I'm very glad to be here at IIT Bombay, particularly sharing some of the work which we are actually trying to do at IIT Delhi. I am associated with a lab which is called as ASISTEC Lab. So ASISTEC comes from assistive technologies. Assistive technologies is a very broad word. If you want to take a more generic definition, many of us in the classroom use assistive technology which many of us are wearing. So that's also an assistive technology. But I think we are basically working on assistive technologies for the visually challenged. In fact, what happened is we started looking at educational needs of the blind. Then we found that before you actually address the education, you need to address their mobility needs. If you are not mobile, then I think the education also suffers. So then we went back and started looking at the mobility aspects and then now we went back and looking at the education aspects. So that is a focus and it's a very different lab. Usually what happens is in institutes such as IITs, you will have labs which are primarily either called as a teaching labs or research labs. But we call it more as an innovation lab because here we look at the grand challenges which are facing society in a particular domain and try to build a solution which is like end to end. In other words, our journey is complete when we know that the design and technologies on which we are working has ultimately made an impact. So we had almost like five or six products which are now in the market. I thought today we'll discuss about one of the products which was very early products which we worked on. And let me also tell you most of the work which is done as a part of this is also part of an interdisciplinary team. Lot of technology students working with design students. Innovation truly actually requires a marriage of multiple disciplines. Technology and design are major. But sometimes you also need management, social science, arts, policy. And it's actually a very good marriage of these. So one of the product which I wanted to discuss is called as a smart cane. All of you are familiar with the white cane which is used by the people with visual impairment and this is like a really a true companion for somebody who is blind. Imagine that for a moment you are taken away like somebody takes a white cane from a visually blind person who is outdoors. The person actually cannot move because you really do not know what the let's say the environment would look like because this is like a sensing instruments to know where the environment is and you get to know a lot of things whether you are walking on a hard surface or a muddy surface, many other things. But issue which comes with the white cane is that situations such as this cannot be handled by a white cane. It's a wonderful assistive technology. If you want to know the obstacles which are knee below but anything need to head height people only come to know through collisions. And this is not just India it's universal it's worldwide whether you go to US, Canada, Germany. But only difference which we have is that in many of the countries particularly Europe and US the environments are very structured. So the laws are pretty strict. So what happens is it is very unlikely that you will have lot of environments and obstacles which will have upper body injuries when you are actually moving with a white cane. But 90% of the world still is very unstructured and where you will see a lot of obstacles such as this. So this was one of the problem which was posed to us. Can we address this particular problem? Can technology and design can address this particular problem was one of them. Rohan was one of the undergraduate students who was asked to take this as a project and he not only did a good job but I think he spent much more time. He went to Oxford to do PhD as a road scholar while he was at a road scholar he continued to work on the project. After his PhD he came back and again worked on the same product for two years before going to MIT for his postdoctoral. Now he is back as a faculty at IIT Delhi. One project along with Professor Rao, Professor Balakrishnan we started looking at how technologies can be and devices can be developed to aid mobility for persons with visual impairment. In fact we had a chance meeting at the National Association for the Blind and it was Mr. Deependa Manocha at National Association for the Blind who highlighted the fact that mobility is absolutely fundamental for a visual impaired person. So one of the solutions which people can think of is to use some kind of a sensor either infrared or ultrasonic or a laser to detect the obstacles and then convey the presence of an obstacle in the form of some output. So what should be a typical output for such a thing? Suppose let's say a person encounters how should this be conveyed to a user? That's where probably a little research really helps. Some of the devices which were built with auditory output did not work for a few reasons. One reason is that there is an obstacle but you are not able to hear or you are not able to convey this particular information it's a too risky to have. The second thing is the people who are disabled would not like to actually declare that they are visually impaired. It's like if you have a device which is continuously let's say giving an audio output you are declaring that here am I a blind person trying to walk and kind of a thing and people don't like that. And these days vibratory output is a very well known. We all use cell phone vibrators etc except for T1. So that was the kind of a solution which was initially used. This sensor says that it could cover knee to head height, all the range of obstacles and one could actually go. So this was one of the first prototype which was built. When educational institutes build their first prototype it's always like a proof of principle. It's not even a proof of concept whether the concept is going to work or kind of a thing and you take it to a people like here is a blind person who is actually trying to test it and what happens is this was given to a students who are in computer science initially. They could address all the sensor programming issues very well but I think they probably didn't do a good job with other aspects of engineering like material, mechanical, in terms of having a right center of gravity. If you see a product such as this you will always have a small torque which is acting which will always take the sensor in the other direction and these things are generally not taken care so this is like a first proof of principle and the users mentioned a list of some 20 to 30 problems with the prototype and why it cannot be used kind of a thing. Then you come back and probably take care of some of the user aspects. Now you bring few mechanical engineers into your team and let computer science and mechanical engineering students work together and build another prototype and take it to people now you have the number of problems which came is doubled. Now not only those problems some of them remain which did not solve but now users have many more additional problems. So what generally happens this is how most of the projects actually get done in colleges usually not many of them go to user if at all it go to user it's something which probably may not meet their requirements. So then we thought that there is something wrong with this type of innovation process. This is okay for learning purpose for an academic purpose but if you really want to make an impact then you need to take care of every small aspect what user would need and that is where sometimes the design and design education and design thinking helps in a much better way to do that. So what was done is that if you actually look at process of innovation where you start from one end to another you have lot of these pitfalls. So one of the things which was not done is before I start addressing any problem or finding a solution did I do enough research even to understand this particular problem completely. In other words earlier attempts were more of let's say somebody gave a problem and you jumped on to solution and attempted it you know that it's not going to work. Can there be a more systematic process to innovation the answer is certainly yes and it says that we have to spend much more time just understanding the problem even before you go to a solution and it also reminds me of a saying once Einstein said that if I have about an hour to solve a problem I would spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes to the solution and probably it was not very well understood when he said but it's becoming more relevant in today's world kind of before you even start attempting such problems and solution you first need to do a lot of research into certain aspects. First thing is understanding the disability you are suddenly asked to do a product or a solution in the space of disability where you have not really studied the disability you didn't understand what disability is when you actually look at the scenario such as India whenever you see a disabled person most of the people would look at a disabled person more from the sympathy or a charity point of view and I think once you start interacting with them you know that that is not what they need what they need is an empowerment they want to be they want to socially integrate with persons without blindness and do all those things which others are not able to do now this comes only when you jump and start understanding interacting with the users immerse in those environments shadow the people to their let's say daily activities then you start understanding many things and that's very essential if you really want to make builder solutions which can make an impact if I just want to do it for academic purpose probably it's still okay but if I want an impact this is an important aspect similarly what are the assistive technology and understanding users user environments we generally suggest that if we are trying to do a product or a solution in a space such as this it's more of a social innovation immersion is a very very important tool that means how many hours days and weeks I spend in the environments are put myself in the shoes of the user is extremely important if I'm not doing it there are certain things are again when I go back to the users they'll give me a much bigger list saying why it's not going to and also it's not always true that users are customers customers could be very different from users correct I think we all use products where we are users like Facebook but we are not the customers someone else is paying for if I'm trying to use and same is here in many cases assistive technologies is actually bought by the government and sometimes given to the people with disabilities so they are not the direct users but they are still the customers will buy products and solutions if available in the market so understanding all these aspects even it happens with stakeholders too and it happens in multiple situations not only this some of our students were actually working on a medical device and they actually found that patients really need this device they spent almost an year and took this device to the doctor doctor said this device is not needed we are not going to prescribe now if you don't take a doctor into your scheme of things are a make them a stakeholder you may come up with a wonderful product but it doesn't go through because you haven't consulted a doctor when you started this particular project so the idea is that you don't want to leave out any stakeholder who is a part in this whole game that's a very important aspect and one should also look at how is the problem being addressed currently what are the problems is a another important aspect and there are a whole lot of other things just to give an example suppose let's say if I want to buy a thermometer where do I go and buy medical shop if I want to buy a white cane where do I go Amazon is it available sure okay other assistive technologies doctor's prescription but but disability is not all disabilities are related to health aspects correct for example let's say if I need a a new gaming console doctor is not going to prescribe correct and I want something which is more accessible gaming console so where do I get it is so the normal e-commerce marketplaces do have some aspects of this thing but they still don't house many of the assistive technologies and second aspect is there is a extremely small percentage of people who need them use the e-commerce websites also because most of the people who are with disability come from an extreme socio economically weaker conditions and usually e-commerce is not a very big thing even if I put it it's not going to sell we have our product on e-commerce probably the number of units which we we would have sold is extremely small because it's still it's there on snap deal it's there on other e-commerce marketplaces but it doesn't sell because for this community probably that's not the best aspect so how do I figure out like how do I reach out to let's say 5 million blind people in India once I have a product I also need to figure out those aspects and probably this interaction and immersion with the user is going to tell me these are probably the routes through which I can actually reach out to people in other words what we're actually trying to say is that if you ask me to define innovation I'll say innovation is something where if there are 200 reasons because of which your product or solution is going to fail you may address 199 but still it's a failure because you left out that one aspect which became a reason for failure but how do I know that these are the reasons for failure understanding all those reasons and eliminating them is the process of innovation somebody can say that I have designs but there are no takers very accepted it's very much acceptable if somebody says I have innovations but there are no takers it looks little odd why it looks little odd is if there is some problem because of which innovation is not making an impact that that particular aspect has not been addressed and hence it's still an incomplete innovation so innovation is something where you don't want to leave anything to chances etc whereas I can still which say that okay I have wonderful designs but there are no takers it's possible then what happened with this particular product is students and the team went back and said let's go back to the research and do a much more understanding and almost six months were just spent with the users end users understanding going to blind schools going to places where the blind community actually meets listening to them and trying to understand this aspect and this investment in research is extremely important not only for product but for the entire life cycle till you make an impact I'll just give an example like if you ask as I said most of these people come from extreme socio-economic condition and suppose let's say if I price my product 3000 rupees and if you ask them are you willing to buy for a 3000 rupees most of them would say no because probably having a savings of a 3000 is not thinkable for many of the people even there are large percentage of people who can't afford to buy a white cane which is 200 rupees and you are actually saying here I have a product can you buy for a 3000 but when you interact with these people you come to know that the people who can't afford 3000 rupees can spend 20 rupees per month this research and this information gives me that I can still sell probably I'm going to come up with a very different business model having understood the people it may be an EMI or it may be something which may be a rental aspects and it's still going to work kind of if I don't do this research I can't even come up with a better business model subsequently also so it's not only helps to just find the product and solution it's also helping you to see how can I reach out to people so this research we found that is an extremely important and I think this research is very well done by the designers usually we have seen that the people who are very close to user and who co-create solution with the users are the best people to do that kind of I mean did anything come up in the research where people said that maybe cane is not the best option you mean to say the smart cane is not the best option for this problem I mean just a cane I mean we're making a smart cane out of the cane so out of the research did I think come up come up which showed that a different form okay yeah so I think this is a very important question can we have like necklace or a helmet or that's where it actually answers this particular question how is the problem which is presently being addressed there are people who have built similar things like there is a product which is like a necklace there is a product which is like a goggle so you have the sensors which are built in in it somebody made a torch ultrasonic torch like this which you can actually do this somebody has put it in a belt and shoes so people have used all these options and all of them have kind of terribly failed why did these solutions fail is that they underestimated the importance and the power of white cane they try to replace the white cane and try to come up with an alternative solution for that imagine there is an ultrasonic torch instead of this thing it can still there are few problems first thing is you are knee to knee and below is still done by the white cane so now if you remove that when I am walking there may be a serious drop off how do I come to know that there is a serious drop off and it's extremely risky to remove a white cane in those situations and other thing is white cane gives you a lot of information if you see people who use white cane they sometimes sometimes probably also you can see them waving that is basically trying to understand the environment and now what happens is if I have an ultrasonic torch then there is a extra thing that I scan it in such a manner that I am not going to miss anything if I miss then it's going to be a risk kind those aspects become an extremely important that anything which you try to replace generally have not worked and they have closed people have tried and given up so this important that people have tried and given up for this reason becomes an extremely important for me not to try and probably try something which is a new aspect so what we found is that often we give a lot of importance to understanding the user and user environments but large number of innovations which we have now done in assistive and medical we found that stakeholders all the stakeholders are extremely important for example somebody who is called as a healthcare professional is a person who trains visually challenged people on mobility so one of the versions of the product which we built the person came and said your product looks good but it is extremely difficult to train people on since we did not consult those people from the training perspective they kind of rejected our product in one of the versions so then we realized why each of these stakeholders is extremely important and where failure is likely to happen let me give a very interesting example from Mumbai for the stakeholders we were working on another product and solution where a visually challenged person can board a bus independently without sighted assistance so there is a small handheld device which helps me to know two things first thing is which number bus has come and second thing is where is the entrance of the bus so that I can actually walk and board independently now when we did this particular product we thought we did not consult many of the stakeholders and when we came to deploy this particular thing in Bombay in one of the depots called back bay depot so we wanted to put it on 25 buses then we discussed we found that there are at least about a dozen stakeholders in this whole process starting from general manager who heads like best to the conductor the driver the depot manager unless you take all of them on board they are not going to let your innovation go ahead then you need to convince the value which it brings before you can actually take them onto a board aspect so this is these are like the real life solutions where you go through a process and realize how important this stakeholder was and how ignoring this stakeholder has costed me it thinks which probably would not have won and then when you do a research you not only come to know it's not just the tree branches which are there there are dozens of other obstacles like standing trucks to protruding air conditioners all require a visually challenged person to negotiate and this is also a probably needed for most of others because you're not going to build a solution for one obstacle it's for all types of obstacles kind when you give one of the prototypes to try to the people you also come to know that you expect people to hold the smart cane or a white cane in a particular manner but then you come and do a research you see that people hold in four five different ways the product and how they hold is extremely important for your product and solution to work because why it's important is the vibrations which are felt is important to know what are the obstacles in your need to head height but whatever is the information which you are getting from the white cane like surface texture etc that should not be lost because of the vibration the moment you like one type of output dominates you again fall into a risk and you have to rework kind of a thing and for that you need to know how the people are going to grip depending on the grip your sensor position is changing you know whether it is actually pointing out to head or below head or above head is also all that information becomes extremely important and all these things generally comes when you do more user interaction technology sometimes happens quickly but at least the first cut of technology but the real problems are very different what we did is we also bought all the existing products in the market particularly international market and gave it to users for one week and said kid try and tell give the feedback about the existing products this is like an ultrasonic torch which I mentioned and people said key this is something which they would never like to use there is another one where the vibrations are felt in your head and people said key they many of them did not use not more than three minutes they say I don't want my vibrations in the head whether it's very awkward kind of a thing the feedback which came for this is saying key I have been used to using a white cane with a particular grip for last 15 years now you are asking me to change my habit and people are extremely reluctant to change their habits just because you are now trying to design a new product people will do that only when the value addition is extremely high you think of any innovation where you bring a very small value and ask people to change their behavior and habits it's not going to happen okay so there are various feedback but they also give the good points in these so now as a designer and as a technology person I know what are the choices which I can make in terms of sensors in terms of form in terms of this thing so that I bring my own usp where probably I am going to do better than the existing one why these existing one did not reach the people is that they typically cost anywhere from 600 700 dollars to 1500 dollars and you are actually trying to sell it to people who have a difficulty in many of them buying a cane of 200 rupees so now that's a bigger challenge even though these are in the market for quite some time some of them of course now are closed but still they are not able to reach out to the 90 percent of the world population what we found is that it's extremely important to go back and apply the design principles so we always say about divergent convergent thinking which is there so we thought let's do both for the problem as well as for the solution which is there then it went through a lot of iterations okay and I think the one common rule in all the innovation is fail but fail fast and probably one iteration is not going to give you all the inputs and take care of all the user requirements in one you can take care of most of them but again you have to come back to your prototyping and redo and probably rebuild the prototype solutions in order to do kind of a thing which is there and it went through a multiple prototype the version which was launched in the market was the twelfth prototype some of them are probably not the functional prototype they may be like look alike work alike prototypes some of them are functional prototypes but altogether we had to do a bone a legend prototypes before we could say that here is something which people are going to accept and now I am very confident that during these prototyping sessions I have addressed all aspects or at least the most of the aspects which user would require once the user is high considered because I mean does it vibrate only when I am about to hit something or if something is a problem. So I think this is a very good question in the sense that what should be the detection range which you are saying so typically one is of course need to head height so usually you take a certain this thing for example we took typically six feet two inches as the height which is the height which it should cover you can also broaden a little bit there are methods to do that the second thing is it is not only important to cover the vertical one you should be able to cover the horizontal one also so how much horizontal what would be your answer suppose if I want to cover around four feet but that that is like not four feet that would be much smaller than that correct okay so the problem with four feet is let us say I am inside a room and I have to exit from this particular room and if I have let us say a door which is less than let us say two feet then I will never be able to detect that there is a gap through which I can actually go through so you need to keep a narrow as he said you take the width and add a plus or minus and that is a probably you should be able to do the moment I make it this thing my obstacle detection increases good but path finding becomes very difficult you know if you know ultrasonic ranging it is basically a conical correct which is there so that means the more the distance it is covering more of a diameter kind of a thing so it can detect anything up to three meters three meters is the range now three meters also when you have a range you do not want to have just telling that there is an obstacle at three meter and there may be something which is just very close to you in both the cases you are saying an obstacle does not help you so what you what one needs to do is that you need vibratory patterns which in some way are also proportional to your distance so when you are at three meters you are walking and suddenly at three meters you encounter you have one type of a vibratory pattern it only alerts you it doesn't stop okay and what happens is when I am using a white cane when I am still let's say waving it to find an obstacle which I still do then I know that in one particular direction there is no beep there is no vibration in another direction there is that basically gives a clue that probably right side there is no obstacle and I can still clear it off so it also requires a little bit training and users who have to use are given a two hour training in orientation to understand this and we found that that is enough for people to be independent but you keep learning over a period of time but after like a few weeks you are probably as good as using your white cane facility it's it's basically like when we start driving car for the first time we know how we make our decisions and once let's say you have been driving for three years or four years your maturity levels are very different same thing happens in the same mobility here too but that now how do I restrict let's say the width to be a smaller and vertical to be higher is that you can do it through programming if you know how to program for the sensor and sensor information you can always actually do this particular aspect how did you know when to stop so what happens is every time you go to a user you always have a big checklist so from this checklist first thing which you are going to decide is what is that you are going to address and what is that you are not going to address when we took this particular product people wanted a few more things on this which we did not address somebody said can your smart cane can also detect for example the dogs in one of the campuses there have been too many dog bites of the visually challenged people can there be a sensor to know that there is an animal or a dog we said that's not we are good if I if I want to do that then probably I need a slightly different technology different cost and a different market so that decision has to be made when you actually do that that another person said suppose let's say I keep my smart cane somewhere in the room and I don't know where it is how do I know can there be a another sensor which can like an object detector okay or through my mobile phone I should be able to know you have another sensor which beeps so that I can use the audio close to find out we said we are not going to do that if you if you look at their wish list it's always much more but I think somewhere you need to say once you have decided that these are going to be specifications at some stage you need to say this is going to be a specifications of my product and once you know that those have been addressed tested that's a time when it's it's also like a gut feeling I don't think there is any rule or a green light or a red light which says oh now it's a green light stop the iterations going to be and it can always happen that even after you launch a product in the market you may still have a couple of things which you may have to change it and sometimes for a very different reason I'll just give an example when we took this particular product we launch this particular product most of them asked what is the color of this particular now probably you did not think color is something which is very important but color was extremely important for them like that's a mistake which we do is somebody who can't see they they don't have a color choices etc that's not somebody in fact very arrogantly asked also how does the color matter to you I think that's probably one of the biggest mistake the person has committed in asking this question and they were everybody was angry they also answered little arrogantly they said when you buy a shirt like I think your this thing is it's not just that you like it you also want others to like it and why are you denying that opportunity for us so the aspirations is a is an extremely important aspect and unless we do a good user immersion we may ignore the aspirational aspects and end up with the products which may fail because it did not meet the aspirations so you are it's a it's a very balanced kind of a thing and it's also possible that if somebody does an urgency and doesn't do enough prototypes and goes to market product may be a failure and somebody may probably do a more iterations but then there is also a risk of probably not being the first to market so it's a it's a very balanced view but if you think that the prototypes which you're doing is going to add a lot of value then I think it's certainly I think there is a very interesting paper which you should read it's called second paradox of Toyota so when the entire world was reducing the number of prototypes to capture the market Toyota went and did more prototypes and came up with a product which kind of captured the major u.s. market in fact people thought key in a world when there is a lot of it is happening digitally why did Toyota go and do a lot of physical prototyping and spend more money and time and delayed their launch but I think ultimately the launch proved that it is something so it may not be the case always but we need to make a very judicial choice when to stop the product and sometimes prototyping may be for a just testing one particular feature of the product so that could be done very quickly you don't have to build another functional prototype and what time does the market come in in ideation like do you consider that it should be within five minutes so I'm not going to ideate in this direction or something like that the market considerations actually come earlier they can come the better you would be placed kind of that's what I think if you have seen the the slide which is pitfalls of an innovation you have like there is a research to design design to prototype prototype to scale and scale to market what happens is if I look at this process as a very sequential then it's quite possible that at somewhere in the third pitfall I realize that my design is not going to go through the third pitfall then you have to go back and redo this particular aspect but if you had a little let's say an idea how the market is going to look like probably your solution will take a very different path and it's more likely to succeed or you end up doing less number of iterations it may still succeed but you end up doing more prototyping more iterations


Our fifth presenter is George Lederman, whose title is Good Vibrations, How to Protect Our Infrastructure. In 2012, a first-grade New Jersey collapse, sending both trains and thousands of gallons of chemicals into a sensitive wetland area. Conrad, the British owner, knew the 72-year-old bridge was deficient, but they didn't have the kind of objective information to make the difficult decision to close the bridge entirely. In fact, there are tens of thousands of structures like this throughout our infrastructure that managers have to struggle with every day deciding whether to close them or keep them open. My research focuses on economical ways that we could monitor our entire infrastructure continuously providing objective information to planners. Our system works like this. We've been placing sensors in order to test our system on Pittsburgh's light rail system. We first acquire data from the vehicle with accelerometers. We're looking at the vibrations of the vehicle. Next, we process it to handle some of the environmental variability. There's significant problems in the infrastructure such as cold temperature, high winds or flooding. We look for features which are robust to this variability. Next, we look at changes. Previous people who have done this kind of work, they have tried to model the way the infrastructure responds. But instead of doing this, we just look for statistical anomalies relative to previous behavior. Finally, because we have this objective information, we're able to provide it in real time to people like infrastructure managers and in order that they can make the best decisions at the moment. These guys in turn can then tell us what information is the most useful to them and we can perform some sort of reinforcement learning. This is a way of tackling the three major challenges which have plagued people in the past. The large size of the infrastructure. These are assets which stand in thousands of kilometers. The environmental variability. And also the uniqueness of civil assets. Unlike other things that we monitor, like aeroplanes or manufacturing equipment, each civil asset is different. So over the last two years, we've been monitoring the Pittsburgh infrastructure from a train. And here's some data that we've been able to find. This is a very low cost element, so any information that we find is useful. Every now and then, the Port Authority adjusts the balance under the tracks, the stones and the tracks wide. And when they performed this last year, we were able to see it. So on the left, we see a 10-kilometer section of track. This is the amount of vibrations in the train and the travels of the infrastructure. Before and after this maintenance procedure has been performed. And if we look at the correlation between the two signals, we can actually see changes after the location where the maintenance work was performed. This is amazing. This is a pretty subtle kind of thing that we're looking for and we're able to see it just from the vibrations in the vehicle. So I'd like to leave you with one last note. Our infrastructure continues to deteriorate each day. But sensors and computational devices like smartphones are becoming more and more basic. If we can harness the information in these devices, we can tell the state of the infrastructure just from the vibrations you feel on the way to work. And we can ensure that classes like this don't happen in the future. Thank you.


Hello everybody, Ian here. Welcome back to another story review. I don't really call this a book, novel or anything. It is awfully dark in here and I apologize. Oh look, look at that head.  Anyways, we're talking about The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. I read this one to Shell. I've never read it. I've read Joe Hills, what's it called, When the Locust Sing, something like that. His updated version and me and Autumn. Me and Shell are going to be dissecting. It's a bug story. We're going to be reading them back to back. Joe Hills reboot and we already read this one. I'm going to go ahead and review it but me and her are going to do an episode of The Smartening. I know last episode was over a year ago and that was for David Foster while this isn't going to digest. We're trying to do other things. We're trying to get Shell back out of here but it's hard, y'all. It's hard.   This is the kind of stuff he writes. Gregor Zane, by the way, if you're not reading him you need to do yourself proper and go grab one of those books. Unfuck that right now. Great author. But this one, I don't like the way this book is written.  I don't like any of the translations. I might have loved it in his original voice but I find stuff like this confusing to read. I always have, I don't know if it's a mild form like dyslexia or what, that I don't understand when there's so many commas and parenthetical statements. I have the same problem with Dickens. I just don't care to read that type of writing and this was, this is pretty much the same way. I just didn't care for the writing at all. Now the story, the way I took it, this Joker has a hundred and like eighty some odd pages but the story itself is only fifty five pages and the reason for that is there's a lot of notes on Kafka's life and all that stuff. I didn't read any of that. I don't plan on reading until I read Hill's version again. I had only read Hill's version prior so me and Shell will talk about, you know, how these affected us differently. I love Joe Hill's version but I had no idea that that was the plot of the metamorphosis. I had no idea whatsoever until I was talking to somebody else and they're like, hey, you know, how do you think it compares to metamorphosis? I'm like, I know it compared to the metamorphosis but we're gonna do that. Both stories are, I don't know how similar they are other than both stories involve young men waking up as creatures. Yeah. I think what I got from this, if I'm gonna deep dive into it, give it a literary assessment, I'm gonna say that this was, that Gregor felt like he was, I still can't say the name without thinking about my friend, but Gregor feeling like a burden on his family or something like that, like he was projecting because I do know something, I know Kafka had a bad relationship with his father. I do know that much about him but if I'm gonna look at this from a literary standpoint, the major vibe I got was he felt like a burden. Now, if that's right, wrong or the other way, that's how I came across it. I'm not sure exactly what Shell's gonna say, but that was my vibe from it is he felt like a burden on the family and that burden is told metaphorically through him literally becoming this burden of this creature, beetle, bug, insect, whatever he is, literally, you know, he's become a burden. He can't help out, he can't cook for himself, he can't feed himself. Well, I guess he can't feed himself but he can't cook for himself, you know, and where he was carrying the family financially, all of a sudden, there's no more carrying going on. I might be missing something, so if you guys want to say, hey, no dude, the whole point of the book condensed, here's my TLDR, if you want to say that down there, it's not gonna hurt my feelings. You guys want to talk about whether or not you like this book. I know this is kind of a non-review because I'm not really going to talk about the book all that much, I'm just basically saying I don't like the writing and Shell had a completely different translation than I did. She was reading along with me as I was reading out loud and I liked her version much more but supposedly this is the version everyone says, read and if it's because it's so like literally, you know, translated, I think that might be the problem with it, why it was so difficult for me to read because it was a literal translation like word for word, whereas I think hers is more takes more of a creative license because they changed quite a few sentences and just made it easier to read instead of the piled on commas and parentheses and m dashes and all that stuff. But have you read the Metamorphosis? What did you think about it? I'm not too keen on classics, period. If you're the same way or if you completely disagree and you don't like modern literature, let me know down there in the comments below. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U, this has been another book review, I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye!


I think you might go for that. It's a slow game. It's kind of a patient game, you know. And the beauty of it is that from the middle or the end of the game, all the instruments are up in journey. And there we are behind it. Well that's the nice thing about Russi-Turkey and I'll see you anytime. So what are the initiatives that you do to counteract the obvious movement of the area? It's not just because you're just following what we're kind of doing. How are we actually doing it? Okay, well, the situation is I have no problem, you know, working with you that if he's helping you with degrees, which initially the first thing that you should help him do is have the button, I have no problem breaking out where people can get degrees and we work towards me moving. You'll see that I put, when I put a fleet into Iberia, I'll put it in Portugal, not Spain, South Coast. If I have to build a fleet in Marseille, I'll tell you in advance that it'll only be if I'm already getting a fleet built in Brest, etc. Austria and Italy generally will stay together until we see what happens in your neighborhood. I would be of the opinion and the hope that we will take out Turkey first. I'm happy to go against Germany if that's what you want to do, or you can sit and wait and see what happens. I'm open to it, or just, yeah, I definitely want to do it. All right, Russia seems very friendly towards me, I don't know, he's just sort of being friendly towards everyone and it's jumping on whatever happens. You want to see where Germany's name is on the former World Champion flag? You want the World Champion to be a German champion? I want to have some miscellaneous.  I can't remember the names of the countries. Okay, what's their countries? I don't want to tell you. Okay, no, that's up to you. Don't ask us, because, of course, I'm going to tell you to go after the flag. Turkey's going to save us. That too. Yeah, Turkey's going to save us. This guy's going to save us after this guy. So, most of the people that are birthed in the West, hey, we're going to save you. So, who backs them? Friends. Friends? So, are you going to trust them? No. What are you going to do? I have a plan. Yeah? Okay.   Guys, if this is your most flexible best purchase, it gets you how long to do that. Okay, thanks for that. I realized I didn't have time to actually do that. I talked to him. He just walked away. There we go, thanks. Some direction in France, we have one to go. And then that's where we're going to save you. So, besides, again, we have in France, we've got six mills, we've got six hundred. So, you've got us three bills. That's it. I would prefer you to have Norway over the Russians. Anyways, because he's already got so much going on elsewhere. So, if you're not interested, you've got your own plans, you order your own fun stuff. That's totally cool. No, really, I mean, I have kind of a balanced power thing. So, really, I'd rather not. I went to Sweden to stop Russia from being explosively engaged. Right. So, you're talking about supporting me and this Norway? Because I can take over myself, but then, to do that, I'd be risking just letting you walk in and we're in the same time.  I'd rather play balance of power on myself, get one bill from somewhere else, but you keep that so you don't lose a thought from that and he doesn't gain a thought from that. It's more balance of power as well. So, you think about it. You think about it. Tell me. If you don't want it, it's fine. You do. I didn't come back to politics. No, I didn't. It's okay. That's part of the problem. What are we going to do about it?


What's good Josh your boy Ross back again another video, so this will be my first time doing a Predictions max for crown jewel, which will be happening this Thursday. You already know We're gonna be live streaming it on the inter clutch page. It's gonna be kind of early for us the show's supposed to start at 11 p.m. Central Standard Time, so If you're wanting to check that out you want to join us in the live stream I don't think you want to miss it.  Can't wait to check it out, but I wanted to make a Predictions video to give my thoughts and opinions on who I think is gonna win why I think they're gonna win now I want to make a disclaimer. I haven't been watching Monday Night Raw as of late, so I'm gonna kind of be out the loop Maybe potentially on certain, you know storylines, but I'm gonna give my best Educated guests to see who will win these respective matches. So Let's start with monsoon versus Ali. I think they're gonna definitely play to the the The home. Well, I wouldn't say hometown crowd, but the country men crowd I think a lot of people are gonna be interested especially from from the country of Saudi Arabia They're gonna be interested in in this match WWE usually tries to have at least one match on the card that, you know, really shows Or kind of shows like they're their ethnic involvement in the company So monsoon versus Ali even though I do like Mustafa Ali I haven't really been keeping up with their storyline So I'm gonna probably give it to Ali only because I do think Ali needs Some type of win here and I'm pretty sure the crowd will love this match Just because you know there is gonna be people in the ring that's like them, you know saying represent Representing them. So I think the crowd is gonna be into this match I'm gonna give this match to Ali. Like I said, I haven't really been keeping up with the feud Zelina Vega versus do drop for the Queens crown final I Can see them giving it to Zelina Vega It seems like they really have been pushing her as a late So I can see Zelina Vega getting the win here I don't think they're gonna give do drop the win to be honest with you But I do see since they have been pushing Zelina these past couple weeks I think they're gonna give her the win here. She's gonna win the Queens crown final For the king of the ring final. This is a match. I'm really interested in Finn Valor versus Xavier Woods, I think what would be great is you have Xavier Woods in here I know Finn could use a nice little Momentum boost after what happened at Extreme Rules, but I think you give this to Xavier The reason why I say this because the end of the day his brothers in the new day. They have all been main event WWE champions and I think this is the step to get him into that main event light and Like I said in the past. I think you could really set up something in the future where Xavier Woods may end up feuding with Big E for the title, you know, it could cause some you know some Descension between the three. I think this would be good I think Xavier needs this more than Finn at this point Finn could take a loss here I think if you're gonna go to storyline they're going to storyline where people are, you know Trying to buy into Xavier Woods. He's the one guy that hasn't had a main event run I think you go with Xavier Woods here. Have him be king of the ring That's just me. That's just me in my personal opinions. I would like to get your opinions on that Do y'all feel like he deserves to get that way Now we're gonna get to the no-holds bar match Bobby Lashley versus Goldberg Um For me, I wasn't as interested in this match, but I have seen some of the clips and some of the back and forth promos They have actually made me interested in this match. I think it's just gonna be a pretty much Destructive match nothing technical just just a destructive match which which that's what you want to see in a Goldberg match and I think I Think they're gonna give the win to Goldberg here I think they are It would be cool if Bobby wins, but I think honestly from a storyline set up I think they're gonna give the win to Goldberg Only because they set it up where it's like, oh you he touched my son You knew this was gonna happen. They were gonna have a match at some point He touched my son. He put hands on my son So just you know, I think they're gonna give him that rub here and I think he's going to win at At crown jewel, that's just my opinion I'm not sure if I agree with him winning, but I don't think I would be Too upset as long as Bobby doesn't get squashed with I don't think he will I'm okay with that They have a back-and-forth cool. I'm okay with that, but most likely Goldberg will probably win this match This is one of the matches. I am so excited for Helen to sell match edge versus Seth Rollins. I Think you give the slight edge no pun intended to edge himself I think edge will probably win this this series and maybe Just maybe he ends up turning face from this You know, I I could see a Seth Rollins turning face from this. I'm not sure but I'm gonna give this match to edge either way If Seth Rollins does win this that'll be cool. I wouldn't really trip, but I'm gonna give this match to edge This is just gonna be I can't wait. I am so excited for this So I think it's just going to walk out victorious on this one We got the Smackdown women's championship match Becky Lynch versus Bianca Bella versus Sasha Banks I Think Sasha's gonna win this I think Sasha's is going to win the Smackdowns women's Championship right a raw tag team championship the RK bro versus AJ Styles and almost I'm gonna give it to The RK bro, man, I think the RK pro or bro is going to Come out victorious here. Once again, I haven't really been watching Smackdown. I mean raw so You can fault me for it, but I feel like AJ and almost I think AJ needs to be doing something else, honestly I think his running the tag team division is cool But I think he needs to get back into the main event scene almost I don't know what you do with him. You can keep him as an enforcer or what not for AJ But I think AJ needs to get back into to the the main event scene He's a main event guy and I would like to see him feud with Big E for the title You know have almost in his corner, you know, I think that would be pretty cool That's just my personal opinion and they have a little bit of history so I would have RK bro win it and Keep that tag team going The WWE Championship match Big E versus Drew, of course, I'm going with Big E here I'm going with Big E here Big E needs to retain if he loses to Drew McIntyre I'm gonna be very disappointed in WWE very disappointed because at the end of the day Big E needs this win He needs to beat Pash WWE Champions formidable opponents. Drew doesn't need the title right now. He don't now you can Potentially turn Drew heel and maybe they continue to feud that way as him being a heel But Big E needs to retain the WWE Championship I'm gonna be very upset if he ends up losing this match To Drew. I'm just keeping the stack in a half with you be very disappointed Would have been a wasted of a title opportunity and of course the main event Roman Reigns versus Brock Lesnar. I've made an entire video on why Roman Reigns must win this match I'm going with Roman Reigns here. I'm sorry. It just doesn't make sense from a booking standpoint to have Brock Lesnar Win the championship back There's no point. We're not gonna see him on television. There is no point in doing that I'd rather have Roman Reigns as my champ. He has been the best universal champion. We have ever had he is carrying the the Smackdown brand in WWE as a whole on his back Doesn't make sense to take the title off him because it pretty much just negates everything He's worked hard for it.  No No, no, no, no, no Roman must win this match. He must simple as that if they drop the belt to him WWE they have wasted They have literally wasted our time for over a year and a half You don't make this guy this unbeatable just to have him lose to Brock because at that point we're going backwards We're regressing, you know, I'm saying we need to be progressing Forward to see who can actually be the next guy up after Roman Brock is not the next guy up. He's not He's been there done that. He's just there because he's a big name Roman Reigns wins and retains his WWE Universal Championship So that's my predictions for my for a crown jewel This Thursday, so I want to know from all the matches that we know that are announced List your predictions who you think is going to win why you think they deserve to win I would like to get your guys opinion on this Especially even more because I don't be watching raw so you can kind of give me a little bit more back story On some of the storylines and story beats, but outside of that I would like to know your guys opinions on who's gonna win this Thursday and make sure you guys tune in Live on YouTube will be live streaming at 11 p.m. I mean 11 a.m. Central Standard Time That's when the show starts for us We're gonna be up in the morning for you guys because this is gonna be a good one. You don't want to miss it You know dub's gonna be really anxious to see what happens between Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar So this is gonna be great. We'd love to get your thoughts and opinions on you know Who's gonna win this Thursday? Appreciate all love and support roll to 60k appreciate y'all kicking with me See y'all next week