Mashallah, today is our Eid, our day of rejoicing, our day of celebration, our day of gratitude to Allah SWT. We thank Allah SWT for all of His blessings. We thank Him for enabling us to reach this blessed day, to be with these blessed people in this blessed place. We are literally inundated with the blessings, the ni'am of Allah SWT. We cannot even begin to fathom His blessings. Allah SWT says, And behold, your Lord proclaimed, If you are grateful, I will certainly increase you. So this is a metaphysical law of existence. You've heard of E equals MC squared. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. This is a physical law, a law of physics. But there are also metaphysical laws. Faith plus gratitude equals divine increase. Faith plus gratitude equals divine increase. This is a metaphysical law. And metaphysical laws are given through revelation, through wahi. And revelations are given through prophets. And our prophet is the greatest prophet of them all. Sallallahu alayhi wa laali wa sallam. He said, I am the master of the children of Adam. And I do not boast. He, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, is the mercy of Allah SWT personified. And we have not sent you except the mercy of the people of the world. Allah SWT says, Ya Allah, we thank you for everything. We thank you for sending us your beloved messenger. We thank you for the prophet of mercy, the prophet of mercy. We thank you. So increase us in all good things. Ya Arham Al-Rahmeen. Ya Hayyu Ya Qayyum. Allah SWT is the most merciful of anyone who could possibly show mercy. Salman Al-Farisi, radiallahu anhu. He reported that the prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that Allah SWT divided his mercy into 100 parts. In one part out of 100, he sent down to creation. Inna lillahi mi'ata rahma wa anzala minna rahmatan wahida. One percent of his mercy is in the world from which mothers have compassion for their children and all animals have compassion toward one another. The remaining 99 parts, then 99% he has kept for himself, Subhanu wa ta'ala, to give to his servants on the day of judgment. However, there is another, there is also the inverse of the spiritual equation or this metaphysical principle. Allah SWT continues. Wa la inka fartum inna azaabi la shadeed. But if you are ungrateful, surely my punishment is severe. So disobedience plus ingratitude equals divine punishment. Ya Allah, we seek refuge in you from becoming ingrates. We seek refuge in you from your punishment. There is no refuge from Allah SWT. Except to Allah SWT. La malja minna Allah illa ilayhi. There is no refuge from Allah except to Allah. This is why we must wear the two sandals of fear and hope, of khauf and raja.  That is haram. La taknutum irrahmatillah. But at the same time, don't have so much hope that you become slothful.  You start to miss your prayers and become heedless about the state of your heart. But here's a question. How do we fortify our faith in these times? This is a question we get all the time from Muslims of all ages and backgrounds. And right now, Muslims of all ages and backgrounds are hearing my voice. So allow me to say a few things as your brother in Islam. I exhort myself first and by extension, all of you. How do we fortify our faith in these faithless times? That is to say, how do we strengthen our iman in the face of such blatant disbelief, in the face of such brazen immorality, in the face of such unabashed rebellion against tradition that we find in the modern world? We ask Allah SWT to protect us, protect our children, protect our grandchildren until the Sa'a The answer is quite simple. And the answer is by dedicating ourselves to seeking knowledge. The Prophet SAW said, Talab al-Ain faridatun ala kulli Muslim. Seeking of knowledge is an obligation upon every Muslim. There's a reason why it's an obligation. There's a reason why he said, SAW, that everything in the dunya is a cursed, mal'unun ma fiha illa zikrullah wa ma wa la wa aalimun awmata'alim that everything in the dunya is a cursed except three things. The remembrance of Allah SWT and that which brings us close to Allah SWT and the teacher and student of sacred knowledge. There is a reason why the only thing in the Quran that Allah SWT asked us that Allah SWT commands us to ask him for an increase in is knowledge. Wa qul rabbi zidni ilmah and oh my Lord increase me in knowledge which also happens to be the school motto of Zaytuna College. Some universities have fiat looks from the Bible, let there be light or looks at veritas, light and truth, truth with a capital T. But these other schools, they no longer teach traditional religion nor even objective truth. Nowadays, they teach that truth is relative and scripture is archaic and irrelevant, even oppressive. But scripture cannot be eliminated. So their solution is to radically reinterpret scripture in light of the current prevailing culture. So we have to take this very seriously. Seeking knowledge is all over the Quran and Sunnah. It is absolutely central to our tradition. We are a thinking person's religion. We are a thinking person's religion. Make no mistake about it. One of the meanings of Antalid al-amadurabbataha a servant girl will give birth to her mistress one of the signs of the Sa'a, of the hour given by the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam and the famous hadith of Gabriel. One of the meanings of this hadith is that the modern West was born from Islam. That Europe in the late antique was sunk in the dark ages. Violence, disease, ignorance was rampant and it was Europe's contact with Islam's intellectual tradition that begot Western civilization and brought them out of the dark ages and then the West turned around and colonized and subjugated its mother as it were. The point is, knowledge is at the centrality of our tradition. Abdullah ibn Amr radiallahu anhu narrates Anr Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi sallam marrabi majlisayni fa masjidi that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam passed by two gatherings in his mosque. Fa qaala kilahuma a la khayr wa ahaduhuma aafdhul min suhaibihi You said both of them are upon good but one of them is better than the other. amma ha'ulayi fa yad'unallaha wa yargabuna ilayhi As for this group, they are beseeching Allah swt and they're supplicating to Him. fa inshaa a'ataahum wa inshaa man'aahum and if Allah wills, He will give them what they're asking for or He will deny them. wa amma ha'ulayi As for this other group, fa yata'ammuna al-fiqha wa qaala al-ilm they are learning fiqh which means a deep understanding of the religion or He said sacred knowledge wa yu'allimuna al-jahila and they are teaching the ignorant fa hum aafdhul they are superior wa inna ma burithum wa anlima and I was only sent as a teacher thumma jalasa fihim and then He sat amongst them sallallahu alayhi wa la alayhi wa sallam Our traditional scholars were masters of the Trivium grammar, logic and rhetoric these are the liberal arts I'm not talking about the political left the word liberal comes from the Latin for freedom these are the freeing tools grammar, logic and rhetoric these are tools that free our minds they allow us to think critically outside the box they are the most powerful tools that one can possibly possess why? because they can move the world the most influential people in history were masters of these tools and as one of my teachers said the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa la alayhi wa la alayhi wa la alayhi was the most logical human being he was always grammatically correct and he was the most rhetorically powerful person who ever lived the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa la alayhi wa la alayhi wa la alayhi wa la alayhi was gifted with jawami wa l-kalim wa jawahi wa l-hikam speech comprehensive in signification and inundated with sapience knowledge frees our minds and freedom is powerful the very first word of the Quran that was revealed to our master Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa la alayhi wa la alayhi wa la alayhi wa la alayhi wa la alayhi wa la alayhi wa la alayhi was eqra, read and I've mentioned this before but I've mentioned it again I read an article a Christian newspaper called Christianity Today a Christian magazine the article was called The Greatest Book Never Read written by a Christian and he said that he went to churches at random the greatest book never read meaning the bible so he went to churches at random and he interviewed parishioners coming out of a church and he said that 50%, zero percent of Christians coming out of a church could not even name the four Gospels of the New Testament, could not even name them Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I mentioned this to one of my teachers and he said probably 50% of Muslims leaving Salat al Jumaah cannot quote one hadith in Arabic, ad-dinun nasiha. How many Muslims know the names of the surahs of the Qur'an? If I say surat al-anqabut, what surah number is this? How many Muslims can correctly cite iconic ayat of the Qur'an? What surah and verses is this? Ayatul Kursi, what surah and verse number? How many Muslims know the names of the children of the Prophet Muhammad? Or can explain the difference between Fard and Wajib and Sunnah and Mustahab? These are basics. How many Muslims know the names of their mothers? The Ummahat al-Muslimin. We have to have high himma, high ambition for our deen. This will save our souls. Inshallah ta'ala on the 27th night of Ramadan, Fahri Ahmad may Allah preserve him. He introduced us to an older brother. I think his name was Ahmad. I don't remember his name. Getting old I forget. His name is Ahmad. I'm getting confirmation. He's a working dad with children and he became a hafiz of Qur'an. This is amazing. What an inspiration. Elim is Nur. Knowledge is light and light is guidance. Arabic is a sacred language. It's not an accident that if you rearrange the tri-literal root letters of the word ilm, you get amal. You get action because a true alim, a true knower puts his ilm into amal, puts his knowledge into practice. These terms are related. There are plenty of Jewish professors of Islamic studies all over America with double PhDs. But these are not ulama because they don't put their knowledge into practice. If you rearrange these letters again, you get lemak, which means light, luster, radiance, resplendence, brilliance. This is ajib. Knowledge plus action equals light. The word iman comes from a root amina, which means to be safe and secure. The word iman is causative. So iman billah or a mu'min billah is one who makes himself safe billah by means of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. In Allah is al mu'min. This is one of his asma'u l-husnah. He is the ultimate cause of our safety and security, the giver of iman. When we acquire knowledge, our faith, our confidence in Allah and his messenger increases and becomes stronger. It is not a blind faith. It is a faith that is undergirded and reinforced by reason. We believe because it is rational. Belief in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is rational. All of his commandments have a rational component. Aqal and naqal, that is to say reason and revelation cannot ultimately contradict because they come from the very same source. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala describes the ulu l-albab, the people of essential understanding in the Quran, that they say, Ma khalaqta haza batila. You did not create this in vain. Subhanaka faqina aza bannar. Glory be to you. Save us from the punishment of the fire. Perhaps the central message here is that existence has objective meaning. Your life has objective meaning with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. I want the young people here to listen closely. The young people here who are struggling to maintain their deen in the face of such overwhelming disbelief. There are many here right now. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, It shall come a time upon the people in which one who is patient upon his religion will be like the one who's clutching onto a burning ember. This is certainly true in today's world. Many people of traditional religious practice and belief, the youth in particular, feel tremendous pressure to capitulate to the status quo of society, this postmodern world order, in order to mitigate internal feelings of alienation. However, we should remember that as believers, we are not meant to feel all that comfortable in this world. At Dunya, the world is the prison of the believer. This discomfort is completely normal. Our real comfort is in the next world. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, glad tidings to the strange ones. I often find myself repeating the following ayat from the Quran. It gives me solace. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and by extension to all of us. Indeed, we know that what they say causes your heart to be constricted. But glorify the praise of your Lord and be of those who prostrate. And worship your Lord until certitude comes to you and almost all of the exegetes of the Quran, they say here that Al Yaqeen means al moat, death. The worship of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is the lifelong practice of the believer. This new generation of youth are steeped in nihilism. This idea that ultimately there is no objective meaning or purpose to human life, that you can give your life any meaning you want. This is what young people are taught nowadays. And this philosophy is rooted in a fundamental rejection of human nature or human essence. This is called existentialism, where you can make your own reality, you can create your own truth, and there is existentialism as a philosophy, and there's existentialism as a lifestyle.  It's coming. It's going to be a brave new world. This is all related to this postmodern revolt against normativity, against objectivity, and against truth. These modern pushers of this philosophy, they hate these words, normal, objective, truth, they literally have visceral reactions. When they hear these words, you see existentialism is all about you.  This is being replaced with an essentially ego-centric life. It's a very subtle type of idolatry. It's called ego-la-tree. It is the worship of the self, of the ego. Allah says, فَأَنْتَ تَكُونُوا عَلَيْهِ وَكِيْلَةَ Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala addresses the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam here. But this is true even today. He addresses the Prophet but also us by extension. Have you seen the one who has taken his own desires as his God? Will you then be a keeper over him? Our modern society is steeped in an unbridled quest for attention. Social media breeds narcissistic monsters. Just be careful. This is unprecedented in human history. Another interpretation offered by modern scholars of the Prophet's statement, a servant girl will give birth to her mistress, is a complete breakdown of normal society. The utter dismantling of millennia old social orders and societal hierarchies in this phenomenon is happening before our very eyes. Self-entitled cultural zealots shaking their fists at thousands of years of human civilization and traditional scholarship and attempting to create a new world in which technology is king and every desire no matter how depraved is fulfilled. A society in which the religious credo will be due without wilt. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said One of the things people have learned from the words of the earliest prophecies is if you don't feel any shame, then do what thou wilt. In other words, you have to have shame. This all starts when we plug into the matrix. The average American spends two and a half hours a day on social media. According to the World Health Organization, the average lifespan is about 73.4 years. If a person started using social media at age 10, which is very common, and that would mean that they spent almost seven years of their life on social media, then when you factor in, the average American spends two and a half hours a day on social media. According to the World Health Organization, on social media, then when you factor in eight years of TV watching, 27 years of sleeping, and nearly four years of eating and drinking, you're looking at about 45 years or almost 62% of an average lifetime spent on these activities. And this does not include working or shopping or driving or socializing. When these things are factored in, you're looking at a few weeks, possibly a couple of months, for real study and worship, a couple of months out of 73 years.  Life is precious. Our Master Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, Seize five before five. Ikhtanim khamsan qablahams. Seize your youth before your old age. Seize your health before your sickness. Seize your wealth before your poverty. Seize your free time before your business. And seize your life before your death. So young people who are struggling to keep your principles, you should know this, even if you're not on social media, even if you don't have any friends, even if two people in the world, other than your parents don't know your name, you should know that you mean something to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Allah is your Lord. He loves you. Allahu Hasbuk. And Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala suffices you. We must not let this world deceive us. The only opinion of you that matters at the end of the day is the opinion of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. When the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was abused and ta'if and chased out of the city and beaten and stoned and he was bloodied, his only concern was Allah's opinion of him. He said, oh Allah, if this is happening to me and you're not angry with me, Salahubali, then I don't mind. This was his only concern, Allah's opinion, not the opinion of human beings.   Life is too short to Salat. Fastaqim. Kama Umirt. Be upright, stand tall. Be principled as you have been commanded. Listen to the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Listen to what he said to Abdullah ibn Abbas, radiAllahu ta'ala anhu maa. Ibn Abbas was a young man at this time. Take this advice. And Ibn Abbasan radiAllahu anhu maa. Qala kuntu khalfa rasudillahi salallahu alayhi salam yawman. He said, I was once behind the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Fa qala ya ghulam, ihfazil la, yihfazka, ihfazil la tajidhu, tujahaka. He said, oh young man, protect Allah. Guard Allah. And he will guard you. Guard Allah. And you will find him before you. How do you protect Allah? Guard Allah? According to the commentators, the meaning is to keep his awamir and his nawahi, to keep Allah's commandments and prohibitions. Tajidhu tujahaka. And you will find him before you. Meaning Allah will help you. He will aid you. He will give you strength. He will facilitate your affairs for you. He will make things easy for you. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, Ya ayyuha ladina amanu, in tansur Allah yansurkum, wa yuthabbit aqdamakum. O you who believe, if you give victory to Allah, he will give you victory and plant your feet firmly. In other words, if you make Allah your priority, he will give you in the forefront of his providence. Ya ayyuha ladina amanu, la tuqaddibu bayn yadihi la yurusulihi. O you who believe, don't put yourselves before Allah and His messenger. Allah and His messenger come first. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam said in the hadith qutzi, recorded by Imam al-Bukhari and narrated by Anas ibn Malik, radiallahu anhu. Qadirabbi, in taqarrab al-Abdu ilayya, taqarrabdu ilayhi dira'an. The Prophet said, my Lord says, if my slave draws near to me a hand span, I draw near to him a cubit. Wa idha taqarrabba minni dira'an, taqarrabdu minhu ba'an. And if he draws near to me a cubit, I draw near to him a fathom an arms length. Wa idha atani mashyan, ataytuhu harwalatan. And if he comes to me walking, I go to him running. Subhanallah. Ya Ghulam, ihfazil la, yahfazka, ihfazil la, tajidhu tujahaka. He continues, sallallahu alayhi sallam. Wa idha sallata, fa sallil la. When you ask for something, ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Wa idha sta'anta, wa idha sta'anta, fa sta'in bil la. When you seek assistance, seek it from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Iyaka nabudu wa iyaka nasta'in. Make dua to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Pour your heart out to him. Fa la tad'u ma'allahi ahada. Ad dua mukhul ibadah. That supplication is the essence of worship. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is the owner of the treasures of the universe. Ask him. You can't lose one of three things happen when we ask Allah. Number one, either Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will give us what we're asking for in this world. Or number two, he will deny our request because it was not in our khayr, not in our best interest to get what we were asking for. So in reality, Allah is removing a tribulation from us. Or number three, Allah will deny our request in this world but reward us for asking. Reward us for asking him on the Yom al-Qiyama. And his reward on the Yom al-Qiyama is manifestly better. We can't lose. If you ask, ask Allah. If you ask, ask Allah. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam continues And know that the whole of humanity were to unite in order to benefit you. They could not benefit you of anything except as Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has already written for you. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is in charge. Remember that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is always in charge. And if the whole of humanity were to unite to harm you in some way, they could not harm you. Except as Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has already written for you. The pens have been lifted and the scrolls have dried. Trust Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. How often do we find the refrain in the Quran and upon Allah let the believers place their trust. I'll end with this ayah. Allah says, And strive for Allah with the striving due to Him. He has chosen you and has not imposed upon you any difficulty in religion.


cyber attacks on Hawaii's airports. We'd better find out what's going on, don't you think? This is Think Tech Tech Talks. I'm Jay Fidel, Think Tech, of course, and our old friend Attila Suresh is here to join us. And he's with Cyber Hawaii, and he can tell us what is going on with the airports and what we should know about it and do about it. Welcome to the show, Attila. Well, thanks for having me, Jay. I appreciate that. And you are right. We do have attacks on the airports, but it's not as bad as you think. Good news is that the attacks are on their websites. And it was through something called the denial of service attack or coordinated DDoS attack. And what that means is these bad guys get inside of computers that have been compromised all across the globe.  This case, it was a series of airports across the country. There are about 14 of them, Honolulu Airport being one of them, and they attack the website, not necessarily the air traffic control or any of the critical stuff that we depend on to get our airplanes around in the sky. So they hit those specific websites and they cause them to go down and be inaccessible. So those folks who are perhaps trying to travel and look up information about the airports, such as like Word Park or what the layout of the terminals might be, they may have had some interruption in service, but other than that, denial of service attacks are generally more of an annoyance than anything else. They don't physically take down or destroy anything that just kind of created traffic jam on the way to those websites. So if you try to access the Honolulu Airport website and we're unable to do so last week, now you know why. Those attacks were attributed to a Russian state-sponsored threat actor. And although we don't have all the details about them themselves, we do know that this was a coordinated attack and it didn't affect just us. It was all United States or a number of United States airports across the country. Lots of questions bring out of that data truth. So the first thing is, so are you saying that these websites do not affect operations at the airport? In other words, the traffic controllers never look at them. The people who run the airport, run the aircraft, the individual airlines, they never look at them. So if you just turned them off completely, the airports can still function fine. Is that right? Right, exactly. Most critical infrastructure networks such as this one or such as those involved with transportation, there's something called air gapping. Air gapping means that you literally have an air gap between the critical part of your infrastructure and the type that you use for everyday operations and perhaps a separate one that you use for marketing. And in this case, it was strictly the marketing and PR-facing portion of these airports that got hit. Getting inside of the critical infrastructure piece, those kinds that might be critical to actually keeping these planes in the air. Well, those are safe, typically. And they have a different level of protection. They have different equipment and they have compliance standards that's gonna prevent these kinds of things from recurring and affecting other parts of air traffic control. This reminds me of a very interesting story about a college campus on which there were a lot of dormitories and a lot of engineering students. And so their mission as a practical joke was to see if they could break the plumbing. And what they did is they coordinated their watches and then in an exact moment in time, they all flushed the toilet at the same time. And lo and behold, they found they could do it. If everyone flushed the toilet at the same time, they would break the plumbing and that was pretty funny, but it actually cost the university millions to put new plumbing in. So at the end of the day, it was not funny. But that's kind of a denial of service attack, isn't it? It is. What's good about data versus water, for example, is that it doesn't have a lot of spillover effects, literally. When you kind of clog up the data pipe between one point to the next or to prevent communications from going out, you're not actually destroying it or taking it down, you're just kind of creating noise and an inconvenience. So everything's still intact. And once the denial of service attack was over, the websites were accessible again and everyone kind of forgot about it. But what it comes down to is we do have Russian speaking operatives that were supposedly behind this attack. And so now this becomes more of a political problem. It also could mean that perhaps they're testing the waters. They wanna see what they can get away with and see if they can do a more coordinated attack that could be more destructive later on. If they did have a backdoor into critical infrastructure and wanted to say take down the websites for those critical infrastructure companies and then take down the critical infrastructure themselves, while now you're doing a one-two punch, that would be severely detrimental to us here, especially on the most isolated landmass on the planet. So we don't wanna have any sort of coordinated critical infrastructure attacks hitting us here. Although I do suspect that because we are in Hawaii, we do have a critical attack that hits us once every, about 11 minutes of every day. So probably as during the time we've been talking, a big attack has come our direction and it has been thwarted by our infrastructure that is here on the island. So we do want to be cognizant of real attacks that are coming at us, but also be aware that we do have good safeguards in place. And I believe that everyone here in Hawaii does consider this a real threat and they do invest in making the correct safeguards for their organization. If they don't, well, it's just a matter of time, right, Jay? What's a good safeguard? I mean, in the engineering example I gave you, you could make it so, it could have to, that if you pass a certain number of flushes at the same moment, it doesn't flush. I suppose you could do that with a website too. You could say if there's more than X number of people trying to get on the website, access to website, then that's gotta be a denial of service attack. So you can't and it stops you. How do you stop this from happening? Is that the approach or is there some other approach? There's lots of approaches. And what's funny is that you mentioned this denial of service attack. Every once in a while I hear about how Ticketmaster will announce a new concert or some sort of event and then everyone rushes the website and the website crashes because everyone's buying tickets within minutes. So that's essentially a denial of service attack, right? So I think it concerns the application of how the infrastructure is designed and what it's designed to do. Computers and equipment and networks and all that, they're built around the business or the service delivery model. So for example, an engineering firm might be working on plans for federal contracts and those plans need to be safeguarded in a certain way. A critical infrastructure organization such as a power company or an oil company might have industrial control devices and those industrial control devices make control pumps and pressures and regulars and valves and all that stuff. And all that needs to be regulated and put aside separately versus an engineering firm, their critical piece may be the data that they're housing themselves and that data may need to be air gapped or stored separately so that it's not accessible if there is a breach. So we're talking about two separate things and two separate applications even though the equipment is fairly identical. So it all depends on the industry. I guess the best rule of thumb is if you think that it could be a problem, go overboard in protecting it. So that's everything from safeguarding private data to employee behavior, right? If that employee behavior is a problem, you gotta kinda go a little bit overboard and see if you can correct it before it becomes a problem. If there is a outdated systems, go overboard and get the newest stuff that's gonna last the longest. One of the things that my grandparents taught me many years ago, which was, I guess the best translation is that the cheap costs more. So as you know, you buy the cheap stuff, it costs more in the long run. That's very good. So I'm just wondering where this happens, the place it happens. It could happen at the, I guess at where the server, if you will, the server, which serves up the website. Seems to me that's the most likely place rather than the individual terminal where somebody's looking at the website. Where's the denial of service attack bring things down? Is it at the server level or somewhere else? That's a good question. So I guess we can get a little bit more specific on this. So web servers do have to physically reside somewhere in the world. Let's just start there. And in between your server or website, depending on the type of volume of traffic that it's expected to take can be distributed amongst multiple locations, right? And there's different, you know, there's Kerberos, there's different technologies out there that allow you to distribute the web traffic amongst multiple physical devices. But in front of that, there's something called DNS. And DNS is the kind of like the guideposts where when someone tries to access, say Google.com, that guidepost is gonna send your traffic to one of multiple servers and distribute that traffic amongst them. And during that... What does that stand for? Which one? DNS, DNS. Oh, domain name service. Okay. And yeah, it's kind of like one of the fundamentals of the whole internet. So when you have a DNS services running, then it's distributing that amongst the different servers that could be out there. But what you really wanna use is a service that anonymizes that. And so that way, a bad actor doesn't have access directly from point A to point Z, right? So they're not going through that DNS or that DNS proxy. Cloudflare is the most popular DNS proxy out there. And it simultaneously proxies and anonymizes the traffic so that let's say a bad actor wanted to take down an airport web server, they wouldn't actually be able to see it on the far end. It would take quite a bit of investigation to kind of circumvent that entire proxy service. It's not publicly disclosed. So think of it this way, kind of like using a PO box instead of your home address, right? That PO box is gonna be in between to kind of take all that junk mail so it doesn't end up in your home mail box and fill it up and cause any problems. So in terms of best practice, if you are running any sort of web services, it's a good idea to use something like Cloudflare or another proxy or anonymizing service that allows you to host your websites without, or should I say with minimizing the danger of someone coming in as a direct attack for it. And this would be more relevant for financial institutions, larger organizations such as car dealerships or staffing companies or larger engineering firms that could be a potential target for this type of activity. So yeah, the other thing is Russia and a state actor in Russia. And I take it that means a bunch of guys in a building like the ERA building as they call it in Russia, you know, they do nefarious things and they hack people at the instruction of the Russian government that is Putin. And they've been hacking Ukraine for example and other targets around the Ukraine war invasion. So here we have a Russian actor taking the time and energy and technology to bring down airport web servers in various places in the country. I suppose as many places as they can possibly achieve that. And you mentioned that it might be kind of a test of our system with the notion that they'll come back later after they learned a few things or two and they'll make it worse. What in the world benefit are they getting is the Russian government, the Russian state actor getting out of this exercise? Well these guys are, this specific group is called Kilnett and they're considered hacktivists, right? So they're coming out and at least that's the public story. But their ties to the government are unknown. So that's not exactly clear. But, you know, let me give you a good example of what's probably going on and what we see personally when we have to deal with financial fraud because it is the same process. So there's something called tapping. So let's say a bad actor gets their hands on a credit card. Right, and that stolen credit card number they go to perhaps a small, you know, web store or they go on eBay and they just buy something for like $2 and it clears. Hey, now that's great. Now they're gonna do another one for $3. A few days later, that clears too. Then they'll do one for maybe $100 a week later. That clears our also. Then the big payout comes, $3,000 from a store in South Africa, from a grocery store in South Africa. Now you know that's fraud. But sometimes even that third one will go through but they tap that card a few times. This could be a perfect example of tapping. We don't know. They could be tapping the system. Let's just see if we can take down the websites first. Okay, now we know we can take care of the websites. Let's see if they're putting any other safeguards. They'll tap it a few more times. And if they do have the ability to do a coordinated attack on critical infrastructure and the air gap to part of the network. Remember what I described earlier, that inner part of the network that is actually in charge of air traffic control. Now we have a real problem. And the same thing happens in all critical infrastructure, right? Think about this. If you pay your electricity bill or water bill online, well, do you think that system is tied directly into the pump controls or into the power control system? Of course not. No, that's completely separate and air gap. But if they need to take the entire network down, they're gonna want to do both at the same time or maybe multiple ones at the same time. Hit the inside, hit the outside and the entire infrastructure is crippled and there's no way they can really recover from that very quickly. Can they do that now? Or are they still at this kind of primitive level testing and testing and testing without being able to go further? Yeah, these things sometimes take a lucky break. So some poor cyber hygiene on behalf of the company that they're targeting. Sometimes it's just a matter of time and they have to wait it out. Other times they're already inside the networks and they're just waiting for everyone to kind of get their act together so they can all strike at the same time. We've seen all the above.  We're just not a hundred percent sure. Some sort of ghost in the machine. Can you investigate? When we investigate, we find them. At that point they say, oh, we've been found and they attack. So it's one of those things where sometimes it's better. You don't want to say it's better not to know but if you do have a feeling that something is not right within the network, there's been unusual activity. Those are prime indicators that you may already have a bad actor within the network and investigating further may point you to where they are and if you find them and don't disable their access right away and remove all the footholds that they've put inside the network while they've been inside, it's very difficult to stop them from deploying a malicious payload. Now when I say malicious payload, that is ransomware. All right, so ransomware is kind of like the last-ditch resort.  And it's unfortunate because sometimes because these bad actors have been in the network for so long and they've already disabled that business's ability to recover their data or their entire operation because they've been watching it for six months, right? Or they've been selling access to multiple bad actors for many months from there. So it may not be that it's just one bad actor in there. It could be, well, you know, we had a few Russian guys in there, a few Chinese guys in there, you know, who knows, it could be from all over the world. They could be in there kind of going inside now, picking and choosing what they want and disabling everything. And then finally, once you discover them, boom, now they stopped the entire network. So it's a mixed bag to discover them because you could discover them and find out they attack you big time instead of just gripping around.  Then you have to take a closer look at it. But what does that look like? In other words, help us understand what a ghost is like and what a peculiar phenomenon is like. So we know it's not just that we're having a bad day. That's just really something ghost like going on. While thinking about what ghosts do, right? They appear and they disappear. Wow, everything's working great on the network. Today it's not for 15 minutes and then it stops working and then now it's back up again. What was that all about? I don't know. How about files disappearing? We'll see that sometimes. We've seen even anomalous movement. So sometimes if an employee is using their computer and they just happen to be eating their lunch at their table, they look up at the screen selling the mouse moves over a few inches. Whoops. Bad guy could have been in there and accidentally tapped his mouse while he's watching your screen. Ooh, that would really give me the heebie-jeebies. If my mouse was moving by itself. It happens. It happens if you're an IT department watching the traffic patterns that go in and out of your gateway. So your gateway is your firewall or UTM device, right? And if your intrusion detection system has been bypassed or if you're seeing that the traffic that is going inside and out is going to foreign countries or it's going to unusual IPs or let's say there's a lot of upload traffic and not a lot of download traffic. That could be that the data inside of your network is going out of your network. So it could be exfiltrated. Look for road connections, unusual firewall rules that don't need to be there anymore. We come across folks that use VNC.  I use VNC myself. I understand it. It's so easy but it's also sending passwords to clear text. I'm sure there's some other ways around this but in general there's been a lot of security concerns with using these kind of remote access tools that maybe IT departments erected very quickly at the beginning of that pandemic because they needed something, some way, somehow to get their employees working offsite. But the end result is that you've now opened up a back door into your network. If anyone else is piggybacked on that, you've got a problem. So think about using only approved tools for your industry. Everything that you have there should be not A, should A, not be end of life, B, manufacturer supported. So if there's a software contracts that are available for your products, make sure that they're all paid up and you are updating those platforms. Everything needs to be updated. You need to be running the latest stuff. And let's just be clear on cost. I know a lot of folks that sometimes we talk to there's been a lot of deferred maintenance. So think about it like a roof on your home if it has not been cleaned or if you haven't done any sort of maintenance on your vehicle or on your teeth, right? There's gonna be a major job coming up. And so those kind of costs that are incurred with that shouldn't be a surprise exactly, right there. It's deferred maintenance. It's something you're gonna have to do and spend the money, do it right, sleep well at night and off you go. Let's all get back to business. Well, talk about change and as we know when great adage that I've always bothered is nothing so unchanging as change.  But what's the cycle? Do I have to look at this and be mindful every day, every minute? Do I have to look at it every week or every month? What's the cycle I should have in my mind as to changing in order to meet the changes that are generated on the other side? J, I'm gonna give you the best piece of advice anyone's ever heard. It's three words.  Three words are, don't get emotional. Don't get emotional about any sort of sunk costs and existing infrastructure or existing systems or different or ways of doing things. Don't get emotional about it. Don't hang on to the old ways that we used to do things. Oh, do you remember when we used to do everything through carbon copy? And we'd write it out on paper or we use those dot matrix printers. Do you remember the old, you gotta let all that stuff go. So how does that translate into an answer to my question? Oh, absolutely. Because the way that you were doing things today is not the way that you should be doing things five years from now. And it's certainly not the way that you did things five years ago, right? And the only reason that people continue to do things the same way is because they have an emotional tie to their old habits. You gotta let that stuff go. We just got some calls last week from some other people that had been scammed. Why? Because they were doing things an old way and they got tied up and emotionally compromised. When you're emotionally compromised, you don't make good decisions. You're easily fooled. And that's all of us as human beings. You gotta let those emotions go. Let the old ways that you've been doing things go. Let the new ways come in. Because I totally agree. We all have to be in the 21st century. You'll have to be thinking change all day long on every level, not just this. But let me go back to a larger issue. You mentioned, and the article that I saw talked about how these denial of service attacks were happening at airports across the country. So how does that work on both sides? In other words, how does somebody generate a denial of service attack in airports across the country? Just airport service for public use, non-operational use across the country. I guess there's a Y in there too. And then the other thing is how do I, how do I as a country find out about this? Is that you call my buddy in the next city and say, have you noticed there seems to be a ghost in my machine or have you noticed that I've been having denial of service attacks and it doesn't work anymore? What's your day been like? And then somehow you find, you know, there are virtually tens of thousands of airports in the country. How do I find that out? Where's the central repository of this information? You know, that's a good question. So you're kind of, what, if I understand correctly, you want to know like, how does a denial of service attack even happen in the first place? How do we find out so that we can write articles so we can talk to the government so that, you know, you would know and I would know and we could have a talk show about it. How do we know that this is happening? So there are remote command and control pieces of software that end up on systems all around the world. And remember I was talking about good cyber hygiene and all this stuff. If you're clicking on an email, it's not necessarily that it's there to, you know, wipe out your system or hold it hostage. A command and control component can be then installed on your computer and it just sits there and waits for a command. And that command could be, hey, go attack this website right now. And when we talk about how many devices are out there on the internet, we're talking the millions, if not tens of millions of devices that are connected to central repositories where there are command and control modules that then send out a command and says, okay, go ahead and attack this website. Last year, Microsoft did a coordinated effort internationally to shut down one of these bad actor groups that had a command and control. The name just at this moment escapes me, but it was several million computers were infected at the time. And at any time they could have pressed a button and all those computers would have attacked. So this is kind of rewinding back down to your IT department watching the network traffic that's going in and out of their network. If there's a sudden spike like this and it's all attacking a singular node, well, now you know that there are machines inside of that network that have been compromised and they're sending out bad traffic. When we talk about, you know, holding on to old legacy ways of thinking and doing, those old WordPress websites that keep having, you know, security problems, it's time to let some of those old websites go. Even us as a company, we moved away from WordPress. We're now doing everything at Wix. It's because those kind of older kind of type of software methods, which were really good for a long time, but WordPress has been really strong, kept getting compromised and then those web servers were taken over and used for command and control, right? So it's not just individual user workstations that servers out there that are doing this kind of work. But how do we collectively find that these broad-based attacks are happening? How does the airport in Alameda find that the one in O'Hare has been attacked? What's the conglomeration, you know, of information that makes us as a community, a national community, aware that somebody is trying to do this to our airport? Well, the good news is that Homeland Security is also watching this kind of stuff. So it's not like, you know, all these computers suddenly wake up and come out with this, you know, that there are purposely infected machines that are sitting there waiting for command and control module to see what happens. And so there are cyber ranges that are established throughout the country where this kind of stuff is practiced. There are labs which are running these kind of command and control bots. And if something does happen, at least then they're gonna know, oh, okay, this is the command that's been sent. We're going to go ahead and alert these targets that they're potentially under attack. But at the end of the day, it's bad cyber hygiene to not at least do some sort of basic cleanup and not run into the situation where you have deferred maintenance inside of your network. You want to make sure that your systems are fully patched. You have the proper software installed so that these NASCs don't get on your systems in the first place. Yeah. You know, I've come to the conclusion in large part from our discussions that there's this kind of baseline of nefarious activity going on in the world today. And it isn't only the state actors or quasi state actors, either in Russia or China, both are apparently doing it. And maybe in this country, there are people in this country who may be doing this stuff. And I guess the question I put to you is that they all seem to be tinkering around and somehow it all gets resolved. The one with the airport's got resolved. It's no longer a threat. The denial of service attacks have stopped. You know, I'm not sure why, but they have stopped. And then we're into the next cycle, whatever kind of attack there is in a different industry, a different, you know, hostility or infrastructure. And so suppose I am Vladimir Putin. Just suppose. I don't want to be associated with that. Why should you say next, Jay? A pathological person. I mean that in the nicest way. And he decides, enough of this, I'm really ticked off at the United States. I'm gonna take all my little tricks through my, you know, state actors and the friends of my state actors and all those little things I, the little breadcrumbs I've left behind on everybody's computer. And I'm going for the brass ring right now. I'm gonna let it all fly. I'm gonna knock off every power grid I can. I'm gonna knock off every airport I can. I'm gonna attack every military contractor I can. I'm gonna bring the whole thing down right now. Can he do that? How can he do that? And what do we do in response? So Jay, what makes you think that's not happening already? It's because we're talking to each other and because my machine works. I'm telling you, we have, it's not just one directional. We have a national effort of network defenders that do really good work in protecting our critical infrastructure, our country and our state. Yeah, sometimes things get through, but overall, remember I said earlier, big network attacks around every 11 minutes. Well, we've been on the air roughly, you know, there's been roughly three big attacks on our, just on our state. And well, we're still talking. So we do have some really good tools out there, some really good software. And thankfully federal, there's some federal pushes now to ensure that anyone who is operating with any sort of sensitive information that they have to have some basic safeguards in place, otherwise they can't continue to operate. So it's becoming grained in the DNA of doing business with the federal, with state. You do have to have some basic cyber hygiene in place. You do have to follow some rules. And if you don't, you can't play. Yeah, and we're aware of it, you're aware of it and through you, we're aware of it. Anyway, you point out that we've been on now for three cycles of 11 minutes each. And that means we have to get off. Attila Suresh and Cyber Hawaii, thank you so much for joining us today. We're answering these questions and for helping us stay alert, stay aware. Thank you very much, Attila. You got it, Jay. Stay safe out there. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.


Macron. Europe faces unprecedented crisis due to Ukraine conflict. Europe is going through an unprecedented crisis due to the situation around Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview with Spain's El País newspaper published, There is an unprecedented crisis because war is returning to the continent. He pointed out, the direct and indirect consequences of the conflict are having a strong impact on the economic model Macron added. The answer lies in a Europe sovereign in terms of the economy, technology and defence. In other words, in a really powerful Europe, the French president noted. According to him, European democracies are suffering from a crisis, experiencing a kind of fatigue and loss of collective focus. Macron also emphasised that in crisis situations, extremes and demagoguery work better because they send a simple message, promising to restore control. I believe that we need to restore control in the world, Macron added. Before this Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that Russia finds plans by the French government to supply heavy armoured vehicles to Ukraine, a reckless move that may escalate things further. We view as reckless and irresponsible the moves by French authorities in the context of the Ukrainian crisis. The decision on further weapons supplies to Ukraine is yet another step that would provoke further escalation of the conflict and cause more deaths, including among civilians in the new Russian regions which have already been attacked by French weapons, specifically the Caesar artillery system. To her, the provocative decision by France to supply the Kiev regime with French-made light tanks is like opening Pandora's Box even wider and pushing France deeper into the conflict. Paris' policy of thoughtlessly beefing up Ukraine's military muscle has exposed the shamelessness and duplicity of its professed desire to avoid an escalation of the conflict and statements about the need to maintain a dialogue with Russia and take a serious attitude towards Moscow's demands for security guarantees, she said.


Good afternoon. I'd also like to begin by acknowledging that we're on the traditional coast-sailish territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Slewa-toothed peoples. Thank you all for being here. It's great to be here at Rogers Arena with team Canada competitors from the most recent Invictus Games. This is a place where we come to see teams show us their strength and determination and cheer them on. This will be the second time Canada has been chosen as the host for the Games, but for the first time ever in classically Canadian, the Games, these Games, will include winter sports. To support this uniquely Canadian event, our government is providing $15 million dollars so we can celebrate and witness incredible competitors from all around the world. Though we all know that when it comes to winter sports, our Canadian competitors will show them how it's done. But just to make sure of that, we're also providing a million dollars to SoldierOn so they can help train and equip team Canada. SoldierOn is a program of the Canadian Armed Forces that helps support recovery for ill and injured CAF members and veterans, and they know that sports can and should be a huge part of that recovery. Particularly because a little earlier I had the chance to speak with competitors about their service, about the challenges they face, and about the profound impacts sports have had on their recovery. I think it's easy to underestimate or almost shrug off the impact that Invictus and Sport can have on injured CAF members on their path to recovery. When you think about it, those who choose to step up and serve their country do it with everything they are and everything they have, and it comes rightly to define them. They give the very best of themselves to serve their country, and they get used to it, and they know that they are there to give their very best in service to the country, and then an injury comes along, and suddenly they don't feel like they can give their best to their country anymore. They don't feel that they're doing as much as they could before, and of course injury or no. They have so much to continue serving the country, but so much of it is mindset in the conversation we had earlier. We talked about the challenge, we talked about the competitive spirit, the drive for excellence, but also about the grieving process of learning to understand that you aren't the person you were before you got injured, but that doesn't mean you can't be a world-class competitor. You can't have every bit of that drive and that push and that quest to give all you are to your teammates, to your service, to your country. That's what Invictus allows not just competitors, but their comrades, their families, and all of us to live, to experience, to celebrate. I'm talking with Mike, a retired infantry captain who injured his spinal cord and duty in service to his country, and how much sport and competition allowed him to continue to push himself to be the very best, how Marcy Lynn, who competes to show the world her PTSD, doesn't define her. Like all of us, every day has its challenges, but Invictus and the work everyone here is doing in support of them highlights that every day also has its victories and has its success. Mike, Marcy Lynn, Pat, with your inspiring story, thank you for your service. Thank you for always showing us what excellence is at the service of the country, at the service of the others. You show us just how strong this human spirit is. You dedicate your lives to fighting for others. You put it all on the line to defend our freedom and our democracy. We are always grateful, or even more grateful that we also get the chance to cheer you on as proud members of Team Canada. Before I end today, I want to take a moment to recognize all the work that the True Patriot Love Foundation did to pull together Canada's successful Invictus bid for 2025. Thank you, the True Patriot Love, for all you do to support Canadian Armed Forces members and veterans and their families. I know all Canadians are looking forward to welcoming the courageous, indomitable servicemen and women to the 2025 Games, and together we'll celebrate the power of sport, the power of recovery, and mostly the power of the human spirit. Merci tout le monde.


The main library presents Whitman himself the modern man I sing with Richard Cuss Leaves of grass I celebrate myself And what I assume you shall assume For every atom belonging to me is good belongs to you. I Loaf and invite my soul. I lean and loaf at my ease Observing a spear of summer grass Whitman himself or at least the spirit of Whitman Resurrected in the library talking to friends you know while roaming the halls of the New York Historical Society I found a first edition of Leaves of Grass published by myself when I was 36 years old Placed on sale July 4th 1855 And it was only 95 pages long But they caused Emerson to rub his eyes and A hundred years later in your critic Malcolm Cowley Referred to it as the buried masterpiece of American writing and now today Unburied after a hundred years Like grass keeps growing the goosebumps I felt as I opened my original first edition With its dark green covers with no author's name on the cover Just the title Leaves of grass and gold rustic letters Which had many roots growing down and many many leaves sprouting up and inside This picture of a working man again No name Is he the man of the book? He faces the title page Leaves of grass Brooklyn, New York 1855 still no author no publisher Is it this young man speaking to us? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems You shall possess the good of the earth and sun. There are millions of sons left You shall no longer take things at second or third hand No look through the eyes of the dead no feed on the specters in books You shall not look through my eyes either nor take things from me You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself Turning the title page in very small print is the copyright entered according to act of Congress in the year 1855 by Walter Whitman And I Walter I was type setter and layout man Self-publishing without a desktop computer. I begin with no contents page But with a prose preface. It is followed by 12 poems pages 14 through 95 And there are no titles for each poem just my songs flowing from the final thought of that preface The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it Clear and sweet is my soul and Clear and sweet is all that is not my soul lack one lacks both a 140 years ago a critic of the book wrote First be yourself what you would show in the poem. Oh I was the critic As a newspaper editor, I loved writing my own reviews or I only wrote three a Majority of the favorable notices You see I Was two men really I? Wanted to be in real life the role I was creating in the book as Early as 1848 I had written in my notebooks. I cannot understand the mystery But I am always conscious of myself as too as my soul and I And I reckon it is the same with all men and women Now the man I created in the book Speaks body to soul. I believe in you my soul The other I am must not abase itself to you and you must not be a base to the other Loaf with me on the grass Loose the stop from your throat not words not music or rhyme I want not custom or lecture not even the best only the lull I like the hum of your valed voice a Child said What is the grass? Fetching it to me with full hands How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he I Guess it must be the flag of my disposition out of hopeful green stuff woven Or I guess the grass is itself a child the produced babe of the vegetation And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves Tenderly will I use you curling grass? It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men It may be if I had known them I would have loved them Maybe you are from old people and from women and from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps and here You are the mother's Oh This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers Darker than the colorless beards of old men Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths Though I perceive after all so many uttering tongues and I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women and the hints about old men and women Mothers and the offspring taken soon out of their laps What do you think has become of the young and old men? What do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well Somewhere the smallest sprout shows there is really no death And if there ever was it led forward life and does not wait at the end to arrest it and cease the moment life appeared All goes onward and outward and nothing collapses and to die is different from what anyone supposed and luckier Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die and I know it I Pass death with the dying and birth with the new washed babe And I'm not contained between my hat and my boots And Peru's manifold objects no two alike and everyone good The earth good and the stars good and their adjuncts all good I am not an earth nor an adjunct of the nurse I am the mate and companion of people all just as immortal and fathomless as myself They do not know how immortal but I know You see I was my own press agent as well as critic And I circulated my book to other writers Conquered Massachusetts 21st July 1855 dear sir, I Am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of leaves of grass I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I Have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well as they must be I Greet you at the beginning of a great career Which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere For such a start I Rubbed my eyes a little to see if this Sunbeam were no illusion R. W. Emerson. Oh Well, not too many people agreed with Ralph Waldo But for some transcendentalists like Thoreau and all caught oh The poet John Greenleaf wittier after having read my first edition Throw it in his fireplace Oh But What was my Long foreground somewhere. I was born May 31st 1819 And named Walter Whitman, Jr. I was the second of nine children in the town of West Hills Huntington Long Island Dutch and English stock Quakers My father was a farmer and a housebuilder and a friend of Tom Payne. Oh My mother I wrote Well begotten and raised by a perfect mother I Went to public school until the age of 12 when I was apprentice to the printing trade. Oh, we were a a close family But but nevertheless at 14 I was on my own and worked as a printer in New York City until the great fire of 1835 burned me out of the job 1836 at the age of 17 I was a school teacher at East Norwich Long Island and later I taught at M. Steaden Babylon Long Swamp in Smithtown Oh, and the days on the beaches Declaming Homer and Shakespeare So ended my formal education At 22 I returned to New York and in 1841 as a type setter for the new world But then I became a newspaper man a writer and an editor To the statesman the Democrat the Long Island star and many many many many others as I pounded the blabber the pavement of Manhattan absorbing its people and places its plays and especially the Italian opera And oh Yes There were the Broadway omnibuses with their drivers. Oh How well I remember them Sitting up on top alongside these men with their teams of horses Riding the whole length of Broadway listening to some yawn Or perhaps I declaiming some stormy passage from Julius Caesar or Richard Oh, you could roar as loudly as you chose in the heavy dense Uninterrupted street base of Broadway Oh, yes, yes, I know all those drivers then Broadway Jack Dressmaker Borky Bill old elephant and his brother young elephant There were hundreds hundreds They had immense qualities largely animal eating drinking women You know, I suppose the critics will laugh heartily, but The influence of those Broadway omnibuses and the drivers undoubtedly entered into the gestation of leaves of grass Also at this time I had published a rather routine temperance novel Franklin Evans or the inebriate Finally in 1846 I became editor of the Brooklyn Eagle at age 27 Walter Whitman Journalist ah Oh, it was during those years. I got rather involved with politics Yes, yes, yes, you too Walter the journalist You see, I was invited by the bosses at Tammany to speak before 10,000 people in New York City After the Mexican War The nation was was expanding and I was politically a free soil We believed slavery should not extend to any new territory And this man I was creating knew where he stood on the fugitive slave law The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside. I Heard his motions crackling the twigs of the wood pile Who the swung half door of the kitchen? I saw him limpy and weak and went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him and brought water and filled a tub for his sweated body and bruised feet and Gave him a room that entered from my own and gave him some coarse clean clothes and Remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness and remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles He stayed with me a week before he was recuperated and past north. I Had him sit next to me at table My firelock leaned in the corner But times change we all know that And as the journalist Walter Whitman my free soil editorial policy No longer suited the publishers of the Brooklyn Eagle after two years. I was fired now Well, we know that game all too well today Walter the journalist there are those who would suppress us Keep us hidden Imagine me keeping my thoughts to myself But in 1848 I was still the journalist writing in the past tense. I had yet to become the poet writing in the present tense uninhibited by society's curtains 28 young men bathed by the shore 28 young men and all so friendly 28 years of womanly life and all so lonesome She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank. She hides handsome and richly dressed after blinds of the window Which of the young men does she like the best? The homeliest of them is beautiful to her Oh, where are you off to lady for I see you you splash in the water there yet stay stuck still in your room Dancing and laughing along the beach came the 29th beaver The rest did not see her but she saw them and loved them The beards of the young men glistened with wet it ran from their long hair little streams passed all over their bodies It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs The young men float on their backs their white bellies swell to the sun They do not ask who sees as fast to them They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch They do not think whom they south with spray So age 29 And I'm out of a job again a failure These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands. They are not original with me If they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing or next to nothing This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is This is the common heir that bathes the globe This is the trail of a thousand clear cornetts and scream of the act of fluked and strike of triangle I play not a march for victors only I play great marches for conquered and slain persons Have you heard it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are one But job hunting in New York City, I managed an out-of-town engagement With a $200 advance So with my 14 year old younger brother Jeff in tow We left my Manahatta and journeyed by train stagecoach steamboat to edit the New Orleans Crescent This is the meal pleasantly set This is the meat and drink for natural hunger It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous I make appointments with all I will not have a single person slighted or left away The kept woman and sponger and thief are hereby invited. The heavy lip slave is invited. The venereal e is invited There shall be no difference between them and the rest Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well, I have For the April rain has and the mica on the side of a rock has Do you take it I would astonish Does the daylight astonish For the early red start twittering through the woods Do I astonish more than they This hour I tell things in confidence. I might not tell everybody But I will tell you New Orleans new Orleans Something happened there. Oh I kept my biographers strangely in the dark Some say a woman I wrote to one of my biographers Though unmarried I have had six children Uh one living grandson fine boy well Circumstances have separated me from intimate relations I exist as I am That is enough If no other in the world be aware I sit content And if each and all be aware I sit content I am the poet of the body and I am the poet of the soul I am the poet of the woman the same as the man And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men I am he that walks with the tender and growing night Well after three months on the job and with the very very homesick younger brother jeff We returned from New Orleans On the water spine of America Yes, we plotted back northward up the Mississippi And around to and by way of the Great Lakes to Niagara Falls and lower Canada and finally returning to central new york And down the mighty Hudson In my preface I I wrote the United States themselves Are essentially the greatest poem Was it new allens Was it the journey What was turning the Newspaper man into the poet Walt Whitman and american one of the roughs the cosmos Disorderly fleshy and sensual Eating drinking and breeding No sentimentalist no standard above men and women or apart from them no more modest than immodest By god, I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms Through me many long dumb voices Through me forbidden voices voices of sexes and lusts Voices veiled and I remove the veil I do not press my finger across my mouth I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart Copulation is no more ranked to me than death is I believe in the flesh and the appetites Seeing hearing and feeling are miracles And each part and tag of me is a miracle Divine am I inside and out and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from The scent of these armpits is aroma finer than prayer This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds In brooklyn again I built a new home for my parents and my family at 106 myrtle avenue Huh, but I I use the storefront office on the ground floor for a free soil newspaper The free man As editorial policy in the first issue I wrote We shall oppose under all circumstances the addition to the union in the future of a single inch of slave land Whether in the form of state or territory Well, I campaigned for the free soil ticket of 1848 Oh, but but but all we managed was to split the democratic party And gave the election to the wigs Zachary Taylor Now we radical free soilers Drifted My paper the free man went under Now the democrat press was closed to me I tried getting by submitting pieces to my friends William Cullen Bryant of the new york post Horace Greeley of the herald tribune Then on march 7th 1850 Fearing the south would secede from the union The great daniel webster Ha made his speech in support of clay's compromise resolution regarding slavery and newly formed states And by september congress accepted it Free soil was compromised As the journalist walter whitman I wrote quote The representatives of the people must never forget that they are only Representatives and that their duty is to act in the interest of all not to tyrannize The duty of the citizen on the other hand Is not to obey But to make his will respected Oh, yes, yes, I renounced politics Ha ha ha I don't on myself There is that lot of me and all so luscious each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach it provokes me forever. It says sarcastically waltz You understand enough. Why don't you let it out then? I think I will do nothing for a long time. But listen, I merely stir Press feel with my fingers And i'm happy to touch my person to someone else's Is about as much as I can stand Now I became the poet walt whitman By 1851 I stood for art and artists Against the materialism of the american people and the worship of the dollar The example I now proposed was socrates and greater than socrates christ I now was writing in the leaves of my notebooks Whoever degrades another degrades me And whatever is done nor said returns at last to me I had left the newspapers of manhattan Went back to house building with my father and my brothers But I wasn't the best of workers. I was writing my book I was a dreamer And a scribbler I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars And the pismire is equally perfect than a grain of sand and the egg of a wren And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery And a mouse is miracle enough to stag a sextillions of infidels I think I could turn and live a while with the animals. They are so placid and self-contained They do not sweat and whine about their condition They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to god Not one is dissatisfied not one is demented with the mania of owning things Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago Not one is respectable or or industrious over the whole earth In my preface as the poet I express my personal credo Making the man in the poem The man in the world This is what you shall do Love the earth and sun and the animals despise riches Give alms to everyone that asks Stand up for the stupid and the crazy to vote your labor and income to others Hate tyrants Argue not concerning god Have patience and indulgence toward the people and read these liens In the open air every season of every year of your life Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book Dismiss whatever insults your own soul And your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words But in every motion and joint of your body Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity What I give I give out of myself Oh despairer Here is my neck By god you shall not go down hang your whole weight upon me I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs And for the strong upright men I bring yet more needed help I know perfectly well my own egotism and know my omnivorous words and cannot say any less My words are words of a questioning and to indicate reality Early on before my leaves I had read the writings of my master Emerson referring to America as I quote an asylum of all nations The energy of irish-german swedes poles and cossacks all the european tribes Of the african and of the pollinations Will construct a new race Unquote and now I knew I was simmering simmering simmering Emerson brought me to a boil It is time to explain myself Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you my brother or my sister I am sorry for you they are not murderous or jealous upon me All has been gentle with me I keep no account with lamentation. What have I to do with lamentation? I am an acme of things accomplished and I an enclosure of things to be I tramp a perpetual journey show to your duds and I will mine and let us hasten forth Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded heavens And I said to my spirit When we become the infolder of those orbs and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them Shall we be filled and satisfied then? And my spirit said No, we level that lift to pass and continue beyond You are also asking me questions and I hear you I answer that I cannot answer You must find out for yourself My words itch at your ears till you understand them I have said that the soul is not more than the body and I have said that the body is not more than the soul And nothing not god is greater to one than one self is And I call to mankind be not curious about god For I who am curious about each am not curious about god No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about god and about death I hear and behold god in every object yet. I understand god not in the least Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself Why should I wish to see god better than this day? I see something of god each hour of the 24 and each moment then in the faces of men and women I see god And in my own face in the glass I find letters from god dropped in the street and everyone is signed by god's name And I leave them where they are for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever And as to you death And you bitter hug of mortality It is idle to try to alarm me And as to you life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths No doubt I have died myself Ten thousand times before and do you see my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death it is form and union and plan It is eternal life It is happiness Or do I contradict myself? Very well I contradict myself I have large I contain multitudes I found my barbaric yelp over the roofs of the world I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love If you want me again look for me under your boots so You will hardly know who I am or what I mean But I shall be good health to you nevertheless and filter and fiber your blood Failing to fetch me me at first keep encouraged Missing me one place search another I stopped somewhere waiting for you For the second edition I wrote 20 new poems Now 32 poems and 340 pages oh the grass keeps growing And in the copyright Walt has officially replaced Walter But still the same carpet of photo Yet conformity appeared It was a book like any other book A table of contents titles and numbers for the poems The untitled first poem I now called poem of Walt Whitman and American It would be years before I would call it song of myself And in this edition of 1856 was sundown poem Wherein I talked to you Who were yet to be born You know it As crossing brooklyn ferry Crowds of men and women are tired and the usual costumes are curious you are to me And the ferry boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross returning home are more curious to me than you suppose And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence Are more to me and more in my meditations than you might suppose What is it then between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is it avails not Distance avails not and place avails not I too lived Brooklyn of ample hills was mine. I too walked the streets of Manhattan island and bathed in the waters around it I too felt the curious Abrupt questioning stir within me I too had received identity by my body That I was I knew was of my body And what I should be I knew I should be of my body It is not upon you alone that the dark patches fall The dark threw its patches down upon me also Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil I am he who knew what it is to be evil I too knitted the old knot of contrarity Blabbed blushed resented lides stole grudged That guile angle lost hot wishes I dare not speak Was wayward vain greedy shallow sly Cowardly malignant The wolf the snake the hog not wanting in me The cheating look the frivolous word the adulterous wish not wanting Refusals hates postponements meanness laziness none of these wanting Closer yet I approach you What thought you have of me now I had as much of you I laid in my stores in advance I considered long and seriously of you before you were born Who was to know what should come home to me Who knows but I am enjoying this Who knows for all the distance But I am as good as looking at you now For all you cannot see me I also included an open letter to emerson in the appendix of this second edition I was feeling my oats I wrote him that sex must be brought out of concealment into the open In order to foster a sane healthy attitude toward this important phase of life Spontaneous me Nature no once for all avowed on purpose wherever our men like me are a lusty lurking masculine poems Love thoughts love juice love odor love yielding love climbers and the climbing sap Arms and hands of love lips of love phallic thumb of love breasts of love bellies pressed and glued Together with love earth of chaste love life that is only life after love The body of my love the body of the woman I love the body of the man the body of the earth Soft forenoon airs that blow from the southwest The hairy wild bee that murmurs and hankers up and down that grips the full-grown lady flower Curves upon her with amorous firm legs takes his will of her And holds himself tremulous and tight till he is satisfied The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find myself indecent While birds and animals never once skulk or find themselves indecent The greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaught till I saturate what shall produce boys to fill my place when I am through the wholesome relief repose content And this bunch pluck that random from myself it has done its work I talk sit carelessly to fall where it may And in that letter to emison I said how much I enjoy making poems But other work have I said for myself to do to meet people in the states face to face and to confront them with an American rude tongue in poems and speeches well I say the word that has got to be said but now the journalist had much to say the election of 1856 was contested over the question of whether slavery should be extended into the recently formed territories of Nebraska and Kansas you see in 1856 there were three major presidential candidates then as now huh There's three Millard Fillmore the Whigs Americans the know-nothings James Buchanan the Democrats and John Charles Fremont for the new Republican Party It was in the Republican Party that we drifting radical free-soilers hoped to find our political place I wrote a paper it's purpose to preserve the union by a reform of the political system I called for a working class democracy Well the 18th presidency at present the personnel of the government of these 30 millions and executives and elsewhere is drawn from limbo tongueed lawyers very fluent but empty feeble old men professional politicians dandy's dispectics and so forth and rarely drawn from the solid body of the people every trustee of the people is a traitor looking only to his own gain and to boost up his party the births the presidency included are bought so electioneered for prostituted and filled with prostitutes the president eats dirt and excrement for his daily meals and likes it and tries to force it on the states as to what is called the fugitive slave law insolently put over the people by their congress and president it contravenes the whole of the organic compacts and is at all times to be defied in all parts of these states south or north by speech by pen and if need be by the bullet and the sword you young men american mechanics farmers boatmen manufacturers and all work people of the south the same as the north you are either to abolish slavery or it will abolish you this matter of deep personal conviction was never published bucannon the democrat was elected in 1856 i i i turned my life back to my art my poems walter walter the journalist you sure had trouble keeping a job did your poetry your thoughts your behavior getting away survivor i was summoned to boston where for the first time an edition of leaves of grass was to be published not by myself by the established firm of fair and eldridge boston the hub of literary america now this photo now appeared opposite the title page well this was to be an extremely organized work a lifetimes work at age 40 456 poems and this blue covered edition of 1860 has chapter headings in bold face on the contents page it has an architectural sense to it but it was still personal i used a copy of this blue book as a workbook for years editing poems always making changes always rewriting always accepting change as a way of life here are the lines printed on the page american mouth songs those of mechanics crossed out with handwritten rewrites declaiming i hear america singing the varied carols i hear each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong oh and one of your favorite poems is first introduced in this 1860 blue book edition as a word out of the sea it opens out of the rock's cradle out of the mockingbird's throat the musical shuttle out of the boy's mother's womb from the nipples of her breasts out of the ninth month midnight yes yes the grass keeps growing you know the poem as out of the cradle endlessly rocking out of the mockingbird's throat the musical shuttle out of the ninth month midnight oh this this penciled blue book was the book that was to prove trouble in years to come when after six months as a clerk in the office for indian affairs of the department of the interior my boss secretary james holland discovered this book on my desk and reading it fired me another job lost through free expression well so much for fame i was hired in ignorance of my writing and fired after reading the book yes i as the poet walt whitman purposely was outspoken telling it like it is when i came to boston prior to the publication i met with emerson the man who was my champion emerson who also had told me there are parts of the book when i hold my nose as i read how emerson now strongly suggested that the sexual section of the book entitled on fonds the adam which i later changed the children of adam this should not be published i recalled my reaction to emerson from specimen days more precious than gold to me that dissertation it afforded me ever after this strange and paradoxical lesson each point of emerson's statement was unanswerable no judges charge ever more complete or convincing i could never hear the points better put then i felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all and pursue my own way what of you to say to such things said emerson pausing in conclusion only that while i can't answer them at all i feel more settled than ever to adhere to my own theory and exemplify it that was my candid response whereupon we went and had a good dinner referring to these poems under the heading of children of adam and calamus thorough said it is as if the beast spoke and you understand even in those days sex was vital to life i wanted it to be a vital part of my verse in children of adam i wrote of amativeness the love of man and woman of procreation placed in this section was a poem from the earlier 1856 edition a woman waits for me she contains all nothing is lacking yet all were lacking if sex were lacking or if the moisture of the right man was lacking without shame the man i like knows and avows the deliciousness of his sex without shame the woman i like knows and avows us now i will dismiss myself from impassive women i will go stay with her who waits for me and with those women that are warm blooded and sufficient for me i see that they understand me and do not deny me i see that they are worthy of me i will be the robust husband of those women and i carried the sexual theme further in the section entitled calamus adhesiveness the love the comradeship of man for man i had discovered this reality in life i put it in my leaves whoever you are holding me now in hand without one thing all will be useless i give you fair warning before you attempt me further i am not what you supposed but far different who is he that would be my follower who would sign himself for candidate for my affections the way is suspicious the result uncertain perhaps destructive therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further let go your hand from my shoulders put me down and depart on your way or else by stealth in some wood for trial or back of a rock in the open air for in any roofed room of a house i emerge not nor in company and in libraries i lie as one dumb a gawk or unborn or dead but just possibly with you on a high hill first watching lest any person for miles around approach unawares here to put your lips upon mine i permit you with the comrades long dwelling kiss or the new husband's kiss for i am the new husband and i am the comrade it had been suggested that i lost my job at the brooklyn times as sexual problems found their way into my editorials yes i had written calling for the legalization of prostitution it is needed and yes i was in love with a man whose name no one will ever know but i confess to you in my verse i am indifferent to my own songs i will go with him i love it is enough that we are together we never separate again but we did love is not always returned he did depart the tone of my verse my life was changed again oh in 1855 i was the youthful egotist in 56 i enjoyed the sexual battle against puritanism but now in the 1860 edition at age 40 the mood was one of negation depression and personal tragedy yes now the man was aging and the poet wasn't so sure of the world of himself a hand mirror hold it up sternly see this it sends back who is it is it you outside fair costume within ashes and filth no more a flashing eye no more a sonorous voice or springy step now some slaves i voice hand step a drunken's breath unwholesome meter's flesh venereal ease flesh lungs rotting away piecemeal stomach sour and cankerous joints romantic bowels clogged with abomination blood circulating dark and poisonous streams words babble hearing and touch callous no brain no heart left no magnetism of sex such from one look in this looking glass there you go hence such a result so soon and from such a beginning body and soul waltz witman lack one lacks both i needed all my strength my will to stand up to the media of 1860 emerson had warned me to cut sex out but the dirtiest book is an expurgated book under the headline smut in them the springfield massachusetts republican wrote in the issue of june 16 1860 oh and i quote those passions which degrade men and lead to nine tenths of the crime of the world he exalts it will be sought out and laughed over by lewd women and prurient boys and hoary headed old leches this notice of his volume will start to read it only the dregs of the social and moral world into which it goes that settles the question when men and women are led by their higher affinities they will be led straight away from walt witman's leaves of grass so walt the poet at age 40 not knowing what more is in store for me with linkin coming with a war coming with old age coming i say so long to you my friends at the conclusion of the third edition of leaves of grass the blue book of 1860 so long camarado this is no book who touches this touches a man is it night are we here together alone it is i you hold and who holds you i spring from the pages into your arms decease calls me forth oh dear friend whoever you are take this kiss i give it especially to you do not forget me i feel like one who has done work for the day to retire a while so long remember my words i may again return i love you i depart from materials i am as one disembodied triumphant dead walt walt walt walt didn't anyone ever teach you life begins at 40 no no no i wasn't to leave you so soon i had much more to do much more to sing much much much much more thank you


year-old technology is about to change forever. And I'm talking about the old fashion circuit breakers that you all have in your fuse box in which you find everywhere where electricity is being used. For the first time ever we have made this into a digital fully solid-state circuit breaker. My name is Shalota Honqvist. I'm serial entrepreneur. I'm a mom to three great kids and I'm also the chairman and co-founder of Blixt. So in essence our solid-state circuit breaker is a combined smart meter remote control and breaker all in one small device that fits in all fuse boxes around the world. We collect real-time data. We can do mega sampling. We can control all devices in a building not only on and off but modulating from zero to hundred percent. That's controlling the power just like a water type. It's now possible. And we are safer. We can break at least one thousand times quicker than a traditional fuse. So the sky is the limit and companies around the world are reaching out. We are currently planning pilots with some leading European utilities and they need this for to get beyond the smart meter and really getting control of the grid edge to balance demand and supply to handle all the volatile renewables and the loads from electric vehicles. We're also building our first test rigs and car test rigs are beasts. They contain thousands of mechanical relays. Each one of them need to be manually programmed for one test.  Eventually even virtual testing without needing the physical hardware. One more example. Inside the car I mean the potential is huge. A conventional car electrical knot contains up to 1.5 kilometers of cables and about 5,000 fuses. So by installing the Blixt breaker directly in the engine control unit we can reduce fuses wiring and weight significantly. Each of those markets are worth billions of dollars. So maybe that's the explanation where the current incumbents don't really like our disruption. I must tell you we got a full page article about us in the economies and being a young company. We are so proud. I also want to make two announcements today. First we got our seed round recently. Two million euros from Bivari energy ventures as lead investor. And finally we have opened up for signups of our dev kids because we want to let the global development community and the corporate to fully explore this potential. I'm convinced the future will not be mechanical for another couple of hundred years. The future is digital. So please sign up and get your test kit today. Thank you for the presentation. That was good. One question. Well two questions in fact. Are you replacing current solutions? And if you are replacing them what is the change or the integration that you need to do to make that work in some of those applications that you just mentioned? You're referring to replacing the traditional circuit breakers. Yes. Yes. We completely replace them. So we don't need like first with mechanical breaking on top of that hours. It's a complete replacement. Of course you need electrician to do that replacement. We are still working in the fuse box. Can you talk a little bit about your pricing strategy and how that compares to the existing solutions? The pricing. The pricing strategy to make it really affordable. I mean this is also a topic of definitions. So we have a smart meter remote control and breaker all three in one. We want to compete with breaking price points. So that's a significant difference. But to make that we need to make it down to system on a chip. So for us now we are working on a PCB printed circuit board. The next step is to take it down to a chip to make it at disruptive price levels and then we compete with the mechanical breakers. More questions. Who's the alternative to you? Sorry. Who is your competitor? It's one other company in the world that are doing solid state circuit breakers. A US based company. They have targeted the industrial. So their equipment is very much like this. It costs quite a lot. So it's not a residential product at all. The current players, you know all the OEMs for using 31 billion euros market, eventually they will not be the leading players in a couple of years. It will be other companies like ours. Also want to mention that we are fired a lot of patents. Both applied patents, public patents, and now we have granted patents. So we are doing on a licensing business model. So I think the traditional OEMs will license this from us. Questions? Just more on the pricing again. So which industry is a different pricing for different of those industries that you showed? Of course. I thought the question was about the circuit breaker price points. I mean taking it to a chip you can still use it for. We got a question last night about maritime vessels. They have 3,000 kilometers of cables and loads, loads of fuses and circuit breakers. I mean it depends on which application you include this in. But that's really up to the OEM to set that pricing because they own the application. We own the IP design. Well we're trying to figure out how big is the opportunity and what is what is the problem. So in the maritime for example or pick one of the industries, some examples maybe? I mean as you see I don't know if I showed it now I cannot flip back. But each of the target markets, I mean only circuit breaking market is 31 billion dollars and that is spot on what we are targeting. Then we have the application layer for for example test equipment. That's worth 50 billion dollars as well. So I mean it's really huge. We are early stage so we don't want to set exactly our business model now or business model is licensed things but the price points is far too early. We are doing the pre-study for the chip project. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.


Pete's helping me with my big reveal Guys, I have vintage space shirts. There are vintage space shirts now It is a cartoon of me done by my wonderful friend Sam who is an animator on the Simpsons by the way It's me on the rocket But it doesn't look that much like me that it's not so weird that I'm wearing my own face right now And it won't be that weird for you to wear my own face my face Anyways, Pete and I just want to tell you guys that we have vintage space shirts now The link is below the link is right here if you want to buy them Vintage space shirts. Whoo. I gotta get a vintage space cat-sized shirts next