Welcome everyone to the generation world's like this podcast by lowstriumindia. This is the episode 4 of the podcast and today we will be discussing media from the point of view of the Gen Z audiences. If you are new to the podcast and you like listening to this one, you can go back and listen to the previous one so I am also will be dropping a few more in the next few days so you can stay tuned for those ones. I am Kunlata and you will be hearing my voice through the podcast and as always I have with me Arlo sir, UMCEO, our strat guru, Aditya Mishra, hi Atee. Hi Kula, happy to be here and before we sort of get into the details of what we want to talk about today, I think it's a good idea to give a view to how we have actually done this whole Gen Z understanding. So we went, you know the approach we adopted sort of was very interesting, we looked at Gen Z insiders you know rather than doing it from an outside view, we thought let's understand it from inside. So getting in people who are Gen Z themselves to go and talk to their peers, understand from them through multiple methods, so there's a huge quant study at the back of it across the last two years, looking at also a qualitative understanding of what is it that they are doing to engage the behaviors, what's on their phone, you know what's on their devices and then exploring what is the kind of things that they engage with various brands, various categories so that we can draw out nuances which can help brands and marketers like us to see what is the way forward for the future. Yeah, perfectly summed up very well. Yeah, so we'll get on with today's discussion and the first point that actually it is not a very surprising one is a very expected observation about Gen Z that definitely they're very digital first since they are digital native generation. It is almost like a status quo for them. So they don't even realize that it is something that is unique or different about them. It's like they're something when we observe, like when we heard some of those things, they're used to we get surprised. OK, how comfortable they are.  You know, digital is not something different from them. It's pervasive in their way of life. So they are digital first, not just in terms of how they look at digital as a medium, but probably how their lives are digital in a way. You know, so it's it's like a very interesting mix of what one typically would call a real and virtual world. And and there's like a seamless flow of how they experience things in the real world versus the virtual world and how each of those things sort of build off each other. So not only is it a convenient thing, a used to thing, but it's also how they explore and seek experiences where one builds off the other. Yeah. And while they use it for pretty much everything, but how they use one different platform differently, that was also somewhat interesting. Like one person was speaking to the person said that she uses, let's say for Twitter is primarily for news and Instagram specifically for motivational quotes that she goes to. And whenever she has any doubt, let's say she reaches out to her friends on various social platform and also goes to quota for those answers. So each of the platform has their specific new nuanced use. And they're very used to using all of those for those specific purposes. Like they're very segregated in that way. Yeah. So, you know, when we talk to people and when we did this study, some interesting and I would say, evolutionary trends also emerged. You know, let's look at a platform like Discord, for example. You know, that that was essentially for gamers. But if you look at the way it has now got adopted, people are using it also as a conversational platform. People are also using it as, you know, something to follow their passions or their interests. So there is this constant shift, I would say, you know, let's say if you look at Gen Z is a few years back, you know, Facebook was the platform where they would be first seen. And today's Gen Z would not be caught dead there. You know, they might have an account, but nobody's using that account. And Instagram, which started off as a photo sharing platform. Today, you know, there are many Gen Z that use the platform not necessarily for posting stuff, but basically as a kind of messaging platform. So they're actually doing calls. They're actually messaging each other on something like an Instagram. So it's also how the platforms are extending beyond what they have been created for in a way. And hence the constant evolution of technology and how these platforms are evolving in the way that they engage the audience. They keep the audience with them. Yeah, yeah. And we'll hear from Anushka now. She speaks about like how she gets very much updated and constantly social media, how that helps her in various aspects of her life. Yeah, so one media can be used horizontally and vertically both. So they look at social media just to get updated, connect two people, get to know them well, and obviously from bonding with different each other. So all of those things that now let's move over to the second one, which is with a higher usage of digital as well as different content that are available and the expansion of their ambit that has made them really more engaged with media at an overall level. So they are more connected. They are more informed and they're having more fun on all of these platforms. So they are constantly engaging with media and that is making them more hungry about I think overall media and content and information, I guess. Yeah, so I think the interesting thing that we saw and which I think is a little different maybe for India, basically some of the other countries and we look at is even today there is, you know, probably some gaps in terms of what we would call a singular super app kind of an engagement. So while WhatsApp remains all pervasive and and with the introduction of payments, there was this big whole thought of, you know, would that become like a single super app which everybody is engaging in. But I think we're still not there yet. It's like it's like an evolution. And the other aspect, I think to consider is that how content and context is coming together for consumption. So what is unique for I think most digital platforms is that these two pieces sort of travel together. So unlike traditional media formats where, you know, content gets created and then it sort of is placed in case of digital. It's an interplay of both which sort of works well. So Gen Z has wider circles of reference where they are trying to do anything because it's pretty much information accessible very, very easily. So whether it's about, you know, finding something and this whole agility of engaging faster and that's, you know, therefore reflected when we start looking at time spent on media and time spent on digital media. There is a huge increase in terms of the overall time which is invested by Gen Z across multiple touch points, despite, you know, having very busy lives, but they are constantly there.   How well are you looking at and understanding that evolution? And hence, what are the policies that you have in place? Hence, you know, this whole discussion that is happening right now in India in terms of data and controlling consumer data. So these are some other nuances, I think, which are important for marketers and communicators to start thinking about as they look at this engagement and as they evaluate what is the right place for a brand to be. Yeah, certainly. And that's what we when we observed Gen Z versus the millennial. So Gen Z definitely have higher engagement and higher time spent on media compared to a millennial and definitely because of COVID also that has gone up. And yeah, you just didn't talk about that how they're spending much more time. And so so spending because time is you have 24 hours only. So you have to have if you're spending so much time on media, then you're less in terms of physical work and all that. But I think they are also recognizing that, recognizing the burnout. They are if not, they're actively trying to address it immediately. But there is those conversations that is also happening around that, that how can you how do you need to also have physical work and all those things as well? So yeah, so I'll play one clip from Meenika. She is from Jhakan. So she speaks about how digital media is like an indispensable part of our life.  I didn't realize that it did actually come to me as a movie. But I'd like to do something a hundred in my head and I can read it as many times as I can. I wish it was right. It has music, TV, that kind of impact. We have actually helped improve the quality of our entertainment industry today because the traditional typical, you know, of people who are going to ask to be parents of children, that's something that you see today on a very conventional level. The content has become so unconventional and so indulging that as you as the creators of the album, it's probably the best time to be alive, right? So there are a lot of the things that you just spoke about is that she kind of again said that. And also that she mentioned about this whole thing about how the quality of content has become so engaging and so good these days. So therefore that pushes them to consume more and more. Yeah, and also one thing that we'll probably now transition to the next point. And that is all about like how digital media is or overall as a media landscape is constantly evolving and constantly changing. And that has like kind of all of these better quality of content and people are always trying to get the audience to their side. So that urge to push the audience and urge to get the audience's eyeball is pushing media to evolve constantly. And that dynamism is which is like evident through these conversations that we had with them. So, see, I think it is obviously reflective.  So there's lots happening in your life. And and therefore, somewhere there is this nuance of, you know, what I consume, what I see, what I watch, what I engage with, it's pretty much my business. I don't necessarily need my parents, my family, my teacher, my peer group, everybody to know. I have that privacy. So in a sense, you know, digital media, a lot of it is also extremely private. So so that is, I think, one nuance of why it's a very comfortable build. You know, earlier, I didn't have an option. If everybody is watching something, I also have to watch the same or I also have to read the same. Now, I don't necessarily need to. I choose when I want to watch with everyone versus I choose when I when I want to watch or do something different. So that choice and a choice is just private is there. So that's that's one big factor. The other thing which you interestingly said, you know, what am I watching? And and therefore, what is the kind of feedback that gives to to brands and to platforms and and here we see this duality, which is emerging, because you have so many things to do while you're spending more time. But but you also have so many things that you want to pack in. And and therefore, this growth of what we call short form content, you know, three seconds, six seconds, memes, very, very quick, very easy to consume and at the same time, huge long form. So something which is of interest, which is of passion, I will spend that time. But otherwise, most of the pieces is short form and and pressure on brands. Therefore, in terms of how do you capture their attention? If I have to tell my story in a two second or a three second thing, how do I capture that attention? So so need to innovate, need to really have good insights in terms of what is your brand or product bringing to the table and how do you translate that in a communication? How do you tell your brand story versus just a look and buy kind of a format? So those are some of the challenges which brands and marketers have to straddle as as they go along, you know, engaging GenC. Yeah, certainly. And the fact that everything is becoming so fragmented and then there's so many platforms to choose like for a marketer or for a brand. Now it is for them to decide, like, do I do a particular thing this way or that way? Or where do I target them? And see, when we look, so there's the few charts that we worked on. And when we map their influences across various categories, so and across various platform, what they're engaging in. So there were three notices that the across various categories, the influence is very fragmented. It's not like something I've OK, in one particular category, this is the person that I follow or this is the brand that I follow. It's not like that is it's like like list and list of brands that as much as we spoke to them, the newer names are coming from everywhere. So that is that means that that many fragmentation is happening. And also across various platforms for different platforms, different aspects are looked at, like, for example, short form video that you spoke of, like beauty is like a big category that that is using short form videos to let's share some content and quick content versus, let's say, tech is is, let's say, on YouTube and a little bit long form, long detailed reviews and detailed discussion around tech. So technically, it's very much strong there. So this is just an example that came to my mind. And but so each of the platform is very fragmented and has no specific use. So the brands have to be very careful and very thought through in where to use what and how to leverage that. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, somewhere, I think it's an interesting mix of what we say, slow and fast thinking. You know, there are there things that I have to buy. And therefore, how pretty much everything is becoming shoppable. Everything is becoming engagement led. But at the same time, there are places that I want to tell brand stories and and whether it's content that I create as a brand myself. Do I partner with other people like influencers or experts who can who can create content and and what's the right balance? So those are some of the questions that brands need to answer. And, you know, there's no one way that the interesting part is as fragmentation happens, it also opens up a world of opportunity. Yes. You know, so for the same category, you may have different parts that you take and and all may work equally well, depending on, you know, how they resonate with your brand story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, certainly. So now we'll listen to Asta. So she speaks about how she she herself is an entrepreneur and how she is using digital media to grow her business. And that's what she speaks about like if I made a page and I started advertising on Instagram, Facebook, all these posts over there, I've started sharing my website on Instagram and Facebook. So people are getting to know that there is a website where you're all sharing the page. And I've started doing digital payments like online payments to work. We don't see even cash on delivery. So I've started making online payments. So see a girl, she's 17 year old. She's starting her own business and such such the power of dynamic world that she lives in that she's going to start up her own business. Now she's thinking about how to grow it digitally and that's what she's investing in. So that's what she is doing so many things, starting a page or she should invest in Instagram ads or how should she get her payments and etc. So all of those details that she's constantly thinking and working towards. So that's how the evolution with the evolution that she's also evolving. Yeah, so I think what digital platforms allow consumers to do or marketeers to do and she's an interesting mix of being a marketeer and a consumer is it has redefined what would be the entry barriers for a brand to come in and meet people or to talk to them. There were a lot of entry barriers in terms of what kind of investment was required, what kind of effort was required. Now with this opportunity to reach out a very large base through very limited actual effort in terms of building say a retail space or building those kind of things. There is a quick try or a test and learn model that people can experiment with because entry is not difficult. You can try out, you can keep refining and reforming your model and you can continue to engage with cohorts or with particular groups of people who are of a similar interest or who are seeking a particular solution. So that opportunity is something which has suddenly changed the landscape and hence the growth of the D2C categories that we see whether it's in traditional areas or whether it is in completely unexpected fields wherein suddenly you have an opportunity to try and to see whether you can scale up. Yeah, certainly. And in fact you speak about how because of the barrier to entry is so less. So not just from the marketer's point of view but also from the point of view of the content creators. So that's actually we are leading into the four point which is all about how because of so much of proliferation of content creation that has led to I guess a little bit of reduction or of a celebrity hood. People looking up to somebody like so larger to life and also the fact that these celebrities you can see you can get much more information about them and you can see them for who they are not just as a demigods. So that you can see you can get much more closer to them. So that has kind of reduced the earlier that demigods stature of all those Bollywood stars and all that as well. And I guess that was multiplied by all these influx of YouTubers that has come and also with the short form video content and all that where people are mastering that art as well like how to tell the story in a short way. So I think two things and we've spoken a bit about that when we spoke about what's the no-ancing in terms of Gen C versus Millennials and how do they look at things? I think one thing which came up very strongly was around authenticity and reality because people are informed it's very easy to access information. So when we talk about celebrity hood celebrity hood is really one aspect of a human being when they are great at something but eventually all are human beings. So there are a lot of other things about a person which earlier because it was a very uni-dimensional whatever stories you would maybe read in print or see some person on television or see them performing somewhere depending on the field that they are in. That's the only aspect that you would see but with this proliferation suddenly you know a lot more. You see the holistic picture and therefore your appreciation of something especially Gen C when they start looking at it in a way make very informed choices. So that is the reason why there is this growth of what we would call micro-influences which is people I know, people I can trust. It's not just a known name which is important but it is also about the authenticity of the information. Is it real life? Is it something which is packaged by a brand but does it really hold in all scenarios? So that's a balance and I think what we are seeing more and more when we start talking about brands which engage with Gen C's is that there has to be a healthy mix. So while celebs are great for capturing attention they get you interested but to keep you interested and to keep you engaged with the brand there is an emerging role of micro-influences or even converting your consumers into ambassadors and influencers. So there is this whole cycle which is emerged right now. Yeah, certainly. And you spoke about authenticity in fact when you spoke about one platform which is Discord the most common thing that came out was a sense of community. Authenticity leading up to a belongingness is the community. Like if you see any YouTuber so there'll be those super chat commenting regularly on those kind of like knowing each other also and commenting on each other's comment as well. So there's a lot of interesting thing that happens around that. And also from a short attention span to like long form content everywhere there is those specialization that are emerging with every new evolution that is happening. Yeah, that is actually very interesting to see now and Shreyaan's kind of sums it up very well. Where he- What stars follow? I guess people go for that thing but thing is I don't think. I guess celebrity hold is actually reducing. People are going for quality things. What the way initially if Amutha Bachchan used to say this Namkeen is the perfect and everybody used to follow that thing this Namkeen is perfect Amutha Bachchan saying that way. I guess that was the whole school. Now people are going for the quality. Now people are going for the quality. I think when he means quality he means all of this reliability and all of these things as well. Reliability trust and how expertise matter and not just one person saying that it is true. You'll also go for verification of that fact. You'll try to get this thing from information from multiple sources and all that. So these are the four points that we wanted to quickly discuss about the media behavior and how Gen Z's view media and so any final thoughts? No so I think it is what I would say a little earlier also I said that it's a great opportunity. It opens up a lot of things that brands can do. As marketers it's important for us to be choiceful because there is only so much. Resources continue to be limited for all of us. So we need to be choiceful about why we are choosing a particular platform. Just because we are choosing digital doesn't mean it's right. So what kind of digital? What is the experience that we really want consumers to have? What is the end action that we are seeking? And are we able to deliver this in a very authentic and real way? So that's I think the sort of tick marks that anything needs to have for a brand to be successful in this space. Yeah, great final words. So if you like listening to this one and you wanna listen to more of such podcasts so you can subscribe on Generation Z, guys. And thanks for listening. Thank you. Bye bye. Have a nice day. Bye bye.


The following is a production of New Mexico State University. Bacteria are very, very small. Very small. In fact, you can't see them at all. Not at all.  With so many bacteria, what's a pirate to do? What's a pirate to do? Most bacteria won't hurt us. They're harmless, and even do us good. In fact, we have bacteria living inside of us that help to keep us healthy. But some are just plain nasty and can make you very sick. If they get inside of you. Yes. Bacteria, bacteria, bacteria. Living all around you. They can help, they can be harmless but there's more than one or two that'll make you sick if they get into you. It took scientists a long time to discover that certain tiny bacteria can make us sick. Bacteria live everywhere, even on the food we eat. And when we eat something or touch something with bad bacteria on it and it gets into our mouth, we can get sick. So, how does bacteria get inside me?  If you toss it, then you taste it. They will transfer to your mouth. If you toss it, then you toss that. You've moved them all about. If you cough it, then you cough that. They transfer yet again.  To your mouth. To your mouth. When you touch, taste or eat things with bacteria all about.  Yes. Some are just plain nasty and can make you very sick.  Bacteria, bacteria, bacteria. Living more. It can be harmless, but there's more than one or two.  The preceding was a production of New Mexico State University. The views and opinions in this program are those of the author. And do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the NMSU Board of Regents.


of my new talk, so, oh, yeah, exactly, exactly, whoo! The truth is that I just got ready this afternoon in total panic, so everything is as it should be. I'll be talking about how to take log for a day on a global scale using collaborative security. Yeah, well, there aren't much to say other than that there's a fancy picture of me from when I worked at KPMD and had to wear a tie to go to work. And also I had to go to work, which I don't now anymore because everything is worth from home. Yeah, I don't want to repeat all that. In order to understand how data is collected, we need to talk a little bit about how CrowdStack works. It's not going to be a completely product marketing talk, but just a very overall basic talk about that. But first, I want to address one of the reasons why CrowdStack was built in the first place, because as we all know, all those of us who work with cybersecurity who have an interest in cybersecurity, there is a problem that is not solved because everybody gets hacked, and as time goes, those of us who have been around for a long time, know that more and more people get hacked, and the companies spend bigger and bigger fortunes trying to prevent that, and it doesn't work. So basically what you could ask yourself is, are we doing something wrong? And obviously, CrowdStack has another approach to this, which we think makes much more sense. And basically, it's time for a new approach because we tried outpowering the bad guys, we tried outsmarting them, didn't work. Why don't we try to outnumber them? Because when you think of it, there is more of us than of the bad guys, so why don't we try and take advantage of that? Because when you think of it, nobody wants to fight a beehive. A single bee, not so bad, but if a thousand bees come running at you, you run. If you're sane, you run. And that's because there are a lot of them. So let's try to take that analogy and put it into security. So basically, I'll try to, in trying to explain how CrowdStack works, I usually compare it with Waze and calling it the Waze of Cybersecurity. And if you don't know what Waze is, it's a GPS app on your phone that shares information about your travel, how fast you're going, where there is weather cues and where there are holes in the roads and stuff like that. And it shares that with all the other Waze users so that everybody hopefully avoids all that stuff. And it's sort of the same with CrowdStack. CrowdStack detects the attack it sees on your service and shares them with everybody else. It also blocks the attacks if you want that, which you typically want. And basically, CrowdStack reflock, right? Then it detects threats, it mitigates those threats, and it sends those signals back. And then they are assessed and shared with the community, with the rest of the community as block lests, basically, yeah. This is just an example of attacks. I'm not going to talk very much about them. Other than CrowdStack can also detect web-based attacks. And this is what we did in terms of this log4j thing. Because CrowdStack reads the web server log and detects basically those log4j strings that some of you may remember. That was part of the attack. And in general, this is how CrowdStack works. Whatever web-based attack CrowdStack is trying to mitigate, it's just looking at the log. The current status of yesterday is that we collect around 1.3 million signals each day. We have 3.7 million IPs in our smoke database, which I'll be talking about in a little while. And around 33,000 IPs in our curated block list that it distributes to other users. I'll be talking a little bit more about how big the network is and what we call network strength in a later slide. And the CrowdStack is open source. And the license we've chosen for CrowdStack is MIT, which means that it's free forever. Once the source has been opened, it cannot be closed, and that is completed by design. Because being a young company and all that, there is a risk that somebody with a lot of money wants to buy us. So we can have a lot of money, which is good. But what is not good is if that company based of money or driven by money, as companies often are, they want to close the source and basically screw with the community and destroy everything we've worked for. So hence, this is MIT, it's open. If a company wants to do that, nothing happens, the code gets forward, and that was a bad decision. We offer CrowdStack offers a fair deal, we think. You share the information about your text you see, and you get all the block list stuff back for free. So that is sort of the trading agreement. If you don't want to share it, then you can always pay and stuff. But CrowdStack is free to use, no strings attached. A question that I'm often asked is what about privacy? Well, it's pretty easy to not give out people's information if you don't collect them. Because usually, when something is free, it means you're the product. That's how it is with Facebook and everything else. But in CrowdStack, you're not the product. The bad guys, IPs, they're the product. So basically, it's their privacy that we sell, and honestly, who cares? I mean, they ask for it. So CrowdStack only collects the timestamp of any given event, the offending IP, and behavior, which basically means a scenario that's been triggered, a scenario can be, let's say it's brute-forcing or any attack. That is everything we collect. We don't collect anything about how the attack is being performed, whatever. We just know that this method, this scenario, and that's it. Another option or another important thing with CrowdStack is, how do you deal with poisoning and false positives? There is a little consensus engine that works on the server side of CrowdStack, which assesses all IPs that have been sent to us in the smoke database. This is the initial database where signals enter. There's a trust rank. Basically, all new agents, all agents have a trust rank attached, and they start with trust rank zero. And over time, as they are contributing signals, and they prove trustworthy, and all that, gain and rises. And after six months of being rock-stable and trustworthy, they got a trust rank of 99. And that is important because this trust rank is being used as a point score whenever an IP is deemed malevolent. For instance, an IP, in order for it to be deemed malevolent, it needs a certain amount of points. And those points are based on the trust rank, basically. And the reason for this is that we want it to be as expensive and hard to poison the database. Because if you are a bad guy and want to poison the database, it takes a lot of time. That's one thing. And also, in this voting process, an ASN can only give one vote, meaning that if you want to have, if you think you can poison the CrowdStack database by buying 1,000 VPSs on the same cloud provider, you're wrong, because they don't have many ASNs. So you need to have them on a lot of ASNs around the world in order to have a chance to build this trust rank, and also a lot of time. There is, in terms of false positive, we have a small fleet of honeypots where we basically evaluate the signals that comes from all the agents that we don't have control over. So the honeypots have a slightly bigger trust rank. There's a white list. There are certain IPs that we don't want to blacklist, like Google DNS, CloudFair, CDNs, stuff like that. And this looks a little bit pre-crime-ish, but there's also a predictive algorithm saying that if a certain number of IPs from the same net block has been doing bad things, at some point, we just blocked the entire net block, saying that nothing good comes out of that. Why not block them in advance? And then after this consensus process, IPs are being sent to the fire database and distributed back. And as I said before, there's around 3.7 million IPs in the smoke database and around 33,000 in the fire database. So it is a very conservative assessment, because we don't want false positives. We just simply don't. And so far it works well. This is not a detail to talk about CrowdStack, even though that you may have felt it like that already. If you want to learn more about which OS is supported and how CrowdStack works in details and all that, I'm having some workshop during MCH. I'll talk a little bit about those that are already arranged. If you want to have one in your village or whatever, just feel free to approach me. And I'm sure we can find a way to do that. There are more details on that in the end of my talk. And now it's time for my first break. Before I'm talking specifically about log4gay, it's important to understand that CrowdStack is not a web application firewall. It's not a VAP. And regarding log4gay, this is particularly important, because as you may know, if not, then I'll talk about it a little bit later, it only takes one request if you're vulnerable to get compromised. So because CrowdStack reach logs, things need to be in the log before it can be blocked. And if it's already in the block and you're vulnerable, then you're already fucked. So CrowdStack relies very much on this network effect. It relies very much on the community signals. If you're a vulnerable server and you're protecting this CrowdStack, then you hope that the network has detected those IPs, because you're in trouble. Luckily, this whole reputation, basically, works pretty well, because we did a small study, not scientific at all, where we run two identical servers, and the whole objective was to try and find out how big is the network effect. Basically, we set up two deep-end servers on AWS. Identical, the only difference was that one of them had the bouncer part of CrowdStack, which is the IPS part of CrowdStack, blocking traffic. Because once you have blocked the IPs in the firewall of the host machine, where CrowdStack is installed, then it won't be in the log, and then it won't be in the stats, basically. So we left those machines running for three months, and it turned out that 92% of all the bad traffic in that the server was blocked by the community already. So this is good news if you're vulnerable to LofoJ back in December, and you rely on CrowdStack for this. But it's also important to note that this is also, CrowdStack is also, in a way, resembling to a 100-part in general, because it's possible to install the CrowdStack scenario, or the 100-part scenario in the scenario, without being vulnerable, you just need a web server. So conclusion, community matters. All right, hopefully this is the part you came for. This is where we are now. If there should be a couple of you who don't know what LofoJ is, I'll give you the very short version of this. On December 9th, last year, Apache Foundation released an info on a critical bug in the LofoJ library. Explorable via remote code execution. And then it turns out LofoJ is used everywhere, and by everywhere, I mean everywhere, right? I saw this tweet from a guy called Kasim Koden, which were dawned on me, because he had, in his iPhone, he has said his name to this specific GDI string, which then exploits the server. And it turned out he got a connection back from Apple servers, and they were vulnerable. And then I was like, hm, it really is everywhere. So it was everywhere. So everybody obviously went totally in panic. And everybody was busy, at least in the security field, to, by reason, free tools and resources to help out. And so did we. We released the entire list of IPs that were actively abusing the vulnerability so that people could import into their own firewall. This is a super fast overview of the timeline. The details of the vulnerability was released on December 9th, on December 10th. Krasnick released the first version of the log4j scenario. Then that scenario was pushed out to a number of agents, and the signal started pouring in a little bit, but it didn't peak until two days later. Because when you think of it, this is a really good example of what is cool about this whole community stuff, that when you have a community of Krasnick users that you can utilize in this way just by sending out a scenario to them, then you can start harvesting CTI on even new vulnerabilities. And it happened pretty fast. As the attacks evolved, we also needed to update the scenarios, because in the beginning it was just this plain texturing, but obfuscation, shenanigans and stuff made them happen, of course, as hackers do. So we had to update the scenarios as well. So on December 12th, on December 13th, on December 16th, and finally on December 20th, when somebody from the community was adding some Unicode bypass pattern thing. It was updated then, and then in the end, it turned out there was 34 GROC patterns in the end scenario, which is pretty cool, I think. This is the spike of signals. You can see here on December 10th, not much going on. On December 12th, it goes bananas. But as we started getting signals, there were some signals that we received that were somewhat different. And our data scientists looked into it, and it turned out that there was a German security research company who were doing scanning. And obviously, we didn't want to interfere with their research or anything. And also, they were not any harm. So we blocked them out. And this is how log4j is looking up until now. You can see a big drop in the end of May. And then after that, there are a few things going on, especially there are two big spikes to the right, which I'll be talking a little bit about. That was on June 21st and July 7th. We're not really sure what happened, but we know who did it. It's this guy, <IP_ADDRESS>. Both on June 22nd and on July 7th, this guy was going crazy with the log4j attacks. We don't really know. It was interesting, because these are data scientists. He treated that on June 22nd. And then on July 7th, there was double as many attacks as he saw on June 21st. As I said, we don't know why, but we have a theory, at least for June 21st. And that theory is that on June 23rd, there was a report from CSAT, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the US, who warned that malicious cyber actors were trying to exploit log4j in being a horizon service. So one can only guess that that's what they were trying to do. And given, as I said, when I talked about log4j initially, log4j library is everywhere. So it's highly unlikely that everything is patched by now and probably ever will. So we may see more of this, who knows. It's pretty clear that when you're collecting a lot of data, like we do, there are other fun things to see. Some more fun than others, I'll give you that. But here it goes. Here is the top 10 of ASN hosting malevolent traffic. Some are more legit than others. I'll talk a little bit about hackers and their need for anonymity in a little while and why they are hacking like that, and also about how some cloud providers are better than others in taking those bad servers down. Look at the two figures of both. Because the top one shows that, over time, all the IPs that has been seen at least once and the malevolent at some point, over time, since CrowdStack started a year and a half ago, it's around 2.79%. But if you look at it, how many new IPs does CrowdStack verify in a week, then it's six times as high. Meaning that the IPs that the bad guys are using is rotating a lot on the short term. And the reason why they do that is because they want to be anonymous. And the way one of the ideas behind CrowdStack is to automatically detect all those attacks and block them right away and by the route if possible. So this is good news, because we really want to put those ASOs out of business. 2% of those IPs, they renew every 12 hours. And in a week, 12% of the IPs are seen for the first time. So yes, it turns out at least when you look at the stats directly, it looks like the CrowdStack strategy by blogging those IPs right away automatically. It's a good idea if we get the world domination that we are trying to achieve. This is another thing, because it turns out that SIP is constantly being hammered. We talked to a user back in November that is a friend's voice of IP provider. And they were seeing a lot of things, a lot of SIP boot forcing. And they suggested that we wrote a scenario for it. And we have done that for our honeypots only. And I'll tell you in a little while why that is important. But if you look at it per agent, then the SIP scenarios are by far the biggest contributor. On one day, we got 3,000 signals just on that single scenario. And given that it's only installed on honeypots, and honeypots are special in the sense that they don't block attacks. So an attacker can, in theory, keep on hammering.  So it reacts on any request to the SIP protocol. But given that it's a honeypot, nobody would want to talk to it anyway. That's what honeypots are for, right? And also, it turns out that as a sage, it's constantly being hammered. This is by far the most important scenarios. We get around, as I said, 1.3 million IPs, 1.3 million signals every day.  And we get signals from 5,000 agents, and 60,000 bad actors are reported on this. This is, over time, an overview of the top threats that we've detected. Over time, we have to take the 102 million signals. And 60%, the orange and the green, those were the ones we saw before. Those are SSH brute-forcing. Windows is only, Windows brute-forcing is only around 2% of those. But CrowdStack is, data is most likely, or they are totally guaranteed to be biased, because CrowdStack is mostly on Linux. And when you install CrowdStack on Linux, it automatically detects that you have SSH and installs this scenario for that. And Windows is a very new platform, so it's not very widely used yet. Oh, sorry. This is an overview of selected Cloud vendors and how good they are at cleaning up when a VPS or a customer's VPS has been compromised. On the x-axis, there is what we call the malevolent duration, and that is the number of days an IP is reported by the community. So an average MD malevolent duration of all IPs in their ASN is an indicator of the due diligence in terms of dealing with compromised assets. And on the y-axis, there is a number of ASNs this Cloud provider has. There's a big difference between the Cloud providers and how good they are at taking down common-by-service. But there's also a huge difference between hostesses in terms of how many risky services they host, and, for instance, like a vulnerable PHP CMS that's like asking for trouble, right? In the orange here is the average MD for each provider. And AWS was best of those that we looked at. Three days in general. It took them over various OVH to 17 days. So it's not to say that AWS are good and OVH are bad. These are indications that we see. And in spite of how good AWS are at cleaning up, they're still, they still have a lot of attacks. So I wonder how it would have looked if they were worse at cleaning up. So AWS dominates the space with the detallation. I don't know if that's something to be proud of or not. And the CrowdStrike network strength is basically the top 10 of the countries that has most CrowdStrike agents. The picture is a little bit blurry because France, US, Germany, Netherlands, they have a lot of cloud providers. So we may know where the IPs are physically, but we don't know where users are from, of course. And that was it. If you want to try out CrowdStrike, I'm doing a couple of workshops here at MCH. I have one scheduled at the Village People Village tomorrow at 1,600. And on Sunday in the Secura Village. And there may be more to come. I don't know yet. Both villages, they have limited space. So if you really want to join, come early. Or you can also ask me to come to your village to do one, I'd be happy to do that. Find us on Twitter at crowd underscore security, crowd security without the underscore or CrowdStrike, those are different. Those are not us. You can also join our friendly Discord community at Discord.gd slash CrowdStrike or scan the QR code. We also have workshops there. Or you can send me a mail or hit me up here at MCH. I'll be around until Tuesday. All right, that was it.


All right, here we are I'm finally sitting down to record my April and May reads video for the last two months And it's it's June 8th. We're already a week into June. I have been Not at all motivated over the last two months to sit down and record this video for the last Week every day. I've been saying to myself, okay I'll record tonight or I'll record it in the morning and then I haven't done it Finally, I'm gonna sit down and record this. This is how my videos are gonna go from now on There'll be one a month where I talk about what I'm reading The books I've read in the past month the books that I bought in the past month and I'll include brief book reviews in those videos and there's there's a Reason for doing it this way besides me just being fed up with my videos not being watched Number one and I'll reiterate what I said in my video two months ago when I said I was canceling everything People are not watching my videos They're just not My book review videos are not getting views The the book discussion videos that I've been recording and Going to a lot of trouble and a lot of time of recording both with Becky and with other guests people are not watching those videos They are not watching those videos. The only book review videos that get views are The the monthly reads I I've never been able to figure out why I think I have a clue One of my more recent videos It's a book discussion. I had with Becky about the book binti As of today it has 29 views only 29 And The the views that it's gotten in the past month. It's only gotten 10 views. It was stuck on 18 For several weeks right after I posted at least one of those views is Becky because Becky always watches the videos and always comments on 29 views over the course of two months for a for a channel that has been around for many years and Has a thousand subscribers my subscriber count today by the way is one thousand one hundred eleven. It's eleven eleven I finally got past the eleven hundred mark and Subscribers are still Trickling in which is another thing I'll get to in a minute, but anyway People have not been watching that book discussion video with Becky. It has Becky in it It's about binti, which is a popular book and it's the least viewed video in the series why I think Combining that with the lack of views on my book review videos And the idea that my monthly reads videos and my My bookstore walkthrough videos, which are just slideshows of pictures of books that I've taken while I walk through bookstores Those get more views than my book review book review videos Taking all that into account. I think I I'm starting to understand why people watch the monthly reads videos It's because people are not interested in book reviews. They're specifically not interested in book reviews Of books where the title of the book is on the the review on the video People will see the name of a book. They've already decided they don't want to hear a review of that book Or they don't like that book or they've already read it. So they don't watch the video But with the monthly reads Videos people don't know what's in the video. So they watch the video and with the With the bookstore walkthrough videos, which again are just slideshows of photos I've taken of books People watch those again because they don't know what they're gonna see So that's what I'm gonna do from now on is just do a monthly reads video where people If they want to learn about books, they they watch the videos if they don't know what specific books they're gonna learn about That seems to be actually keeping people away and also People are not watching videos on my channel period So I have enjoyed Recording my book discussion videos with Becky and I want to continue to do those and I've talked about this with her But if we continue to do them in the future, I don't want them posted on my channel I want them to be posted on her channel where they will be seen because they're not being seen on my channel And then going back to my 1,100 subscribers New subscribers are continuing continuing to trickle in over the last two months Even though I've not been posting videos which base the question of where are these subscribers coming from and why are they subscribing? clearly they're not subscribing for science fiction or for book reviews over the last two months My number one video has been the review. I did of that works A weed wacker that works electric stream screen string trimmer Over the past 30 days, I'm looking at it on my screen here behind my camera That video has gotten six times more minutes watched than its closest competitor at number two, which is a review I did of the The Wacom bamboo Drawing tablet The video is called you don't need a $2,000 centique. That's number two video number three and this has always been highly ranked in my videos is my coherence movie review So the coherence movie review has fallen to number three the my review of a piece of lawn mowing hardware is Running away with the number one position the last two months for the last two years The video that's been number one far far out in number one was that Rubik's Cube video I did that all the Rubik's Cube kids hate Not only is that video not number one over the last two months. It's not even in the top ten. It's disappeared But coherence is hanging in at number three At number four and here's another surprise This book is this video has never been one of my most viewed but somehow it's at number four For the last 30 days how to pack a comic book for shipping That's the thing. I did a little over a year ago in my top ten videos for the last 30 days Only one of them is a book review. It's the war of the world the rest of the top ten are Vintage board game reviews that I did years ago That's that should tell you something about what People want to watch what people are watching because it's not my subscribers who are watching these videos. These videos are old It's people who are finding them through YouTube searches and through suggested videos that YouTube itself is suggesting that's where 75% of all views come from is YouTube searches and suggested videos and on top of that 80% of all of my video views come from non subscribers, which means that Subscribers are not watching my videos Taking that into account the 29 views that the binti book discussion has If 80% of those views are coming from not subscribers and they are all all of my videos have the same percentages Then that means only one or two of my subscribers have watched that video only one or two when I announced two months ago that I was canceling all these series and gonna stop making videos almost all together except for the monthly things I Wanted to I said that I was disgusted with these numbers and I still am and I'm still very angry about it I see new New youtubers coming on who have only been on for a few months and they already have 700 subscribers Their videos already get 150 200 views Where are they coming from? How are they doing it? I don't know. They're not doing anything special. I can tell you that And then here I am I've been doing book reviews for six years six years. I'm not a beginner And I can't get more than a handful of views On my videos and the the videos that are getting the views are not the material that I'm doing People are clearly not interested in the videos videos that I'm making even my subscribers are not interested Which Begs the question where are these new subscribers coming from where are my regular subscribers? The people who subscribe because of the science fiction book reviews. They're not coming back even though they remain subscribers They're not bothering to unsubscribe the new subscribers must be coming from the few people who are watching the The who the hell is Thanos video Which is in the top 10 for the last month and the people who are watching the We whacker video I had I've had a few comments on that video people thanking me for making that review I am not going to switch to making reviews of lawnmowers I'm not going to do that But people are I guess they're they're seeing the video they're liking they're kind of liking that particular video They're hitting the subscribe button Even though they don't know what I do and they're not coming back to watch more videos If my subscribers are not aware of my new videos YouTube has that problem a lot of youtubers are complaining that Their subscribers can't find their videos The idea that subscribers can't find someone's videos that's nonsense all they have to do is Look on their subscription page. I guess People who normally watch YouTube don't bother to look on their subscription page. That's where I look every day To to see the new videos from the people I subscribe to if people aren't doing that. There's nothing you can do if people aren't bothering to look at who their favorite YouTubers what new videos their favorite youtubers make if they're just looking at the YouTube front page all they're gonna see is music videos and movie trailers and commercials If they're not gonna bother to look at the subscription page There's nothing that you or YouTube or anybody else can bother to do I mean youtubers always telling people to hit that hit that bell button so that you'll be notified by email Why the hell bother? Speaking of which my revenue I have people say to me Are your videos gonna get demonetized if you say such and such or show such and such it doesn't make any difference I Started I turned on monetization for my videos last November The total that YouTube tells me I've made in Those nine months is eighty nine dollars to sixty nine cents. I'm looking at it right here. Why bother You have to get millions of views To make any kind of money and YouTube has never paid out money to me I've been thinking this whole time that they'll pay out when I get when I reach a hundred dollars But I honestly don't know that if I do get a payout. I'll turn off monetization completely because that's you know Why? Why bother? Anyway, what I want to say is about my what I said before about Turning everything off because people aren't watching and how how angry I am about all this I'm not looking for words of encouragement I'm not looking for people to tell me how much They personally enjoy what I'm doing. I know I know those the handful of people who watch all my videos interact with me I know you enjoy it I'm not a teenager. I'm not a struggling College student. I'm not new at this. I've been on the internet for 24 years. I've been on the internet since 1994 And I have never had anything that I would call successful and If if one of you wants to tell me that oh, it's a labor of love you should do it because you enjoy I'm gonna delete that comment because I don't want to hear it. I Know I'm doing this because I enjoy science fiction. I enjoy talking about it, but the reason me or anyone else posts this stuff on the internet is because I want to share that enjoyment with other people. I want other people to see it and people aren't seeing it so This idea that I'm doing it just as a labor of love Part of the labor of love is sharing it with other people and if people aren't watching why should I bother? Doing making an informal video like this once a month that I'm not going to bother to edit by the way I'm gonna handle it more like a live stream Doing it more than just this once a month is a waste of my time. It's a waste of my energy. I I discovered three months ago When I started that drive to raise $500 to To pay my bills and to go to conventions and I started posting videos every day. I spent a lot of time Making those videos. I discovered number one that people were simply not gonna kind of donate. They simply weren't gonna support that So fine that message was loud and clear Excuse me the other thing I discovered was that when I post videos Every day when I post videos too often People only see the the latest video that I posted They did if I post a video today and then post one tomorrow people will only see the one that I post tomorrow The new video will sabotage the video from the day before People don't bother So posting every day for me for someone like me who's not getting very many views Actually shoots myself in the foot as far as views go so more than once a week would be a mistake for me I've discovered for me that My I post a video and over the course of a week. It'll reach a certain level It will get 40 views 60 views if I'm lucky maybe a hundred hundred twenty views and it'll stay there It will never grow after that aside from the videos in my top 10 every month that people seem to keep finding My regular Weekly videos they reach a level and they stay there and if I were to post a new video That same day or the next day. I'll sabotage Whatever videos whatever views it's gonna get because people don't bother to look at what other videos I have Okay, so I Guess I'll start talking about books. I guess that's what you're here for what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna talk about the books that I read over the last two months I'm gonna do brief reviews of them. There are two books that I'm gonna talk about at length But first I want to talk about books that I've bought I have my lists here Oh One of the thing I should say I've rewatched the entire Steven Universe series over the last two weeks all five seasons If you have not watched Steven Universe, you are missing One of the science fiction events of the decade. I'm not kidding. I'm not exaggerating And you cannot jump into Steven Universe in the middle You need to to watch the entire series from the beginning the It's a slow burn. The the first few episodes will strike you as being silly. They did me That's how they did me But as it goes along and you start to see how well written it is and how how thoughtful it is and how good the science fiction is I can't stress enough how good the science fiction is in this series if you're a fan of classic science fiction Big picture cosmic science fiction you need to see this and you need to pay attention Seeing the entire series as a single work watching it through from beginning to to the present I've begin. I was appreciating the writing already seeing it as a single work I've been really floored how how much foreshadowing there has been in this series from the beginning from episode one Rebecca sugar who has written this series Has had her vision has had her five-year vision from go it really is amazing and What else I bought a I boosted a Facebook one of my Facebook posts as a test I spent $5 because Facebook is always badgering you to boost your posts And I thought I'd see I'll spend $5 to see if I get any response at all to to this So I put I boosted my shut up about Star Wars t-shirt. I got nothing Facebook told me that I got something like 1800 or 1900 impressions But only like Only like 10 or 12 click-throughs To the page where I'm selling the t-shirt. That's a pathetic rate And of course I got no sales none Going back to what I said before I've been on the internet for 24 years I've been selling stuff on the internet for 24 years. I've had so many creative projects over those years More than I can count. I've never had anything that I could call success About a month ago, I saw this guy This guy on Twitter and tumblr who does He does the thing called swear trek where he makes animated gifts from the original Star Trek series And sometimes the animated series and sometimes Next generation It's just animated gifts of the the actors and the characters Swearing they're kind of funny. He started a patreon in 24 hours. He got $700 a month in pledges. I Was so mad. I was so angry. I actually twittered. I actually tweeted in response said are you I said are you shitting me? I Can't sell one t-shirt not even one t-shirt and This guy overnight gets seven hundred dollars in monthly pledges I And again if one of you wants to respond and say to me well, you can't expect to make your living on you I'm not expecting that. I'm expecting Something I'm expecting some Kind of sale some kind of views and I'm getting Nothing after all these years 29 views on that that binti discussion video That's the same as zero views For a channel that's been doing this for six years and has Almost 700 videos. I've made 650 something videos 320 330 book reviews and for any of my videos to not even get 30 views That's the same as zero and I'm not gonna put up with that anymore and And then I see something like square Trek who just he just makes animated gifts. He gets $700 a month in pledges overnight. I'm I'm sorry, but I'm angry about that and I'm not Going to accept it. I'm not gonna sit quietly um All right, I was about to get to books. So I guess I should um All right, I Review that I never got to Flow my tears the policemen said by Philip K. Dick My short review is it's bad. It's very bad. I thought it was really bad one of my regulars When saw it when he saw that I was reading he piped up and says that it's his favorite and he also said that the Man in the high castle Is one of his least favorite man in the high castle is one of my favorite. I think it's Philip K. Dick's best writing So he and I are reversed on this Flow my tears I was very poorly written the first two chapters were Fantastic immediately after that it went right into the toilet It was incoherent. It was scatterbrained. It was all over the place. He couldn't tell a coherent story He's he switched From telling the book from one person's perspective and started telling it from another That that's too disjointed and unacceptable to me actually the end of the book was Really disappointing the idea that he had was really fascinating what what the problem turned out to be really fascinating He didn't do it justice in my opinion really bad book Written by someone who's clearly Unable to focus because he was on drugs and that's that's exactly what it read like All right a Book that I showed you before When I got it new tales of space and time it's an anthology of short stories I Posted I tweeted By the way, if you're not watching me on Twitter and on tumblr I'm continuing to post over there when I When I buy new books when I start reading new books, I'm reviewing things all the time talking about science fiction all the time If you're not over there, you're missing You're missing most of what I'm doing I've made this appeal before and I know it doesn't work people who People who see you on whatever platform whatever their favorite platform is they will not go watch you on some other platform They just won't do it. So I know I'm I'm yelling into the wind but Anyway I'm really disappointed in the quality of the stories in this book the first Story in the book is by Ray Bradbury. It's the same short story that Ray Bradbury always wrote He wrote the same short stories over and over The second story is by Isaac Asimov. It's not at all interesting. That's what most of the stories in here are like There's a story called Little What's it called I Always forget little Anton It's a it's a really long Story that I've seen in other anthologies. I've read it before it's an attempt at science fiction humor I don't think it's funny. I actually think it's offensive in a lot of ways But I've got one more story to read. I haven't finished them. There's one story in here that I didn't bother to finish because I thought it was so poorly written and it wasn't holding my interest The one thing I want to talk about though is A story called Betty Ann That's one word there is Betty Ann by uh By chris neville It's an author whose name I don't recognize but this story is so beautifully written I have to mention one of the most beautifully written stories. I've ever read I haven't been able to find uh the story online if I do I'll let you know But if you can find an anthology with that story in it, I encourage you to read it Just tremendous writing I also read Voyagers in Time an anthology Edited by Robert Silverberg. This is uh this came from that box set of Tempo books that I found at uh That's the the tempo books logo up there. Yeah um, I found this at uh Oh that that big bookstore in Portland whatever whatever that's called um This is a pretty good collection There's no particular story for me to rave about But uh overall quality much better than that other anthology Yeah, I like I like this one. These are all time travel stories by the way if you haven't if you can't tell from the the title uh, there's more short stories to talk about here's uh a short story collection that I bought this this um The cover of this book by the way is a deep purple. I'm seeing on On camera. It looks like it's bright blue. It's not at all I don't know how the video will look when I when I upload it, but on my little screen here. It looks bright blue It's not It's a really beautiful deep purple. Anyway, it's called the Belletrist by uh Miranda mayor. This is a woman I saw uh Selling her books at a table at a convention I forget which one It was in Portland. I believe it was one of the uh fanfests. I think Anyway, she had this little collection of short stories. I said short stories. Sure. I'll read the new author short stories. They're good They're really well written. Uh, she's a good writer Uh, I wouldn't call most of them science fiction Um, I don't know if I'd call any of them science fiction, but they're they're good I recommend her short stories. This is self published and there's a lot of typos In it, but that's self publishing Anyway, I recommend her writing Surprise surprise. I mean who would know unless you try Uh, here's another thing I showed when I got it. I bought this at a convention a couple years ago again in portland Lovecraftian micro fiction this group called um The uh Oh, I always uh the Lovecraft film festival. Yeah, it's the Lovecraft film festival Yeah, I've I've met these people in portland though. I've gotten to know them over the last couple years Every year they have this Lovecraftian micro fiction contest and it's um stories that are less than Let's see.  It's the uh HP Lovecraft film festival If you're looking for you know stuff to read real quick on the bus they sell t-shirts by the way This is their uh Psyco.com. Yeah, see how they spelled Yeah, they they sell t-shirts that that's part of how they make their living in addition to the festival But this was good stuff um What next uh some? Excuse me uh some other Uh short stories that I read over the last two months how to talk to girls at parties by neil gayman Um, he published this on his website so you can find it at neilgayman.com. I saw people raving about this story um It was okay Neil gayman is a good writer. So it was you know, the writing was good I Wasn't crazy about it, but you can find it on his website. So go look for it Um a human stain by kelly uh kelly robson This was good. This was a good horror good new modern horror um Excuse me becky reviewed it. She gave it more of a review Um, then I'm going to give it here Uh, it was really well written. I'll say that much very vivid very Very visual very sensual it was um It was a pleasure to see a protagonist who was so smart and so who caught on Immediately and didn't was not willing to put up with being manipulated and lied to But of course, it's a horror story. So things don't go well um A toy for juliet. This is another by robert block. This is another story that I learned about from Becky reviewing it You can find this one online robert block bl och is the guy who wrote psycho you can find this one online Is a good little short story? um Definitely science fiction a little bit of horror Uh, go look for that one Mimic by donald a wall heim this is uh After reading this this is very short. It's only a few pages I learned about it because the guys who run the hppodcraft.com were trying to find A good copy of it online and I did um, it's um It's in a uh I found it immediately when I looked for it the other day, but now of course, uh, it's nowhere to be found But anyway, it was worth reading. It was clearly the uh inspiration for that shitty mirasor veno movie from 1997 Um, definitely lovecraftian definitely horror uh really gross It's it's about uh adaptive uh camouflage um And if you know anything about that movie from 97, you know what I'm talking about Uh, but look it up. I I recommend you find it. Okay now Let's talk about some books that I've read I just read uh All systems read By uh Damn it. There's another thing. I didn't I didn't write down All systems read by martha wells This is a novella a short novel Um, I've been I was able to download a free copy of it from a tour.com because they tour does this all the time A sequel to A book will come out and so they'll give away an ebook of the previous book. That's how I found this The the second book in the series came out and uh, so they gave away the first book in the series It's it's a series called the murder bot series and I read I read that name murder bot and I was like I Am I really interested in another? renegade robot story I don't know about that Becky read it and liked it again. Becky is influencing my My choices here. I didn't realize she was having that much of an influence on Anyway, um I read it and I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I strongly recommend all systems read by martha wells um uh It was very well written uh excellent world building in in the short The shortness of the novella. It's another example of some of a writer doing excellent world building in in a short span an excellent character building It was surprisingly Touching surprisingly emotional. That's not at all what I expect Expected from a series called murder bot um And excellent science fiction. I strongly recommend that you get all systems read One of my regulars on facebook saw me post that I was enjoying it and he Responded very negatively. He did not like it at all and he um And he made that clear Anyway, I loved it And I feel like I have good reason to have loved it Uh, what else is on my list here? Um, let's talk about the books that I bought I didn't do much book buying I took a trip to a local a resale shop not a not a good will But a similar kind of thing here in the In the atacoma area. It's called the desert uh Donation and uh a resale shop And I found a surprising number of good Science fiction mixed in with the religious books Those places are full of religious books um Lord of the flies by william golden. I've never actually read this I might have in high school or read Summaries of it because I remember discussing it in in class in high school I've I've read so many discussions of this book that I feel like I know it But actually I don't think I've I've actually read it so A 50 cent copy of Lord of the flies. Yeah Yeah, I'll pick that up A time of changes by robert silverberg um This is a collection of uh Wait a minute. Is it an anthology? No, it is not. No, it's a novel A novel by silverberg 50 cent silverberg novel. Yeah Yeah, I'll take that Something called we by samuel r delaney. I had to look at this Do a double take at it because there's been a lot of talk uh recently about The the book called we that was like a precursor to orwell's 1984. This is obviously not it. This is samuel r delaney um And It's something i've never heard of it's got the name delaney on it. So I bought it Um, even though I you know come to think of it. I strongly dislike that one delaney novel that I reviewed um And it's it's a double book with uh zealazny Home is the hangman zealazny is one of my least favorite authors But uh, I'll definitely try to read both of these. They're obviously short. Um The worlds of frank herbert now. This is an anthology. This is a collection of short stories again frank herbert not one of my favorite authors, but A collection of short stories. Yeah Yeah, I'll definitely Be interested in that Speaking of anthologies Here's a book that I had to walk past several times before Looking closely and seeing what it was. It's the 10th annual edition of the year's best science fiction Edited by judith meryl And this is from what year? Uh 1965 Yeah, this is exactly the kind of thing that I love Um, and again, this is the kind of thing you won't find unless you stop and look Carefully And then there's this Again, something I would have walked past And I did walk past it several times before looking more closely nightside A collection of 18 horror stories by joys carol oaths 18 short stories by joys carol oaths for a dollar Yeah There's no way I don't want this for a dollar I didn't know something like this even existed and there it is at the at the resale shop Practically giving in way Um, I took a lot of pictures of books at at the desert shop that I did not buy There was there was a lot that caught my attention though And I guess I'll end this video with a slideshow of Of that stuff. I am going to have to do some editing on this video as much as I don't want to okay now Wrapping things up the two books that I want to talk about at length um Number one is a book called girl in the golden atom I mentioned this I've mentioned this before I mentioned it while talking to Becky in our last video and I posted links to The authors Um The authors bibliography ray comings is his name But I'm looking at it myself here Uh This is an author who I was unaware of. Uh, his bibliography is gigantic How I've gone all these years Not having heard of him um He he wrote this book, uh Actually a short story called girl in the golden atom in 1920 or 1921 And it was so popular that he wrote Uh a novel to go with it using the short story as the first chapter Um, he was clearly trying to write the same kind of thing that edgar rice burrows and hg wells were writing In fact, it was patterned on hg wells. The short story was patterned on hg wells the time machine It's about a group of men who are not named Getting together in a gentleman's club hearing this one guy tell this tremendous story about how he invented this incredible machine and then At the end of the story, he leaves the group saying that he'll be back and then he's never heard from again That's where the short story ends and then the rest of the novel Um, the continuation novel picks up after that. His writing is not good He is not The quality of writer that burrows and wells are at all um But the the subject matter Um Interested me interested me Because it's about a scientist um Finding way to insert himself into the microverse to visit adams as if they were planets Uh, and anyone like myself who grew up reading marvel comics in the 1970s and 80s will recognize the title Because it was used As the inspiration for an incredible hulk a famous incredible hulk story arc called the girl in the emerald adam Where the hulk gets shrunk down in the microverse and He ends up on a planet full of people with green skin and he falls in love with a beautiful princess named girella and um And she meets a uh a grizzly fate and that's a motivation Motivation for the hulk to to do more fighting and punching um So, yeah, that's how I first heard of the title the girl in golden adam now. Here's the thing um Here's why I ended up finding an e-pub version an e-tex version of this Is because last year when I did a lot of driving I I listened to an audiobook of it But I didn't finish it the the story was so uninteresting. I didn't bother to finish listening to it But there were some interesting Aspects of it So I wanted to get the uh an e-text and reread parts of it and certainly read the end Um as and as I read the the first chapter I continued to read it and the the writing was so poor that I could skim through it The the writing doesn't contain A a large amount of information you could skip through it But as I was reading it I was thinking this doesn't His description of how they're descending into the microverse doesn't Seem the same as I remembered it. This doesn't sound like the same description so one of the things I liked about what I listened to was his description of What they were experiencing as they were shrinking into this Crack in in the surface of a of a gold ring or something And how it would expand into canyons and then tunnels and and they would follow the same path as they shrunk I thought that was fascinating And as I was reading this book, I'm like this doesn't This this description isn't the same as I remember it. Maybe I'm just wasn't Maybe I'm remembering it differently than I heard it, but then Halfway through the book. I came to the conclusion. This is not the same book at all this is not The these things that are happening are not what I remember happening. It's not the same story Uh, so it was kind of a mystery. Why was I Why did I experience two entirely different versions of this book? They're not variations On the same book. There were two different books Uh as it turned out, uh Ray Cummings Wrote uh wrote entire novels on the same subjects over and over Uh, and and I'm looking right now for the name of the uh The name of the book that it turned out Uh That I had actually listened to and it was an entirely different book Um, let me see if I can find it here All his books have uh the same kind of stories Um, the the same kind of titles the snow girl the man in the meteor Uh, the fire planet the sea girl Um Tomah princess of mercury The shadow girl the man who mastered time Princess of the atom that might be what I read Um Actually, no, I don't think that's what it was Princess of the atom. No, I don't think there's clearly the same kind of book as the girl in the golden atom Uh, no, there's uh, there was a short story. I remember reading on this seeing on this list called the girl from infinite smallness See it's the same title just with different With the synonyms Thesaurus title Anyway, I continued to read Uh I continued to read the book and I finished it and there were a couple of things about it That held my interest and were worth mentioning and that that's why I'm talking about it at length here Number one as I was saying before his description of People's experiences as they were changing size Uh He really hit on Some some some really sensual descriptive How how can I put this the way he was describing was surprisingly effective People were They were experiencing disorientation with the world around them seeming to grow and when they're reversing the process everything around them seeming to shrink the the Just straight up disorientation that people experience That people would experience at that but also a sense of movement a sense of either moving forward or backwards or like being on a On a fast moving train or in a fast moving cart because As their feet are changing size The ground underneath their feet is crunching and moving underneath their feet See, this is something that makes perfect sense, but I wouldn't have thought of Uh And and and yet there he was this guy who's not a very good writer at all pegging this one little thing and The the other book that I read I thought Describe that better. So he had obviously refined that um and When people would Emerge from the atom they would start the process of growth They would have to make sure that They were climbing out of the canyons and climbing out of these cracks in the floor Because if they didn't do it quickly enough they would get caught And would be crushed Between canyon walls Again really smart thinking There was a scene near the end of the book Where This guy and this girl they were trapped in An upper room in a castle turret on the on the golden atom planet And um So his plan was okay, we'll take we'll take the pills to grow It's uh the science doesn't make any sense. Of course by the way We'll we'll take the powder And we'll grow and we'll we'll just crash up through the ceiling. So they do that And they're they're growing and they're pushing up against the the ceiling and the ceiling doesn't give And Both of them are are growing and having having to hunch over and being curled over and um They're actually afraid for a moment that they're gonna die Because there's no room left and the the ceiling finally does give but I thought that was Uh, I thought that was very entertaining He thinks we're they're just gonna crash up through the roof like monsters and the ceiling doesn't give way um the other thing This book contains and again the fact that this is coming from such a poor writer is amazing This book contains the clearest Most easy to understand and most concise description Of the rise of fascism And why it's impossible to fight it I've never seen it it put Into such clear terms and I think It would be worth using it as an example to describe The problem and and how it's so impossible To to put it into it This book is easily found In an e-text form on um On a Gutenberg Gutenberg.org Um, and I recommend you look it up just for that reason. It's a fast read you can skim through it Uh, but again, it's description of how this that what the guy does is I forgot to mention is this guy He invents a microscope that has no limit to how small it can view anything I I described this when I was talking with Becky in our last video and she said she wishes she had a A machine that could do that But anyway, he looks at um a single atom in a scratch On his mother's wedding ring, I think So it's a gold atom And the the when you look closely enough the atom becomes a planet And he zooms down onto the surface of the planet and he sees a A peaceful lake with some wooded hills and everything and he sees a beautiful girl sitting On the edge of the lake So the most beautiful girl he's ever seen he immediately falls in love. See it's it's nonsense And he he decides that he needs to come up with a way of shrinking himself down to To to meet this girl And he does that that's where the whole thing starts But anyway, the people on this planet they have a small population They've never experienced war. They they don't know really anything about politics, but one guy Or violence or anything like this this this one guy He becomes unhappy with their king he he does some assassinations and He develops a following of people who have the same fears that he does about About being told what to do and it's It again, it's the simplest clearest most concise description of the rise of fascism I've ever seen Uh, and I recommend it for that reason Um and also for the descriptions of how of people experiencing shrinking and and growing Okay, the last book I'm going to talk about I've I was ranting about this before Uh, Jonathan Livingston Seagull I mentioned this book In a review I did years ago It was actually a book tag called 10 books that stuck with you You can find it Among my videos if you go to youtube and just search the phrase 10 books that stuck with you Mine comes up first at least it does for me. It's got a picture of a dr. Seuss character on it Anyway in that In that video I talked about a book Uh, I read as a child And I say child but I was in sixth grade Which means I was 12 or 13. I guess It was a book called in search of the save opatomous And I chose to do that as my Uh book review uh one week in class in english class and uh I don't know if you've had the same experience that I did in grade school, but uh, uh A a certain number of times every semester We would have to read a book And then stand up in front of the class and give an oral book report Uh, and it was really aggravating for me because I was doing plenty of reading But to to come up with novels that I could read that fast Anyway, I chose to do a book review on this uh a book report I always mix up the word report and review on this book called in search of the save opatomous Which was a picture book a children's picture book I thought the art was amazing And I felt like that was enough of Of a motivation to do a book report Well, my teacher didn't Agree She was furious She was so angry that she took me out in the hallway and chewed me out And gave me a bad grade. She kept calling it a picture book We don't we don't review picture books. We don't do reports on picture books and um So What I did was I knew that her favorite book was jonathan livings in seagull because she talked about it all the time She talked all the time about her favorite book is jonathan livings in seagull So I got a copy And for my next book report I did My oral report in front of the class on jonathan livings in seagull and got an a double plus She was so easy to figure out um Well, I felt at the time that it was one of the dumbest books I've ever read And I saw this copy On the shelf at a resale shop recently So I said i'm gonna pick this up and read it again. It's super short. It's not a novel at all It has three parts. It's hardly even a novella If I said this before it belongs in the greeting card section That's the kind of thing it is there's A book review online. I found It was written by heather haverleski The her review it was written in 2014 And her the title of her review is jonathan livings in seagull and the rise of simpleton wisdom She savages this book She says she starts off by saying there are the books that change your life Then there are the books that people tell you will change your life If those people are stoners you men in college then the books in question are either Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance the electric kool-aid acid test or jonathan livings in seagull Pray that you don't wind up with the seagull book because nothing is quite as bewildering um She goes on to say uh, let's see her description of the the book she says Having heard over and over again that it will totally blow your mind only to discover a story about a seagull who loves to fly very fast He rejects the flock He is eventually reincarnated as a seagull angel So by these discriminating standards one could argue that the very hungry caterpillar offers profound commentary on capitalist fancy Blah blah blah. She said the the goodnight moon presents a radical handbook for non-attachment to the material world by these standards Yeah, she's Yeah, she really lets this book have it and it deserves it. Um, she she says this is uh Um, this belongs with the the tau of poo crowd um He calls it super mystical Uh groovy promise of the murky unknown. It's really It has a quote here on the cover Uh from uh Ray Bradbury He says this book does two things. It gives me flight. It makes me young That's exactly the kind of thing that Ray Bradbury would say just just bullshit um, the book is indeed about a seagull who is uh interested in perfecting flight um People will will tell you you look for a book reviews of this book on youtube and again and again the people who review it will tell you that it Uh, it was very inspirational to them personally. It provided spiritual inspiration to them the word spiritual Actually being a meaningless word because it means something different to everybody else And all these people will tell you that it means one thing or the other And they all have different interpretations of what the book actually means and the reason is because there's really nothing in this book It's it's extremely simple. There's no world building. There's no character building um And one thing that the people will not tell you in these reviews is like like it said in uh In heverleski's view here review here Um much of the book the bulk of the book takes place after jonathan livington's seagull is dead It takes place in his afterlife The in the first part of the book. He's interested in perfecting Uh flight and speed of flight. The other seagulls are only interested in squabbling over food Uh, he is rejected from the flock. He spends the rest of his life as a hermit Out over the sea not even coming into land ever just occasionally eating and spending his days Uh flying super fast and then he dies he dies as a hermit Alone entirely alone. I think that's that's pretty Unpleasant I don't think that's a very Uh positive message at all and then in his afterlife He meets other seagull angels who are interested in perfect flight. Uh, he has a um Uh He has he finds an instructor in seagull heaven whose name is master chang a chinese seagull, I guess Um, he witnesses master chang ascending to another level Beyond seagull afterlife Um, and when it comes when he perfects teleportation himself he Chooses to come back to the the living world Um, and the his his seagull flock is horrified But he starts he collects followers among the Young seagulls who want to learn flight one of them smashes into a rock and dies and the entire flock witnesses jonathan Literally resurrecting this dead seagull So people have they have all these nonsense interpretations again based on their own views of Some will tell you that it's a jesus allegory. Some will tell you that it's a buddha allegory Um, they can interpret it any way they want. Um, it's just not good It um The most interesting thing to me about this book And it's it's the thing that prompted havereleksia to write her review in 2014 that in 2014 One of uh Richard box relatives his wife or his daughter. I don't remember Discovered the manuscript for part four That he had written Back in the day the same time he wrote parts one two and three. He just never submitted them to the publisher And in 2014 there was a new edition published with part four um I find that the the story of the writing and publishing of the book more interesting than the book And one other thing um as i'm as i'm looking through this book I have to I have to ask the question Okay Mrs. Freeland from sixth grade How is this not A picture book Here I am 40 years later, and I'm still mad about this All right. I guess that's it for For this month Uh reading wrap-up video Uh, I'll come back at the end of june and talk about what I've read and what I've bought uh in that time and As i'm going out enjoy the slideshow And uh see you in uh three weeks or so. Bye