I think something went wrong when I was born. My parents tell me it was fine other than being so close to Christmas. They didn't want a child born near Christmas because they were afraid it would be overshadowed by the holiday. They let me do whatever I wanted for my birthday. And if that meant that I wanted to sleep over with 20 of my friends, so be it. I learned from an early age that the night before my birthday was special, however. It was a time for me and me alone. I couldn't let anyone else know about the 12 minutes after midnight, those 12 minutes leading up to the moment of my birth, 12 minutes in which I didn't exist the day of my birth, but not yet the moment, a strange void in which I was and was not. I can't explain where I got that idea. It's something that's always been in my head from the moment I could form memories. I think I tried talking about it with my classmates once along with everything else that happens in those 12 minutes. And I quickly learned that I was the strange one and I shouldn't tell this story because I'd be laughed at. It started small, but profoundly terrifying for a small child. My earliest memory is of a dark claustrophobic space and the weight of the blankets I was hiding under, the heat of my own body and the stale air that I desperately tried to not breathe to afraid they would hear me, even though I knew it was too late. For I held the edge of the blanket down with both hands, even as they gently pride at it, trying to lift it up and reveal me cowering underneath. It felt like it went on all night. Now that I'm older, I know it only lasted 12 minutes. As I got older, hiding under the blanket was not enough. I was in third grade the first time they pulled me out from under there. They lifted it up just enough to reach a hand through. And even in the darkness, I could see that it was human. But too angular, the swell of joints and the curve of skin was entirely absent. It was like a cut out of a hand. There was no color either. And no depth. It did not reflect the light scant as it was. It grabbed my wrist. And it was so cold that I cried out. But weakly, because terror was wrapped around my throat. And I was choking on it. I could barely move. It pulled and drew me out. And I stumbled as I fell onto the floor. And I saw that all around me, the darkness had covered the walls of my bedroom and was stretched across the floor. I was alone on a narrow strip of carpet with my bed behind me. And it was like everything ended at that edge, vanishing into an empty gulf. The hands came from that darkness, dozens of them stretching out along the floor to grab at my wrist and ankles. I dug in my heels, grabbed hold of my bed frame, and the hands could move me no further. They tried, but they were weak. And I remained where I was until my clock's minute hands reached 12. And I was alone in my bedroom. I screamed for my parents sobbing. I told them what happened. And my father investigated the house and told me all the windows and doors were locked. Nothing had gotten in. And it was probably a nightmare. And like with my classmates, I learned to not talk about it. I guess as a kid, I interpreted that their evasiveness about the circumstances of my birth meant they knew about those 12 minutes and wouldn't do anything about it. In eighth grade, I learned to fight back. Holding my ground wasn't enough. I was getting bigger, but they were getting stronger. By then I'd learned that hiding wasn't enough. And so I'd sit on the edge of my bed, watching the clock tick towards midnight. Happy birthday. I whispered to myself as December 20th began, and the darkness started to crawl in across the walls, starting at the corner of my vision, the 12 minutes in which I didn't exist. And the void came to claim me. They surrounded me. And I stood to confront them. I felt cold fingers close on my legs on my arms. And I braced myself as they began to tug to drag me towards the void. And my front foot gave a step. Another. I stumbled and panic welled up in my chest. I was losing. They were dragging me forwards inch by inch. And I wondered what would happen when I reached the edge of the floor. Would I fall? Would I die? Would I cease to exist? My breath felt like fire in my lungs and my chest heaved. And in my panic, I slapped one of the hands, then I closed my fingers into a fist, and I hit it at the wrist. And it shattered just like that, shattered like glass and fell into splinters on the floor. So I fought them off for 10 long minutes. And when they vanished, I went to my bed and sat there shaking for hours. I didn't take it very well, realizing I had to fight for my life now. I got shingles soon after the reactivation of chickenpox that the doctor said was due to stress and my first ever D on my report card. My parents assumed it was because we just moved to another state and grounded me until my grades improved. I resented them for that and decided I wouldn't tell them anything ever again. In my sophomore year of high school, those splinters cut my skin when I shattered the hands. The next year I wrapped my hands with medical tape in the minutes leading up to midnight. In my freshman year of college, I bought a baseball bat and smuggled it into my old bedroom. classes were out. And part of me was relieved because my roommate wouldn't be involved. But part of me was also sad, because I wanted to know if anyone else could see the darkness too. I still don't know. I've never married, and I've never had anyone around at midnight on my birthday. I keep people at a distance. I think I'm cursed. You see, my parents kept telling me that my birth was normal. And I finally stopped asking. Don't get me wrong. Despite what I said earlier, I have a healthy relationship with my parents. I grew out of the teenage angst. And I haven't told them what happens every night on my birthday, because I don't think they can help me. And I think it would destroy them to know I've spent all these years fighting for my life, all on my own. But they have their secret as well. My birth was not normal. Something went wrong. I'd long suspected this. And a couple years ago, after a particularly vicious fight with the intruders, they pulled my feed out from under me. And I was at the very edge of the floor. I could feel the cold of the void on my back. And then it was 12 minutes. And I was safe. I decided that I was going to figure out exactly what happened. I'd start with the only documentation easily available to me, my birth certificate. I went to my parents house one day while they were out of town on a trip. They keep all their important documents in a lockbox, and I got this out and opened it. Inside were their passports, their birth certificates, copies of our social security cards. Underneath that were personal things, letters and photos and other irreplaceable mementos. I made sure to set everything aside in order, but I quickly lost track as I had to dig through far more than I thought I would. My birth certificate was at the very bottom, the second to last document in the box. I wondered why they buried it there when all the other identifying documents were within easy reach. I took it out, unloaded it and read my birthplace, the time of birth 1212am. Then I folded it and started to put it back into the box. My glance fell on the document underneath. Only one thing left inside, a yellowed envelope on a whim. I picked it up. I'd already snooped through everything else. What was one more envelope, right? Inside was a death certificate, same town, same date. My name 12am. Was I still born? Was my soul fighting for the right to existence in those 12 minutes, just as I fight every single year? I don't know. I have my answer, I guess. But I don't know what to do with it. I have to keep thinking of how to stay ahead of the void that comes to claim me. Fighting them off is getting harder. There's too many of those hands. And I can't shatter them all. So I started prioritizing. I keep my center of gravity low to maintain my balance and aim for the ones that are trying to grab my arms first, so that I can keep swinging my weapon. Then I try to knock off the ones grabbing my legs next. Two years ago, one grabbed my throat.  I couldn't breathe. It was crushing me. I couldn't break its grip. And I remember slipping into darkness right as the clock ticked over to 11 minutes after midnight. When I woke up, it was 13 minutes after midnight, and I'd been moved a full two feet from where I last remembered. I wonder how close they'd gotten my unconscious body to the void. Last year, I fought like a wild beast. My careful stance and preparations were forgotten. I couldn't simply hold my ground, not with the memory of that thing choking the breath out of me. I felt their fingers grazing my skin. And it was like I was being burned as I thrashed wildly desperate to shake them off. The pain was too much. And I put my head down and I ran instead because the darkness had not yet consumed the room, and the door was still there, and the hallway beyond it. And I thought this was it. This was the solution. I would flee instead of fight. They followed. I made it to the car in the driveway and backed out into the street and floored the gas. The darkness came with me. It seeped in around the edge of the windshield, covering it like frost, and then peeling off into fingers and reaching for my face. I spun the wheel and panic, sliding the car into a streetlight. Then I ripped the door open and fell out into the street, just as their hands closed on my shirt. And they began to drag me backwards. And the color was draining out of the world. Everything was fading into gray. And then it was 12 minutes after midnight. I lay on my stomach in the street. My car was badly dented, but no significant damage from the impact.  I think I understand what's happening. A friend's kid once made a smart remark to us after she said she was 11 and a half and someone told her that her half year didn't count towards her age. She said that grownups don't count half years because we're close to dying, which is dark and hilarious, but also true. I am closer to dying. Every year, I'm closer to death. And every year, my visitors have gotten stronger. I guess we're all trying to stave off death in our own way. My fight is just a little more literal. I was dead in those 12 minutes after midnight, and something brought me back. Perhaps I fought my way out. But I think I was meant to stay dead. And perhaps this is just the grave's window of opportunity once a year, trying to drag me back to where I belong. It's getting so hard. 12 minutes is a very long time when you're fighting for your life. I took up running this year. I've been working for speed more than endurance. I only need to keep going for 12 minutes after all hiding stopped working and now fighting is not enough. So I'm going to try flight.  And it is. And maybe I can keep running every year after this until my body begins to fail with age and oblivion doesn't seem so unjust anymore. I've got my running clothes on already. My running shoes. I'm terrified. And there's still hours to go. Wish me luck. And if you don't hear from me tomorrow, then I guess I wasn't fast enough. Hello again. It's been a year since I last posted. Well, a year and some change. Today is my birthday. The exact moment of my birth has already come and gone. And here I am still alive. I wish I could take such a thing for granted. I've been running all year four times a week or perhaps three when I feel I need a rest. It's difficult. I'm focusing on both speed and stamina after all as 12 minutes is a long time to run. I run the same route every day because as tedious as that sounds, I need to know it by heart. I run it regardless of the weather because I need to be able to keep my footing in snow, slush or rain. Sometimes when I see other people out running, I wonder what it is they're running from. I think we're all running from death in our own way. Other runners might talk about how it gives them more energy or makes them feel better or countless other benefits. But I think subconsciously we all know we're just trying to outrun death, trying to keep our hearts and lungs strong so that we can better fight off that specter if it chances to cross our path. They just don't want to admit it. My running is out of desperation. I was training for one run in particular, the only one that would matter. This year, as November started to roll around, I started hinting to my parents that there was something bothering me that I was actively dreading my birthday. My parents tried to make light of it, saying that if it bothered me so much, we could just skip it this year. I could open my presence from them at home and we wouldn't make a big deal out of it all. Whatever made me happy. No, no. It's not that. I told them over dinner about a week before Thanksgiving. It's just I can't sleep right before my birthday. I'm always awake around midnight and it's like those 12 minutes after midnight just feel weird. I watched them carefully out of the corner of my eye trying to do so inconspicuously. Surely they didn't know. Surely they wouldn't have let me struggle by myself all these years fighting for my life in the silence of my bedroom without anyone the wiser. I was still relieved to see that they didn't react in any unusual way. My mother just said that's an odd thing and maybe I could try taking some medicine that would help me sleep. I waited a few minutes and then said something that did make them pause. Did anything odd happen during my birth? Mom and dad looked up at each other from across the table. Then mom said something had happened, but they hadn't brought it up because it was such an unpleasant memory. After dinner we all sat down in the living room and they brought down my death certificate. I stared at it and tried to pretend I was seeing it for the first time while dad told me the story how I'd been born and I wasn't crying. The nurses quickly whisked me away. No one told them what was happening. My mom said she was crying for her baby and the nurses were cleaning up like nothing was wrong. Then after a little bit after my dad threatened to punch the doctor I was brought back in. I was fine. The nurses said nothing to be worried about. They put my name on the birth certificate and a day later were leaving the hospital. That was when it got really odd, my dad said. They found a slip of paper tucked under the windshield wiper of their car. It was a death certificate, the one I was holding and there was a handwritten note with it. They didn't keep the note but he remembered every word of what it said. It said, I'm sorry you deserve to know. My dad hounded the hospital after that demanding answers. It wasn't funny, he said. What kind of sick prank was this? What exactly happened to his daughter? My mother in the meantime tried to put the entire incident out of her mind and focused on their new baby. They never got a satisfactory answer. The doctor whose name was on the death certificate was conveniently never available when he called. He wanted to go to the hospital in person and find the doctor, but my mother talked him out of it. He'd had enough heated exchanges with the hospital staff at that point that they might just call security and throw him out. Best to just move on, my mother said. Whatever happened, I was alive and well now and that was all that mattered. The story clearly upset my mother for she got up to make tea. I covertly took photos of the death certificate when she did. Probably something I should have done when I first found it. But I don't think the extra months would have changed much. I couldn't find any trace of the doctor that signed it. It's been so long that I suppose he doesn't work there anymore and has been gone long enough that no one knows where he is now. It's not an unusual name either. So simply looking him up online isn't going to yield any meaningful results. All I know is that something unusual happened in that hospital. A death certificate was filled out, but never filed. It was given to my parents in secret. And because of whatever happened there, my death comes chasing after me every year. In the 12 minutes I was neither alive nor dead. I didn't tell my parents what happens to me every year. I fear it would destroy them to know. Instead, I began planning for this year's flight. The next part of my plan was far riskier, but I thought that if I was going to figure this out, it was essential that I get help. I called one of my friends up. She's someone I go running with. We worked together a few years ago, reconnected, and on Saturdays we go on runs together. I wouldn't consider her her best friend. I'm not sure I have any of those, to be honest. But I felt she was the best option since she was already a runner. I asked her if she wanted to do something unusual on my birthday. Go running at midnight in the 12 minutes before I was born. The idea intrigued her and since she had some vacation time she planned to take anyway. She agreed. A midnight run sounded fun, she said. It'd be quiet and peaceful outside. She showed up around 10 and we watched a movie while we waited for midnight to roll around. Once the show was over, I told her the rest of why I'd invited her. I told her everything about the void about how it hunted me as a child and how I fought it and how now I was running from it. I just needed someone to run with me, I said, someone to confirm that I wasn't imagining this and to see what it was that pursued me so that maybe I could have someone else to help me figure out how to stay ahead of it. To her credit, she listened to the whole thing. Her discomfort was obvious but I expected this. It's not every day that a friend springs something like this on you. And she obviously didn't believe that this was real but she said she believed it was my reality and she'd do whatever she could to help me understand what was happening to me. Prove that it wasn't real at first and then get me into therapy. I thought bitterly. Well, if that was the outcome of this midnight run, I couldn't complain. It sure would be nice if this whole situation could be resolved by a bunch of counseling and however it is you treat hallucinations. Honestly, I kind of wish that was what happened. You can still back out. I told her I don't know if this is going to be dangerous for you or not. I think we'll be able to stay ahead of it as it didn't seem like it was catching up very fast last year. But I can't promise. I mean, I don't know what will happen if it catches either of us. She assured me it would be okay as she laced up her shoes. She was there to help me. We started running a bit before midnight to give ourselves time to warm up and acclimate to the weather. It was cold and the rain was mixed with sleet. We ran on the street where the pavement retained enough warmth to keep from icing over yet. I tried to not look at my watch. I'd know. I'd know when the void opened up behind us. There was no sense in stressing myself out any further. I focused on my breathing in one, out two. I kept my hands close to my floating ribs, focused on the movement of my legs and how my feet landed. We need to pick up the pace, I said to my friend. I felt the tickle of the void on the back of my neck, a mounting sense of dread in a drop to my stomach, like I was falling. Like the world was falling away around me. The houses in the corner of my vision were being swallowed up, consumed by the darkness that encroached all around us, sweeping in silently from behind. My heart pounded in my chest and the blood rushed through my ears. The terror gave new strength to my legs and I lengthened my stride, feeling my muscles respond to carry me forwards as if I were flying. I don't think I've ever felt so alive as I did in that moment, running from the grave that yawned hungry behind me. I didn't say anything to my friend. Not yet. I wanted to make sure we were out distancing it before I told her to look behind us. We were moving in a good clip and I felt the hungry presence of the void trailing our heels and I knew that we were going to be okay. It wasn't catching up. It was persistently dogging us, but it wasn't going to catch me. Not this year. I felt elation fill my heart and panting. I told my friend to take a quick glance behind us and tell me what she saw. Don't stop, I said. Just look. She did and she slowed and turned around to stare. I screamed her name. I turned to unwilling to leave her behind and grabbed at her arm. I pulled hard trying to spur her in a movement. The void lay open behind us immense enough that it blotted out the sky and the stars. The world ended in darkness mere yards away. The sidewalk breaking apart like sand as the void advanced swallowing up everything that lay between me and it. We have to go. I said it can't catch us. She faltered, stammered something, stunned into immobility by the impossibility of what she saw. I cursed myself. This was a mistake. I shouldn't have involved someone that wasn't mentally prepared for this. She turned to run, but it was too slow. Too late. A hand wrapped around her ankle, the flat emptiness of a human hand stretching out from the edges of the void. Another wrapped around her shin and yet more surged forward at that one point using her body to drag themselves forwards. She screamed and jerked her leg away from them. I saw their fingers shatter like glass. Blood splattered on the sidewalk as it cut into the shin of her calves. She began to shriek and sob and then more hands stretched out of the void, grabbing hold of her wrist and her hair. Slowly the grave advanced and the ground beneath her began to crumble. It broke like a dropped window pane, shattering into shards and she stumbled as one of her feet slipped on the edge of nothingness. The hands were reaching for me now. One stretched its fingers towards me, sliding along the pavement like a snake. I stared up at my friend. Her eyes were filled with tears. Her face was pale and she stood there frozen in the mounting realization that she was going to die as a hand slid across her face, a blot of ink on her cheek, like the grave was caressing her in welcome. I let go of my friend.  I ran.  The pain felt right. I'd abandoned my friend and I deserved to suffer for it. At 1211, I turned around. My legs burned. I was nearly at the end of the street. I didn't know what I'd see if the void would still be only a few yards away and I'd watch it fade away in the last handful of seconds I had left. Instead, there was only the empty street and the shine of the rain and sleet in the streetlights. I was alone. I searched for my friend. I did. I went back to the point we'd separated and I looked for her up and down the street. There was nothing, the reality of what had happened didn't sink in until I reached my house. My mind was racing. I kept trying to think of what I'd do next. Did I call the police? Would they believe me? Could I make up a lie to justify them searching for her without implicating myself? Did it even matter? It wasn't like there was anything left for them to find. She was just gone. I turned down the street leading to my house and with a shock I realized that her car was gone as well. My driveway was empty. Her purse was gone from my house when I went inside. I tried calling her cell phone but the entry for her number was gone. As were all the texts I'd sent her. She wasn't on Facebook. She wasn't on Instagram. Wasn't on LinkedIn. It was like she'd never existed at all. It wants to do the same to me. Roll back the clock all the way to twelve minutes after midnight on that fateful night to when I shouldn't have lived at all. But I think while the grave demands to be filled it's not discerning. It may not care who it takes. I think, I think I found a way to keep the void at bay for another year. But I need a different solution. I went back to where it all started to where I was born dead and to where I was somehow brought back. I told my parents I was going out of town for my birthday, bought plane tickets and rented a car when I landed. I drove to a modest sized town with a single hospital. In my jacket pocket were copies of my birth certificate and my death certificate. I was born 12 minutes after midnight, according to the birth certificate. My parents finally told me that wasn't true. I was born at midnight but I was quickly taken away and returned later with no explanation. 12 12 a.m is the time that was written on the birth certificate and my parents didn't find out the truth until they left the hospital and found a death certificate left under their windshield wiper. Filled out but never filed. I talked with dad some more over the past year about this. Mom doesn't want to talk about it. She's trying to forget it ever happened I think. But dad, dad is still mad all these years later angry about how he never got answers. About how the hospital blocked his attempts to contact the doctor that filled out the death certificate at every turn. We talked quite a bit about this and once I was convinced I knew everything. I started doing some digging of my own. The doctor in question no longer works there. He unfortunately has a common enough name that I wasn't able to find where he moved to. That's a dead end. I also made no progress with the hospital administration. The best I got was a half hearted admission that perhaps some paperwork was filed erroneously and some miscommunication happened. But that was so long ago and it was unlikely anyone that remembered what happened still work there. They understood my frustration they told me but it'd be just one of those things I'd never find out. I wish I could just learn to accept that and move on. I would if the stakes weren't so high. But every year in those 12 minutes the void comes for me. Trying to undo whatever mistake was made all those years back. Last year I lost my friend. She simply ceased to exist. I'm not going to let the void take anyone else and I certainly am not going to let it take me. I'm tired of greeting my birthday with dread every year.  I'm angry. I'm frustrated. And you know what? I really don't like running.   I plan my trip to give me a few days in advance of my birthday to scout out the hospital. My plan was to wander over to the nursery and if I got caught by a nurse just pretend I was lost. When I got to that part of the hospital I realized it was a lot newer than the rest of the building. I quickly found a fancy sign that thanked the generous donors that made the addition possible. It was built five years ago. So that obviously wasn't what I was looking for. I went back to the main entrance and chatted with the person at the desk after that when it looked like he wasn't very busy. I was waiting for my aunt to get out of surgery I said and was just killing time. And then I casually asked what was made out of the old nursery wing because my mother used to work there before she retired. It was all just inpatient rooms now he said might even be where my aunt wound up once surgery was done. I got the floor number from him and then made my excuses to leave. Not that he cared. It's amazing how easy it is to just walk around somewhere when you look like you know what you're doing. I scouted the floor but didn't see anything unusual. I mean I didn't expect to. If there was anything weird going on then I'm sure someone would have noticed by now. I was more just trying to find out if there was a decent escape route. I didn't want to run down the hallway in case anyone saw me. So my plan is to head down the stairwell from watching it through the day. It was clear hardly no one used it so I wouldn't run into anyone. I'm not very confident on how fast I'll be on the stairs. I mean I'm in great shape from running all the time but it's still a heck of a gamble to take. But I just feel that if I don't take this opportunity to find out more of what's happening. I'll be running from this my entire life. I hate living in fear of this one night for the rest of the year. I have to do something. So I've got my route and that brings us up to date. I've scheduled this to automatically post so if there's nothing after this bit that means I wasn't fast enough. I made it. I'm still shaking from adrenaline so I'll just finish this up with an update and maybe by then I'll have calmed down enough to go to bed. I waited until midnight. I kept an eye on my watch so I could count the very seconds. I was poised to flee as soon as anything came to me. As midnight approached I felt something pressing down around me like the pressure change from an airplane taking off. I swallowed and my ears popped. I heard a sound like a bubbling like a hot tub somewhere was running except it was all around me. Then it was midnight and there was nothing to run from. The void had swallowed up the entire hospital. One minute I was standing alone with a harsh fluorescent light illuminating the drab walls and the next it had all changed. It was like every surface was dipped in ink. The darkness ran together and I could no longer see where the walls joined the floor. The overhead lights still shone but the walls and the floor simply swallowed up the light. It was like staring at a single flat plane that just went on and on into eternity.  The texture of this once beige paint beneath my fingers was the only thing that reassured me that I was still in this world. The pressure around me was increasing. It felt hard to breathe. I opened my eyes and desperately looked for the stairwell. I had to get out of here. I had to escape before the void closed again and took me with it. I didn't know if that was what would happen but it was what I was thinking. Panicking as my worst fears were realized. I was inside the void. I'd made a terrible fatal error. That was all I could think of. I found the door to the stairs by feel. My hands passed over the frame, indistinguishable from the rest of the blackness, and then found the bar that opened them. I stared down into an abyss, an empty hole in the world. Tentatively, I slid one foot forwards and felt stable ground. Another. I waved my hands out in front of me, desperately seeking the railing of the stairs.  I shuffled awkwardly forward until I found the railing, and then I clung to this like I was drowning. The first step was the hardest. I located the edge with my toes and then gingerly lowered myself down. After that, I let my body take over, as I knew by instinct how tall each step would be. I reached the first landing and pivoted around to the next set. My hands clutched tight on the railing I could not see. Ahead of me was the next floor. I could see its landing clearly. The void ended a few steps away. The hands grabbed me at the border. The void seized hold of my ankles, my arms, my clothing. It didn't want me to leave. I let go of the railing to strike at them, trying to break their hold. The ones I hit shattered like glass, but there were still more pouring out of the void to replace them. They seized my hair, and then fingers wrapped around my neck. My watch beeped at me as the timer I set went off. 11 minutes and 50 seconds after midnight. In desperation, I shoved off the step and let the weight of my body carry me forward. And then it was 12 minutes after midnight as I tumbled forward into the light and out of the void. I only fell four steps, thankfully. It still hurt. I was so shocked by that point that I just lay there, panting and staring at the walls. I barely registered the pain. I was just grateful to be alive. I blinked, reeling. There was a nurse kneeling over me, watching with concern. I must have been a sight on the ground, pale, shaking, dripping in cold sweat. I tried to say something, but the words wouldn't come. So she helped me get up and sit on one of the stairs. She asked a few things. I can't remember quite what to make sure I wasn't hurt. And we sat side by side for a moment while I recovered my wits. I asked her if she'd seen anything when my heart had slowed enough that I could catch my breath. Something that couldn't be explained. She said she hadn't, with a reflective ease that I have to suspect she'd said this many times before, perhaps to patients that were awake at midnight. Maybe it was because I was freaked out and not thinking straight. Because I did something risky. I took out the copies of my birth and death certificate and handed them to her. I told her I died here, right at midnight, that no one told my parents, at least not in any official capacity. She looked close to my age, so I wasn't sure what I was hoping to accomplish. Everyone that worked here during my birth was likely long gone before she came to the hospital. She smoothed out the creases in the paper and drew in a sharp breath. I didn't see anything. She said, but something felt wrong. It always does when midnight comes around. She paused and took a deep breath. It felt especially wrong tonight. I was scared to go upstairs, and then there you were, like you appeared out of thin air. And then she asked me what I saw. So I told her. There was a rumor, she said, among the hospital nurses. The doctors don't pay it any heed, but the nurses and the rest of the staff that control where patients are placed do. No one that has any risk of dying are placed in these rooms. They call it the Bermuda Triangle. A little cluster of roughly a dozen rooms where the outcomes are never good. And the funny thing is, she said, that before everyone started being careful about what patients went into these rooms, the people in them always died at the same time. Midnight. I asked how long this has been going on. My heart hammered in my chest. Did it start with my birth? Or did it cause my death? She doesn't know. But she's going to try to find out. She lost a patient, she said, years ago when she first started working there. He coded and died in under a minute, as soon as the clock struck twelve. She'd reviewed it over and over in her head, trying to find what went wrong, what she'd missed, that he could have deteriorated so quickly as the night progressed. Then an older nurse pulled her aside, told her it wasn't her fault, that they'd put him in the triangle, and that was on them. She didn't want to believe it. Not at first. But, she said quietly, staring down the empty hallway. Something always felt off about this part of the hospital. She didn't want to elaborate, and I didn't pry. I was emotionally drained enough already. I gave her my number and got hers in return. We're going to keep in touch. She's going to try to find out more, and I promised to help however I can as well. And when next year rolls around, well, maybe we'll have a better idea of what we're dealing with. Hey everyone, thank you for listening. Remember to like and subscribe if you enjoy the video. A special thank you to Fainting Goat, who is one of the absolute best authors on No Sleep, for allowing me to narrate this story. Make sure to check out more of the author's work. There'll be a link in the description. If you'd like to support me further, there's a link to my Patreon in the description. And remember, if the void comes for you this year, make sure to keep running for at least 12 minutes.


Okay, I'll get started in while Sushant joins. So yeah, today what we thought we were going to talk about is the work that we are doing in Azure as far as support for container networking is concerned. Let me share my screen. Can everyone see my screen? Yeah, we can see it. Perfect. And that was Sushant, right? This is Anand, but I think Sushant is also trying to send some messages. Sushant, here you go. We can hear you, Sushant. Okay, Sushant. I think it starts six if you're having issues on the phone. Okay, let me start and then as Sushant joins, he can jump in. So Sushant is a developer on container networking in my team in Azure networking. So he's put together these slides to update us on the work that we are doing in container networking. So today what we thought we will cover is support for container network policies in Azure. As you may already remember from some of the past discussions, Azure Network supports overlays or what we call virtual networks for containers. When you deploy Kubernetes containers in Azure, they can already be deployed into Azure virtual networks, get IP addresses in the private space, talk among each other as well as talk to VMs and on-premise resources through the Azure Virtual Network stack that is already available for VMs and not for containers. So what we are going to talk about today is how we are enhancing this virtual network for containers to support policies. And the component we are going to talk about is Azure Network Policy Manager. My slide is not moving forward. Okay. Okay, so the Policy Manager will support Kubernetes policies natively. So essentially, however you specify the Kubernetes policies through YAML, the Policy Manager will plug seamlessly into Kubernetes such that we support the same policy language specification that Kubernetes applies. This will be open source. It will be stateless. It does not require any store or state replication as part of Kubernetes. And we support both Linux and Windows. If you're able to join, feel free to jump in or let me know and I'll hand off to you. Can you guys hear me? Yes, I can hear you now. I don't know what's wrong with my volume, my mic probably. Yeah, so you can continue from now on. So I forward the overview slide. Why don't you continue with the slide? The slides, do you want me to present my screen? That's okay. I can stay in touch with you speaking. So next one is the architecture slide where we show what type of, we are handling all the three types of events that Kubernetes sends to the Policy Manager. For example, whenever something is wrong with PowerPoint, just one second. I'll just stay in this. Yeah, continue. Yeah, so we have event handlers basically using the. So, so we have three types of event handlers, all three that Kubernetes sends us events for. For example, like whenever a pod is created, updated or deleted, or in namespace is created, or whenever a customer updates a policy email file adds new policies in there. So we have, so we have event handlers for all of these events, and this policy manager is implemented as a demand set, following the Kubernetes guidelines of how to write a policy manager. And basically what we use is the combination of IP tables and IP set. To implement any, any kind of policies specified in the in the YAML for Linux and for Windows, we use something called Windows virtual filtering platform. You can think of it as analogous to IP tables in Linux. So, so that's about the overview of what we do. So we're going to look at the details and next slide. It just says what I what I just talked about just basically whatever I just said using client go is the is the one we use to register for the callbacks from Kubernetes. If you want to look into more details in the in the next in the next slide, we have details on how how it is implemented. We have a completely stateless so we don't save any any of the state. We rely on the Kubernetes callbacks. So let's say the policy manager flashes or restarts. We when we register for the events Kubernetes sends us whatever is the current current state regarding the policies in the in the notes should be and we work off of that. So how it is implemented is basically in the forwarding chain of the IP table filter table. We forward all the all the whatever packet comes we processes first through the Azure npm chain, which is basically just the chain that we create. So that all whatever we do is constrained within one chain. And within their that chain we have separate scenes again for ingress and ingress policies. And I don't know how much detail should I go but let me go further little bit more. So in the in the policy ML. I think it's my speaker. So in the policy ML there are, you can specify policies based on pod labels or the namespace label namespace names. So what we do is we create an IP set for every part level, which helps us in reducing the number of IP table rules that we need to add. Whenever a new pod gets added to a certain label, we just update the IP set and none of the existing rules need to be changed. So that's one thing we use. And then for it we so in the policy ML also the policies are based on ports like like HTTP or TCP protocol support and protocol combination along with every IP set we have one goal for that. And then we forward that the same thing for ingress and egress for both chains we forward those packets. Depending on which port and protocol and IP circuit matches to another for ingress we create a new chain called ingress from and for egress similarly we have another change egress. And then basically we start by basically we start by rejecting by adding the reject rule. And then we in. So the first two rules are for the IP blocks. So the way IP blocks are because you can specify what's what IP blocks to accept to accept packets from except you can specify some exceptions. So we start by specifying the exceptions and the rest we accept. And then similarly then it goes through the namespace so namespace selector label is also like an IP set. And we if it falls IP address falls within the IP set for the namespace we we accepted and similarly for the pot selector. And what happens is whenever we get a callback for like a new pot gets created in a certain namespace we update we keep on updating the IP sets. And these rules we add once, whenever a new namespace comes or a new part label comes, we update the rules once. We never take it. I'm sorry. Did anyone. So these rules we add once and whenever a new part gets created we do not change the rules we just update the IP set. And, and it's pretty performant, because we don't touch the IP tables again and again for creation of new parts. I can also give a quick demo on like a quick demo that we have prepared. So I'll stop sharing. I'll share my screen. So I'll share my screen I'm. So this is a, I'm connected to the master of one of our Kubernetes clusters. I'm going to show you all the parts that are there in the cluster right now. So, the namespaces we have. Okay, so the cleanup is done. And so, okay, so we have the only cube system, what's that running. Let me, let me deploy three namespaces. So what I'm going to do in the demo is I'm going to create three different namespaces and parts in those three namespaces. And I'm going to, first I'm going to show that these namespaces can, can reach each other. So right now, for example, we have three namespaces NS1, NS2 and NS3 and there are some parts there. They're still getting created. So once they are created, we'll get the IP addresses for them. And Sushant, these are from Azure VNet. That's correct. So these parts in these three namespaces are directly connected to Azure VNet. They can reach on-prem, express route, all service endpoints work. If you have like a storage or a SQL service endpoint somewhere running in Azure, you can reach that from these parts. So these are the NS1 and NS2. So let me, let me connect to a pod in one of the namespaces, like let's pick in NS3. So I have a YAML that allows from NS1 to NS3. So let me connect to one of the pod in namespace two. And I'll show that I can reach from NS3, I can reach NS2 and from NS2 I can reach NS3. But when I apply the policy YAML that only allows NS1 to NS3, that communication will break. So let me connect through. So I'm in the pod. So these are NGINX, all these pods are running NGINX. So I'm in one of the pods in namespace two. And let's pick one of the IP addresses from namespace three. And we should be able to reach that now because right now I have not applied any policies. So we can get something from the NGINX that's running. So now let me apply the policy. Can you show the policy Sushant? It's a very simple policy that says apply it on the namespace three. This policy you should apply the namespace three. And by default everything is blocked unless you specify something in that policy YAML to be allowed. And if you look at the ingress, ingress part of the policy, we can say any namespace that match labels of namespace NS1. Only that will be allowed. So it's one of the, we have like, we support everything that Kubernetes supports. But for the demo purpose, we have a simple one. So I'm going to apply this policy. So this policy is applied. And now, because it only allows from namespace one to three, this communication is now broken from namespace two to three. And I can remove this policy and it will start working. So I can apply again and it will stop working and I can remove again and it will start working again. So it is, like I said, it's pretty performant. There is almost no lag between when we apply the policies and when the data path starts working on it. And we support it in cloud. I think we are the first public clouds to public cloud to actually support the Kubernetes policies natively. So, so, so that was the demo. And we were also hoping if we can discuss in this forum, whether we can because right now the policies, we can only have these actals like port and IP address based what to block what to not to block. But we were hoping to discuss here if if there is enough forum on in this forum to, to further enhance this to maybe include some routes, because those are also the policies that generally customers want in in public cloud, routing their packets via force running or, or some kind of more richness in the policy. So, I'll let Deepak take over and and maybe he has something to add to it. I feel like, like Sushant was saying, in Azure VNet today for VMs, we support a wide array of policies. Security groups is certainly one of it that you just saw. But in addition, we also support capabilities for service chaining. And something that we call routes is what enables customers to specify policy to forward traffic from one from one part, another part and they go through this appliance in between. So, so routes is one such policy that that we are considering enhancing the cooperative policy specification with another one around load balancing and DNS, right. We support rich load balancing policies. And similarly, we support rich capabilities around DNS and then remote to on premise. So, so right now, while security groups are possible. We would like to extend the YAML specification include policies specification for these other scenarios that are possible with machines but are not possible with containers today. The other thing, the other thing I'd like to add to what Deepak said, I don't know how much of a policy definition. But there is a lot of, you know, value add and also providing an integrated experience where the Kubernetes policies or, you know, or any policy coexist with the Azure VNet policies that we have if we can use, you know, labels back and forth. You know, you can use ads back and forth between the two environments that is very useful in hybrid scenarios. I want to go from a v in a cluster or from a cluster to work. Yes, I definitely I think, you know, our group would definitely want to continue talking about the service chaining the load balancing and DNS extension pieces for sure. We have three areas along with like IPv6 is like a fourth area that we want to definitely take forward into the work group to try to define some extensions we want to suggest. Yeah, that would be great. We would love to work with you on to define those. The last thing that was just mentioned with the labels. Is this is just kind of going to like a custom defined label that can be, you know, mapped or are you suggesting something different than that? Yes, so so we support two kinds of labels. One is what we call system labels, which are to identify Azure services. And another is to we support custom defined labels which customers can can put labels on on any part of their containers or workloads. Yes, both of those we would like to be able to the customers with containers. I think definitely that's those those topics would be something we should definitely if you guys have like some something you could present. You can get together with me. Come up with some type of like, you know, definition we want to present to the work group. If you guys have something you want to present, we should definitely entertain that in the next, you know, one of the next meetings coming up. Sure, sure. I think we would love to give us maybe we'll probably won't be ready for the next meeting, but the meeting after that, we should be ready. So how about we intuitively put us down four weeks out. So next month for us to present at least an initial proposal on on routes and maybe load balancer. And I'll set up some time with you guys in the next maybe in two weeks to kind of have some discussions, you know, just between a smaller group of us. Yeah, that would be that would be great. I'll work with you on that Deepak. Yes. Yes, that would be great. One question I had was how, as a community, how do we want to approach this with respect to the NCF this working group and the network sake group in Kubernetes right do we do we take a joint work together to to Kubernetes network sake, or do we expect the two communities to be one and same only how do we see that happening. Yeah, but for the most part we have, and I think this week Brian is is on vacation but we usually have Brian join us from the CNI contributors group. And I don't know if we have anyone on here from the network sake, but we usually have one or two people from Google join representing the network sake this means I don't know if they were able to make it today or not. Yeah, we sort of collaborate together and you know whatever you know whatever we bring forward as a proposal from here we would probably presented to the TOC and the CNCF and then from there work through, you know, through the different whether it's a CNI request or whether it's a Kubernetes request we would work with the appropriate groups collaboratively on that. Sounds great. Yeah, the last question I had for the for the Azure team is, is there any interest in, you know, you said your policy manager was open source. Is there any interest in presenting all or any part of your policy manager to the CNCF. We would love to. We would love to. What, what would you like to see covered in in that presentation, detailed architecture, or, or more code level structure. We would love your guidance on what you would like to see presented there. Yeah, I can definitely provide that to you and I think it's probably more along the lines of, you know, specifically the policy pieces and the extensions and how, how we have implementation to show kind of how that works or kind of show the running code and an example of, you know, how the policy definition works. So we'll talk more about it offline, but I think that's, that's where the long line is what I was thinking. Sounds great sounds good and the main reason for us to open sources to have the community participate and contribute to it so so certainly we would love to present and get the community feedback and and participation. Definitely. Awesome. I'll get you our talk with Chris to get your schedule to probably be a month out of so given the timing on the TLC but I'll definitely work with you guys on when you can present and when they were able to pitch you in. Okay, thanks. Cool. Hi, I don't see a Lexus is really way from we've works joined. Before I jump on to the next item. Do you guys have any questions for for the Microsoft team. Thanks, Deepak and Shushant and joined with thanks for your for the presentation and overview of the work you've done on the policy manager and the different policies, you've been working on any questions from anyone on the call. Any comments. Quiet today. Okay, no problem. So the, the next piece of the agenda, so I just want to say something. Okay. So the, the next agent item was around part of the work group. There's, you know, looking at the networking space and on the, and the landscape that the CNC efforts put together. There's quite a few companies that they've sort of, and projects that they've sort of put into the network space. One of those projects I know we've works has presented to the TOC and is interested in becoming an official CNCF network project and so one of the things I've asked them to do is come and present to this working group and then I'll try to get that scheduled me for the next, the next meeting. But, you know, part of what we want to try to do I think is start looking at some of the network projects out there, especially in the areas that we know we discussed previously and you know the low balancing piece. And we think about some of the services that are needed in network IPv6 type of services, you know, looking at projects that are addressing those areas and reaching out to those projects to talk about what the cloud native aspects would look like in those projects so and definitely open for anyone on this call to look at those companies and you know suggest ones that might be of interest that are filling a gap in the cloud native ecosystem today that we should talk to. Same thing with like monitoring tools, you know, there's other sort of like areas that are kind of complimentary to network but are not in the network space that we probably should broaden scope of the discussion to as well that are kind of complimentary to what networking is providing to the cloud native infrastructure. Yeah, I agree. This is Lee. A couple of thoughts. One is, so yeah, so we've is intending to propose net for adoption that I spoke with Alexis that reached out a couple of times, kind of asking for project management there. I just did not have the bandwidth to engage but but we've had them present or that that project present on this working group but I think at least once in the past right. Yeah, we did. Not that it doesn't make sense to do it again it just can recollect it. You know, speaking of like monitor related monitoring tools and like sort of opening up scope it's like, well, actually, actually still we scope is certainly very, you know, micro services visual topology oriented. Definitely. I agree. I brought that up with Alexis in the past as well. I think there's a couple of things particularly around like, you know, I guess there's a couple ways that this particular work group could go one being somewhat service provider oriented in nature. You know, FD FD.io and some of that flavor of projects, much of what's in the CNCF and the general focus is much more inside the data center and kind of enterprise and end user oriented. So I'm happy to suggest things more toward that and so some of those things are like service mesh is a decent topic probably not lots of kind of education to happen in that area. Lots of interesting projects in that area. Very interesting. You know, we don't, you know, other other things maybe around. And I actually just missed D pox presentation so I don't know if that was, I think deep pocket presented before as well if I recollect it was around Microsoft's perspective on enhanced network policies and really sort of in context of Kubernetes policies but that's certainly there's lots of like QoS and sort of other higher level network services that probably get to be, you know, get to be addressed. I don't know if any of that helps sort of sort of riffing here on some, some things I know from my my part I've had a heavy focus towards service mesh of the last six months or so. Right. I think it's definitely a good topic so I go ahead and depart. Yeah, I was saying Lee what we presented today was more around security groups and isolation. And, and before you join Ken and we talked about quite talked about DNS load balancing IPv6 as some of the topics I think was is a good one that we should add to the list as well. Got it. We did you guys know the state of IPv6 that that you know more or less the scale is kind of, you know, thinking help trying to steward within the Kubernetes network say, is that like you said. So what was your question around IP kind of a state of IPv6 support in Kubernetes. No, we haven't looked at that but that's certainly one area that we want to look at next. There's a big disconnect and sort of the efforts are going on with IPv6 and the vendors ability to support them right now as you probably know only something that I'm very interested in sort of helping to, especially from the end user standpoint right if we can have a strong user voice back to, to the community space I think it would be very beneficial to I know my being a little bit you know selfish like you I've been spent a lot of time in the space and that mastercard being a transaction network we have no IPv4 at all. And we rely on IPv6 or out of space completely and every, you know, every transaction and every place in the world has an IP address associated with it so we're trying to, you know, we're trying to really get our vendors to understand that IPv6 isn't an option for us. So another supported this is on the roadmap and it's, it's even even like working with some of the cloud solutions out there today they're all IPv4 and you know IPv6 isn't part of the capabilities yet so I think it's a big area that we can help drive so if you want to give an update to the working group on what Cisco is doing with the Kubernetes thing that would be really good I think. Yeah, I'm ignorant, I don't, I just, I just recognize that you know some of our former cohorts are there being active but I haven't kept pace. You know that's interesting so you guys are you're having to traverse the IPv6 IPv4 stack as you guys communicate outside your networks and then yeah if you go to try to use really any of the public cloud services you've got, you've got that translation challenge. I think we've shown and Ken, as you steward the serverless working group as well, we've shown and I don't know that this is going to happen all that often but at least with cloud events, you know, a lot of hesitancy and reservation on the public, you know, the lead to public clouds behind AWS to really partake and adopt but certain like almost the peer pressure at this point might pay off so to the extent that you know we would gain enough mass around IPv6 that might. Yeah, definitely we can push definitely want to push for that so. Yeah, certainly I think Ken your comments on IPv6 requirement is very useful even for us in Azure because like you said, customers need to ask for it I don't think there is broad awareness. I know we have run out of IP addresses ourselves just like you said and and so at an infrastructure level, we've been moving towards IPv6 but as far as exposing it to customers is something that we have been trading quite slowly, partially because customers haven't been coming out to us and saying they must, they must have IPv6 it would be good to get that input from you over to Azure as well. Definitely. So I can try definitely service message one of these things I've been wanting to kind of have a discussion so I might see if I can align something up for two weeks from today for a service message discussion I think it's. It's very interesting I'll start working on an IPv6 one with my friends at Cisco, see if I can get somebody from this driving that need to join us and kind of give us a briefing on what's what's going on there. Yeah, you know, we never really we never I don't know that we necessarily ever came back to, you know, I don't know what your, your appetite is in this working group to potentially take on a bit of a white paper maybe like maybe this would be more evident after we can have a service mesh discussion that lots of lots of you know, particularly with respect to API gateways, lots of overlap in like on paper when you read down the features list it's like well these these two things do the same thing and so what's the difference to why why is it like anyway there's just like, you know, hey, I've got a container orchestrator it does health checks and a little balancing and why firewalling like why do I know I think that's a very important, very important point right and I, if within the server, let's work group right we kind of identified a white paper topic right and went after that I think and you're right and then and our working group I'd like to, and it doesn't have to be one. Like with serverless it was really more of about just how you kind of position serverless and function as a service and what it means to cloud native and the platform as a service and that kind of stuff right I think. In the networking work we probably want to have a couple of different white papers that may be more along the lines of the different services that we are, you know, trying to like kind of highlight from an end user community are important services that have gaps today and the delivery and the execution of you know to do in a cloud native way today so. So I definitely would like I don't I don't have an idea of what that proposal is yet, but I think once we talk about some of the different services that we want to look at adding extensions to for cloud native. And we look at you know service mesh, we look at IPv6 and we look at qos and maybe a few other topics to come out of those discussions. I think well to your point. We will have a much better view of if we were to do a white paper what would we do it on and would we do one would we do like two different white papers, we can take it out later but. Yeah, just just even as you know we might even be a good witness test just even as a group of insiders and, and as we go to grok the right answer to some of those questions. Yeah, but you know at one point the CNC I've had a, I hate, I don't have the right word I call it as a test bed with like a, you know, supernap had provided some, you know, servers, and you know, joint before they were had, you know, put some resources on kind of building out an environment where we could actually host and test out projects and ideas and have them interoperate together and stuff like that and that all died because of different reasons but I still think it you know, there's there's enough interest here and especially if I working who has enough interest in doing something there. You know I know from talking with Dan and the CNC that they're definitely provide, you know, resources to work with us, you know, whether it's doing a white paper whether it's getting access to some kind of an environment that we can test out some of you know ideas or, you know, for that matter a lot of the things that you're talking about here I have up and running in different environments today that I could, you know, at least provide results of I couldn't give access to them but I could at least provide results and take input on what things you want to see tested and maybe get those things tested quickly and provide the results of the test but you know one of those yeah you know actually on that not now that's funny that you mentioned it because I put in a proposal for some time on the cluster yeah I think that's what we were calling it CNCF cluster and the proposal was round performance testing of various container network drivers and you know like there's some natural expectations that overlays bear some overhead but but even at that like like various host level network you know just the various drivers of the same genre still had different implications and you know that like as a matter of fact this might even be something good for us to take a look at on this call and put the link in the chat is a free tool that we created at SolarWinds at about that time to really created with that use case in mind it was going to facilitate kind of throughput tests kind of performance tests across different networks kind of like an eye perf but you know pretty way and helps you kind of compare the as a matter of fact there's a little bit of like some we've scope type visualization in here. It's been a while since we've updated it but I don't know if folks want to take a look at just maybe the screenshot on the page and get a sense of whether or not a demo or just anybody has want to talk about this and I mean I definitely think it'd be worth talking about for sure. It's a we've scope is a you know it's gotten so much more time put into it than this necessarily has but this is kind of this is like a deluded version of that and so but but I bring this up can mostly to reinforce the point that you were making about like a various at scale reports or tests like or at least you know I know that as long we were focused really heavily on CNI the various network drivers there which went to use and why and making them off was it was kind of the why this project was created. Right. I like it. We definitely get something scheduled to talk through this and I do think there's you know work groups within the CNCF have have some flexibility still to kind of define what are some of the outcomes that we want to define and then what sort of the request we want to take back to the CNCF in terms of having an environment for doing things or having you know a tech writer to work with us to help you know document, you know, a white paper for instance or I'm not completely clear on the whole CNI integration or engagement piece yet that's something I need to kind of still work out with the TOC but I still like we have the ability to kind of request, you know, update. And I would hear some some things that we think are gaps and in the specification they may not, you know, accept them but I think it's still our scope to kind of define things that do we see as missing or needed. Yeah, I totally came to receive, you know, an update every so often and then to, yeah, allow space for suggestion. Yeah, I'm guesting myself. Well, everyone thank you for for joining today I will, I have a nice, I was hoping to get a nice list of topics for the next couple months and I, you guys have helped me successfully fill out more than enough things for us to talk about for the next few months and so I'll get a, I'll update the TOC page I haven't updated that in a while so I'll get that updated with these agenda items and get a schedule together and get speakers lined up to come and speak with us and each meeting will try to have a presentation and also, you know, knock off some of these tactical discussions we want to have as well so maybe 20 minutes on presentation 20 minutes on, you know, tactical next steps and discusses like we had today and then, you know, leave 20 minutes for, you know, new topics or open items we want to discuss so. Thanks. Thanks everyone have a great, great rest of your day and rest of your week. Alright. Cheers.


Let's look at the most recent eight organisms that we produced with some of these mutations. And we can see how well we might be able to reconstruct how they're related to each other. We would do that by seeing which of them have the same mutations in them. So if we start at the right end, all of them have the same sequence up to this spot here. And some have a C, some have a G. So we have this difference here. If we keep going down the genome, organism G has a mutation here that none of the others share. Organism C has one here that none of them share. And then they're no longer aligned because it looks like this one has a deletion. And this one may have...let's see how they line up. So we can see the AAC is the same in most of these, except this one. So it looks like maybe that AAC got deleted in organism C. And then we have CCA in a lot of them, followed by GAA. But then this organism has the AA has a genetic difference here that is not present in the others. The others all have the GAA. When we start looking near this TCC, there's a variation here and here, whereas all the others have a G in there. When we look a little farther along, there's quite a bit of genetic variation right in here. So let's try looking at the end of this TCT, which all of them have. So then we have after that TCT, we have a G here, a C here. So this is different. This is different. But the others are all the same. Only one has the AAA and the sequence. Only one has the GG or the T here. Only one has the end and one has this TGA. So I think that all of these differences seem to be unique to individuals. The next step would be to see if we can use these mutations to understand which organisms are related to each other. Half of the organisms have a G here and half have a C. And so I'm going to divide these out into two categories, one and two. There's only one with this mutation, but there are two with these. So they both happen to be in category two. So we'll say maybe those two are related. Two of the organisms have a mutation at the same site, but it's not the same mutation. So I don't know that that tells us anything about the relationships. And then these over here are all unique and variable. So if we were going to do some statistics on them, we would divide the organisms up by their shared mutations. We'd have two overarching groups, ones and the twos, with a subgroup within the twos that I've labeled A here. So for the ones, we have A, C, E, and G. And for the twos, we have B, D, F, and H. And then within the twos, we have D and H closely related to each other. So I'm going to move my D. So what I've done is I divided these up into groups that are more closely related to each other based on their genomes. And we can put this into what we call a phylogenetic tree. And the idea here is that we would be able to use the variations in mutations to reconstruct which organisms are closely related to each other. But we would show this as an idea of evolution through time. So B and F and H and D are more closely related to each other. And so each organism is at the tip of a tree branch. And then we show that B and F had a common ancestor and H and D had a common ancestor. Because I've coded where the mutations actually were, we can see that H and D had a common ancestor with the AA at the site, whereas B and F didn't. And B and F have the same ancestors as the other organisms. But then what we could do is we could say, okay, all of the ones in group two had an ancestor that had a G at this location. Whereas all of these, A, C, and E, we'll say that this is the branch that had the G and this is the branch that had the C. And these all branched off and got these different mutations like the ones over here did as well. So I will label this one as having the AA and this one would have the GA. And it turns out that all of these over here also have the GA. So if we were going to read this tree, there's some ancestor to all of these organisms. And at some point one of its descendants had a G at this location. The other had a C at that location. And with division through time, the organisms, the descendant from the one with G had another mutation that led to a GA being on one side and this other position and an AA on the other side. And then more mutations happened that differentiated the individuals that we have preserved. We can look and see what characteristics the organism, original organism had by looking at all the similarities of the genes. So components of the genes that are all the same are all of these. So the ancestor, because this is shared by all of the genes, we can say it probably had the C, A, T, G, A, C, G, T part of the code. And then if we look at this next section, we have the C and the G. If we look at this next section right in here, we can see that almost all of them have a G, C, G, G, A, C, AA. One of them is different and that's this organism right here. So there are two different interpretations since it's different. One is that there was a mutation along this branch that caused the difference right here. And that would mean that the ancestor had this whole sequence, but it was just changed in one of these organisms. So I'm going to put a star in. So this is either C or G. Half of each organism has each one. And then we can say that it probably was G, C, G, G, A, but there is one difference right here. So the general idea I want you to come away with is the thought that the variations in the genome preserve the evolutionary history. Phylogenies can also be constructed from the morphological characteristics of fossils. And the key is to look at the organisms, see what the similarities are, and try to reconstruct the evolutionary history. So thanks for watching.


Hey guys, how you doing? I'm hoping that this all pans out. I was having some problem with the camera and microphone, but do me a favor, post in that chat box if you can hear me. I think there's like a bad echo, something going on with StreamYard, and I don't know why I'm doing it, but you know what, this stuff happens. So if you would, just post in that chat section if the audio is okay. If you can see me on video, that would be nice. But let's just check it out, make sure everything's working, and then I can move forward. So Paul says he's standing by. Paul, let me know there if this audio and this camera is working properly. And I think I know what part of it is. Let me try turning down that. That may help. I had some volume up there, but let me know if that's working. I'm waiting for you guys to post. I guess I should just start and assume it's working. I don't know. I don't want it to sound bad for you guys. That's my only concern. Let me switch my camera to a different camera and see if that looks better too. I think that camera is better right there. So anyhow, I'm just going to start and assume that you guys can hear me okay, that it looks okay. We got some construction in the backyard today, so if there's some noise, it's the guys in the back. It's not me. It's the guys in the back. Hey, don't forget, if you haven't subscribed, make sure you subscribe. Don't forget to ring the bell for all done notifications so you're notified each and every time I go live. And I'm sorry about the delay.  I really do. It's a thing I've got. Even when I go to the doctor's office, the first time I meet with a doctor, I'm like, hey, my time's just as important as yours. If you're going to always be late, let me know now so I can switch doctors. And I've done that many times. And most doctors will say, hey, if I'm running late, can I come out and tell you? I'm like, yeah, that's fine, but don't just leave me sitting there. I don't like that. My time's just as important. You just got a different job resolved. So anyhow, what we're going to talk about today is some lucrative ways you can make money online. It's pretty cool stuff. I think you're going to like it. And if you guys are hearing me properly, please post something in that chat section there. I don't see that. So I assume it's working okay. Let me just check my iPad here and make sure something. Yeah, I think it is. I think it's working fine. So we should have a problem there. But anyhow, I want to go through these ways. Small businesses that you can start online, you don't have to have a lot of money to do this. I think a lot of people use that as a crutch or an excuse. I know growing up, I always heard you had to have money to make money. That's just BS. You have to have action to make money. You do not need money to make money. It's just not necessary. So currently getting spinning circle of doom. See, that's weird, Paul, because I'm actually watching it on an iPad. And the iPad here is showing it's working. So I'll hold that up there. So that's me on YouTube right there. So it should be working. Not maybe your computer then, but it's coming through on my iPad over here. So it should be working on your end too.  And guys, I'm going to blow through these things really fast. These different ways of making money online. I keep looking out here because they're building a fence in my backyard as I'm recording today. But I want to go through all these things with you and show you some ways you can make money. It is certainly possible. It is certainly possible. So let me go through them, make some notes, put questions about each individual one into the chat box there. And I'm just going to go through them. And I can expound on any ones that you want to. The first one is start a drop shipping business. You can buy stock, store, pick it up and do all that stuff. But it's a whole lot easier to do a drop shipping business. It's easy to start. And it's the first good business idea I would give you today. You can curate products from one or more suppliers. You can use something like AliExpress if you want. There's just a whole lot of ways going about it. Next thing you can do is you can design and sell print on demand t-shirts, hats, blankets, shower curtains, whatever you want. There are so many print on demand companies. And you can use freelancer sites if you need some help from like Fiverr or Upwork or Dribble or 99 Designs, any of those companies to get any designs. But you know most of the designs are just very few words on a shirt. So it doesn't take much design skill. You can do that. Number three, you can launch your own book. I've done books. I'm doing another book right now. And books are a great calling card. It's a great way to get people into your funnel. Let me see here. And let me ask Paul. Okay. So I want to get over to my other screen here. Just put a comment in real quick for you guys. There we go. Can you hear and see me now? Because it looks like it's working. There we go. I put that in there. I'm kind of toggling between two screens here. One of my screens wouldn't allow my camera. So I'm having to go from Firefox to Google Chrome and back and forth. So it's a little cumbersome. That's okay. But books are great guys. You can all you do is outline some chapters. You can record it, you know, in your phone, have it transcribed and boom, you got a book. It's just not that hard to do. People think it's so difficult. It really isn't. Number four, you can create digital products online. And I've done all these digital products online are great. You can do courses. You can do videos, you can do audios. But digital products are great because you can sell them over and over and over again. And none of these things cost you really any money, guys. You know, all you get to do a little bit of marketing, but that's about it. Number five, you can sell cradle demand posters, greeting cards, prints. There's companies that will do that for you.  There's plenty of digital templates and mock up generators like place it as P L A C E I T. I think it may be dot net on that one. Let me see what if I can see what that is. Yes, place it dot net, not place it.com. And you can use them to see what it's going to look like. Number six, you can start a charitable business.  But it's a it's a cool way of doing it. Having a mission to go along with your business is really cool. You don't have to have a nonprofit that you can have a business where a percentage of everything you make goes to a charity that makes people want to do business with you. The giving grow Shopify app makes it really easy. It's called give and grow Shopify app. You can use that. There's so many different softwares out there didn't even exist. You know, when I first started number seven, you can sell a service offering services isn't passive. Okay, it's one of the few that's not passive, but it can be very lucrative. You know, your time can be very valuable to other people.  Number eight is going to be create an online fashion boutique. If you want to do that, I think it's pretty cool. If you like fashion and you like sharing your sense of style, you consider creating your own online fashion boutique. You don't need to become a fashion designer. You can simply curate items from other vendors into your own online store and have them actually ship out the products. You can do dresses, shoes, swimwear, accessories, much more. And you can build your own fashion brand using one of the several sourcing apps from Shopify. Shopify has all these apps you can find this stuff. Shopify is great, guys. And I think I have a link that's going to be in the description after this, so you can put that in there. Let's see here. Don't have any comments over there right now. Paul must have had a hard time being able to make the fake work. Number nine, you can sell handcrafted and homemade goods. If you like doing that stuff, I don't. It's not for me, but it doesn't mean it's not for you. You know, whether you like doing DIY soaps or candles or sauces or pottery, whatever the heck it is you want to sell, Shopify makes it really easy to do a lot of that stuff. And I say Shopify a lot because it's really one of the best website builders for selling stuff online. What else can you do? Number 10, you can build an audience that you can monetize, okay? In today's connected world, the ability to capture and keep the attention of others is a real true asset, guys. It's one of the many businesses that are even willing to, you know, really pay for that one-on-one type of things that creators do. When you create an audience, you can then send out offers to them. You can do sponsored posts. You can become an influencer. You can sell physical or digital products. You can do Patreon. You can do a combination of all this stuff. You don't have to do one of them. Number 11, you can start pet business. Pet businesses are great. My wife has one, but she does dog training. She has courses online. Every now and then she'll actually do one-on-ones. We did one yesterday and we film it. And we use that for her dog training courses online.  We film it as if we sell that footage, which is a pretty good deal. The pet industry is really full of opportunities right now. It's an industry worth nearly a hundred billion dollars. So it's easy one to get started in with guaranteed demand.  Your pet business could be product or service-based. Hers is service-based, but she has some outer wear with the name of her pet parent reset. You can look that up. She has t-shirts and hats and all that kind of stuff, hoodies, all that. You can also create a membership program. That's number 12. I also have membership programs. I have membership programs that pay me money every single day. They're great to have. You have money coming in every day. It's a monthly income, which is cool. So that's another thing you can do. Number, what are we up to? What are we up to? Somebody keep a track. Somebody keep a track. Number 13. You can join an affiliate marketing program. There's so many affiliate marketing programs out there. I like ClickBank because they have a whole lot of offers, but you can also go to share a sale, something like that. You can go to link share. You can choose the offers you want to promote. You can get an affiliate link, and you can promote that link across all your different assets, whether you've got a blog or whether you've got a YouTube channel or Facebook or whatever it is you want to do. Then every time somebody buys from those people, you automatically get a commission on those. You don't have to come up with a product. You don't have to create a product. You don't have to do any of that. It's already done for you. Number four. I like this one. You can become a virtual event planner. Virtual event planning is a profitable business idea if you enjoy organizing and connecting people. You can grow this business because it is growing at 23% a year. That's significant rise in business. People are doing this now. They're doing these online events. As a virtual event planner, you'd be responsible for creating virtual conferences, networking opportunities, educational sessions for companies all around the world. That's the cool thing nowadays. You don't have to worry about, you know, my town doesn't have enough business. You know, it's the internet.  Facebook, you know, is moving to Metaverse, which will open up new opportunities for event planners in the near future. Party.space, for example, has raised capital to scale its metaverse being virtual events business. If you want job security for the future, virtual event planning is a great way to go. What are we up to now? I'm watching the guys do the fence out here. And for those of you who got in late, we're having a fence replaced in the backyard right now. So I'm checking that out. You can start a landscape business. Maybe you want to do physical type stuff. Okay. Landscaping. Oh my gosh. I mean, I had the hardest time getting somebody a good gardener. We're having a hard time getting a housekeeper now. We've been through three housekeepers in four months. They just quit showing up. You know, the last one that was here, just to show you what the demand is for it. She brought in a crew of five people clean the house for two hours. And I can't get a hold of her to pay her. She hasn't even sent me a bill. I mean, so I'm totally confused on that one. But anyhow, there's so much work out there you could do. Number 16, you can test app developments. If you want to do that, app development is pretty cool. Creating a million dollar app is not easy. In fact, 99.5% of consumer apps fail. Most apps don't have a pop product market fit. They need a ton of marketing and they're expensive to create. So why bother putting this on our small business ideas list? Because consumer app development isn't the only path for entrepreneurs. New apps for the Shopify App Store crop up daily with a market of motivated businesses eager to find the tools they need. Sound interesting? All you gotta do is check out some of that on Shopify. Number 17, offer child care. I talked to somebody last night who did that. There is a child care crisis happening right now. The world illness, I think I'm supposed to call it exposure. It closed a lot of daycare places. And the rising cost is less parents with no choice but to take care of their kids at home. So the rise in demand for child care services with decreasing supply is a perfect mixture for starting a new business. President Joe Biden's infrastructure bill has pledged federal spending to help fix the child care market. So you can get some government money in this if you want. Number 18, start an online coffee shop. I'll let you think about that for a second. I'm going to get a sip. What? An online coffee shop? Yes, selling coffee can be profitable with a strong brand in the right marketing plan. So we're not actually selling a couple of coffee. We're selling real coffee. Coffee has a lot of competition, but that shouldn't really scare you away from this. It's a multi-billion dollar business. Selling a high commodity product like coffee has a lot of benefits, right? There's a high volume of customers. Customers typically associate small brands or having a higher quality than the corporate brand. So if you have your own little niche brand, you stand a better chance to sell a coffee than the big brands do. So there's a lot of niching opportunities.  If you want to just do stuff, maybe you're handy fixing things or installing things or doing whatever, become a handyman. You know, I grew up where my dad had me help him every time he did a project. So I tend to learn things. So I can fix some things now, which is good. But he was always giving me projects to do and telling me why they had to be done. You know, home repairs and improvement industry sits at around $450 billion in market value.  Number 20, like taking pictures? Sell your photography. Get passion for taking photos. Learn to take your hobby into a full-time photography business. Now, you don't have to just sell your services for weddings or corporate things, but you can. You can easily set up a store and sell prints, posters, NFTs, and a whole lot more. Or you can sell your photos and stop photography and pass it in a lot of these sites. And we're down to number 21, number 21, become a social media management consultant. Man, social media is so important right now. So many people are involved in it, but you got to understand whether it's a small restaurant or a nail salon or, you know, haircut in place. They don't have time. They just don't have time. And you know, it's pushed more, you know, since the illness has started, it's pushed more and more people to social media than that's ever seen before. As of October 2021, get this, there are over 4.2 billion active users around the world. That's 53.6% of the population. Now, I understand some of these people are super old. They're not going to be online. And some of them are babies. They can't get online. So that's a huge amount between YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and all the other social networks available. Brands need help managing their accounts. If you're good at that stuff and you're doing it anyhow, why not charge for it? A social media manager is responsible for like creating and analyzing content for brand social accounts. Clients will pay you to create engaging content, to write active videos, to respond to comments, to run ads, and a whole lot more. You could change companies' whole focus by helping them with their social media. And you can charge by the hour, the project rate, whatever you want to do. It's a perfect job for digital numads to make money online and start business with little investment. In fact, no investment, really. You just find the clients. So there's 21 things. I did that pretty quick, didn't I? 21 things in about 25 minutes, something like that. And I apologize for starting late. I had some technical difficulties. I still don't have them fixed. Normally, I use Google Chrome. Unfortunately, it wasn't working. So I had to use Firefox today. So I had to find Firefox. I haven't used it for such a long time. But do me a favor, guys. Put any questions, comments you have in that chat section. If you're watching this and it's not live, put it in the comments section below. I do come back through. I answer all those comments in there. I'll help you with any problems you're having. Maybe you just want to say hello, that's fine too. You can certainly do that in the comments. Thank you so much for listening today. I really appreciate it. Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't done so. Don't forget to ring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications so you're notified each and every time I go live. Thank you so much for listening today. And I will see you in the next video if I can figure out how to turn this off, which should take just a second. And it's probably going to be like right now. Now.


It's a busy afternoon on the grenade practice range, throwing live grenades for the first time. Everything is going along smoothly when... Pull pin! ...something goes wrong. Prepare it! An experienced soldier is doing sentry duty. Suddenly, he's overcome by a wave of depression. At an Army training camp, Private X is on sick call for the fourth time in a week. His back hurts and he can't straighten up. But the medical officer has found nothing physically wrong with him. Overseas, a young officer is lost in some little town. He doesn't know how he got there or even what his name is. This soldier has been keeping to himself and acting strangely towards the other men. He thinks they're whispering about him. Then, in the middle of chow, he thinks the milk tastes funny and accuses his neighbor of trying to poison him. At a medical aid station, combat casualties wait to be treated. A jittery soldier, exhausted by combat experience, reacts to an unexpected noise. These men are all suffering from some form of psychiatric disturbance. There's nothing strange or mysterious about that. Nervous, emotional or mental illness can occur in anybody. The seeds are in all of us just as are the seeds of physical illness. Take any cross-section of the United States Army, a tough and rugged body of men. But not a single one of them is 100% healthy. Some have a little sinus trouble, heartache attacks and boils. Others have had repeated attacks of appendicitis, which may return in an acute form. More than half have been slightly infected with tuberculosis without even knowing it. But the scars of the old infection remain. Not one man in a hundred has a perfect set of teeth. And each man's body carries millions of germs ready to attack, should he be weakened by exposure or fatigue. Even the healthiest people aren't pure white healthy. Or the sickest people solid black sick, unless they're dead. Instead, people are somewhere in between. Neither white nor black, but some shade of gray. Most people are light gray. A lot of health mixed with a little sickness. It's the same with emotional or mental health. Slight mental or personality disturbances are present in everybody. No one is 100% perfect. Private Phillips worries too much, whether about a mortgage or a letter two days overdue. Green without cause feels that he isn't up to the standard of the rest of the outfit. Davis is quick tempered, aggressive on the surface, but really oversensitive. He can't take orders or kidding. Becker has trouble making decisions. Parker feels he's always getting the dirty end of things. His tendencies, if magnified, can seriously impair the men's ability to function. No man is without some little fear or tension, some nervousness or uncertainty.  Most of them are some shade of light gray, and these men are merely darker shades of gray. In them, the balance between emotional health and illness has been tipped toward the unfavorable side.