Hello, everyone. My name is Johannes Deans. And today I'm going to talk about my experience in a real DevOps team with a technical architecture documentation template ARC 42. And I will share a lot of lessons learned, what we saw, what really works in our team. And it's hands on experience. So you should be able to take it home and use it the next day. So let's get it on. First, a little bit of context. I work at Deutsche Bahn, especially a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn. Deutsche Bahn operates worldwide, but mainly in Germany with over 300,000 employees. And I work at a subsidiary called DB Sustell. And we're the digital partner of the Deutsche Bahn. We're driving the digitalization of the Deutsche Bahn. We also provide a lot of services. And we noticed in 2018, around 2018, that we're not providing the best service we could. We were separating dev and ops. And we said, okay, it's not very good to separate dev and ops. So we are changing this now. We want to develop a lot of services, which are mainly provided by us and sold to our customers. Customers also subsidiaries of Deutsche Bahn. And we want to produce these services and operate it in a DevOps production model. And the DevOps production model in DB Sustell is DevOps. As you mean it, you build it, you run it. So what do we do in my team especially? In my team, we are developing a product. And that's also pretty new. We're normally only a project project delivery for our subsidiary. So the subsidiaries come to us or customers come to us and say, we want something and we build it. And then it's owned by the by the subsidiary. That's not what we want to do in the future. We are going to develop services. And that's what our team does. One of the first teams that that does this thing, we are building the developing the DB content hub. And the DB content hub, it's a hub. So we are hosting a headless CMS with an API on an API gateway platform, API management platform. And it's content as a service. So you buy our product over self, over self service. And then you get a cluster and instance of our product. And you can start creating content and deliver it over an API or over, over front end. And what we do, we have a surprise by software we host in our backend. And we're doing this self hosted in cloud, especially HWS.  And as I already said, you build it, you run it. So we're talking to customers, we're implementing the features, we bring it to production and we operate it. And that's pretty special because you see a lot of different flavors, flavors is maybe a wrong word, but flavors of DevOps, where you say, okay, we have a DevOps team that operates everything. So it's ops team. So we have the whole built chain of the software. And that's pretty special, I would say, especially in, in the context of Deutsche Bahn, which is normally a very traditional company corporate corporate environment. Well, that's the first thing. Then we are doing product development and product development is a little bit different from project development. So we don't have a customer that says, here, I have an idea, please implement it. No, we develop a product and have to sell it. So content as a service means we have to win our customers. And that usually implies that you have short iteration cycles to see what works. We are still in the face of see what works. So we have short iteration cycles. We also are doing a lot of mistakes. Yeah, that's that's part of product development. So first, we tried to use a managed cloud, which didn't work because we couldn't scale a scale. Then we switched to HWS. And we also tried OpenShift, for example, but they all HWS is the right thing, but we use the wrong technology there. So we're making a lot of mistakes and have to take some decisions back. And we have to learn and adapt. That's pretty cool. But we also have to deliver on time, because we don't have we don't have infinite amounts of money, which is we are sponsored by Davises Tell. And then we have to create value in a short amount of time. So this has a lot of pressure that lies on us. And what's also special and it's kind of necessary for DevOps to work, we have an agile production model. So we use firstly used scrum, then we use Kanban at the moment. So we are really agile with inspect and adapt and see what works. And we are also very customer orientated, because we have to win customers, we need to know what our customers need. And so also the team, that's special for our team, where we talk to our customers and see what they need, help them integrate our features. So what I will focus on in this presentation is the cost of poor documentation and documentation in the sense of not customer documentation, but in technical architecture documentation. This is where R42 comes in. So we have this fast iteration cycles and product development. And we have this pressure of delivering fast delivering features and a lot of features. So what happens when you deliver fast and have short duration cycles? Normally, if you don't pay attention, you have not, not the best documentation, documentation always comes last. It's even after testing. So testing comes last and then comes documentation. And that's a real problem. And in a talk from Kevin Goldsmith, he said, one employee said, documentation is not agile, because he understand the agile manifesto wrong. So first, I want to make clear why poor documentation costs the team a lot. So the question is, is why do we document in the first place? In a DevOps team, normally the team should be stable, but he had some kind of flukation in there. And every time a new employee comes in, he has to learn the whole system. Our system is a very tiny service, not tiny small service. But it's also a lot of techniques, frameworks, methods, a new employee has to learn. So the onboarding usually takes 25% over a few weeks of one of another team member to onboard this new employee. If we can reduce this percentage by even 10%, we free the old employee, old team member of a lot of work, which we can then use to implement new features or make the better documentation. So every time you document, you should document in the sense of, okay, there's maybe another onboarding or onboarding of another team member. And also, we're in a corporate environment, we are also documenting documentation, because we have to. There's also must haves we have on documentation, for example, an operations manual, and technical architecture documentation, architecture decisions, we have to document these are must haves, not optional. And that's more on the side of user documentation, but also for other teams that want to work with us. Sometimes we document for other teams that they understand how how to use our service, how our service even works. That's our important part, especially if you just lend a front end developer, for example, he has to implement in our, in our backend something to have a nice front end there. Then the documentation should be because you have to onboard it on board the new employer. And finally, and that's more of the more in the funny side of things, I have this thing called developer amnesia. And everything that happened four weeks ago, I don't know about it. So I often document for myself. That's, that's a thing I had to use in this slide. I think it's it's a common thing. It's so fast moving development cycles and you're just forgetting things. In this talk, I want to put the focus on arc 42, the technical architecture documentation template. Normally, I ask, who knows arc 42, that's not possible in the video, of course. And therefore, I assume that only 50% that's normal percentage in Germany who know arc 42, the technical argument, technical architect documentation template. So I'm going to give a little overview of arc 42, not too long, maybe one or two minutes. So arc 42 consists of a structured template, it's a template, a lightweight template. And it says, and it was developed by Gernot Stark and Peter Ruschka. Hands, they had hands on experience year long handles hands on experience in documenting technical architecture. And they found out that this structure really helped them to document everything the same way. And that it was useful. So the first start with introduction goes, what is this system you're building about then the constraints of the system, context and scope. Very interesting is the context and scope for if you don't have a context diagram for your system, you may want to create one tomorrow because you will find out that a lot of systems you are talking to and they are talking to you and you don't know about it. Then you have the solution strategy. And then come the interesting more of the what you think of architecture diagrams, building blocks, deployment, few runtime fuels, then the overarching concepts, for example, logging is an overarching concept. And then come a very favorite, favorite idea of minds architecture decisions, quality scenarios, risks and technical depth, which should be mentioned in the glossary. And we're going into some of these in detail. But you can see they're all they're a little bit more detailed on the right side. So what our introduction goes quality goes, they call the required functions and how the business domain is mapped to the building block view. And the technical view is in the building block view as well. You can break it down the building block view into deployment view. And later on the runtime view, where you're calling functions. So this looks like a very heavy weight approach. But I assure you it's not. So what are the requirements of technical architecture documentation in a DevOps team? I would say Arc 42 is perfect for DevOps teams. And I have a few arguments to make there because if you're working a DevOps team, what you want is to move fast to grasp the architecture, the technical architecture of this of the system very, very fast. And it's perfect if you use Arc 42 in your system. If a new employee comes in, he knows he already knows the structure where to find what. So if you always use Arc 42, it's very easy to get in the system. Then as I already said, it's lightweight and lightweight means there's no obligation to fill out every single chapter. If you don't need a runtime view, if you don't need a deployment view, don't fill it out. If you don't have architecture decisions yet. Yeah, there are no architecture decisions. It's okay. So create them on demand. Then not specifically important for Arc 42, but for every documentation, just document what you want to read. If you want to create a runtime view because you need it, yeah, okay, you want to read it, then create it, document only what you want to read. That's important, but not specifically to Arc 42. And there's also something I learned in the last few weeks. If you have to create an operations manual, often the technical architecture gets duplicated there. And yeah, you can reuse the technical architecture in from Arc 42, especially the deployment view in the operations manual or a modified deployment view. So you don't have duplicate of application of work. So just to make clear what we are seeing in our DevOps team, what we really need in our in our technical architecture documentation, we are very hands on everybody. There's we are cross functional, T shaped, as someone might say, that's okay, but we also we all know our system inside out. So we found out that we need introduction, goals, constraints, context and scope, and the solution solution strategy very, very much. We created them in our Arc 42. But we don't need all these views. The building block few we created it, because of as an exercise, I created it. But it's not very necessary because our system is small, we know how it's built. And it's, in my view, very easy to grasp. So you don't have to create these three views. What we then added was concepts. For example, as a DevOps team, we knew we need observability, monitoring and alerting. So we added a concept view in the last few months. And we are documenting architecture decisions and quality, quality is a little bit of a step child. Unfortunately, we have to work on that. And we also have a risk and technical depth. What we didn't have was a glossary. And I recommend to everyone of you this the first learning you should, you should take home a glossary is very, very much needed. Because I was sitting in a customer integration workshop. And our product owner was talking to the customer and he always said, yeah, we have this content asset, we have this content assets. And you don't know and the customer didn't also know there are also content types, which is basically the content data model of the content. And the technical technical term for content asset, technical implementation of the content asset is a content led. So I was sitting there and thinking about what is he talking about content asset, content asset, is this a content led? And the customer thought, oh, yeah, content asset, content as it's a content type. So there were three people talking about the same thing, but having different things in mind. And this is very much mitigated by using a glossary. We say, okay, here's a glossary, we use this term in our team. And then you can give it to the customer says, okay, we use this team. And it means that that's very important. The first thing you should do is creating a glossary of terms you use. And since we made that clear, and we created the glossary, it's, it is better, we're all always talking about the same things and meaning the same thing. So a lot of misunderstanding is mitigated through that. So the first thing thing you should take home. Then if you're using arc 42, there's a confluence template, a wiki template. And normally a wiki in a corporate environment is easy to get. Plus, it's also this way. Then we say, okay, we create a wiki and put our arc 42 documentation there, a wiki is born. Yeah. And what happens there? Everybody writes in this wiki because everyone has rights, right permissions. Yeah. And what happens? The technical architecture, architecture documentation sometimes gets filled with tutorials. And the tutorials are mixed with, with technical architecture documentation, and information ideas and everything else. So okay, there you have a tutorial, but it's very domain specific for specific customer. And technical architecture documentation should be free of tutorials. That's a point I want to make. Because we experienced it and it didn't work out. So we had all different kinds of information in the tutorial. And it should be somewhere else. For example, if you have an API repository in your GitLab, then put it there, put it in a readme in the repo, you can already read you can reference it or include it on in the right user documentation, for example, no tutorial and technical architecture documentation. Then what we, we experienced in the year we used a wiki was the wiki is a problem child. Because it has a lot of problems. You might notice saying a wiki is the place where information goes to die. Yeah, that's okay. Somebody puts his thoughts, his heart, his ideas in the wiki. And it's in a very unstructured way. And then the information just goes to die there. Because everybody can brain dump. Everybody can brain dump his ideas into the wiki on a place where it doesn't fit. And this usually, usually leads to developer pros and developer pros has everything and diagrams, ideas, comments, tutorials, examples, everything you can mention is in this Enwickler pros and this Enwickler pros is very hard to read. So and then you add a comment function and everybody knows comments get outdated and nobody deletes them. So it's just not working out for technical architecture documentation. And also you have this, this mixture of domain specific ideas, information and technical documentation. And this is very hard. And we learned it the hard way because we had a big customer and all our arc 42 documentation was, was around this domain of the customer. And we had to separate it because the technical architecture documentation of our system is generic. It's content as a service. And we have to head it head to separate it. And we are still finding some references of this first big customer. Yeah. And that's a very sad state. Normally wikis are in. And I would say every we all have this dream of creating this this cool wiki as a book. And it's a nice castle and it just doesn't work out. And the main thing I think or I saw in our team was and I see it in a lot of wikis is that the quality is bad of the documentation, but you have to ask the question, why is the documentation and I think the main reason is because everybody body can brain dump in this wiki. So you have no review, like in code, for example, normally you should review your code. And then a lot of problems get spotted before it enters the master branch, for example. So the quality is bad because there's no review. And there's another problem. If you're moving in a DevOps environment and have very fast release cycles and you want to version documentation, this is very hard in wikis, or for example, in work, but it's not versionable per se. So I really would say wiki wiki is not the right tool for DevOps team. And I want to stress this, this information wiki is not the right tool. So what is the right tool? Then you ask. Yeah, we figured out that the switch to docs as code is the right thing. Why? We are using code all day and code is basically text. Why not write our documentation also as text and version it like we version our code. This led us to, okay, create a git repository and put ask it in there as documentation. You go from VCWIC, VCWIC editing to yeah, we have code, we can version it, we can review it, we can do everything. So the advantages are clear. We use the same tools. We use the same tools for documentation as we use of for code. And then it becomes much easier to be enthusiastic about documentation because you don't have to switch in an ugly format like for example wiki or docs, docs like word or another processor. You just have to write text and that's much easier. And it's easier because if you use for example ASCII doc, there are a lot of great plugins for vicious studio code. There's a very, very great plugin for IntelliJ. I use it daily from Alexander Schwarz. You should check that out. Or if you're a more purist, you can use the bash and WIM for example. So if you treat your documentation as code, you don't need a special program to edit your code, your docs. There are also more advantages, which I already scratched a little bit. If you have documentation as Word for example, or as a lot of Excel sheets out here in a corporate environment, I know, then you're going from the paradigm of wisiwik to wisiwim. And wisiwik has in my experience annoying problems. They are not as big, but they are very annoying when you create documentation, which makes you dislike creating documentation. For example, if you use wisiwik, then I often have a heading. And if I use this heading and say enter, then sometimes it stays a heading and creates a new line, which I don't understand. And sometimes it's standard text afterwards. And this is not deterministic. It's just annoying. If you write docs as code in, for example, ASCII doc, yeah, it's just text. And it's wisiwim. What you see is what you mean. And what you see is what you mean. It just gets rendered and it looks good. That's cool. One of my main points for docs as code is you get the same workflow you use for code like you use for docs. And I want to stress this. In our team, we experienced much higher quality of our documentation when we started protecting our main branch and that could only be pushed to the documentation repository over a feature branch. So if we have an architecture decision, we just create a feature branch, which is HDR042, for example. And then we create this HDR. Normally, I'm creating the HDR because I'm enthusiastic about HDRs. And then all of our team members can quality check that HDR at their own ideas. And they get reviewed and we have a discussion in our GitLab and normally what gets merged into the main branch is a lot of higher quality. So you always see the AsciiDoc format here. So you might ask why not use Markdown. It's much easier than AsciiDoc. Yeah, AsciiDoc is a more complete standard or more complete specification. If you want to want to put it precisely than Markdown. Markdown has a little specification and it lacks, for example, tables. And these tables are a big problem because if you have a lot of different Markdown flamers, just use GitHub and Stack Overflow, they're completely different flavors and they're not compatible. So if you're not, if they're not compatible, then you have a really big problem because you can't switch from one system to another. That's not a problem with AsciiDoc. Everybody implements the same specification, the same standard. So if you have Pandoc or DocToolChain or your plugins, it always looks the same. So that's a big plus for AsciiDoc. Then another big plus for AsciiDoc is the possibility to use includes. So you can structure your documentation modulary, modular. You can structure your documentation modular. Let me stress that. Modular. So if you have a readme and in a repository and you want to include in the user documentation, yeah, just create a user documentation overarching AsciiDoc and include that file. Don't create it new the documentation, just include it. And you can structure everything modular and it's pretty cool. And then you say, okay, you're in a corporate environment and you have to deliver, for example, Doc, PDF or PPT, yeah, no problem. We have tools for that. So AsciiDoc can, with the right tools, you can create every format from AsciiDoc. That's very powerful. So how does documentation really look like in our team? Firstly, we started with a single repository for documentation because it was easy. Put everything in this repository. In the last few months, we wrote an operations manual and we found out, okay, the deployment should be in the in the repositories. We have a lot of Docker containers at the moment. Four for one cluster deployment. And then we said, okay, how do we create the deployment? Yeah, this should be in the repository of these. The documentation for creating it should be in the repositories. So we just moved the documentation for the deployment into the repositories. And when we create, create a user documentation or create a technical documentation, then we just check this out as a sub module and use, for example, DocToolChain or you can use any tool but DocToolChain is developed by a colleague of mine and it's very Ralf de Müller and it's very sufficient in doing this. And we create everything from these documentation, for example Word or PDF and you can even style it. So it looks like you created it from Word. It's very cool. And what we also use in our team is a thing called MicroSight. We render from our central documentation repository on MicroSight and HTML static site with a static site generator. And I will go into detail a little bit more because I think as I already showed DocSys code and Arc42, it's more or more or less a laugh story. You have these same tools and you can use the technical architecture documentation. And there's also a template for Arc42 in ASCII.Doc in the right repository which is linked in the last slide. I have links to this repository where you can just check out Arc42 in ASCII.Doc. So I think it's a laugh story. And we create this MicroSight. And this MicroSight has a lot of things in it. Don't worry, it's in German, but architecture is architecture. And you see it's a static HTML. This is a screenshot of my browser. And there you have all the chapters of Arc42 in there. So you have one to 13. And everything that's not filled out, you see it. The screenshot is a little bit older. We don't have the deployment view, chapter 5. And you can also put in this MicroSight besides the Arc42 user tutorials or some deep knowledge or some infos or FAQs into this MicroSight. So you can a central place for your architecture documentation or for systems documentation, not only Arc42. And this is very powerful. And there is one thing we have, I don't know if every corporation has it, but we have an internal search engine called DB-Suche from a DB-search. And an HTML site is very easy to index. We have the search button on the right side. And we have a sitemap xml and we just point the search bot. The search has a web crawler and just across our website. It's easy searchable. It's very accessible. And everybody without knowledge can browse this because it's just an HTML page. So it's accessible and everybody can use it. So now you say, yeah, your quality of your documentation is high. But don't you have outdated documentation? Yeah, I just made a year end clean out of our documentation. We have outdated documentation. I don't want to lie about that. So how do we deal with that? Our technical documentation moves fast. We change a lot of things. We switch from cloud formation to terraform, which made technical decisions obsolete. And the rework of our architecture was needed and we didn't rewrite everything. We just missed some outdated documentation because of moving fast. So we have this two-hour slot every Thursday where we just go over the documentation and see how the documentation works. We review a documentation that's older than one year in this time slot and say, okay, do we need it? Can we disregard it? And the best thing about it, if you version it like code, then you can just recall it from Git history. There's no problem in it. So deleting documentation is very, very easy. Then I have a few more minutes. Sometimes I skip this section, but let's talk about architecture decisions. In our team, and I have a whole other talk about it, if you want to hear, just give me a call. I give it in a meetup. I have two talks about it actually. So what we found most valuable in ARK 42 were chapter 9 architecture decisions. And architecture decisions are normally decisions which affect your architecture, but in a way which are very costly to change or not even possible to change. And we use these architecture decisions for these decisions, but also, for example, tool decisions. A lot about automation and DevOps is about tooling. What tools do we need? And don't use too much tools, but one tool. So we are very, very diligent about choosing our tools. And it's very sad that it's on the ninth chapter. I would put it a little bit up there, for example, or after four. But I see it makes sense to put them there, but we are emphasized architecture decisions because we had a lot of discussions about technical decisions and we want to distribute the knowledge of our decisions. We did to even, it's even mandatory in our corporation to make them transparent decisions. So we do that. So let's talk about the format we use for architecture decisions. And there's a very popular format of architect decisions called HDR architecture decision records. It's not from us. It's from Peter Nygaard. I learned from Peter Nygaard. Actually, it comes from the book Software Architecture and Practice that originated from. And we use the template from Peter Nygaard. I also put in the links in the last slide. You can see a lot of different HDR templates because I think this template works very well in our context. Let's see how an actual HDR is structured. We have this title and this title always starts with HADR minus and then the number 003. I don't think we get more than 999 HDRs to change the format. And then you have a noun phrase and this noun phrase is staging with cluster environment for our CMS. And then after that there comes the decision. The decision is usually one or two sentences sentences long or short and they and states what we are doing now. So do we staging or do we cluster? No, we use two environments and we set it up as clusters. So everybody knows what we decided there. And there are a few status it can have, status. Most is accepted sometimes and even in the last few months we had this a lot. We said okay, it's deprecated or we say there's a new one and link to the new one. The status is not set up. You can use whatever status you want. Then you have the context and the context in a corporate environment is sometimes funny, sometimes strange. So put everything that comes that leads to this decision in there. Even if it's say, oh it's meetup-driven development, your lead architect says yeah, we have to do this because I saw this in a meetup or in a conference and it's cool but it doesn't make sense. So put it there or you have some data or some service you can't access because the corporation says it's not for you, not for use for you but it's perfect then put everything that makes your decision transparent there. Then you have the consequences. The consequences are usually short-term. So what have you do now? I have to do now to set this decision or to implement this decision now. Then you have the alternatives and I want to stress this. This is a very important thing. It's very short here because, okay, I had to fit it on one slide. So normally you have a lot of alternatives. If you don't have an alternative then it's a constraint. It's chapter two. But the alternatives are very interesting in the long term when you say okay, I have to deprecate a decision. Then you can say what alternatives did I evaluate so you don't have to evaluate the next so you're saving time. So now you have the basic architecture decisions we use and how do we document them. We document them in our main documentation template repository and just put it there as a template and then you can copy it. It's very easy. Just copy the file, enter what you know and create a feature branch and then we render it as a block view in our microsite and we even use tagging. So we have a course system and we have an API system which one is hosted on HWS and one is hosted on OpenShift and then we created a text API and course system and then you have an historic few of your HDRs and can see what HDRs did you have and you can also search it so you can see what turns you took while developing your system which is very cool. So to sum it up you learned a lot about DOCSIS code and documentation. Maybe the same as ARC 42 but you saw that ARC 42 is very suited for documentation documentation of technical architecture. You saw a lot of mistakes for example don't use a wiki in a DevOps team. I don't think it makes sense. You should have the same tooling everywhere and then the DOCSIS code approach comes in and if you use the DOCSIS code approach with ARC 42 then I think and I'm very sure that you will be happy in your DevOps team with documentation.


Good evening and welcome to BU TV and BU News Services live-streamed election night special Decision 2012 the polls just closed in Massachusetts and our election night coverage begins right now online and on TV I'm Matt Reed and I'm Victoria Price every half hour until our 10 p.m. Special will be bringing you the latest numbers from the presidential race as well as the fight to represent Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives Didi Sun is standing by in our newsroom where editors and students alike are working in the launch of our multimedia website BUNewsService.com Didi over to you. Thanks Victoria there are a lot of people working with me here in the newsroom tonight to bring you that coverage as you can see we have journalists who are blogging writing live tweeting you name it we got it all to bring you the latest we'll be speaking with some of them here tonight so tune back within tune back in with us in just a bit now meanwhile let me explain to you how this is going to work tonight the map as you can see is largely gray and blank so far but we do have two states in for Mitt Romney that's Kentucky and West Virginia eight votes for Kentucky five votes for West Virginia and three votes in for Obama in Vermont and so keep in mind that the magic number is 270 270 electoral votes to win the presidency tonight and so the states in question we have Ohio and Florida the candidates have been spending a lot of time in Ohio campaigning this week spending millions of dollars and that's because there are 18 electoral votes that could go to either party so far and that's all we have for now back to you guys in the studio. Thanks Didi right now I'm joined by our senior analyst Tom Fiedler former Miami Herald editor and dean of the BU College of Communication Dean Fiedler you've covered many presidential elections how often is it that you see a candidate lose his home state as we think that we're going to see Mitt Romney lose Massachusetts tonight Well it's not it's not often but it's not uncommon George McGovern in 1972 who lost 49 states he won only Massachusetts but he lost his home state of South Dakota and Al Gore lost Tennessee in the 2000 election had he won Tennessee he would have been the president of the United States so it's not unprecedented but it's unusual and perhaps even a little bit embarrassing Now of course here in New England we're not looking at Massachusetts we're looking at New Hampshire a lot of both the candidates had last ditch efforts in New Hampshire this weekend were those efforts in vain do you think they did something in swinging independent voters what are your thoughts Well you can never tell I think that's why both candidates go back you don't want to leave anything on the table so and in an election as close as this one is even New Hampshire where this four electoral votes could make the difference particularly for Mitt Romney so he clearly didn't want to take it for granted and the other reason why you do that is you need to energize your volunteers right up until the last minute you've got to show that you're expending every ounce of energy that you have What indicator should we look for to see how tonight's going to play out I think what we ought to do is look at the states first of all that Governor Romney needs to get to win first and foremost we've got to look at Virginia they're already starting the count there if Governor Romney doesn't win Virginia it's going to be very very difficult for him to actually get the electoral votes he needs and then Ohio of course is the one that everybody's been looking at that that could be the linchpin on which this turns but I think first look at Virginia and also look at way young people are voting I'm so sorry we're short on time thank you so much we've come back to you later in the evening Matt I'm going to send it back to you at the desk and we'll begin back live at 8 30 with more on this decision 2012 on our be your TV news service coverage during the next two hours we'll have the numbers and results as voters bring along an expensive campaign season to an end we have some breaking news in to the news when we're going to go look at a graphic as it is coming on screen right now and it has to do with the state right next door to us Barack Obama has in fact one new Hampshire getting its four electoral votes all right wonderful Kelsey thank you so much we'll be checking in with you in just a little bit Kelsey has been following the Obama campaign for decision 2012 she caught up with John Walsh chair of the Massachusetts Democratic Party to learn about their efforts not just here in mass but in neighboring New Hampshire as well let's go get a new answer thank you after supporting many campaign events in New Hampshire this election the Massachusetts Democrats wait to see if their efforts in this neighboring swing state have paid off Democrats in Massachusetts for many years understand that we lend a hand to our friends up north Obama visited New Hampshire just two days ago in one of his last efforts to rally the state for support BU TV's Justin Bork was out there this morning to bring us the story GOP nominee Mitt Romney arrived to the polls this morning to cast his ballot in one of the tightest presidential races in U.S. history it was a short-lived moment for Romney who resumed a grueling final stretch of campaigning with last-minute stops in Cleveland and Pittsburgh I've got a clinical message for you and that is America is about to come roaring back I'm sitting down with BU professor and NECN special correspondent Artie Sol Artie thank you so much for joining us this has been an extraordinary race two billion dollars when all is said and done on the presidential race and Mitt Romney was right forty seven percent will not vote for him the companion part of that is that something like forty seven percent will not vote for Barack Obama either two billion dollars for six percent of the vote concentrated in eight or nine of the so-called battleground or swing states let's speak with some other members in our newsroom she is a third year grad student she works with BU news service hello hello Marie so this is our newest website it's the BU news service dot com that the grad thesis class has been working on all semester so as you can see though we have an interactive map which is the graphic that you've been standing behind all night we have an abundance of articles we have a photo ticker that will if you click on it you can get our latest features if you'd like to tweet with us you can add BU news service you can also hashtag BU news and that'll show up on our ticker right here Suffolk University polls says that fifty five percent of Massachusetts residents are in support of ballot question number three the medical marijuana initiative while highly opposed by law enforcement officials supporters of question three insist the benefits outweigh the costs BU TV's Inside Boston takes a look into the measure if question three does pass as many as thirty five dispensaries could open statewide in the next year one of the first arguments supporting the legalization of medical marijuana is that it will help patients with medical issues cope with the suffering from their illnesses let them spend five minutes in my shoes and how did they tell me I don't have the right to be paying free Massachusetts ballot question the initiative for medical marijuana has passed by a large margin Elizabeth Warren has won the Senate seat in Massachusetts beating the incumbent Scott Brown and you're looking at the graphic right now we're going to take you live right now to Elizabeth Warren who's at her headquarters this victory belongs to you you did this Death with Dignity is just one of the three hotly contested ballot questions in this election and advertisements have argued both sides fervently BU TV 10's news magazine show Inside Boston takes a look at the controversial issue the purpose of the Death with Dignity Act is to give dying patients who find their suffering no longer bearable the option of hastening and inevitable death for some family members seeing their loved ones struggle moves them to advocate question two like Lewis Cohen whose mother-in-law Myra Burzov recently passed away she developed emphysema became oxygen dependent and her world kind of shrunk but for others the death with dignity act is not an option opponents of the act are concerned that patients must self-administer the drug with no doctor required to be present they would be cheated out of if you know in that moment when they're in agony we simply ended their life we're now joined by Justin Bork who is at the Romney headquarters Justin what's the response announced when Obama had won Massachusetts well Matt if the Romney headquarters over here is disappointed about the Obama winning Massachusetts they sure aren't showing it there's definitely still a lot of energy over here they're still staying very positive I actually talked to a GOP staffer earlier today in Delmont where Romney was voting who said that they honestly never expected to win Massachusetts Decision 2012 reporter Joe Lyman takes a look at how recent Massachusetts nominees have fared in the race to the White House and why regrets over the past dozen presidential elections candidates from the state of Massachusetts certainly have some some great moments unfortunately I blew it in the end too bad as I say to people I owe you all an apology if I had beaten Bush one you'd never heard of Bush two we wouldn't be in this mess candidates from Massachusetts have not been elected to office since John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960 breaking news this is really really big President Obama has just taken swing state Ohio the candidates have been spending a lot of time in that state over this past week millions of dollars one statistic shows that they've been they've been running 333 ads per day in Ohio it's very interesting that Ohio was the main factor in this election many people have debated whether Ohio is actually the biggest swing state there are so many there's Nevada there's New Hampshire there's Pennsylvania but Ohio was the deciding factor for this one but we're sitting back again with our senior analyst Tom Fiedler when Barack Obama got elected in 2008 it was the first African American president to be elected president this was also a first election this was the first time an incumbent had been reelected with unemployment higher than 7.2 it's currently 7.9 is that in itself a very impressive feat? well actually it is because again the conventional wisdom would have said that no one would be able to win re-election with those kinds of numbers he had economic headwinds that were stronger than any other president seeking re-election had ever done in your opinion what could a Mitt Romney have done differently that maybe we'd be talking about him right now instead of Barack Obama there's always talk about in October surprise in an election this year it was a November surprise November 1st when Hurricane Sandy hit and I think if you look very very closely at the polls Mitt Romney's momentum which was moving very very positively for him in fact some showed that he was actually pulling ahead of President Obama it ran into a wall right about the time that Hurricane Sandy hit two of our reporters Alexa Dragumas and Joel Sinek who are studying Washington DC this semester went to the Department of Employment Services to talk to people who are out of work and what needs to be done to get them back into work here in the district unemployment is almost a full percentage point higher than the national average of 7.9 percent I don't have any income other than that the retirement check that I get and what does that cover as a matter of fact I was unemployed for six months after having 42 years experience in the construction industry with unemployment rates still high both candidates are promising to fix the economy in the next four years here in the nation's capital on election day many are hopeful that their candidate will be able to solve this crisis right now you're looking at footage live from the Obama and the Mitt Romney headquarters in Chicago and Boston obviously the side on the right looking a little more somber than the one on the left so despite Barack Obama having 290 20 more electoral votes and he needs to secure the presidency Romney is still saying he's not quite ready to concede this is due in part to a lawsuit in Ohio regarding a form on a ballot again we kind of spoke about it earlier the Republicans will still can hold the House of Representatives and the Democrats will hold the White House and the Senate are we back to kind of where we started you know if we rerun the clock six o'clock we kind of began where we left off that could be very dismaying for a lot of people if we end up stuck with the same kind of battles something has to break the log jam has to break we're headed toward the so-called fiscal cliff President Obama has a powerful club in his hand because if he does nothing all these tax inquiry the old Bush tax cuts disappear I think that should that should cause people to make a move for our BU TV live stream special Decision 2012 this is an unprecedented collaboration here at Boston University's College of Communication more than 100 students were involved reporting through articles blogs tweets video news reports radio spots and photographs you name it all about the election today


I'm just going to switch now from the cog uptrop and go to the business view just to note where stuff is located on the business view. I'll try to toggle back and forth between the two views. And so the cog is still up top. The major changes are on the left. So here's your get things done page. You've got your business overview. That's where your reports are going to be located over here. And then you've got your get paid and paid area. And that's where your major cycles would be, which I would call them, like your customer center and your vendor center. So here's your customer information up top. And here's your vendor information on down below. So we'll dive into that more in future presentations.


So let's get this section started off by doing some simple arithmetic. We're going to do addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and powers by arithmetic operators. Just plus, minus, multiply, divide, and take a power. Now if I click in this little cell here, you can see that it is a code cell. So I'm going to write code in there, but you can see I've got a bit of text there. As in Python with Julia we can write these comments, comment lines, starting them off with this pound sign. I can even put a space there. Anything after that pound sign for that line, Julia is going to ignore. It's not going to execute that code. So that's not marked down. That is just part of Julia itself. Same as with Python. All languages have their own little comment Key is there. This is Julia. We have the pound sign, the hashtag. It's just going to ignore that line of code. But let's get going. Two plus two. I'm putting these spaces in just for visual effect. You don't have to put them in there. To execute this line, the cell, I'm going to hold down shift and return, or shift and enter, or I can hit this little play button. Off we go, and we see this gets executed and two plus two indeed is four. Three minus four. What's that going to give us? Negative one. As simple as that. Multiplication, three times four, shift, enter, that's 12. Multiplication, as with most languages, is this little star sign, shift eight on most keyboards. Division is the fourth slash sign, so I can say 12 divided by four, and that's going to give me three. One thing I want you just to notice, see that was 12, but this is 3.0. There's a difference between those. This is an integer, this is a floating point value. We'll get to that in future. And just two to the power four. So in case you know Python, and Python, those will be double stars. But here in Julia, we have this carrot sign, shift eight, and I'm not putting in spaces there, although you could, just to remind myself visually that this is two to the power four, and indeed we're going to get 16. So simple arithmetic just using simple mathematical operators. Next up, we're going to look at the use of functions to do these simple calculations for us.


CNN's Allison Camarota usually does panels featuring voters. She kind of like picks their brains about who they're thinking of supporting and why they're supporting said candidates. And I usually find these fascinating. This time she did a panel featuring former QAnon members and individuals who know a loved one who became a QAnon supporter. And I am really excited to watch this. I haven't seen much of this yet, but let's see what she has in store for us. In the aftermath of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, investigators are trying to figure out what happened and how they missed the signs. But one group of Americans did not miss the signs. They saw it coming, and they see another violent battle brewing today. You're about to meet a group of three former QAnon followers and three people whose loved ones are still in the grip of QAnon's conspiracy theories. All of them tell us that the next alarming date comes this week, Thursday, March 4th, to be exact. QAnon has a new plan for violence and destruction, and they don't let reality get in their way. Does anybody understand what is supposed to be happening on March 4th? Well, so March 4th, they're thinking that Donald Trump is gonna come back and he's gonna be the president. Apparently what they said is way back when, it was like 1871, inauguration day used to happen on March 4th, and then Donald Trump will be back and he'll be inaugurated as either the 19th president of the United States Republic or the first president of some new something. They also... Okay, I heard about the March 4th date and that that was supposed to be the day according to people who are still adhering to this conspiracy theory that Trump was supposed to come back. I didn't know like how far reaching it was. Like, I wish that we can get like a sample of how many people, like the percentage of QAnon supporters that were in QAnon are still in QAnon, you know, now that Biden is president. Like, I would love to know. I don't think there's really any meaningful way that you can quantify this. I don't know that people would want to come out as pro-QAnon or all of them would. That's really interesting. As many of you are noticing, it is a March 4th and that has not happened. So now what's gonna happen is the next day gonna be some other time when Trump is supposed to assume power or create some new republic. So many questions. I think that there's going to be this great financial reset both in our country and around the world where debts are just gonna be forgiven, where if you have a mortgage, you don't owe on it anymore. It's just so ludicrous, you know, to put it bluntly.  Like, this is ruining people's lives. Like, the lie that this new economic system or whatever that Trump is going to unilaterally install, it's gonna forgive mortgages and debts. This is leading to people not paying their mortgages, defaulting on their debts. Now, I don't know how widespread this issue is within the QAnon community, but it's happening. And it is ruining lives. This is serious. Like, this is no longer something to look at and laugh at. Like, this is no longer some, like, hyper-online phenomenon. Like, this is really ruining people's lives and it's terribly sad. And I just, like, I wanna ask these folks, Donald Trump is a Republican. What makes you think that he would support any economic system or any institutions that would allow for the cancellation of mortgages and debt? Like, he could have done that while he was president. I still have family members that don't even believe that Joe Biden is president. Charlotte, is it true that one of your sisters does not today believe that Joe Biden is president? Yes, she now, she calls her daughter that she thinks that the White House is upset. No, no, no, I'm gonna pause it, I'm gonna pause it and I'm gonna guess. I'm gonna say that actually Donald Trump is the president, but she thinks that Donald Trump is wearing Joe Biden's skin over his face to pretend to be Joe Biden, but it's actually Donald Trump. Or Donald Trump shrunk himself and is, like, controlling Joe Biden. Like, that's gotta, I don't know how you can think Trump is the president or Biden isn't the president. Like, it's so, it's scary how detached from reality they are. Like, that is genuinely horrifying to me. That Biden isn't actually president. Wow! Yeah. Wait, did I miss it? What's the reason? A set and that Biden isn't, she thinks that the White House is a set and that Biden isn't actually president. Wow! I need more details about this. That is mind-boggling. Well, the person that I started talking to anyways that had initially got me into QAnon, he was like, you know, Joe Biden's not even real.  What? I did not know it got this like cuckoo for cocoa puffs. That he's not real.  Like, what the conspiracy has got to be that he's an android? Like, QAnon is kind of like it's an umbrella theory of a lot of other conspiracy theories. Like, it's not just about Q anymore. Like, it has expanded into something entirely different. Like, this virus of Q has mutated and now it's this entirely different beast. That Joe Biden is not even Joe Biden. Okay, so for those of you on the top row who did for a while fall into QAnon. On the top row, that is QAnon, Karen, the individual who destroyed the mask display at Target. Just FYI. Did you understand who was feeding this information and like who the ringleader of it was? No. I didn't know that I was in a QAnon group until I got out of it. Like, I had no idea that the information I got was QAnon information. So do you guys think that there are particular media types, media personalities who also are a gateway to conspiracy theories and QAnon? Well, Newsmax, which is a TV station, definitely, they're just, their reportings are really off the wall. I can remember when Glenn Beck joined Fox News was when my mom became very susceptible to conspiracy theories. She hung on as every word. And then in the more recent years, it's been people like Tucker Carlson. Definitely stuff like Fox News. Tucker Carlson, who doesn't know what Q is, or claims he can't find evidence that Q is a thing. I found myself eliminating 98% of media so I could exclusively watch Fox News and they tell you, don't go anywhere else. Keep your attention here. If you go to any of these other stations, it's fake news. And that is a huge part of what's radicalizing people. These news companies like OAN, Fox News, Newsmax, these aren't news outlets. These are businesses that operate under the facade that they are news. But really what they care about is the bottom line. And so if they think it's more lucrative and it's going to increase profits to drive people into QAnon, they don't care if that affects their legitimacy in a negative way. They just want to increase revenue, which means you do what you can to increase clicks and eyeballs to the television screen. This is dark. We are in the darkest timeline. My telegram chats and in my groups, the only outside media sources of getting information other than the group that they ever said we could, I guess, trust would have been Newsmax or there's Right Side Broadcasting Network. I don't know if they're actually on TV. I know that they're on YouTube. Show of hands, how many of you today think that we do have a domestic terrorism and or white supremacy problem in this country? All of you. Just everything happened with Trump and just his view on the whole thing.  My concern is that a lot of the threads that weave a lot of these conspiracies together in the Q world are very thinly veiled white supremacy, very thinly veiled anti-Semitism. When I was in these groups, I was like, no, we're not racist. Like, you know, I'm not sneaking out on Wednesday nights to KKK meetings. Like, so I thought I wasn't racist being out of it. I have taken upon myself to have conversations and I've bought books and I'm reading and I'm learning, but as far as domestic terrorism, I think QAnon is a domestic terrorist group. Just seeing to what some of the people say, there's a lot of anger and a lot of confusion. I think it's going to get worse. I worry about a lot of violence. The conversations that's been said in these groups is when March 4th happens, if Trump isn't back, they need to start planning. And they will switch how they talk and communicate, whether it's online or over the phone. They're going to switch the meaning of their words so nobody can pick up and flag it. I have already noted. That's not new, by the way. Fascists nowadays have to do that. This is something that Nazis have been doing forever. So they're now replicating the tactics that we've seen of fascists. I picked up on that. Do you have any examples of that? Speaking of a certain group of people that they consider less desirable, they will use the term Canadians. So they don't like a particular demographic here in America and they refer to them as Canadians. Yes. And is this a particular racial group? Yes. Yeah, can I add to that? Yes. You have just this huge group of people that feel that their country is in danger, their children are in danger, their freedom is in danger. And so they feel like they have to go to war and they have to fight to get things back right. I think the biggest thing that we're looking at... Because if they genuinely believe that like, there is a threat that they have to address, then they will respond in a way that they believe is proportional. That's why we saw hundreds, if not thousands of them storm the capital because they believed that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. They believed that inaction wasn't an option because democracy was at stake. Now ask yourself this, if it were actually the case that an election was stolen, a national election was stolen, wouldn't you think that that would be a justifiable way to save democracy, storm the capital and stop the coup from taking place? So that's what they were doing. They were responding in a way that they believed was to save democracy. In actuality, they were doing what was an attempted coup. They were the ones who were attacking democracy, but that's not the way that they perceived their actions. Especially coming out of the capital riots on January 6th is that people are emboldened to take matters into their own hands. I'm trying to warn everybody of what I see that's going to come. And if this group cannot be stopped, and when March 4th comes and goes, we're gonna be hoping and praying that they push another date out there. Because if not, the insurrection is gonna be a drop in the bucket compared to what's gonna happen. I have to say that's the- Wow. So there's another video that we're gonna get to, but I've just got a comment on that. Like this individual, she's absolutely convinced that there's going to be more violence and that these dates kind of keep them at bay. It gives them something to look forward to. It's a distraction, if you will. But without these dates, without something to keep them going, she is pretty confident that they're going to resort to more violence. That is worse than the capital. I just don't know because what do we do in this situation? In theory, the QAnon conspiracy theory should be over. Biden is in power. What Q said did not happen. So if you're thinking logically, you would put two into together, connect the dots and realize, okay, I'm being duped here. I'm being fooled. But the thing about these sorts of conspiracy theories and cults, which this has, I think, evolved into a cult, is that you don't think logically. You don't think using facts and reason. You think using emotions. And so this is an emotional thing. Their actions and beliefs are driven by their emotions. They believe that they're in danger. That Joe Biden is a threat to their families. And I don't know what way they believe he's a threat. Like it's not in the traditional practical sense that, oh, well, he may not get the stimulus out fast enough. And my family may not eat, they may go hungry. Like this is a different type of threat where they think that Joe Biden poses some sort of supernatural satanic threat in a way. I think is what they believe, but it's hard to keep up because the conspiracy theory, it keeps evolving. But let's go to the second clip here. How many of you think that the pandemic has been a gateway of sorts to QAnon? I think at first, COVID was such an unknown for everybody. And then I think that QAnon rushed in and filled that vacuum with misinformation and disinformation, filling that void again about fear of foreigners. It's the so-called China virus. It's this, it's anything that people can seize upon, that plays upon their fears that are already inherent. And that's really what- What she's saying is totally correct, by the way, because when there's a lot of uncertainties and unknowns, that drives fear and desperation. And when somebody comes along and gives you answers, even if it's the incorrect answers, if you can get any sort of comfort from those answers whatsoever, you might be inclined to take it up. So if QAnon is saying, here's the answers to the questions you're asking, then people can become radicalized by that. Everything she's saying here is absolutely correct and spot on. What I came down to was this overwhelming feeling that came up for me during the pandemic was that I did not think that I was going to be okay. I just had no grasp on reality and what was going on. And I felt like I was on quicksand. So, Bree, your parents are down the QAnon rabbit hole. So do you know how they fell into it? I think last year with the pressure of the election and seeing how Trump was falling in the polls during the COVID pandemic control, I think that was what pushed them to get really into QAnon. I think they were kind of panicking, they were nervous.  And I think that that's very true. I think that whatever your specific fear is, you can find essentially what is like a choose your own adventure down a doomsday rabbit hole of whatever you are most afraid of. Well, that's why that right there specifically is why this conspiracy theory is so powerful. Why it's roped in so many seemingly normal people who might not even be like predisposed to think conspiratorially because it has so many components. Like it's not just, hey, Q says this, Q says that there's this like secret pedophile sex ring involving Democrats and Hollywood elites. Like it's beyond that. Now it's grown and it's just unfathomable. Like the reach that this conspiracy theory has is so large now and the impact that it has, the toll that it's taken on people. Like this girl's parents are involved in QAnon. Like I look to my parents for guidance and advice, but to think that like they were taken by this conspiracy theory and I use the word taken deliberately. Like it's sad. Like this is ruining people's lives. And it's just, it is deeply depressing to see this. And we have to try to grapple with the reality of this phenomenon to try to save people because this is hurting them. This is hurting their families. Definitely. I related to the pandemic, kind of bringing people into QAnon. It made it easier because you were cut off from everybody.  And all's you're doing is if you're not, yeah, and if you're not watching Netflix, you know, you can only watch that so many times. So then you start your on social media a whole lot more. Serious question. Like how many people were saved from falling into QAnon by animal crossing? Like I'm asking earnestly, I feel like that was like the best distraction at the beginning of the pandemic, but I digress, so let's get back to it. And I think, I mean, that's, I think that's where a lot of people got in. Jordan, tell us who in your life is currently in the grips of QAnon? My cousin, who is a police officer in the Bay Area in California. Oh, that's terrifying, but not surprising. It's scary to know that somebody like that, who is a police officer, is pulling people over and giving tickets and just, you know, it's so radicalized. What are the things that he says to you?  This past summer, we had on the West Coast in Oregon and California, you know, that Antifa dressed up as Trump supporters who raided the Capitol. So in other words, the way he justifies the attack on police officers, Capitol police officers, at the U.S. Capitol, is he believes it couldn't be his people, right? It has to be other people dressed up as Trump supporters. Exactly. It's interesting to hear how people are getting walked into it still, or, you know, after I had left. Yeah, because, Jay, you were from about 2014 to, I guess you got out in 2019, but you got in early. Before it was even called QAnon, you were starting to flirt with, what, some of these conspiracy theories? Was it like Pizza Gate back then? Yeah, so what was the conspiracy theories about? No, because Pizza Gate came out of the WikiLeaks in 2016. What, so QAnon isn't like the origin, like that was a variant of some other conspiracy theory. This is fascinating to me. Obviously, Hillary Clinton, there was like a cabal of pedophiles. Can you just explain that one to me? The cabal of pedophiles that all Democrats are apparently involved in, that is somehow connected to the basement of a pizza parlor? I mean, do you understand why when you're nodding QAnon, that sounds crazy? Oh, it absolutely sounds crazy, absolutely. Why was that plausible to you? We just kind of felt a general state of confusion and paranoia in our lives, if you will.  So it's just a kind of call to action. Well, I think the interesting thing about QAnon that people really need to understand is even if you are in a very well-educated person, you can still fall into this because of the brainwash like mechanism that it has because it operates exactly like a cult. What QAnon basically tells you is here's the information you know. It's no longer true. Here's why. And you are encouraged to quote unquote open your mind and think about it differently. So show of hands, how many of you blame the Facebook or YouTube algorithm for sucking you or your loved ones in? Well, definitely Facebook. Facebook just has such a hold on my cousin and my aunt. I mean, they just believe anything that is shared and just the disinformation. Well, me, it was TikTok. And so, you know, if you start liking certain types of videos or interacting with those people on TikTok, I thought you looked familiar. The algorithm is going to start showing you more of those things. And in there, some conspiracy theories started coming through. The thing that frustrates me the most is TikTok will have their general statement oh, we don't allow QAnon or conspiracy theories on our platform, but I can go to my for you page and I will still see conspiracy theories going out. And what is your advice for if somebody's dealing with a loved one? My advice to anyone that has family members in it is, you know, try to have some compassion or empathy when it deals, you know, with that just because people in these groups, they're terrified. I think family support is the most critical thing to helping people get out of this. So I just can't stress enough, you know, be patient with these people. It's been a really, really tough year for a lot of people and put yourself in other people's shoes. You might not understand their perspective. You might not agree with their ideology, but at least you can love them and have compassion for them as a person, as a human being. I think one of that right there, we're about done. Look, I think that what they're saying is correct. As easy as it is to, you know, shame and laugh at a QAnon person, that's not necessarily what is going to penetrate their bubble. We have to try to approach them from a position of understanding. And honestly, like for me, I'm not gonna be able to de-convert people. Like if you showed them a humanist report video where I talk about how QAnon is bad, you know, that's not going to resonate with them. This needs to come from their loved ones, like husbands, sisters, brothers, because if you don't already have that rapport established with them, like they're not gonna believe you. They're not gonna believe anyone else unless they're reaffirming what they already believe. So if you wanna penetrate that bubble, it has to be someone who they already trust, you know, a family member or a friend. Otherwise, I can't see how anything else can get through to them. And that's even if they're willing to change because if they're not going to be receptive to counter-arguments, if they don't actually wanna change and if they want to be in QAnon, then you might not be able to change their minds. It's tough, like we need to deconvert as many people as possible. I think that should be our mission. But the problem is that this might, you know, be a thing that is really prevalent in their lives now, but maybe a year from now, two years from now, QAnon isn't their go-to conspiracy theory anymore. Maybe it's some new conspiracy theory, it just evolves and they think, oh, well yeah, QAnon was crazy, but this conspiracy theory, this one has legs because I mean, look at this guy. He was in like a conspiracy theory that evolved into QAnon since 2014, like this is before Pete's Gate, this is pre-Trump. So, you know, if somebody is already thinking in that way conspiratorially and they're deep in that cult, deep in that bubble and they're just getting their information from a Facebook group, it's gonna be really hard to reach them. That doesn't necessarily mean that we don't try, but also that means that we have to be real. Some people are not going to want to come out of this. They want to be involved in this, like it gives them comfort, like it's a vice for them. So, I think we should try to learn as much as we possibly can about these conspiracy theories and try to de-convert as much people as possible. And I think that the way that we try to get through these folks is by having loved ones approach them, trying to de-convert them, but coming from a place of understanding and love. And that's all I can say about this. I think this is fascinating, but this is something that we have to address as a society because this is ruining people's lives and it is absolutely sad to see. Like I don't want to see that.  Like I want them to get the help that they need. And as these people said, they're fearful. They're not like, they're not doing this because they're not believing this because they feel as if it's just like enlightening to them and it's interesting and entertaining. Like they're resorting to believing in this because it gives them comfort because they're scared and they're fearful.


Hi guys, welcome back to my channel. Today's video is a Mother's Day special. I've been wanting to film this video since 2016. Wow, you waited this long? I waited this long. It's finally 2021. True, true. Yeah, so we are going to be doing the mom tag, but while we're answering like some questions, or while they're answering some questions, we're gonna be trying these cookies from Cookie Crumble, or Crumble Cookie. You do a question then we get a cookie for. Answering. Well, only if we answer correctly. Yeah. Okay. And I'll decide. Okay. Questions are gonna be. I'll decide if it's all right. Okay. Oh, and Happy Mother's Day for all. Happy Mother's Day everyone. Happy Mother's Day. So the first question is, and I guess whoever wants to answer first, what was I like as a child? She was a hellion. She was incorrigible.  The real story is she was a sweet, wonderful child. Everyone loved Alex.  She was very easy, I guess. She didn't cause us any problems. She was what? She was. Oh my God. That's gonna stay in there. I was gonna say easy to handle. I was gonna say easy to handle, but easy to handle sounds like a pet. So I was gonna say. This is already started off great. You didn't cause any problems. It's okay. Sherry's a little rusty with the video. Is there? Okay. Let's just all get a cookie. All right, who wants to try what? Let me be the producer. Oh, I'll hold it. The gallery holds it. Okay, I'll hold it. So I wanna try a piece of the lemon. I'm gonna try a piece of all of them. Ooh, it's crumbly. Very good. It's tasty. This is the lemon flavor. This is lemon. Lemon. It's like trained animals. They give you a treat after you say the right answer. Yeah. Okay, next question. Well, in my case, just give any answer. What do you think about me making YouTube videos? Fine. I think it's something you'd love to do. You make a little money at it. It gives you great pleasure. You're good at it. I enjoy being in the videos. So I think it's great. I think you should continue doing it if that's what you'd like to do. What's something funny I did when I was younger? Alex would go to the office with me every day until she was old enough to start school, put that knife down. Don't think, I don't know what to think with that knife there, Alex. And so she'd go in the office and she became like our mascot at our real estate office. Great. And Alex learned how to staple, properly staple on the angle, staple and collate at a very young age, maybe three, four years old. And whenever we would have someone come into the real estate office, she had learned how to go over and offer them a drink, see if there's anything they wanted. So she was a mascot and a hostess. She really was. She was the hostess with the mostess and three years old. And it was wonderful. We all just enjoyed that so much, seeing Alex functioning in that role in the real estate office. Plus it allowed me as the broker there, the owner of the company, to be able to save on receptionist expense. Child labor. Ooh, I should have said that. Ooh, I should have said that. No, actually we had a receptionist. Alex was just a helper, an intern, an unpaid intern. Well, personally I didn't think that was very funny. So you wanted a funny story. I don't really, I can't really think of anything funny. I think of something funny. That you did. I think of something funny. But I always saw something that was kind of unusual that you could do, was that More unusual than collage? For a long, yeah, for a long time, she had such power in her legs that if she wanted to like sit on your hip, you could just put out your fingers like this and she'd grab your fingers and she could propel herself up into the air and right onto your hip. True. I would say I named all of my stuffed animals after Valerie. Oh, that's true. I named everything Valerie. You had Valerie shrimp. Yeah, so that's really funny. That's funny. Alex loved the green alien blow-up thing that you get at the fair. And Alex loved that. And so while other children, while other children were going to bed with their little soft furry little stuffed animals, Alex was squeezing a plastic blow-up alien. Alien guy. So alien was like Alex's, one of Alex's very favorite toys. Kind of like anatomy guy, too. Yeah, we had anatomy guy. Okay. A hard plastic thing that you could take its guts out. This is gonna be a long video. And Alex loved it. Next question. This is really funny. Have you learned anything about makeup and beauty from me? Yeah, I got crumbs on my shirt. Have I learned anything about makeup and beauty from you? No, they haven't. Well, I was forced to learn because of dance. I was forced to learn how to do her makeup because of dance. So I didn't really know a lot about applying the, whatever, all that stuff that had to be applied to your face. And eyelashes, the false eyelashes we had to put on. And how your lashes were like different for you than for everybody else because you had smaller eyes. Yeah. Make sure.  Okay, which cookie do we want this? No, I know. Wait a minute. We should get a cookie now. Yeah, we should. No, no, no, I learned something from you. What? I learned about hair because, well, you see, when one gets older, when one gets older. Not me. This is not, this is not my thing. Okay, when one gets older and one already has fine hair, then their hair gets finer and thinner. Yeah. And so I found that I was losing an unacceptable amount of hair. So I took Alex to Alta and I said, Alex, help me. And Alex got this great shampoo for me. And I've used that shampoo now for a couple years. I'm good with hair. And it has turned my hair into the luxurious hair that you see now. So yes, I did learn that from Alex. Cool. Cookie. Well, this is the chocolate chip that is the. Let's do chocolate chip. I wanna save the chocolate one for last for me. Hang on a second, do a taste test. Thumbs up on the chocolate chip. Way to go crumbles is really good. Milk chocolate chip. They actually specify that. And I like milk chocolate. Surprise is really good. I didn't know at first, but now I kinda like it. Definitely be having more of that one. And the next question is what is the weird habit of mine? A weird habit. When you were little, you always smelled everything. Oh yeah. Francie will say that too. Paper book. Well, I still do. Everything. I still do. You smell everything. Yeah. Alex loves the holograms. And I love playing with them and scratching them. And she loves to play with holograms. Look at holograms. They're so cool. She's always loved holograms. So she has a whole collection of hologram postcards from Disney. I do. Starting from 2008, I think. No, earlier than that. I mean, you first started on Disney. Yeah, okay. Scratches. Oh my gosh. Mothers tell all. If you had to rename your daughter, what would you name her? Oh, I know. Oh my gosh. I'm scared. I gotta remember now. What is the country? The country. Bellaroos. Yeah. I would name Alex Bellaroos. Great. I'm so happy that didn't happen. I used to tell Alex all the time that I was going to have, if it had been up to me, I would have named her Bellaroos. And why? And why is that even funny? I don't know. But I always made Alex laugh. And sometimes, in fact, I wouldn't even call her Bellaroos. Jerry? Well, I like the name you have right now. Well, yeah. If I was just going to name you without Valerie involved. Right. Even though it would have been hard for you to learn to write this, probably, and to put it on those Scantron cards.  I know. I really like Alexandra Josephine. Oh my gosh. Blankenship. Alexandra Josephine Blankenship. Oh my gosh. That would be quite some name to put on there. But Josephine would have been after my granny. Do you know if I had a boy? Yeah. Oh, I know the name. What's the name? No. Oh. It would have been Norwood. Norwood? Oh my gosh. Oh my God. No, I would not even. I would have named a girl Bellaroos and a boy Norwood. And then I would have changed their last names to Chancellor. So we would have had Norwood, Chancellor. We would get bullied. And Bellaroos, Chancellor. So. They would be the laughing stock of the school. Bellaroos, Chancellor. Actually, the first name that I liked for you was Bailey. Yeah. I was going to be named Bailey. No, it wasn't because we had to vote. When you guys go out to eat, what does she order? Well, actually, you have expanded your repertoire for the bit. Well, it's like my go-to. Well, I don't think that they have eggs without the yolk. Hot dog? No, that's not my go-to. Salmon. Yeah.  They don't have like salmon. Salmon is the same for fine dining. Yeah. You always get french fries with whether it's fine dining or fast food. True. If it's fast food, you like Chick-fil-A. Oh, I love Chick-fil-A. I know, I know. Let's not talk about it, ladies. You will eat, though, you will have steak, as long as it's filet mignon. Yeah. Caesar salad. You have Caesar salad.  Yeah. Wings. Yeah. You'll eat crab legs. OK, guys, I've made a whole video. If you want to see the video of all the foods I eat, I'll link it down below. OK, I'll need to name them. OK. All right, cookie time. Which one do we want to try next? Show them something. You can show them. Show them. The cookies are kind of delicate. It looks like it's an onion on top of it. I don't want to drop it. Look how big my hand looks when it comes close. Whoa! I'm keeping that in there. This is really what we do. We sit around at home at night with a big old box of cookies because I'm my love.  Well, yeah. Not you, but. Well, I work out. OK. The mummies. Yep, really good. Really? What's it taste like? You have no idea. OK. It's got buttercream frosting. Well, you were supposed to know.  That's really good. What is one thing you wish she would do? Well, you do everything that we want you to do. Yeah, that's true. I do like a lot of the chores. I know. I have something. I know.  Oh, putting on earrings. Wear earrings. Yeah, I know. I wish you would wear earrings all the time. I don't care if she wears earrings. My body, my choice. Yo. I had to do that. That is really good. Thank you. She is so funny. I still want you to wear earrings. She is hilarious. You know that already, though. I am sure that the studio audience already knows that you're hilarious, right? I don't know. She is so funny. Oh my god, she's so funny. She's a perfect kid. Oh my god. She is. She is everything I wanted to do. You have something chocolate on your hand. I know. There's no wonder. Next question. What's something I do that annoys you?  I'm just kidding. I know. Because that's like the reverse of the last question. I know. OK, OK. If you want to think of anything that annoys me. What's something I obsess over? You used to obsess over your hair when we had to put it in a bun. Yeah, I still obsess over my hair. Let's just say I obsess over. Now, thank you. Obsesses over exercise now. What? Now, I think you're becoming like an exercise person, which is good. It's a lifestyle. I don't want to get out of it because it's so hard to get back in. I know. Now, I mean, I think that's good. Yeah. It's just I have to keep a routine or else like I'll just let myself go like. No, like me. Yeah. So I have to like have that discipline. Obsess over boys. Not a product of the people who raise me. Definitely. We're getting like five questions per cookie. OK, OK. Where would you like to see me in 10 years? Happy. Oh, that's so sweet, Valerie. That's what I care about. Sandy, I care about now. Sherry. I want to see you happy. I would like to see you happy also. And I think that happy would be married with a couple of kids, being a stay at home mom, and doing YouTube full time. Yeah, I'd love to do that. I think that is like my like what I want. That's what you want to be. Then that's what you should be. Oh, and own a corgi. Oh, yes. That's a must. When are you the most proud of me? Every day. In every way. Oh, my goodness. These two, they don't script this stuff.  I have to take drugs. Excuse me.  What you do in your other job. Yeah.  I'm proud of you.  Oh, really? Yes. You do such a good job with my mother. I feel like I should say more, but I just don't. No, but you do. I mean, you do a very good job with her. I try. She likes you very much. OK. That's good to know. And I'm proud of you when you help out here around the house, because God knows we need it. Very proud when she goes to dishes.  You are, you have grown into a wonderful person and a wonderful woman. Thank you. And I am very, very proud of you. And I am not kidding. And I love you very, very much. No, I know you're not kidding. I know. I'm not.  Sherry agrees. I just, I agree. All right, what's the next cookie? OK, can we get a cookie after that? OK, this cookie, I'm not really interested in. I'm not into it either. That is an oatmeal cookie. Sherry, take a bite of it, because I want to know. We have to take a bite of it. Just because everybody has to take a bite. Everybody's got to try everything. I mean, I really do not like raisins. OK, take this one. That's a little less peace. Chocolate is not raisins. Oh, it's chocolate. OK. Ew, I don't like oatmeal. I could live without it. Not very good. If you like oatmeal cookies, it's probably very good. I wonder if we're going to be sick tonight. If it was the only cookie left in the box, I would eat it. What's your favorite moment of us together? Just one moment. Again, there are so many. Yeah. Don't know if this is a favorite moment. OK. But as an adult, you as an adult, when we were at the Shaman Reunion, and we were going down Bourbon Street, and you and I went into the bar to get the Jell-O shots. Yeah, that was fun. And we had never really had an adult experience like that together. It was kind of weird. And we both had been to that place and had quite a few adult beverages. But I thought that was so interesting to have an adult moment with my daughter going into that bar and getting those Jell-O shots. But that wasn't my favorite. It was unusual. It wasn't my favorite moment, but it was a moment that made me realize that you were an adult and that I had just had this adult experience with you by going into that bar and getting those Jell-O shots. Can it be a series of moments? Yeah, I was going to say dance years. Yeah, I was going to say. She was a dance mom. Yeah, I was going to say those moments of picking you up at school and taking you to some place to eat before we went to dance. And you talk about school, what happened that day at school. And it wasn't always fun and exciting and invigorating. And we did do a tap-douette together. Doing a tap-douette was very wise. So the tap-douette. We'll have to do a reaction video to that. OK, so probably just the whole dance thing was probably favorite moments. Even though you like yelled when I did your hair and makeup. Yeah. There's still something to look back on. I know. And can I add something? Yeah. And when Alex was little, when we still lived in Columbus, and Alex was going to Wellshill Schools for preschool and kindergarten before we moved here to Florida, I would take Alex to preschool or to kindergarten. That was always fun because we would talk on the way. But it was really fun because on the way there, we would go to McDonald's and have breakfast. Learn about the planets. And we'd learn about the planets. And did you know that Michael Collins died? Oh, yeah, I did know. OK, and I made her learn the three astronauts that went up in Apollo 11 so that she could name who walked on the moon the first time, second time who was in the command module. Anyway, it was Michael Collins, by the way. But anyway, it was so cool because we would have that special time together in McDonald's. OK. So lots of the little things, just everyday things. How was I in school? How was I a good student? Did I make it great? Yes, you're a very good student. I think being a student was one of my strongest She was an excellent student. Points of me, I don't know. You'd go to school, dance, and then come home immediately. It helped you get more organized when you already were.  She was a very good student. I made very good grades. I worked hard. She did. But I still can't. I still can't tell the main idea of a story. So don't even try to ask me that. Two more questions, and then we can finish off the cookies. What would you change if you could raise me again? I would teach you more things about being... Let's see, how can I say this? I don't want to be insulting. Things like classy cooth things. Yeah. Like table manners. I would want to take etiquette classes. Where the fork you're supposed to use. Etiquette. And covering school.  I know. Why do you cover my mouth? I know, I said that for Sherry. I know. And doing things that are... I'm like not turning the potato chip bag up. Okay. But probably is that like Valerie. But there are some things that we did not teach you along the line of being classy and cooth. Yeah. And I think it's because we didn't really care that much personally. Right. But I think that when you get out in society... You need to... You should know how to do those things. Which my mother taught me how to do those things. Right. If I had to do them. Right. That's like a job interview or something.  I want to get my kids early in classes like that. Well, I can still learn, you know. Yeah, I know. Okay. Sherry. That's what I would say. I probably would have spent less money when you were younger. So you would have more money when you got older. Oh my gosh. Yes, guys. Describe my perfect guy. You can just add things. Couple of years older. Yeah. Tall, nice build, not chubby, but not too skinny. Blonde, Caucasian. Smart. Business-minded, smart, career-minded with goals and values that line up with yours. And we'll do YouTube. And we'll do YouTube. That's right. Yeah, I mean, well, they don't have to.  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd like to travel too. We'd like to travel some, right? I'd like to travel some. I am typically a homebody, though, as most of you guys know. Yeah, but I mean, but she likes to go. I do like to go. I do like to go places and stuff. Yeah, I would agree with what Sherry said. We're going to finish these cookies. So happy Mother's Day, everyone. Hope you guys had a good day. Nice day yesterday. And I'm about sick. They're going to make me eat two more cookies. I feel like this is some sort of torture I've gone through, because we just had a big dinner. It was a lovely dinner. Dry cookie crumbies. I've eaten. I've eaten, like, big chunks of three, four cookies now. No, I gave her a whole slice. We mean you just split one. We just had a little slice. I don't really care about this one at all, because I don't like chocolate at all. We're going to finish these cookies. But this sugar one, I love. But I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Make sure to give it a thumbs up. Hopefully we entertained you some. And don't forget to subscribe. And I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye. Bye.