I fully agree with you, I mean I couldn't have said it better, empaths and narcissists absolutely deserve a job. I mean I visited forums of self-styled self-aggrandizing so-called empaths and trust me, narcissists have a lot to learn from them. Narcissists have nothing on these people. I mean they are more abusive than any abuser ever come across. Anyhow, I'm trying to remedy the situation with my very limited viewership but I don't think it's working because empath feels good. I mean it feels morally superior. It feels like you've been wrong. It's a victim stance and a very rewarding victim stance and there are many people who make a lot of money from the empath industry. They sell them books, they provide counseling, they even academics have been swept into this graze and contaminated and corrupted by money so you have professors of psychology and others who propagate this. Anyhow, listen, I got to go. I have a video to make so thank you for the news and we'll be in touch. I'll call you on Thursday. I'll call you tomorrow. Okay, bye. There you are. I've been looking for you all over the place. So first of all I owe you an apology. In one of my previous videos I mentioned the book Laws of Human Nature which I regard as a manual on how to become a psychopath, a successful psychopath. The author is Robert Green, not Brian Green. Brian Green is a physicist, a respectable physicist. Robert Green is the author of the book. He also wrote The Art of Seduction and other How to Be a Psychopath and How to Be a Narcissist manuals and he calls himself the new Machiavelli and is exceedingly proud of it. Bizarre what people are proud of nowadays but he is proud of this. So here's the correction. Robert Green, not Brian Green and my humblest prostrate apologies to Brian Green who is a great physicist and has popularized physics and science to a large extent. I've just been appointed as editor in the editor program of academia.edu. Academic.edu is the largest academic portal in the world with more than 110 million professors as members. So I'm in the editor now and in the editorial board of academia.edu and of course it gratifies me a lot and I must say I love this pandemic. It's exactly what the doctor ordered. Plus I've been wearing a mask all my life. Hell, narcissists, the narcissist is the mask. There's nothing there.  You know the horror movies where there's this faceless entity walking the creeping across the corridors and about to get you. That's a narcissist. There's only the mask. Masses is a prime for this pandemic because they have been masks. They've not been wearing masks. They have been masks all their lives. You know of course that the word personality comes from the Greek, ancient Greek word persona which means mask. Personality is a mask that we put forward. There have been scholars like Jung and Govman who describe how we put on a mask when we interact with other people. The difference between the narcissist and a healthy person is that a healthy person takes off the mask and then there's a person behind it and the narcissist takes off the mask and there's nothing there. Okay, enough with this sophisticated bladder dash. Today we're going to talk about narcissists, sex and other pretty titillating bits and pieces. Narcissists sexualize intimacy. They have something called sexual overperception.  Men tend to misinterpret female behavior and regard it as a sexual invitation.   But narcissists take sexual overperception to a whole new level because they sexualize everything. They sexualize intimacy as well. Today I will try to deal with a fraught question. Why is a narcissist's sexuality so distorted? His personality is distorted and disordered. His conduct is problematic. It seems that there is a kind of metastatic process that had invaded every dimension in his life, which is exactly what the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual says. But sex is a different domain and has a different etiology. Many narcissists grow up in families with mixed signals. You could have for example a mother who is asexual and a father who is promiscuous or exactly the opposite, a father who is anti-sexual, for example highly religious or highly traditional or highly conservative, and a mother who is a bit on the promiscuous and histrionic side. So they are mixed signals. When the child gets too seriously conflicting signals about sex, the child can't make up his mind.  At the same time, mother was subtly incestuous. She touched the child inappropriately maybe, or she confided in the child, rendering the child an effective intimate partner, so she parentified the child.  So she reacted as an equal partner to anything the child said. In other words, the mother entered the role of a companion. She abrogated her duties and her role and her functions as a mother in favor of maintaining an interaction with the child, which is ambiently and emotionally incestuous and sometimes crosses the border into physical incest. Similarly, the father, and of course the roles can be reversed, let it be clear. The roles can be completely reversed. The father could have this usually with a daughter, but for clarity and simplicity's sake, I'm using a typical mother and father.  And so then the child is caught in the vice of these mixed signals, because his mother sexualizes him and his father is warning him against anything with a whiff of sex, with the remotest hint or association of sex. So how to interpret mother's behavior? Is she an enemy? Is she trying to corrupt? Is she trying to destroy? Is she trying to infect? Is she contagious? Is it a contagion? Is she a virus? Or is father wrong? Any father is wrong about this? Maybe he's wrong about many other things, so it undermines the father's authority and infallibility and the two pillars of the child's existence crumble. It's like Samson, Samson with the temple, you know, the two pillars crumble, the temple crumbles, the whole edifice. The whole edifice buries the child like in an earthquake or an explosion. It's a very, very traumatic state of things because the child doesn't know who to trust and who to believe and who to adhere to and who to follow. And so this kind of children grow up to be adults and they develop Peter Pan syndrome and they refuse to accept adult chores and adult responsibilities and they become commitment, commitment fobs. They're afraid of commitment. We know all this, but a very important thing to realize that these kind of children can relate to a woman, again, you can exchange the pronouns. When I say he, you can, when I say she, you can think he, when I say he, you can think she, but I don't want to encumber this video. So I'm going to use he and she, woman and man, okay? Don't go all politically correct on me and don't crucify me, the feminists among you. So, or the migtails or the red pillars or whatever your, your insanity of the day is, insanity du jour. So this kind of child can be with a woman in one of two ways. He can be with a woman as a child. In other words, he can refer, he can relate to the woman as a substitute mother. If the woman is a long time life partner, she gradually acquires mothering functions, nurturing functions, or the narcissist forces upon her, cajoles her, coerces her to behave like a mother, to become maternal.  It's incestuous or vertically incestuous. So the relationship becomes gradually asexual or sexless. So this is the first form of interaction that a narcissist from home where he had received mixed signals from a family that was dysfunctional in the sense that he received conflicting messages.  And the second way he can relate to women is as a promiscuous, incestuous, but very stern and disciplinarian father. So the woman in this case would be a disposable slot to be sexually despondent and verbat at the same time as he sexually desponds the woman as he treats her as a dispensable object, as he actually enacts incest with her because he is her father in his mind. He has a paternal mindset. At the same time, he verbally abuses her and he verbally abuses her to discipline her for her own good. It's kind of tough love coupled with sex. So to summarize, when a child grows up in a mixed message home, he grows up to be an adult and then he relates to women in one of two ways. Sex as he has a sexless relationship with a mother figure or he has an incestuous and promiscuous relationship with a slot and then he verbally disciplines and abuses her for her own good. So when he loves a woman, as he had loved his mother as a long-term intimate partner, he loves her as a child.  Sex is dirty.  That's the only woman worth having sex with because you can't defile her more than she is. She's already dirty. She's already contaminated. So when he desires this kind of adult, when he desires a throwaway woman, he transforms himself into a stern disciplinary father like his father had been. He hates women, this kind of adult. He hates women.  He hates these women, and he's afraid of them. And so he sadistically despoils them, corrupts them, defiles them, dismantles them, dismembers them, and abuses them in every way. He pushes these women away, often towards other men, partly to reaffirm his view of women, and for the other shoe to drop as he fully anticipates that this kind of woman is going to cheat on him. So why not, why not get it over with right now? Sometimes these narcissistic adults marry, get married, establish a family and a diet with the first type of woman. So they have a maternal relationship, sexless maternal relationship at home, and they dilly-dally and shill-shally with wayward straying promiscuous women outside home. And sometimes it's exactly the opposite. They're married. They're married to a promiscuous woman, a serial cheater, someone who would betray them, someone who would affirm and confirm their dim view of femininity, passed on to them by father. And outside the marriage of the diet, they would form a relationship with a matronly maternal figure, with whom usually they will not have sex. But narcissists always have two sets of women in their lives, maternal and promiscuous. Narcissists don't fantasize about sex, but about humiliating, trashing, despoiling, degrading and demeaning, debasing, derating the woman alone or with others.  The narcissist doesn't derive pleasure from the sex act that takes place in an orgy or in a threesome. He derives a pleasure from observing, observing the way his woman, his wife, his spouse, his girlfriend, is rendered a whole, a slut, by her liaison with another man. When he watches the woman in his life having sex with another man in such a setting, not as a cacold, he doesn't derive pleasure, the cacold derives pleasure. The narcissist's pleasure, the narcissist's gratification and edification is from the debasement, despoiling, demeaning and besmirching of the woman, how she renders herself a slut at his service. Given the opportunity and the consent, some narcissists sexually assault, they become aggressive and violent, they engage in BDSM. Usually it's consensual because they're cowards, but it can easily cross the line when the woman, for example, is drunk. Conventional sex leads the narcissist to boredom and many narcissists develop erectile dysfunction if they engage when they engage in traditional, conventional, possibly missionary sex. And again, they use group sex to spice up their sex lives, but not in a good way. They introduce other partners into the sex life not in order to bond more closely with the woman, but in order to finally be able to regard her with full justification as a slut to humiliate the female.  And so this creates, in every relationship with the narcissist, it creates divergent expectations. Most women cannot reconcile true intimacy and love with the narcissist's way of relating to them, especially sexually. The narcissist's sex broadcasts to the women. You're an object. You're something to destroy, to despoil, to dismantle.    I'm going to force you to act against your will, against your values, your convictions, your wishes. I'm going to overtake you. I'm going to dominate you.   And this doesn't sit well, of course, with true intimacy and love. And so the women are confused. There's a preclusion. The narcissist's sex precludes intimacy and love, but it doesn't start this way. In the first stage, in the first phase, women usually indulge the narcissist's sadistic sexuality. At first, when the attachment and when the bonding are minimal, because at the beginning they're minimal, women say, okay, what the heck, I'll give him what he wants. I'll play along. It's a role play. It will pass. As we get more intimate, as we fall in love, as we establish a home, as we create a family, make a family, things will change. And he will settle down. Or maybe if I were to graphify his fantasies, he will no longer need them. He will have kind of realized his dreams. And now he will be able to move on and become a full-fledged adult with adult sexuality, which includes reciprocity and intimacy.  They keep hoping against hope that the narcissist's initial expressed sexuality is an aberration. It's not the real him. It's just maybe an artifact of infatuation or because the woman is new to him and he wants to experiment with the body. They tell themselves, women tell themselves all kinds of stories and invented narratives. And they indulge a narcissist sexually. They collaborate. They play along. Whatever he asks them to do, they realize all his fantasies. Never mind how repulsive to them and how that is gusted by or even never mind how morally reprehensible they find some of the requests. And of course, this is the effect, this acquiescence, this submissiveness, this compliance. This is the effect of amplifying and solidifying the narcissist's attachment and bonding. The narcissist says, wow, I found the love of my life. I found the woman of my life. She does everything I ask her to do. Whatever my wishes, whatever my fantasies, she realizes it. She never says no. She's wonderful. She's the one I've been waiting for and he gets very attached and bonded with her precisely because she's indulging him. Now she's indulging him because she hopes he will change and he gets attached to her because he hopes she will never change. That leads to the second phase. The second phase is when the woman gives up the ghost and she says enough is enough. It's been one year. It's been two years. It's been three years. We've been playing all kinds of dirty games. Anything from water sports to three sons and I've had enough. I want to have normal, loving, reciprocated, intimate, warm, accepting sex. Finally, I want him to tell me, I love you with this body. I don't want this anymore. I don't want the objectifying, cold, calculated, schematic sex that he has in mind. I don't want to become an object.  So as the woman gets, as the woman gets more attached and more bonded with the narcissist, of course, time spent together tends to induce attachment and bonding. The more times she spends with the narcissist, the more she bonds with him, the more she gets attached to him because she sees his tender side, his childlike side aspects, the childlike aspects of his personality. She sees, you know, no one is 100% bad. Sometimes there are good moments. Sometimes there are tender moments and she gets attached. She gets bonded, especially because she wants to get attached and bonded. She's so lonely. She's waited for so long. And he looks to be perfect. He looks to be the perfect partner. Don't forget it starts with lovebombing, with grooming.  She doesn't see reality. She doesn't see the world. And above all, she doesn't see him. She says she sees not him, but what he represents for her. She sees herself in him. She likes the way he sees her. And so she can't let go. It's addictive. It's absolutely addictive. And she gets very attached and very bonded, unusually so actually. But when she does, she really, really wants to be loved. She really wants to be held. She really wants to be understood and listened to. She really wants her emotional needs to be catered to. She wants empathy. She wants warmth. She wants acceptance. She wants to see in his eyes the glint of love. And so then in this second phase, women demand to revert to conventional, intimate adult sex, to reciprocate. They suddenly refuse to have the narcissist kind of sex, which is impersonal, objectifying, dehumanizing, sadistic. They want to put a stop to it. Enough is enough. No more threesons. No more water sports. No more disgusting acts, you know. I want to make love not to have sex. And so the second phase, while in the first phase, the woman indulges the narcissist. In the second phase, she cuts off his kind of sex.  And this leads to stage three.  He feels deceived. He feels furious. Because for years or for months, she had given him exactly what he wanted. Every fantasy was hers. She shared is every king, is every predilection. She agreed to be tied. She agreed to be subjected to various physical acts, which are unmentionable, at least on YouTube. And so suddenly she cuts it off. That's unfair. He feels that she had been manipulating him and deceiving him.  He doesn't want her anymore. His body is rejecting her. His mind is furious. His body is becoming dysfunctional. And he can't do it anymore. He doesn't have erection to cut a long story short. The relationship is rendered increasingly more and more sexless, sexless and disintimate. There is a vein of aggression, underlying aggression. As the narcissist begins to digest, the things are not going to be the same. That she is an independent autonomous entity, person, a person with her own wishes and fears, with her own preferences, with her own predilections and her own proflivities. This separateness is very threatening to him, because it implies abandonment, anxiety. And of course it's a vicious circle. Because of this, he withdraws. As he withdraws, intimacy declines, sex seizes altogether, and now she has an incentive. She definitely has an incentive to find an alternative, for example, to cheat on him. The attachment and the bonding weaken not only on her part, but on his part. Because the narcissist begins to put distance between him and the woman. He begins to realize that he's going to lose her, that she's going to hurt him and abandon him and cheat on him. So he begins to preemptively abandon her and reject her. He says to himself, I'm going to reject her before she rejects me. I'm going to abandon her before she even thinks of it. She's going to cheat on me. I'm going to cheat on her. It's a bit like borderline. And by the way, I'm not the guy who suggested that borderline is failed narcissism. That was a scholar by the name of Rothstein. I'm just quoting him. So narcissists have these borderline features, preemptive abandonment and so on and so forth. And so when a sexual chill sets in, because the woman would no longer collaborate in his delirious wishes, it is then that the narcissist begins to withdraw and he begins to regard the relationship as a chore and the woman as a nuisance. Why? Because he's not getting his sexual needs and desires met. That, by the way, is a totally normal reaction. Everyone would react this way. And then the stage four, cheating or breakup or both. The narcissist is still attached and still bonded. If there are enough maternal elements in the mix, even a promiscuous woman can be very maternal. So it's always a mix. Even a maternal woman can cheat. There's always a mix. But the level of maternal, I mean, what's the percentage of maternal elements determines the extent of attachment and bonding. So at this stage, which is the last stage, stage four, the narcissist is still attached. He's still bonded. He still refuses to let go of the woman of her maternal, of the maternal, of the expression of her maternal instincts. She takes care of him. He is loved in his mind unconditionally. And he refuses to let the woman go free. He refuses to set her free. And it is at this stage that many narcissists become erotomanic stalkers or very jealous, romantically jealous. They begin to spy on their spouses. They begin to micromanage and micro-control their spouse's existence and being. They limit the freedoms that they hitherto had given their partners. And so stage four is a very conflicted stage. There's attachment and bonding abate. They go down. They go down on the part of the woman because she feels that the narcissist's sexuality signifies a lack of intimacy and a lack of true love. Bonding and attachment abate with the narcissist because he feels frustrated. He feels aggressive.  And so with both of them, there's a reduction, reduction in phase two attachment and bonding. It's not what it used to be, the couple. And many times they try to break up the narcissist and his woman. They try to break up. They agree on a period of separation or they agree to an open marriage or they effectively separate. The narcissist upsets himself. He becomes, I don't know, or alcoholic. Or the woman starts to travel a lot or go on separate vacations. I mean, there are attempts to somehow wind up the whole business. But these attempts are not working well. Mainly because the narcissist is residually attached to the woman as a mother, as a mother and want to let go. And similarly, the woman is residually attached to the narcissist, owing to the paternal, disciplinarian, strict and stern emanations and communications from the narcissist. The woman has daddy issues. The narcissist has mommy issues. And they complement each other perfectly. They cater to these missing parental figures in their lives. And there's always the hope that this time it's going to work. This time it's going to work because mommy loves me and daddy just wants what's good for me. Tough love is okay, as long as it's love. And so women stay. And narcissists stay. And they try again dysfunctionally. And it only gets worse with time. And of course, some women are exploitative and they remain in the relationship for financial reasons. They render services, but they are free. Otherwise, they behave as virtual singles. They are free to cheat serially and indiscretly, or they triangulate ostentatiously, or they try to terminate their stalking by teaming up with other men or and so on. But all in all, narcissists are forced to choose between loveless sex with dispensable disposable women, or sexless love with true intimate partners and companions. But these partners and companions are actually substitute, substitute mothers. In both cases, loveless sex and sexless love, the narcissist is likely to endure modifying betrayal. It's a very sad situation. The narcissist cannot exit from the matrix and the template of his childhood, nor can his woman, his wife, his spouses, his partner. We are all, when we interact within romantic relationships, we all hark back. We all rely on these internalized templates and we can't truly get rid of them. And there's no exception with the narcissist and his partner. And the narcissist doesn't have really other options because the narcissist doesn't have a healthy sex drive. Most narcissists are not actually promiscuous and they're not actually addicted to sex.   It's actually not about sex, it's about conquest. It's about narcissistic supply. And so, narcissists' relationship with sex is very confounded and problematic. Most narcissists, I would say, if I had to generalize, most narcissists are actually asexual, even somatic narcissists, that you do something, that you engage in and act doesn't mean that it reflects internal motivation or relevant psychodynamic. It's very important, the etiology, the psychological reasoning is very important. Why does the somatic narcissist, why is he so preoccupied with sex? He doesn't see the women he sleeps with. He doesn't see them.  And if it's a woman, they're the men, if it's a histrionic woman or seductive, the men are animated dildos. The somatic narcissist masturbates with female bodies. Watch the previous video that I posted today. It's very relevant.  That's why narcissists are humongous consumers of pornography. In pornography, the participants are reduced to body parts. And 40% of pornographic imagery in films focus on body parts, not on the entire body or let alone personality. Narcissists are asexual.  I'm faithful to my wife. That's why I'm not interested in women. They're intimidated. They fear women.  They dread female sexuality. And of course, they are biological entities. So they're also attracted. There's always a conflict. And so their solution, the solution of narcissism, both somatic and cerebral, when they can reconcile the physical biological attraction with their state of mind of hating women, fearing women, dreading women, female sexuality, when they have to put these two together, their solution is sadistic despoiling. They confuse sadistic despoiling with sex. When children get a new toy or a new radio, you know, at the time, they dismantled it. They wanted to see what's inside. They broke it apart. Narcissists do the same to women. They dismantle them. They want to see what makes them tick. Where's the inner mechanism? You know, they despoil the woman. They dismantle, dismember the woman. They confuse and conflate sadistic despoiling with sex.  It's about power, subjugation, hatred, fear and envy. There's no trace of love or intimacy. The narcissist reserves love and intimacy for other types of interactions within their relationship, even when the partner is loved. And even when there is intimacy, when the partner is intimate, the narcissist would segregate, sequester, isolate the sexual aspect from everything else. He could be, the narcissist could be loving and intimate and supportive and the most wonderful partner when it comes to other issues, but when it comes to sex and true adult intimacy, he is a child in the worst sense of the world. Sex, excluding masturbation or despoiling kink, sex is a physical activity with attendant dimensions. For the narcissist, sex induces, creates performance anxiety. And so he has to relate in sex to another full-fledged organism, and it makes him very anxious. He is also always comparing himself with others. He's very typical of a narcissist who asks the partner, how many orgasms do they give you? Did you ever have this before? Am I not the best you ever had? So many narcissists finally settle on masturbation.  And so with this fully controlled object, they could have regulated, well-regulated sexuality. And the poor narcissist is not even really interested in casual sex.  It's an interim solution between, between regular partners. And in this sense, it's very laudable. I'm all for it.  But casual sex, one night stand or whatever, is a great solution, at least biologically and physiologically, if not psychologically. But it's a great solution when you don't have a partner. But the narcissist is incapable even of this. Even of this. Why? Because casual sex, first of all, requires investment. You have to invest. Even if it's one hour, even if it's a few drinks, you have to invest. You have to pretend that you're interested in the part. You have to listen. You have to talk a little. You have to have some good time.    And the narcissist for the narcissist to invest in other people is wasteful. He feels, he feels that his time is wasted. His resources are wasted. He feels that it's very unjust. And it irritates him that he has to invest in other people.  Literally impossible.  Or if you go to a specific club, their BDSM clubs and so on. There you can pick up the appropriate partner.  Very unlikely. So it's all gratifying. And it causes narcissistic injury. It causes narcissistic injury because after the casual sex, you are disposable. The woman doesn't want to see you again. Doesn't want to talk to you again. It's humiliating. So narcissists are not natural candidates for casual sex. Because body, personality, sex, sexuality are not satisfied. They need to dominate the female. They need to reduce the female to unthinking submission brought on by unrequited and tantalizing craving. They need to make the woman act in ways that she would find shameful, hurtful, denigrating and guilt inducing. And obviously none of these can be accomplished in a brief, almost anonymous encounter. Grooming requires time, effort, careful planning and preparations, repeated exposure. Regular relationship sex with a partner requires intimacy and inordinate and wasteful investment of resources. So it's also a problem. The sole interest of a narcissist lies in objectifying, humiliating, degrading and dispoiling the woman. Sex is just one way of accomplishing this. Sex is the physical equivalent, the bodily equivalent of verbal abuse. It's a form of abuse. So as far as a narcissist is concerned, sex is just another mode of abuse.  Otherwise sex totally fails to arouse the narcissist.  The aim is to frustrate and to hurt the woman by rejecting her, by humiliating her to the core. And when the woman makes demands, when she criticizes, disagrees, gives advice, gets too intimate, too comfy with the narcissist, it destroys the sex drive because it makes true sadism impossible. And remember, narcissists are into sadism, not into sex. Sadism requires unmitigated domination. Sadism requires information as symmetry and distance. So making demands, talking, interacting, criticizing, arguing, knowing the narcissist, getting to know the narcissist, up close, humanizing the narcissist. All these imply equivalence. They imply equality. And equality is the antidote to sadism. You can't be sadistic with an equal partner. And so this is stage four.  Others cheat. Others remain in the relationship, but abandon the narcissist effectively with another man. Others become service providers or business partners or roommates. There are all kinds of arrangements. Even open marriage sometimes is agreed. All kinds of arrangements. But in any case, whatever the arrangement is, attachment is gone. Bonding is gone. And the two parties are actually absent. They're absent either physically or emotionally and typically both. And women try everything before they reach stage four.  I've seen women do, women, not men, do absolutely everything. In the narcissist's mind, it is okay to foster expectations and then frustrate them. It is okay to promise commitment and then not keep the promise. It's okay to affect other people's lives irreversibly and irrevocably and then simply disappear and withdraw and ghost them. Why it's okay? Because it is sadistic. It is proof positive of the narcissist's power. You see, she's after me. She's talking me. She's addicted to me. But demands, so this is expectation. Demands, real intimacy. They destroy the sadistic fantasy and they make sadistic practice impracticable. Many narcissists actually prefer sadistic supply to narcissistic supply. They would sacrifice narcissistic supply if they can get sadistic supply. Sadistic supply implies a much bigger power asymmetry. You're more God-like. You're more God-like when you have the power to hurt. Anyone can love, anyone can, you know, but few people can truly cause pain. God can cause pain. God punishes. So sadistic supply is of a higher grade, higher quality than narcissistic supply.   He wouldn't take the sex, even if he's attracted to the woman very much.   High grade heroin is sadistic supply. And a woman to the narcissist is a figure, an artifact, an object. And again, this is very similar to the way that pedophiles are attracted to immature children's bodies. The woman's body is a fetish. Watch the video I posted earlier today about fetishes and fetishism. The entire human body is a fetish to be ruined, degraded, played with, toyed with, dismantled, soiled, dispoiled. I mean, it's an object to be tossed around, bumped and bounced. And the entire body becomes like a single object. It's like a classic fetishist. They admire, I mean, they are sexually attracted and aroused by body parts. So classic fetishists would be around by feet or by boobs or by shoes or by panties or bras. The narcissist fetishizes the entire body of his partner. The body becomes a fetish. And the narcissist is sadistic, not only sexually, that's the problem. He's also a psychological sadist. So the sexual sadism is an echo. It's a reflection and a resonance of much deeper psychological trends and tides and rivers and streams. You can't dissociate, disengage and disentangle the two.  Their sexual sadism is pretty segregated, pretty separate from their general psychological makeup. And so the sexual sadism can be isolated and tackled. With a narcissist, it's a much bigger problem. And in this sense, by the way, honeyball-lector is a narcissist because honeyball-lector is a psychological sadist. He derives a huge amount of pleasure from the way, from the preparation for the sex, before the sex, from the foreplay. So in the narcissist, there's a confluence of psychological sadism and sexual sadism. How do you treat this? Withholding is a form of sadism. Coercion and imposing are forms of sadism. Toalting, tantalizing, teasing, frustrating. All of these are forms of sadism.  When it comes to a lifelong partner or intimate partner, the narcissist is promiscuous. Anyone who can provide him with supply, with narcissistic supply, can become the narcissist's intimate partner. It is a myth, nonsensical myth, that narcissists are attracted only to specific types of women. Co-dependence, or this is total trash, unsupported by research. Narcissists are attracted to absolutely anyone and everyone who provides them with narcissistic supply or has the potential to provide them with narcissistic supply. That's why many narcissists end up with other narcissists in a couple. But when it comes to sex, it is true that there is type preference, there's mate selection. Narcissists react to two types of women in sex. Women who are submissive and are already deeply in love or irresistibly infatuated with the narcissists. And these women require grooming to be brought to this stage. But having been groomed, these are, they become, they are rendered sexually attractive. The second type of women, promiscuous masochists. This kind of women you can find in sex clubs, private networks, or even in bars. It takes a lot of effort to find these women if you also insist on fulfilling your fantasies. And there are huge risks involved, medical and personal. So narcissists usually go for type one, not for type two. The groom. Women in casual sex, as I said before, would never agree to realize the narcissistic sexual fantasies. Such women also demand equipotence, negotiated power symmetry. They want to be gratified in sex. They have demands.  It's very narcissistically injurious. It's unfulfilling and it provokes performance anxiety. And, and finally, the narcissist is discarded. The woman doesn't want to have anything further to do with it. So it's humiliation. It's perceived as rejection. So narcissists look for, for number one, a woman who can be groomed into infatuation via massive sublimation. That's the clinical term. Problem is that a woman who can be groomed requires an intimate, committed relationship. And the narcissist is not willing to embark on such a relationship or truly provide it. So he fakes. He lies, simply. False promises, pretensions of commitment. And then it creates approach, avoidance, repetition, compulsion. He approaches, then he panics, he avoids, he runs away, comes back, runs away. He's looking for an admirer, a playmate, a lover, a mother. He wants a shared fantasy. He's not looking for a wife. He doesn't want to become a father. He doesn't want to establish a family. And he doesn't want to buy a home. He deceives the woman. He makes false promises. To the contrary, in order to secure the three S's, sex, supply, services. And yes, sometimes the narcissist will do as far as getting married to such a wife. So as to secure her cooperation. But then the marriage is a sham. And so this is the, this is the background, the background to, to the narcissist sexuality. Add to this the fact that the narcissist has no empathy. And that the narcissist is immoral, has no morality. In other words, the narcissist has not been socialized to internalized, to internalize moral and social mores and addicts, addicts and so on. The narcissist, in other words, is not constrained. He's not religious. He's not moral. He has no values. And if he's psychopathic, he's merely goal or it. Add these into the mix and narcissists become seriously dangerous. Seriously dangerous because what you see is not what you get.  They're disgusted by it. And all of them ultimately will want something deeper. And so at some point, the narcissist is going to be trapped by his own promises and the expectations he had fostered.  There's no winning in this game. You must understand this. Do not think that anyone can teach you any strategy or technique or no contact if you can. It's painful. It's heartbreaking. Better to be with a broken heart than with no heart at all. The narcissist is a phantasm. It's a phantom organ. It's a mirage. It's not there. There's no water in the oasis and the palm tree that is growing is a figment.


Hey everybody, welcome back to Magic Orthodoxy. My name is David and this is a deck review. Hey, today we're going to look at a deck of cards from the Chris Angel. Now, I believe this is the second edition, second volume, second printing of the Baroque playing cards. Now, a while back, I think when Chris Angel's cards first came out, they were the Mind Freak cards. They were the yellow and orange backed cards with the Chris Angel like haunting eyes. And if you ever picked up a deck of those, they were garbage, right? They were junk. They were printed in China, they were paper thin, they stuck together, they clumped, they were pretty much useless. My son has a couple of those decks and they're awful. After that, Chris printed the Baroque series, which was this patterned back design.  They're still available on his website, I believe. And they were made by the United States playing card company. And I did hear from people that had purchased them that they were really good, that they handled really well. I think the only place you could get them was online. So that's why I never picked these up. I found this at a drug store thinking that it was maybe a new printing of the Baroque series because it is the same back design, like I said. However, these are printed in China as well. The front of the check case says Chris Angel has Chris Angel's logo there and playing cards. And then this is C and A for Chris Angel. It does say that it comes with a little URL so that you can get a PDF of a bunch of different card tricks. The side says Chris Angel playing cards, as does the other side. The bottom tells you that they are printed in China and the top has a custom Chris Angel tech seal. The back design of the tuck case is of course the back design of the cards and that is pretty much it for the tuck case. Let's take a look at these cards. Like I said, these cards are printed in China.  They have a linen finish to them. They do have a linen finish to them. So the cards do glide, which is an improvement over the mind-free cards. They don't clump together. I could see, you know, if you are a magician, you could use these for cards. I don't know that they would work as well for cardistry because of just how kind of warpy they feel.  It is a two-way back design and so that makes it good for playing cards and for magic. I found these in black. Like I said earlier, the original broke version ones, they are available in black and white. So I have not seen these in white. So if you have, let us know. With this deck, you're going to do your secret code card that lets you in on your download so that you can get your magic tricks and you're going to get two original jokers, which again is the double CA. It's the Chris Angel logo. Your Ace of Spades is very attractive. It's a bowl with wings with a with a wheel pattern there in the center and a nice big expletive pip with a vinework on the edges. Your pips and indices cards are all completely standard. Easily recognizable traditional layout, traditional colors, traditional, traditional, traditional. The court cards have a more older feel to them. They almost look like arco courts, but they're not exactly arco courts. They do have like a little bit of a different coloring to them. And so it kind of makes them stand out and be a little bit more unique. Other than that, there isn't really anything else to this deck. There's no other bells or whistles. And so that is pretty much it for this deck review. As always, recommend that you like this video, just so other people can find it faster. We also recommend that you subscribe to this channel just to see up to date on all of these cards and card magic. Now, if you want to follow me on social media, you can. I'm at facebook.com slash magic orthodoxy twitter.com slash magic orthodoxy and instagram.com slash magic underscore orthodox.


Hello, everyone. Welcome to the APM conference 2021. We're glad that you can join us today. And this session we'll be talking about how to eradicate flaky test with Anand Bagmar. So without further delay, over to you Anand. Thank you so much, Alicia. Today we will be speaking about how to eradicate flaky tests. It's a tall claim, but let's see how much we are able to accomplish. A very quick introduction about myself. I'm Anand Bagmar. I've been a quality evangelist in the quality space for more than 20 years now. I work with various types of organizations in any role that is relevant to help build a quality product. I'm also a contributor on the Selenium project, small one, but I really feel very proud that I've been able to contribute to that. And I'm also on the conference committee teams for Selenium conference, APM conference, Agile India and so on. You can reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn, and I would really love to connect with you and discuss quality and ways how we can get better at quality going forward. So enough about myself. Let's start with the core topic. How to eradicate flaky tests. To understand how to eradicate flaky tests, you need to understand certain prerequisites of sorts or you need to have some holistic information about why does this really happen. And for that, I want to take you through some examples of what different products might be and what types of issues can come up. And then we'll see how to address those problems, some of those problems as well. Any complex system that we are working with any complex product that we are working on a typical architecture would be something like this. There is one or more front end applications, it could be native apps, it could be hybrid apps, it could be mobile web, or just desktop web. But those front end applications are going to communicate with your backend systems through some authentication gateway. And the backend systems is also a pretty complex system that would be there. You could have a monolith, you could have micro service based architecture, hybrid, whatever it really means, a lot of data stores. And the important aspect is that however complex your system is, you are still going to rely and communicate with some other systems as well in the backend, from your backend. So there could be a system like payment getaways, credit systems and so on that you might be communicating with to give the functionality to your users what is expected. So I hope this type of complexity you can relate with. Now, in such a system, how do you typically approach doing your either API workflow automation, or end to end test execution. So typically what we do in such cases is we remove the front end applications. And we simulate the interactions of those with those applications in form of the end to end functional UI tests, or in form of the API workflow tests. And the orchestration of these scenarios is mimicking or simulating the end user behavior. And the purpose of these types of tests is to ensure the user is able to execute all the different business flows and transactions. The feature set that you have providing to them, and it works in a properly integrated fashion. That is a typical approach that we take. Now in context of end to end testing, what are the type of challenges that you come across in such situations. So let's look at some of the challenges. I'm not going to talk about all of them. I'm going to talk in terms of the topic for today. So first of all, these challenges are in form of the long feedback cycle. Our scenarios are cutting across the product feature set or different modules. Hence, these scenarios also take a very long time to run and execute. And hence the feedback cycle is slow. That's a big challenge. The other aspect is that there are certain aspects of your automation that are not possible to be done because we are doing end to end validation. And these could be because of certain other dependencies in your system, which you are not able to control very well. And hence, you cannot really simulate those types of situations in an easy fashion. I will be speaking more about this aspect later in the session, but also there is a session later today by Sagar Singh Pawar and Joel Rosario about how to automate the un-automatable scenarios. I would strongly encourage you to attend that one to get more details about a real case study how this can be tackled as well. There is also a challenge when it comes to cross-browser or for that matter, cross-device testing as well. You want to make sure your product is working correctly, functionally and it has the right user experience for your users for any of the browsers or devices that you might be using. So how to really tackle this problem of cross-browser or cross-device execution. That is something very important as well that we encounter. And most important of all, which we really as testers, as automation engineers, again, titles do not matter. Anyone who's involved with doing automation or UI automation, especially a big pain point for them is flaky tests. Flaky tests are something that will pass intermittently or fail intermittently and there is no clear direction why that has happened and how to fix that problem. And if you dig in deeply into what really the flaky tests are, there's a huge set of things that you can potentially look at to understand why your test execution is flaky. This is a completely different talk or conversation on its own. So I'm not going to go through all the details about why tests are flaky over here. But I'm sure you would have come across situations where your tests are flaky and it has led you to frustrations and situations where you feel like pulling out your hair because you're not able to understand why really that is happening. In context of today's discussion, I want to focus on a few aspects of why the UI tests are flaky or also another way that we call it brittle, any small changes, the test fail. And these are the reasons for these potentially could be because the UI has changed, the locators could have changed, everything in the UI is fine, but the locators have changed. And the UI itself has evolved, so that could be one reason of test flakiness. There could be a challenge when it comes to downstream dependencies. You don't really have control on the dependencies if they're available or not, if they're responding in the correct time or not, that could be a big problem. And then data dependencies also becomes a huge aspect, especially when you're working in an very integrated big environment. The data might change what you're relying on, hence the test is failing. And there could be issues related with the network as well. Maybe the network link between your system and an external system is down for whatever reason. And that is causing your test failures. The impact of any of these challenges is it makes your test execution unreliable. So how do we really tackle that? And these are some of the challenges that I want to focus on. How do we solve this in the rest of the session today? So let's talk about the way forward, right? Just talking about problems or challenges doesn't help anyone. What are some of the techniques that you can use, you can try and understand and use in your own context to see how to make this aspect better for you. So how do you really reduce the flakiness of your test execution? First of all, reduce the number of UI tests. Simon spoke about this in great detail yesterday in his keynote about move your test lower in the test pyramid. That will give you faster feedback and less code you write at the top layer. That means less reasons for having flaky tests. So that is technique number one, reduce the number of UI tests. Second, remove the dependencies on your external services or external systems by intelligent virtualization. And we'll spend a good amount of time talking about this in just a few minutes. And third, how can you write less code while doing more, while getting increased test coverage, all by writing less code? So visual assertions is a great technique where you can get the power of functional and visual testing together. You write less code and you get increased coverage and we'll see that aspect as well. So let's begin deeper into each of these solutions that I'm proposing. How do you reduce the number of UI tests? We know we are in the automation space. We are working on building test automation. So we know the various different types of automation that can be done for your product as well. And the test pyramid is a great way to understand what are the different types of tests that could be done on the product to get fast feedback and increase coverage. While slowly integrating more and more of your systems together. The test pyramid also includes the NFRs, user experience testing and NFRs. It is very important to bear in mind. And this is just we get so caught up in our way of working. We fail to realize this aspect, but each and every activity that you do with respect of automation is helping you give an indication of what is your product quality. So your product quality is not just if my UI tests have passed or not. It is all the different types of tests that have been automated. What is the kind of feedback you're getting from them? And overall all these tests combined, including the exploratory testing that you're doing on your application will tell you what is the quality of your product. So that is very important. Reduce the number of UI tests. UI tests are very important. Don't get me wrong. I focus a lot on end-to-end testing. But identifying the right candidate of tests to be automated at a UI layer is extremely crucial. Whatever can be automated at the lower layers of the pyramid. That is the first approach you need to take to move the code down in the pyramid. That will give you faster feedback, more stability of the test. And it helps you focus on the overall quality in a better way. So that is how you move your tests lower from the UI layers. Have less number of UI tests. Second thing, the second technique that I was referring to is intelligent virtualization to eradicate or remove the external dependencies. So again, let's take an example to understand what we mean by this. So looking at the same architecture diagram that I referred to earlier. What do we do for end-to-end tests or automated tests? We are going to remove the actual client application or the manual interaction with those applications. And we are going to implement the simulation of those scenarios either using our end-to-end functional automation tools or something like a builder framework on top of APM or Selenium to simulate those scenarios. Or at our API workflow level, you would be implementing those scenarios. But now with this in mind, let's take a concrete example of a test scenario, what you would want to automate. So your test, let's say in order to accomplish a workflow, the first call that it needs to do from the UI is call a particular service in the backend. It could be in form of a click or whatever action you're doing in the app. This is going to result in a call to service 2 in the backend. Service 2 does some processing and at a relevant point, it may call some external service to do further processing. Now, if this external service, unfortunately for whatever reasons, takes a long time to respond. So the request times out, for example. Or if that service is not available for whatever reason, maybe a new deployment is happening in that external system that you are interacting with or integrating with. There could be various reasons. But if this particular call from service 2 to the external system does not go through as expected, what happens is your service 2 is going to go into an error state. And this is not really an unexpected error, right? Because your service needs to be implemented for various situations of how the interaction with dependencies is going to happen as well. But because this particular call of service 2 is now going to fail because an external system did not respond as expected, the test is going to get an unexpected response or an incorrect response from the service 2 and hence your test is also going to fail. And this is a problem because all your test was really concerned about in this trivial example was how is service 2 responding in a particular context of the test execution. But because of some external service not being available, your focus of validation of service 2 has gone for a toss. And you get a false positive that the test has failed over here. Your service might have, service 2 might have worked as expected, but in context of that test, it did not do the right thing. Hence this test has failed and that is a big challenge. So the challenge over here is how to deal with scenarios where there are external dependencies which itself are flaky. Or the second challenge over here is how do you really test out different types of responses that are possible from your external dependencies as part of your test automation. Now it is not possible to change service 2 from your testing perspective to take the service 2 down in order to execute this test because this is all happening in an automated fashion. Also there might be other tests running which rely on a correct working of this external service. So you cannot actually make physical changes to this interaction with the external dependency because it will have a big impact on everyone else. So these types of scenarios become a big challenge to automate. So the solution over here that I propose is you stub it out using SpecMatic. A very quick note about SpecMatic. SpecMatic is an open source tool. It is available on GitHub. You can find out about it using SpecMatic from SpecMatic.in website. At a glimpse, it helps teams start doing contract driven development. And that is very important when you want to have you have producers and consumers and you want to start working on that interaction, but you don't want to make it a sequential implementation approach. It will take forever. So how can you really start doing contract driven development while making sure you have executable contracts, you have backward compatibility checks and so on. The biggest advantage that SpecMatic allows us to do is it decouples of producers and consumers and it does so with confidence because of the various different types of checks that can be run by doing taking this approach. So you can find out more about SpecMatic from SpecMatic.in and there could be other tools also which will allow you to do similar things. But this is the approach that I have taken which has given me a lot of flexibility in my implementation and I'll show you how that really works as well. So in the context of the scenario that we were speaking about earlier, if we come back to that, if I'm using SpecMatic in my test execution environment, then how would that work? So now first thing that I have is I am using SpecMatic as a stub server in my environment and what this means is all my services, whenever they need to speak to any external systems, we are going to stub out those external systems using SpecMatic and my services are going to call the stub server instead. So step one is set it up as a stub server and the external services are stubbed out, internal services point to these stubbed endpoints. Step two, my test, given the context of the test, right, so if I want to simulate that my external endpoint has to, it's a positive case scenario where my external dependency is available and it is going to give me the right response. What is the response that I'm expecting from this stub? I'm going to tell this stub server when you get a request of a certain criteria, here is the response that I want you to send back. So I'm setting a dynamic expectation on SpecMatic for a very specific use case. And once this expectation is set, now my test calls service to service to does its processing, in turn it calls the external service, which is now stubbed. And now, because I have set the expectation on the stub server, the request criteria is met, I'm going to get the response from SpecMatic, what I had set from my test itself. When this response comes from the stub server to service to service to is able to process that information as expected as per requirements, and then it gives a result back to my test, and the test is now able to assert the behavior correctly. And if the assertion fails, then it is going to be because service to has not implemented its requirements in the current fashion. So with this approach, what we are saying is, we are able to simulate positive cases, negative cases, edge case responses from our external systems, all in context of all in control of the test that you have implemented. And that becomes a huge value add when you want to test different types of scenarios, and at the same time focus on what you control and your control is about service to over here is that implementation working as expected. Okay, so that is technique number two that I want to a solution number two that I am recommending is stub out the external dependencies intelligently and have your test simulate all the different types of interactions required in context of the different responses required from external dependencies, and you will still be able to validate that make sure your product is working as expected in all those cases. Of course, this is all happening in your test execution environment. Typically, this is going to be an isolated environment where only automated tests are running. Once all these tests pass, then when you run a subset of these tests in your real integrated environment, then you just have to focus on your positive case scenarios with the external dependencies actually integrated, and you will be able to make sure everything is fine. Okay, solution number three, using visual assertions instead of functional assertions. We already saw what the pyramid does for us and all the different aspects that of automation that when you do on your for your product, the kind of feedback you'll be able to get to know the product quality. However, you would realize that even though you have done all these types of automation really well defects still escape to production. And the reason these defects still escape is because automation automation frameworks, we are not really building it or using it correctly for the modern apps. Some examples of types of defects that you would see is everything is working fine your functional automation using APM is still working fine for this Southwest airline app. There is a username password field over here, just the colors are such that the user is not able to see it, but your functional test will still be able to pass using APM because the locators are the same. You will be able to interact and fill in data over there for username password and click on login. However, from an end user perspective, this login does not work. They don't know there is a username and password field available over there. And likewise, you'll see countless examples, whether it is some overlapping content or images or banners not seen correctly. Across any different type of product and domain, that is going to be a problem for your end users. The functional automation test is still going to work fine in most cases as long as those elements are visible, you can interact with them, but the experience is completely broken. And you have to, with a curious mindset, assuming you have a curious mindset, I'm sure you're already thinking why would such types of issues still be happening? Why are these issues which seem trivial? Why are these still going out to production? The answer is simple. These types of issues escape to production because our approach to testing or test strategy or test planning itself is incorrect. Our approach that we take is, requires us to do a lot of mundane activities. These are extremely tedious, repetitive activities that you need to keep doing and you're always running against the clock. And when you're running against the clock, you're bound to make mistakes, you're bound to miss out on things which could have been found if you had the luxury of time. But think about this, it is not just one device or one browser that you want to validate. Each, the thing that can still be different across these different browsers or devices is the rendering engines. The way the screen gets displayed is going to be different. There are, of course, aspects of functionality in some cases that would be different, but that your APM test will be able to catch. But the rendering aspects is difficult to catch unless you go through each and every screen on all the relevant combinations manually. And the approach that we typically take to find these types of differences, whether it's one device or multiple, is we play the game or the puzzle of spot the differences. Given two different images, similar images, you want to try and find the differences on that. And if I tell you, you've got five seconds to find the differences here, how many can you really find? Some people are really good at understanding this, some people take time to understand this. And a lot depends on the state of mind when you're looking at these images as well. So in this case, there are so many differences that have been found, and maybe I have missed out on identifying some differences over here as well. But that's the error-prone nature that comes when you're looking at these things manually. But you might say, we are really working on software products. We are not looking at two different arbitrary images to look at this and find the differences. Our problems are real-world problems on software applications on different types of browsers and our devices. And these have text, dynamic text, static and dynamic test. It has got images of different forms. They are responsive pages that are form factors to consider. There is user experience to consider. There is so much context that a product has. How do we really work on this? Unfortunately, the answer is not different. It is still, we are still doing spot the difference type of thing from a testing perspective to make sure everything is fine. Given two pages on a mobile device or a browser doesn't matter, we are still looking at it in the form of is what I am seeing the same as what is expected. So in this particular image, left side is what I am expecting. Right side is what my new page behavior is when I am running it against a new build, for example. Are there any differences in this? And these are real problems, challenging problems because these are long pages. And going through it in detail to figure out what might have changed over here is a huge overhead and extremely error-prone. In fact, the challenge is bigger because you don't really have a baseline to compare each and every time. What you are doing is once you understand the requirement, you are looking at the new image that is seen or the page the weight is rendered on the screen. And you are trying in your mind to correlate it with what was the expectation over here and is there any difference. So you're not even having the luxury of putting it side by side to figure out if there's anything wrong or anything different over here. And this is a real challenge again, which is extremely time consuming and error-prone. And that's where we need a different approach over here. That approach is how can you use a part of the computer that can replicate what a human eye and brain can see and do, and give you enough information very quickly that will allow you to take decisions if what you are seeing on the screen is acceptable or not. And that approach is called visual AI. So using visual AI, you are focused on not looking at the rendering differences. You're focused on finding out what are the differences that really matter to the end user. You don't want to be using pixel comparison in such cases because any small change in the screen size resolutions is going to result in false positives, which means, again, you are defeating the purpose of finding out what truly was different over here. So visual AI, you want to use not pixel comparisons. Also, your product might be available across multiple types of platforms like native apps, hybrid apps, web. You could also have PDF documents for various reasons that you need to validate. So you need a platform or solution that can work across all your products in a seamless fashion integrated with your functional automation to combine and get the value of functional and visual validation in one test execution. And at the same time, you also want to make sure your user experience is consistent across all your supported browsers and devices at the same time. Do I really want to run my test the same test on all different types of mobile web devices or native apps, all devices that my native app is going to be used on or the desktop browsers. You need a more intelligent solution that will allow you to scale very seamlessly. And by the scaling, it means if I have 100 tests, which is going to take one hour to execute, I don't want to run the same 100 tests on 10 different browser device combinations, which means my feedback cycle has now gone to combine 10 hours. That is too long a feedback cycle. And of course, there are going to be aspects of test failures, intermittent test failures, because of different devices, network conditions, whatever. So there's additional investigation time to rerun your failing test to figure out if there was a real problem or not. You are spending a lot of time in this scaling approach. And that is something that you also want to avoid. So with that, let's take a concrete example to see how all these things start coming together. So in my context, what I have done is I'm using Apple tools for visual AI to do my visual validation, along with my functional validation. And I'm using Specmatic in my product deployment in my test environment, where I'm stubbing out the external services using this Specmatic tool for intelligent virtualization. And I'm going to orchestrate various different scenarios to make sure everything is working fine. So an example that I want to walk you through what tests I want to run and show for you is, let's say, these are very basic APIs that you have where your test is going to first log in. After logging in, you're going to get the list of users that are available in the system. But to get this list of users, your application actually needs to connect to some external system out in the Internet and get a list of users. That list is going to be dynamic because it is going to come from an external source. Based on the list of users that is returned, I'm going to edit a specific user. And after editing the user, I want to verify, I see the updated user details in my list of users that I see in the application. But now what would happen in this case is, my external service is, first of all, going to return a dynamic set of users. So how do I know which user do I want to edit and see if it is working correctly? Or what if this list of users is empty? What if this list is very huge? What if the service is down for whatever reason? It could be a network connectivity issue or that service might be down. The result is my test is going to fail because of this, even though there is no problem in the intent of my test from edit and verify user details. So in this case, the approach that we are going to take for this is, I still have my system deployed, but instead of reaching out to the external service to get a list of users, I'm stubbing it out using Specmatic and the Specmatic server is part of my test environment. It is not going out over the internet. Now with this, I'm logging in. After login, my test is going to tell Specmatic what is the response that I want for this list of users that I want you to give back whenever you get a call to get list of users. So once the expectation is set that test is going to call get list of users. This is going to call instead of the external service, it is going to call Specmatic, which is going to return whatever the expectation that I had set in step number two. Based on this, I'm going to edit a specific user and I'm going to verify if everything is fine. And this approach scales very well because now I could say, I could very easily simulate how should this API get list of users work if the return list is empty, if it is extremely huge, or if that endpoint is down, it is timing out, whatever scenarios that I want to understand out of it. And based on the step number two, I will be able to validate all the different flows how my application needs to perform given these types of external responses that are coming in. Okay. So this is where we are something here. Yeah. So let's look at a quick demo of this. I have a local application running over here. In this application, I have set up, I will now need to again tool windows see the terminal window. I have a local application running, and I have Specmatic running over here as well on my local machine, which is stubbing out a particular endpoint with this if I run the test. I'll just start running the test and I explain what is going on. So now the test has started and I'm doing a live demo so fingers crossed everything works fine. So now in this case, my test has started running and the browser is of course opening up on a different window. So here it is the browser window. I hope you are able to see over here. And the test is running. While the test is running, I'll tell you what is happening with this test. The test is in this case using a APM web and over here, whenever I want to do any validations, I'm using apply tools to do the functional and visual validations for me. I don't have any assertions over here. Okay. As this test completes, what we'll see is in the apply tools dashboard, the results start coming in. So this is a test results which are coming in right now, but I'll show you the results from the earlier run that I did just before this session started. I ran one test, you saw the browser load up. The test ran once over there. However, in the apply tools dashboard, we are seeing there are 21 tests which have run. I ran just one test but I'm getting feedback from 21 tests. What are these 21 tests? I could group them based on the devices. We are seeing this is for Galaxy Note 3 at different resolutions. I'm running it in landscape and portrait mode. You see the behavior is slightly different over here. I'm also running it on desktop browsers and we are seeing the differences for that as well. Each test has actually seven screenshots that have been taken. If you open up any one of them and I highlight the differences because I ran this in the layout mode, we are seeing that from a structure of a page perspective, there is something different when I ran that same test again on this Chrome browser. And this was a difference. I could do root cause analysis and figure out what was the difference in DOM and CSS. Based on this difference, this seems like a genuine defect. Let me report this as a defect button missing, which can create a defect automatically in my defect management system, whether it's Jira or Rally or anything. And at this point, I could fail the test. In fact, I as a QA don't even need to look at this on my own. I run the test and the developers should be looking at this dashboard. The product owners should be looking at the dashboard to see how my product is behaving in the different context that the test has run in. But there is still one gap over here, right? I have not answered a question. I ran the test once. How am I seeing the results come up so many times? And that answer is because I use aptly tools, I am using the ultra fast grid. As soon as I can find out, there we go. In the ultra fast grid configuration, what I am doing is I am specifying how many different browsers or devices. And what viewport sizes, if it's desktop browsers, do I want to run that same test in. So essentially every eyes dot check call that I have is automatically going to render for each of these devices and browsers automatically for me. And hence I see the results come up over here. So what does this approach do for me, right? First, you're making a test automation intelligent. Remember, there is no magic over here. Magic is a very bad thing to have in test automation. You don't want to automatically rerun and find things out. You want to make your test very predictable, very realistic and deterministic. So make your automation intelligent, reduce a number of UI tests, use visual assertions instead of functional assertions and remove the external dependencies using intelligent virtualization. That will give you a lot more power in your test implementations. You reduce your UI test by moving whatever is important to the lower layers in your pyramid, hence get faster feedback. Hence you're also reducing the flakiness and written as due to UI changes or locator changes in our application. Use the visual locators because one line of code over there will give you functional and visual validation. We saw the button was missing over there and it was capturing that if I quickly go back over here, there was one thing which I wanted to highlight. Though this test is showing as fast, that is because of layout mode. If I see it in the strict mode, it is going to tell me each and every difference that was highlighted. So depending on the context of your test that you're doing, you will be able to use the correct algorithm and get the validations that you are requiring for. Also, you are able to scale seamlessly in a very easy fashion. All you need to do is specify your browser device configurations, portrait or landscape modes, whatever it might be. And using the ultra fast grid, you can scale it very seamlessly just by running the test once. There are a lot of different advantages of the ultra fast grid. I don't want to go through that right now, but the slides will be shared to you. Any questions you have, we can definitely talk separately about that. And more, most importantly, or to conclude, virtualizing the dependencies at runtime, not getting some standard static stub responses helps you test very different types of scenarios, which will give you confidence to make sure your requirements have been implemented correctly. There is no unexpected behavior. There are some set of resources that you can refer to. And with that, I'm going to stop. I see there are a lot of questions in the Q&A panel over here, and we do have some time to address that. So I'm going to stop my content and start going through the questions to see how I can help you. Okay, so there is a question. Is there any solution for dynamic for this problem? I'm sorry, I don't really understand that question. Can you add more context to that? And I'll come back to it. Gaurav is asking, in your opinion, how is specmatic a better choice than packed for contract testing? Gaurav, this particular question is answered really well on the specmatic website itself, but in a nutshell, this is doing complete decoupling of producers and consumers, and you have the ability to implement completely in tandem both sides, producers and consumers while ensuring your contract is always adhered to. There is backward compatibility check as well. And of course, there is a lot of different types of support that is there in specmatic. So I request you to take a look at specmatic.in website and get more details on that. And of course, we are connected separately as well, so we could always talk more specific details about the same. Atmaram is asking, does specmatic support dynamic stubbing, like the one resource in Typical Crud when you call list endpoint that resource is listed? Yes, it allows you to do dynamic stubbing, but remember, as I mentioned earlier, there are various different types of contract tests that can be run. Doing intelligent stubbing is one of the use cases of specmatic that is coming at the later side of the cycle. Before that, except there's contract tests, there's backward compatibility checks that you can run that you will be able to use in your test automation. But answer is, yes, specmatic does support dynamic stubbing. Gaurav is again asking, one challenge with stub is to sync stubbed with underlying service changes. Any approaches to ensure consistency is maintained? Do you recommend some live end to end test to get signals from live system? And that's exactly the point what specmatic helps achieve Gaurav is, and you should definitely attend the session later today by Joel and Sagar about how to automate the un-automatable. They will be talking more about similar things over there as well. But the overall contract-driven testing approach means there are various different types of tests that you need to automate to ensure whatever you have stubbed in your test environment is actually in sync with your contract spec itself. And that's the core power of specmatic because there's one contract spec which is used by everyone, producers, consumers at various different levels of the test pyramid to ensure we are testing against the same stubbed end point, the same contract, essentially. Santosh is asking, isn't stubbing external service also means we are potentially maintaining a parallel system by staying up to date with the changes? Not really maintaining a parallel system. In fact, you are testing early in your development and testing cycle, what your integration points need to be. So again, this is a much more involved conversation, but contract-driven testing, the way you would create your contract spec and the way the same spec is going to be referred to by the producers and consumers to run all different types of tests, ensures that you are building and testing against the same contract at all points in time. And that is the key. You cannot have a copy of the spec in one place for one type of test, another copy in another place. You are bound to fail this approach that specmatic allows you to take. There is one contract spec definition that is there in place and that is referred to by everyone. Any advice on loan testers on an agile team? How would you approach this with context and what layers would you focus on first? Trying to read this again. I'm actually not understanding the question very clearly. What do you mean by loan testers on agile teams? If it's an agile team, there is no loan tester. You're working in collaboration with the other roles as well. So I'm sorry, I don't understand the question completely. Maybe you could rephrase that. What if there are new changes in the external APIs with this way of testing and against a stubbing, wouldn't we be mimicking incorrect behavior? Same point as before, everyone is testing against the same contract stub. There is no copy of these stubs lying around. One stub is there in place. Producers, consumers both are referring to the same stub in one repository. So you could have maybe one git repository in your organization where all the contract specs are there and everyone including the consumer and producers are referring to that same stub. Any change that happens in the stub, immediately one or the other or both will crib about that this spec is incorrect. There's some test that is failing as a result. So the last question, is there some open source tool library for visual test automation that you would suggest? There are actually a lot of great tools out there open source as well. But remember, what is the criteria of your application that you need to do for visual testing? What do you need to test in visual testing? Is there any aspect of dynamic data that is coming across over there? What about the different screen sizes, viewport sizes, landscape portrait that might be there? Would it support web, native apps, hybrid apps? All those aspects need to be considered to say which tool is going to work well for me. So tool evaluation is a very important criteria should not be taken just based on someone saying this is the best tool. There is nothing like a best practice or a best tool. It has to be something that works really well for you and your team. So a lot of options there and understand what parameters you are interested in and which tool is going to help support the best for that. So with that, I will pause over here. Thank you very much everyone. Thank you. Thank you so much everyone for joining us. Thank you so much and then for sharing your experience today.


Other two techniques which are very often used with the ordinal data are called point-bicereal and phi-coefficient. So point-bicereal correlation is when one variable is like nominal scale, like dichotomous data and the other one is continuous data. There are many examples. For example, we want to see the scores and then male and female, what is the relationship between that if male are scoring more or the female are scoring more. So we will change the dichotomous data to zero-one ranking and then we will calculate the correlation by simply using the same method as the Pearson product moment correlation. So a variable with only two values is called a dichotomous variable or a binomial variable. For example, male-female, for example, college graduates versus non-college graduates. For example, older than 30 years or lesser than 30 years, younger than 30 years. So if you have one dichotomous variable in that the one continuous variable, you simply will go for the point-bicereal correlation. To compute the point-bicereal correlation, the dichotomous variable is first converted to numerical value by assigning value of zero to one category and the one to the other category and then regular Pearson product moment correlation is used. So we talk about our square value. Whenever we are using correlation, we usually determine the amount of variance explained by one variable in the other variable by calculating our square, which is also called a coefficient of determination. So similarly for all correlations, we used our square to find out or to predict how much variance is explained in the y-variable with the help of x-variable. So squaring the value of the point-bicereal correlation produces our square, which is exactly the value of our square we obtain measuring effect size of independent sample t-test. The sum of the bucking, maybe our square, we have calculated, our square simply tells you effect size amount of variance, which can be explained by the independent variable into the dependent variable. As with most correlations, the strength of the correlation is best described by the value of our square. Our square is called the coefficient of determination, which measures how much of the variability in one variable is predicted or determined or explained by the association of the second variable. So simply, when we calculate correlation, then we are interested in this that if our one independent variable is explained by x-variable in the y-variable, how much of the percent change is explained. For example, if my smoking or health and I find out the correlation in the smoking or health, and first, we have talked about the correlation value that ranges from 0 to 1. And if there is a negative correlation between them, the more we smoke, the more health it deteriorates. First, the correlation coefficient is minus 0.5. So now, when we look at the coefficient of determination, we will take the square of 0.5. So that will be 0.25. This means that because of smoking, the difference in health, the health when deterioration is coming, that is 25% or 0.25. Or this means that 25% variability is explained in the dependent variable, which was health with the help of just one independent variable which was smoking. So we use any correlation method in it. R-square, that is, coefficient of determination, we find out what it is. But sometimes, in correlation, your IV-DV does not happen. Simply, you want to find out the relationship of two variables. You are not necessarily specified that this is IV and this is DV. Sometimes, you definitely do it. Sometimes, you don't do it because correlation means that it just states that two variables are moving in the same or the opposite direction. You don't infer any causation or causality. Fourth and last technique, which we use a lot in correlation, that is 5 coefficient. What happens in 5 coefficient is that both of our variables acts or y are our dichotomous. Muscle male or female are smoking. So our gender and smoking are two variables. Gender is our dichotomous. And our smoking, smoker or non-smoker are also our dichotomous. So both are dichotomous variables. We want to find out their correlation. We will assign them numbers like point-by-serial. So we will assign one to zero and one to one. For example, male to zero, female to one. Smoker to zero and non-smoker to one. And then we will find out the relationship. 5 coefficient basically is a test of association. It tells us that both are in the same direction or there is no relationship or association between them. And when we convert them to zero, one, and the other variable to zero, one, then we apply the same formula, Pearson product correlation to find out the relationship between the two variables. 5 coefficient can be used to assess the relationship between two dichotomous variables. The more common statistical procedure is the chi-square statistic to calculate it. So we don't have to see the significance of it. We mainly use chi-square test to find out the relationship between or to find out the association between two dichotomous variables. But the technique or procedure behind it is our Pearson product moment correlation. So this was some overview about other correlational methods. You see that if our scale is an ordinal variable, it is very important to us. I say that if you really want to be a pro in the start, then mainly you have to understand the scale of the measurement because we have to go into your research and use what design we have to use, what analysis we have to use, how we have to find out the correlation. It is very important that you understand what is the level of measurement of our variables. So nominal-ordinal interval ratio, you must always remember, that will help you not only in deciding which statistical test to be used, but also for your research design, for your sampling to move ahead. It is important because this is the basic to decide how you're going to do your research.


In the eastern part of South America are two vast low areas, the basin of the Amazon in the north and in the southern half of the continent, a sprawling plain that is drained principally by tributaries of the Rio de la Plata. Of these, the greatest is the Paraná. This was the river which early Spaniards hoped would lead them to the gold of Peru, or the Rio Paraguay, or the Pilcomayo. Today within the branches of these three rivers is located the Republic of Paraguay. Tolar the Niagara, the Iguazu Falls form their giant arc just east of the Paraguayan border. This is the splendid site which greets the 20th century traveler flying from Rio to Asuncion, only a few minutes before he crosses into Paraguay itself. Almost as unchanged in 500 years as the thundering waterfalls are these Makka Indians, members of one of the few Aboriginal tribes of Paraguay which have remained unabsorbed. In remote areas in the western part of the country, they continue to lead a simple primitive life, clinging still to ancient rites and customs. This is charqui or dried beef. Fresh meat is cut into long thin strips, then hung out to be cured in the sun. Belts are woven as they were hundreds of years ago. Then in 16 too came Paraguay's greatest colonizers, the Jesuits. Many were killed by the Indians, but the work of others prospered. By 1768 the Jesuits had been expelled, but only after they had built 32 missions of brick and stone. Thus the new nation was gradually formed. Some missions failed. Yet among their desolate ruins, we see still traces of those unique Jesuit colonies, where for more than 100 years, Spaniard together with Native Indian created a self-contained economy and practiced communal living. Illustrating this thorough fusion of colonizer and Native are the people and town of Itagua. Typical of an overwhelming majority of the citizens of Paraguay, these people have in their veins both Spanish blood and that of the Guarani Indian, and they still speak both Spanish and Guarani. In the homes of Itagua, a traditional craft of the early Jesuits is still practiced. This is Paraguayan Lace. This Paraguayan Lace ranks easily with the best in the world. The Guarani word for this lace is Niantu Ti, which means spiderweb, Yerba Mate, or Paraguayan Ti.  When hot water is poured over these mate leaves, the result is an excellent and healthful beverage. On the east bank of the Paraguay River lies Asuncion, capital of Paraguay, and its chief center of population, industry, and culture. And since the river furnishes Paraguay's principal means of transportation to and from the outside world, the docks of Asuncion present a constantly busy sea. Their thousand mile voyage from Buenos Aires has taken these passengers as long as a transatlantic crossing from London to New York. In this business section of Asuncion, I transacted most of the commercial affairs of Paraguay. Here you will find offices controlling the nation's small, but steadily increasing export trade. Here, too, is the principal wholesale and retail market for imports. Scattered through other sections of the city, we find Asuncion's architectural and historical monuments. This is Francisco Solano Lopez, who led Paraguay in her disastrous war of 1865. Today, however, Paraguay's small but efficient army drills not for aggression, but defense. These military cadets are training for the officer's corps. Headquarters for Paraguay's expanding cotton industry is also located in Asuncion. And this particular mill with modern machinery sets a high standard for the future industrial development of the entire nation. Not two percent of the land is under cultivation. Yet, agriculture rather than industry forms the backbone of Paraguay's economy. Here, a typical countrywoman who has just spent the day selling her vegetables in the Asuncion market returns to her suburban home. This is typical of the average Paraguayan farm. Where on a small plot of land, the farmer can harvest a crop sufficient for his needs. The climate is mild, similar to that of Florida. The rainfall ample and the red clay soil fertile. Food is plentiful. There are no famines in Paraguay. The prosperity of Paraguay depends ultimately on the river, for the river is the country's only real link with the outside world. The cost of shipping goods from Buenos Aires to Asuncion by rail is about equal to the cost of shipping them to Yokohama. Even transportation via the Paraná, Paraguay river route is extremely expensive. Here aboard a shallow draft cargo vessel, we are moving upstream on the Paraguay toward a northern port of the Grande Chaco. Divided among Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, the Grande Chaco, or Great Plain of South America, is geographically unique. Its swamp lands and prairie stand in startling contrast to the rest of Paraguay. Paraguay, bisected by the river of its name, to the east gently rolling hills, to the west a low flat plain, the Chaco. From September to April is the season of rains. Great shallow ponds form. When the dry season comes, the standing pools evaporate into air and the sun bakes the earth to a dry salty crust. With extensive development, this riverless plain might become one of the rich regions of the world. But today most of it remains a wasteland, tough and forbidding as its cactus grows, and the thorny Palo Baracho or drunken tree. Until 1926, a colorful profusion of butterflies and birds had the lonely land all to themselves. In that year, however, a group of Mennonites from North America and Europe made a start in the colonization and development of the Chaco. After years of trial and sacrifice, they have succeeded in making the reluctant Chaco earth yield them a livelihood. With the aid of native Chulipi Indians, the Mennonites have developed a variety of crops. Here they are cutting the tassels from sorghum, a source of sugar and molasses. In spite of transportation difficulties, they are successfully marketing dairy products. From the point of view of the country's economic welfare, the Mennonites cotton crop is their outstanding achievement. But most significant of all is this. The Mennonites have proved that the Chaco wilderness can be tamed for man's benefit. In 1546, the Spaniards succeeded in transporting eight head of cattle into Paraguay. Today there are five million, raising over 35 percent of the entire country. Modern frigorificos or meat packing plants, the beef is boned and packed for export. Not only meat but tallow and highs are valuable byproducts of Paraguay's cattle industry. So tough it's called cabracho, meaning axe breaker. This medium-sized tree affords Paraguay her most profitable industry. Together with Argentina, Paraguay is responsible for almost the world's supply of the extract of the cabracho tree, the most important source of tannin. Stripped of its bark, the heartwood of the cabracho yields from 25 to 30 percent of this strong acid compound needed to tan leather. Workmen use the age-old principle of the lever to lift the heavy logs. Forests which are some distance from the river, two large corporations operating in the northern Chaco have constructed narrow gauge railways. One of these companies, an Argentine concern, makes its headquarters at the river port of Casado. Here workers in their families take the necessary precaution of sleeping under nets or insects thrive in the Chaco swamps and malaria takes a steady toll of the careless or the unlucky. Carpenters and builders prize cabracho as a tough durable lumber and they make with it huge wheels for those same ox carts used to haul more cabracho from the forests. As an investment in their future development, Paraguay is today spending considerable time and money in a war against illiteracy. In city nursery schools, more fortunate youngsters start their training early. This is in preparation for their standard primary education, which Paraguay plans to extend to all children between 7 and 14. Supervised play, the habits of cleanliness and a balanced diet, these will one day pay high dividends to the youngsters themselves and to their country. In government schools, these students are being trained as teachers. Here they are adding English to their knowledge of Spanish and Guarani. The babies receive their rightful share of attention too. With United States cooperation, the Paraguayan government has recently established clinics in areas which long existed without medical aid of any sort. Mothers trudge into these clinics from miles around to have their babies examined and prescribed for. In a nation where disease has long been a scourge, standards of health are now being improved. Visiting nurses are being trained, many receiving their instruction from nursing personnel recruited in the United States. A new hospital by now completed in Asuncion illustrates the nation's effort to improve public health. Visiting nurses, clinics, general hospitals with these three weapons, Paraguay should make significant progress. For an inland country like Paraguay, the airplane holds an exciting promise for the future. Motor highways are almost non-existent and transportation by riverboat is uncomfortable and slow. Even small aircraft such as this can make the flight from Asuncion to Concepcion a voyage of days on the river in little more than an hour. In the future development of the nation, its skyway should play an important part. One thing is certain, Paraguay has today the opportunity to achieve that success which has so stubbornly eluded her during the past. Her children and her people are strong of body and have shown a willingness and an ability to learn. And the land they live in has been blessed by nature with a mild climate and productive soil. A good start has already been made in education and health, in agriculture and industry. But her uninhabited undeveloped lands of the northeast and of the Chaco offer a challenge which must be faced and squarely met if Paraguay has to take her rightful place among the nations of Latin America. The ingredients for success are there, a good land and a good people. Properly developed and strongly directed, Paraguay has every chance to realize a sound and lasting prosperity.