraine through this winter where again I think Russia is failing in terms of their attacks. Missile after missile has been shot down effectively to help Ukraine through this winter and to set up a system so that Ukraine can prevail in what will clearly be a longer war, but where there's no doubt in mind the West actually has the ability to support and to effect the right outcome. You've called for the seizure of some $350 billion of frozen Russian assets to fund the war effort. Can you legally justify that move? I know there's a big discussion about that at present. And is this an admission that the current sanctions regime on Russia has quite frankly failed to change Moscow's population? The way to think about it is we've already frozen those assets. The question is what should we do next? And I think there's a legal argument, a moral argument and a political argument. The legal argument, the lawyers will give their advice about the right way this can be done, but there's growing legal support for the idea that there is a way of using these resources. I think the moral argument is quite straightforward, which is that at the end of the day Russia is going to have to pay reparations for its illegal invasion. So why not spend some of the money now rather than wait till the war is over and have all the legal wrangling about reparations? I think the moral argument is strong. The political argument about what are the consequences does this change the way people see the way financial centres operate and all of those political arguments, on those I would say look, when Putin launched this illegal invasion, the world changed and we have to change with it and recognise we are in a more dangerous, uncertain and difficult world and so we should be prepared to do some innovative thinking about how we use these resources to help Ukraine. So I'm certainly working very hard on that. I think the rest of the G7 are. I think we're going to make some progress. As well as that, let's use all the sanctions regimes we have to hit the Russian individuals responsible with travel bans, asset freezes, all the other sanctions that you can do. One of the things Britain is doing is making sure we don't just announce the sanctions but we actually check that they're not being bypassed in other countries and I'm going to be encouraging every other European and Western leader that's here and foreign ministers that's here to make sure they're doing the same thing. Thank you. Foreign Minister Culebon, on the eve of this forum your government launched a new piece initiative bringing together 80 odd delegations. Well certainly it was part of an initiative that has been ongoing. I think this is the fourth meeting that's been held. Notably a lot more from the global south were in attendance amongst those 80. China didn't participate. Of course Russia wasn't there as talks with Russia have been declared illegal by President Zelensky. Given these significant and worrying current narrative about whether or not there will be as much if any support for Ukraine particularly out of the US going forward. How long do you think you have to end this war and what are the prospects of peace at this point from Ukraine's perspective? Can you share more detail on what that peace proposal looks like? Well less than a year ago the first meeting of national security advisers on Ukraine's peace formula took place in Copenhagen Denmark and it brought together 15 participants. The fourth meeting brought together 83. In the meantime a lot of things happened in the world and we heard so many discussions about destruction, about fatigue, about the different kind of defeatist voices but we see that the actual dynamics in engaging countries from all over the world into the Ukrainian plan is very positive. I think we are setting a precedent here where the terms of peace are being defined by a country whose peace was broken by an invader. It's not the invader who imposes his peace terms on the victim. It's not the third party that is proposing a compromise solution in a form of peace terms. It's us, the country that is fighting back, that defines the rules of peace. I think it's quite a remarkable moment in human history in the history of wars and diplomacy. There are 10 points in this plan and one of them is accountability. Accountability implies the tribunal and paying for the damage inflicted. The most important part of this peace plan is of course restoring territorial integrity of Ukraine. When we hear arguments coming from some experts or thinkers that maybe it's worth freezing the conflict, our response is we need frozen assets, not frozen conflict. This is the way forward. This is the way forward to send a clear message to everyone in the world that if you dare to break rules you're going to pay. If we don't send that message, if we don't make it very clear, the number of conflicts, interstate conflicts and tensions across the globe will be growing. And I think this is, and the price of fixing them will be much higher than the price of helping Ukraine. And I think this is one of the motivations that brings all these countries at the table because they realize the consequences of not participating in an effort to restore peace on just terms. The next step will be summit and President Zelensky agreed with President of Switzerland to begin working on organizing the first summit here in Switzerland actually. And yeah, there is a lot of diplomatic work we will be coordinating with the United Kingdom and I guess David and I will be working a lot on making it success because this success is important not just for peace in Ukraine but for global peace. David. I guess right, I mean you get peace through being strong and I think that it's always worth remaking the point that when Ukraine had its referendum in 1991 every single part of Ukraine including Crimea, including the Donbass, voted to be independent, to be one Ukraine. And I think the job of Allies is to back Ukraine in this struggle and to allow them to work out the agenda for when they want to do more work on peace and settlements and all the rest of it. I sometimes say to other foreign ministers, if you say let's support Ukraine and also let's promote a new peace process you won't get either of those things. If you support Ukraine you may well get the second thing. But that's what we need to do now and as I say I think that, I think we should think about the next year as one in which Ukraine with this support can actually grow stronger, grow stronger economically, diplomatically, militarily. That is, should be the aim and that will make peace more likely. I think that is the way to think about it. As Dimitrius says, this is not just about Ukraine security, this is fundamentally about European security but also about American security too. History demonstrates to us that if you appease an aggressor in Europe the aggressor comes back for more and when the aggressor comes back for more the price you eventually pay in your own troops and in the cost of your own country the price gets higher and higher. I think that's the argument we need to make in the United States. Obviously they've got some big political arguments taking place there but fundamentally there is a majority in Congress for the support. We just need to find it and make sure it votes for it. It turns me to my next question for Minister Culebi. Your president concedes that one of the things that splits support for Ukraine in the US is elections and the fact that in Ukraine elections, certainly presidential elections are unlikely. Does that worry you that voices on the hard right in the US are trying to tie further support to what they see as the need to show that this is a democratic process in action? Are you confident that you will still be around as well should there be a vote ultimately? Governmental and presidential? It's always remarkable to hear far right caring for democracy especially in a foreign country but I think the good news is that they seem to have run out of arguments if they resort to this one. Ukraine is a democracy. I'll tell you more. Ukraine would not have survived, would not survive if it was not a democracy. It's our democratic nature and the way our country is organized that helped us to repel the aggression, the Russian invasion and save the state. We are a democracy. We will remain a democracy. We have pre-district rules in the constitution on holding elections during the wartime. We have a wartime reality. For example, as foreign minister I'm in charge of the vote abroad and depending on whose data you find credible from 5 to 10 million Ukrainians who found who became refugees abroad will have to vote. It's technically at this point it's just technically impossible to organize a proper vote for them and let them express their will. But the whole discussion must end at one simple point. We will, we are committed, deeply committed to remaining a democratic country, a part of the democratic world because what we fight for is actually democracy itself. Well, I'm not the one who's making decisions. If I have to go and vote, I will. If I have to organize the vote under the circumstances I described, I will organize them. But I asked all countries with huge Ukrainian communities about the legal and technical framework for organizing elections. And some responses came, some responses were that we can organize a vote only on the premises of our diplomatic mission. How can you have hundreds of thousands of people make them vote in one premise? I also have a feeling that the very same people who are complaining about this point, if elections were held with all the difficulties of getting people to vote in parts of Ukraine that are occupied by Russian soldiers, they'd be the first to complain that these elections aren't accurate, are not proper, are not fair. The only thing I'd say is someone who's led a country, recently I saw President Zelensky, his approval rating has slipped from 90% to 80%. I used to dream 80%. One of the first things I did as foreign secretary was to go and visit Kiev and Odessa. One of the things that most strikes you is the incredible unity of purpose of the Ukrainian people. Actually Putin not only has he united the Ukrainian people as perhaps never before, he's also united NATO as never before. He's worried about the expansion of NATO. He has caused Sweden and Finland, two countries, Sweden by the way has just announced it's doubling its defence budget to highly capable countries joining NATO and making it stronger. Ukraine clearly at the top of your box, it was your first trip out of the gate as soon as you took this job recently. I must ask, I think it would be remiss of me not to ask, given that we're talking elections UK lightly to go to the polls by the end of the year. UK are passionately about Ukraine and as I say it's clearly at the top of your box. Do you have any confidence that you will be in place to drive that policy forward come this time next year? Well, we have an election year and I'm absolutely sort of committed. I didn't join this government simply to be foreign secretary. I joined the government because I think we have a highly capable Prime Minister who leads a very strong team. There's now got a growing economy that is making important steps in the world with a vital domestic reform programme and I think we have every opportunity. So I've been around in politics for a while. I stood in 1997 when we lost an election very badly. This does not feel like that at all. It feels like we've got a very dynamic Prime Minister, a dynamic team with a very clear agenda and crucially the right values to help our country in a world that is troubled and difficult and uncertain and dangerous and I think that core conservative value of security is the one that we need right now. And let's talk about that world which is increasingly feeling frightening and dangerous. Your Cabinet colleague, Defence Secretary Grant Shaps this week said and I quote, we find ourselves at the dawn of this new era. We've come full circle moving from a post war to a pre war world. And he name checks China, Russia, Iran, North Korea there. Do you agree with that assessment? And I have to ask, given what is going on in Gaza at present with that conflict and the evidence of spillover, significant spillover at this point, are you concerned that that is a distraction in support for Ukraine? You have called for a sustainable ceasefire but not an immediate ceasefire. Where do you stand on that? Of course, I mean, it's absolutely right. This is a very dangerous world. Not only have we got the Ukraine illegal invasion, you've got the situation in the Middle East, the more wars taking place in Africa at the moment that we've seen for perhaps 40 years, but turning very directly to your question. Look, we want this conflict to end as soon as possible. We don't want it to go on for a moment longer than necessary. And what I said very clearly yesterday, first of all, we need an immediate pause, an immediate humanitarian pause so that we can get aid in and we can get hostages out. That is absolutely essential. And I think the really important question is, is there some way of turning that pause into the sustainable ceasefire that we want to see? Because it would be much better if we didn't, after a pause, return to fighting, return to violence, return to destruction. But in order for that to happen, a number of things would have to happen. We'd have to see Hamas' leadership leaving Gaza. We'd have to see an end to the threat of rocket and terrorist attacks into Israel. We'd have to see a Palestinian authority perhaps bolstered with Palestinian expertise from elsewhere, perhaps including Gaza, helping to provide the governance and the services that people need. And of course, as part of that, you're going to need this longer term horizon for how you see a historic settlement of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. But I think that should be the approach we try to take. Let's get this pause in place, get the aid in, get the hostages out, get that hostage negotiation done, and see if we can turn that into the sustainable ceasefire we all need to see. And the reason for using this word sustainable is, look, if you think you can just stop fighting and do nothing else, you'll never get a two-state solution because you can't have a two-state solution with Hamas in Gaza able to launch rockets and terror attacks. And that's why it's so important that those conditions are put in place. Briefly, how big a distraction does it feel at present, a conflict in the Middle East to sort of, you know, eye on the ball when it comes to support for Ukraine? Well, we know better than anyone else that every war is a tragedy. And I really find it inappropriate to consider wars taking place in the world through the perspective of destructions. Destructions, yes, destructions. So that's just not the way we think about it. When we meet with our partner governments, we feel that they are focused, here in Davos everyone is focused, everyone wants both wars to end and peace to be restored. The world has capacity to handle conflict, a number of conflicts at the same time. We should not create the impression that the world does not have that capacity. And as David rightly mentioned, the combined GDP of the coalition that stands for Ukraine and for the world order is much, much, much bigger than Russia and its partners or those who stand behind Hamas, including Russia. So we do have resources. We do have the capacity. We seem to have the will. What we have to do is to put the will into action. Questions? Yes, sir. A question for Lord Cameron. When you're having meetings at Davos at the moment and speaking to other world leaders, is what's happening at home with the Rwanda Bill, an embarrassment to Britain on the world stage? And just secondly, on asset sieges. Where are most of the Russian assets frozen currently? And which of our partners do you most have to persuade on the points that you've made? On the second point, on the assets, I mean we can get you the figures, but there's a substantial amount in the UK, but there's an even bigger amount in Europe, actually specifically in Brussels because of what's tied up in Euroclear, but we can get you the statistics. 180 billion. What I'd say is that there's different legal opinions about the best way to do it, but there are lots of legal opinions that it can be done. And so that's the work that's being done. On the first, I would say quite the contrary. I would say, to be frank about this, the problem of illegal migration is a problem every country is having to deal with, particularly countries in the west. And I would say there are, if you like, two sorts of politicians. There are those politicians that realise if you want to deal with this problem, it's absolutely fine to talk about dealing with backlogs of asylum seekers, which we're doing. It's absolutely fine to talk about smashing criminal gangs, which we're doing. It's absolutely fine to talk about the collaboration you're going to have with neighbours and partners, which we are doing. Even providing the money as well as collaboration. But unless you're prepared to do something that stops this trade in human beings, that means that if you take a boat from one perfectly safe country, France to another perfectly safe country, Britain, unless you're prepared to say that if you take that boat, you won't be able to stay in the country. Unless you're prepared to do the innovative thinking, the out-of-the-box thinking, then you are a politician that has got nothing to say about solving this problem. And I would say that what Rishi Surak and what the government is doing is yes, it's quite unorthodox in some ways, but it's necessary to do this out-of-the-box thinking to break the model of this appalling people smuggling, which is not just something that totally undermines the migration system in the UK. It costs so many people their lives. We've seen this week another four people drowning in the freezing cold water of the English Channel on a January night. We've got to stop this. And so I think, as I say, you'll find lots of politicians here who've got lots of things they want to do, but if they're not prepared to stop the boats, if they're not prepared to make sure that people who arrive from a perfectly safe country can't stay, they're not going to solve the problem. And I think there's a growing understanding for that. As I talked to leaders from places like Italy and Austria and elsewhere, there's a growing understanding that we have to take some of these novel steps if we really want to stop this trade. And that's exactly what that bill is all about. Yes, sir. Question also for Lord Cameron, John Paul Ford Rockhouse, from The Daily Mail. Just on Rwanda again, Paul Kagame said today here at Davos that there are limits for how long this can drag on. So are you worried that unless this is resolved in the UK that the whole plan may fall apart anyway? Second question also Lord Cameron, you mentioned the UK economy doing well now. Do you admit that you were wrong back in 2016 to worry as much and warned as much as you did about what would happen to the UK economy after we left Brexit and hasn't Brexit actually been a big success? First of all, on resolving the situation. Look, the Rwanda bill will have its third reading tonight in Parliament. I'm confident it will be passed. We have signed this new treaty with Rwanda, which puts beyond doubt that there are no dangers of asylum seekers being sent back to the country from which they came if they genuinely are asylum seekers, the principle of reformal. So I think that is important. And also in response to the Supreme Court judgment, there's a huge pack of information that's been published about actually what Rwanda is like as a country in terms of refugees. And I would just point out that Rwanda actually hosts schools that have relocated from Sudan. It hosts people that have relocated from Afghanistan. I think there are over 100,000 people who've claimed asylum who are living and working in Rwanda. But of course we want to see this resolved. That's what the bill, that's what the treaty, that's what the process is all about. As for life post 2016 and more particularly life post November 2023 when I came into post, I'm very clear that look, we made a decision as a country through a democratic referendum, which I promised a full two years before an election, we held that referendum, we're bided by the result of that referendum. I've often said this that the country's made its choice and our job now is to make that choice work. And I think what we're demonstrating is that Britain is a country that is perfectly capable of making a relationship work where we are friends and neighbours and partners to the EU and we can make a success of that. And I think actually our engagement with Ukraine is a classic example of this. I was delighted when in Ukraine that Britain was described really as the number one partner. And we do that in partnership with EU countries. But it's a good example as it were of how we are small enough to be nimble in our help for Ukraine and how we've got out in front of others and really done things that have helped. But we're also big enough to matter. We are the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world. We have some of the finest defence forces in the world, one of the best diplomatic networks in the world, one of the biggest aid budgets in the world, which I'm responsible for. And we make those things count in our relationship with countries like Ukraine and in the way we work with the EU. Ffarran Sotri, David Cameron, and Ffarran Minister for Labour. Thank you very much indeed for joining us. Thank you.


Time here for more systems and after I did my video yesterday and uploaded on the casea issue in the breach and everything We knew at least at the time of publication. I was then a panelist with the huntress for each rapid response webinar Now I'll be leaving links to that longer video there but I wanted to talk about some of the technical knowledge that came from this and It's interesting because there's a little bit more to the breach than just that CVE I had mentioned in the previous video there are a few more technical details that I thought maybe people might find interesting and We covered that in depth and I really highly recommend that you watched that entire webinar If you are in the IT service industry and you want to know a deeper Understanding of what happened how it happened exactly how to respond not just from technical details But from the large overview that was very well covered in that video But I want to just cover really quickly the proof of concept that hunters put together and answer a couple technical questions Well this that information wasn't available to me at the time I published my video So this is kind of like a part to but to cover a couple of those You know minor little aspects that I think are really important and this is the same blog post I linked to and it's being updated So the same links are valid from the other video There's as I said just more information and this even came after the webinar This is on 7 6 20 21 at 7 0 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time as demonstrated in our webinar today huntress security researcher Caleb Stewart had successfully reproduced the Hosea VSA exploits used to deploy the our evil So to kibby ransomware and released a proof of concept demonstrating a video detecting an authentication bypass an arbitrary file upload and a command injection now why this is so important is because No one knows or I should say not no one the threat actors I was to know exactly how this was pulled off so in order to Understand why the Kaseya VSA system is still slowly being brought online and not just turned back on is because first you have to do and this Is done independent of Kaseya's own testing. They're doing a proof of concept like can we figure out exactly how they did it because you can't Patch for something you can't reproduce. This is what proof of concepts are for so they walked through and they did this in a webinar And this is just a snippet from there showing that yes, they stood up a patched as of July 2021 Kaseya VSA server and they're able to take control over it This doesn't mean this is exactly how they did it But this is a best effort based on reverse engineering the logs to get an understanding now back to that CVE I had mentioned in the other video that was part of it They did talk to the Dutch search and Victor and confirm You know everyone compares notes in the cybersecurity world that are actively engaged in this and they confirmed that part of it Was that CVE but that was not the full extent. It's not like the knowledge they had from that allowed this entire Incident to happen. There were more steps involved So there was yes the known and as we pointed out in that previous video probably since around April We don't have an exact date when Kaseya was notified We just know when the CVE was created, but it is important to know that that is only a piece of it There were some unknowns only known by the threat actors Which was the other methodologies that are being reverse engineered by the teams at Kaseya and Huntress doing their own reverse engineering to confirm this and be done Now a couple things that came out of that as well that was the challenge of working with it It was all the functions that did things like delete all the logs and this was Also done on purpose to hamper the investigation I brought this up in that webinar and we talk a little bit more in-depth about process and procedures, but one of the things that's really important is Logging on a separate server apparently or at least the MSPs that were able to pull some logs was because their systems were either partially and Not completely Destroyed and that allowed for some logging to be on there So that this is really an important point because logging is something I probably should have brought up in another video which it doesn't save you It just gives forensics companies and incident response people a better Picture as to how to reverse engineer this so it can be fixed faster So sorry that you may have gotten hit But do you have good logs and this is one of those things that threat actors were thorough in doing was destroying logs destroying access to the server and Creating a lot of the problems Therefore now one of the things that also came up in the webinar and like I said Please watch the webinar to get all the details But it does look like they were not in there long enough to do the usual exfiltration of data Doesn't look like as in no evidence of that doesn't mean that there aren't other circumstances that maybe they did But this seemed to be kind of a hit-and-run type of situation But all the details are in the Huntress blog right up here all the other details of some of the you know What should you do in the case of a breach? What if you're an IT company that gets breached? What are those processes you should follow and how that should be played out? That was all a big part of the discussion So there's a lot of the management discussion to go with the technical details that are in that video That Huntress did but it's still really a Tragic thing that happened here ultimately as I said in the previous video the same things apply We need to have more thorough security audits against the software that we trust and that does include You know a full code audit of the Kaseya platform is obviously very necessary And I'm hoping Kaseya comes out better from it because for them to be able to write this Required those flaws to be there, which then they've probably been there for a very long time So this code really probably needs some solid review to become Usable again because this is also hampering their ability to get the system back up and running They were told Kaseya VSA users were told on July 2nd of 2021 to shut it down And here we are in July 7th and they're still not able to bring their systems back up to start Managing and monitoring systems because the patch is hard to write when you have a lot of code to fix You want to fix it once you want to fix it right and Yeah, this is why these proof of concepts are out there and so important now I will leave links to all this down below and thank you And thank you for making it to the end of this video If you enjoyed this content, please give it a thumbs up If you'd like to see more content from this channel hit the subscribe button and the bell icon To hire a sure project head over to laurancesystems.com and click on the hires button right at the top To help this channel out in other ways There's a join button here for youtube and a patreon page where your support is greatly appreciated For deals discounts and offers check out our affiliate links in the descriptions of all of our videos Including a link to our shirt store where we have a wide variety of shirts and new designs come out well randomly So check back frequently And finally our forums forums.laurancesystems.com is where you can have a more in-depth discussion about this video and other tech topics covered on this channel Thank you again, and we look forward to hearing from you in the meantime check out some of our other videos


Still talking security, gunmen abducted 136 students from an Islamic school in a north central Nigerian state of Niger on Sunday. A state official said on Wednesday that the figure is lower than the estimate of 200 previously offered by the federal government. Niger's deputy governor Ahmed Mohammed Kitso told reporters that the number of missing children has been established. The last update would disclose that government was making efforts to identify the budget, the allocation through the combined effort of the security agencies. We also confirmed the government had ordered all boarding schools in the area to temporarily revamp the, perhaps the reason the budget attacked the Islamic school. Government is now in touch with some of the parents of the kidnapped children. They have been assured of the safe return of their words. Let me restate our stance not to pay any form of ransom to any criminal like Kol Bandit. Let's find out about fresh news updates.


At this group we were discussing how we can contribute to evidence-based policy making and some of the questions that we were trying to discuss were, you know, how do we build the linkages and networks with what kinds of people so that we can communicate our policy-related messages and how do we understand the policy process and policies better and how do we identify opportunities or windows where we can influence or infuse evidence and then influence the process. We actually started out discussing, okay, we keep talking about policy makers. Who exactly are we talking about, do we know? And we are trying to see if we could make a distinction between policy makers and decision makers. And then we said, okay, policy makers are not always necessarily the politicians and the ministers who are sitting in the ministries, but usually they have these technical advisors and advisory committees and management boards and often consultants and experts to whom this is contracted out to. And those people actually formulate the policies while it is approved by, you know, the political bodies like the House of Representatives, etc. And then we were also trying to identify at what levels this policy-making happens. And we said generally it's the federal and regional levels where policies get made and implementation responsibility lies with the vorators and the capabilities. So we said, well, the strategy would be to develop relationships with these people, I mean the technical, I mean the experts, etc., who are actually involved in formulating policies. And then when we say develop relationships with them, maybe in formal relationships, we are not starting on a blind slate. I mean everybody sitting here, most people sitting here do have existing social capital or network, so how do we take them to the next stage? And then, yeah, yeah, some of that network kind of intelligence. And then we also talked about possible windows where we weren't really sure how that works in the Ethiopian context. We said, well, Ethiopian has taken on five year planning now, but right now they are in the beginning of a plan, start of a plan, and we might have to wait for the next planning, past five year planning and that might be a bit too late to wait for. And then how do we engage these people? We said, and what stage do we engage them? Well, some felt we should start engaging them right from the planning process of research, formally or informally or include them in your projects, steering committees or advisory committees, etc. Another thing we talked about was, you know, instead of having, I don't know, not, I would say, different options on how you can make this whole policy influence and process effective. We have started forming a national platform, bringing people together, yeah, holding meetings, large meetings, 50 people, etc. Or you could also target specific individuals or organizations who could take these messages out in a much more effective manner. Some examples we talked about were this Agricultural Transformation Agency, the Derbler Advisory Group, or the possibility of identifying a national champion of two per country or per region or whatever who could help us do that. Talked about, started talking a little bit about communication and then what role media could play or professional associations could play, but we didn't come to any kind of conclusive discussions about them.