Okay, May 40 here. So I'm looking at an essay in the Washington Post by Robert Keegan so he's a neocon and He's got this big long essay in the Washington Post our constitutional crisis is already here You may be thinking oh anything that makes Robert Keegan cry I'm enthusiastic about that so This is what he writes He says Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for president in 2024 Right. He enjoys mammoth leads in the polls. He's building a massive campaign war chest and the Democratic ticket looks vulnerable So barring health problems Donald Trump is running Second Trump and his Republican allies are preparing to ensure his victory by whatever means necessary So his charges are fraud in the 2020 election now primarily aimed at establishing the basis to challenge future election results that do not go his way and The amateurish stop the steal efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized national campaign To ensure that Trump and his supporters will have control of the state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020 So those recalcitrant Republican state officials in 2020 who effectively save the country from calamity By refusing to falsely declare fraud or defy more votes for Trump for being systematically removed or hounded from office So Republican Legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the election certification process So Republicans have proposed or passed measures in at least 16 states that would shift Election authority away from the purview of the governor the secretary of state or other executive branch offices to the legislature so Robert Kagan is worried the stage is being set for chaos imagine weeks of competing mass protests across multiple states as lawmakers from both parties claim victory and charge the other with unconstitutional efforts to take power and From Jerusalem.  That means honored guests in the soccer So Jews at this time of the year like booze or a suit car to dwell in but a lot of strong reasons in this article to believe that Trump will be running in 2024 the Republican Party will be increasingly united behind him and increasingly effective at wedging elections, so Robert Kagan's afraid this can to lead to massive amounts of Political crisis is going to effectively Lead to a constitutional crisis That's his long up-ed in the Washington Post other thing that grabs my attention this weekend is the Is the intercept so Peter Zion says this is the most serious and the most detailed version of the lab leak theory I've seen also the most credible So the intercept says leaked grand proposal details high-risk coronavirus research. So the proposal was written by the eco health Alliance Peter Dayzak is in charge of that and It was rejected by the US military research agency DARPA But it Describes the insertion of human specific cleavage sites into SARS related that coronaviruses so the eco health Alliance was working on very risky areas of research and the Coronavirus has sparked all sorts of research into Coronaviruses and much of it is quite risky So Peter Dayzaks Eco health Alliance Wanted to do all this risky research They wanted to create full-length infectious clones of bat SARS related coronaviruses and insert a tiny part of the virus and I went there into all the scientific language into bat coronaviruses So I'm obviously not an expert on bat coronaviruses any coronaviruses. I'm not a scientist But many scientists that are interviewed in this Essay in the intercepts say that this information has changed their minds And there are decent alternatives to Trump. He's got a court of personality behind him He is a Trump is a unique figure in American history in world history and Someone who can galvanize both massive support and massive opposition and he only needs to change about 50,000 votes from the 2020 election to you have to win in 2024 So he came close in 2020 So many people who believe that the coronavirus that caused our pandemic Merged from a laboratory rather than natural origins. They claim it's unlikely that this particular sequence of amino acids That's in the coronavirus would have occurred naturally And so there's Alina Chan. She's a Boston based scientist She's a co-author of an upcoming book viral The search for the origins of coven 19 and she says a threshold has been crossed So she's been vocal about the need to investigate the lab leak hypothesis And she says the revelation of this proposal from 2018 by Peter Dejak's eco health alliance and the very risky research They wanted to conduct Uh, you know promotes the idea the possibility of the lab leak hypothesis We've got this novel SARS coronavirus emerging Out of Wuhan with the novel cleavage site in it and we now have evidence that in early 2018 This eco health alliance had pitched inserting novel cleavage sites into novel SARS related coronaviruses in the Wuhan lab. So This definitely tips the scales for me. I think it should do that for many other scientists, too So here's my number two guy aside from Trump. Well, I think uh, Tucker Carlson I think he would probably be the most effective republican standard bearer We've got Richard Ebright. He's a molecular biologist at Rutgers University And he also believes that there's strong evidence that the coronavirus may have emerged out of a lab So this particular coronavirus is the only virus in the entire genus of SARS related coronaviruses That contains this fully functional cleavage site at the s1 s2 junction And here is a proposal from the beginning of 2018 by p2djax eco health alliance that proposes explicitly to engineer that very sequence that we see at that very position in lab generated coronaviruses And martin wilkowski is a director of the max plank institute of animal behavior in germany says this Revelation has made it more open the idea that the pandemic may have its roots in a lab leak Says that the information in this 2018 proposal Changes his thoughts about the origins of covid And now we see that a possible transmission chain is now logically consistent with the very research that they wanted to do and laid out in 2018 And it was also interesting how much effort that peter dayjack went to And other related researchers to Hide what they were doing. So he did not reveal Along with linfo wang two of the researchers have submitted this 2018 proposal They did not make light what they had proposed to do in 2018 So they've been very little awareness until now of this dangerous research that they wanted funded And dayjack and the eco health alliance have sought to quash interest in the idea that the coronavirus originated in a lab So he gathered together all sorts of scientists To sign a letter strongly condemning conspiracy theories suggesting that covid 19 does not have a natural origin so remember you're for about a year after the origins the coronavirus The prevailing opinion that was the only acceptable one in the news media Was that the coronavirus emerged naturally? It was not the result of a lab leak And if you thought it was a lab leak then your conspiracy theorists you're another you're probably racist and Trump supporter but This is this is the most credible logical reason That we have seen so far for the lab leak hypothesis because the very Very research that was proposed in 2018 We're seeing we're seeing the results of that in the coronavirus Okay, third topic. I'm really interested in the topic of energy Because when I have energy I can do great live streams. I can do great writing. I can do great work I am more of a joy to be around life is more of a joy. I am more optimistic I am more happy and helpful. I'm easier to be around I can just contribute more to others and to myself so energy is Like a vital concern to me particularly as I struggle most of my life of chronic fatigue and So I was interested in this article in time magazine why you feel so tired all the time and Since coronavirus we All tended to have fewer social interactions and I know for myself and I think for other people We get much if not most of our energy from interacting with other people face to face Like interacting with people via zoom and youtube does not transmit the same energy That you get from interacting with people face to face. So when you get on the same page with people and you have synchronicity you have Rhythm in your interaction so that when you speak there's a pause the other person's speech You're not just talking all over each other But when you get on the same page with people that tends to transmit emotional energy So that's a large part of the reason why people Socialize join groups go to events that there's tremendous emotional energy that's released when you get on the same page with other people So you get this from going to synagogue or church or attending concerts sporting events movies going to restaurants All right, and many of these social events People are doing much less since the coronavirus so people are going out less often So there's a lack of collective excitement now lives And then people are replacing I think that lack of collective Excitement with doom scrolling right you feel kind of sluggish you feel kind of bored So you go online you check out trending topics on social media you visit new sites And you're not going there to learn anything specific You're going there because you want to jump jolt to your otherwise flatlining system And the jolt may come in the form of a horror story about politics or about covid or afghanistan or any other unsettling topics And so you get a jolt and it feels like the excitement that you used to used to get interacting with other people But it's probably less excitement than anxiety and repeated bouts of anxiety lead to exhaustion so We have lost the the positive and energizing forms of excitement that we used to get from our interactions social interactions And we're replacing the these positive sources of excitement and energy with negative and exhausting exhausting sources of anxiety So This time magazine says we need to stop replacing our desire for excitement with anxiety So when you feel the urge to doom scroll Ask what is fueling that urge? Maybe there is something healthier So I used to get excitement by looking at pornography at certain times in my life It wasn't like an every day every week thing for 50 years of my life But there are times and places in my life where I tend to turn to pornography for excitement And one thing I did was that I changed that up when I needed excitement. I switched to disaster documentaries That's so like 60 seconds from disaster Or all those plane crash documentaries or true crime documentaries or the first 48 hours after a murder Or all those documentaries So that was for me a healthier form of excitement than pornography. So we replace pornography with true crime disaster documentaries Second we have to do everything we can to insert positive excitement into our life Because there is inertia in fatigue So there's there's physical fatigue. There's psychological fatigue and then there was another article in the Huffington Post that I liked 12 industrial disasters. Yeah, I mean they're exciting to watch docos about industrial Disasters like 60 seconds from disaster. I think I've seen every every episode of that series Then I was intrigued by this essay in the Huffington Post on the same issue 12 mindless habits that are secretly exhausting you Oh, that's interesting. So one And after I read this I realized, oh, this is there's something to this Yeah, good mountain climbing disaster I mean, what was that great great book on Mountain climbing disaster at Mount Everest I mean that that was incredibly compelling book and exciting So watching emotionally charged tv shows. So if you binge watch on the emotionally charged tv show That leads to mental exhaustion. Why because trait identification? Like I don't know about you, but when I watch a tv show, I'm constantly imagining myself experiencing the same events and the same feelings and the same The same emotions of the specific character that's being portrayed in the tv series So this experience allows us to see the world differently to acquire and gain access to various Emotions that we weren't formally able to experience But sustaining these high intensity emotions can result in a state of heightened arousal and over stimulation And so it then takes additional mental health effort To dampen these signals with emotional regulation So this can be true for both positive and negative emotions because they activate similar pathways in the brain So if you're watching, you know, a lot of emotionally compelling tv and movies That can lead to emotional fatigue and mental fatigue Create difficulty focusing on the activities of day-to-day life and reduce your energy levels So I think we have to use some consideration with the type of entertainment that we consume We have to take note of how we feel after watching some emotionally compelling tv or movie series And how it affects us in the hours and days afterwards So there may be some themes that that are say triggering and the best avoided So there are certain tv shows or movies that I don't watch because they just don't have a have a good effect on me So other strategies may be put a time limit for emotionally charged viewing Maybe consume more neutrally turned shows to balance the scales or restrict intense tv shows to days off So that you control the cumulative emotional load sustained on any given day Yeah, watching Luke will make you excessively aware of your vulnerabilities Death may own worker fails Okay, waiting too long between meals. Yeah, that that I think definitely reduces energy Working at a messy desk Yeah, I find if my environment is organized and clean That that's more conducive for for me feeling good and clean in my in my energy flow, bro Planning too far in advance or over planning over scheduling, right? I find that can be exhausting I having too many tabs open All right, so not only may overwhelm your Your laptop but having two more too many tabs open in your browser can be sucking up mental energy Because it can distract you Taking phone calls right away. So I almost always 90% of the time I have my phone on do not disturb because allowing someone else to just call me and interrupt me That it's very distracting because you have to Your nervous system has to process, you know a big task change at the flip of a switch They have to process the conversation that you're having without say any facial cues of body language So your brain has to work harder and once the phone call is finished.  So when you avoid And when you refuse to confront say certain painful emotions Then you are you're reducing your emotional range And it just and your life just gets smaller and smaller and smaller Anxiety builds up the more that you avoid So ideally any task that takes less than five minutes should be done right away. That's the most energy efficient option Not dimming lights at night. So having a dark bedroom. I think it's it's important for sleep And I like the metaphor here that our energy is is like water in a cup and The things that leak our energy are like holes in the cup Right, so there are two ways you can ensure that your cup of energy contains enough water You can constantly pour more water into it Or you can make the holes in the bottom of your cup smaller So boosting energy is like filling the cup And then reducing the the drainage in your cup of energy That that can keep you More more energized So when I usually think about energy, I usually think about How I can get more energy, but I hadn't thought as clearly before about Things that I may be doing that unnecessarily drain my energy. So yeah, I love watching things about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster as well I remember I went away for a weekend stayed with an acquaintance and I brought with me a book It was like a book on the different ways that people die at Yosemite National Park It's just wow I think I've got a lot of insight into your character, but this is the type of book that you take away with you So there are lots of things you can do to boost your energy, right? Probably the number one thing that we can do is get a good night's sleep Eat eat healthy exercise Set boundaries Minimize contact with toxic people Okey dokey, so I was I was blown away By this book I read on religion in secular society So it's such a smart book and it came out 55 years ago And it talks about how much less influence religion and a mystical magical World view has on us in today's world, which is increasingly rationalized increasingly pragmatic increasingly scientific and where we have many ways of finding emotional comfort and human connection outside of religion Josh Randall, you gotta let me borrow that book and have people died at Yosemite I'll see if I can find it for you on amazon. I think I've borrowed it from from the library so Perhaps the best example of how we are steadily becoming less religious and I'm not sure that this can be changed Right. I think it's pretty much inevitable That the modern world is going to become increasingly less religious and this is this is unique in human history Right. We've never had this before We've never had non-religious societies so You often hear now of particularly christian religious leaders Emphasizing that there's no conflict between religion and science But you only say that sort of thing when you're willing to seed no vast swaths of of of life to a different genre science So science is increasingly prestigious in the minds of average people It's providing answers that people used to turn to religion for And religion can't even compete So that's why religious leaders are saying oh, there's no conflict between religion and science And so this is the first time that we've had secular societies. So maybe there's no way back for religion in In our western world So this is a professor at the University of Essex But I should explain that I'm a quantitative social scientist And I'm going to be talking about the decline of religion in the western world Help whether measured by belonging believing participation in services or how important it's felt to be in life Religion is losing ground across the western world Societies being transformed and the momentum seems to be unstoppable At this point you might be asking yourself a couple of questions First is it actually true? And even if religion is losing ground Could things change in the future? Religion really is true and no things won't change Modernization has predictable and permanent effects One of which like all the secular transition can't so This is the first time in human history that we've had secular societies religion has almost always been dominant in human history So a natural reaction to oh, this is the first time we have secular societies This is not sustainable like there's a religious impulse. It's just inherent in people So there's inevitably going to be a swing away from secularism back to religion. Now this professor Says no, it's inherent in the processes of modernity, which tends to make people more individualistic Our human community gets diminished because our Our occupations become more specialized and our recreational pursuits become more specialized And we find more specialized ways of attaining emotional comfort So that removes the communal feeling of which religion was so important. So he says there's no way back Which I find interesting So there's a process of generational replacement and they're replacing the population It's a process that's been happening for decades across the western world in some cases for a century or more Take us The example whether people say they have a religion And I'll use the example So when people Arrays without religion. It's very rare that they go from a secular background to becoming religious So approximately only five percent of people who are read secular then feel Feel the need to become religious later in life Oh, come on, man Why are you dropping a a new browser on me here? So we have an increasingly Specialized world. All right, we've got we've got the we've got work We've got no, I don't want to help you two by answering one question. Come on, man Bloody hell Sorry about that Okay, anyway interesting academic talk there on One professor quantitative social scientists arguing why there is no way back for religion in the west so There was a famous book published in 1966 called religion in secular society and it's just republished five years ago And it makes the point about how divided our lives have become compared to traditional lives. So The economic sphere of production has been separated from consumption Family and its concerns have been separated from the productive sphere. Education has developed a certain autonomous sphere We've now got You know politics and and law which is largely away from the control of religion We've got the separation of recreation from religion Away from the community and the family. So religion seems to govern less and less of our lives It does not dominate our social institutions the way it once did. So our lives have become increasingly compartmentalized And particularly when we're mobile when we're moving from place to place Uh traditional ties such as religion and family tend to have less hold over us So religion once had general presidency over people's concerns and endowed their activities with a sense of the sacred and this attitude towards life regarding activities in life as sacred has increasingly diminished over the past About 150 years So our activities have become secularized. So in a sense many americans go to church But this has almost no effect on how they do business or how they participate in recreation Religion in america is overwhelmingly vacuous. Well, if you meet someone in europe or australia who goes to church That's someone who takes religion seriously and their religion pervades You know vast swathes of their life So our lives have become increasingly secularized and the sense of mystery the sense of the sacred The religious meaning of everyday acts and objects are steadily decreased So we've had this steady demystification of the world So our thinking has become increasingly instrumental matter-of-fact scientific and rational And our emotional involvement with nature with the community with other people has been steadily reduced and our external world Has been drained of meaning. It's been drained of the sacred. It's been drained of the magical So we we steadily have fewer and fewer people who Who feel the imperatives of the religious interpretation of the purpose of life And it's not just churches lost numbers But people largely cease to think of or respond to the world with a sense of mystery and or with that that religious impulse That has diminished Increasingly morals just private matters Like people are less and less prepared to be their brother's keepers The force of community opinion about what is down and what is not done That diminishes its local community life itself diminishes as Our connections become increasingly specialized by our profession and our recreation So we're increasingly less concerned with morally regulating our fellows So We had in the 19th century the rise of economic laissez-faire which brought with it Moral laissez-faire so economic laissez-faire essentially the free market and we have moved into an arena of a free market of morals Even when our economic policy is switched back to more planning So used to be we held that moral values came from God And so therefore prescribed morality was unchanging and it was authoritative but churches and synagogues and masks are increasingly facing circumstances in which the authoritative will of God is making less and less impact on men in society where social and legal and professional control is increasingly separate from religious control and men are increasingly Ceasing to put themselves under the the guidance of clergy So the church used to be the arbiter of moral behavior But the churches instead have become more and more reflective of the practices of the times And they're gradually and hesitatingly endorse change in things like birth control So churches of of emphasize getting up to date and liberal synagogues, you know, we want to be up to date We want to be with the times So By saying that they want to get up to date churches and synagogues are recognizing their own diminishing capacity to influence their members and society and when you look at the shifts of Of various churches with regard to birth control shows the ways that moral theologians Are trying to come to terms with the changing moral practices in society And realize that they know Not very much about what's going on in society and therefore feel that they have less authority So many things that churches and synagogues at one time condemned the sins A few decades later later, they acknowledged these behaviors as perfectly appropriate So at one time almost all churches and synagogues regarded homosexual sex as a sin Now most you know regarded as appropriate in certain contexts From a secular perspective the primary person purpose of religion is to provide emotional consolation And now people get their emotional consolation from Going on youtube going to therapy going to a psychiatrist getting medicated going to yoga Like watching movies and tv shows so people Often receive more effective emotional consolation that they feel more quickly more easily more effectively from other sources than religion At the same time in our increasingly divided and compartmentalized world I think people are under greater continuing strain in their daily lives But they're trying to handle this situation by means other than religion. So we've got government welfare services Right, they once were promoted by christian motives, but they become completely secularized So what was once done from a sense of christian duty? Has now become an accepted service of secular government It's just an extension of general political civic and social rights Now in our increasingly mobile and compartmentalized society people feel under more strain more stress They have a weaker sense of identity Then you know growing amounts of anxiety, you know people feel Less at home less sure about who they are But they're not searching for answers for these problems generally speaking from religion They're going to secular therapy and they're getting medicated and they're going to yoga Or they're going to 12-step programs So affluent industrial societies produce seemingly high rates of mental ill health You know drug addiction suicide crime delinquency But the solutions for these problems no longer routinely sought in religion So we have lost that religious orientation of the individual and our society and There seems to be less and less common consensual communal solutions possible for our problems instead our problems are seen as individualistic So people may go for therapy for example, and it's the specialist techniques of secular mental health that people often turn to for emotional consolation rather than religious pastoral care And as people have shifted away from a religious and sacred mindset Then clergy have lost social status Like scientists have risen above them in social status literature in the arts have often risen above religion in social status So our societies have become increasingly rational and skeptical and pragmatic And this has affected clergy They are increasingly reluctant to believe that religion provides answers to social questions Just as they have shifted away from believing that religion can provide answers to physical questions and scientific questions So we are living in an age of empirical observation and information and it's the acquisition of these empirical skills And the acquisition of the skills to analyze the data that has passed beyond clergy to secular scholars So it's this awareness of the relativity of modern knowledge that makes The cleric increasingly guarded and less confident in his declarations So a professional cleric All right can play an intellectual game But at the same time he is bound By economics dependence upon his religion. All right, so he may think So he may think outside the box But he usually has vows of obedience and loyalty In addition to economic and social dependence And religious laity. They only want assurance and certainty. So pretty much most people all they want Are assurance and certainty whether it's politics social cultural existential questions people The common people want assurance and certainty and clerics feel increasingly less confident to provide this so Clerics are becoming increasingly skeptical They're ceasing to believe in many of the foundations of their religion They're ceasing to believe in many of the essentials of their faith or believe them in a different way and so this Contributes to a source of confusion and despair to those who want to believe in simple truths Most people want to believe in simple truths. Most people want to believe in simple truths about their health Most people want to believe in simple truths about covid people want to believe in simple truths about politics All right people the average person wants a simple truth And they want assurance and they want certainty and people who can provide that to them will get a large audience Now the united states when compared to europe has a high level of religious activity but outside of church America is at least as secular as any other western country so America has a very you know pragmatic Lays a fair attitude to life. It's very instrumental in its values. Americans tend to be very pragmatic Americans have you know bureaucratized rationalized Procedures for living they have technical legal methods scientific methods And the instrumental rational technical scientific Approach has probably gone further in america than any other western country. We have the most productive workforce in the world so america is probably The country in the western world in which the sense of the sacred the sense of the sanctity of life And deep religiosity is most conspicuously absent So as my father told me religion in america is a mile wide and an inch deep so Previous visitors to america who commented on the apparent extensiveness of church membership They also also said that they found religion in america to be vacuous and superficial So the dominant values of american society are not religious and american culture is marked by A central stress upon personal achievement, especially secular occupational achievement so The tenor of life in america compared to other industrialized nations is highly impersonal There's less of a sense of community. There's less social cohesion social trust in america compared to any other industrialized nation of which i'm aware so Tenor of our life is highly impersonal We lack social trust and social cohesion in america Individuals are constantly feeling manipulated The economic organization Of society has reached giant proportions that threatens the identity of the individual So there is a persistent demand for something which provides a communal orientation And americans probably move more probably more mobile than any other people in the industrialized world So americans are often on the move For work for pleasure And when people are constantly moving it's hard to establish communal life So there are a few You know agencies to produce communal life So the church and the synagogue takes on the functions of providing community So it's the church and the synagogue essentially represents the values of agrarian society It provides the warmth the stability The mutual involvement of a type of community life so The synthetic nature of the community It stands out to non-americans when they visit here because usually community meant That you live within a few miles of where your grandparents lived And that that's the way life is in much of europe and japan You will tend you will tend to live where your parents lived and where your grandparents lived That's that's real community. So community in america seems much more synthetic So the personalized gestures of our impersonal society Acquire like a macabre quality for those who experience genuine community Those who have felt the natural spontaneous operation Of rural community life So for non-americans that That friendliness of american churches that strikes them as jarring Because for people from europe They frequently experience real community so The the number one Religious ethic in american Is probably civility, right? so So on the one hand, this is this is Enable different religious people to get along in america But it has come at the cost of religious authenticity that people have sacrificed the authentic claims of distinctive truth of their religions In order to have easier relationships with their fellow citizens And this has produced a vacuous and superficial religion in america So religion has become privatized in america So president eisenhower said a man should have a faith no matter which faith it didn't really matter President johnson who was a thing a church of christ and his wife an episcopalian They asserted that their daughter's conversion to roman catholicism did not disturb them It's considered unamerican if you are disturbed when your children convert to a different denomination or a different religion Because from from the typical american perspective religions just a private matter And faith in one religion is as good as faith in another religion. So this is an american value This is not a christian value. This is not a jewish value. This is not an islamic value This is an american value which dominates religion in america So belonging to a denomination or religion in america Is generally unconnected with any distinctive religious belief and this is completely unparalleled in europe and australia So in europe church adherence has a content of distinctive teaching So with the protestant reformation The early protestants such as montluther john calvin. They conceded the supremacy of state authority above priestly authority And then american churches subordinated their distinctive religious values to the values of wider american society So religious practice then increased in america in the 19th and 20th century But the vacuousness Of popular religious ideas increased with it So the content and meaning of religious commitment in america became acculturated to the american creed of The individual getting ahead Now Men in the west developed religious rights before political rights So religion in england Was an agency for general discontent and disaffection but in america it's been The the distinctive claims of the various denominations have been muted So religion of your choice is an american phrase which amuses europeans Because from a european perspective you don't really have a choice over religion. You're born into it or not in europe religion has functioned to vindicate the fixed status that you have in society but in america Religion is an expression for getting ahead For claiming more status So religion in america abandoned many of the functions it fulfilled in europe So in america religion has emphasized love joy personal security getting ahead in life Rather than you know, eternally burning hellfire Now consider as someone who's born into a low status religion who then rises in the world He cannot afford to continue associate with religious groups to practice lower class religious rituals At the man who's brought up as a holy roller as he invents us in the world It's less and less Advantages for him as a businessman with a public reputation to roll in the aisles with the least sophisticated members of his community so In in america religion is another status marker because religion Because the american ethic is all about the individual getting ahead So in england secularization Manifested in the widespread abandonment of the churches as in other european countries in america secularization manifested in the absorption of the churches by the wider society and the loss of claims of distinctive religious teaching So in america churches are agencies for the expression of community These communities are not natural communities These are not communities of people who've lived face-to-face contact over many generations They're rarely receiving strangers Churches in america are agencies of synthetic community life So american churches have this distinct welcoming characteristic About which europeans Frequently comment So people who don't know each other whose lives have impinged relatively very little on each other Suddenly Subscribe to the fiction that they're now part of a community And everyone wants to belong to a most everyone wants to belong to a community The mobility of american life Diminishes the capacity for community. So church and synagogue give you the semocra of community Now most people want to belong Now the various churches in the united states express status differentiation They don't really do that in europe and england So the various christian denominations in britain express the basic divisions of social political and economic orientation They represent the class stratification of england so There was a sociologist in the late 1950s to examine different attitudes to work among jews Protestants catholics he found that Jews and Protestants had positive attitudes to work Catholics had a negative attitude that jews and Protestants regarded it as important that a child should learn to think for himself Catholics thought it was more important that a child should learn to obey They found that Catholics attached themselves more to kin groups And the the Protestants were much more individualistic So the general sense of moral rectitude which once extended to almost all of our social and personal activities Even in peasant societies That demonstrated how we dressed how we spoke how we ate in courtship attitudes to strangers neighbors kin All right, this this used to be a manifestation of a real local unity and community That was entrenched within a religious view of the world But the influence of religious morality and religious beliefs have been largely swept away in our modern secular age Christianity has become de mythologized traditional ideas about god have been challenged by bishops in the church and ecumenism the You know the finding the beauty in the truth and all religions has become the one thing that many religious Leaders can believe in so in england and europe The tiny proportion of the population that goes to church Implies considerable commitment to their religion that in the united states high church involvement is associated with low commitment to religious values So in britain and europe the doctrinal positions of denomination Speak to the distinctiveness of the past But their denominational organization has grown weak in the united states Denominational doctrinal distinction has little consequence, but the organizations enjoy wide support and they're relatively strong So the history of descent Is really the history of demystification Where the functions of religious specialists are increasingly shorn of their mystical and magical attributes This is max vapor's analysis So you begin with the protestant denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation The rejection of the idea that priests configure sins The rejection of the immediate efficacy of the confessional Israel aspects of emerging Protestantism So Protestantism stressed the priesthood of all believers and in Judaism There's no distinctive function that only only a rabbi can perform now. There may be some very complicated Legal procedures such as writing a divorce that the generally speaking only a rabbi will perform but in in general religious services There are no distinctive Categories just for rabbis So think about work work When when we were primarily farmers was just a part of life itself Then work became a calling And it was recognized as a distinctive activity of life and it was sanctified in religious terms And now in our secular world The calling of work has become a job And It's no longer sacralized So those are some of the highlights from this terrific book religion in secular society 50 years on By brian wilson And here's what else i've been reading DSM a history of psychiatry's bible So the DSM the diagnostic and statistical manual used by the mental health profession They will be the most influential book of the past century but Prior to 1980 it didn't have much influence It was with the publication of the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders the DSM The third edition in 1980 Right and DSM Define what mental disorders are legitimate How patients conceive of their problems who receives government benefits for having certain problems Which conditions psychotropic drugs target and which conditions insurance companies will pay to treat And the DSM also came to delineate the curriculum that is taught to psychiatrists and other mental health professionals it Defined the diagnoses that researchers and epidemiologists explore And it also came to define the psychic problem Problems of public policies attempt to remedy. So the DSM has had increasing influence since 1980 And they've become a part of our culture. So now we know that environmental activist Greta Thunberg has asperger syndrome That donald trump is commonly seen as displaying narcissistic personality disorder That the singer mariah carry has discussed publicly her struggles with bipolar disorder And the same condition that's dramatized in the main character of the homeland tv show Kerry Matheson lady gargar Speaks about her struggles with post traumatic stress disorder tv mobster tony soprano sick treatment for panic attacks His son is suspected of having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD You've got the author of the best-selling memoir girl interrupted Said she discovered she had borderline personality disorder while she was reading the DSM 3 In a local bookstore. So many patients today enter therapy already knowing what diagnosis they expect to receive Let me have a look at the chart ironwood says I think we will see new religions grow Very possibly Judaism is strong. Otherwise luke would not have jumped into it Five of the founding fathers of the united states are not even christian Claire core is annoyed with denis dale says free speech no longer exists on denis dale's platform The west sleeps right now will it wake up or will it die? modern science Is the new world religion? Okay, so the DSM its importance for psychiatry is unique among various medical specialties So overall psychiatry is the least prestigious medical specialty It's the least likely to be considered real medicine by other doctors So other areas of medicine rely on biological markers that can confirm or refute a diagnosis of some disease So cardiologists use PET scans to see whether a heart has tissue damage or not Nephrologist takes x-rays to search for a kidney stone oncologists can perform biopsies to detect cancer cells Psychiatrists have none of these tools All right, there aren't any confirming markers for any common mental disorder. So psychiatric diagnosis Is highly subjective It has none of the objective physical markers of other medical diagnoses. So psychiatric DSM diagnoses depend upon self-reported symptoms and the The mental health professionals observation of what what he sees as symptoms So clinical observations and self-reports. So there are no independent criteria that can verify the accuracy of a clinician's assessment of a mental health disorder The american psychiatric association owns the DSM Which allows that organization, which is the psychiatric You know union the union of psychiatrists to monopolize the diagnoses of mental disorders for all mental health professionals So all professions want to maximize their reach maximize their power maximize their status and maximize their income Now psychiatrists use the DSM for getting paid And they will use it for rhetorical purposes, but very few psychiatrists consider its diagnoses accurate portrayals of underlying natural phenomena But they use DSM for educational training for obtaining reimbursement for treatment submitting grant applications providing measures for epidemiological studies But they don't think it actually reflects reality And other mental health professionals are clinical psychologists Psychiatric social worker psychiatric nurses mental health counselors. They must all use DSM categories to receive third-party payment for their services And the DSM serves as a benchmark for determining mental disorders in our judicial system. So There are about 6,000 court opinions citing the DSM So there are court rulings citing the DSM in legal areas Including defense from criminal responsibility Exemptions from the death penalty Eligibility for disability benefits Determinations in child custody cases DSM very powerful in our legal system Now the use of DSM diagnoses make it seem that mental orders are running rampant in our population So psychiatry has changed from prior to 1980 1960 it was a specialty that would treat just a small group of seriously disturbed people or primarily treated people who are institutionalized Now psychiatrically, psychiatry primarily treats people who come into the office voluntarily So now psychiatry thanks to the power of DSM is charged with the mission to To confront a large and growing public health epidemic of major depressive disorder that threatens virtually everyone So When psychiatry and any profession can convince Large and large in numbers of people that they're in need of its services that increases the profession's ability To make money to gain power and to achieve status It's not necessarily in our best interests So since the 1960s federal regulators insurance companies and medical schools have increasingly wanted to portray Psychiatrists as doctors practicing medicine So psychiatric legitimacy stems from how they name define and distinguish their central concepts The diagnosis is the first step In transforming a person with an ambiguous complaint Into a client with a defined mental disorder Right someone who you can bill and who you can medicate so the credibility of the DSM depends on its depiction as evidence-based you know scientific research This is the product So the DSM and the psychiatric profession will will often claim. Hey these diagnoses stem from empirically derived data But it's just not true So prior to 1980 people thought of mental disorders as something that happened After 1980 the public increasingly considered mental disorders just something independent of individuals like they have depression Or they have bipolar Prior to 1980 people consider mental health disorders as an individual attribute. I am depressed. I am bipolar So it's the medicalization of psychiatry So SSRIs came to prominence in the late 1980s things like Zoloft and They're probably least effective for treating depression. Right. They're primarily marketed for treating depression But according to clinical results, they are the least effective in dealing with depression Right. They are less successful in treating melancholy and depression than auto medications But they are more effective at dealing with anxiety But because of the DSM and its straitjacket, you have to prescribe for just very specific mental disorders SSRIs are primarily being promoted as antidepressants even though they're not effective as antidepressants They do have much more effect as anti-anxiety medication So whatever it is that SSRIs do Has virtually no relationship with any specific DSM diagnosis But the FDA in 1962 ruled that Drugs could only be advertised for treating specific mental disorders. So things like Xenax Which, you know, treated generalized anxiety You couldn't you couldn't advertise that you have to relate it to very specific DSM Diagnoses So these diagnostic changes in say DSM4 we got childhood bipolar disorder Right. So millions and millions of kids got this diagnosis, which has very little basis and empirical fact So millions of kids were medicated For no good reason because As the DSM grew in prestige As psychiatry grew in prestige It relentlessly expanded The notion of what counts as mental illness To accommodate all these new medications that are flooding into the market from the pharmaceutical companies So we've got this Through DSM3, 4, and 5 we've got this relentless expansion of what are purported to be mental illnesses Primarily to accommodate new medications that purport to treat these purported illnesses contrary to DSM assumptions of disorder Specificity genes for virtually all psychiatric disorders are non-specific. There's no disorder that corresponds to a distinct gene or group of genes so all Mental disorders share large amounts of genetic vulnerability with other conditions Now medical diagnoses in general tend to be uncertain and ambiguous But most medical diseases are distinct from health, right? So you've got blood pressure or cholesterol level. You've got specific cut points that indicate likely pathology So physicians tend to think in black and white And specific either or diagnostic categories make mental disorders seem more real to the public To insurance companies to other physicians and the federal regulators So even though mental health illnesses are usually on a spectrum rather than categorical, yes or no but rather just varying degrees of intensity, but that doesn't work for Insurance billing purposes for social prestige for federal regulation So psychiatry now Is in a position that most of medicine was in 200 years ago of having to define as disorders by symptoms by syndromes That there's no ability in psychiatry yet to Develop etiologically informed diagnoses etiology means how did this come about? So psychiatry is divorced symptoms from context So psychiatry is blurred situationally appropriate psychological phenomena from mental disorders So virtually every symptom of various mental disorders can be biologically and psychologically suitable adaptation to a given context or to a given cultural expression So symptoms resemble depression arise naturally after a loss loss of a job loss was a prestige loss of money loss of the death of a loved one And that that indicates that your grief mechanisms are working appropriately not inappropriately that you're not pathological Now a panic attack is an understandable reaction when facing an impending fall off a cliff But if there's no danger A panic attack is the is a sign of disorder Like hearing voices, right? That can be a hallmark of schizophrenia But in particular culture and religious settings. It's the cool thing to do So by contrast a heart attack always signals a failure of natural functioning regardless of context or culture And then I just started reading a new book moral acrobatics How we avoid ethical ambiguity by thinking in black and white And he notes, you know rarely do we observe all moral laws? Right virtually everyone pays as little tax as they can get away with We all tend to preserve and defend our privileges As if we were naturally entitled to them. So we in our head. We are all monarchs Thinking that we were chosen from above. I love that in our head We all think we are monarchs chosen chosen by God essentially So unlike most characters in Shakespeare's plays or Dostoevsky's novels We are not inclined to acknowledge that we all meet up of a bundle of conflicting values So monsters only exist in our simplifying head. So someone who you call a monster They're probably vast areas of his life where he's very nice like Hitler was a vegetarian the Nazis were very concerned about cruelty to animals And so we tend to talk about outgroups Jews blacks Chinese Russians Arabs Muslims with no nuance Without any awareness of the various cultures and languages represented by these groupings Uh criminals for example are never just criminals And good people are never just good people so How do we deal with The complexity of reality We trick ourselves We simplify We create order in our head whether it's none We give ourselves illusions of control We reduce unmanageable complexities by building shortcuts by staging and challenging ourselves by dramatizing by representing situations to enhance our Happiness level. So we're ceaselessly creating Comfort values for our souls and for those we identify as extensions of ourselves our in group our family our allies So we're constantly creating comfort values now When we reflect we Understand that we are mortal that we will die that everyone we love will die that everything we experience is transient And that we're all doomed to disappear from this earth so this this gives Our life an inescapable sense of absurdity if we dwell in this place very long So we then have to struggle to find meanings That allow us to transcend our realization of our doom on earth And this is the main existential framing of what we consider to be right and wrong so when we reflect Hitler loved gay sex but loathed poppers well There's no evidence that Hitler participated in gay sex So when we reflect on these things we realize how dependent we are on other people And how elusive our freedom is Because most of what we do is to please other people to get their validation We are highly dependent on how other people perceive us and evaluate us so We're naturally obsessively concerned with our status with our social situation And our emotions such as guilt and shame and hubris and pride and contempt. They shape our morality They frame our moral decisions Because when we think about it we realize that without other people we are nothing So for many of us our deepest fear is being rejected And this fear makes us desperate for social recognition for social validation And desperate about how we are perceived and evaluated by others So above everything else we care about our reputation because we exist through our good relations With other people without other people we deteriorate and die physically and psychologically So what drives us Is ban ban basic affiliation need and we all have this deep fear being rejected by others So this is the basic foundation of our insatiable need and struggle for human recognition So the main moral rule is that our moral compass is constantly recalibrated Depending on people and situations We hold different moral standards in our moral decisions Whether people are in our in-group Same family same social class same religion same language same party Or in our outgroup Bye-bye


Hey, Psyched Goers, have you ever felt that if you were smarter, you would have fewer problems in your life?  Of course, we'd like to emphasize that there are multiple different types of intelligence, but did you know that high intelligence can cause its own problems? Here are five struggles only smart people will understand. Number one, you're prone to imposter syndrome.  Does this doubt sound familiar to you? Smart people are extremely aware of how much they don't know yet, which can lead to imposter syndrome.  They're constantly fearful that they're not as talented as others think and their incompetence will be exposed. If this sounds like you, don't despair. Find reasons to enjoy your tasks for their own sake instead of anxiously wondering whether you're good at them. Number two, you're often alone. How many things are on your to-do list right now?  Research shows that smart people have a greater ability to solve problems and adapt to new challenges as a result, their time is more focused on big goals that make the most of their capacities. Unfortunately, this also means they have much less time to socialize, so they're often alone. If this sounds like you, don't despair. The research also finds that smart people are impacted by loneliness less because pursuing their goals can be satisfying in their own way. Number three, you're stuck in analysis paralysis. Did you take a long time to make your last big life decision? Smart people know the value of thinking things through, collecting information and considering multiple perspectives. This is a key part of what makes them smart, but do you also agonize over small decisions always unsure about the right choice? Then you might be experiencing analysis paralysis, where you overthink a situation and don't take action. Smart people often find that their intelligence works against them when they face this problem. If this sounds like you, don't despair. Set a time limit to make decisions and then commit to whatever you've thought of when it expires, even if it doesn't feel like the perfect choice. Number four, you're burdened by high expectations.  Smart people know this is not as encouraging as it sounds. They're often burdened by the high expectations placed on them throughout their lives. They face constant pressure to excel at everything they do with no room for failure or mediocrity. A study by the University of Texas at Austin asked elderly individuals with high intelligence to look back on their lives. The ones who had been labeled gifted as children had lower psychological well-being and felt like their lives had disappointed everyone's expectations. If this sounds like you, don't despair. Celebrate achievements you're proud of rather than thinking about the times you've let others down. And number five, you can't explain yourself to others. Do you ever feel like others just don't get you when you try to explain yourself? Research shows that smart people suffer from the curse of knowledge. This means they know so much that they can't think through the perspective of someone who lacks that knowledge. Passion, knowledge, and expertise on a subject can actually make someone worse at explaining it to others. As a result, communication between a smart person and a novice can break down very quickly when the novice can't properly interpret what the other is saying and the other can't understand why the novice is confused. If this sounds like you, don't despair. Getting regular feedback about the other person's perspective can help to bridge this gap and explain complicated topics. So did you relate to any of these points? Did we miss anything? If so, let us know in the comments down below. Remember that intelligence comes in many forms. It's also not the end all be all. Intelligence comes with its own problems and it doesn't take you far without hard work and commitment. Please like and share this with friends that might find some insight in the video too. Make sure to subscribe to Psych2Go and hit the notification bell for more content. All the references used are added in the description box below as always and thank you for watching. We'll see you next time.


This epic begins with the city. And the city is exemplified by the wall. Look at that wall, that most wondrous thing. So in order to have a city in Mesopotamia, you are going to have to have walls, protectable walls. There is no such thing here as a city without a wall. You need the wall to protect the food supply. Because when famine hits outside the city, you will get marauding tribes, uncivilized, coming in, rushing in to take your grain. So the walls are absolutely necessary.


Jeff we're heading out to the first stage here. You are on the side of the road Yeah, just when I saw him as we were coming up to the ADK coming out of Hempelmack here So I stopped and the distributor cap seemed to be just off a little bit, but not on properly So I'm pretty sure it must be in the distributor or the cap or something. I don't know I guess a bonus if you like have a long touring stage out to the first stage Let's hope you can get it underway and get into that first gravel stage Yeah, I am and we're certainly going to be late, but that doesn't matter. It'd be nice just to get in there in close to time anyway We're a front runner in his yellow escort, but today he's not in that car He's in the number two escort as little BDA is 1600 escort and today at this stage is not going anywhere So what's the go? I thought the distributor cap was just slightly skew if coming out of Hampton And then Smithy found some plug leads you didn't think right, so I don't know We've got it going right for 800 meters and now it's gone flat again, so How many stages have you done? Zero, thank you


The APC has constituted a 24-man reconciliation committee in what seems like an attempt to reconcile warring parties in all your states. Speaking during the inauguration of the party's secretariat in the Okiaido area of Ibadan, Chairman of the party, Isaac Omode will charge party members to cooperate with the committee in order to find an amicable solution to the crisis currently rocking the party. Omode will who describe the leadership of the committee as critical stakeholders urge them to use their vast aspirants and influence to resolve ordinal wranglings within the party, stating expressly that reconciliation was most expedient if the party was serious about victory and the forthcoming elections slated for next year. In addition, he charged the committee to present a situation report in the next two weeks and a desperate bid towards addressing all grey areas that add and the past characterised a congress' primaries and other issues pertaining to the party's general interest. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Alright, here we go. Sexton, Irish whiskey. Sexton. I never saw that one before. Oh, look at this. Castmates, castmates. Oh, sorry. Constellation. Oh, that they own. I think they own Taylor. Red Bush. Yeah, Red Bush. Irish whiskey. That's funny. Red Bush. Unbelievable. Cheerio, J. Cheerio. Just a little humor. Kilbegan. That means if somebody begs you for a drink of this whiskey, you kill him. Kilbegan. Oh, look at this. Tennessee whiskey. George, George Dickle. George Dickle. How about that? Little Dickle. You got Knob Job Creek. There's a smoked maple. Interesting. Gentleman's Jack. Gentleman's Jack. Make his mock. Make his mock. See what we got here. Monkey's Shoulder. Scotch whiskey. The Monkey's Shoulder. They gave you the cold shoulder. What's this? $10 for a large bottom. Oh, it's American whiskey. Bankers Club. So J. Cheerio. You ever hear of this company? Bankers Club. It's the old Glen Silver. And there's Grants. Bless their hearts, Grants. But since this is American, I'm assuming this is a bourbon. $10 for a decent-sized bottle of Bankers Club. I don't know anything about it. Let me go get what I came here for. I was talking to that bonehead over here, Brick City Brewery in Little Fairy, New Jersey. Now, this is another one. I didn't even know they existed. They got nasty with me about selling to retail. Why should I sell to retail when I could keep all the profits right here in Little Fairy? I guess that's not the point. How much ambition do you have? He got mad. Too bad. Here's the rums. Let me see what we got here. Castillo Bartons. Gold. Meyers. It's great rum. Meyers is great rum. Appleton. Anything with the word Añejo? Añejo is a very good rum. Avril Nelson Spiced. I wonder if I should try that banker's whiskey. It's probably a bourbon. I'm not sure. Well, let me get what I came here for. Here we are. Bless their hearts. Tennessee Cream Mail. Bless their hearts. Yeah, I like the price and the quality. I didn't know it was a 140-year-old company. Yeah, I had no idea. And they don't have any tours. You've figured out 140 years they have tours. Maybe they don't want to hire anybody to give the tours. At least maybe Yinling made it. That's the oldest. I think Genesee is just a little bit younger. No. Rochester, New York. Genesee? Yeah. Yeah, Rochester. I wonder if this is any good. Do you think this is a bourbon, this banker's club blended whiskey? It's only like 10 bucks for that bottle. The biggest problem is the Jim B. Blacks for $15. Jim B., you like Knob Creek? Yeah, it's good, too. Grant, look at this. This Scotch is not a bad price. I don't know how Scotch is. Glen Silver. Yeah, that's probably bourbon. If it's American whiskey. Yeah, it's blended. Oh, it's blended. That's why 100 Pipers. Roddy Piper. Yeah, right. That's right. You can buy tours. There you go. 33 bucks for that big-ass bottle. Yeah, I think I'm going to, I think I'm going to... That's why I used to always get for my dad big bottle of tours. Big bottle of tours. Well, I kept him happy for all. Yeah, then they were going to John Baer, the one. Yeah, another John Baer. Yeah, you don't have any more? John Baer. Oh, Scoresby. I saw somebody do a show on YouTube about that. Scored. There's a guy named Jay Terrio from New Orleans that does booze, live stream booze shows. Sometimes he invites me on. I wear crazy hats. Sometimes I put a crown on my head or a poor Jester's hat. Only because he's in New Orleans.  Red wine. Oh, this is funny. 19 Crimes. Look at that.  Look at that, I bought it. Oh, look at this guy. Oh, 19 Crimes. Look at this guy. The rough character. 19 Crimes wine. I'm still making up my mind.


I'm back. Did you miss me? I miss me. So this vlog today, Monday's vlog, includes Saturday and Sunday and today for you. I don't think I'm gonna do this every weekend, but I'm thinking about it. And now understand why a lot of vloggers, most vloggers, only vlog Monday to Friday because everybody needs a weekend. Everybody needs a little bit of work.  I understand why people do that. So, we'll talk about it throughout this week, see if I continue doing that or not. It was kind of nice, but for this weekend, my only excuse was I just needed a little break. I needed to get a lot of stuff done, hang out with family and stuff. Anyways, here is Saturday, Sunday, and Monday for you. It is fine morning here guys, let me get the lights turned on here. Okay, you know, most people would turn them on before they start vlogging, but me, I'd rather turn them on with you. I'm a sharer. So, yeah, we're home. Yay! That was just kind of a mess. James was down last night. We didn't vlog anything, but we had a blast, went and played pool, and went through some trails in the bush with my car, and came back here, and we watched half of that movie I bought the other day, and then we fell asleep. But, he went fishing today, invited me to come with, but I said, I've got to mow my lawn. Well, not so I had to stay home, mow my lawn, and I've been working on some YouTube stuff, and cleaning up, had a shower. Now we're going to go into Steinbeck and go to Walmart. Walmart's awesome. Guys, remember how many leaves were on these trees when we were here last? There was at least one leaf on that tree when I left, now there's not even one. There was actually hundreds of leaves. Hey, that tree down there still has leaves. That's strange. The neighbors over there have a dog around, they've got all their dogs outside. They just realize that Diesel's wandering around over there, and they're jealous that he's free, and they're not. Their neighbors are down there. The neighbor dogs. There's three of them. Good boy, Diesel, you're a very good boy out there. Good boy, man. Just ignores them like a boss, like they just don't mean anything to him. You're not even worth a buck.  Maybe you should have said hi. Why, you always tell me not to, man. Very true.  Very good boy.  Doesn't even look at them. That's my boy. Yeah, it's cold enough to break out the tube. How do I look? You miss it? This is my Tim Horner's tube.  Yeah, it was cold. It was worth a mention. So it's cold out here, as you can tell, outside all the leaves are gone. They gone. Bye-bye. See you next year. Yeah, it was kind of chilly out there when I was mowing the lawn. Next time we're home, there could very well be snow on the ground. Have I ever shown you guys the beautiful flag of Manitoba? That is the Manitoba flag. You'll notice it's almost identical to the Ontario flag. The Ontario flag has three golden maple leafs in that little green area, and we have a buffalo. So yeah, I really don't understand why our flag is so similar to Ontario's flag. I don't like that. I think Ontario should get a new flag. I'm just kidding. Ontario is obviously much older than Manitoba, because that's where Canada started. Canada started in Ontario. And then they took over Quebec. Now, I don't know all the history and what not. Anyways, it used to be English colonies and then French colonies. And then they had a war, and the English won. They had a habit of doing that. They always had a habit of winning wars until the Americans stood up to them. But they took over the French, and then it became lower Canada and upper Canada. And then eventually, in the 1800s sometime, was it 1876? 1867. Anyways, sometime around the late 1800s, mid-1800s, Manitoba was officially a province of Canada. We joined the confederation and we copied Ontario's flag for some reason. I don't know why. It's exactly the same, except like I said, it's very... We got a buffalo and they got maple leafs. I think Manitoba should get their own flag. Saskatchewan has their own flag. Alberta, BC, everyone has their own flags. It's from Manitoba. We just moved off Ontario for our flag. That's not very cool. I think we're unique enough to have our own unique flag. But until then, we'll salute that flag. Fast forward to the next day, the next night, actually. It's already nighttime. Oh, what's that over there? What is that over there? Oh my goodness. That'll do. There's a truck in that parking lot. You are not supposed to be able to get a truck. How did he get in that parking lot there? They even have those like bars over there that you can't get in there. There's signs everywhere that say no trucks in there. He went in there anyways. Like a boss. Okay, well, he's not supposed to be in there. Anyways, I wanted to show you these trucks up. I'm here parked at the co-op in Winnipeg. And I parked here because in the morning, I'm going right down the street that way to the Freightliner dealership where they have my part for my air conditioning. I'm gonna get my air conditioning fixed tomorrow but I gotta go pick up the part and then I go to a different shop. A shop that I'm more familiar with, more comfortable bringing my truck to. I bring my truck there. They're gonna get everything fixed for me. Get my bunk heater fixed, get my air conditioning fixed, service the truck. But I parked right between these two trucks here. Now, one's a Volvo and another one's a Freightliner Sentry just like mine. Exactly the same pretty much. A little bit older it looks like. I wanted to show you, they both got bumpers on there. Now, this one here has the light guard bumper.  Like, these are the ones that I'm like, why do you even bother putting that on? That's not gonna stop much, right?   The guy beside me over there, I'm gonna show you in a second. He's got the alley arc bumper. Remember I talked about the alley arc bumper and that it wasn't quite as tough as I was looking for? I'll show you what the alley arc bumper looks like for my truck. See, this is the alley arc bumper for my truck. Well, it's on his truck, someone else's truck but see how it's got the two posts like I said there? The one bar going around the headlight and it does look pretty tough. It does look pretty tough. There's one whole bar going around there. What not? He's got the lights in there. Definitely wanted a roll of lights or like a light bar. That's the alley arc. It does look pretty tough when you come up. Look at it in person, right? That'll stop a deer for sure. I don't know what it moves but I wanted more protection around my headlights, right? So here's my truck. Now, any kind of wildlife would mess that up. But what I wanted, instead of this one little bar going around there, I wanted a post just like that there, like that's considered a post. I wanted another one of those on this side here and then a bar going across so that it's just like as tough as it is right in the middle of the grill. It's that tough right in front of the light as well. So yeah, that's what I've been talking about. I know I've shown you on a couple of different trucks but that's what it would look like on my truck if I were to get an alley arc. Not good enough for me. I want tougher. So yes, I know there was no vlog yesterday or maybe the last two days. I took it a little easy this weekend. We had Thanksgiving supper with my family today and hung out with James the other day. So I've just sort of been relaxing enjoying my home time. And of course the vlogs will go back to their daily regular routine once I get back on the road. So you guys don't got to worry about that. I'm not slowing down or nothing. I'm not quitting. Don't worry. Don't worry. We're going to be resuming our regular schedule as soon as I'm back on the road. So I don't know, I might take some breaks like this sometimes when I'm at home. Just to, you know, take some me time. I said I don't have to worry about bringing a camera out every time, every day when I'm at home. But no worries. I know you guys understand.  All 30,000 of you. Man, there's a lot of you out there. But hey, there's always room for a few more.  Share it out on your social networks. I am totally cool with that. If you want to show it on your website, just put a link to my page so that people are directed to my YouTube page. As a content creator, the creators like me own all the rights to the videos that we post online because original content that I made that came out of my own brain and into my camera, out onto my computer, through the internet and into your eyes and ears. It's my creation. You can post them wherever you want. Just make sure that it's a link back to my YouTube page. That's all I ask. That's all I ask. But hey, if you like them, chances are there's probably some other people you know that like my videos. So why don't we have like a Share Trucker Josh video? Or a Share Trucker Josh video day. Maybe once a week. Randomly I'll say, hey, today's the day. Tell someone about Trucker Josh. I don't know. You guys can do that on your own. I'm not going to force you to do that. I don't care. You guys don't have to. Diesel, what are you doing for diesel? Yeah, I need more frames, man. Diesel, look here. No, I'm not looking at it, man. Not until they share my video. Well, you heard the guy. I need to share the videos. Every one of them. I'm just messing with you guys. So we're going to be hanging out here at the co-op, like I said, for tonight. And be getting our part tomorrow. And we will talk to you then. Stay tuned. See you then. $180. Thank you very much. Very nice when pointless things break like that after having them fixed. But hey, still going to be a good day. Whatever. So I figured why not. We'll, uh, start off the day on a good note and say I'm in a good mood. Getting the truck fixed today. We're going to have air conditioning again. We're going to have a bunk heater again. We're going to have the truck service. He's going to be all happy. Horton's coming up on the left there. I'm not going to stop at it though, because there's too much traffic here right now. When I drove local in Winnipeg, this was one of the main areas I would be in. In St. James and up road 90 here. If you haven't figured that out already, we're going south down road 90. Approaching Saskatchewan Avenue here. In Winnipeg. Not in Saskatchewan. I know, we have a Saskatchewan Avenue here, named after our neighboring province. Winnipeg street named after us and their province. So it's like a buddy-buddy thing. We sort of switch names, and here you can have our name, if we can have your name type of thing.  Look at that. He thinks he's the boss. I'm bigger than you. I'm the boss. Are you diesel or the boss? So I'm going to show you a little clip of me driving through this. It's like a very popular road in Winnipeg like I was saying called Road 90, going south. I could have taken the perimeter but to me it still feels like a little ways around to take the new Canada Port Centerway, whatever it's called. I don't know, I'm not used to it because I'm a little old school. Plus I wanted to see my old neck of the woods where I used to work all the time. I used to be here every single day and the lights have not changed. They still turn red every time. I haven't figured out how to keep them green yet. I don't know. There's a Timmy's over there. We're going to go get our daily dose of Timmy's and from there we're headed to the shop where we're getting everything fixed. We're really not looking forward to seeing how much it's going to cost to get it all fixed, but at the same time I just want to get it fixed whatever, just fix it. Walking the weasel first thing in the morning. Walking the weasel. That was a delicious muffin. I had a pumpkin spice muffin from Tim Hortons. It's a muffin that tastes like pumpkin pie. Mmm, mmm. Oh, you're going to go right there. You're going to warn me. I'm going to walk right into him. I'll take you to the fire hydrant, man. Fire hydrant. Way better, way better. Things massive, man. There you go, good boy. So I'm walking from Tim Hortons back to my truck, right? Whistling to myself. What am I going to say to you guys next? I'm looking at the ground.   What is all this stuff on the ground? Then I realized, oh yeah, we built this whole development. All of this. They built it all on a natural habitat for Canadian geese. This is where the Canadian geese have been coming probably for hundreds of years. This area used to be like a little lake and this is where they'd come, you know, have their babies and raise them. And then when it got cold, like now they take off to Mexico and North Carolina and Texas like, you know, the rest of us would love to, but our governments don't allow us to do that just yet. They put a line in the dirt there. The line is always keeping us up here in the cold. Anyways, so we got to stay up here in the cold. And yeah, so all of this was built where they always used to come and nest, right?   Good thing I didn't step in any of it because this whole parking lot and this whole area here just fills up with hundreds of geese every year, right? Because the geese come back from North Carolina and from the south. They come up north in every spring. And they come and line in the parking lot here and it's like a paved jungle. Like what happened to our home? Kind of a sad story actually, but yeah, so they just hang out here anyways. Why create a new home when you can just keep your old one?  I'm sure it drives the rich suburban people just right crazy. I don't want to disgust any of you or anything. It's all worn you in advance. It's not that disgusting, but they cleaned a lot of it up over here, but you see all those brown spots everywhere. Just up there, just up there. No diesel, don't eat that. Can you hear it? Can you hear it? Now it's not going to honk its horn. Honky horn train. I can hear it. Oh come on, honky horn. That's no fun. It's no fun. Why aren't you honking your horn? I didn't lay it on that thing. If I was driving that train, I would be hanging off the airplane. There it is. Isn't that beautiful? Maybe I have itchy nose. I'm trying to make my nose itch apparently. There's a train going through town. We just got home and got the truck all fixed up. I'll talk to you about it in a second. It's good to be home again. Home again. I'm not going to sing for you, don't worry. I only sing for myself. I'm greedy that way. So we spent all day literally all day getting these repairs done. Did I mention it was all day? You got all the hair on your lens. Has that been there a while? In a second here. What are you doing? That's not even a diesel hair. Where do you come from? Is there any more? I still got those two specs on the inside lens. I still got to figure out how to get those off of there. How does that even get in there? Anyways guys like I was saying, it is now with the clock over there say quarter after eight and I just got home. I slept in Winnipeg so I could be at Freightliner at eight a.m. this morning so that I would definitely get there first thing, right? Because you know if I sleep in my own bed here I've told you before I'm going to sleep in. So when I'm at home I don't wake up early. I'm just one of those guys. I'm a night owl. It's not like I sleep in late. I sleep in late but I stay up real late. I'm a night owl. I stay up till probably like three, four in the morning when I'm at home which really messes with my schedule when I have to leave first thing in the morning. I don't really like that when that happens. But you know, whatever it's all about being an adult. You got to be responsible about it, right? If you got to leave in the morning you can't just sleep in. Sometimes you just got to get up so I'm not always that lucky but if I can I'll take advantage of it and sleep in. Anyways, what are we talking about? Diesel. I don't want to say anything to good people. This is probably going to be a long vlog already because I'm not too sure if I'm going to connect this on to yesterday's footage. Probably. I'll just make it one vlog and I'll make it a Monday vlog and then you guys will have no videos on Saturday, Sunday. Sorry guys. You know, it's not going to happen all the time but everybody needs a break every now and then, right? Everything's okay though. Don't worry. We're going back to the daily videos. We will be leaving either tomorrow afternoon or the next day. Not too sure yet. I already know what my load is but we'll talk to you tomorrow. You're just going to have to tune in to find out. 4 a.m. Central Time, guys. There will be another vlog right here on Truck The Josh Vlogs.