The next talk is Malus DeWalck, she's an artist and writer from the Netherlands, and she's working with lots of different materials and media, and at the moment she's doing an 8-bit game. So the topic is why do we entromophize computers and dehumanize ourselves in the process? And we have a mumble, which is doing the translation. The talk is in English, and we will translate into French and German.  Thank you, Yatia. And thank you all for coming. My name is Malus DeWalck, and I'm going to talk about anthropomorphization. And I will approach this as a survival strategy. See how it works, and if it is effective. And when I'm speaking of big data, which is an umbrella term, my focus will be on the socio-technical aspect of the phenomenon, the assumptions and beliefs surrounding big data, and on research using data exhaust or found data such as status updates on social media, web searches, and credit card payments. And now my slides are frozen. Oh gosh. I will in a moment. Gosh, it's completely frozen. I'm very sorry, technical staff. I have to exit if I can. I have to get rid of something, I think.   But they're going to have a coffee soon, and then it's going to work. I think I know what the problem is. Start, yeah. I'm sorry. It's really not working. All right. Let's see if we're back. Okay. Okay. So sorry for the interruption. I wanted to start by letting Silicon Valley itself tell a story about technology. I'm really sorry about the interruption. So Silicon Valley propaganda. During our lifetime, we're about to see the transformation of the human race, truly something that blows my mind every time I think about it. People have no idea how fast the world is changing, and I want to give you a sense of that because it fills me with awe and with an extraordinary sense of responsibility. I want to give you a sense of why now is different, why this decade, the next decade, is not interesting times, but the most extraordinary times ever in human history, and they truly are. What we're talking about here is the notion that faster, cheaper computing power, which is almost like a force of nature, is driving a whole slew of technologies. Technology being the force that takes what used to be scarce and make it abundant. That is why we're heading towards this extraordinary age of abundance. The future will not take care of itself. As we know, the world looks to America for progress, and America looks to California, and if you ask most Californians where they get their progress, they'll point towards the bay. But here at the bay, there is no place left to point, so we have to create solutions. And my goal is to simplify complexity, take internet technology and cross it with an old industry and magic and progress and big things can happen. I really think there are two fundamental paths for humans. One path is we stay on earth forever or some eventual extinction event wipes us out. I don't have a doomsday prophecy, but history suggests some doomsday event will happen. The alternative is becoming a space faring and multi-planetary species, and it will be really fun to go. You'll have a great time. We will settle Mars. And we should because it's cool. When it comes to space, I see it as my job to build infrastructure the hard way. I'm using my resources to put in that infrastructure so that the next generation of people can have a dynamic entrepreneurial system as interesting as we see on the internet today. We want the population to keep growing on this planet. We want to keep using more energy per capita. Death makes me very angry. Probably the most extreme form of inequality is between people who are alive and people who are dead. I have the idea that aging is plastic, that it's encoded. And if something is encoded, you can crack the code. If you can crack the code, you can hack the code. And thermodynamically, there should be no reason we can't defer entropy indefinitely. We can end aging forever. This is not about Silicon Valley billionaires living forever off the blood of young people. It's about a Star Trek future where no one dies of preventable diseases where life is fair. Health technology is becoming an information technology where we can read and edit our own genomes. Clearly, it is possible through technology to make death optional. Yes, our bodies are information processing systems. We can enable human transformations that would rival Marvel comics, super masculinity, ultra endurance, super radiation resistance. You could have people living on the moons of Jupiter who'd be modified in this way and they could physically harvest energy from the gamma rays they were exposed to. Former culture connected with the ideology of the future, promoting technical progress, artificial intellect, multi-body, immortality and cyborgization. We are at the beginning of the beginning, the first hour of day one. There have never been more opportunities. The greatest products of the next 25 years have not been invented yet. You are not too late. We're going to take over the world, one robot at a time. It's going to be an AI that is able to source, create, solve, and answer just what is your desire. I mean, this is an almost God-like view of the future. AI is going to be magic, especially in the digital manufacturing world. What is going to be created will effectively be a God. The idea needs to spread before the technology. The church is how we spread the word, the gospel. If you believe in it, start a conversation with someone else and help them understand the same things. Computers are going to take over from humans, no question. But when I got that thinking in my head about if I'm going to be treated in the future as a pet to these smart machines, well, I'm going to treat my own pet dog really nice. But in the end, we may just have created the species that is above us. Chaining it isn't going to be the solution, as it will be stronger than any change could put on. The existential risk that is associated with AI, we will not be able to beat AI. So then, as the saying goes, if you can't beat them, join them. History has shown us we aren't going to win this war by changing human behavior, but maybe we can build systems that are so locked down that humans lose the ability to make dumb mistakes. Until we gain the ability to upgrade the human brain, it's the only way. Let's stop pretending we can hold back the development of intelligence when there are clear massive short-term economic benefits to those who develop it, and instead understand the future and have it treat us like a beloved elder who created it. As a company, one of our greatest cultural strengths is accepting the fact that if you're going to invent, you're going to disrupt. Progress is happening because there is economic advantage to having machines work for you and solve problems for you. People are chasing that. AI, the term has become more of a broad, almost marketing-driven term, and I'm probably okay with that. What matters is what people think of when they hear this. We are in a deadly race between politics and technology. The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism. These were all quotes. Every single one. Not only Silicon Valley CEOs speak of technology in mysterious ways, let's see some examples from the media. Artificial intelligence regulation, let's not regulate mathematics. A headline from import.io from May 2016 about the European general data protection regulation. The article concludes autonomous cars should be regulated as cars. They should safely deliver users to their destinations in the real world, and overall reduce the number of accidents. How they achieve this is irrelevant. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves, which comes from the super famous article, The End of Theory from Chris Anderson in Wired Magazine 2008. Google creates an AI that can teach itself to be better than humans, headlined from the independent. The article continues, the company's AI division DeepMind has unveiled AlphaGo Zero, an extremely advanced system that managed to accumulate thousands of years of human knowledge within days.  We're deeply sorry for the unintended and hurtful tweets from Tay, which do not represent who we are or what we stand for, nor how we designed Tay. And then the PC World article, AI just 3D printed a brand new Rembrandt, and it's shockingly good. The subtitle reads, the next Rembrandt project used data and deep learning to produce uncanny results. Advertising firm J. Walter Thompson unveiled a 3D printed painting called The Next Rembrandt, based on 346 paintings of the old master. Not just PC World, but many more articles touted similar titles presenting the painting to the public as if it were made by a computer, a 3D printer. AI and deep learning. It is clear though that the programmers who worked on the project are not computers and neither are the people who tagged the 346 Rembrandt paintings by hand. The painting was made by a team of programmers and researchers and it took them 18 months to do so. What is communicated through these messages is that the computer did it, yet there is no strong AI as in consciousness in machines at this moment, only very clever automation, meaning it was really us. We comprehend the role and function of non-human actors rationally, but still intuitively approach them differently. We anthropomorphize and stories about the intelligent things machines can do and force the belief in the human-like agency of machines. So why do we do it? I'd like to think of this as two survival strategies that found each other in big data and AI discourse. George Sarkadakis in our own image describes the root of anthropomorphization. During the evolution of the modern mind, humans acquired and developed general-purpose language through social language and this first social language was a way of grooming, of creating social cohesion. We gained theory of mind to believe that other people have thoughts, desires, intentions and feelings of their own empathy and this led to the describing of the world in social terms, perceiving everything around us as agents, possessing mind, including the non-human, when hunting anthropomorphizing animals had a great advantage because you could strategize, predict their movements. They show through multiple experiments, raves and nas, we're picking up on this anthropomorphization and they show through multiple experiments that we haven't changed that much. Through multiple experiments they show how people treat computers, television and new media like real people and places even though test subjects were completely unaware of it, they responded to computers as they would to people being polite, cooperative, attributing personality characteristics such as aggressiveness, humor, expertise and even gender, meaning we haven't evolved that much, we still do it. Microsoft unfortunately misinterpreted their research and developed the innocent yet much-hated clippy-to-paper clip appearing one year later in Office 97. This survival strategy found its way into another one, the oracle, survival through predicting events. The second strategy is trying to predict the future, to steer events in our favor in order to avoid disaster. The fear of death has inspired us throughout the ages to try and predict the future and it has led us to consult oracles and to creating a new one. Because we cannot predict the future in the midst of lives, many insecurities we desperately crave the feeling of being in control over our destiny. We have developed ways to calm our anxiety, to comfort ourselves. And what we do is we obfuscate that human hand in a generation of messages that require an objective or authoritative feel. Although disputed it's commonly believed that the Delphic oracle delivered messages from her god Apollo in a state of trance induced by intoxicating vapors arising from the chasm over which she was seated. Possessed by her god the oracle spoke, ecstatically and spontaneously. Priests of the temple then translated her gibberish into the prophecies the seekers of advice were sent home with and Apollo had spoken. Nowadays we turn to data for advice. The oracle of big data functions in a similar way to the oracle of Delphi. Algorithms programmed by humans are fed data and consequently spit out numbers that are then translated and interpreted by researchers into the prophecies the seekers of advice are sent home with. The bigger the data set the more accurate the results data has spoken. We are brought closer to the truth to reality as it is unmediated by us subjective biased and error prone humans. This oracle inspires great hope it's a utopia and this is best put in words in the article the end of theory by Anderson where he states that with enough data the numbers can speak for themselves. We can forget about taxonomy ontology psychology who knows why people do what they do. The point is they do it and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data the numbers speak for themselves. This oracle is of course embraced with great enthusiasm by database and storage businesses as shown here in an oracle presentation slide. High five. Getting it right one out of ten times and using the one success story to strengthen the belief in big data superpowers happens a lot in the media. A peculiar example is the story on motherboard about how Cambridge Analytica helped Trump win the elections by psychologically profiling the entire American population and using targeted Facebook ads to influence the results of the election. This story evokes the idea that they know more about you than your own mother. The article reads more likes could even surpass what a person thought they knew about themselves and although this form of manipulation is seriously scary and very undemocratic as Kathy O'Neill author of weapons of mass destruction notes don't believe the hype. It wasn't just Trump. Everyone was doing it. Hillary was using the groundwork a startup funded by Google's Eric Schmidt. Obama used groundwork too but the groundwork somehow comes across a lot more cute compared to Cambridge Analytica funded by billionaire Robert Mercer who also is heavily invested in alt-right media outlet Breitbart who describes itself as a killing machine waging the war for the West. He also donated Cambridge Analytica service to the Brexit campaign. The motherboard article and many others describing the incredibly detailed knowledge Cambridge Analytica has on American citizens were amazing advertising for the company but most of all a warning sign that applying big data research to elections creates a very undemocratic asymmetry and available information and undermines the notion of an informed citizenry. Dana Boyd and Kate Crawford described the beliefs attached to big data as a mythology. The widespread belief that large data sets offer a higher form of intelligence and knowledge that can generate insights that were previously impossible with the aura of truth, objectivity and accuracy. The deconstruction of this myth was attempted as early as 1984. In a spreadsheet way of knowledge Stephen Levi describes how the authoritative look of a spreadsheet and the fact that it was done by a computer has a strong persuasive effect on people leading to the acceptance of the proposed model of reality as gospel. He says fortunately few would argue that all relations between people can be quantified and manipulated by formulas of human behavior no faultless assumptions and so no perfect model can be made. Tim Harford also refers to faith when he describes four assumptions underlying big data research. The first uncanny accuracy is easy to overrate if we simply ignore false positives. Oh sorry. The claim that causation has been knocked off its pedestal is fine if we are making predictions in a stable environment but not if the world is changing. If you do not understand why things correlate you cannot know what may break down this correlation either. The promise that sampling bias does not matter in such large data sets is simply not true. There is lots of bias in data sets. As for the idea of why with enough data the numbers speak for themselves that seems hopelessly naive in data sets where spurious patterns vastly outnumber genuine discoveries. This last point is described by Nicholas Taleb who writes that big data research has brought cherry picking to an industrial level. Line Weber in a 2007 paper demonstrated that data mining techniques could show a strong but spurious relationship between the changes in the S&P 500 stock index and butter production in Bangladesh. What is strange about this mythology that large data sets offer some higher form of intelligence is that it is paradoxical. It attributes human qualities to something while at the same time considering it to be more objective and more accurate than humans. But these beliefs can exist side by side. Consulting this oracle uncritically has quite far-reaching implications. For one, it dehumanizes humans by asserting that human involvement through hypothesis and interpretation is unreliable. And only by removing ourselves from the equation can we finally see the world as it is. The practical consequence of this dynamic is that it is no longer possible to argue with the outcome of big data analysis because first of all, it's supposedly bias-free, interpretation-free, you can't question it. You cannot check if it is bias-free because the algorithms governing the analysis are often completely opaque. This becomes painful when you find yourself in the wrong category of a social sorting algorithm guiding real-world decisions on insurance, mortgage work, border checks, scholarships, and so on. Exclusion from certain privileges is only the most optimistic scenario. So it is not as effective as we might hope. It has a dehumanizing dark side, so why do we believe? How did we come so infatuated with information? Our idea about information changed radically in the previous century from small statement of fact to the essence of man's inner life. And this shift started with the advent of cybernetics and information theory in the 40s and 50s where information was suddenly seen as a means to control a system, any system, be it mechanical, physical, biological, cognitive, or social. Here you see Norbert Wiener's moth, a machine he built as part of a public relations stunt financed by Life Magazine. The photos with him and his moth were unfortunately never published because according to Life's editors, it didn't illustrate the human characteristics of computers very well. Norbert Wiener in the human use of human beings wrote, to live effectively is to live with adequate information. Thus, communication and control belong to the essence of man's inner life, even as they belong to his life in society. And almost simultaneously, Shannon published a mathematical theory of communication, a theory of signals transmitted over distance. John Durham Peters in speaking into the air describes how over time this information theory got reinterpreted by social scientists who mistook signal for significance. Orid Halpern in beautiful data describes how Alan Turing and Bertrand Russell had proved conclusively in struggling with the Encheidung's problem that many analytic functions could not be logically represented or mechanically executed and therefore machines were not human minds. She asks the very important question of why we have forgotten this history and do we still regularly equate reason with rationality. Having forgotten this, 10 years later in 58, artificial intelligence research began comparing computers and humans. Simon and Newell wrote, the program computer and human problem server are both species belonging to the genus information processing system. In the 80s, information was granted an even more powerful status, that of commodity. Like it or not, information has finally surpassed material goods as our basic resource, bon appetit. How did we become so infatuated with information? Sorry. Yeah, this is an image of a medieval drawing where the humors, the liquids in the body were seen as the essence of our intelligence and the functioning of our system, a metaphor for our intelligence. By the 1500s, automata powered by springs and gears had been devised, inspiring leading thinkers such as René Descartes to assert that humans are complex machines. The mind or soul was immaterial, completely separated from the body, only able to interact with the body through the pineal gland, which he considered the seed of the soul. And we still do it. The brain is commonly compared to a computer with the role of physical hardware played by the brain and our thoughts serving as software. The brain is information processor. It is a metaphor that is sometimes mistaken for reality. Because of this, the belief in the Oracle of big data is not such a great leap. Information is the essence of consciousness in this view. We've come full circle. We see machines as human-like and view ourselves as machines. So does it work? We started out with two survival strategies, predicting the behavior of others through anthropomorphizing and trying to predict the future through oracles. The first has helped us survive in the past, allows us to be empathic towards others, human and non-human. The second has comforted us throughout the ages, creating the idea of control, of being able to predict and prevent disaster. So how are they working for us today? We definitely have reasons to be concerned. With a sort of damoclast hanging over our heads, global warming setting in motion a chain of catastrophes threatening our survival, facing the inevitable death of capitalism's myth of eternal growth as earth's resources run out, we are in a bit of a pickle. Seeing our consciousness as separate from our bodies, like software and hardware, that offers some comforting options. One option is that since human consciousness is so similar to computer software, it can be transferred to a computer. Ray Kurzweil, for example, believes that it will soon be possible to download human minds to a computer with immortality as a result. Alliance to Rescue Civilization by Boros and Shapiro is a project that aims to back up human civilization in a lunar facility. The project artificially separates the hardware of the planet with its oceans and soils and the data of human civilization. And last but not least, the most explicit and radical separation as well as the least optimistic outlook on our future, Elon Musk's space X plan to colonize Mars presented in September last year. The goal of the presentation being to make living on Mars seem possible within our lifetime possible and fun. A less extreme version of these attempts to escape doom is that with so much data at our fingertips and clever scientists will figure out a way to solve our problems. Soon we'll laugh at our panic over global warming safely aboard our CO2 vacuum cleaners. With this belief we don't have to change our lives, our economies, our politics, we can carry on with out making radical changes. Is this apathy warranted? What is happening while we are filling up the world's hard disks? Well, information is never disembodied, it always needs a carrier and the minerals used in the technology hosting our data come from conflict zones resulting in slavery and ecocide. As for instance in the Coltan and considerate mines in Congo, gold mines in Ghana. Minerals used in technology hosting our data come from unregulated zones leading to extreme pollution as here in the black sludge lake in Baotau in China. E-waste is exported to unregulated zones and server farms spit out an equal amount of CO2 as the global aviation industry. Our data cannot be separated from the physical and its physical side is not so pretty. And what is happening is that the earth is getting warmer and climate research is not based on Twitter feeds but on measurements yet somehow largely has been ignored for decades. Scientific consensus was reached in the 80s and if you compare the dangerously slow response to this to the response given to the threat of terrorism which has rapidly led to new laws even new presidents. This shows how stories, metaphors and mythologies in the world of social beings have more impact than scientific facts and how threats that require drastic changes to the status quo are willfully ignored. So does this survival strategy work? This mythology is believe in taking ourselves out of the equation to bring us closer to truth to reality as it is separating ourselves from that which we observe blinds us to the trouble we are in. And our true nature embodied intelligence not a brain in a jar. An organism completely intertwined with its environment its existence completely dependent on the survival of the organisms it shares this planet with. We can't help to anthropomorphize to approach everything around us as part of our social sphere with minds and agencies and that is fine it makes us human. It allows us to study the world around us with empathy. The most important thing is that the metaphor is not mistaken for reality. The computer creating thinking memorizing writing reading learning understanding and people being hardwired stuck in a loop unable to compute interfacing with and reprogramming ourselves those metaphors are so embedded in our culture. You can only hope to create awareness about them. If there is more awareness about the misleading descriptions of machines as human like and humans as machine like and all of reality as an information process it is more likely that there will be less blind enchantment with certain technology and more questions asked about its purpose and demands. There is no strong AI yet only very clever automation. At this moment in history machines are proxies for human agendas and ideologies. There are many issues that need addressing. As Kate Crawford and Meredith Whitaker point out in the AI now report recent examples of AI deployment such as during the US elections and brexit or Facebook revealing teenagers emotional states to advertisers looking to target depressed teens show how the interests of those deploying advanced data systems can overshadow the public interest acting in ways contrary to individual autonomy and collective welfare often without this being visible at all to those affected. The report points to many I highly recommend reading it and here are a few concerns concerns about social safety nets and human resource distributions when the dynamic of labor and employment change workers most likely to be affected are women and minorities automated decision making systems are often unseen and there are few established means to assess their fairness to contest and rectify wrong or harmful decisions or impacts those directly impacted oh sorry automated no sorry lost those directly impacted by deployment of AI systems rarely have a role in designing them and to assess their fairness to contest and rectify wrong and harmful decisions or impacts lack of methods measuring and assessing social and economic impacts now let's keep scrolling back but in any case there is a great chance of a like me bias because of the uniform uniformity of those developing these systems seeing the Oracle we've constructed for what it is means to stop comforting comforting ourselves to ask questions a quote from super intelligence the idea that eats smart people by machay chiklowski depressing ethical questions in machine learning are not about machines becoming self aware and taking over the world but about how people can exploit other people or through careless carelessness introduce immoral behavior into automated systems instead of waiting for the nerd rapture or for Elon Musk to whisk us off the planet it is important to come to terms with a more modest perception of ourselves and our machines facing the ethical repercussions of the systems we are putting in place having the real discussion not the one we hope for but the hard one that requires actual change and a new mythology one that works not only for us but for all those human and non-human we share the planet with thank you thank you malosh is there any questions like you would have one minute okay so thank you again given the bigger applause again thank you


Approximately one in four children experience child abuse or neglect in their lifetime, according to the National Library of Medicine. Think about a normal routine day. We're bound to see groups of children heading to school and universities, it's heartbreaking to do the math. Parents are viewed as superhumans, people whom we can rely upon, who are supposed to have our back at any stage. But a lot of times they can say hurtful and destructive things without realizing the psychological damage they cause their kids. A study, including German citizens, showed that negative words cause subjects to release stress and anxiety-inducing hormones, so words have an impact. Whether you're a parent or a child yourself, these eight things can be helpful in recognizing the toxicity that surrounds children. Number one, let me do it. On the face of it, this doesn't necessarily seem negative, but when said in a condescending manner, it can make a child feel that they're incapable of producing an efficient outcome. Think of this.  How does that make them feel? It feels discouraging and cuts down their confidence. This is a manifestation of over-parenting, which is associated with higher levels of narcissism and more ineffective coping skills like internalizing and distancing, for example, which in turn are related to greater anxiety and stress in young adults and children. Number two, can you change your appearance?  You stop them so that they can fix their appearance according to what you think would look better. Even when parents know their children inside out, telling someone that the way they've chosen to look is not appealing can be devastating to handle. You being judgmental might not only bring down their confidence, but also make them shy away from being their true selves and showcasing their own taste. If prolonged, it could emerge in forms of self-consciousness or even eating disorders. In a study by UCL in 2015, the quality of the parent-child connection was examined using a sample of 5,362 people, wherein they were shown to be happier and more content as adults if they felt their parents were less psychologically controlling and more caring when they were young. Number three, you disappoint me. When your child gets to know that there are disappointments to you, it can make them feel inadequate as they're not able to meet the standards you've set for them as their parents. By saying this, you're telling them that they don't live up to your expectations and therefore, feelings of unworthiness flow from within. Number four, it's your fault.  One of your parents comes home from work and they unleash their intense anger and rage on you. How are you, as a 5-year-old, bound to feel? The impact of a parent's rage may be felt by children even after they grow up, which can include rising depression, social alienation, and abuse. In a study involving children aged 5 to 6, those who enacted achievement situations in which teacher criticism was presented were more likely to make global negative self-judgments, including negative judgments of their goodness. Number five, why don't you try to be more like them? It's natural to idolize someone, but asking a child to be like someone else does not only make them feel ignored but unaccepted the way they are. This constant comparison by their supposed strongest ally, whether intentional or not, can have devastating consequences for a child. As a result, many people suffer from low self-esteem, chronic self-doubt, and even depression.  Not letting a child feel their emotions is one of the worst things a parent could ever do. Emotional neglect follows when a parent fails to pay attention to their child's emotional needs. As a result, they stop seeking support and these issues can get manifested in their adult life. They might end up feeling clueless while trying to deal with their emotions. In a 2021 longitudinal study of 3,265 children, it was found that childhood emotional neglect was significantly associated with depressive symptoms in late adolescence. The emotionally neglected children are prone to feeling guilty, becoming emotionally unavailable themselves, and have a hard time trusting others. Worst case, they may even keep such a parenting style running when it's their turn. Seven, they have it worse than you. Have you heard of the term toxic positivity? Let's break it down. If a child indicates that they need their parents to acknowledge the sad and depressed emotions that they're feeling, but all they're offered is a remark which forces them to be grateful for what they have, the child is likely to feel that their emotions are invalidated. This willful suppression of negative emotions or an unhealthy obsession with positive thinking is toxic positivity. In a study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was discovered that toxic positivity had an impact on college students, psychological functioning, their cognition, emotion, and behavior, and particularly their emotional state. Feelings of embarrassment and ability to express their emotions and invalidation of their emotional experiences were common. Eight, we'll do this the next time we're here. Children can be fuzzy and adamant on things, however, that doesn't mean it's okay for parents to make empty promises about instances that they know very well won't happen. Young kids honor their own word and anticipate that others will do the same. Getting a promise broken by a parent can be viewed as betrayal by a child and may deteriorate through a relationship. Whereas, when that word is kept, it can help foster a sense of trust and certainty. Each parent comes with their own flaws. Even when they blurt out these things unintentionally, a child can be easily influenced. Have you heard these phrases before? Let us know which ones and the impact they had on you.


So this vlog is going to be a little bit different from previous vlogs. I got this idea because I've seen actually like a few content creators do something like this and every time I've seen it I've been like that is a great idea. Not like, I mean partially for content obviously because I decided to do it, but mostly I was like for life, like that's a good idea. By the title you already probably know what this is going to be, but so I'm swapping my average screen time on my phone for reading time. It's a video idea, clearly I'm doing it, but also like way to get my life in order and because I'm making content out of it that like motivates me to actually do it instead of being like theoretically I should swap screen time for reading time, but because it's a video then I feel like pressure like obligated to actually stick to that. Anyway so my average screen time I'm going to use not last week but the week before because last week I was scrambling to like finish books that I had lives for so I was like my screen time was actually down last week because I was like trying to finish books right before the live so that's not actually really an accurate representation of like what my normal screen time is like. My average screen time the week before last was six hours and 15 minutes a day, meaning on my phone. That is wild. This will be a little bit tricky because a lot of that in me it's cumulative and a lot of it is like when I'm like working or doing whatever then like you know I finish a work task and I treat myself to like scrolling through Instagram for however long and then like and then when I'm not working I also do it and then when I'm listening to audiobooks I'm sometimes scrolling so like cumulatively that adds up and also some I mean if it's an audiobook and I'm listening to you while I'm doing that it is also reading time so like it is I'm not trying to say it's not bad it's very bad but like yeah anyway so the way I'm going to approach this this week basically every time that I would normally be picking up my phone I'm going to have a book next to me or my audiobooks so like this week's books and then if I get through these then I have obviously others on my TBR but I need to finish the last or start and finish the last argument of Kings which is obviously a reread but we're recording the podcast episode for it this weekend so I need to get this one done not that I really need to because like I read that this will be my hey cat stop it this will be my fourth time we're getting it anyway so this will be my audiobook for this week and then my physical book Jade City by fondly so basically my plan is that when while I'm working which is again when a lot of this like incidental screen time happens I'll have a book next to me yeah I'll have a book next to me so that instead of scrolling through Instagram for five minutes ten minutes more don't tell my boss I will read a chapter of Jade City alternatively I will listen to like if I decided to hey stop it alternatively if I want to like use my break to like a go and get a call anyway alternatively if I am using my break to like get up and do something like go get a cup of coffee go get a snack whatever then I'll listen to a chapter or say like 15 minutes of the audiobook for the last argument of Kings and then obviously when I'm done with the work then that's pretty straight forward instead of being on my phone scrolling mindlessly I will be either listening to this in which case I will not be scrolling through my phone while I listen I will I don't do anything more productive TBD on what that would be maybe a meal prepping for the following day that's a good thing to do anyway or you know physically reading Jade City so that's the plan and basically six hours a day reading instead of scrolling through my phone um really increase the amount of reading that I can get done in a week obviously I still am going to check social media so for that too I'll set a timer and I think like in the morning I'll set a timer for like 10 minutes to like check messages reply to messages etc and then like around noon five minutes and then before like in the evening at some point not like right before bed because that's a bad idea but like in the evening sometime also 10 minutes to like check messages reply to messages etc that is the plan this week and we'll see how we go just time for a quick update before the live show I have tonight which starts like 15 minutes so I have hit my goal basically today because I failed to mention my intro this is the last day of February and the last book I had to finish Worship of Destiny and I had six hours at the speed at which I was listening to it I had six hours left like accounting for the speeding up six hours left in the audiobook so I did finish it today I woke up at like 6 a.m. and I start work at 9 so I listened to it for three hours before sort of work and then listen to it like here and there throughout my day so I did finish Worship of Destiny so much to unpack so I was also chatting with Mara about it and she finished it before I did this month I was behind so we were kind of like unpacking our thoughts and she and I are gonna be chatting about live ship versus far seer sometimes soonish date is TBD as of the filming of this clip but anyway yeah and then I did since I finished my TBR for February and I still had you know hours left today I started last argument of things so I already hit the six hours that I was aiming for with this and then I've listened to not quite two hours in the audiobook and I listened to it at triple speed so whatever that math comes out to so six plus hours today have been consumed but I do have a lot of tonight and I don't think I'm gonna read anything after that so we did it today on my screen time has been a little high because of that I did have to talk tomorrow about the end of a life ship traders so had to use phone for that but yeah day one of this I would say is a success so day two is the first day of March so I get to start on my March TBR which is all ready for me to go over there but I must dash to the Murakami live on Hilary's channel good morning happy Tuesday I thought we'd have a quick chat over breakfast I did my check my stats hey stop it for yesterday I decided to like sort of log it because I figured by the end of the week I'd forget would be harder to figure it out especially for like my screen time my phone tracks it but anyway so yesterday I did I calculated it it was only audiobooks and I did six hours and 37 minutes of reading listening so zero time physically reading and my screen time was actually over three hours yesterday now like I wanted to blame this on the fact that I was chatting on Voxer with Mara about Ship of Destiny because I finally finished it and that was a chunk of it it's not like it wasn't but that was my third most used app yesterday my top two most used apps yesterday were Instagram at the very top as usual and then discord and then Voxer and like today I know I've used Instagram quite a bit because we're trying to schedule a podcast episode and so like we're doing it via Instagram so like that's not my fault but I did wake up before my alarm this morning and all the time but I couldn't get back to sleep so the time between me waking up and my arm going off I just like decided to give myself some phone time then on Tuesdays and Thursdays I try before work to spend a couple hours replying to my comments on my channel and watching other people's YouTube videos and like catching up on watching and commenting because like I mentioned in other videos that like I wanted to set specific time aside for doing that instead of just being like when I have time because then I never will have time anyway so I did that this morning woke up was on my phone for a while then main coffee and like reply to comments and commented myself and now I have made breakfast and when I also you know figured out calculated my screen time versus reading time and now I'm gonna finish this breakfast and I have to go to the office today so to and from I will be obviously listening to last argument of Kings and I'm hoping to use my lunch today to film some videos so that's happening and then yeah this evening I have no plans besides probably editing videos in my modest but I'll try to squeeze in some physical reading time since I haven't done any of that yet and show your interest to know what I'm gonna think of Jane City as you're applying to a bunch of comments this morning on my TBR video and like half the comments were like oh no you're not gonna like Jade City or I love it so like you better like it no pressure or I'm so excited for you to read it cuz it's so good and I'm just like so anxious I feel like there's a lot of pressure this is why I haven't read it yet cuz I just feel like it's so hyped and then because people know that I often dislike hyped things I don't know I feel like a disproportionate amount of pressure as concerned to do so anyway hopefully I'll start it today I have to finish last argument of Kings before Sunday but that's super doable any who's ease yes that's that's where we're at with things so I'm gonna finish breakfast and head out and listen to last argument hi to hell I have decided I'm done with work which means I will check my email again in like five minutes but no I'm done it's been a long day I'm pooped I can't think anymore so it's a perfect state of mind to be in to read a book I can't think anymore I'll read yeah that's why I'm checking in because I'm gonna read I did manage to film my wrap-up for February over lunch knocked that out I do still need to edit and upload it but that's a tomorrow problem I have made some headway on last argument of Kings I was at an hour and 49 I believe and I'm now at six hours at like the normal speed of the audiobook I was at an hour 49 and now I'm at six hours so that means I listened to about well let's let's round it up a lot let's say I was at two hours and I'm now at six hours so I read I mean I listened to four hours of it I listened to it at three times speed so and hour and 20 minutes yes yes an hour and 20 minutes ish of listening time is that it really I thought it would be more a long day can't tell anyway so I'm gonna start reading Jade City and oh yeah the note for my page is still in here from when she sent it to me if I remember I try to put like a book comes with a note I put it in the book so years on when I'm going through my library I can remember that once upon a time I had friends yes okay so I'm gonna set a time or not a timer but a stopwatch um while I'm reading so I can so I can know how long I'm reading that's that's the general idea that's kind of what we're doing the whole point of this book great okay cool I hope you can't tell like I cannot even think okay let's do it Wednesday unlike yesterday when I woke up before my alarm I snooze my alarm 50 bajillion times this morning um so did not wake up crazy early like I intended to but when I woke up I did calculate my time for yesterday my screen time went down but not as much as I intend as I thought honestly so yesterday my total audiobook time was an hour and 20 my total reading reading time was an hour and 20 and my screen time was two hour 20 so I did have more reading time than screen time because it was to altogether two hours 40 minutes so it's only 20 minutes more so I was like what the heck I swear I didn't which just goes to show how like it just gets you cuz you don't even know you're doing it so I checked like what I was doing like what were the most used apps it was Instagram was the most used but I was only on Instagram for 37 minutes altogether throughout the whole day and I was gas and as I mentioned I was trying to schedule when we're gonna record the podcast episode so it's always a little bit of it and I was also scheduling some other things so like that's a little bit of it and then I put a grocery order in on Instagram as well as the next biggest one so Instagram and then Instagram and then the rest was like I was on YouTube for 10 minutes Boxer for eight minutes discord for seven minutes my work email for four minutes Goodreads for four minutes so like it's mainly Instagram and Instagram was high partly because of scheduling not like just my list scrolling so it's you know it is what it is anyway so yeah I'm having coffee now from my brand new color changing at Red Rising Mug which is so cool it arrived yesterday so I had some tea last night from it cuz I couldn't resist.  Kaz why are you up on top of my bookshelf? Kaz look at me when I talk to you. Kazy Kaz.  Kaz you know you're in trouble come on why why you want to get sprayed?  As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by my child I'm just drinking coffee for my very cool new mug and I'm gonna read some more of Jade City because yeah I haven't even talked about Jade City. I made it to um I finished the first five chapters of Jade City. It's very early to tell obviously but like I'm into it and I wanted to read more but I just got sleepy um clearly I needed sleep since I went to bed kind of early ash and then slept a bit late. Anyway yeah so I would like to read like a couple chapters this morning while I drink my coffee and then throughout the day and I'll do my timer again and we'll see how we do and I will not be checking my phone no no no no no no I did like even though I said I would set a timer to check my phone I didn't do that yesterday so I'm really going to put my phone on airplane mode and only use it for the timer um except for like a designated time when like I'll set a timer like while I have lunch or something um for like 10 minutes to like check otherwise nope so uh didn't check in when I finished his work because I just wanted to read Jade City more tonight before going to bed but I'm gonna go to bed now or like read in bed before bed so I wanted to check in before I do that so I'm not like groggy and like about fall asleep and I'm like oh I stopped checking anyway um so since I will have some more reading time tonight I'll get my final count for the day tomorrow morning but so far today my physical reading time all throughout the day and then after work is five hours not too bad and then my audiobooking time I'm at 14 hours in the audiobook now okay I started at six hours I'm now at 14 hours so that's eight hours divided by three two and a little over two and a half hours listening time and five hours physical reading time in my screen time I did check that earlier this evening and it was like just under an hour and a half altogether I haven't checked the breakdown of that um I did have some phone calls today I don't know if it counts that I guess we'll check much more in the morning but yeah I've mainly just been just uh binging drained city and we'll continue to binge it tonight it is uh it's 9 30 p.m um and I go to bed usually like 10 30 or 11 except for the nights that I'm binging something and I stay up till four in the morning it's only extremes here anyway um yeah I meant to check in like earlier this evening or this afternoon whatever but I was just so I like deep into this book so yeah half-way through um yeah someone keep reading today I think was much more successful than yesterday or Monday Monday was not my fault because I had a live show yesterday was my fault today though the hell of reading um so yeah anyway that's my my update for you not a ton anyway yes that's that's all I have to say okay great okay good night good morning happy Thursday I stayed up past midnight or just about two midnight reading drained city I went to get some water I stopped my timer and when I came back to start it again I saw that it was midnight and I was like I guess anytime that I read past now should count towards tomorrow and then I was like you should count towards tomorrow because you should go to bed right now so I was like okay okay I'm done I'm done I'm done go to bed so I went to bed just like just after that so my final count for tomorrow I calculated that for good because I was at midnight so that you couldn't get more final than that so um my audiobook time was two hours and a little over two and a half hours my physical reading time came to 10 minutes less than seven hours so six hours and 50 minutes and um my screen time was an hour and 40 minutes definitely better than the day before my screen time went down by about exactly 40 minutes so my reading time went up by a lot which is less to do with this project I think and more to do with how addicted I am to this book I have so when I checked in last night I was halfway through now I'm I think uh when I entered it on Goodreads um I'm like at 60% now so yeah I only have this much left because yeah these like darker pages I think are like either excerpts or notes yeah it's extras so like I only have this much left to go so I'm gonna finish it today I think unless something wild happens to to make that not happen like I kind of just I have some time now before work I think I mentioned that my the schedule I've set for myself which I had straight from many times since the beginning of the year um is that Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays I wake up early and before work I write or work on my writing if not not necessarily maybe writing anything but doing work related to my writing so I set that set that time aside for that anything to do with that and then Tuesdays and Thursdays I get up early before work to reply to comments on my channel to watch booktube videos and comment on them and just like to catch up with with that but I didn't do any writing yesterday because I woke up late and one that also just did some reading today I also woke up late because I went to bed at midnight and what time I do have before work I just want to read so this week um it's been it's been a different week anyway which I guess it would need to be since this vlog project would change matters but that wasn't one of the things that it was supposed to change um yeah I think I'm just going to read this morning and I'll check in with you later well friends um I have finished both books now and I only started the one Tuesday I was I Monday was just finishing Ship of Destiny and doing my live show so um I have still tomorrow to go and the rest of this evening although it is just after 10 o'clock so let me go to bed I'll probably go to bed pretty soon but then again I'm pretty buzzing from the end of Jade City lots of uh rapid heartbeat moments so I'm not particularly sleepy right now my also I realized I never like looked at the breakdown of my screen time for yesterday so I did look at it and um a huge chunk of my screen time my most used app was clock because like I realized that like when I turn the stopwatch on to like count my reading minutes if I don't like actively like shut off my phone it just leaves the screen it leaves it like lit up like it doesn't go to sleep or whatever um so like there were like multiple times or just left it running and I was like oh shit I should you know uh lock my phone instead of letting the screen just like waste battery but yeah so um my screen time was actually like a lot lower than it seemed because like big chunk of my screen time was just the clock to check my reading um anywho's easy today's reading my uh audiobook time was four hours and 30 minutes a little over four hours and 30 minutes so I finished the last argument of kings my stopwatch says three hours and 11 minutes to finish jade city so all together that's seven seven and a half seven three quarters hours that I spent on reading today um not shabby so I guess what I've learned is that I should never use my phone if I want to get reading done which I mean I obviously already knew that but it's also not realistic because I know I have so many messages that I have to catch up on um that are just piling up there are like hundreds of messages I have to catch up on um so realistically I can't do this every week if I want to like not be babayaga gas stop it so yeah two books for march already done I guess I didn't really like pick a book three for this week because I thought between finishing ship of destiny and getting cracking on these would be plenty I didn't anticipate all of this binge reading um I guess my next book will be well my next audiobook needs to be one of the ones I have out from the library so that I can finish it in time without before it expires I have like four out from the library right now they're all due around the same time so I currently have out from the library pamper menagerie bad feminist warbreaker more due and night at seven kingdoms uh well warbreaker is the longest might do warbreaker next so then yeah that's my plan tomorrow not tonight tomorrow I will start warbreaker on audio and tonight I mean I just want to read jade war it's not a tbr and I also don't have a copy so if I wanted to start a jade war I'd have to like get it on kindle which is which would be really silly because I ordered jade war already like the physical book it's just won't it's not here so anyway I have plenty books in my tbr I really shouldn't read jade war but that's all I want to do anyway anyway anyway um yeah I may maybe I'll start over enchanted next is my physical next physical book that or or blood of the fold because that'll take me I don't want to be finishing that book like the morning of the live again like I did in February anyway anyway anyway that's my update for you I'm probably going to get ready to vote a bit late and I have done my reading for the day so good night good morning and happy Friday so as I have my breakfast I was listening to or as I prepared my breakfast I should say I was listening to warbreaker started this morning I am two and a half hours into the audio book and I listened to it on triple speed so that means I have not been listening to it for an hour yet a little over 45 minutes I guess listen to it while I watch my face and brush my teeth and made my coffee and made my toast I thought about filming a clip of me making this toast but when I was editing my last vlog I realized that like every single day I made the same breakfast and filmed it and I was like they must be so sick of seeing this breakfast they must be like yeah we get it we know you eat this every day and I don't actually but like usually I get like uh I don't think you care about this but like I'll get in the mode where like there's a specific food that I really really want and I only want that food for like a week two weeks maybe even a month and then I'll be a sick of it and then I'll move on to the next thing that I only want that thing for like two weeks or whatever so for the last few weeks this has been like my almost everyday breakfast because it's just been what I've been wanting they go through phases so so sorry not a lot of variety with me there's just variety over time one thing I never get sick of is my favorite rice bowl I could eat that every single day and sometimes I do anyway that is not what this vlog is about I just wanted to I guess justify the lack of b-roll on food because you've seen me make that toast like 50 billion times so my final counts yesterday were for a little over four and a half hours listening um three hours and 10 minutes ish physically rating and an hour and 25 minutes on my phone but the breakdown of how I spend that time was as follows so on Thursday an hour and 25 right um my most used app was instagram but it was only 15 minutes so I think that's very good then audible six minutes so like that was part of reading and then there's like a death of a thousand cuts with the others like I used my texting app for five minutes used voxer for four minutes used ebay for four minutes was on the phone for two minutes the clock app yeah everything else is like tiny amounts that I'll like add up to yeah anyway so I think that's pretty good today it's already a little higher um I'm already at 20 minutes today I did want to send some people some messages because I haven't been all week so I just like quickly dipped in like went in and went out like said my piece and then was like bye so many messages to catch up on this weekend anyway anyway anyway one of the messages that I wanted to send this morning was because I started Warbreaker which Hilary picked for me and like we're not giving ratings until we do our live shows and so and I'm also like not going to tell her what I think of the books as I go um in terms of like liking or disliking but as soon as I started Warbreaker the prologue song like this is spoilery the prologue is sort of like getting you acquainted with the magic system and the main character or a main character the prologue's main character is like absorbing the breath which is like the magic system is breath and color based so anyway he's absorbing the like breaths of somebody else like it's like seems like life energy life force type vibes so he absorbs them and immediately describes being like his senses being heightened and everything sort of coming alive and feeling whatever and I was like oh so he just like put on some jade because I just finished jade city and like every time somebody either puts jade on for the first time or like acquires a new jade that's the same thing they're like my senses are heightened and like whatever so like having just like marathon jade city as soon as he was like my senses are right and I was like jade so I need to like unlearn the magic system that I've been on for the last few days and now switch to colors and breaths any hoesies um yeah so I gotta get to work pretty soon yes baby cute huh just pop your head up like a gopher we can see you you're not gonna know body can you come with me yes baby hi you can say hi the people they love you they want to see you you're cute I had my living room window open this morning there's a screen so she can't fall out but she loves when the window's open because then she can watch the birds and chirp at me complaining that she can't get to the birds but I had to close it because it makes a lot of noise like you can hear a lot of the ambient noise from the city streets outside so that's why she's over here now she's been at the window all morning but I closed the window to film this clip and she's like excuse me hi guys can you say hi can I say hi guys you guys they want to see you feet okay bye bye anyway um yeah so warbreaker my audiobook now that I finished last argument and then this afternoon hate that's my coffee you don't want that I will probably start river enchanted I know I mentioned last night maybe a little bit of the fold maybe a little bit of the fold we'll just see which one I'm in the mood for and decide at the time anyway I gotta hurry up and finish my breakfast so that I can get to work um but I'll check in with you later I went to wrap this up last night but then I thought that I was going to be able to finish warbreaker and I ended up falling asleep that's just boring just because like it was late and like it was going to be a bit of a reach to finish it but I really thought I could do it um and obviously not um it's on my final account for yesterday I just did the number it's also full disclosure this morning I already spent like a how I can tell you exactly but it's over an hour already because I'm like looking me on my phone again uh but today I've already been on my phone longer than I was for the whole of yesterday so I've been on my phone for almost an hour and a half today and it is still quite early um that was the first thing I did when I woke up non-stop okay anyway my final account for yesterday audiobook uh was six hours and 37 minutes um so I'm about 80 through warbreaker I will probably finish this tonight although I have other things to do today but I think I can finish it today my physical reading time was a whopping seven minutes so I did start um I did start a river enchanted but I just like wasn't feeling it so I just didn't read anymore and then my screen time was the best all week like every day went down so I'm proud of myself except for today then it just got rocketed back up but well yesterday my screen time was an hour and nine minutes that's it so yeah but so then yeah today like I've been on my phone a lot today because I had you know withdrawal but also because as I mentioned during the course of this week there were so many messages that I knew I was getting so I was like I can't check those because that don't screen time this week so like a full at least half an hour this morning was me just catching up on like messages just like reading and listening to them to like for a whole week's worth anyway um so I have not pulled stats for the whole week does that I mean I guess it's by the day should I do that I hate I don't want to do that so I'm not gonna but what I will do is show you a screenshot that I'll post here at this time showing you my final totals for the week I would say this was a success uh or at least success in terms of like getting me to get off my phone or do some reading I mean like I finished I mean I had them more than half of Ship of Destiny to read on Monday I read all of Last Monument of Kings and Jade City and I almost finished Warbreaker like if I hadn't been sleepy I could have done it like it was like 10 30 when I fell asleep it wasn't like midnight or anything so if I had been able to stay up till midnight I would have finished Warbreaker yeah so what I've learned is that I should get off my phone will I in the future next time I do a vlog like this no I mean it was kind of alarming to see the numbers even the times when I thought I wasn't using my phone very much I was like two hours when it just like sneaks up on you so anyway um I hope you had fun I had fun uh and uh yeah see you in my next video bye


What you see here is a really important organ because this organ, the pancreas, will not only help with digestion of foods, but it will also help to regulate your blood sugar levels. Now the pancreas is this long organ that you see here. It is one of those accessory organs, meaning that it supports everything that's happening in that digestive tube. It sits in the upper part of the abdomen just behind the stomach and the pancreas, as we said, does have a very important group of digestive functions. It secretes a group of enzymes and these enzymes, simply just called pancreatic enzymes, will break down fats, proteins and carbohydrates, so all of those dietary molecules. And the pancreas, when activated, sends out all of those enzymes into the duodenum, which is that first part of the small intestine. In the duodenum, whatever has come through from the stomach will now have this exposure to lots of enzymes that will hopefully just break everything down into their final little bits. We also have the pancreas producing hormones, as we said before. The pancreas produces two main hormones. The first is one you've probably heard of, this is insulin. Insulin has the effect that it lowers blood sugar levels when blood sugar levels become a bit high.  The pancreas releases insulin, which comes along and it pushes that down. We then get another hormone from the pancreas, which does the exact opposite, which is glucagon. Glucagon instead will increase blood sugar levels when our blood sugar levels are low. It's released from the pancreas and it pushes that up. So the pancreas has a couple of interesting functions. Not only is it helping to break down and digest foods using pancreatic enzymes, but it also helps to regulate blood sugar levels.