Old Town Road Rapper Lil Nas X released a brand new single called J. Christ and the promotional material that he's put out in the lead-up to the release of this single has been nothing short of incredible because he is once again trolling evangelicals to perfection and expectably they are taking the bait. So I'm going to show you just a few promos that he put out followed by the reaction, his response to the reaction and then we'll dive into the significance of the art here because there is a lot of depth to it but you know there's a lot of people who can't see past just the imagery itself and the symbolism and them being triggered so they lash out but let's get to what he's put out there. So he released this gif of himself on a cross depicted as Jesus but the cross actually transforms into a mech which I think is badass. He also released an image depicting himself as an angel with guns which is very American. There's an image of him on a cross being crucified. I believe this is the actual cover art for the single and he also released a promotional video depicting the stairway to heaven featuring parodies of celebrities like Taylor Swift and I think Ed Sheeran, Oprah, Kanye West and also Barack Obama. So yeah. And in the final preview leading up to the release he shared a graphic of him being depicted as Moses parting the Red Sea. Now this isn't an official promotion that you're looking at right now but I would be remiss to not point out him sharing a clip of Candace Owens attacking him while his music plays.  But it gets better because he put out a TikTok that is just blatantly blasphemous with a snippet of his song playing and we're gonna take a look at that by the way the song was already kind of like chip-tuned by him. I had to mess with the audio more so that way this video doesn't get copyright claims but here's what he put out. Now if you're not evangelical you might not know why this is so significant but he is basically making a mockery of communion which is a ritual in Christianity where you eat bread and wine or juice to symbolize you accepting the flesh and blood of Christ into your body not to be confused with cannibalism but when I was in church when I was a kid I was taught that this is basically something that you can't do lightly. It's like a really significant thing and if you partake in holy communion you have to genuinely offer yourself to Jesus otherwise it could backfire and you could go to hell.  Now somebody responded saying are you serious with crying emojis and he responded saying now I don't like Lil Nas X either but y'all really gonna pretend y'all didn't want to do the shittest kids and he is absolutely right because I remember taking communion when I was like eight or nine not really knowing what's going on but wanting more servings myself because I was hungry and bored in church as kids typically are but I mean there is a broader discussion to be had here about evangelicalism and how children are taught to participate in supposedly sacred rituals while not understanding what it means which theoretically implies that their parents could be inadvertently subjecting their own kids to eternal damnation by indoctrinating them into these substantial processes when they're too young to even understand what's going on but it's an entirely different tangent for a different day. That video that he put out got him death threats and on Twitter he pointed out the irony of them calling him evil while threatening to kill him over what he did or saying that he should die over what he did but I want to get to some specific responses from evangelicals because they saw all of the promotional material and of course they were absolutely triggered they clutch their pearls and that includes individuals like Ali London who I guess is religious now or at least trying to tell on him to other evangelicals in his base so he writes singer Lil Nas X mocks Jesus in a teaser for his new single Jay Christ as he appears in underwear and silver boots in a video clip posted to his ex the singer has previously courted outrage for promoting satanic practices including selling sneakers containing human blood so you know Ali London of course has to try to get some engagement off of this I don't think he really cares but he knows that the right-wing people in his audience will care on top of that mega pastor Sean Foyt reacted to the cover art for his single with the scripture that reads most importantly I want to remind you that in the last days scoffers will come mocking the truth and following their own desires except people have always mocked religion and they've always said it's the end of day so whatever Rachel Wilson a pro-patriarchy evangelical author tweeted oh gee whiz I'm sure this won't be as blasphemous as possible and it probably will be but cope now there were some Christian rappers that even responded like right-wing Christian mega rapper CCG Gray who called it demonic only to later encourage his followers to ignore quote gay demon Lil Nas X because he's doing it for publicity now keep in mind that he said this after he took the bait himself but nonetheless now we should ignore him but I mean if Lil Nas X is doing all of this for publicity guess what it's working he knows exactly what to do to trigger you and you take the bait every single time he knows how to get clicks and this is what artists do to promote their work right wing outlets for example like Fox News as well as the Daily Wire all reported about his blasphemy and then hilariously enough his responses to them being triggered went more viral than the blasphemy itself arguably so he responded in a couple of ways and I want to get to how he responded because I think that he is an S tier troll he was part of stan culture before becoming an actual artist himself so I think that he's really aware of how to cleverly respond and monopolize and all of this publicity but so he explained first and foremost in a more serious way that using religious symbolism in music is not a new phenomenon and he's right he says people have been recreating biblical stories for thousands of years everybody devout Christians when Lil Nas X walks into the room though exactly and he retweeted images of rappers like Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West wearing thorn crowns like Jesus and it's not just hip-hop as another magazine explains quote religious symbols and iconography and music are nothing new or uncommon a 1995 study of music videos on MTV show 38% of them featured religious imagery this phenomenon has been seen across decades and genres from Madonna's 1989 pop song like a prayer whose video depicted the singer referencing her Catholic upbringing in front of burning crosses causing the Vatican to call for a boycott of her music so Lil Nas X is just following in the tradition of other artists who have done the same thing but it seems as if there's this extra layer of outrage because it's Lil Nas X I mean that's not to say that Madonna didn't gin up outrage or Sinead O'Connor didn't gin up outrage when attacking religion or criticizing religion but when it comes to Lil Nas X there's this sense that's relatively explicit from evangelicals to where they think that it's extra unacceptable because he's gay and we kind of see this towards queer artists so Sean Foyt for example one of the individuals was attacking him for his blasphemous imagery also attacked drag queen Christian singers like Flamie Grant because in the mind of an evangelical you're not allowed to even dabble in Christianity or experiment with religious imagery because you don't get membership to this club if you're gay and Lil Nas X addressed their attempt at gatekeeping Christianity in the most hilarious way possible writing making Christian music does not mean I can't suck dick no more the two are not mutually exclusive I am allowed to get on my knees from multiple reasons and he's not wrong there are plenty of LGBTQ plus people who are still religious some of them want to take back the religion that they were raised in so that way it's no longer hateful but I mean that tweet set off a firestorm for obvious reasons for example Christian rapper Holy Gabana responded on Instagram saying quote if Nas X want to be gay cool do you lil bro just don't title yourself a Christian and make others believe it's okay for us to live in habitual slash intentional sin people deserve truth and I stand on the word of God now I just want to take a moment to address that criticism specifically because according to him you can't be a Christian and live in sin simultaneously but interestingly enough this same individual makes a really convenient exception for himself and you can see this in the video that he has pinned to his Twitter profile Christians they'd say hey was not that you're saved will you get your face tattoos removed no I won't because you're asking me a question God didn't ask me himself God and say hey before you come be my son go I want you to remove your face tattoos humans look at the outer appearance God look at the heart oh well isn't that fucking convenient see I'm allowed to live in sin and keep my tattoos but Lil Nas X he's not allowed to still live in sin he actually has to turn away from his homosexuality if he wants to be a Christian except the book that you purport to love so much condemns both homosexuality and tattoos in the same goddamn section Leviticus 1928 reads quote you shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead nor tattoo any marks on you I am the Lord hmm interesting how you just forget about that or maybe you didn't know better schedule an appointment with a dermatologist to get those tattoos removed immediately so as to not live in sin right because you want to be a real Christian I mean these same rules apply to Lil Nas X and you do they not it's just the hypocrisy is so overwhelming and they don't even try to be consistent here but on a serious note again I genuinely don't know if Lil Nas X is actually religious perhaps he's not a Christian perhaps he's spiritual in some way but he is right that you can be both LGBTQ and religious I am not I'm an anti-theist but there are plenty of queer people who are religious but putting that aside he at least tried to convince evangelicals regardless if he's religious himself or not that he was sincere by posting a fake acceptance letter to Liberty University which is hilarious and he writes I know Twitter hates me right now but I want y'all to know I'm literally about to go to college for biblical studies in the fall not everything is a troll anyways I'm a student again let's go now if you look at the acceptance letter it looks very legitimate but there's one thing that should really get your attention and that is it's signed by Jerry Falwell who's dead and as LGBTQ nation explains in reality the current president of Liberty University is actually Don D. E. Costin the university's founder evangelical pastor and anti LGBTQ plus activist Jerry Falwell senior died in 2007 his son Jerry Falwell Jr. served as Liberty University's president from 2007 to 2020 when he resigned amid a sex scandal involving himself his wife and a former poll boy but on the subject of Jerry Falwell Jr. he actually responded and his response was unexpectedly reasonable quote this is the real Jerry Falwell president of Liberty University from 2007 to 2020 and that is my signature I know this is a joke but I wouldn't have hesitated to sign that letter for you to enroll don't believe all the lies that you have been told the last three years no judgment at L. U. only grace now first of all that's bullshit because Liberty University is an extremely religious organization that is vehemently anti LGBTQ plus but having said that though it still is really weird to see Jerry Falwell Jr. of all people have the most normal response to Lil Nas X among all the religious people who responded now moving on I do think that it is reasonable to deduce that Lil Nas X is being purposefully provocative for PR purposes but at the same time that doesn't mean that what he's doing isn't art because it is it's still art and it has a significant meaning and he confirmed this saying the problem is y'all judge everything at face value I've never released a visual without an underlying meaning and y'all know that but since I'm a troll y'all discount my art as pissing people off and I think that he's exactly right like if you troll a lot then sure people aren't gonna take you as seriously and not know when you're serious but he has evidence of what he's saying in his song Montero he stirred up an even bigger shitstorm because of his depiction of satanic imagery there's actually a really deep meaning to that music video as mckels street of out magazine explains if you haven't been paying attention in Montero Nas X combines Greek mythology and biblical references to essentially tell the story of queer self-empowerment in this world he traces an arc of being judged and condemned by society for his sexuality eventually being killed and sent to hell but on his way there he reclaims his sexuality and harnesses his sexual energy in order to seduce Satan and take over hell so from the perspective of a queer man who grew up being told that he'd go to hell for embracing his true self he chose to take back the power that that threat of eternal damnation had over him and embrace his true self despite the consequences I'm gonna be myself no matter what and if I go to hell so be it I'll serve cunt there too that was the message of his music video now I don't know where he's going to go with his latest music video because at the time that I record this video I haven't had the chance to watch it yet it's not out at the time that I filmed this on Thursday but blasphemous imagery especially from queer artists is always going to be meaningful to me because for LGBTQ plus people blasphemy is a form of rebellion evangelicals and anti LGBTQ plus organizations vote and lobby against our rights and very existence and our liberation often comes down to a fight with these same people so when there's this fundamental disrespect for our basic humanity and basic rights well you can understand why the feeling is mutual and why there's this animosity between both groups I mean churches have taught hate for centuries and they forced queer people to think that we're defective and sinful for just being ourselves and the threat of hell has been used as a form of psychological warfare as a cudgel against us to make us feel guilty for just being who we are being different right so after being told again and again that we're gonna go to hell if we don't obey God and be straight and sis openly defying God is an inherent act of rebellion for queer people but then again I don't know why he's using this imagery or how he's going to use it personally but I mean if you're a true believer what Lil Nas X does shouldn't matter his imagery doesn't impact your Christianity right it's what you do that matters to your God but by poking the bear Lil Nas X he's kind of exposing the inherent nationalism behind evangelicalism it's not just about this personal relationship that they supposedly have with Jesus Christ most evangelicals want to impose their beliefs and rules on all of society they're not content to just believe it themselves they want all of us to be indoctrinated into it as well and Lil Nas X is able to effortlessly expose that and get them to give the game away so I absolutely love and respect Lil Nas X I think he's absolutely hilarious and brilliant and a side note his new single may have actually been made with the most unorthodox instrument ever so I'll leave you with that on that funny note and yeah I'm Lil Nas X and this is how I make the beat to my new song so first I like went ahead and and then I uploaded the part into logic and right here I started playing with the pitch a little bit let's try I try going high and I tried to go all the way high and I was like what if you went like mad low right and then that brought me to this and I was like wait a fuck a minute and then that's what made me go ahead and say fuck it and I made this this let's play it up a little bit she stroked my face with the vagina she stroked my penis and balls


All right, folks. I did it. I found the stupidest person in America So at an anti-mask rally, which is still a thing apparently in the middle of a pandemic this person She said something that almost made my head explode. She equated anti-mask activism to police brutality against George Floyd. Take a look at the end of a mask mandate saying they are tired of not living their normal lives. A passionate call for action Friday morning in St. George several police officers on standby as many locals called concerns about coronavirus spikes overblown. The flu kills more than coronavirus. Others calling the virus a hoax or stating that asymptomatic carriers simply do not exist and they cannot be forced to wear masks anywhere as citizens of the United States. If we want to wear a mask, that's fine We can take care of ourselves. Some rally attendees say they shouldn't ever wear masks if they have any medical issues or mental health concerns Or if they feel they simply can't breathe. When George Floyd was saying I can't breathe and then he died And now we're wearing a mask and we say I can't breathe But we're being forced to wear it anyway.  Most child molesters Love them school administrators responding that they don't understand why crowds are protesting them based on a mandate given by the governor They blocked off the front entrance to the school building and we went out task them to move and they Attempted to storm the school building the school board is implementing the governor's recent order that face shields alone are not enough And if a parent is adamant that their child cannot wear a mask or a shield They must fill out a form including a doctor's note so the district can review it and st. George katie kralis abc four news That is going to be a big yikes from me How do you say that with a straight face when george floyd said that he couldn't breathe He had a knee on his neck for nine minutes If you're wearing a mask the difference is you can wear a mask for nine minutes And breathe it may be uncomfortable.   This is non-negotiable There's no medical condition where you can't wear a mask I get that there are issues with some people wearing masks with children for example Like if you put it on a toddler, you know, it's going to be difficult to get them to keep it on 99.9 of the population is fine wearing a mask fine wearing a mask But If you are in america and you're a right winger You're always the victim under any circumstances It doesn't matter how minimal the inconvenience is you are the victim and we're still getting these viral videos of Male and female carans yelling at minimum wage workers because they aren't allowed to shop at stores Um without masks.   I knew it was possible But you just don't expect to see as common as we see it, but it's pretty common unfortunately in 2020 america real-life version of idiocracy folks


Leading Together aims to guide and assist those who might be placed in leadership positions in response to international disasters and conflicts. Leading Together provides insights into the principles that will help you prepare to deal as leaders with the multitude of agencies and issues that you'll face in the field. You land on the ground, everything's happening at once, every community is at risk, everything has to be done right away. So how you prioritize really kind of depends on what crisis rises to the top that day. If you're on an operation, everybody who's following you needs to know your intent.  What capacities and competencies do they bring to the table? And then what role are they going to play? The leader must understand, where do they fit in? It's like a wheel, where in the wheel do they fit so that the wheel runs smoothly? Bringing diverse groups together with competing agendas and different perspectives means that there's got to be some compromise and you really got to have an open mind as to how you can work through that and look for what the best outcome is. And that sometimes may not be your outcome. You're never going to encounter the perfect mission, right? I mean by definition it's going to be changing, adapting, complex. You need to be open-minded and you need to be able to adapt. And also not always ask for permission for everything you have to do. Sometimes you have to make a decision. When it really comes to a point at which it's time to use the phrase that we often use the building back better, where we really can get ready for the next event and if we get ready properly, the next event might not be a disaster.


Hi, I'm Kyle Rourke, VP of Platform Strategy here at Snowflake and I could not be more excited to be here today with Margaret Sherman, who is the head of data strategy for Sonos. Now all throughout the day today, we've been hearing from lots of customers from all over the world and hearing about their journeys and how they've transformed their business by embracing the data cloud. And of course, this next story is one I am personally very excited about because I'm a huge Sonos customer and I'm sure many of you are as well. Thanks, Kyle. As you mentioned, I'm the head of data strategy at Sonos and what that means is that I set the data priorities for the company as well as guide the company on where to invest now and in the future to get the most out of our data resources. I've spent about four years at Sonos. Previously I was the head of product data and worked a lot with setting up Snowflake and the IoT data and I've been in technology for 20 years. And the last 10 years I've spent in data analytics and machine learning. That's very cool. Now, how does your company view data in general? How does your team fit in the overall strategy of how Sonos leverages data? Yeah, so Sonos is a sound experience company and we really pioneered multi-room wireless audio and we made that experience amazing and truly changed how people listen. And our mission is to inspire the world to listen better. And everything that we do is in service to that and data is a part of that. So we really believe that data is fundamental to helping us achieve our mission. Data helps us build a better business, build better products and ultimately we think it helps us make our customers happier. Now before Snowflake, maybe let's go back in time, you've been at Sonos for the last four years. Maybe go back in time a little bit for the time pre-Snowflake and what were some of your challenges that you guys faced before you started with us? Yeah, it was really challenging. So I was actually leading the product data team at the time and we used Snowflake primarily for our IoT data. And so we're collecting tons of data, but we're really struggling to leverage it. Essentially what would happen is if we wanted to answer a single question about what was happening with the customer experience, we would have to have data engineers go and write some code, spin up clusters. This could take weeks just to extract the data and get it into a shape where analysts and scientists could go and work with it. And so we really went from being in a place where it was taking weeks just to answer a single question to now we can do things in hours. So it really changed things for us. Wow. And so the benefits of, I mean, obviously being able to go act on information very, very quickly. What are some of the other benefits that that's driven for you guys? I mean, our data people love it obviously because if you think about the process of data science, it's very iterative.  You're going to want to dig in, you're going to want to pull more data, and you're going to want to join it together, do different cuts and pivots. And before that was just off the table because as you can imagine, if every time you have to go weeks to go do that, it's just impossible. Whereas now, our data scientists can churn through these problems very quickly. And the data engineers love it because they're not sitting around waiting for jobs to finish for forever. They are able to get through their code faster. And as one of my engineers likes to say, she told me, she said, Snowflake, she's a beast crunching through the data. You mentioned IoT. I think that's obviously a very challenging space for a lot of customers. And there's a lot of interest in it. Maybe give me some more thoughts on how much data are you guys bringing in? Is it small, large, has the volume been something that you could handle with Snowflake? Yeah, I mean, that was why we chose Snowflake. So prior to having Snowflake, we were really struggling with a lot. I mean, we have very large volumes of data, as you can imagine, from an IoT device because we're collecting from over 10 million homes across the world. So it's quite a bit of data. And all of that doesn't fit in a traditional sort of data warehouse. We were trying to push some of it into SQL. And we were essentially taking just a handful of our telemetry events. And we were boiling them down to daily and weekly aggregates. And even trying to push that into SQL was just too much for it to handle. And with Snowflake, we had processing jobs that were timing out in SQL server after running for hours and hours. And then Snowflake could just crunch through it in a few minutes. So it was, yeah.  They showed me the comparison numbers. Well, so now, well, so it's been a good experience for you. But let's talk about your customers. And I think I can say, as a customer myself, I've always had a great experience with Sonos. That's probably why I keep buying more and more and more of them. But talk to me about how has data really, really helped you guys drive that customer experience in some very tangible ways? As a Sonos customer, we really hope that you enjoy the great sound and freedom of choice and ease of use that the product brings. But obviously behind all of that, behind that really easy experience, it's very complex. You've got a lot going on when you're interacting with your Sonos system. So it's not just a single piece of hardware. You've got you've got a mobile device potentially that you're using to control it. You have third party voice services. You have music service providers, Wi-Fi, network traffic. All of these things are going on. So for us to really make sure that we're creating an amazing experience because we're super customer obsessed. So Margaret, you know, one of the things that I've always experienced as a customer of Sonos is that, you know, frankly, it's just for me, it just always works. And that's one of the best parts of the customer experience, whether I'm pulling up Spotify on my phone to go listen to it or whether I'm plugging in a sound bar into the TV, everything seems to just work. So maybe just walk me through why it's been such a good experience maybe for me. Yeah. And how you use it with it. So some of the, you know, kind of at a high level, an example of what we do is we use Snowflake and because of the power of Snowflake, we're able to bring together different kinds of telemetry about what's happening in our products and our services. And then we can try to pinpoint reliability issues and determine what's happening, like what's causing them. That was kind of the first thing that we attacked with Snowflake, was really to go in and dig in and join some different events together and start slicing and dicing and looking for, you know, what are the main problems that we're seeing and what are the fixes to them. And the product team was able to find some reliability issues that they were able to fix and they shipped the fixes and we were able to significantly reduce the rate at which some of these errors were occurring. So just by having all the data in one place and being able to go actually act on it quickly and of course in a cost-effective manner, it really did let you guys really pinpoint any issue when it did occur and go support a fix quickly. Yeah, I mean, we were able to find things that we didn't even know were happening because we could really drill into the data. So it wasn't just having one place, it was also just being able to go dig into a different level of fidelity that you didn't have before. I mean, you should see some of the Tableau dashboards that we've put on top of Snowflake, so it's pretty impressive. That's awesome, that's awesome. So what really set it apart?  You know, what really set apart Snowflake from everything else at the time and even now in your opinion? Just like you said about Sonos, it just works. We were able to stand it up really easily, we were able to load data into it really easily. You know, it's pretty flexible in terms of what you can do. So we, for example, we use the variant column quite a bit and that allows us to take kind of this semi-structured data and throw it in there and have it indexed and then we can work with it as we want to and we don't have to have like a real complex data pipeline upstream before we throw things into Snowflake if we don't want to or we can. We really like, obviously, I mentioned the speed, I keep mentioning that because it's really powerful and it holds a ton of data, but even better is the cost, right? So we're pushing tons of data into Snowflake and we're not having to pay that much for that cost. We're basically paying S3 costs and then, but then you pay, you just pay for what you use, so you're just paying for your processing costs and even that is pretty easy to optimize and you guys provide tools for that and support.  That's great. It's really great. What's the plan for the future? Where do you see Sonos and Snowflake and the data cloud? Where do you see all that intersecting in the future? Yeah, I mean, we really want Snowflake to be kind of the center of our data platform and bring all of our data together. We want to live the data dream, right? We're going to get our data together and do all sorts of cool analysis. So we have a bunch of different projects that we want to be able to do. For example, one thing that we're looking at doing is bringing together our product telemetry data and our customer support data so that we can try to find patterns in terms of the types of errors or sequence of events that happen before somebody calls us so that we can potentially intervene and fix the problem before somebody even has to reach out to our care team. And then another place that we're looking at using Snowflake is connecting it to Salesforce. So for people who are interested in hearing from us, we could do things like when you set up a new product, we can send you information about how to use that product or if there's new features available for the product that you have, we could send you information about that. And with Snowflake as our back end, it really helps us be able to tailor the customer experience. So Margaret, you've talked a lot about Snowflake and using Snowflake and it quote, just works. I mean, you guys are running a very large, a very, very large implementation of Snowflake using IoT data coming from, as you mentioned, millions and millions of devices. What's been the overall lift to the organization just to go manage Snowflake and keep it going and keep it up and running? It almost runs itself. Like I'm almost surprised because, you know, we obviously use a lot of different third party tools and most of them require quite a bit of intervention on a regular basis. I would say Snowflake, it stays up and running and you have great tools for managing the whole system. And it's easy to see what's happening. It's easy to see, you know, when different clusters are spinning up and spinning down. We have Tableau dashboards that we use to monitor all of our usage. And so, and you guys provide all the data for that to make that really easy. So, that's really great. Can't say it enough, we love Snowflake. So Margaret, thank you so much. It was great hearing your story about Sonos and how you leverage Data Cloud. So again, thank you for being a customer and thank you again for being here today. Thanks for having me, it was a pleasure.


Essential oils are complex mixtures of volatile compounds produced by plants. They are composed primarily of terpenes, which are synthesized through the mevalinate pathway. Additionally, they contain phenols, which are derived from the shikimate pathway. The chemical composition of these oils gives them many beneficial properties such as antioxidants, anti-inflammatories, antimicrobials, and more. These properties make essential oils valuable for use in food and cosmetics, as well as in the medical field. This article was authored by Wissal Daifi, Sanaa Bellilli, Sabrine Jotzi, and others.


Is there any instance that we as human beings see angels physically? There are people who have said that they have seen angels, so yes it is possible because I mean in Hebrews it actually talks about angels who come in physical form, so yes. So it could also be... There have been occasions where people have seen angels. Okay, it could also be that we have interacted with angels but we didn't know that it was an angel. That could also be... And one more question I had is like, we have the names of Gabriel, Michael as angels, archangels and all. So where these people first in human form passed away and then became an angel, what appointed them or is it like from inception only, they have been an angel? Yeah, when we look at that some passage which we started off with, there it talks about angels being created as a separate form of a species of creatures. So it's not that sometimes humans become angels and sometimes angels become humans. There's no intermingling of the species, if you can call them that. Humans are a separate created species by themselves. Humans are a separate species by themselves. God has got certain plans and status in mind for angels and he has a separate status in mind for humans because humans were created in the image of God to be rulers of this earth. Angels on the other hand were created in the heavenlies for some other purpose. So there's no intermingling of these two species. They are two separate categories of species, if you can use that term. So Gabriel and Michael and all these other angels, when they were created, they were created right from the beginning as angels. They are not humans who later became angels. There's no interaction between the species simply because there's no verse anywhere in the Bible which indicates that such a intermingling can happen. So in fact, we will touch upon that further now. So we have been looking at different things that are mentioned in scripture regarding angels so that we can have the correct perspective regarding these things. So we will move into the next point, which in fact was just brought up now because there's this teaching that humans, at least some humans after dying become angels. So and they base that teaching on some verses which are found in the book of Acts. So let's look at what actually those verses mean because what the impression that we get from scripture is that angels will always be angels. Humans will always be humans. You cannot just have a kind of metamorphosis where angels sometimes become humans and humans sometimes become angels that is not possible. They are two distinct species but there's this verses which are misunderstood in the book of Acts which has led to this wrong teaching. So let's actually look at that for a little bit. Acts chapter 12 verses 13 to 16 which basically is talking about Peter's deliverance. He's arrested by Herod and then the angel comes and sets him free from the prison. So he comes out of the prison and he comes to John Mark's house where all the believers are gathered in all night prayer. They're praying basically for him. So that's basically the event which is mentioned over here. Acts chapter 12 verses 13 to 16. And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate a girl named Rhoda came to answer. When she recognized Peter's voice because of her gladness she did not open the gate but ran in and announced that Peter stood before the gate but they said to her you are beside yourself yet she kept insisting that it was so. So they said it is his angel. Now Peter continued knocking and when they opened the door and saw him they were astonished. Alright so in this passage the verse 15 it says it must be his angel. So you know the background is basically that Herod had very recently killed James who is the brother of John. So James has been killed the Jews are very very happy and so Herod thinks okay this is nice these people like it whenever I kill a believer so he arrests Peter. So the church is now gathered in John Mark's house and they are praying for him so that his life will be spared so that he will not be killed in the same way that James has was killed but they are not very sure that the prayer will be answered or not and so in the middle of the night they hear a knock on the door and so you basically have Rhoda the servant going to the door and when she hears Peter's voice she is so happy that their prayers are answered she comes running back inside and she says you know what Peter is alive our prayers have been answered and they say how can that be in the middle of the night you know I mean how could he possibly be here and she continues to insist that it is him and so then they say oh it must be his angel the word that is used over there is the Greek word agelos so it's literally the word for angel which is used over there so there are two ways in which people try to understand this one set of people they say this must be referring to Peter's guardian angel so you know the people thought that Peter must have been killed and now the guardian angel is coming to inform the believers that Peter is dead so they must have thought of it in that way so when they said it must be his angel maybe they were thinking that Peter's guardian angel was knocking on the door but to basically look at the passage it says that Drodha recognized Peter's voice so are we saying are we coming up with a theory saying that guardian angels will have the same voice as the person whom they are guarding you know we are making a lot of assumptions which are not backed up by scripture so this may not really be what they had in their minds when they said it must be his angel in Jewish mythology you know they had their own set of beliefs and not all their beliefs were in line with the Old Testament scriptures so among their you know folklore one of the ideas which they had in their minds back then the Jewish people was that when a person dies now this is not scriptural the Old Testament does not say this but the Jewish people you know in their mythology in their belief system they generally believed that when a person dies his soul continues to you know be there for three days just in case you know the body comes back to life so their belief among their popular mythology was that when a person dies his soul continues to hang around for three days and the end of three days when the body begins to decompose then the soul goes either to Sheol or goes to Abraham's bosom depending on whether the person was a good person or a bad person so this was their belief system though of course it is not backed up by the Old Testament so the chances are when they said it must be his angel they had that in their minds because the Jewish mythology it basically taught that after hanging around for three days that person was a good and godly person he would get changed into an angel and he would go into Abraham's bosom on the other hand if he is not a good person then he would not turn into an angel he would instead be condemned and sent to Sheol that was their mythology so these people because they know they believed that Peter is a good person they probably thought that his spirit has come knocking on the door and which is why it has the voice of Peter okay so we got to understand that in Acts chapter 12 the believers are still at a very young stage in their faith they still have not absorbed the scriptures been taught the scriptures clearly they have not had time to really grow in the scriptures so they still have a lot of wrong belief systems in their minds so when they said it must be his angel they are not declaring something from the Old Testament scriptures they are resorting to the popular beliefs that were prevailing in their times so in this passage it is most definitely not talking about humans becoming angels after death okay that is simply not the doctrine which is being presented in this particular Bible passage what does the Bible say about what happens to us after we die I mean that's very you know in a very simple way 2 Corinthians 5-8 this is what 2 Corinthians 5-8 says where Paul is talking about himself and he says you know I would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord so when once a person leaves his body he immediately goes to be at home with the Lord he doesn't hang around over there his soul doesn't keep hanging around the body that is more the mythology which people believe in the Bible plainly says that after a person leaves their body they immediately go to be at home with the Lord and then of course in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 35 onwards it talks about how one day we will be transformed but we won't be transformed into angels no we will be transformed into the resurrected body which God will give us that is what we are going to be transformed into okay so let's actually look at a few of those verses 1 Corinthians 15 if we could maybe read out verses 35-37 1 Corinthians 15 35-37 but someone will say how are the dead raised up and with what body do they come foolish one you what you sow is not made alive unless it dies and what you sow you do not sow that body that shall be but mere grain perhaps wheat or some other grain yeah Paul uses the imagery of a seed to talk about this whole idea of a resurrected body he says when you put a seed into the ground what comes out doesn't look anything like the seed the seed is round and small and really tiny but what comes out of the ground is so completely different it's an entire plant or a tree or it can even be one of those huge trees which grow very high so a seed and what comes out are so completely different he says it's like that with us when we die our physical body will be buried under the ground but what comes out that resurrected body which we will receive when the rapture happens that will be so gloriously different you know so he says there's no real resemblance between what we are now and what we are going to be so we will be transformed into something very grand we will I'm sure look as grand as the angels so you know we don't have to feel inferior that somehow we don't look as special as the angels when we receive our resurrected bodies we will be as awesome as the angels but we will never become angels you know so this wrong belief which the Jewish people held you know in the time of Jesus about how good people will get transformed into angels and then go into the Abraham's bosom that was a wrong teaching a wrong belief that they held in those days on the other hand scripture tells us that we will go to be with the Lord I'm assuming that in the time we go to be with the Lord we will just be in spirit form but we will receive a resurrected body at the time of the rapture another thing that we need to talk about is you know we've been happily saying demons fallen angels and all of that so maybe we should look at some verses about how they came into being of course we are familiar with these things you know but just to go over it once again Jude verse 6 so if we could look at how fallen angels came into existence Jude verse 6 it says over here that certain angels did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling God assigned to angels certain positions God gave them certain authority they were given certain tasks but these angels did not keep the positions of authority which they had been given they abandoned their proper dwelling rather than continuing to stay in the posting which where God had placed them they wanted something more they wanted something different they wanted something greater they became greedy for power which is what we see about even Satan right so let's look at another scripture Isaiah 14 verses 12 to 15 how you are fallen from heaven O Lucifer son of the morning how you are cut down to the ground you who weakened the nations for you have said in your heart I will ascend into heaven I will exalt my throne above the stars of God I will also sit on the mount of the conjugation on the farthest sides of the north I will ascend above the heights of the clouds I will be like the most high yet you shall be brought down to Sheol to the farthest depths of the pit so here we see one example it only talks about Lucifer over here but then there are many other angels also who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling so Lucifer we know he was appointed to be the guardian of the holy mountain that was his position that was his proper dwelling but he chooses to abandon his proper dwelling he says I will raise my throne above the stars of God he says I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly that was not the proper position or dwelling that was given to him he was appointed for another task he was supposed to be the guardian of the holy mountain so he went against the position and authority that was given to him and in verse 6 we are told that some of these angels who participated in this rebellion against God they have been chained in a place of darkness so it says over there in Jude verse 6 it says DC has kept in darkness bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great day so there are some fallen angels and demons which are allowed to move about freely on the earth but there are some who have already been bound and placed in a place of darkness for the future judgment let's look at some more verses regarding this 2nd Peter chapter 2 verse 4 which repeats almost the same thing 2nd Peter 2 verse 4 but if God did not spare the angels who sinned but cast them down to hell and deliver them into chains of darkness to be reserved for judgment so when these angels who have sinned they were sent to hell to a certain portion of hell where they are being held in chains of darkness and the demons in a popular passage which we are familiar with Luke chapter 8 30 to 33 Luke 8 30 to 33 Now a herd of many swine was feeding there on the mountain so they begged him that he would permit them to enter them and he permitted them then the demons went out of the man and entered the swine and the herd land violently down the steep place into the lake and drowned Now if you were to look at verse 30 and Jesus asked them saying what is your name and he said Legion because many demons had entered him so Jesus is addressing the demons which are there in a particular person and there are many demons inside that poor man and these demons they you know it says in verse 31 they begged Jesus repeatedly not to order them to go into the abyss so this abyss seems to be the place where certain demons are already being held in chains and so these angels which are you know freely moving around on the earth and who have taken position of this man they begged Jesus and they say when you cast us out of him please don't make us go into the abyss allow us to you know rather to go and live in the pigs so there is a place called the abyss maybe it's one particular portion of hell and there some angels have already been placed in imprisonment some other fallen angels are allowed to roam around at present but whenever God orders them to go into the abyss they will have no choice but they will have to go and be enslaved over there be chained over there all these fallen angels which are already in the abyss and all the fallen angels and demons which are roaming around in the earth today they all have one final destination which is mentioned in Matthew 25 verse 41 Matthew 25 verse 41 then he will also say to those on the left hand depart from me you cursed into the everlasting fire for the devil and his angels. So there's a place of eternal fire the lake of fire which has been specifically prepared for the devil and his angels the sad thing is that even some humans are going to end up over there simply because they have chosen not to place their faith in Jesus who is the only way to the Father so you know the so actually this lake of fire was not created for humans it was meant only for the devil and his angels but of course all the people who refused to believe in Jesus they will also end up over there. So right now some of the demons are being held in chains in the abyss but ultimately all the demons and the devil will be put into the lake of fire that will be their final destination and it seems to indicate that believers will have a role to play in this event. 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 3 if someone could read out 1 Corinthians 6 verse 3. Do you not know that we shall judge angels? How much more things that pertain to this life? So when these angels are all fallen angels when all these fallen angels are judged and thrown into the lake of fire there will be various degrees of punishment which they will experience. Maybe the higher demons which were you know involved in greater rebellion will be given a harsher punishment in the lake of fire and it looks like believers will have a part to play in judging these demonic beings. So imagine this high status which has been given to believers where believers will even participate in the judging of these fallen angels. So believers will have a role to play in what level of punishment would be given to these demonic beings. So we kind of get indication regarding that from 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 3. Let's move on to another concept regarding this whole you know subject of angels. Angels are known by different names you know there is a hierarchical system so you have demons belonging to different levels of power and authority and we see an example of that in Ephesians chapter 6 verse 12. We also see that repeated in Colossians. Colossians 1.16 also talks about that where the demons are divided into various categories based on the level of power which they possess. So if we could have someone read out Ephesians chapter 6 verse 12. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities against powers against the rulers of the darkness of this age against spiritual hosts of wickednesses in the heavenly places. I am assuming that I have not covered this point over here. I have not talked about this right very difficult to remember. Okay so there are four levels of demons being mentioned over here. The highest ones you know it depends on the translation that you're reading in different English translations you'll have different wordings used for these four categories but basically in the original Greek these are the four categories. The highest seem to be what are called as the arcas Now that's basically the word which means ancient ones. That's basically the Greek word from where you get archives arcake. Now it's talking about ancient very very old things. So the highest ranking demonic powers are probably these ancient ones these arcas. They are the highest level of demons and then the next Greek word that is used they are the exousia These exousia they hold delegated authority which the arcas have given to them. So at the topmost level you have the devil and the arcas and the power which they hold they delegate some of their authority and power to the ones below. So the next line of leadership in the demonic world is the exousia they hold the word exousia literally means power authority. So they hold power which has been delegated to them. And then the third Greek word that is used that is basically kosmo kratos kosmo basically means world and that word kratos basically means ruler. So world rulers So under the exousia you have a series of world rulers So you have different world rulers controlling different territories of the earth. They talk about territorial spirits right So that's basically where the idea comes from that different regions of the world are controlled by different demonic powers. So these are the kosmo kratos and then you have the lowest level of demons which are just simply called spiritual forces of evil. These are your just average evil spirits which do the work which has been assigned to them by the higher demonic powers. So there is a hierarchical system in the demonic world as well. In the same way when it comes to God's angels you have the arc angels which are at a very high level when it talks about the prince of Persia that is a demonic prince. So you have all these designations given when it talks about these angelic beings Another common word that is used for angels is the one which is used in Job chapter 1 verse 6 and in fact in many other places what is the term that is used for angels over here? Job chapter 1 verse 6 Job 1 6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came among them and the Lord said to Satan. So here the angels are referred to as sons of God. That's the term that is used for them. Daniel 4 13 Yeah uses a different term. Daniel 4 was 13 if someone could read out. I saw in the visions of my head while on my bed and there was a watcher She is reading it. Only thing can we have more volume so that we can hear her reading out. I saw in the visions of my head. At our end the volume is low so we are not able to hear you read. He will just increase the volume. Go ahead. I saw in the visions of my head while on my bed and there was a watcher Holy One coming down from Heaven Yeah so here the word that is used for the angel is the term watcher. So and again the same thing is mentioned even in the same passage. Daniel 4 verse 17 where it says this decision is by the decree of the watchers and the sentence by the word of the holy ones. So the angels are referred to as holy ones and they are referred to as watchers in this passage. This basically is your Nebuchadnezzar passage where Nebuchadnezzar has a dream and in his dream he sees an angel coming to him and declaring judgment against him saying that because he has not honored God but because he regards himself as being equal to God or superior to God he will be reduced to the level of an animal. So the watcher Holy One comes and gives him this judgment in his dream. So these terms which are used are sons of God and watchers and holy ones they all refer to angels Why are the angels being called watchers over here? This is just basically a normal word which means messenger. Let's look at Isaiah 21 verses 6 to 8 where it talks about a human watcher. Isaiah 21 6 to 8 For thus says the Lord said to me go set a watchman let him declare what he sees and he saw a chariot with a pair of horsemen, a chariot of donkeys and a chariot of camels and he listened earnestly with great care So here in this passage it talks about a human watcher. So a watcher is basically someone who delivers a message a watcher is someone who is basically like a messenger. So you have human watchers the prophets the Old Testament prophets are referred to as watchers in the sense they listen to what God has to say they wait upon God and watch what he has to say and then they come to the people and they deliver that message. So in the same way angels are also watchers in the sense they spend time in the presence of God and whatever message they have received from him they come and they deliver it to people So when we come to the Genesis 6 passage which talks about the sons of God and it talks about the angels who are watching the earth you know the whole thing is kind of taken in a very wrong sense. So there are the series of apocryphal books called the books of Enoch. There isn't just one book there are many many books of Enoch in the second book of Enoch he talks about I mean the person who ever wrote that particular book he gives his own interpretation for Genesis chapter 6 where he says that God has appointed a bunch of angels as watchers and their duty is to watch over the people and guard them. So while these angels are living here on the earth and watching and guarding over the humans they begin to observe that human women are very beautiful and so they decide to take some of these human women as their wives and so as a result of the intercourse between these watchers and these human women a race of giants was formed you know that is basically what is said in the second book of Enoch which is a apocryphal book and then the same stories almost you know the same stories repeated in another apocryphal book called Jubilees. So even in the Jubilees it says that these watchers began to lust after the human women who were very beautiful and so when they had intercourse with these human women it led to a race of giant monsters who corrupted the people of the earth. So this apocryphal interpretation of Genesis 6 is basically what majority of the Christians hold on to and it's a little sad because this interpretation doesn't come from the Old Testament this interpretation is coming from apocryphal books which are not inspired so maybe when we look at this interpretation of Genesis 6 we should take it with a pinch of salt don't fully accept what is being said over here because these are apocryphal writings and it is their interpretation of Genesis chapter 6 so maybe we should not just so welcomingly so innocently and naively accept the apocryphal interpretation of Genesis chapter 6. Let's actually look at Genesis chapter 6 verses 1 to 4. Yeah, someone could read out Genesis 6 1 to 4. Now it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them that the sons of God saw the daughters of men and they were beautiful and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose and the Lord said my spirit shall not strive with man forever for he is indeed flesh yet his days shall be 120 years. There were giants on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them those were the mighty men who were of old men of renown. So there are two ways in which people interpret this passage. I will just explain both the beliefs which are there. It is up to you which belief you would like to go with but I know I'll start off with a popular belief you know the popular interpretation of this passage which is basically that the sons of God over here meaning angels the fallen angels they chose to marry human women and so when they married human women they were able to give birth to children and those children were born as giants that is basically the popular belief that is accepted by almost the entire church but this belief is based on two apocryphal writings which were most definitely not inspired by the Holy Spirit so maybe we should be more careful in accepting this explanation because there are many assumptions being made when we present this theory. The first assumption that we are making is that angelic beings which are spirit beings who don't actually have a physical body we are making an assumption that spirit beings are designed in such a way that they can actually have intercourse with a human woman so that is an assumption that we are making it nowhere in scripture does it actually say that. Another assumption that we are making is that these angels actually have the ability if not for intercourse at least to be able to produce human genetic material and be able to produce babies. Do angels really have that ability to be able to produce human genetic material do they have permission from God to be able to produce genetic material whenever they feel like it. These are all a series of assumptions being made and there is no worse in the Bible backing up any of this. In the Bible in fact we only see one example of Mary where the Holy Spirit creates human sperm and places it inside the womb of Mary because there is no man involved in the birth of Jesus so God literally must have created the genetic material required and placed it inside Mary's womb so that she is able to produce a fully human Jesus Christ. Now were angels given this kind of an ability that God given the permission to be able to do that and if there was actual intercourse can spirit beings have intercourse with a human a series of assumptions are being made over here with no backing of any kind from the Old Testament and the only backing for this theory is from two apocryphal books which were written during the inter-testamental period, the time period between the Old Testament and the New Testament when people were doing whatever they wished living however they wished and there was no profit from God speaking in those days so maybe we should be a little careful about accepting this theory. This is second belief which seems more likely the second belief basically this that when we read that particular verse, what is the verse? Genesis chapter 6 verse 2, if you could just read out that verse once again. The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. The wording over here it basically says that the sons of God the angels they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose so the second theory is that these fallen angels they took wives in the same way that they take human beings now through demon position. So one way that we could look at this verse is they took these beautiful women in the sense they possessed them, those beautiful women became demon possessed and we are very familiar with this old temple prostitution ritual which existed in those days. So men would go to these temple prostitutes and they would have intercourse with them so the theory is that maybe the fallen angels took beautiful women they possessed them, these women became possessed and maybe when men would come and perform demonic rituals, those witchcraft rituals and sleep with these women then the babies which were born out of that kind of an intercourse probably were deformed and very huge in size because they were born out of witchcraft rituals so when we look at this theory there is no unbiblical assumptions being made in the sense we are not saying that spirit beings can have intercourse with humans nor are we saying that they have the permission to create genetic, human genetic material which can actually be viable in a human womb we are not making any of those assumptions, we are basically talking about demon possession, we are talking about temple prostitution where men did sleep with prostitutes who probably were demon possessed and so the offspring which would come out of such an intercourse would be demonic in nature so maybe these children which were born were in the form of giants so again this is another theory, nobody really knows a clear interpretation of this so the reason that we are only talking about this is because it talks about the sons of god angels interacting with humans leading to a race of giants but one thing is sure when the flood comes all these demons which were, all these giants which were created which were born, every single one of them died and was wiped out the word that is used for them in Genesis chapter 6 it calls them the nephilim, that word nephilim it talks about the word nephilim is a Hebrew word which basically comes from the Hebrew verb to fall naphal, naphal means to fall so these giants are called nephilim because they cause people to fall, they are very powerful, they are very mighty, they are able to oppress and cause people to fall in that sense the word nephilim talks about very powerful, mighty people so all the nephilim were wiped out during the flood, not a single one of them survived in the book of Numbers you have again the term nephilim being mentioned, let's look at that Numbers chapter 13 verses 32 and 33 Numbers 13, 32 and 33 32 and 33 Numbers 13 verses 32 and 33 and they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out saying the land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature, there we saw the giants, the descendants of Anak came from the giants and we were like grasshoppers in our own site and so we were in their site the nephilim who are being talked about over here are most definitely not the nephilim who were there before the flood because in the flood only 8 persons were saved the ones who had entered the ark, every other living being was wiped out so the nephilim over here are basically the descendants of somebody named Anak, Anak was a descendant of Noah and his sons so Anak is not a descendant of those giants which were there before the flood, so these giant people who were living in the land of Canaan, they are just the descendants of Anak maybe again there was some kind of demon position involved maybe there were temple rituals which were performed leading to this kind of a giant race of people because nowhere in the Old Testament do we see any of these giants showing their allegiance to Yahweh, all of them were against Yahweh so we don't really know how they became giants again were there some kind of temple witchcraft rituals involved but one thing is for sure these nephilim are not in any way connected to the nephilim which were there before the flood because during the flood all of the nephilim were wiped out so the second belief does not involve too many assumptions where we just simply say that human women were taken by the fallen angels they were possessed by the fallen angels and when men had intercourse with these human women, babies were born and those babies were born as a result of witchcraft and so therefore they probably were giants. So this is one way of looking at it. Now if we had a little more time we could have looked at all the things, the activities that angels do maybe let's look at one or two verses in the little time that we have. Angels, one of the main activities of the good angels is that they continually praise and glorify God and this one point that I want to make over here very specifically regarding the way the angels worship and glorify God. Job chapter 38 verses 4 to 7 Job 38, 4 to 7 Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding who determined its measurements surely you know or who stretched the line upon it to that to what where its foundations fastened or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. It says that when God was creating the earth the angels were so excited it talks about them as morning stars if you remember Lucifer was also a morning star so over here it's not talking about stars it's talking about angels. So the morning stars sang together and the angels shouted for joy the thing about the worship and praise which angels do it's not out of a sense of duty they do it because they are so excited by the things which God does and they are so excited about who he is. You know when they keep crying out holy, holy, holy it's not that they are performing a solemn ritual they are crying out holy, holy because they are excited about who he is and when they praise and worship the works which he has done it's because they are excited about the things which he is doing you know not like the worship which we sometimes give to God on Sunday we stand over there and we do the whole thing like as if it's a responsibility that has to be done our worship should be like the worship of these angels it says that they were singing together and the angels were shouting for joy because they were so excited about what God was doing. That should be the same kind of worship that we should offer you know so even though we have no time for all the other activities of the angels I thought maybe we could dwell upon this one point because angels set an example of what true worship should be like. As we are out of time we will close. If you can close with the word of prayer. Lord we just thank you so much for all the things that we could learn today from the scriptures about angels. We thank you O Lord that you have created these very powerful beings to help us to assist us to protect us. We thank you O Lord that you care for humans so much that you made us in your own image and you appointed powerful superior beings to serve us. How high we are O Lord in your eyes. How deeply we are treasured and loved by you. So we pray O Lord that our main focus will always be you that you will be the center of our worship that we will not focus on angels or get attached to them but rather we will always focus on you and worship you and honor you and as and when angels are required you will send them O Lord to help us to serve us to assist us in our ministry. We thank you O Lord for this name. Amen.


Next we have Ivan with DeepFish Simulating Malicious AI. We'd like to thank our sponsors Endgame, Silent, Sophos, and Tinder. And without further ado, here's Ivan. Okay, so last talk before lunch, let's see how it is. So my name is Ivan Torroledo or Ivan Torroledo in my language.  So first of all, let's see who I am. So I am the lead data scientist for the research team AXE XTERRA. I studied physics and economics. Additional to the data science research that I do, I also like to use Fortran and do a lot of stuff doing parallel computing. And finally I am from Colombia. However, I hate coffee. Yeah, it's a sad story for me in Colombia, but so here is my Twitter account if you want to follow me. So let's start. I like to start my talk using this figure because basically it provides the motivation that we had at the beginning of this project. Here we have the Google Trends results for the keyword cybersecurity and AI. As you can see in the last three or four years, there has been a dramatic increase in the interest of the people around the relationship between these both topics. So if I had to summarize our current scenario, it should be this. Yeah, everyone is talking about AI in cybersecurity. So knowing this at the beginning of the year, we started to look for the newest cybersecurity marketing trend. And we found out several news wondering about how AI can be applied to cyber attacks. So if these were a terminated movie, people would be wondering about if Skynet is already among us trying to destroy the world. So despite all these news and marketing noise, we don't have a real evidence if this is happening. So the real question that we need, we first needed to ask is how attackers may enhance their campaigns and attacks using AI? Okay, so as a research team, we decided to start testing this question and this hypothesis. So by analyzing deeply the question and the idea, we realized that the first question that we need to answer is how attackers may enhance their campaigns and attacks using AI? Okay, so to start testing this question, we needed first to define a use case. So we choose a phishing campaigns and phishing attacks as the first one. The main reason behind this decision was that almost 91% of cyber attacks and cyber crime starts with a phishing email. So phishing is one of the most important tools that each attacker has. And if an attacker starts using AI, probably they would start improving their phishing attacks. So once we define the question, once we define the use case, we can start creating an experiment. So we created an experiment that has three steps and we called that simulating malicious AI. So at the first step, we wanted to identify some individual traitors. So why we need to do that? So basically, the main goal of this project is to understand effective patterns of phishing attacker and try to improve them using AI. So as we cannot now attack us directly, we must learn about them using their attacks. So to achieve this, we collected a database with almost 1.1 million phishing attacks coming from phishing and we decided to analyze this data. So how do you analyze 1 million phishing attacks? Incredible attacks. So we started by looking for the most common domains in our database. It led us to this first domain called nailerandticks.com. Basically, this domain belongs to an online attack store that obviously was compromised previously. And in the whole database, we found 406 URLs using the same domain. Now, to check if this set of URLs belong to the same attacker, we want to verify if they were targeting the same institution. So we did a visual check to the screen shots available in fish tank and we realized that they were targeting the same institution. In this case, a mayor Brazilian bank called Bradesco. So finally, we can say that this set of URLs belong to the same attacker because they were targeting the same institution. Now, what happens if the attacker is not only using one domain? It's a fair question. So we started to look for this strategy in the whole database. So by analyzing the data, we realized that they were some keywords commonly used in the data. So we collected these keywords to define the attacker strategy. Now, by checking this strategy in the whole database, voila, we found 105 additional domains using the same strategy. So finally, the first domain that we need to do is to verify if they were targeting the same institution. So again, we did the visual check and voila. We verified that they were targeting also the same institution. So finally, at the end, we can say that this whole set of URLs belong to the same attacker because they were targeting the same institution and they were using the same strategy. Okay, so cool. We just uncovered one factor in our 1.1 million phishing attacks. So we keep doing this process for a while. So we found additional domains using additional strategies and targeting other institutions. For example, in this case, we found that they were targeting a Canadian bank called TD Canadian Trust. So at the end, we just uncovered several transactors using this strategy. So that was the first step. Now, once we uncover or we identify some transactors, we wanted to evaluate how effectively they can bypass our detection system. Indeed, our own AI detection system. So how we do? First of all, of course, we needed to define our detection system. So for this case, we used an AI classification model that we created previously. Basically, it's a model that is using LSTM neural networks. And basically, by analyzing each URL, the model is able to learn defective patterns or to gather the strategies and the patterns that each URL has and at the end produce a probability if the URL is being used for phishing attacks. That's the whole intuition behind this model. Okay. So once we define the detection system or our own AI detection system, we started to measure how effectively they can bypass our detection system. So to measure this, we defined something that we call the effectiveness rate. The effectiveness rate is defined as the percentage of URLs that are able to bypass our detection systems. So for the whole database, we found that we found that the effectiveness rate was 0.24%. Okay. Now, for the threat actor number one that we just uncovered, we found that the effectiveness rate was a little bit higher, 0.69%. Finally, for the threat actor number two, we found that the effectiveness rate was 4.91%. Now, at the end, we can say that despite these two threat actors that we just uncovered were a little bit more effective to bypass our detection systems that the average attacker in the whole database, we are doing a really good job with our detection systems in the whole database. So we can say yes, we are winning the battle. Cool. So that was the second step. Now, let's see the final and the most interesting step, the third one. So in this step, we wanted to improve the phishing attacks of each attacker using AI. So let's see how we achieve this. So to answer, to achieve this, we created an algorithm called DeepFish. So let's see how it works. First of all, the model divides the data of each attacker into a set of non-effective user-friendly URLs that the algorithm, our detection system, was able to catch and a set of effective URLs that bypass our detection systems. Okay, so taking this last set, we transform the data, we encode the data into a mathematical representation such that we can input this data into an AI model. So what kind of model did we use? Again, we use an LSTM model or launch and turn memory that basically the whole intuition behind this model is we give one URL to the model, the model catch or gather all the patterns in the URL and then start producing new characters that at the end, we collect these characters to build new URLs following the same patterns that the previous URL had. Okay, so that's the model that the AI model that we use. So once we have this model and once we have this trained model we are now able to start producing new URLs in the following way. So first of all, we give to the model once it, for example, it can be a segment of a URL that attacker has and we start producing new characters to create new paths. Then we filter that path to gain some aloe paths and by joining this data with a set of compromised domains that the attacker should have, at the end we are able to create something that we call a synthetic URL with this form. So basically to summarize, we created an algorithm that was able to analyze a data that we gave to the model and produce new URLs following the same patterns. That's the whole idea behind this model. Okay, so that was the experiment. So let's see the results. So as you remember, in the traditional way, the attacker number one has an effect in the rate of 0.69% and the second one, 4.91%. So what happens is that the attacker has an effect in the points when the attackers start using AI. Boom. We can see that for the threat actor number one, we increase the effectiveness rate from 0.69% to 20%. And for the threat actor number two, we increase the effectiveness rate to 36%. So with these results, we can say that if an attacker starts using AI in the way that this fish does, they will be able to bypass our detection systems more effectively than before. Yeah, that's the experiment and that's the conclusion. So if this fish could say something, they will say something like this. You are doomed. Yeah. Okay, so however, down panic, we keep improving. So the next steps in this experiment is to include another AI tools, for example, deep adversarial learning or generative models that basically at the end, including these models, we are going to be able to anticipate how attackers may use AI to enhance their attacks. And by anticipating this, we can say that we are going to be winning the battle against AI and SkyNet again for the next year. So thanks so much.


In this video I wanted to introduce to you a new piece of terminology called series. There are two ways. If I had two resistors, there's two ways that I could arrange them. The first is in series, and it would look like this. The second way that I could arrange two resistors is in parallel. That looks like this. It so happens there's a trick you can use to find the total resistance whenever you have two resistors that are in series, or two resistors that are in parallel. So I'm going to start off by showing you two resistors in series. So in order to find this total resistance of these two resistors, what I'm going to do is assume that they are attached to some sort of arbitrary voltage source. So it could be any voltage. The total resistance will satisfy Ohm's law, the formula that V equals IR. So the question is, what is our total in this case? Well, to do this I'm going to have to use my loop rule and my node rule. So let's start out using the loop rule. So remember, the loop rule tells me that the total voltage drop across this circuit here must be equal to the voltage gain across the battery. So that means that the voltage gain is equal to V, the total voltage drop is going to be equal to the voltage drop across resistor one plus the voltage drop across resistor two. And then using Ohm's law, I get, to get any further, I'm going to have to use the node rule. So the node rule tells me that the current flowing into this junction here is equal to the current flowing out. So I've asked to consider this point here, the current flowing into this point is equal to the current flowing out. This means the current flowing through resistor one is equal to the current flowing through resistor two. So mathematically, I can write, this means if I1 is going to equal to I2, so in this case I'm just going to call this I. So if I substitute this into the formula above, now let's compare these two formulas. So I've got formula number one at the top and formula number two down the bottom. So I've both got the voltage is equal to the current times the total resistance and the voltage is equal to the current times R1 plus R2. This proves that for two resistors in series, the total resistance is equal to R1 plus R2. Now it so happens that if you have more than two resistors, but they are all in series, you can still use this formula. It's simply that the total resistance is equal to the sum of the individual resistances. So you just add R3 plus R4 and so on. So we've just arrived to formula that allows us to determine the total resistance of any number of resistors in series. If we wanted to write this a little bit more rigorously, we could write that the total resistance is equal to the sum of all the individual resistances. Please note that this only works when resistors are in series. If the resistors are in parallel, then there's another trick that we're going to have to use and I'll show you this in the next video.