Thanks for the invitation to be here, and please do ask questions if you have any. Can everyone hear me? Okay. Is it Okay, is that better? Can you hear me now? Is that better? I'm just not speaking loudly enough, I guess. Okay, is that louder? Seems to be. Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to talk to you about the weak gravity conjecture. As we'll see this is really sort of a family of related conjectures, and there's some broader context to this which is what's sometimes called the Swampland program. The name the Swampland program was given to the set of ideas by Cameron Vafa back in 2005, and the general idea of the Swampland program is that we know there are many infinite families in fact of consistent quantum field theories, and it also appears that there are likely to be many consistent theories of quantum gravity. But the idea of the Swampland is that the set of quantum gravity theories is actually in some sense much smaller than the sense of quantum field theories that make sense. So to sort of sketch the kind of thing we have in mind, there's some large space of consistent effective quantum field theories that can be perturbedively coupled to gravity. They have a stress energy tensor. But the idea is that not all of these actually can be completed into full quantum theories of gravity, and in fact, the quantum gravity theories that we know are rather special. So we know some examples of continuous modulite spaces of theories of quantum gravity, various families of these theories, and we know isolated vacua. For instance, certain ADS vacua seem to be isolated points in the space. They have no continuous deformation. And so the set of these quantum gravity theories is called the landscape. And the idea of the Swampland conjecture is we might be able to identify some sort of boundaries in the space of effective field theories where we can say that if a theory is on the wrong side of some sort of inequality, it has no hope of being in the landscape. It just can't be completed into a consistent theory of quantum gravity. And so there might be some regions in this space that we can rule out in various ways, and these are called the Swampland. So effective field theories that can't be completed into consistent theories of quantum gravity. Okay. So why might we care about this? One reason is just to better understand quantum gravity itself, if we can identify ways that we can exclude effective field theories from being consistent theories of quantum gravity, we'll get a better understanding of quantum gravity. But another reason, and the reason that I got into this, is that you might hope to connect to the real world. So you might hope that there are theories that, as theories of particle physics, as phenomenological theories look perfectly healthy, but that we know can't really be the answer for our universe because they're located in the Swampland, and so they can't be UV completed. Okay, so the goal of this program is to identify better, sharper ways to delineate what could be in the landscape from what could be in the Swampland. And there are a few different ways that we approach this question. One is to try to start with some set of general principles, maybe holography, maybe aspects of black hole physics, and argue that certain kinds of effective field theories are inconsistent with these principles, and so could not be completed into theories of quantum gravity. Another approach is to study explicit examples of theories of quantum gravity, things that we can actually construct in string theory, and notice if they have common features and try to generalize. If we notice that certain things just never happen in examples that we have within string theory, you might guess that those sorts of phenomena lie in the Swampland. The danger of that approach is you might be looking under the lamppost. We might only know the string vacua that are easiest to construct, and so if you're too hasty, you might claim that certain things are in the Swampland when actually they're not, just because we haven't been clever enough yet to build the right theories of quantum gravity that have those properties. And so what's been happening in practice over the last several years and work on this this program is a lot of back-and-forth between these two directions. There are attempts to derive things from general principles. There are studies of explicit examples and guesses about what might characterize the landscape versus the Swampland, and then those feedback, there are attempts to prove those guesses or to construct new examples that might violate them. And so in this way the kinds of conjectures that we're making are getting sharper and crisper, and there's more evidence for them from both of these directions as time goes on. Okay, so as you may have noticed, there's been a lot of activity in the area of the Swampland over the last five or so years, and it's really much more that I'm going to have time to tell you about in this set of lectures. So let me refer you to a couple of examples of places where you might read more. There's a set of TASI lecture notes that came out in 2017 by Brennan, Karda, and Vafa. That's one place where you might read more about the Swampland program in general. There's also a very recent review article by Palti that just came out a week or two ago. There's a 200 page long review of many different aspects of these topics. So if you want to learn more than what I'm going to have time to tell you about, I would recommend that you read these. In particular, they have a lot of discussion of some recent ideas that have gotten a lot of attention where Ugrie and Vafa and various of others have made some pretty bold conjectures that in fact there are no desider vacua in the landscape that all desider vacua are in the Swampland. That's a claim that I'm going to say very little about in this set of lectures. So if you want to learn more about it, I would recommend that you read some of these lecture notes. In this set of lectures, I'm going to try to be a little bit more focused and talk about topics that are pretty closely related to the weak gravity conjecture and not all of the other aspects of the Swampland program. So let me summarize some of the things I'm going to tell you about. There's a claim that theories of quantum gravity cannot contain global symmetries. I'll try to explain some reasons why we believe that's likely to be true. There's a statement that in some ways sharpens that claim, makes it more precise, which is the weak gravity conjecture. I'll tell you what that conjecture is. I'll talk about various generalizations of it. For instance, the theories with multiple gauge fields. I'll give you some examples of consistent string theories and how they satisfy the conjecture. I'll talk a little bit about some potential applications. One set of potential applications is the theories of inflation in the early universe. Another is to the question of whether the standard model photon or photon-like particles in hidden sectors could have masses and along the way, I'm going to connect to a different conjecture that goes by the name of the Swampland distance conjecture, which was formulated by Aguri and Bafa in 2006. Among all of the other set of Swampland ideas that have come out over the last several years, I think the Swampland distance conjecture is the one that's most closely related to the weak gravity conjecture. In fact, it sort of leads us to stronger formulations of the weak gravity conjecture that seem to be true in examples, and so I'll discuss that. Okay, so that's kind of the big picture outline of where we're headed. There are several other references. I'll try to give you references as I go along, but I'll say that a lot of what I've been, what I'll be talking about is based on several papers I've written over the last few years with Ben Haydnreich, who is a professor at UMass Amherst. And Tom Rudelius, who is a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. So if you look up our three names, you'll find several papers that we've written that I'm going to be drawing on heavily in the lectures. So that's the outline. And now the first topic that I want to delve into in more detail is this claim that there are no global symmetries in theories of quantum gravity. So as you know in quantum field theory, global symmetries occur very commonly, and they're very useful, and there are several different kinds of global symmetries that are interesting. Maybe the most familiar kind are simple, continuous symmetries that act on local fields, and they have conserved currents that are vectors. So for instance, the familiar SUN left times SUN right flavor symmetry that shows up in QCD-like theories, but in fact there are other kinds of global symmetries. There could be discrete symmetries as well as continuous symmetries, and both of these could be generalized to some higher form symmetries, p-form symmetries, that act on extended objects, and these kinds of symmetries are very common in gauge theories. For example, if I give you a quantum field theory with just a free U1 gauge field, just a single photon, this theory actually contains two conserved currents, which are nothing other than F mu nu and its dual F tilde mu nu, thinking about the four-dimensional case. And these are conserved currents which act on Wilson and Tift loops. So the charged objects in the theory are not localized at a point, they're extended along a line, and there are generalizations of such p-form symmetries that act on surfaces of higher dimension. These kinds of global symmetries have gotten relatively little attention until pretty recently, but one place that you can read about them is in a paper from 2014 by Galloto and collaborators. So these are various kinds of global symmetries that appear in quantum field theory, and the claim, one of the claims of the Swampland program, in fact one of the earliest Swampland type claims that was discussed in the literature at all, is that there are no global symmetries in quantum gravity, and that includes any of these. No continuous symmetries, no discrete symmetries, no symmetries acting on local objects, no symmetries acting on extended objects. There are absolutely no global symmetries in theories of quantum gravity. So this is a claim that's been around for at least 30 years, and it's one of the most well-established claims in the Swampland program. It long predates the idea of the Swampland itself, and I'm going to summarize a few different arguments for why you might believe this is true. The most rigorous ones have been recently given by Harlow and Oguri, but that's specifically in the context of asymptotically ADS quantum gravity, but it's really believed to be true of any consistent theory of quantum gravity. So why might you believe this to be true? One of the oldest arguments was given by Tom Banks and Lance Dixon in 1988, where they observed that if I had a perturbative string theory, and I imagine that there's some global symmetry in the spacetime, that would be associated with some current operator on the world sheet of the string, and given such a current operator, we can dress it with a factor of e to the i k x to make a vertex operator that creates a massless spin-1 particle in the spacetime. Yeah, good. What do I want to do? Yeah, I guess Yeah, you're saying it like that. Yeah Thanks Okay So the claim was that if I told you that I had a spacetime global symmetry, you could look at the world sheet theory and say actually that symmetry is gauged because we can just explicitly create the gauge field that that couples to it. Okay, there's a very similar sort of argument in the context of ADS-CFT. If I hand you a gauge theory that has a conserved current J mu, then in the dual description, there's a massless gauge field A mu in the bulk. So again, there's a similar sort of flavor. Given a conserved current, the gauge field just explicitly has to appear through the holographic dictionary. Okay, so these are arguments that apply to particular forms of quantum gravity theories, but you might not be happy with those because you might ask what if there are other kinds of quantum gravity, they're not perturbative string theory or not asymptotically ADS. So there's another argument, which is maybe a little more vague in some ways, but I think pretty convincing, which is based on black hole physics. And I think that some version of this argument has kind of been around for a while, but one place where I know that it's written down in a pretty clear way, the paper by Bankson-Cyberg about eight years ago. And this argument is that if I have a theory that has a global symmetry, then everything in the theory has to respect that global symmetry, even black holes. Right? If black holes explicitly violate the symmetry, then it was never really a symmetry in the first place.  But for a global symmetry charge, there's nothing outside the black hole that tells me what the charge is. There's nothing I can measure, there's no electric field. And so if I trust effective field theory, the black hole will Hawking radiate, it'll gradually shrink, but it won't lose its charge. It might change its charge, it might happen to radiate particles that are charged, and so its charge might kind of random walk as Hawking evaporates. But it has no reason to systematically prefer to emit charged particles over particles that are not charged. And so in the space of black holes labeled by their mass and their global symmetry charge, there's some minimal mass for which I trust effective field theory well enough to talk about, to talk about these things of semi-classical black holes at all. So in strength theory, this would be when the radius of the black hole is at the strength scale. So below some line in this plane, I don't trust effective field theory, and I don't know how to calculate anything. But above this line I do, and I can make black holes of arbitrarily big charge. If I have anything in the theory that carries this global symmetry charge, I can just throw those things into black holes and make arbitrarily big black holes with arbitrarily large amounts of charge. And these black holes will Hawking radiate until they shrink down to the size at which I stop trusting my effective field theory. And by starting with black holes of different charges and different masses, I can eventually create a collection of black holes whose mass is always around this minimum mass at which I trust effective field theory, but which have any charge that I want. So the conclusion of this argument is that there are in fact infinitely many different kinds of black holes that all have a mass and some narrow range around this minimum mass at which I trust my semi-classical calculation. And the claim is that that should bother you. You shouldn't trust that this is a consistent theory. Certainly any kind of thermodynamic ensemble isn't going to make sense because I have infinitely many different states with similar energy. And these kinds of arguments appeared in the context of discussions about black hole remnants and the black hole information problem already decades earlier than this paper. This also violates, if you're looking for something more precise, it violates Rousseau's covariant entropy bound, which is again sort of believed to be a property of general theories of quantum gravity. Although I think like many of these Swampland ideas, we could say that it's not necessarily rigorously proven that this is true either. But at least this establishes a link between this idea of no global symmetries and another widely believed property that theories of quantum gravity should have. I should mention these arguments are not necessarily completely airtight. So one paper that objects to this argument was written by Diwali and Guzman years ago where they claim that there are some theories where black holes actually carry some kind of skirmionic air that can be detected at long distances and could potentially alter these kinds of semi-classical arguments. So I think none of these arguments are completely rigorous and none of them should convince you that this has been definitively established in all theories of quantum gravity, but at least at least these arguments are strongly suggestive. Good. So the question, if I heard the question correctly, it was does this argument apply to discrete symmetries? Is that right? Okay, that is a very good question and that's something I should have mentioned. All of the arguments I've given you so far are really just arguments against continuous global symmetries. In these cases, I explicitly assumed that we had some kind of conserved current. And here I assume that there were infinitely many different possible charges. If we talked about discrete symmetries, there's actually some discussion of that in the Bankston-Cyberd paper. If you had a really big discrete symmetry, you could try to make a similar argument just by saying there's a finite but gigantic number of black hole states and that might still violate the bound. But it's certainly a less crisp argument than for continuous symmetries. So at least my understanding is that until fairly recently there were no strong arguments that had appeared supporting the claim that there are no discrete symmetries in quantum gravity, except that every place that anyone found a discrete symmetry in string theory, it turned out that it was actually gauged. Now, that has recently changed and I'm going to briefly mention a recent paper by Harlow and Ogury, a paper that came out just a few months ago. There are two papers. The one with the smaller number is four or five pages long. The one with the longer number is 150 pages long or something like that. But the argument, so there's a lot of content in the long paper and I'm not going to do it justice. I'm just going to briefly mention it to you today. But they claim to give a general argument against global symmetries in asymptotically ADS theories of quantum gravity using calligraphy, using ADS CFT. To do so, they have to give, yeah, writing bigger, okay, yeah, thanks. So in order to give their argument, they actually have to give quite a bit of discussion about what is a global symmetry. Is that more visible? And the reason they have to do this is there are certain pathological cases that you have to exclude. And so for them, a global symmetry is sort of somewhat local and that involves some operators that depend on an element of the gauge group and also some region, some spatial region. So they say that to really define a global symmetry and local quantum field theory, we should be able to construct operators that kind of only act with that symmetry within some bounded region. And in cases that have a conserved current, this just follows from the existence of having a local current, but they want to claim that this should be sort of an axiom of what we mean by global symmetry. And I'm not going to try to give you all the arguments to convince you of that, but I think it's a reasonable claim because if you don't make this kind of assumption, there are sort of pathological examples of symmetries that you wouldn't really want to think of as symmetries. Right, yeah, this can also be generalized to the p-form symmetries that act on extended objects. Yeah, so they give a general discussion where they explain what this means, both for the usual zero-form symmetries that have one-form conserved currents and for the more general things that act on extended objects. Yeah, so in fact, their argument is meant to apply, when I say it's a general argument against global symmetries, it's meant to apply to all the different kinds of global symmetries I mentioned before. Continuous, discrete, acting on local operators, acting on extended objects. But it really hinges on sort of a detailed discussion of what they mean by global symmetry, which is a bit technical and I'm not going to try to explain it to you. But I will just tell you the one sort of fact that plays a role in their argument is something that Harlow has worked on quite a bit called entanglement wedge reconstruction. And the claim is just that if I allow you to work only with data from some boundary region R and ADS, that I can only access some portion of the bulk theory defined by some surface, which they call an HRT surface, which your next lecture can tell you more about than I can. But the idea of their argument is basically just to kind of tile the boundary with some set of regions that completely cover the boundary, but that individually don't allow you to access the entire bulk. And then derive some kind of contradiction by showing that this means there can't be localized charged bulk states because if I tried to put such a state in a region that doesn't overlap any of these regions accessible from parts of the boundary, the state would commute with all the different symmetry generators and wouldn't actually be charged. Okay, so that's a very brief sketch. I can't do justice to their full argument without spending a lot more time, but that's the general sort of idea. And the structure of the argument doesn't really care about whether this is continuous or discrete or whether it acts on zero forms or whether it's a zero form symmetry or a higher P form symmetry. And so they claim that this is sort of a completely universal argument that given there are axioms for what a global symmetry actually is, there's no such thing in a theory of quantum gravity. That is asymptotically ADS. And so the weakness of this argument is that it still requires that assumption about asymptotically ADS. So this idea of no global symmetries in quantum gravity has been around for about 30 years and we see that various arguments supporting it starting from very different assumptions, whether we're making specific assumptions about the form of the quantum gravity theory being a perturbative world-sheet string theory or about the asymptotics or about black holes. These various arguments all lead to the same conclusion that theories of quantum gravity cannot have global symmetries. And that's probably the most well-established of the Swampland claims. So compared to everything else I'm going to talk about in these lectures. This is relatively well-established. The downside of being well-established is that it's relatively useless. If I want to use this to make statements about the real world, I really don't care if my theory has an exact global symmetry. I often care quite a lot about whether my theory has a good approximate global symmetry. But this doesn't tell us anything about approximate symmetries. It's a precise statement that actual symmetries that map one state of the theory to another do not exist. But that doesn't tell us how close we can get without sort of violating the spirit of this claim. So the direction we'll be going is trying to have statements that are more useful and that they take us away from this limit of exact symmetries and allow us to talk about approximate symmetries. On the other hand, the further we go from the less well-established the claims are going to be and the more sort of circumstantial the arguments are going to be. So while I'm on the subject of no global symmetries, let me mention one other Swampland conjecture which again predates the name Swampland. And this is called the completeness conjecture. Again, I think it's an idea that was sort of discussed for a while, but it was written down in a clear way by Polchinski in 2003. And the claim of the completeness conjecture is if I give you a quantum gravity theory that has some gauge fields in it, there will be some lattice of allowed charges under those gauge fields. These could be electric charges. They could be magnetic charges. But there's some set of allowed consistent charges. Then some state of the theory exists that carries that charge for each possible charge. We probably have to be a little bit careful about boundary conditions when I say this. Certainly, this is something that seems to be true in asymptotically flat space theories of quantum gravity. In the ADS context, I could have boundary conditions that allow a state of electric charge but not magnetic charge. And then there could also be magnetically charged objects, but I would either need them to come in a pair with something with an anti-charge or I would need to change my boundary conditions. So there are some subtleties about boundary conditions. But it's still kind of morally true in these ADS theories that the statement holds.  Or at the very least, some sort of dions that if I put them together in a multi-particle state with things with electric charge, I can make things that have purely magnetic charge. One reason why Polchinski was a good person to suggest this was that if you had this idea before D-brains were discovered, you would have known there were these Ramon-Ramon gauge fields in string theory and concluded that something charged under them must exist. And of course, D-brains are the things that are charged under those gauge fields. So that's a case where this proved to be true. It wasn't kind of initially obvious that a charged object exists, but they turned out to exist. Okay, so this is another statement that is pretty generally believed to be true, pretty well established. Again, not super useful for the real world because it doesn't tell you how heavy these objects are. We could say with confidence that we believe that magnetic monopoles should exist in the real world. But if you can't tell an experimentalist what its mass is, that's not a super useful claim to make. But something that I think has been appreciated only relatively recently is that this completeness conjecture actually follows from the statement that there are no global symmetries. And the reason is that if you don't have objects of all allowed charges, you will then find that you'll have these kind of higher form symmetries that act on the Wilson loops or Tuft loops that correspond to the missing charges. To give you an example, if I told you I had a U1 gauge theory where the only charged objects I find have charges that are multiples of three, this gauge theory actually has a Z mod 3 one form symmetry that acts on the Wilson loops that's a global symmetry. And so if we rule out all global symmetries including the discrete kinds and including the kinds that act on extended objects, then the completeness conjecture actually follows as a consequence of that. And I learned this fact from Thomas de Matrescu. I'm not actually sure where it was first stated in the literature, but it was also discussed in the paper of Harlow and Aguri. Does it go the other way? I don't think so. I don't see any reason why every global symmetry would have to be associated with some sort of missing charges and a charged lattice. I think the answer is no. If it was true, it would be not obvious that it was true. So these are kind of classic ideas about theories of quantum gravity that have been around for a long time, and that seem to be true, but they're weak enough statements that they're not super useful. If you want to draw conclusions about the real world, they tell you that things exist, but they don't tell you what their mass is, they don't tell you where to find them. And so the weak gravity conjecture is one attempt to take these ideas and sharpen them into something a little more quantitative that actually tells us that not only that objects exist, but that they exist below some sort of threshold. And so what I want to do next is tell you what the weak gravity conjecture is. But before I do that, let me just recap some facts about black holes that are probably familiar to many of you, but are worth reminding you of.  That's not true for gauge charges, at least for continuous gauge charges.  And associated with this external measurable electric field is a lower bound on the black hole mass for a given charge. The black hole mass is bigger than some multiple of its charge. And there's nothing really mysterious about this. It's just following from the fact that there's an electric field outside the black hole, the electric field stores energy and that energy contributes to the mass of the black hole. And so parametrically you can get the right form of the bound just by saying that the mass of the black hole is bigger than the integral of the electric field squared outside the black hole.  And the fact that it's a black hole means that its radius is in order its mass and plonk units. And so when you put these together, you get the mass is bigger than charge times the gauge coupling times the plonk scale. So that's parametrically the right conclusion. Quantitatively you can work out what the exact bound is by just finding the classical black hole solutions. And so to give you one quantitative example, for Rice to Northstrom black holes in four dimensions, so these are black holes in Einstein Maxwell theory. We just have gravitons and photons. And then we find that this bound is true with the factor of the square root of two set of conventions that I can specify. So in plonk is the reduced plonk mass square root of 8 pi g Newton. Sometimes this product of E and Q is just called the charge. But I'm going to use conventions where the charge is a quantized quantity. So Q takes values only in integers. And then this number E, the gauge coupling can be read off if I tell you that the gauge field kinetic term has a factor of 1 over E squared in front. In the convention that a particle of charge Q couples to the gauge field by integrating A over the gauge fields world line and multiplying by Q. So those conventions tell you how I ended up with the square root of 2. This is how I'm normalizing everything. And the reason to be a little bit fussy about normalization is that the precise number that we get here will depend on the details of what theory we study. So in particular, here we had only gravitons and photons. I'll tell you a bit about theories where we also have scalars. And if the scalars coupled with the gauge fields, you get different solutions and this number actually changes. And so when I tell you what the weak gravity conjecture is, it's going to be important to try to be quantitative about that number. Because it's going to turn out that in the presence of scalars, there's more than one thing that you might mean by the weak gravity conjecture. And to figure out which one is the right one, you have to be careful about it. That's right. And that's another good point, which I was going to come to a bit later, but I might as well say it now since you asked. The question was, does this bound mean that gravity dominates over the electric force? And that is exactly right. They called this an extremality bound. An extremal black hole is one that saturates the bound. And the claim is that two extremal black holes of the same charge have no net long range force between them. So the gravitational attraction balances the electromagnetic repulsion. And consequently, exactly as you said, one interpretation of this extremality bound is that four black holes, gravity is a stronger force than electromagnetism. So any two black holes that are not both extremal, both saturating the bound, will be attracted to each other because gravity will overcome the electromagnetic repulsion. Good. So that's one important consequence of this extremality bound. This session ends in five minutes, right? So the statement about extremality generalizes to a larger class of theories. So for instance, we could consider Einstein Maxwell dilaton gravity, where the dilaton part means that I have a massless scalar, really stronger than massless, a scalar with a flat potential. And the way that scalar interacts with the theory is going to be not only by coupling to gravity, but by coupling to the gauge field with the factor of e to the minus some constant times phi in front of the gauge field kinetic term. So this is familiar, for instance, from the 10-D dilaton in string theory, but it also happens with lots of other things. If I study collutes of Klein theory, for instance, as we're going to see, we get similar couplings where phi is the radion field that tells you how big the circle is that you compactified on. So these couplings show up pretty often. And the claim is that in this theory, you can again find some set of classical black hole solutions that carry charge. But now in these solutions, the scalar field is turned on, you can't avoid turning it on because you have an electric field, so there's a non-zero value of f mu nu squared, so that sources phi and the classical solution. And so you get a different solution, and in fact you get a different extremality bound, and that bound turns out to be of the same form as the previous bound with a different constant in front. It differs by a factor of the square root of one plus alpha squared. Okay, so this is quite general. There are lots of different variations you can study on how scalar fields couple to gauge fields, but you will typically still find an extremality bound in any of those cases. The alpha is the constant that appeared in this coupling of the scalar to the gauge field. Let me just make one other brief comment before ending this session, which is that one thing I haven't really said so far, but I've kind of tacitly been assuming is that charges are quantized. And so if you like, you could think of that as another Swampland conjecture. In quantum gravity, if I hand you an ability in gauge field, the gauge group is always u1. It's always compact, and charges always quantized. The gauge group is never r. And in fact, that claim can be argued with very similar arguments to the one about no global symmetries. So if we had a theory where I had two particles whose charges were irrational multiples of each other, one in the square root of two, I could throw those charged particles into black holes and make black holes with any combination of those charges that I want and let them evaporate. And I would end up again with infinitely many states in a given range of charges. So that argument also appears in the Banks and Cyberg paper. And so if you found the black hole argument for no global symmetries convincing, you should also find it convincing that charge is always going to be quantized. And so I've really been assuming that in everything that I said. Like when I said there is a charge lattice and magnetic monopoles are part of it. All of that relied crucially on the assumption of quantized charge. We'll pick back up after the break.


It's a television What's up everyone welcome back to realistic gaming juniors not here because it's his birthday today So going wish him happy birthday in the comments right now and go hit the notification bell for his birthday But today we're gonna react to three different animations gonna be a Thomas one a toy story one in the cars one They're all weird We'll see how they are so let's start off with and for animation and this was scary spider Thomas the tank engine Thomas EXE You already know we love those videos All right, here we go And bring it subscribe to the channel by the way in the bottom over there I'm gonna put the links to our Instagram and our tiktoks to go and follow us. All right YouTube doesn't like us Don't show your videos What was up with this dude? He he rocking the Nike tech or what or is this an elf? Oh his knee hurts. I Get this. Oh, no, he's tying the shoe.  I guess oh It matches driving you just see big old Thomas is With long legs is chilling. He's like, hey, what are you doing on my street? Oh? You know Yeah, that's exactly what I would do. Oh, man, but it's gone. Oh, you got out the car. No, why are you getting out the car? You're going into the tunnel. That's where he lives. Oh It's over. Oh the cops. What are the cops gonna do? Shoot him in the butt? Shoot him. Oh Yeah, you saw that. He just he just like teleported. He's over there like Oh He bought it Why's the cop not shooting the cop froze I should have shot him Shoot him, bro Needed to die. He's just like now. Now. He's giving him a little neck massage. Come home, bro This old video, but I see now I got to see this Thomas tank engine exe part four. I haven't seen this This is watching see what happens. I Just throw it. This was not part of the videos. I was gonna watch today, but here we are This is by who? Oh and for animation Oh three days ago. Okay, let's see What language was that? All right, so they just you know, they're just hanging out. Oh Is that Thai Chinese? Let me know. I don't know. Is it Korean? Let me know in the comments. Is he peeing? Oh, I thought he was peeing. Never mind. What happened? Oh Oh, look up Jump TV jump. Okay. I'm for animations Hey, those are cool. I like them. Good job, Amber. Go give them a follow too. All right next video We're gonna watch is called toy story woody corruptions and it's by a vibing leaf All right, so go give them a follow. Let's give them a like Let's check this video out. Okay already creepy music. Okay Sometimes when woody is rendered he is switched to a low-poly model with textures all messed up Take a look at how it looks. Okay.  Oh, that is pretty creepy black eyes Okay We never thought we'd bring this up since it was more of a frustrating glitch that took a time to fix We encountered it again when developing toy story treats and decided to mess with this bug this video is your chance Okay, so we got always is part of the toy story movie. Okay, hopefully we don't get any copyright on this So I'm gonna keep talking over it just in case So what's this? Oh That sounded crazy That's pretty cool. Okay. I remember this from the first movie All right, let's see who wins this thing.  There's usually a time limit for moving But seeing this how this is a casual game between friends.  He didn't like that He didn't like losing he didn't like losing to the hand I'll get it. I would go back to He corruptions. Hey, well, there you go. That was pretty cool Um, I actually like the sounds to it. It sounds like super creepy now. The last one we're gonna watch is by Eater kfc card And it's called cars the remake boot I already like the title so let's give him a like and make sure you go and subscribe to his channel Let's go. Let's check it out Oh, do you kind of check the engine bro? You got Oh, they're farting. Hey, yo, it looks exactly like him Look at all the cars enjoying the view Dude, this is actually uh, I think this is a trailer for the new one Yo, he was twerking on his head gotta go fast That's my line It's dangerous cars could slip on it Come on, yo Hello there stranger. I see you have woken up Is that portuguese on the bottom? You were in a car accident My buddy here Brought you to our little town so you can be taken care of Thanks for all the help chaps, but I really gotta be going now photo my friend You are still recovering. Don't worry. We are gonna take very good care of you You should listen to the dog sweetie You're absolutely right.  You're so skinny. You must be starving. Here eat this Yes, you should eat as much as possible to grow big and healthy. Don't be shy Okay, if you say so So let me introduce you to our humble little town There's our police station and the sheriff There's luigi's tire shop Our drugstore What about that building over there? We must keep away from that one only town's focus permitted in there Why is that what's in there? That's none of your concern boy. What you should worry about is treating yourself Here's our welcome banquet just for you Enjoy What's in there?  We're just doing what we must do to survive in this post apocalyptic world post apocalyptic What are you talking about?  Or whatever.   It's time to eat and you are our main dish. They're carnivores Oh, no, no, no, I'm out of gas Not about to eat them. What's the matter zimba? Oh father.  I'd be having dreams like this Zimba animation I am now a smarter person after watching that for watching y'all Make sure you guys hit the notification button Go and comment also as you guys see our videos sometimes they don't even give views honestly So you guys want to help out by commenting? We really appreciate it And yeah, that'll be all for today. Make sure you guys follow us on instagram and on tech talking Yeah, that's it. See you guys later. Peace


king of breakfast as he's brought technology, design and innovation as the ingredients in building a packaged food company. Before I invite him on the stage, let me also inform you that we are all Facebook live. So you do not have to worry about taking videos on the phone. It's all accessible on Facebook. But keep your insights coming using hashtag eLiveIndia. I repeat, hashtag eLiveIndia. With that energy, let's welcome on stage our next keynote speaker. Ladies and gentlemen, the CEO and co-founder of ID Fresh Food, Mr. Mustafa PC. Good morning. In the name of God, peace be unto you. Thank you for inviting me here. It's such a great honor to be here among all these great leaders and superstars. I am PC Mustafa. We make world's best food, idlies. We make crispy dosas, real, real yummy parathas, if you haven't tried it, and the most famous vada. Vada with a proper whole and many more. I come from very remote village in a beautiful place called Vineyard in Kerala. That's my village. If you have not been there, that's a must visit place. My village was so remote that we had no electricity in my village. We had no roads in my village. I had to walk miles to my school. Government's midday meal scheme was the biggest motivation factor for me to attend the school. My dad was a Cooley. As my dad was finding it difficult to meet both ends of the family, I ended up doing a Cooley job at the age of 10 with him. Three-time meal was a distant dream during my childhood days. Breakfast was a luxury. I was very poor in my studies. I was a school dropout. I later went back to school and became a school top in less than one year. I then worked with few MNCs in India. I then did my engineering and computer science by chance. I handed over my first-man salary to my dad and he literally cried seeing that money because he had never seen that kind of money in his lifetime. It was actually more than his lifetime savings. I then worked with few MNCs in India, Middle East and Europe. I decided to come back to India with an objective of creating employment for smart kids from my village. That's where I did tie up with my cousins, who were running a small time Kirana store in a place called Pishantar in Bangalore. We burns on different ideas. And that's how the famous ID or Idli Dosa product came to the market. All what we had was one grinder, one mixer, one sealing machine, one weighing scale and a second hand TVS kuti. Our job was to go to market every day by rice dal, come back, clean it, wash, soak, grind, mix it, pack it, ferment it and then load it on the second hand TVS kuti and go to the market ourselves and sell it to ourselves. It was a back breaking work. Our shirt would be soaked in the sweat. But then it's one of the most enjoyable things that I did in my life. Looking back, these are the stories that you don't hear from the success stories. You don't get to hear these stories from magazines. These are the words best business are built. You have to go through the struggle. So when we started, Idli Dosa product in Pishantar in Bangalore with 20 stores, it took us nine months to sell 100 packets. Today we sell Idli Dosa batter to make more than a million idlis every single day. Today we are a thousand crore brand. This journey has not been very easy. For any business, you need to look at three important checklist. One of course is the profitability, sustainability and scalability. Today I'm going to talk about scalability, but let me just quickly touch up on the profitability. It's extremely important to make business profit from day one. First month, we made a profit of 400 rupees. We still make profit. If you don't make profit today, it's extremely difficult to make profit tomorrow. So profit is the first thing that we need to focus on the business. Next one on sustainability. Whenever my grandfather could afford to eat Idli, if he could afford to eat a breakfast, he would eat Idli.  I think Idli is the most sustainable business in the world. Coming to the main subject is scalability. Did know that we Bangaloreans take in Idli dosa batter to make more than two crore Idli every single day. That's a multi-billion dollar business opportunity. The only thing is it's not a fancy business. People don't take it as serious. This is where we started. Now, to scale a Idli business, it's not going to be easy. So we looked at three aspects for the scalability. Manufacturing, which is the back end, distribution, which is the supply chain, and innovation. So I'm going to talk about these three subjects quickly with each of them with a story. So let me tell you about the manufacturing that we did. As you all know, you have seen these grinders on the left side. Yeah, those are the traditional wet grinders available across. This grinder grinds 1.5 kg of dal per hour. To get best Idli, you need best batter. To get best batter, you need to do the stone grinding using wet grinding technology, which our grandmother used to make at home. Now, most of the food processing machineries are innovated in Germany. Unfortunately, Germans don't eat Idli dosa. So I had nothing to copy from. For me to scale up this business, it was extremely important for me to focus on the back end. Today, we grind around 25,000 kg of rice and dal per hour. You can now imagine the size of the factory required. You can now imagine the complication that comes with the quality consistency. Because if I use the traditional grinders, which is 1.5 kg, I would need probably half of MG Road area to make the factory for the two days better. And moreover, it is not easy to maintain hygiene. When you are around, employees would follow your manufacturing process. Whereas when you are not around, they will end up doing this. You can't help it. And that's the fact. It was extremely important for me to focus on the back end. So we looked at what kind of technology is available across. There was nothing available for the Idli dosa. But then we were not experts in making grinders. We ended up going to Germany and identified mustard paste making machinery, which is quite popular in the US market. We worked with them, developed Idli dosa better making machinery. We are using very good technology. Today, the grinder that you see on the right side, which is from my factory, grinds 5,000 kg of Idli dosa better in an hour. Untouchable hand. With a press of a button, I will clean it. That is extremely important for a manufacturing business. Focus on the back end. Because we think technology is all about mobile apps and internet. It is not. It is not just internet and mobile apps. Technology is also about the back end. That's my first story. Focus on the back end. Focus on the manufacturing. Focus on the machineries when you are in the manufacturing business. My next biggest challenge is about distribution. As you all know, for a fresh food business, wastage is the key. That's the biggest challenge. We want to sell fresh with 0% wastage. Now, as you all know, 40% of the food that is produced in India is wasted across. There was no way for me to make this business profitable and scalable at this kind of wastage. That's where we used technology again. This time we used the real IT. First thing that we did was to ensure that every store is geotagged. So today, we supply our products to around 30,000 outlets every single day. We do more than 3 lakh transactions every single day. We do to get this stores right and the transaction right. So what we did was geotag every store to ensure that my salesman reaches every store on time, every time. We used traveling salesman path algorithm to ensure that routes are optimized. This worked. Then worked on the service issue, which is my salesman has to reach the store, go to the store and replenish the stock on a daily basis. Unless you use technology, it is extremely difficult for you to monitor service quality and to ensure that my salesman actually has visited the store and replenishes the stock. This is where we did geofencing. We ensured that he can do a transaction only when he's within the store using geofencing. And then we linked his rewards based on the number of transactions he did us. That worked. And coming to the last point, which is the most important point in technology that we use was data. ID runs on IT. We captured last eight years of data. Before that, let me just tell you, when we started ID in 2005, we were sending 100 packets to the market. Nandy used to come back and sold. I was running a wastage of 90%. There was no way for me to be sustainable in that business. Over a period of time, in three, four years, we started sending 2,000 packets to the market. 500 used to come back and sold. 25% wastage in 2008. Again, there was no way for me to make this business scalable and profitable with this kind of wastage. That's where we used technology. We started capturing store-wise, item-wise, sales and wastage data. We now use this data to predict the right demand for the right store in the right day. Doing 3,000,000 transactions every day and getting all those 3,000,000 transactions right is extremely important. Today, in a mature city, a mature product, we run at a lesser than 2% wastage. That is the power of technology. Use technology wisely. Don't overdo it. Use technology to sell idly. My last point is about the importance of innovation in scaling into the business, which is the most popular Vada. As you all know, Vada goes best with idly. Vada is a great snack. Kids love Vada. A South Indian breakfast is incomplete without idly, dosa, Vada, chutney, and an ID filter coffee. So, in a period of 10 years, we managed to reach a million households every single day with fresh idly batter. What next? Scale up. Of course, the Vada. But then, Vada is one of the most difficult snacks to make at home. Even if you give a Vada batter, you can't make Vada at home. Vada batter is as sticky as super glue. You can't get the size right for the Vada. You can't get the shape right for the Vada. And what we learned is, we Indians don't eat a Vada without a hole in the middle. The hole is the most important part for the Vada. A Vada without a hole is not a Vada. It's a bond up. It was extremely important for us to focus on this. We took three years to build a hole for the Vada. We failed 100 times, but we didn't give it up. Today, a homemaker can make Vada at home by just using an ID Vada batter and touch by hand. Let me just show you how it works. This is no ordinary snack. A South Indian specialty. It's a favorite in homes across India, but its circular cylindrical shape and donut-like hole make it fairly difficult to prepare at homes. It needs the expert hands of grandmas and aunts or even restaurant cooks. Not anymore. ID decided to turn its attention on this age-old problem and transform the complex art of Vada making into a science for everyone. And the key ingredient, common sense.  The spout that shapes batter into Vadas with the hole. And that's it. Squeeze, shape, cut, fry. Handmade, but with no mess, no stress. Just delicious crispy Vadas. ID, maker of India's favorite batters and fresh food presents Vada batter in a pack that shapes batter into Vadas. Now, everybody can Vada. It took just five seconds for you to clap, but it took me three years to build it. And that's a fact. It is extremely, extremely important to be stay focused and be patient in business. And for you to get innovation into the business, my request to all of you is go ahead and reward your employees for failures. We all celebrate success, but we don't celebrate failures. Unless you start celebrating failures, you will not get product like Vada. Go ahead and reward your employees for failures. Then you will get products like Vada. Now, it's such a coincidence that young boy from a remote village of Vayanad in Kerala, whose dream was to eat three-time meal and a healthy breakfast, is part of a team driving Italy business, world's best food, Italy, into more than a million homes every single day. It is not by chance. It is by choice. Scaling up is by choice. For scaling up, focus on three aspects. One, the backend, not just mobile apps, focus on the missionaries. Second, focus on the supply chain, technology used wisely. And third, focus on innovation. This video went viral across the world last year. Today, I'm getting inquiry from different part of the world to make the same thing for donuts. We decided not to do it, by the way. Techies call it 3D printing of Vada. World called it innovation, but we used our common sense. We used common sense to build this business. We used common sense to identify that Vada goes best with Italy. We used common sense to identify that the biggest problem of making Vada is the whole. And then we used common sense idea to put a whole for the Vada. Now, since the message to all of you is look at common sense, because common sense is the most important grade for innovation, which is reducing dangerously these days. We end up communicating things unnecessarily. Coming to the last part of my session, innovation is not just about packaging. Innovation is not just about technology. Innovation is important in your marketing campaigns as well. Today, we built a 1000 crore business just by spending 20 crores in the last 10 years, because we were still smart. Even today, we are still smart. So, let me just play one video for you, where we used common sense to identify that this works. Good luck, son. Eat your food, okay? Okay, mom. I'll talk later. Bye-bye. Sorry, guys. Hi, mom. Hi, son. Work done? Yeah, mom. I'm going out right now. Son, eat something. Yes, I will eat something. Okay, bye. Hi, mom. Have you had breakfast, Adi? I'm running very late. I know. I won't be coming home this weekend. Bye. Hello, Adi. Hi, mom. Why are you calling so late? Mom, I'm very stressed at work. I can't talk right now. Anything urgent? He's sure that you can do anything. I called you so many times. Why didn't you pick up? I've been sick, bitter.  I didn't want to disturb you. Mom, I'm very stressed at work. I can't talk right now. Anything urgent? You ate your food. For this great opportunity, keep eating idli every day.  Thank you so much. All right, one second. Thank you very much, Mr. Mustafa. You know, you've made some great points today, but we love to know a little more about you in terms of how you really put together this business. So, we're going to just ask him some very, very quick questions, which he's also going to answer equally quickly. Okay, I'll try. So, you know, how did you raise the seed fund, initial seed fund? So far, I think all what we had was 25,000 rupees. We made business profitable from day one. Yeah. And idli business was not a fancy business. Right. There was nobody willing to invest on the idli business. I think we used three F approach, which is friends, families, and fools to invest in idli initially. But you also raised from some very serious funds. You raised from helium adventures and you raised from Prem Genevase. So that we started that happened at the stage when they started using my product and they start noticing us in the market. Then they came to us. So we did our first round funding from helium and second round from Prem Genevast. And you also entered the UAE market. Why did you think of UAE as a great market for id fresh foods? UAE is like a developed India. That's right. Yeah, it's you know, half of UAE is India. Yes. And particularly South India. It's a great business. Today, it's just four years for us in the market. Today, UAE contributes 25% of my business and 100% of the profits. Sure. Sorry. And finally, you know, I mean today, there are lots of startups out here and out there also who are building a lot consumer brands and consumer brands are unlike tech businesses. Yeah. So how do you build a consumer brand without spending too much? I think to build a consumer brand, you need to look at three important aspects. It's like a triangle. Right. Just imagine this triangle. Number one is the product. Your product must be a hero. Let me just take my Vada as an example. Vada is very soft. It's crispy outside. Soft inside. Yummy in taste. You feel like having it again.  So your product must be a hero, not Shahrukh Khan. Yeah. If you don't get your product, right, don't even attempt to build a brand. Yeah. Right. That's the first thing. Second part of the triangle is more like what do you say? The memorable consumer experience. Again, let me take Vada as an example. We didn't sell Vada. We sold Vada batter. Consumers ended up making the Vada using my Vada batter. And the moment that Vada batter cup was coming out from the Vada pack in the round shape, that was like a warm moment for them. For many of them, this was their first Vada in their life. Kids started making Vada. And I'm sure this is something which they will remember their lifetime. Many of them started taking selfie and videos and posting on different social media platforms. That really helped. So it is extremely important for us to give that memorable user experience for consumers because you can't build a brand just by using money. You need to give them that memorable experience that they will remember for the lifetime. We all see many advertisements by people spending huge money. But how many of them they remember? Right. Right. But then when you see, when you experience a Vada pack of this sort, you will remember that for your lifetime. I think that was important. So first thing, product, memorable experience. And last but probably the most important thing is the well crafted storytelling. That's true. That is extremely important. It is zero cost investments, zero cost. And in fact, we build this brand using these three aspects. I went to Harvard and shared the story of what I'm making. Right. And that went viral. So we use opportunity to share the story behind Vada. So well crafted storytelling. People would love to know more about your brand and about the kind of work that you've done. Can we pass on the mic to the gentleman? We have like five minutes left. Right. We'll just have two, three minutes. Maybe two quick questions. Thanks, Mr. Fine. It was very inspiring to get to know about your story. It's a very quick question. So food package business or food package industry is very competitive and crowded market, especially in India. Right. And definitely as you mentioned, it's a multi-billion dollar industry. So my question is, how did you protect your business from competitors, you know, from the likes of you need? It all depends on who your competition is. So if you look at Idli Dosa business in back, we Bangalore took in more than two and a batter for two crore Idli every day, which is the size of hundred Asian elephants. We ID. Okay. How many of you use ID? Thank you. Keep eating it every day. By the way, many of them think that ID is a monopoly. That's wrong. ID has a very minute miniscule market share. My market share is just four percentage because 95% of the people make batter at home. My competition is not the local batter available here. My competition is the greatest at home. The day I'm able to throw those greatest out, that's when I become successful. And I think that's the way we look at it. Don't look at your direct competition. Look at your grinders.


Listen, 308. This instant is the only time there is. I have conceived of time in such a way that I defeat my aim. If I elect to reach past time to timelessness, I must change my perception of what time is for. Time's purpose cannot be to keep the past and future one. The only interval in which I can be saved from time is now. For in this instant has forgiveness come to set me free. The birth of Christ is now, without a past or future. He has come to give His present blessing to the world, restoring it to timelessness and love. And love is ever-present here and now. Thanks for this instant, Father. It is now I am redeemed. This instant is the time you have appointed for your son's release and for salvation of the world in him. Amen.


The president of the Senate, Ahmed Lawan, have urged all the opposition political parties to team up with the incoming government of the all-progressive Congress to jointly take Nigeria to the next level of development. Lawan said these in Abuja while receiving in audience a delegation of the Organization of African-Caribbean and Pacific State led by its Secretary-General George Rebello Pintino Cicotti. Lawan said his guests had earlier mentioned that they came at a time now just going through a transition but assured them that a transition from one government to a new government on May 29, 2023 would not be an issue for the organization. The Secretary-General George Rebello Cicotti said his guests had earlier mentioned that they came at a time now just going through a transition from one government to a new government on May 29, 2023 would not be an issue for the organization. Lawan said they came at a time now just going through a transition from one government to a new government on May 29, 2023 would not be an issue for the organization. Your Excellency, being in Nigeria for me is also the occasion to inform your Excellency that at the OECPS level, the joint parliamentary assembly of the OECPS is now being constituted and indeed at that level we do count quite a lot on Nigeria, which is an important member of this parliamentary assembly and we do expect that as they work towards the elaboration of the rules of the joint parliamentary assembly, we certainly do expect that Nigeria will play a critical role to develop this parliamentary assembly. Hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Laura Nolan coming to you from ITW 2020. Joining me today is Peter von Burgl CEO of M6. Peter welcome to JSA TV. Thank you Laura and thank you for having me. Glad to have you. Well for those who don't already know can you please tell our viewers about M6. Yes thank you so M6 is an internet exchange and in that role we are one of the major connection hubs in the world connecting many people together and many companies of course together and you can probably best compare it to something like like a large port or an airport. So here in the Netherlands we have Rotterdam port for example where they actually bring a lot of containers in and then they bring them on to other parts of Europe and that's exactly what we do but then actually for internet traffic. So yeah that's what we do that's on chicks. It was a great explanation Peter. Thank you very much. So tell us about any recent news or updates. Do you have any to share with us in the ITW virtual event audience. Yeah so any recent news updates. How can I not talk about COVID of course a crisis that we've all been faced with and have to deal with and I must say for M6 of course we have had our challenges but also we've seen weirdly also a positive effect. So specifically after the lockdown came into effect in the Netherlands and in a large part of Europe we saw quite the increase in traffic which we could deal with quite easily because of the way we're designed and now we're handling that traffic but of course we also had to deal with that operationally. So we have to make some changes to our team and our process to support that. I'm happy to say that we've been able to get through that quite quite effectively but also us you know we're working at home so the whole team has been working from home for a long time. We have reopened the office although many people are still working from home as we speak and yeah we're just trying to find our way into the new normal I would say. So you know operationally and business wise we're doing okay but you know the future is somewhat uncertain like it is for everybody and to see where this crisis is going to take us. Peter as we're navigating this new normal and you know business operations are moving ahead do you can you give us an idea of maybe what the rest of the year looks like and beyond business wise or what initiatives you have moving forward to the M6. Yeah so like I said for the for the second half of the year we are relatively positive I would say. Of course it's optimistic I think the saying is in English because like I said we do expect economically there be an impact. Many parts of business have been affected and many people have been affected and that can't be without also an effect on companies like us. However when we look at our business we also seem to be in the right business right internet and internet connectivity has proven very important in these challenging times and we also see that in in our business. So for the second half of the year we have a number of opportunities with a relatively new service we launched last year it's called high access service where we help companies actually set up their own IEX and that's been proven quite successful and we also continue to invest in our network and in our services to make sure that we can you know deal with those opportunities or for that matter any of the changes that are going to happen in the in the market places. So like I said we're cautiously optimistic but keeping a close eye on market developments because of the increased uncertainty in the next couple of months. Understood well Peter tell our viewers where we can go to learn more and follow the developments of M6. Yes of course there's our website omsix.net where there's a lot of information available people can subscribe to the newsletter but also you know the normal social media channels we of course use as well so like LinkedIn and Twitter and what have you but also channels like this so we have a booth at ITW or a virtual booth this year you can find us there and find more information about us and yeah we really hope also that in the near future the real events are going to happen again and we'll be present there too in when and if they happen. Okay go check out M6 at ITW the virtual booth and their website and social channels you'll know where to find them. Thank you Peter so much for joining us and sharing with us today. Thank you Laura it's been a pleasure being here and I hope you have a good show and we'll talk to you soon. We will do that and thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA podcast. Happy networking.


We are headed over to the toy section here at Walmart and we are shopping for some kids. Oh this one's cute. Two third grade classes. I think he's gonna love this. I worked with a couple of the teachers. All right. To ask them if they could have their students like the coolest game ever. Right. A wishlist to Santa. I'd love this. I would wear this. And then they sent the list over to me. I'm so excited. And so with my communication with Santa we were able to get that list. How awesome is that? And help shop for these kids. Hot wheels speed away. They have no idea that they're getting any of these gifts. Oh this is one of them. So it's gonna be a huge surprise. Oh they're gonna be so excited. I can't wait to see their faces. I think we're good. The money was actually raised by Denver police officers. We all collectively put in and bought all these wonderful gifts for the kids that are in a third grade class at John and Miss.


Right. Welcome to this improved pressure to just deal with one matter in relation to the attempts by the state, particularly by some state or staff and some of the UPND elements within government institutions. to try and downplay the magnitude of the scandal around the God's Cando at Kenneth County International Airport. Zambians have a right to know what is happening on their soil, especially when it borders around criminality. And patriotic Zambians, particularly members of the opposition, have been speaking on behalf of the Zambian people, asking very critical and pertinent questions around that particular saga. Demanding for transparency, especially that government has exposed itself through contradictory statements and the information that is not coordinated but is not telling.  One is to try and divert the attention of the citizens by wanting to create a narrative that this is just basically a street transaction of some street scammers of God as a way of shielding very senior government officials and authorities in government that obviously everyone, well-meaning Zambian would know that for those aircrafts to end up at the presidential pavilion using the VIP session of airport, that would not happen save it was cleared from the highest authorities of the land. We have seen a precedence that only goes to demonstrate that Misaka Ndehichilema is a coward. He has been allowing sudo social media platforms like Cosway as a means through which they begin to instruct institutions of government and what is disappointing is that system of government respond to sudo platforms of that nature to go and arrest the opposition. Today, which is a second time, Cosway and other social media UPND commentators have been demanding for the arrest of Ambassador Muhamba, a member of central committee for the patriotic front as well as deputy chairman for information and publicity. Because of the fact that he has been able to ask pertinent questions demanding for transparency, but instead of just answering those questions they want to use intimidation, a character that has no proper background in journalism but has been employed as a niece and now has even been attached to the president in terms of covering the president whenever he travels is even courageous as a civil servant now to start posting on Facebook page demanding for the arrest of a very seasoned diplomat, a very seasoned journalist. The one that is renowned both locally and internationally in the name of Ambassador Muhamba to have him arrested and according to their dow and naive argument that because he seems to have more information, asimoning for investigation. What investigations? Investigations should be around what has transpired. We have heard of the fact that the money initially people are claiming it was 40 million dollars. Later on it turned out to be 23 million dollars. It changed to 11 million dollars. Next it was over 6 or so million dollars. Now it is sitting at 5.7 million dollars. All that including now what has turned out to be a description of the minister of minds as being a miracle worker who has attempted to change the description of the minerals found there from God to something else. These revelations require answers. Chushka Sanda was apologizing yesterday over conflicting statements from government officials. Jack Muimbu yesterday was trying to warn his fellow ministers and other government officials who have made comments around this issue to say can you stop it. Only going to demonstrate that this government the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. And the only reason why that would be the case is whether is only when that particular scandal involves very senior people in government. If it was basically an isolated scandal that doesn't involve anybody in government it would have been a straightforward arrangement that the panicking government would not have been there. Even this boy they want to use the young man Kassanda to try and trivialize this whole scandal and move it away from status, move it away from community house, move it away from government is because of the fact that they want to divert attention. Now there are pictures which asambians are supposed to celebrate. When Ambassador Muimbu was high commissioner in South Africa, Kassanda found himself on the bad side of the law in South Africa and the duty of an ambassador is to look out for every Zambian. That's what patriotism demands. Even if whatever they have done, if they find themselves in an awkward position, an ambassador or high commissioner in that particular jurisdiction is supposed to safeguard first of all that season and bring them back and if they are to answer to the law, let them answer in a back home in their country. That's what Americans do, that's what Europeans do, that's what everybody does. They go on and earth those pictures which were taken at the time that Kassanda and his family went to appreciate the government of Zambia through ambassador for the interventions that were made for him not to be unfairly treated in South Africa. So for us Kosue and all those elements they are using, we just say hard luck, you are embarrassing your president. All the moves you are making and I hope the police and law enforcement agencies will not fall to that trick and end up continuing to regret about the actions they take which only goes to invariance the head of state and the UPND government. Thank you very much and good evening.


Alright, if this is your first world-building analysis video, then I'll give you a basic idea of what it's like. Sometimes fantastical worlds that are created by authors aren't very logical. Sometimes they outright contradict themselves, or don't follow any sort of patterns, and I've talked about it in the past with videos like this. Fantasy is a very broad genre, with everything from large epic fantasy based on medieval Europe to the real world with a few basic magical elements. Think Lord of the Rings as one, and Twilight as the other. For this one, I didn't have a whole lot to say about any individual fantasy series, but I did have plenty of small complaints about a bunch of them. That doesn't mean I hate all the books I mention here, some of them are great. They just have problems that are worth bringing up, because I feel that criticizing things helps to improve them. Or maybe I just obsess over small details as a way to distract myself from the unending size of the void between stars. Also, assume that there will be big spoilers for everything I talk about here, so skip ahead if you come across something like that, or just put it on mute to preserve my watch time. K, thanks. Yeah, we're starting off with only the finest vintage today. This book is terrible in every way, so forget everything I just said about liking some of these books because I hate this one a lot. The setup here is that there's a typical fantasy land called Utrasia, which is based on medieval Europe that had a war against some evil sorceresses 300 years before the story begins, where the good guys emerged victorious. The sorceress leaders were exiled across the ocean where they rebuilt their power and thus the story unfolds. So the first problem. The sorceresses are taken on a ship and sent off in a lifeboat 14 days into the voyage. No one has ever gone farther than that and returned. As far as anyone knows, the ocean just goes on forever, so they're expected to die on the trip. They do it this way because wizards can't kill people except in self-defense, so rather than behead the sorceresses, they had to exile them in a way that they knew would kill them, but they still technically had a chance to survive. Possibly. Theoretically. On paper.   But the sorceresses manage to convince the heads to let them pass in exchange for giving them a bunch of other people to eat later. For starters, 14 days of sailing isn't a great unit of measurement. How far you go in a day is determined by stuff like what kind of ship you're in, what the wind is like, and where the currents go. All of this can change depending on the season or even from day to day, but whatever. Not a huge problem on its own. My problem is that no one else ever thought to do this. No one ever sailed out, saw that they were about to be eaten by giant talking heads and tried to negotiate. Even if you don't want to sacrifice other people to save yourself, the heads have no way of holding you to that bargain.   As soon as the royal family and army's leadership are beheaded, the entire country falls into complete chaos. Apparently there's no other authority in the country. None. No local nobility who survived the attack. No prime minister who knew how to run a kingdom. No mayors, no magistrates, no constables, no bishops, no guilds, no town councils. No one at all who could help keep things together. And I'm not saying they were all killed. Most of the country was untouched. If they existed, they'd still be there. Even in the harshest dictatorships, no man rules alone. A king can't defend his own borders, build his own roads, or settle every little dispute in every village. That's why most governments which are larger than one community have some sort of local jurisdictions that can handle the smaller problems. How much autonomy they have varies, but the authority is there. The United States has had eight presidents die in office over the years, and even if there was no succession afterwards, the whole rest of the federal government would be there to run things. And if that was gone, every state, territory, county, and municipality would have its own leaders. The instant I read that part, I knew the author hadn't put any sort of thought into the setting and just sort of threw things together like he was writing a Kingdom Hearts spin-off game. And this is hardly the only time he does that. There's also the fact that there's no magic outside of Eutrasia for some reason, or how the massive war that occurred only 300 years ago is unknown to most people, or how every king gives up power when his son turns 30 for some reason. How does that even work? What if he has no sons? Does the throne go to a woman? Does it go to the next male relative? How did this get started? What purpose does it serve? It's implied that the directorate of wizards might have strong-armed the monarchy into accepting this arrangement. Wouldn't this create an unstable political environment where one or two former kings might still be alive and filled with a desire to come back into power? Of course not. That would be neat. Despite all of this, I haven't even begun to touch on the worst this book has to offer, but I don't want to talk about how much incest is involved in the villain's plan, so let's keep going. Time for a palette cleanser. Yeah, this series was written by a teenager, but it's pretty good considering that. I can acknowledge the issues and shrug them off. It's still an enjoyable series overall. That said, the setting has some problems. It's mostly stemming from the fact that in some ways it tries to be Middle Earth, in some ways it tries to be a light-hearted realm that operates on fairy tale logic, and in some ways it tries to be dark and serious. The first problem is small. The Empire is literally just called the Empire. I know some of the expanded universe stuff refers to it as the Brodering Empire, but in the books it's never given a real name. That just sounds really weird. Imagine if France was referred to as the country. It would be odd. Names are used to differentiate things. Why we have them in the first place. That aside, the role of humans in Allagazia doesn't add up. Okay, I can accept that Galbathorix and the Forceworn are powerful enough to kill off the other dragonriders, and I can accept that the political situation would be destabilized enough for them to take over the human kingdom, especially since the elves and dwarves decided not to help. But the idea that Galbathorix's new empire could dominate Allagazia so thoroughly that other races would be forced to hide in the wilderness is ridiculous. He barely held his empire together for several decades, to the point where Cerda was able to secede, and even if it wasn't barely functional, humans are far weaker than the elves, and magic is far less common among them. The elves would cut through all but the Forceworn like... What's something softer than butter? Not important. The dwarves would do well for themselves too, so how the hell do the humans command so much fear? Maybe you could justify this setup by saying that the humans have a gigantic numbers advantage, but that doesn't check out either. There are between 1 and 2 million sentient beings in Allagazia. That includes humans, urgals, dragons, elves, and dwarves. The humans are the most recent arrivals to the continent. A few hundred years ago, a nobleman named Palinkar sailed there with his house. Then they colonized everything on the west coast and populated enough to have several large cities along with tons of smaller towns and villages. One noble house of humans came, and within a few hundred years they had that many people? There weren't any other waves of migration that could have explained this. Aragon and others know next to nothing about the old human homeland. There's no contact with it whatsoever. Population growth can account for some of that, but it's glacial in pre-industrial societies. Stuff like being able to grow more food, create the tools needed to grow all that food, and get the food where it needs to be all require technology that they simply don't have. In the year zero, the Earth's population was around 300 million people. A thousand years later, it was 310 million. A thousand years after that, it was 5 billion. Industry matters. And all of this was after losing a series of wars against the elves, e.g. a bunch of them died immediately after arriving. Despite this tiny population, Galbathorix was somehow able to muster an army of over 100,000 men in Eldist, which was not his only army, and he could replenish it when people died. Look, suspension of disbelief is a thing that has to exist in every story to one extent or another. You have to believe that magic can exist in this world, that humans would evolve in the exact same way they did on Earth despite different circumstances, and while everyone has a different threshold for what divergence from reality is acceptable, some things are just too much to overlook completely. Let's review. A few hundred thousand humans got on boats and colonized a new continent with no contact back home. Out of charity, they were given a big chunk of land to live on, and some humans became dragonriders. Then some riders killed all the others before taking over the human kingdom, while the other races did nothing to prevent the political situation from falling to pieces. Then that new human empire, despite being run so poorly that pieces broke off and being completely cut off from most trade with other countries, somehow becomes a superpower of such overwhelming might that it takes the combined forces of all other races and a new dragonrider to defeat.   This series is basically perfect.   I went over a lot of things. However, there was plenty of material that I skipped or glossed over, which isn't surprising when you remember that it consists of eight books that clock in at an average of over 400 pages. Also, the protagonist will be referred to as Aelin throughout this, even though she changes her name midway through the series. Okay, so the gist of this is that there's an evil empire called Otterlin that's gone around conquering stuff for a few decades. Then this super cool badass assassin named Aelin comes in and leads a rebellion and stuff because no other plotlines exist in young adult fantasy. Then Aelin decides she's the chosen one, and also the king of Otterlin was possessed by a demon who is the real bad guy, and they have to defeat him. So let's start with Otterlin's power base, or lack thereof. The king of Otterlin is an absolute ruler, but as I said earlier, no man rules alone, not really. Other people have to fight wars and such for him, which means he has to assure the loyalty of at least part of his population. He needs some sort of power base, whether that be the common people, nobility, or certain ethnic slash religious groups, which means that he needs to run things in such a way that some people will benefit from his rule. You see this sort of thing in all sorts of governments. In pre-revolution France, the kings kept control through loyalty of the aristocracy and clergy. They held all the important positions and made up the bulk of the army depending on the time period. Without their support, the monarchy would crumble. The peasants may not have benefited from this arrangement, but they didn't have any power, so it was a moot point. After the revolution, most of the old nobility were dead or exiled, and their old positions were filled with loyal revolutionaries, who were mostly either the old middle class or peasants. For a while anyhow. In democratic countries, politicians need votes to grab onto or stay in power, and they do that by establishing a base, and that always means alienating yourself from a segment of the population. If you establish support by whipping up hate against a certain ethnic group, then members of that group probably won't vote for you. That's not to say no one you rail against will support you.  Just look at the association of German national Jews. You don't matter as an individual, only as a voting bloc. Whoever is in power, or is seeking power, tends to play up to their base more than anyone else. They enact or promise policies that can benefit those who keep them in power, not always to the detriment of others, but sometimes. For example, promising attacks on those above a certain level of wealth for social programs that benefit the lower classes will win you support from one, and hate from another. As for the king of Otterland, his policies seem to be detrimental to literally everyone. Peasants, nobles, the middle class, foreigners, humans, fey, everyone is worse off with him around. His main source of authority seems to be brute force. All opposition is met with death, even when it comes from nobility. The king doesn't seem to exercise control by making people like him, or by controlling resources or taxation, so his power flows entirely from his armed forces. This raises the question of how he inspires loyalty in his soldiers, and where he gets the money to pay them. Although those are kind of the same question. If the army offered good pay for anyone who joined, then I could see a lot of peasants joining up. But there's no hint or indication as to where the king's wealth comes from. If his personal lands had gold mines or something, that would be one thing, but there's nothing ever mentioned. As an aside, there's a point in the first book where Eileen mentions that Otterland's standing army is over a million men strong and... I've made this point before, but pre-modern societies, with pre-modern economies, and pre-modern technology didn't have the capability to maintain an army that large for any significant length of time. Magic can handwave some of that, but this series never does. Enough about that. Let's talk about how demifay and witches don't make sense either. The three sentient races we see in this series are the humans, the witches, and the fey. And the ways they reproduce with one another is... odd. The witches are all female and reproduced by canoodling with human men, and their offspring are stated to always be girls. Girl witches specifically. Okay, that makes an odd sort of sense. But then it later comes up that one of the main witch characters, named Manon, is a witch whose father is also a witch. This is possibly the most blatant clumsy attempt at a retcon I've ever seen, and I read The Cursed Child. If some witches can have male children, then obviously they aren't all females. And if their male children are humans instead, then what exactly sets witches apart from humans? Why are they a different species if they need humans to...  The fey are even worse though. They fall into that standard fantasy race that is very powerful and lives a long time but is nerfed by not having many offspring, trope, like elves in Lord of the Rings. However, they can breed with humans to make demi-fey that have some of their powers and longevity. Even someone like Aelyn, who only has one eighth fey ancestry, has a lot of magic power, both when she has the god's blessing and after she loses it. She also has a longer lifespan and super senses because the self-insert must be the best. The thing is, Aelyn has fey ancestry because she's a member of a human royal family which intermarried with a fey royal family. If this is something that happens, then every noble in the world should have some fey ancestry, or just outright be fey. In monarchies, marriages are ways of forging alliances, bringing new wealth to dynasties, and sometimes for religious reasons. By the end of the Middle Ages, most of the noble houses of Europe were related. That's how you wind up with the monarchs of Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom all being first cousins and all going to war with one another during World War I.  The map is a mess too. As is common with terrible young adult fantasy series, and terrible regular fantasy series for that matter, the map is just a blob with words on it. Take a look at the ecology. We have a forest jammed up against the coastline between two deserts, a river that flows uphill, and... Is that a jungle in the middle of the arctic? Are you joking? Then there's this big chunk of terrason that's behind the mountains, and has nothing in it. Most of the national borders here make sense since they're drawn along rivers of mountain ranges. This one just expands outward into nothing. There aren't any towns or cities marked, and we never hear about any important reasons for the royal family to want to go to the trouble of holding onto it. And when we go outside of Aralea, we see stuff like this lake that spawns about 12 billion different rivers all going in different directions. On the southern continent, there are several mountain ranges that aren't even ranges so much as bunched up groups of rocks along the coasts. There's no signs of tectonic plate movement here, which is a bit too analytical even for me, but the fact that I have to think about it at all is a sign of how badly this series fails at immersion. Okay, last one. Skull's Bay. Skull's Bay is a giant pirate haven off the coast of Otterland. It's not part of the Empire's territory. In fact, it's a country in all but name, run by its own pseudo hereditary monarchy. The guy in charge, whose name is Rolf, seems to have a fair degree of control over the other pirates.  So here's a question for you. What do you get when you cross an expansionist, continent-spanning empire, and a small country right off its shores which keeps attacking it? You won't have a small country for long. The only reason this thing exists is so that Empire of Storms can spend 400 pages talking about how important it is.   Basically, Christian mythology is true, at least partially. So there are fallen angels who fell to Earth millennia ago, and they just kind of hang out doing stuff.  However, once a year during the Jewish month of... Heshvon? Cheshvon? I can't pronounce that. They can possess the bodies of Nephilim, and they can feel stuff during that time. What's a Nephilim? A person who is descended from humans and fallen angels.  But if angels can only possess Nephilim, and Nephilim are only created by an angel possessing a Nephil to slap genitals with a human, then how was the first Nephil created at all?  And I guess that could work, but it doesn't fit the explanation given in the text, so I suppose your view on it will depend on if you're an orthodox or reform member of the fandom. This also flies in the face of later developments, since it's possible to possess people outside of Heshvon. Nora possesses Nephilim and fallen angels more than once using her awesome Nephilim powers. Patch even possesses another angel to escape from hell because apparently that's a thing he can do, which brings up questions about how angels possess people in the first place, since when Nephilim do it they just sort of mind control them, while when angels do it they actually enter the other person's body. Angels have a physical presence, so are they made of some sort of heaven particles that can break apart when they want to possess someone?  It's kind of hard to expand on how weird that is, because it's such a small part of the story, which is never explained at all, even a little. That's kind of what I mean by this series not having any world building. It doesn't create a setting for the characters to inhabit, it just sort of tosses a few things together in a way that creates drama without making all that much sense. There's not even enough detail here for it to be a real world, just a see-through facsimile of one. What does all of this pedantry mean? In the grand scheme of things, it means that crafting a proper fantasy setting is far more difficult than a lot of people, fans and detractors alike, want to admit, and crafting a compelling story that'll get people to look past other flaws is even more difficult. Aragon has issues with the setup of its story, but that story is a lot of fun, so most people don't notice it, and those who do can shrug it off.  And Throne of Glass is a naked, self-insert story. Everything there is done for one reason, make Aelin look cool. The villain is strong because the story demands that he be strong so that Aelin looks cool for beating him. Faye and humans can breed so that Aelin can be a cool hybrid with all those neat powers. Aelin is the lynchpin of the entire universe, and that makes the universe dull. This is why I focus on bad world-building so much. Even if you don't consciously understand that something is wrong, you can often sense that something is off and that prevents you from fully getting into the story. The opposite is also true. If the story is unengaging, then that forces the audience to notice the places where the setting is a bit thin. You need to do at least one of those things well in order to properly draw people in so that they either don't notice or don't care about the flaws. While this all seems pedantic, I have real reasons for doing it. Plus, it's just fun to rag on stuff that annoys me. Subscribe. Okay, Patreon patrons give people money. The $10 enough. We have Oppo Savilane and Olivia Ray and Ava Tumor, Brother Santotis, Christopher Quinten, Deanna Dahim, Mbis, Joel, Karkat Kitsune, Kevin Zhang, Liza Rudakova, Madison Lewis Bennett, Microphone, Sad Martigan, Tobacco Crow, Tom Beanie, They, Victus. You guys are all cool. Other names are... You're also awesome. I couldn't do this without you. I swear you guys are the best. I love you so much. Thank you for watching. If you donate to my Patreon, you get rewards and stuff. Like, video, comment, subscribe, and follow me on social... Goodbye.