But imagine somebody's on the fence about becoming a vegan. They're not really sure whether it's gonna be for them or not, and then they see what's happened here. This here, Alex, you're really losing me here, mate. You're really losing me here, mate. Hello everyone, welcome to another video. So CosmicSkeptic has uploaded a video clarifying his community post that I made a video about. Now that CosmicSkeptic has added some clarity here, I would like to do him the charity of responding to what it actually was and not make assumptions because you can't blame me for making assumptions because his post left many things to the imagination. But the main thing was I've been re-evaluating my ethical position on eating animals. So let's listen to Alex and we're gonna listen to Alex. Maybe offer some advice if I can or see how he approaches this because my whole thing was when you make a video, Alex, do not throw the animals under the bus because you have some personal health things going on and you're having some difficulties. So let's see how he approaches it. So as you can imagine, the past couple of weeks have not been particularly easy for me, but of course this is something that I expected when I made my community post announcement about consuming animal products. I expected that there would be a great deal of sadness and disappointment and hatred and anger and all of these kinds of things.  You've spoken about this issue on stage so poetically and then this post is the next thing we hear. But I kind of said that I saw it coming. So yeah, there's a few things that you were saying that kind of led me to believe that your ethical position was a little bit flaky and your position on veganism was not very strict. I'm basically just trying not to sensationalize this. I recognize that this kind of video can cause a lot of drama, bring a lot of attention, a lot of negative attention to the vegan movement, to animal advocacy. That's really something I'm trying to avoid. Well, I will give him that, that yeah, he's not trying to sensationalize this. He's not gonna say why I'm no longer vegan and why veganism is bad and why animals deserve to be killed for my taste preferences. He's not going down that route, which was something that I was hoping he wasn't gonna do because I've seen it before. Tim Sheaf, John Venus, I've seen this stuff. I've been a vegan now for nearly 10 years and an activist online for seven years and people come and go and they always sing from the same hymn sheet. But Alex here, at least, is coming from a responsible point of view. So I do think that he does, it's hard to say this, but I do think he does care about the impact of what he says in terms of how it harms animals and reflects badly on the vegan movement. So I'll give him that. I've been thinking a lot about how best to approach this whilst doing the least harm to animals and the least harm to the vegan movement as a whole. I'm still not entirely sure what that looks like. Of course, ideally, you would have wanted me to just stay totally plant-based, but I'm hoping to explain some of the reasons why I didn't do that. But crucially, and I should say this from the outset, even though it should be obvious, look, I'm not some kind of nutritionist. I'm certainly not a nutritional expert. And so I'm in a bit of an awkward situation here in that I feel I want to explain some of the problems that I was facing in maintaining a healthy plant-based diet, but I want to clarify that that shouldn't be informing your position on the viability of a plant-based diet for your cell. Another responsible thing to say, I am not a nutritionist. I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to this topic. Alex, why didn't you chat with someone who is a plant-based doctor or plant-based registered dietitian when it came to the issue that you're facing? Why didn't you reach out to them? If you cared about the rights, lives, suffering of non-human animals and this movement of justice for animals, why didn't you reach out to these people who knew about this topic a little more than you do before making a post like that that has probably done its damage? A lot of people have been sending me studies, in particular the American Dietetic Association study that being vegan is healthy at all stages of life, including pregnancy. As if this is new information to me, as if this isn't something that I was already aware of and wasn't citing myself, of course, the American Dietetic Association says that a well-planned vegan diet is healthful at all stages of life. The key point is well-planned there and my problem is not with the idea that every nutrient that's required to be healthy can be found in a plant-based diet. I think that it can. My problem is with the practicability of maintaining it for myself. Alex, if you have issues well-planning a vegan diet, you would have issues well-planning any diet. I mean, I'm no nutritionist, but I know that. You need to well-plan any diet. If you're having issues with eating a wide variety of whole food plants and getting enough sunlight, then supplementation is key and that just means taking a tablet here and there. I would recommend getting a blood test 100% to see if you're feeling a little off, maybe it's vitamin D, maybe it's B12, something like this and you take some supplements, have a multivitamin to cover your back and that would be if you're not well-planning any diet. So people have been asking, well, what's this magical nutrient that you can only get from an animal product that you can't get from plants? I wanna clarify from the start, there isn't one. Great, okay, thank you, Alex. There's no magical nutrient. Every nutrient that you need to be healthy can be found in an adequately-planned plant-based diet. As long as it's being supplemented. I just wanna talk to you about some of the reasons why I found it very difficult to maintain a healthy plant-based diet. Okay. I also wanna clarify that I really don't know what my diet's going to look like going forwards. I don't know if I'll continue to eat these foods or whether I'll be able to abandon them again in the future. I really don't know. So now he's saying that he doesn't know whether this is the be-all and end-all, whether he's made the, so he's a bit unsure about whether he's made the right decision. So we're still on the fence here a bit about this. So let's see where this goes. So I'm not trying to do an ex-vegan, anti-vegan thing.  Like I still want to encourage people to be vegan. I still want to encourage people, of course, to care about animal suffering and to help bring about the end of factory farming.  Just looking at your community post here, at the very least, even if I'm way off base and totally mistaken in my assessments, I do not wish to see people consuming a diet on my account if I've been unable to keep up that diet myself.  I still want to encourage people to be vegan. So that's not consistent with your community post. I still think animal suffering matters greatly. I still want to see the end of factory farming as soon as possible. All that happened was in practice in my life I found it difficult to maintain a healthy plant-based diet. That's it really. No, that is not it, Alex. So, although I'm going to be charitable to Alex in some parts of what he's saying, you did not say that.  Your ethical position shouldn't change whether in practice you have some health thing that's stopping you from adhering to your ethical position. No, and also what you said, I'm no longer convinced of the appropriateness of an individual-focused boycott in responding to these problems. You're no longer convinced. So in this video, you're just saying I struggled to maintain a healthy plant-based diet, but in your post, you were no longer convinced of the appropriateness of an individual-focused boycott in responding to these problems. You were just, it was excuse after excuse after excuse. I've re-evaluated my ethical position. I can't be healthy. I'm no longer convinced that boycotting works. So basically boycotting industries that torture animals, that murder animals, that violate the rights of animals is futile because individual boycotts don't work. That's what your community post was saying, bro. That's it really. I understand why that would annoy people or upset people, especially given that I'm somebody with a public platform. Alex, that's not, that's it. That's not what you said. You said a whole bunch of other things, bro.  You were very deliberate about that post. I'm sure you looked at that very carefully before you posted it, but you were just excuse after excuse after excuse. It was just healthy. Why don't you just say what the health problem was at the start to stop people from making assumptions, man, eh? But that's what this breaks down to. Now, for most of my life, I've had a particular set of health issues, just like most people have some health issues that I must stress are unrelated to veganism. They're not caused by veganism. I had them before I was vegan. It's nothing like that. But for instance, one of the most important relevant here is IBS or irritable bowel syndrome, which. Okay. So I'm glad Alex has prefaced his health issue with what he prefaced it with. He said that it's not caused by veganism. He had it before he was vegan. People have to varying degrees. I've suffered with it quite severely for most of my life. It's not been as bad as I've been getting older, but it essentially translates to having some severe stomach problems, as well as, I don't really know how to put it, but you need to make sure you have access to a toilet. For most of my childhood, one of the great miseries of my life was that I essentially wouldn't be able to go anywhere that didn't have an immediate toilet access because otherwise I'd be absolutely stuck out and the anxiety of just being there and knowing that that was the case would be enough to bring on the symptoms of IBS and I'd just be paralyzed by it. Now, that is no joke. I empathize with Alex here. Of course, sympathize within empathize. I don't know what the right word is because I haven't been in this situation before, but my father suffered with Crohn's disease and the complications of his Crohn's disease, they cut body parts out of him. They gave him immunosuppressant drugs. They were feeding him dairy for a tube at one stage, but his immune system was really low. His complications due to his Crohn's disease, my father had these complications for years and years, about four to five years before the complications of this disease took his life from him. So I and my dad had incredible anxiety around food and around there being toilets around and things like this. So, and I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that can empathize with you on that one. Alex said you had this issue before you were vegan and then you went vegan. If this issue is stopping you from being healthy as a vegan, I don't see how this issue wouldn't stop you from being healthy full stop with any kind of diet. That's if we were just going for a picnic or like hanging out by the river or something. I knew that if I was going to eat something and then go to these things, there was a good chance that I was going to run into quite a bit of trouble. And so what I would do is have a very restricted relationship to food in these instances. It meant essentially not eating or eating very minimally and safely whenever I was in one of these circumstances. So sometimes, you know, we'd be out and people would be getting food and people would notice that I'm not really eating anything or not finishing a meal that was in front of me or being really picky with my food. And a lot of the time I'd have to politely decline to eat various foods because I was just so worried that it was going to set off a reaction in my stomach. And one of the worst things about it is that it was quite unpredictable. I never knew when the stomach was going to flare up. So sometimes I'd be able to eat and be fine, but I didn't want to run that risk. I understand what he's saying here. And of course, I sympathize with Alex. That sounds like something that can probably ruin some people's like social lives. That's a terrible thing causing him suffering and anxiety and things like this. How would that be different eating any diet? My father had exactly what you're explaining. And he was an avid meat eater, cheese eater. He ate lots of processed food, my dad smoked, my dad drank, my dad did all the things like that he wanted to do around food though. He had food anxiety no matter what happened. Like no matter what diet he was eating. I just don't see how that pertains to a particular kind of diet. But let's keep watching. Maybe, look, again, I'm not a nutritionist. I'm not a health expert. I just don't see why eating, I don't know, low-fiber vegan food or some kind of vegan food would be different to eating non-vegan food in that event. And so in any of these kind of circumstances, I'd be restricting my eating very greatly. And this is something that I did before I was vegan as well. So I was well adjusted to it, but essentially if I was going out and doing something, like if I was going out to a field somewhere or if I was going to give a talk, I just wouldn't really eat or I'd eat very minimally and I'd eat very safe foods that obviously weren't particularly nutritionally adequate but would help me to get some calories in. And then hopefully after I'd finish whatever it was I was doing, we'd go somewhere more suitable and I'd be able to eat more food. Now this clearly isn't ideal, right? Like this isn't a particularly healthy way to live, but it was essentially a choice between that or just turning down all of these opportunities and not doing any of these things. I'm well aware of the fact that every nutrient we need to be healthy can be found on an adequately planned vegan diet. My problem is with the practicability of this. You can imagine in a situation like the one I've just described, how it can be difficult even to make sure you're getting the right amount of calories, let alone making sure that you're on top of your macro and your micronutrient balance. Alex, before we continue, I'm just gonna say that you would have that issue either way, vegan or not. Now, what you need to do in that case is because like, how do you think you're gonna get your macro and micronutrient? You said at the start of this, you're not a nutritionist. How are you gonna get your macro and micronutrient balances correct just in any diet? What's it like in any diet? Like micronutrients, what are you gonna get them from a bit of fish? Like what do you think is like so special about non-vegan food that it's gonna provide all your macro and micronutrients, even if you have these symptoms of IBS and you can only eat a little bit of food? Like, that's what I don't get. That's what I don't get. Now, here's a quick solution because my father wasn't the only person that I have been around who's had stomach issues and there's a great, I'm gonna put the product here. It's called Shuul. Shuul, now Shuul is a liquid or powder form of, it's like a supplementary food here but it's in a powder or a drink, it's great, it's vegan. But all, here, let me just read this out to you. All ingredients listed in Shuul powder and Black Edition Shuul are low FODMAP and for this reason can be used alongside a low FODMAP diet as part of your dietary routine if you have IBS. If you have IBS and an extremely busy lifestyle where convenience is a top priority, Shuul could form a part of your eating routine to ensure you're achieving a regular meal pattern and optimal nutrition. However, as tolerance to FODMAPs can vary between individuals which I'm sure Alex has his own personal experience and I'm not a doctor or a nutritionist or a registered dietician but I'm sure there's plenty of plant-based doctors, nutritionists are Dr. Alland. Let me just grab him up for you, Alex and for anyone else who's having these issues, he's Dr. Alland Desmond and there is his, come on. Give it to me, give it to me. There he is. Dr. Alland Desmond is a gastroenterologist, a gastroenterologist and there we go. I'm not even expert enough to read what he is but he's very good on gut health and stuff like this. So check out Dr. Alland. Shuul is a great product and Shuul, let's just look at the nutrients of Shuul here for a sec. If you're worried about getting nutrients, Alex, just look at the nutrition in these bad boys. Let's just grab that. You can get ready to drink too, ready to drink and I'm sure you can, if you've got some money for some junk food here and there, you've got money for Shuul. You shouldn't be eating lots of vegan burgers and high-fatty, crappy foods anyway and convenience foods if that's what you're concerned about anyway but let me just, Shuul powder, ingredients of Shuul, let's go. So it's got like every single amino acid you can think of here. What's this chocolate? It's got all different flavors as well. Now it's got, okay, here's just one here, vitamin D, it's got vitamin D, calcium, iron, potassium, vitamin A, C, E, K, total K, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, B6, folate, vitamin B12, biotin, pan-tonot, pantothenic acid, phosphorus, iodine, magnesium, zinc, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, moly, I don't even know that one. This nutrient here, molybendum is so good, I can't even pronounce it. Chloride chlorine and it's got omega-3, omega-6. It's even got medium chain triglycerides and lycopene and lutein and all this stuff like, bro, if you're worried about nutrition, you just get some fuel, bring it in a powder, you can take it with you when you contact me about France. You didn't mention that you had some type. If you just reached out to someone, like, look at the small amount of information I have on this, right? Imagine if you reached out to someone who's like an expert on gut health and who's sympathetic to your vegan philosophy that you hold and knows that you don't wanna consume animal products and just recommended you eat fuel and maybe they try to help you with the IBS and stuff, I don't see how that means that you should eat seafood and other animal products. Now it's important to stress that I don't have any health problems, at least to my knowledge, that are caused by veganism. Yeah, I mean, Alex, you seem uncomfortable here, mate, because you're going up against not just the American nutrition dietetics, like you're going up against a lot of science that just proves you wrong and a lot of anecdotes that just prove you wrong but its main thing is a lot of data that just proves you wrong anyway. But because of the fact that it is easier to get the nutrients that are required to be healthy on a non-vegan diet, which say what you like about it being easy to live healthily as a vegan, which I believe in many cases it can be and is, it is easier to not be one. Grabbing a scoop full of fuel and bringing it with you on your engagements when you're speaking engagements, right? A low FODMAP fuel, right?  What's easier than that? Really, I need someone that's like really good with health and stuff here to help Alex out. If he really wants help, if he really wants help and he really wants to stay involved with the animal movement and he wants to be vegan, Alex could just use a bit of guidance here, I reckon. And I hope this is genuine, Alex, and it wasn't to do with re-evaluating your ethical position and not thinking boycotts work and all this other stuff, even with my minimal amount of knowledge and nutrition and health and stuff. This is not really an issue that should like stimulate you to start violating animal rights and eating tortured fish again and things like this. I just don't see that here. I wasn't able to make it work. And so I ended up experiencing a lot of the typical symptoms that you hear in these kinds of videos. So these are the typical things that you hear about. I was experiencing fatigue, but at the same time as insomnia, I just wasn't sleeping properly. I was experiencing brain fog. I was unable to properly focus. Sounds like not enough calories.  If you're eating not many calories, you might have other issues that stem from that, like fatigue and brain fog.  Get your bloods done if you're having these issues.  If you haven't done that, then you're just basically self-diagnosing, which is not a good thing to do. You know how many people are deficient in vitamins that are not vegan? Most of the people who are deficient in vitamins are not vegan. You know, I was experiencing all kinds of things that I found it very difficult to know what was being caused by my diet. And crucially, as I say, this isn't something that's caused by veganism. It's not caused by a vegan diet. It would have been caused if it was caused by my diet by the way that I was doing this vegan diet. I'm glad that he admitted that, which is something I said in my video, his application of this diet. Sometimes it looks like, so it seems to me like he's just fighting his battle alone and he's not asking for any like guidance or help or like help about planning diets or supplementing and things like this. Like, it seemed like you really needed to get your blood work done there, man. And if you haven't had your blood work done, still, I would still go get your blood work done now. Like now, go get it done as soon as possible. There have been various things that have happened in my personal life that have at points led to something of a mental health crisis. I don't really not say here because I'm sorry, but I'm just not going to give you the details about that. And he doesn't have to give us details about some personal crisis that he's had that's caused the mental health issues. So, yeah, he doesn't have to.  But in terms of him having a crisis of mental health, because something has happened that he doesn't want to talk about, is fully within his right not to talk about that. And again, crucially, I'm not trying to say that this was caused by veganism, but look, there were days when I would be eating zero calories and periods where daily I'd maybe be eating between like zero and 700 calories. Well, Alex, like if that were the case, a little bit of fuel, this stuff is calorie dense, bro, with all these nutrients in there, vitamin D, everything. And let's look at the macro nutrients of this fuel stuff. I'm not sponsored by a fuel, by the way. I'm just saying, man, like check out this stuff, dude. It's liquid drink. It's a liquid drink. You can get these pre-made. You can get them even in the supermarkets, Tesco selling, just boom, grab it out of the Tesco. Convenient for you, bros. It's 400 calories per bottle, 400 calories. It's got 22 grams of protein. It's got a little bit of fiber in there, some carbs, and it's got a bunch of vitamins and minerals. Look at that. I will even personally buy some fuel, Alex, to help him out here. It's not eating because of something that's happened in his personal life, which is, you know, that's terrible no matter what diet you're on. But being essentially unable to eat, I found that if I could stomach anything, I wanted it to be nutritionally dense. I wanted it to be something that was gonna give me the best chance of, you know, improving my physical health. Something like fuel, all right?  Get that done and then see what's going on and have a doctor sit there and review it with you and look at it and say, okay, well, your iron's really low, or this is low, or that's low, or that's too high, or, oh my God, mate, like you need to do this, this, and this. But now you've just gone, I'm gonna start eating some seafood and stuff. I don't know whether he's gone to the doctor, by the way, maybe he did get a blood panel done, maybe he did, I'm making assumptions again, maybe he did figure out something was low. Maybe the doctor told him to start eating animals again without telling him that you can get vitamin D, vitamin B12 and vitamin, he knows you can get these stuff from a supplement. So he's been around long enough, so. It's really difficult to find a balance here between trying to talk about my experience whilst trying not to make it just sound like I'm making a bunch of excuses and trying to make you feel sorry for me. I'm not gonna be able to give you all of the details of certainly the mental health stuff that I was talking about. I know that people are upset and people are angry, but the amount of vitriol that I've received, I've seen people. So Alex has gone through some stuff, right, and he doesn't have to tell us about it, and I feel bad for him in that case, but I also am an animal rights activist and he came into the movement to defend animals. He has come out with flaky excuses in his community posts for eating animals again, and he left it up to us to make assumptions, right? And there was a lot more he said in this than just I've been having some health issues. It was like, so. But on this topic here about him having some horrible stuff happening to him, I don't wanna see that happen to Alex, and you know, I hope he's okay. He's gotta expect that a bunch of people who care about, the pigs are being gas chambered right now. Dairy cows are being raped and slaughtered. The calves are being bashed in the head to death. The last thing the animals need is someone who was defending them to come out and go, you know what, I've re-evaluated my ethical stance on eating them. That is the last thing the animals need. And no matter how hard you are doing it in your life, you know for a fact that these animals that you're eating, whatever they, if they see animals, are suffering horrible deaths on the deck of a boat being dragged out of the ocean, all right, so that you can eat them. You know that, all right? So of course we're gonna come out and think of the victims, all right? You're still sitting here in the UK as a privileged human being going through some stuff.  I know exactly what mental health issues are. I've been in the mental health ward before. I've been on antidepressants, antipsychotics, you name it, so I understand, right? But I also know a lot of animal rights people with mental health issues and I don't come out with statements like this. They have IBS, they might have Crohn's disease and they are vegan and animal rights activists. What you came out with was something a little different. And I saw this coming because of your rhetoric before that. If you were going through such a hard time, why are you on Michaela Peterson's channel throwing the animals under the bus and calling her a vegan by your standard? If she has to eat carnivore because of health, then she's a vegan, you know? Like that doesn't sound like, why are you doing all these speaking engagements, going through this horrible, horrible thing? That you sound pretty, you sound strong enough to put yourself through that, right, going through this horrible thing and putting yourself in these positions, but not strong enough to stay vegan for the animals or to look for a nutritionist who can help you find some fuel. You know, I just don't know, Alex. Like, although I do empathize with Alex, I'm gonna be charitable where I intuitively feel like I should be. I'm also going to be a little bit more, I've got some doubts. What I'm trying to do instead is get across the point that when I'm talking about the practicability of living a healthy plant-based diet, I'm not talking about the idea that a plant-based diet isn't or can't be healthy. What I'm trying to get across is that even if, in principle, it can be healthy and it's perfectly possible to be healthy on a plant-based diet, for various practical reasons, that might be something that's unattainable. Alex, you haven't met the burden of proof that it's unattainable. I don't think you've justified it being unattainable for some, for you. I just don't think it, I've known people to be in a much more terrible state than you and still maintain being a vegan. Like, so I just think it comes down to your commitment to want to live a lifestyle that is consistent with your ethical values. I don't think your ethical values were there anymore. That was my thing. I think you didn't have the ethical values, so therefore you were like, well, why would I even try when I could just eat animals? And also being completely misled into the point where you think eating animals will solve your problems or your health issues is, I just don't see how you would come to that conclusion. When there are many plant-based ways to help you get nutrition, there are people right now with Crohn's disease who do quite well as a vegan. Anyways, I'm not an expert on this topic, so we're gonna just keep moving along. To not recognize that, I think is a mistake and I think it's gonna do harm. What do you mean it's going to do harm to not recognize that it's unattainable to be healthy on a plant-based diet? You haven't even justified your own situation. Like, it seems to me like you didn't try enough. Like, if that were me, an animal rights activist, having some health issues, I would get my blood work done, my blood panel done, and I would see what I'm doing wrong in my life and I would try to fix it. And I'd look into these things and I would find a way. There would be no way that I would just, Man, like, I'm just gonna start eating animals because there's something about eating animals that's gonna solve my problems. And on that point, I should talk about some of the reactions that I've received just from the statement that I put out. But, I mean, you don't need me to tell you that there's been a great deal of hatred and vitriol. You can see it for yourself. Of course, what you can't see is the things that people are messaging me privately. Maybe I can show some examples on the screen.  If we're in older times, I'd be calling for a public hanging, my God. You'll forgive me if I'm not gonna give you the details, certainly not of my mental health experiences when I know that there are people out there who are just waiting to essentially make content out of this. Alex, of course, I'm making content out of this. It's not, it's begrudgingly.  I had to address that as, I had to address this because you have a much bigger following than me and what you said has actual harm on animals.   Of course I have to stick with defending animals here, Alex. And I hope you understand that. I don't care if you don't understand, of course you would understand it. I don't agree with people just coming out. Well, look, I'm gonna say this, right? What you're doing to animals is, it's egregious, it's cruel. You think it's justified. Other people think it's not justified, all right?  That's what I was seeing there. Now, some of the comments are, don't really know what to say about some of those comments. That's not the way I would address this, but you've got a lot of people who are angry and traumatized. They have witnessed trauma from seeing what happens to the animals that you have re-evaluated your ethical position on eating in your community post. So you can understand, you left that quite open for people.  And some people defend animals in a apologetic manner, other people defend them in a relentless, unapologetic manner because they've had enough of people coming into the movement, proclaiming to care about this issue, and then throwing the animals under the bus because they're too flaky to find out if they have some deficiency, they're not rectifying, or if it's something they're doing wrong, or some other issue, they change their mind one day, right? Or activists, and they change their mind one day.  Animal rights activists are sick of it. Where is that principle, that strong principle? You lost it before you made that post. Don't try to say, oh, look at this, look what the vegans are doing now. They're attacking me because I've got this, because I've just made this post. That's all I did. No, it was the impact of that post that it had. We're fighting a justice issue right now, all right? And there's so many carnivores, and you're up there cucking to Michaela Peterson.  It's like, pick a side, bro. You know what I'm saying? But, yeah, like, don't say, oh, the vegans are being mean to me now. You've seen my video, okay? Yes, you're gonna have some people, every movement has the relentless, unapologetic antagonists, okay? Every movement has them. And we're talking about animals being decapitated, suffering in gas chambers, stabbed to death. I don't have to tell you what we're talking about here. It's very, very, very serious.  I was once, you know, I was once against child abuse, but I've decided that I've re-evaluated my ethical position on abusing children, and now I'm gonna abuse children again.  Come on, mate, you have to, if I ever said this, I mean, I wouldn't, but if I did, you know what's gonna happen? The same thing, so you ain't special. You're not unique. I've been doing YouTube a long time. Like, I've built up a thick skin to this kind of thing. I can deal with mean comments, but I've had a lot of people reaching out to me to check that I'm okay. You know, people seeing the responses and messaging me to be like, man, like, are you doing all right? I mean, this looks horrendous. You know, I was considering reaching out to Alex. I thought I'd make a public YouTube video because I was kind of losing faith in Alex anyway to when I seen a bunch of his videos. And I didn't respond to him straight away. I did do a lot of my responding in the video I made about Alex. He came out and made a community post, I'm gonna start eating animals again without reaching out to me. I wasn't gonna go see if he's all right. I needed to respond to it, right? I thought, you know, I'm gonna respond to it. I begrudgingly did. I thought, God, I wish this could just go away because of the impact this might have on animals, but I come out to defend animals, right? There was no, hey, Joey, man, do you know any plant-based doctors that can help me with this? I've got IBS, I've got problems. I would have kept it completely serious. I would have signed an NDA for you, bro. You know, don't victimize yourself in the face of this, mate, please. And a lot of it has been horrendous. But as I say, I can deal with it. The thing that I want people to be careful of here is like, how is this gonna look to other people? Oh, you're worried about the optics, cosmic skeptic.  How does that look? You're worried about the optics of people attacking who they consider to be now an animal abuser. You cared more about what that looks like compared to what your community post looks like. Like, I still want to encourage people to try veganism. You don't try veganism, Alex. You don't try it. That's what you did. I tried veganism. It's like an experiment. I tried veganism. It's a justice movement. You're either against animal rights or you support animal rights, all right? There's no trying veganism. This is a movement that it's not gonna go away because you left. I promise you that. I still want to encourage people to join the movement against animal suffering, against factory farming. We're not just against animal suffering and against factory farming. We're against animals having their rights violated, all right? So it's an animal rights movement. And it was always an animal rights movement. Funny that veganism was founded on the principle of animal rights, okay? So yeah, it's not some utilitarian movement and we just care about suffering.  But imagine somebody's on the fence about becoming a vegan. They're not really sure whether it's gonna be for them or not. And then they see what's happened here. This here, Alex, you're really losing me here, mate. You're really losing me here, mate.   I wasn't really sure whether opposing gas chambers was really for me. But then I seen someone be mean to someone who decided to eat these pigs out of this gas chamber. So I thought, you know what? They're gonna be really mean to me if I oppose gas chambers. So I'm not gonna oppose gas chambers, mate. You do not know what you're talking about.  Because that is hilariously dumb. Imagine being in the times of slavery when, and yeah, I know you're going through stuff here, mate, but now you're overstepping the line. Imagine going through the times of slavery when, and it was like, you know what? I would join the abolitionist movement, but I might just stay supporting slavery because you've seen how mean those abolitionists get when he stops supporting slavery and then go back to supporting slavery. They get really mean. So I don't know. I'm gonna stay supporting slavery, actually, yeah. They see somebody who says, look, this wasn't working for me for various reasons and I need to let you know about that and seeing this kind of response, seeing this kind of this hatred and unforgiving vitriol. That's not what you said, Alex. You didn't say it wasn't working for me. You said I'm gonna be, I spent, for some time, I've been reevaluating my ethical position on eating animals, but what you will not know, which is something people have also noticed, but what you will not know is I've also been struggling privately to maintain a healthy plant-based diet. So these two things came together, which came first, the chicken or the egg, remember? And you also said that boycotts don't work.  What is that person gonna think? They're gonna think I obviously don't want a part of this because is that gonna be me if I then end up changing my mind? So I joined the anti-racism movement, right?  Like, you know what? I'm never joining an anti-racist movement ever again. Like, this is what you sound like, bro. You're forgetting this is not a diet that you try. You keep jumping between it being a justice issue and a diet that you try. It's really, mate, yeah, you're losing me here. I understand the anger. I understand the disappointment, but believe me, it's not a good look. This is what a lot of people do, like, back off, man.  This isn't a good look for your movement, man. This isn't a good look. Bro, you're gonna get attacked by animal rights people if you start supporting the violation of animal rights again.   And it would be justified, wouldn't it? Now, I'm not saying everything everyone said is okay. I'm just saying that you have to expect that when you go against the movement that's there to protect animals and you start making posts on whether it's okay to eat them. Not a good look. And a lot of people have said, look, you know, it's so much worse because you've got this platform, but, you know, if you're commenting this kind of stuff underneath that platform, all of these thousands of people are gonna see your comments. Alex, you've got way more moral culpability than the people commenting have. Don't even try to compare it. So, of course, there are still gonna be people who think that this is inadequate. It's inadequate because now you're trying to put the blame on the people in your DMs because they're being mean to you when you're, you know, that's why it's inadequate, mate. And it's also inadequate because I could do five minutes of research and find nutritionally adequate meal replacements that are low FODMAP that could potentially help you with your nutritional requirements. And it took me a small amount of time and you could have asked any nutritionists about this. You know what I mean? So that's another thing. And if you're having trouble with IBS, right, you're gonna have that same trouble no matter which diet you choose. And if you had all these symptoms, why didn't you get a blood work done?  I'm gonna start eating animals again. There's something in fish that I can't get from a supplement. What is it? I don't know. There's no magic, so you start off, there's no magical nutrient that you can't get from a plant-based diet. And then you go, well, you know what? My solution to all these ailments is I'd better not be vegan. What I really wanted to do is just expand on my post and say, look, this is the experience that I've had. It's not that I think that you can't get all the nutrients you need from plant-based sources, as some people have assumed, and quite understandably, that I meant. It's not what I meant. I was talking about the practicability of maintaining such a diet and that you shouldn't come to me for nutritional advice. We definitely won't and I implore anyone not to. And I wouldn't come to you for any kind of advice, really, because it seems like you're all over the place. It seems like you've got some issues going on. It seems like you're doing a little bit of, like, switching the blame here onto people who are angry, that you've gone back to eating the victims that they are defending. It seems like that you haven't done enough due diligence with it when it comes to your own personal health. Look, personal health is a very touchy subject. I get it. But, mate, if you really cared about animals, you'd get blood work done and try to get that solved. So let's keep going. But I'm not trying to offer you some kind of advice here. One thing that I said at the end of the statement that I put out was that I was sorry, especially to people who'd become vegan activists or advocates on my account. And a lot of people misunderstood that. I'm not sorry that I've turned people vegan. I'm not sorry that I've made people advocate for this cause. I'm just trying to say that I'm sorry to them for the disappointment that they might and do feel because of what I'm doing here. I'm not sorry that they've become vegan activists. Yeah, I thought that as well at the start, but then I actually changed my mind on that. I thought that maybe I misinterpreted him, so I did say that in the video. But that's not the only thing you said, Alex, that you were sorry about. I'm especially sorry to those who are now vegan activists on the account of my content. You actually said, I do not wish to see people consuming a diet on my account if I haven't been able to keep up to that diet myself. That's what you said as well. So you didn't even want people to be vegan. And in this video, you're saying maybe you should be vegan. So which one is it? All right, I've got my own personal health issues just cause I can't be vegan. That doesn't mean you can't be healthy as a vegan, right? But here you're saying I do not wish to see people consuming a diet on my account if I've been unable to keep up that diet myself. Two inconsistent things. Alex, you should review this stuff before you put it out. And I hope that vegans don't see me as their enemy on this front. Like I'm hoping we can still work together in our advocacy here. I think honestly, that would make you a huge hypocrite, but I still think you could help. If you could help us abolish this industry, I do think you need to speak to someone to do with your health stuff. I don't think you've been getting good advice if you have been getting advice. Thank you for your time. Thank you for listening. I didn't really know how to begin the video. I don't really know how to end it. I can only say thanks for listening. Thanks for at least trying to understand. I'm gonna talk to the camera. Alex, I appreciate you making that video. I appreciate you not throwing the animals completely under the bus with that video. You seem confused. Your video's inconsistent with your community post. I'm glad that you didn't go full anti-vegan. It's much different to what I've seen with other people's ex-vegan videos. So it seems like Alex is still on the fence about this and what he's gonna do. I don't know. But yeah, it seems like he's tuned.  He's listened to everyone's videos. I think he has listened to comments and videos. So look, Alex Huell. I'm not sponsored by Huell. Blood panel. Someone who can help you. Dr. Alan Desmond in the UK. Fantastic. Tell him Joey Carves from Recommended You. And look, let's see how this evolves. Yeah, I hope that what you got going on in your personal life gets better soon. Yeah, you were such a good voice for animals, mate. You were such a good voice for animals.  You gotta have some rights in there. But anyway, that's my video. That's my response. I only responded to it. Well, I'm gonna respond to it because I'm an animal rights activist and one of the biggest animal rights platforms in the world, you know, so I had to address it. I'm sure Alex knows that. Let's get back to defending the animals.


Legacy versus blended retirement. Which retirement system is right for you? Imagine that this represents the path of your military career and retirement. On the left is the legacy retirement system. On the right, the new blended retirement system, or BRS. The legacy system has served the DOD well since the late 1940s. BRS, however, provides additional options to attract and manage a military force in an evolving global economy. It goes into effect in January 2018. How does it affect you? Let's take a look. Everyone currently serving as of December 31, 2017 will be grandfathered under their current retirement plans. No one will be automatically switched to the BRS. Everyone who enters the military on or after January 1, 2018 will be automatically enrolled in the new BRS. But some of us who are currently serving will have a choice. As of December 31, 2017, if you are active duty and have served fewer than 12 years, or are a member of the National Guard or Reserve with fewer than 4,320 retirement points, you'll have a choice to enroll in the BRS or remain covered by your current plan. Now, let's take a closer look at how opting in will work. If you're serving in the military as of December 31, 2017 and have fewer than 12 years of service, or for National Guard and Reserve members, if you have fewer than 4,320 points, you'll take mandatory BRS opt-in training in 2017. In 2018, you can then choose between enrolling in BRS or staying with your current system. The BRS may not be right for everyone, but based on your circumstances and your career goals, it may make sense to switch. There are numerous resources available to you. Online training, the BRS resource webpage at militarypay.defense.gov. The BRS comparison calculator, your installation's personal financial managers and counselors and military one source. Legacy versus blended retirement, which retirement system is right for you?


Does New Zealand take enough refugees? I mean, what do we take 750? Well, we take 750, but we've actually been well below that for the last few years. Yeah, so why is that? I honestly am not 100% sure. I think the breaks have gone on a little bit. I mean, Christchurch had a bit of a play in it.  Well, not the people that I see in the positions that they are in. And many of them are actually in real, I mean, obviously in desperate need, but they're also, many of them have to get out of their countries because they're educated and they dare to stand up and say, you know, this is wrong, and then they had to flee. And I actually think that our refugee population has actually done New Zealand a service rather than a disservice. And I think people mix up the other refugees that often come here and get in and stay rather than the pure refugees that we take on. I mean, surely we could increase the 750 quota to, you know, by 10? Well, yeah, I don't know the... all the costings around it. We certainly do a whole lot more for our refugees.


Thank you for staying with us at Steel Plus Politics and my name is Nyam Ghul Aghgadi. Right now we'll be looking at the inclusion of persons living with disabilities in the political and electoral process in Nigeria.  However, most countries of the world have moved from such discriminatory practices to an inclusive society for persons with disabilities. The population of persons with disability in Nigeria, which is about 30 million, is higher than the entire population of five countries in the West African sub-region. Unfortunately, Nigeria is one of the major countries in Africa where little or no attention is paid to the plight of persons with disabilities. Hence, there are exclusion from governance, electoral process, healthcare, education, employment, and social community life. Joining me to discuss this is Comrade Louise Aouta, President, CEO, Network of Women with Disabilities. Louise, thank you for joining us. You're welcome. Thank you for joining us. Louise. When I hear Louise, the name Louise, I think of Superman's girlfriend. That's by the way. Okay. Well, a lot of promises were made for the 2023 elections. Some of them, a lot of people are complaining about, how was it with the disability or the people living with disability community? Was there inclusion as what you expected or were there things that still needed to be done and were not done? Yes. Inclusion of persons with disabilities in quality is a gradual process. For over 20 years, we advocated for the passage and signing of the Endurance Disability Act, in 2019, that was achieved at the beginning of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities talks about the right to participate, to vote, and to be voted for. Having said that, disability inclusion in the electoral process is a gradual process, because where we were 10 years ago is not where we are right now. We have moved, we have made some progress, and we have recorded some milestones. 2023 elections, for me, I'm disappointed with INEG. I have to say the truth, because they promised us citizens with disabilities that they are going to deploy assistive devices for those with visual impairment, for those with alginising, hearing impairment, to be able to vote independently. Assistive devices like tactile ballad papers, magnifying glasses, for those with alginising, and other devices that could aid voters with disabilities to be able to vote independently. Some out of the 200 plus assistive devices that INEG promised to deploy, the number that was able to assess those assistive devices was nothing to write home about. And some polling units were not accessible. They were not inclusive, promised by INEG. Yes, INEG is doing well. Now we have a department on gender and inclusion of persons with disabilities, but we need to do more. INEG need to work with organisations of persons with disabilities to be able to give us our rights as citizens of this country who have the rights to vote and to be voted for. So for me, I'm not happy with the result that was recorded by the inclusive friends association and South Africa, the Arduino Foundation Africa, who were at the station, they monitored, they observed and they also evaluated the 2020 elections. I got this report from them. Thank you. Say that where we were 10 years ago, it's not where we are right now. What are some of these things that you found in this election that were not available in previous elections? Let's begin to see the marked improvement that they have made, even though it was not enough, before we go into what they should have done. Yes, just like I said in my opening statement that where we were 10 years ago is where we are right now. 10 years ago, there was no Nigerian disability acts, 10 years ago, there was no national commission for persons with disabilities, 10 years ago, there was no a department in INEG for gender and inclusivity. Right now we have it. 10 years ago, there was no policy or the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the electoral process. So these four instruments I just mentioned are legal rights for persons with disabilities to try. First, we have our disability act. Second, national commission to be able to manage our affairs. And thirdly, the department that we have in INEG to also manage our issues and our activities. And lastly, the addition of other policies by INEG. We have to invite this period of implementation. Without it, we won't be able to achieve those rights. We will be able to go back home and feel excited that yes, INEG has done well. Today, I was able to vote independently, the QP course accessible to me, the ballot papers were accessible to me, and other devices that INEG needs to provide for citizens with disabilities. Thank you. I have been following the struggle by people living with disabilities over the years to make sure that some of these things that you have mentioned that the government has done, INEG has done and everything, comes to fruition. But now that these things have been done, like you said, the spirit of implementation needs to be imbibed, what plans do you have as people living with disabilities to make sure that these documents, these commissions, these things that they have done in your favor begin to work in your favor. Because as it stands, my people say, if your apparel that you used to dance doesn't do what it's supposed to do, you use your hand and make sure it does what it's supposed to do. So how are you going to play your drum to make sure that the government and all the relevant people dance to the tune that you are saying, that you are playing? Yes, we need to keep advocating, we need to keep saying it, we need to keep speaking up. We need to keep reminding the government about their promises, their agenda, the what are the news do you use to remind them and to talk to the government? Yes, we need to tell the government to appoint us, because persons with disabilities have gone to school, we have graduates, we have educated people amongst us that can be appointed as ministers, as commissioners, as DGs of different MDAs. We have the capacity, we have the competency and we have the character to be able to do extraordinary things in public offices. So I'm appealing to government and key actors to appoint persons with disabilities, to believe in us, to engage us, employ us, educate us, those that have not gone to school should be given free education or scholarship to study within or outside the country because if we are not educated we cannot do politics, we cannot join politics and involve actively. So we need to put these things in place, appointive and elective positions when persons with disabilities come out to ask for your vote, support them. In the 2023 elections, I think only 30 people with disabilities came out to aspire for elective positions. This needs to be encouraged, we need to see more of them because as it is, we are at a 0% level of participation in Nigerian politics.  But in this country, the level playing ground is not the same. So we want to see equal opportunities, we want to see our rights being given to us. We want to see inclusion in the political spectrum. Thank you. Okay, it goes beyond just asking for government to give you what some people will call handouts. But what do you do to encourage your people to build the character that will be good enough to get all these rights that you're talking about? What do you do to encourage people to come out to do what they need to do and ask for their rights? I'm interested in that. Do you build character within your sphere? Do you encourage people? Do you do what you need to do for people to come out and be themselves the way they should be? Yes, but for me, I don't think I agree with this statement. We have persons with PhDs in the disability community. We have doctors, academic doctors in the disability community. We are educated. So we have to be encouraged when we come out. I ran for elections in 2019 in the FCT for House of Presentatives, 2023 slash 2023. I also ran in Kajumina State for House of Assembly in Kaurak Estates to be precise. What people see is disability before the ability. They see my wheelchair first before noise outer. I will never forget when I was on a live radio program just like this one we are having, when someone called in and said, Madam, go back home and sleep. You don't have anything to offer. When we were at an interview section with other two male candidates, I was only female during that interview section. So why did he feel that I should be the one to go back home? Why didn't he tell the other two male candidates to go back home?  Is it infrastructural barrier? Is it attitudinal barrier? Is it inadequate funding? Is it ethnicity? Coming from Kajumina, lived in Abujamari to Apoibo. All these diverse elements are stopping many of us to try in the political arena. So we need to remove these barriers. All these institutional barriers and other, even language barrier, because I remember when I ran in the FCT, I couldn't communicate with some of the baggy people at the grassroots. They did not understand English and I did not understand their language. So all these things need to be removed and be able to give a level playing ground for aspirants with disabilities or candidates with disabilities. Okay. It means not just the government. All the people need to do more. The people living with disabilities will do more. Government will do more. Citizens will do more. It's a collective responsibility to make sure that we get to that point where every citizen has equal rights to vote, be voted for, to go to school and to enjoy the basics of life. Thank you so much, Louis Outer, for coming on the programme and sharing more light on some of these challenges. And we do hope that going forward, whatever has been done in your favour will be implemented also in your favour. Thank you for coming on the show. You're welcome. Thank you. Okay, we've been talking with Comrade Louis Outer, President and CEO Network of Women with Disabilities, and we were X-raying what went on in the 2023 election and the inclusiveness, whether it was as much as they dreamed of. We'd like to draw the curtain on Plus Politics today on that note, hoping that everybody will play their part to make sure that we all are enjoying life the way we need to enjoy life as citizens of Nigeria. My name is Nyam Gul Aggaji. Let's do it again tomorrow. Bye.


All right, so welcome everyone. I'm Betsy Coe and I have Aowyn Walker, wiki tree forest elf and Steve has been regularly coming to these as well and it's very experienced wiki treeer. So I guess the first thing would be to see what questions you have, because this is really for you. So before I have things prepared, but before we jump into that, definitely questions. What if the things you've prepared will answer my questions? Well, what are you going to do? People always seem to be very interested in seeing a profile created from scratch. So I was going to do that with both. I don't know if you've seen in G2G that we have a new profile creation system that's a data testing right now. So it's not hugely different, but a little bit. I've been doing it all day with the challenge. So I can give my feedback. Yeah. So I'm actually prepared to create two profiles. One with the old system and then the other with the new system. One, I have a photo that I can upload. People always seem interested in seeing how that's done, talking about categories and stickers and also a little bit about the WikiTree browser extension. So that is what I have. What does that address your questions or what? Well, all that sounds wonderful. I will be wrapped. And if it's going to include the, oh, and I'm at a loss for the word. If I import... Jetcom? Yeah, the data that comes along with the Jetcom has a name and I can't think of the name. That compare? The what? That compare? Yeah, that might be it. When I first got on WikiTree, I did like dumped my entire tree on there and then I had to go through profile by profile and obviously I didn't get through everything. And it was very overwhelming. And I have all this stuff on my laptop. I use, what's this thing called? Family Tree. It's magic. I use it. So I've been trying to figure out if there's a way for me to export just one person and then import that one person and have all that data automatically populated. But it doesn't look to me like I can do it one by one. I have to do like a whole Jetcom file. And export from WikiTree or export from RootsMagic? Export from RootsMagic and then upload to WikiTree. I think you can do just one person. I have RootsMagic. I'll try while you guys talk. Okay. That would be the big question that I have for this evening.  But sure. But that being said, there's certain benefits to uploading one profile at a time, making sure that the data is accurate and Jetcoms can corrupt a little bit when they get uploaded to WikiTree. So if you are gonna do that, do WikiTree. So if you are gonna go one at a time, we would probably recommend just going into the actual profile editor or profile creator and doing it that way. Might save you some time because then you'll already have some stuff up at that point. Yeah. I think that would be a little bit faster than doing a Jetcom export and import each time. Okay. So do the profile creator as you're about to show me how to do. Right? Because then you have full control over what you put on that profile at that point. When it's a new person, yeah. Okay. Okay. And Stuart, what's on your mind? Specific questions that we can help you with? As I just wanna see how you're presenting the information. At one point in time, I was working on a training program for the Wales project, but that's got sideline but I'm still interested in, as a grader, I see questions all the time from new people that write to me directly afterwards after being greeted and asking a lot of questions. So our help pages have a lot of information but they get really rather technical at times. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.  That's wonderful. It's such an important service for the community. All right. Well, we'll just welcome Sally and then maybe I'll jump into creating a profile. Answer her, Alice's question real quick. Yeah, go for it. So I just tried in Roots Magic and if you decide to do that, you are able to just do one person at a time. Oh, you're muted, Alice. Thank you for trying that. That's much appreciated. And if you need help, I can write out the steps for you. Okay. Great. Hello, Sally. Welcome. Hi. Hi. We're... When I was eating myself, I was eating my dinner. Oh. No worries. We were just about to, we were just finding out what everybody's questions were. My question, I had a question. I had a hard time finding you. Oh, okay. I had to go to the wiki tree and then ask the question to where this meeting was because I didn't know what the link was. I see. Okay. Yeah. We put up a G2G post the Sunday before these new member zooms happen and the zoom links are always in that. I think that's maybe what I finally found. Yeah. If you follow the tag new members, then you'll automatically see that post in your daily feed. Oh. Yeah. Yeah, new members. So it's new underscore members. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you found us. Me too, because I missed the last one because I couldn't find it. Oh, dear. Okay. I was afraid that I was going to have the same problem tonight. Okay. And do you have any specific questions about your wiki tree, Ying? No, I think I had finally figured out how to do the footnotes. Okay. The source. Yes. Inline subjections. Yes, the inline. Yes. Great. Okay. All right. What we are going to do is I'm going to create two profiles from scratch. One using the traditional way for profile creation and then the other using the new profile creation method which is in beta testing now. Ayo, any information on when that's going to officially switch over or? No, we're still getting feedback and just giving people a little while to test it out. Sure. Okay. No. Okay. Cool. All right. Well, I'm going to share my screen. So we're going to create, this is one of my grand, great grand uncles. And as you can see, I only got as far as creating his profile but not his wife or his four children. So I thought we could create his wife, Emily. She's actually got a very distinctive name, Emily Rosina Ruth Bignell, which is, yeah. And also helpful for identifying her in the records. So knowing that we were going to create this profile on the spot tonight, I sort of went ahead and did some leg work in this Google doc. So, what you would do is go to edits and then over here, I've got, I'm sorry, I got to move all of you so that I can see what I'm doing. We're going to add a spouse. So far as I know, she's, sometimes people you go to add may already be on WikiTree, but let's first type in all her information. So we got Emily Ignell. Her married name was Redwood. Her birth date was August 7th, 1897, certain. That date, I don't have a day, but I do know that it was in June 1970, female, certain. Okay. And then the system is going to tell you, okay, these are two possible matches, but I know none, these are not correct. If the name was extremely close, I would definitely take a look. And I'd also make sure to check it, to just to verify, yes, I've examined this and rejected this. Middle names, I assume I can put in multiple. Little, yeah, Rosina. Ruth, okay. And she did go by Rose. Birth location, Cardiff. Death location, Swindon Blastisher. Her marriage date. So you want to put in as much of this as you have available. January 1919, certain location. You don't know where she got married? Not off the top of my head. I didn't make note of that, but. But you can always come back to it later. Yes, I can come back to this. This is all, the only thing that's really hard to undo and even that is not impossible is the last date of birth. And that can be corrected if necessary. Okay. And the email address would be if this was a living person and then they would receive an email and be invited to become profile manager of their own profile. I don't have any notes. So now I'm gonna go to here. I'm going to use, since I'm creating her as the spouse of an existing profile, I'm gonna use the marriage record to create her profile. So you're not gonna build a small biography in what's the notes section then? I don't generally do that. I mean, I do this and then I work within the bio text box. Okay. Yeah, after it's been created. Yeah, exactly. I do my inline citations in the notes section. Oh, okay. Yeah, I suppose. Well, I don't do, I'm not gonna do that for a specific reason. Right, for this purpose today. You'll see why I'm not gonna do it in a second. Okay. And ta-da. There she is. Profile successfully created. If you look up here, you can see that her wikitree ID is bignell832. And now I can get out of that. I do like to try to at least put birth, marriage and death in initially. So I'm going, there's the marriage registration. I'm going to add in, there's birth, I'm going, and then I'm going to add in death. Okay, so the document that you're working from. Yes. That's a word document. It's just a Google doc that I, yeah. Okay, but it's a text doc. Where did, what created that format of that information? Okay, I will show that to you. Okay. Because that's the Sorcerer app, which is an extension. Okay, I'm just getting ahead of that. Yeah, no, no, that's, so I'll show you. Actually, yeah. Okay. Let me write this one. Subtension. Okay. Okay. So there, and before I proceed further, let's preview. And then all you can see, I've got a little formatting issue. So I go back up here. And I think if I just... The X space should work with that. Yeah. Just to make it pretty. And let's see if that fixed it. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Let me answer Alice's question about the Sorcerer citation. So I'm just gonna say I've added sources. And now I'm going to get out of there. Let's see. So let me, 11, 372. Okay. All of these out of free BMD, which I mean, you can also find these, these records on Ancestry or Family Search. But if you can, well, Family Search is free. And of course this one is free too. So if you can cite from free platforms, that's preferable. So I'm just gonna find her again, her birth record. Is that only for UK records? Yes. Okay. It works pretty well to just put in the surname. It's funny, that's where I'm working right now. 11, eight. Well, there you go. It's a great website, 372. 372, that pulled it up before. Okay. And boom, there she is. And we know it's her because of the names. So I'm just gonna go to info. And then if you can see on my screen up here, I have this little one in square brackets. Yeah. So this is a browser extension that you can add to your whatever browser you use. And so when I click on this, I'm gonna get this pull down menu. What I did was I did build source citation. Now it's on my clipboard. And when I go, then I'll add it again just so you can see. There it is. Yeah. And there's also, you see at the top of the pull down menu, a way it will search. You can say for this person, can you search family search or ancestry or find my past? So it's a really powerful application. And just to clarify that is different than the Wikitree browser extension. Yes. This one's called the Sorcerer extension. They're two different things. Yeah. This one, if they're, it's developed by Rob Pavey and he has a really good YouTube video that walks you through the whole extension and things you can do with it. So I watched it several times. I highly recommend it. Ewan, do you use Sorcerer or either of you? Do you use it? Yeah, I do. Yeah, is this?  I was just gonna say the only thing that I find a little cumbersome is I always have to take out these BR. The brakes. Yeah. Is there a way around that? Because we don't need it with Wikimarkup. Right. Yeah, I don't think there is. I think that's something that Rob would have to change in the way he codes it. So that might just be something, I don't know what his reason is for doing that. Yeah. Other than maybe he just likes it on another line. Yeah. Maybe it's just something to bring up with him. Yeah. So. You could not decode it out. Yeah. Right, I mean, all I do is I just, I take these and I delete and I put in a space. So there's usually two or three of them. So. Yeah, because that's all one link. It's deceptive, but it should actually be right behind index. It should be like one space behind that when it prints out. You could just search your place for that. Right. That's your job. Yeah. Yeah. So this, you'll see me use Sorcer extension on Ancestry as well when I create the other extension. So, okay. So, okay, we've created Alice, Emily. And now, since she was born in Cardiff, I thought it would be nice to give her a sticker. And the stickers go under the biography line. Put that in there. And I'm not sure if we'll see the complete thing. Yeah. So what's in the preview, you can see this is what's gonna look like. It will have her name and yeah, just adds a little color. So, and then the other thing you can do is you can cat, you can and it's very helpful to the rest of other researchers if you categorize. You can categorize by places, birth, residence, death, occupation, cemeteries where the person was buried. So let's, the categorization button is right here. And what I'm gonna do is I'm going to search for Cardiff since she was born there. Alabama. On Alabama, yeah. Yeah. The one in Australia. Where did it go? Glamorgan. Yeah. Yeah, okay. So now that means she will show up if someone was looking for all the people on Wiki Tree who have some sort of association with Cardiff, she would be on that list and they could hop to her. Now the other thing that I'm gonna do with her for categories is I'm going to leave now and her bio is very, very thin, non-existent. So I'm going to use a personal category which I can walk everybody through. I just learned about these last month and I love them. So it's co-31 is my Wiki Tree ID number and I'm going to say co-31 needs bio. So now let me go to here and what I've done, well, I added a sticker so that's bio improvement and I categorized. Okay, so we can see there. And at the bottom we have her categories, Cardiff and then my little note. Now what this does is it's sort of my personal to-do list. These are all the 20 bios so far where I need to go back and do a bio for these people. But I know you just said, wow. Should we talk through personal categories? That's amazing. I'm actually working on her records right now too so I just saw that in your list here. Oh really? Oh, okay, fine. So funny that all these names keep coming back around. That's the thing I'm researching today. Maybe they will. But personal categories are great. I use personal categories myself and I have them broken down by sources and by to-do and things that need to get because cemetery is added to them and stuff like that. Right, right. So I have categories. Yeah, go ahead. Do you wanna show all the categories that are in your personal category? Sure, okay. So if I go back a level. Yeah, I have needs bio, birth, baptism, death, marriage or profiles created like William Redwood really should have had that category because I needed to create his wife and his children. So you can also put your free space pages on the same page which is kinda nice instead of going to your watch list to look for those. All you do is you categorize your free space pages with Code 31. So if I went to your wiki profile would I be able to see this stuff or is this just stuff that you can see in your wiki profile? Okay, so let me ask which browser do you use? I use Chrome. Use Chrome, okay. So Chrome is kind of handy in that it's very powerful. Like if I just go Code 31, it remembers and it can even if I didn't have the tab open it would be able to take me to my categories but let me take you the cumbersome way. So if we go find categories and then we go to... I know, this should be a while. Maintenance, yep. And then maintenance, personal categories. And then these are all the people in wiki tree who have personal categories. So you could easily go to, well, find me Kay and boom, there I am, blessed. We're right next to Thomas. Right. Yeah. Do you wanna walk through how to create personal, your personal categories? Sure. Yeah. So there is, maybe Steve, could you put this in the chat? This... Oh, yeah. Personal categories. There's a really helpful page. Good when help pages are helpful. And I can't, can either of you think of a personal category that I could add? Yeah, and I could create one. Do you have a cemetery creation category? So when you need to make a new category for our... I don't like, as in, well, that would qualify for most of my categories needs. So you have a need cemetery? Yeah. If I find a person is buried in a cemetery but there's not a cemetery for it, it's annoying. So I always have to remind myself with a personal category, go ahead and make it and then go ahead and add all those people to it. There should be the correct link for personal categories that's on the screen in the chat now. I'll double check myself. Make sure that is accurate. I'm gonna get out of full screen myself. Wait, maybe I did it wrong. Oh, I goofed because I typed it by hand. Disregard that link. Sorry. Here we go. Yep, that link is correct. Cool, thanks. So to initially start out, you have to be on your profile, go into edit mode and then at the top of your biography box, you're going to type, well, for example, co-31, but it would be whatever your wiki tree category is. So you can see it right here, category colon and then whatever your wiki tree ID is. Yep, and then you're gonna save your changes and this is the part that's a little bit like, when I did it, it was sort of like, uh-oh, oh, did I do something wrong? Because, but it warns you, it will be in red and what you need to do is click on the red category link and it's going to take you basically like a new profile page with complete, with a text box. And in that text box, you're gonna type double bracket category, personal categories. So remember when I walked through the categories, maintenance, personal categories, that's how we tell the system whatever your wiki tree that your personal category should go under personal categories. Yeah. So it's a colon in between category and personal categories. So it'll recognize it as a category, parent category. Okay. It's part of the wiki marker. Yeah. Then you'll see an option to save the page and this is a one-time thing. Once you've done it, then you'll never have to do it again. You can make some notes for yourself in the text box if you want. Like this is going to be my way to keep track of my research to do items. You don't have to. And then it would be the same thing with subcategories. So, but except that if you would do those from the profile.  Oh, is she big nil? Eight, three, two. Okay. So now in edit mode, I'm going to go category, code 31, needs cemetery. Okay. And it's more about, because you can add to the cemeteries if they exist, but if the cemetery category isn't created, that's the category that I create. So it says, needs cemetery category created. And then it forces you to make that category and then you can go back and add them. So I just wanted to clarify that that's what I actually was talking about in that situation. Okay. All right. So I've been, I was categorizing full save. Okay. Then you get this warning box.  And now you'll see that when we go down here, it's in red. So when I click on that, then I get this text box and I'm going to, again, I'm telling the system that I want to nest this under my personal categories. One. And now it'll be a subcategory. I'm going to save the page and there you can see, I'll go back to my overall list. Now I have this new subcategory just with one entry. Whereas needs bio, there were 20 entries. And there you go. So any questions? Stuart, Sally, are you still with us? I don't know if Sally's still with us. Is she? Yes? Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. All right, great. Any questions? No, I don't think so. Okay. But I'll probably have to watch it again because it goes so fast that... Right. It's hard to keep up. At my age. We have the option to go back and watch this again, right? It'll go up on YouTube on the WikiTru channel. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. So now let's create a profile with the new system. So if you're interested in Stuart and Alice and Sally, are you using the old way of creating profiles or are any of you beta testing the new system? Okay. I didn't even know there was such a thing. Okay. If you're interested in doing that, you're gonna go to my WikiTree and you're gonna go to your settings and then towards the bottom, okay, miscellaneous settings. So now I'm gonna turn this on and save. Okay. So the other profile that we're gonna create is one of my aunts who passed away in 2017. So I'm going to my grandfather. So edits and we're going to add. Create a new profile. Okay. So, ooh, not me. Okay. I'm going to, what I'm gonna do is add, she has a Chinese name and an English name and characters. So I'm gonna add in the characters later. It's very pretty. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, she was beautiful. Okay. So, and co, her married name was Lee. Her birth dates was March 19th, 1937, exact, born in Taipei. Wasn't Taiwan it? No. It was born in 37. It was Formosa. She can override that by typing in anything. You don't have to select the option. That's interesting. They may not have worked on that section of wiki tree yet for sample locations. Okay. Taipei, Taipei, sure. I'm gonna do this one. I can always change it later. And then her death date was 26th, March, 2017, certain. Unless she just turned 80. Yeah. Palo Alto, where's Palo Alto, California? San Alfredo, oh, sorry. I was just reading about Palo Alto. There we go. Okay. So here's one. I think this, well, this is different, you know, the pull down menu here. Okay, continue. Yes, my grandmother was the other parents. Continue. If there had been a possibility on wiki tree of somebody who could have been her, that would have shown up, but no. Now then the hard thing with Chinese Asian records is that there's not some, I mean, her birth record, for instance, is over in Taiwan. I don't have access to her death record, but what I do have is her naturalization record, which very helpfully confirms her birth date. And her name, although they did get the two letters wrong, her maiden name. So I'm confident that, you know, this is her document. She came to the States in the 60s. So it's not like I'm gonna find her on any censuses that are available yet. Oh, yeah. So she went by Yvonne in the States. So what I can do, this is where Sorcerer helps, is here's the record. I'm gonna go view, and then I'm going to use this. I'm going to build a source citation. And it's like lightning, it's so fast. Now I can go back and I can add this. I do want to take out the asterisks because that's gonna get added automatically. And create, so. It does take you back to this page, actually, when you produce the profile. Yes. Right, right. Thank you for that. It's just gonna be when I keep working on it. Right, which I do. You know what, so I guess. We can put in you have an honest or preferred name, right? Or is that not? Yeah, I would say that probably was Yvonne. It wouldn't count as a nickname because it was her accepted name in America, right? Right, it was her official name in the United States. Okay, so now we have this. I'm gonna go ahead and I definitely need to add a lot for her. So go 31. And I can go back later and add the other categories because she needs a lot. Then the other thing we could, oh, the two other things. Maybe the category needs a lot. Just put in your generic code 31 category as well. Yeah, yeah, sure. We can add a photo because I have a photo of her. But let's take my aunt as an example or an opportunity to talk about privacy settings because she did pass away within 10 years. So I was talking with Aylone about this earlier today. So it would be, I'm gonna set her privacy settings as public. So you can see this is, and again, maybe Steve, could you put this in the help page for privacy? Right. Yeah. We've got seven levels of privacy settings. So we have unlisted. These are living people who are not members. And presumed, maybe if you remember the first profile that I created had the email field. Maybe you create a profile for your sibling and they get an email and they are so excited about WikiTree that they join and become a WikiTree member. But up until that point, they would be an unlisted person because they're living and not members. And there are some exceptions for notables. Notables that have a lot of public interest. Right, right. Private, a limited amount on a private profile. Now there are always going to be two views to it. So there's, you can see, if you're the profile manager, you're going to be able to see everything. But if somebody just looks it up on, they're browsing, they're doing a Google search and they're not on the trusted list, then they're going to see very limited information only viewed by the trusted list. We have, it's just basically a gradient. So then the final two are open, which is what is required for people born over 150 years ago or who died over 100 years ago, must be open. Which means that anyone can work on it. But beneath that, you need to be on the trusted list to add or change information. So, so that's what we're going to do for my aunt. Let's see. So I go to privacy. Oh, wait, I better. You might want to save that first. Exactly. So I added sources. Privacy. So we're going to make it public. Now, if we want to add a photo, you click images. Click to upload. I have it ready on my desktop. There we go. Okay. This was from Family Collection. Wiki Tree is very conscientious about copyright and not just sort of pirating things from elsewhere on the internet. So this box is really important. And sometimes we get images from Creative Commons, which are all available copyright free for use. And sometimes you might see a really amazing photo of your ancestor on Ancestry or another site. What I do in those situations is I send a message to that person and say, explain, you know, oh, I'm creating a profile for this person or I have a profile on Wiki Tree. Give them the website address. Say, may I have your permission to use this photo? They, if they reply, they always say yes. I've never had anyone say no. And then what I would say is used here, I would say use with permission of Ancestry user, blah, blah, whatever their username is. So I'm just gonna title this Yvonne Ko. She was Yvonne Ko at the time this picture was made, done. So I'll use that. I pay. She was probably about 20. So I guess we could go with that. Certain. I'm gonna say 1957. Whoops, I'm not sure. So I'll leave that approximate and I'm gonna upload. Wow. Yeah. That's a great photo. Yeah, thanks. I could give that popularity. Let's get some popularity to that. So now I have, I think this automatically will become her, yeah, it automatically becomes her profile picture. If for some reason, if I didn't want that, then I could go back to the photo and I could. I'd select primary. You'd usually have a second photo in place and then you would set that as the primary. Exactly. Now sometimes you have photos that are, that have more than one person in them and you wanna tag the photo to all the people in the photo. So I have someone like that. So this photo was just discovered last week. Really, really exciting. We, it was like one of those photo box in the attic stories. My distant cousin sent me a Facebook message and she said, I just found this, my parents just found this photo. Do you know who the women are? And my jaw just dropped because I had a photo of the men only. Oh. All of a sudden it was like, it's my great grandmother and it's my grandmother and my aunt. So. That's cool. Yeah. Wow. So I had just right now put it, attached it to my great-grandfather and my great-grandmother that I was, whom I was sure about. But having talked to my mom and my aunt, I am now very sure that this is my grandmother. So what I can do is just go down and I can head to, well, these are, this is everybody in my list. Let me see if I can find her super quick. Redwood. Redwood, yeah. Redwood. Oh no, not finding her. Hang on. Code 31. So I'll just go to my tree apps and there she is. Okay, Redwood 529. So the other way, if you can't find them in the checklist is to just go like this. And then I'm gonna save. So now you can see that it's also saved to my grandmother's profile. And one thing that I probably should do with this image is because of the number of people in it is to go back to that text box and add in like a legend, you know, and just say who's who. Who's where? Yeah, exactly. So. And then it should populate, right? We have to go into view all. Yeah. Well, you have a lot of photos. I do have a lot of photos of her. So there it is. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. I think I covered everything that I meant to. Oh, I didn't. I wanted to show you David Randall's is completed profile checklist. So as you're working on profiles, yes, do you, are you familiar with this Alice? No, but this is what I want. OK, all right. So, Steve, could you put this in? Yep, we're going to order it right now for you. OK, yeah. If you are doing the 15th or 15th challenge, there's this is one of the things you could do. And it basically just walks through.  I've actually ported this over to my 15 by 15 page. So I don't have to go back to this all the time. Right, right. Yeah, so when I talked about this last Saturday on the round, the Saturday livecast tip of the week. And I asked David, you know, how does he use it? And he said he's a traditional paper kind, pen and paper kind of person. So he prints them out and he has a binder with a sheet for each for each profile that's in progress. But he said, but I imagine that it could be very easily, you know, converted into an Excel spreadsheet. Greg Clark had the fantastic idea of, oh, print out a copy and put slip it into a clear plastic binder. And then you can check off with like an eraser. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I love that. Dry erase. Clever. Yep. So, yeah. Okay. So if you do happen to participate in 15 by 15, you know, I don't think it's still too late to be a part of that this year. Oh, you guys know what that is. I can put it into the end of that. Alice Stewart. Sally, do you guys know what the 15 for 15 mission is? You want to show them so they know what you're doing? Okay. Let's see. Are you participating? Okay. There's a G to G post. Do you want me to put drop that in the chat? I've got it. Sure. Please. Yeah, because it has the link to the help page. Okay. So wiki tree is turning 15 in November. So we have this community challenge to do. There's a whole list of things you can do. You only have to pick 15 of them, but if you want to do 30 or 45, you can. And let's see. Where here's a list of the missions. So there are a couple that are about you, like if you don't have a photo already, improve your bio DNA information, increase your CC seven. Then things related to working on profiles. And see the, here are the ones that apply to David Randall's checklist that we were just looking at. Try out some apps. The browser extension, which I don't know if we're going to get to talk to talk about, but send out e cards. Basically it's all these activities that will fluff up your tree and get you a lot more knowledgeable because you're sort of, you're going to have to explore more widely on wiki tree. Projects, join a project. And then these are sort of things related to the community. We have this botanical, pit shepherd does this wonderful weekend chat on G to G. And I highly recommend that as a way, you know, just basically you want to find your little corner where for me, when I first came to wiki tree, it ended up being the Saturday live cast in there was sort of a there's so many little rooms in the wiki tree palace where you can find your little group, social media. And then, of course, you get a sticker for completing 15 or 30 or 45 that you can put on your profile for some bling. And look, already someone's got 30? Wow, that's amazing. So, yep, cool. Yeah, so that's 15 for 15. And let me also show two G2G posts. It just came out that are super helpful. I was gonna point out this page for getting to this Zoom today, actually, because we will post it right there. Yes, right, because Sally was having trouble. Now I can't find the chat. Oh, dear. Where? What are you doing, Betsy? I don't know. The chat thing disappeared. I'm gonna stop sharing for a second. Okay, I still have it up. Do you need me to post it? No, I got it. Okay. I just saw it right before you made that go away. So it's there. For some reason, it might be hidden on my screen. Okay. Betsy? Yeah. But this has been great. Yes. Thank you for being here, A-Win. Thank you. Yeah, of course. To meet you, A-Win. Yes, thanks, A-Win. Thanks, A-Win. I'll see you Saturday. I promise. I'll see you Saturday. Just remember to stop recording when you're kind of done with this part. Okay, we'll do it. I'll remind her. Thanks. Okay, so this post I'll go back to sharing. Share. Is a terrific, like, day by day, what's happening on WikiTree with links that'll take you either to the YouTube link or the Zoom link. Yeah, there we are. Yeah. Yeah. And where do I find this? I just put the link in the chat, Sally. Oh, okay. Thank you. Yep, and so it's a G2G post that A-Win and the team is going to update.  So I plan to just every few days just sort of check this. Now this one doesn't have the tag new members attached to it. I noticed that. So if they're looking for it using that tag, they're not going to find it. Right, right. They're going to use different tags to find it potentially. Yeah. In terms of tags, I think following announcements is really good events. So. I think it follows those. And there's our, we will rock you nominations that we're building up now. Yes, yeah. Very excited for that. Do you guys know about that? We will rock you. Rock, stay, let's see if I can. Oh, yeah, I did hear about this in the last... Random acts of wiki tree kindness. Yeah, that was in the latest newsletter. Right, right. So there are two posts. There's one looking for people who are going to help. And then there's another post to nominate people. So basically it's like the challenges, but it's for another wiki tree. To help them increase their CCC, their level of connection. Okay. Yeah. And then the last thing, this is something that was in my digest this morning. There. Okay, now I see why. Okay. Okay, just put it in the chat. And Tommy Buck did this, where it's kind of like just a consolidation of looking for what's going on and links. And so this is another good, really good one to bookmark. So. Oh yeah, he's been maintaining that since 2020. So it's been a long time. Yeah. 2000 views. It's a lot. So, okay. So I hope I didn't overwhelm or overload you guys. Well, I'm glad I can rewatch this video. Me too. It's a lot. It's a lot, but it's great. It's all good stuff. It's still, thank you. You're welcome. All right. Well, any last questions before we wrap up? Sally, Stuart. I maybe have questions after the recording has stopped. Okay. Let's do that. So we'll, oh, I will say this, if you're planning to come back next month, usually we do these on the first Thursday of every month, but the first Thursday in March falls during Roots Tech. And I'll be at that really excited. So we're going to do the second Thursday of the month for next month. And that'll all be in the G2G post. Okay. Okay. Let me stop screen sharing so that I can stop the recording. Thanks everyone for being here.


We can't presume that a lot of the population we're seeking to reach actually has mobile connectivity, let alone access to the internet. So we've all heard about the large number of mobile handsets globally. There are over 7 billion SIM cards and registrations. But that doesn't really tell us the number of unique subscribers because many households have multiple SIM cards. And it masks the very important access agenda. So if we want to reach those people living on less than $2 a day to achieve UN Global Goal 4, we really have to accelerate connectivity. And that's where the opportunity between industry and governments comes in. There are four major barriers we've done in study to understand why mobile penetration hasn't gone to the extent that we had hoped in perhaps sub-Saharan Africa where there's less than perhaps 50% coverage sometimes, or penetration rather. And that's four barriers. The first is coverage. So we need to deploy more technology and infrastructure to areas that are remote. Secondly is affordability. That means achieving economies of scale, governments and industry coming together to drive down the cost. And then two other ones are related to education. First is digital literacy. So many people may have access to a phone but they don't know how to use it. They don't know how to navigate the menu. They don't know how to call their son. They might be illiterate. They are just actually interested in learning how to become liter because they want to text message their son, a mother in rural Africa. We've heard this story. And so digital literacy is key. And then the final point is people want access to local content that's relevant to them and for learning opportunities. We did a study with MasterCard Foundation and found in Sub-Saharan Africa that African youth really want to access mobile to get educational content that will help them find jobs naturally. And so educational content is I think a very important opportunity for private public partnerships where the mobile industry can take the content and distribute it. There's a great example in the Philippines where there's been a partnership between the Filipino government and the mobile operators to take the content, bring it at a subsidized rate to populations in the islands and the remote areas. And then they take part of it and they monetize it and commercialize it for other populations. I'm very excited to say that at our Mobile World Congress in Barcelona 2016, which we hosted at the end of February, the mobile industry came together and declared its unanimous support for the UN 17 global goals. And that's very exciting. I think that the operator community realizes that the mobile platform is a gateway to achieving so many of these global goals. And I think the UN community and civil society and governments realize the same. So I would like us to advance the agenda by really thinking about those outcomes. How do we reach these top goals of ending poverty everywhere, giving people access to healthcare and education opportunities? And I would go circle back to my first point, which is to say that the starting point is we have to get everyone access to quality opportunities to access the internet. And we only have 40% access to the internet today globally. We're expected by 2020 for that to go up to 60%. And we also, according to our studies, most people in developing countries will access the internet first through their mobile phones. So we definitely need to focus on that. But there is a win-win proposition with the educational agenda, which is, as I said at the beginning, that not only do we have these technological and commercial challenges, but we have the educational challenges of people not knowing how to use mobile phones, how to use the internet. And so if we're able to demonstrate that, and I think mobile companies are very motivated to help through digital literacy programs, we actually create more demand. And then finally, there's an opportunity for the rich content we have globally. How do we do educational content? How do we digitize it? How do we get it so that it creates an economic opportunity for people to get online and to learn more?