And welcome everyone to simple text adventure tutorial written in Java. This is for very, very beginning Java programmers. And we're going to be working on a game called Voldemort's Revenge. So let's get started here. Before we do real quick, shout out to my channel members, many of whom have been with me for six months or more, and some who are newer. So today's concepts that we're going to be looking at are integers, booleans, strings, conditionals, a while true loop, and the scanner class. So if you are familiar with these things, you'll be able to create this text adventure, at least this part of the text adventure that I want to do with you today. Okay, so let me show you what we're going to be doing. Now, what I'm going to show you here is not Java, okay? What I'm showing you here is something I made ages and ages and ages ago using JavaScript. Now we're going to put this into Java, of course. Now we're not going to be able to do graphics or anything like that. We're just going to have a text interface. So a text adventure is an interactive story where you are the protagonist. So here is the story I'm working on. It's called Voldemort's Revenge. And I hope JK Rowling has a sense of humor and does not sue me. So here's the situation. You're Harry Potter, Hermione and Ron have been captured by Lord Voldemort. And you need to rescue them, says press enter to begin. So I'm going to go ahead and do that. So if you've never done interactive fiction, which is also called our text adventure before. Essentially, you are in various locations and there are objects and things that you can interact with. So and you can go in different directions such as north, south, east, west, up or down are typical, typical directions in this sort of thing. So let's take a look here. So it says you are in Dumbledore's office. There are a lot of old books on bookshelves. Dumbledore's desk has various items on it. There's a magic mirror in one corner and Dumbledore is sitting behind his desk. So what you have to think about at this point is if I were in this situation, what would I do? I just did this with my students literally this week. And some of them were like, well, just grab some books. And I'm like, well, you don't walk into someone's office and start grabbing books. So the way these old school text adventures worked is you would issue commands. So in this case, I'm going to say, ask Dumbledore. Now to keep it simple, I'm going to use everything in lower case, couple of little simplifications, just to make this program work that we're going to be doing today. So I'm going to go ahead and type ask Dumbledore and I'm going to hit Enter. Okay, so I do that. It says, Ron and Hermione were kidnapped by Lord Voldemort. Take this magic amulet. It will glow when you get close to your friends and when you find them, say, return us. This is really, really important. When my students play this game, they often forget to write that down. They get to the end and they can't rescue Ron and Hermione because they have not written down all the instructions. So you can see there's an amulet now in this room. So if I type get amulet, okay, I now have that in my inventory. I can also type INV to see what I have. Now we're going to be doing a much simplified version of this, which you'll see soon. And you'll also see that I have a score of 10. Okay, so I've kind of, I've done one important thing in the game. So I'm going to go ahead and examine. This is another thing that you do in Text Adventures. And I'm going to type mirror. So keep in mind, these are the commands that we're going to be doing in Java here in just about a minute. So it says the mirror is bigger than you and has a gold frame. There is some ancient writing on the frame. It says to use this mirror saith thou trelfaths. So clearly I'm going to go ahead and hit say trelfaths. And now watch what happens. I get a little message. It says the magic mirror begins to glow. You feel yourself floating towards the mirror. You go through the mirror and find yourself on a path. You're on a path. The path goes in many different directions. To the north, you can see trees. It must be the legendary forbidden forest. To the south, you can see a river. To the east is the castle of evil Lord Voldemort. So you can see now I can go north, south, or east. Typically in these games, you would just type N, S, E, you know, north, south, or east, W for west, et cetera, et cetera. So what we're going to do is we're just going to stop there. We're going to go ahead and program what we just did in a very simplified manner. This is, again, something that I made for my students. I just did this with my students this week. And I wanted them to be able to apply some of the things that they're learning. And they just started learning Java about six weeks ago. So they know the basics, which I mentioned on the previous slide. So let's go ahead and get started. So I'm going to pull up G, which is my preferred programming editor. You can use whatever you like. I'm going to make a new file. And I'm going to call this Voldemort's Revenge. And I'm going to go ahead and do public static void main string arcs. Now, if you don't know what any of this means, this is not the right tutorial for you. You should check out my Intro to Java tutorial and go from there. So I'm going to go ahead and just say this to my desktop real quick. And Voldemort'sRevenge.java. Now, notice I saved it as the exact same name as the class. So this is going to be where I type all of my game code. Now, I'm keeping this simple. I'm not going to be adding any other classes. Let me go ahead and actually make the text a little bigger so you can make sure everybody can see that. And what I want to do is I want to think about this game. What do I need to keep track of? So when I initialize the game, these are my starting values. So thinking back to what we did, so for example, there was a score. So the score when we start the game is going to be 0. That's kind of logical. Let's see what else do we have. The user entered a command. So that's going to be a string. So we're just setting up our basic values, our basic variables. And what else do we have there? We had a room. Now, the room, what we could do is we could say string room equals and then give it a name. What I did in this particular case was I actually did room as an integer. And it works. And so we'll go ahead and stick with that just to demonstrate a couple of things about Java programming. Now note Dumbledore's room is going to be room 1. And the path I'm going to call that room 2. So each room has to have a unique number.  And when we start the game, of course, we do not have the amulet. So that's basically the start of this game. This is what we have. This is what we need to keep track of so far. Now, there's more, of course, once you get through the whole game. But for this particular part that we want to program, this is all we need. Now, the next thing we need to think about is we need to get input from the user. So when you're talking about keyboard input, this is the scanner class. And again, if you haven't watched my introductory videos and this does not make sense to you, stop now. Go watch those. Come back. So I'm going to go ahead and import java.util.scanner. And then I'm going to go ahead and create a scanner object. Call that scanner sc equals new scanner system.in. And now with this sc, I can actually go ahead and get input from the user. Now, as you noticed, the game continues and continues and continues. So what we're going to have to do here is we're going to have to create a while true loop. And a while true loop is basically just runs forever. You might hear it be called a forever loop. Some people might call it their main loop in their game. So first, what we want to do is we're going to print the room information. And this is where conditionals come in. So as I mentioned, I made this for my students. And we've studied so far basic types. We studied strings. And this unit was about conditionals. So our room is determined by this particular variable. So room equals 1. That is Dumbledore's office. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and put if room equals equals 1. Now I'm using equals equals because it's an integer. I'm going to say system.out.println. I'll just say Dumbledore's office. We'll write the whole thing. You are in Dumbledore's office. And then I'm going to go ahead and just copy this because I'm kind of lazy. And I'm typing it out over and over again. I'm going to keep it simple here. Dumbledore looks worried. There is a magic mirror in the corner. In the corner. And I think that was it. That was the key information, I think. So then I need to do that. So why don't I go ahead and run this? Let's compile it. Make sure it's working. So I'm going to hit the compile button. And compile successfully, which is always a good thing. I'm going to run this and watch what happens. OK, so you can see it says you are in Dumbledore's office. There's a magic mirror in the corner. Dumbledore looks worried. It's just repeating itself. So to get this to stop, I've got to do control and z. And if you're on a Mac, it's the same thing. Control z, not command z. So I'm on Linux. I think Windows would probably work the same. I'm going to go ahead and hit Enter. So if you're using Genie and you see this red thing, just go ahead and hit Enter. And that clears it. Now we can run it again. So it's printing the room information over and over because we're stuck in this while true loop. So next, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go and get the user, I'll say player, get the player command. So I'm going to go ahead and type system.out.print, not print line in this case. And I'm going to keep it old school. And I'm going to do that. And then what I do is I do command equals sc.nextline. So if you recall, sc is the name of our scanner object. And to get text input, this is text, not integer, not a double, not a boolean, et cetera. Text input, we have to do sc.nextline. And then here is where we will deal with the user or player, I'll say player, input or commands, depends how you want to put it. So this is where it's really important. We have to think about this. So our first room was Dumbledore's office. Actually, let me go back. Let me see if this is still working. So I'm in room two now. I'm on the path. So if I type ask Dumbledore, nothing should happen. So it says, I'm not sure what ask Dumbledore means. This is because we're in room two. There's no Dumbledore here. So ex, a, mirror, nothing happens. Well, is there anything else? I think that was it. I'm going to try to say trialfaz again. So those are the three commands we're going to work. Now I had this little message up because it says you can't say the trialfaz. I know, clever. So they're not working because we're not in that room. So this tells us that we're going to need another if statement. So if room equals one, and then in here is where I'm going to deal with all the possible inputs for that room. So if command equals, let's say ask Dumbledore. Now note, here I'm using dot equals. I'm not using equals equals. Room is an integer, so we use equals equals. Command is a string, so we use dot equals. So don't make that mistake. It's a very common beginner mistake. So if the command equals ask Dumbledore. So this is where he tells us what's going on. So we're going to go ahead and system.out.println, Hermione, and Ron. Ron had been kidnapped by Lord Voldemort. I forgot my semicolon. Let's go ahead and copy that. You need to rescue them. No pressure. Thanks a lot, Dumbledore. You need to rescue them. Here is a magic amulet. It will glow when you get close. And what was the other thing we needed to do? Yes, when you find them, say return. That's our magic word. I know very clever. So let's try this. Let's see if that works. So I'm going to go ahead and compile it. I'm going to go ahead and run it. It says you are in Dumbledore's office. Dumbledore looks worried. There is a magic mirror in the corner. So I'm going to go ahead and type ask Dumbledore. And you can see there. Let's scroll up a little bit. It says Hermione and Ron have been kidnapped by Lord Voldemort. You need to rescue them. Here is the magic amulet. It will glow when you get close when you find them. Say return us. So far, so good. So our basic commands are working. Now if you recall from when we practiced the game earlier, a couple of things happened. The amulet appeared, and we were able to get it. Now we're going to simplify that. We're just going to get it directly. And our score went up by 10. So what we'll do is in here, we'll go ahead and do score plus equals 10. And notice, if you recall, we did this. So we either have the amulet or we do not. So I'm going to go ahead and do has amulet equals true. So now, OK, I'll just real quick. Don't forget this. Now notice this program is still running. So I need to do Control Z to stop it. This is red. So I need to hit Enter. That's a little annoying thing with Genie. But just so you're aware. If you're using something else, you don't have to do that probably, but you might. So now the score is plus equals 10, has amulet equals true. So we need to print this information out now. Now what I want to do is I want it to be after the room information and before the command. So I'm going to go ahead and say prints inventory. This is the stuff you have. And score. Now score is pretty easy. I'm going to state system.out.println.score and plus score. And again, if this stuff is not familiar to you, this is not the tutorial for you. You should go back and learn some of the basics. So let's go ahead and just test that part. Compile it and run it. And nothing happened. That's weird. Let's go ahead and try it again. Run or review the current file. And let's see why is it doing that too. Ah, OK, it's locked up. Yeah, Genie does this from time to time. Let's see if that fixes it. Nope, I'll have to close Genie, I think, and run that again. So let me go ahead and open that up and compile. And I know you can see that I think the font got a little smaller. Let's make it big again. And go ahead and run it. OK, so you see Dumbledore looks worried. There's a magic mirror in the corner. Score is zero. So I'm going to ask Dumbledore. Now you can see my score is 10, because I did that. Now, of course, I can do this, Dumbledore. I keep getting scores. But if we were going to program this properly, we would avoid that. But for now, we're just going to let that go. So I'm going to do Control-Z to stop it. Enter to get rid of that red thing. And now I want to print my inventory. So I'm going to do System.out.print. You have, and I'm going to do this, if has amulet, System.out.print, amulet, and a space. And the reason I put a space there is because once I start adding other objects, I'm going to need to print them out side by side. Then I'm going to go ahead and do System.out.println to go to the next line. So again, I'm going to go ahead and test it. Compiled. So I'm going to ask Dumbledore. Now it says you have the amulet and your score is 10. So we're making really good progress. I'm hoping that you're seeing it's pretty simple. With what I'm doing here, you could program, essentially, an entire text adventure. Now your code wouldn't be efficient. It would get pretty long, longer than it needs to be. But you could do it. And this is something I tell my students, if you remember nothing else from what I teach you, remember this. All of programming is if this, then that. So if you have the amulet, print amulets. If you don't have the amulet, obviously you don't print it. So let's go ahead and finish out the rest of the commands. We also have elseif command.equals. What was it? Is a mirror? Now we might also want to do or command.equals in case somebody wants to type examine or examine magic mirror. So that way we could strain together multiple possibilities. So this one we just say system. Copy that.  I get so sick of typing that out. The mirror is large and has, what does it say, ancient writing on it. It says to useif this, useif this, mirror, sayif now, try with as. And that's the magic word to get the mirror to work. That's all that really happens. So let's go ahead and test that. You notice how every time I add something, I stop and test it. Ooh, did I close that? No, I didn't. So I go to command Z, enter. Go ahead and run it again. So I'll ask Dumbledore. And I'm testing this to make sure I didn't screen anything up with that. That still works. I'm going to do exa mirror. And let's see here.  The mirror is large. It has ancient writing. It says blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. OK, so my next thing is to go ahead and program the command. So elseif, let's go ahead and close that so I don't forget. Elseif, command.equals, say tralfaz. And don't forget that second closing parenthesis. I do it all the time. It's really a rookie mistake, but I do it all the time. So system.out.println, say you float up and through the mirror. Now at this point, we have to think about what happens. So we float through the mirror and what changes. Our score is going to go up by 10 again. And we're going to change to a different room. So I'm going to go ahead and say room equals 2. Score plus equals 10. Now if you notice, we haven't coded information for room 1. So I'm going to go ahead and type elseif here. Elseif, room equals 2. And I'm just going to copy this, change that.  And I can say to the north is the Forbidden Forest, the east, Voldemort's Castle, and to the south. So let's go ahead and test it. Compile, run. OK, so I'm going to go ahead and ask Dumbledore. OK, examine mirror. Now again, it's getting cut off. Sorry about that. OK, some mirrors large. And then I'm going to say trough us. OK, you float up and through the mirror, you are on a path to the north is the Forbidden Forest, to the east, et cetera, et cetera. Now again, if I type get amulets, or sorry, if I say ask Dumbledore, nothing happens because I'm on the path. OK? So you can see how, hopefully, you can see with just what I've shown you here, you can create a fairly complex and complicated text adventure with just what I've shown you here. You don't need any fancy, you don't need any other types of loops. You don't need any arrays. You don't need any array lists. You don't need any hash maps. Everything you need can be done with what you see here. Now again, all those other things will make your code more efficient, will make it faster, make it easier to update. But essentially, this entire thing comes down to if this, then that. If you're in room one, print this information. If you're in room two, print this information. If you have the amulet, print amulets. Print the score. Get the command. Now if you're in room one, here are the commands that it recognizes. Now actually, I can actually guess I could add here at the end of this, system.out.println. Sorry, I don't know how to do that, how to do that. Maybe that would give maybe a little bit easier on you. What did I screw up there? I forgot the closing. Yeah, I forgot that. So I'm going to go ahead and compile it again. Run it. And just like blah, blah, blah. And again, I do that. It says, sorry, I don't know how to do that. So you'd have to put that inside of everyone. So then now that we have room two, we can do else if room equals two. And then you deal with all the room two stuff. Now with room two, all you really have is like if command dot equals, let's say east. Don't forget the second one. All you have to do is change your room. Let's say room three is the entrance to Voldemort's castle. So let's go ahead and do that real quick. So we didn't get to it in our practice, but let's just try it here. If room equals three, I don't like to repeat myself a million times, so I'm going to copy that. And you can put more information there. I might also put system dot out dot print ln. There is, because that's the way we came. We came from the west. Let's go ahead and try it. I've got to compile it. I've got to close this. Command Z, Enter, Compile, Play. So now I can just go ahead and jump ahead. I know how to do this. So say trial fads. And I'm going to go ahead and see if I can go east. And it says you are at the entrance to Voldemort's castle. There's a path to the west. So hopefully you can see now with just a bunch of if statements and else if statements, et cetera, et cetera, you can program an entire text adventure. The trick to this is just thinking about what information you need to keep track of. Thinking about its type. So the score, for example, is an int. Your command, of course, is a string. And again, I used integers for the room. You could do something different. I just did it that way. I liked it. And booleans for whether or not you have something or you have done something. So one of my students was very clever. She came up with the idea, well, let's do something like has asked Dumbledore. And then so it was false. So basically what would happen is with the first time you ask Dumbledore, that becomes true. And the second time you ask Dumbledore, he doesn't say the same thing. He says, hey, I already told you what to do. So I thought that was really clever. And I was happy she came up with that idea. So you can see here, this is what coding breaks down to. If this, then that. Essentially, with this kind of structure, you could do almost anything. Arrays and things like that are conveniences. And they're very helpful. But fundamentally, everything that you need to do can be done with basically a while true loop and a ton of if statements. It's really fascinating stuff. So that is that. That's the lesson. I hope you learned something from it. I hope it wasn't too fast. Again, if some of this stuff didn't make sense or you haven't seen it before, you might want to go back and check my beginner Java intro. I think that'll clear up a lot of things. And I hope you can maybe come up with some cool games or come up with some cool ideas of your own. So thanks a lot. Click like, subscribe, et cetera, et cetera down below. And yeah, keep on coding. Take care.


All right, it looks like we are live. Just double checking. Wonderful. Okay, hi everyone. Thank you so much for joining us, those on Zoom and in the greater internet world. My name is Nubra Nelson. I am the Director of Arts Engagement at Seattle Rep. I'll give a quick physical description of myself for blind and low vision audience members. I'm a lighter skinned brown woman.  I would like to begin by acknowledging that we're on the traditional land of the Coast Salish people including the Duwamish people past and present. And we honor with gratitude this land and the Duwamish tribe. We continue to work on creating relationships with our local communities. And you can learn more about that and how to support local tribes here in Seattle on the Seattle Rep website. So I'd love to just jump in and get started. Let's get started with just each of you introducing yourselves. You do so much, both in the theater as artists but also as activists outside of theater. And I'd love for you to share a little bit about what you do and who you are. And I'll just pass it to each of you. Fatima, will you start us off? Yeah, of course. Hi everyone, my name is Fatima Wardak. I am an Afghan-American first generation in my family. My parents immigrated here in the late 80s. I'm currently in Brooklyn, New York, this is where I live but I was born and raised in Seattle. I'm an actor and artist, collaborator, do a lot of like divides and original work and also lots of fun plays. And activist-wise, I tried to be a very like supportive community member. It's part of other communities that have been supportive of me. And in the most recent present, became an immigration expert in assisting people evacuating Afghanistan. So thank you. Thank you. Humaira, you're unmuted and you can stay unmuted. I'm Humaira Gilzai. I'm an Afghan-American. My family immigrated to the United States after the Russian invasion. We came and settled in the Bay Area in 1980. I'm currently on the land of Ramata Sholoni, colonially known as San Francisco. My work is mainly as a cultural producer, speaker and writer, as far as my work as a cultural producer goes. I basically have had the amazing opportunity to work at Seattle Rep and a lot of other theaters that were developing productions that were related to Afghanistan. And I brought cultural authenticity to their work by working with the playwrights and directors, actors and many, many components of a production. I also have done cultural advisory with film and television as well. As a writer, I write a blog called Afghan Culture Unveiled and I write about Afghan food, culture and most recently, all about how I write about is Afghan politics. And I speak about Afghanistan, Afghan women, the history of Afghanistan and the current situation that is ongoing. And thank you so much for having me today. Thank you for being here, Sylvia. Hi, my name is Sylvia Corey. I'm a playwright, recently a physician also. My play, Selling Cobble, will be in Seattle Rep's upcoming season. I wanna say first and foremost how honored I am to be on a panel with two, hopefully three, Afghan women, artists and activists as an outsider. I am of Turkish, Lebanese, Iraqi and North African descent. And the impetus for my play, Selling Cobble, which is the story of an Afghan SIV applicant an interpreter who was left behind by the Americans. The impetus for that was pro bono work that my husband was actually doing with his colleagues starting in 2015. And they were doing that for the International Refugee Assistance Project or IRAP, which is basically lawyers trying to use legal recourse to help people get to the United States. So I was shocked both as an American and as someone with, let's say a family whose tragedies and histories have been shaped by negligent colonial forces that such promises had been made and then broken, that was appalling. And I've been immensely fortunate to have had the privilege of speaking with a number of such interpreters and their families to guide my work on this play over the past seven years. That's really tragic to me, the state that we're in now, when that seven years is a long time and the history of our country's involvement in Afghanistan is just, so I have an upcoming production of this play at Playwrights Horizons in New York City this November and December. And I will be fundraising parallel to the production for IRAP, seeing as my entry point really was these legal recourses. I'm very interested in this organization that's working to make good on these promises through legal means. I'm also in the midst of inviting many voices, particularly Afghan voices to the conversation sparked by the play. In a lot of ways, I think my play is actually very American because it's really dealing with American culpability. And I'm really eager after this panel to connect with and amplify the voices and efforts of the Afghan women here. And thank you for having me and for including me. Thank you so much. And thank you for sharing a bit about that, about the history of your play. It really leads really nicely into the conversation. But before we continue, I just wanted to also say that we have one other panelist Gazelle who is without power currently. So we're really hoping that she'll be able to jump on as we continue this conversation. But I want to make sure that y'all look into her regardless of whether she's able to join us or not. So as you kind of started us off, Sylvia, a lot of what we're here to talk about in addition to your activism and your advocacy outside of your art is how that art and activism can be connected. And obviously there are the, I love that you set up this ability to, for art to highlight a platform for greater support, for either monetary or in other ways, for an audience to better understand an issue and then connect them to resources. But I'm wondering what are other ways that y'all see art as a tool for advocacy, either a piece of art itself or the work that you each do around productions. What do you see there is the importance of that and where are you seeing that perhaps connected to some of the work that you are doing right now in regards to Afghanistan and your art in that regard. Anyone can jump in, yeah. I'll jump in. Well, as my work goes as far as the cultural advocacy work that I do is all about bringing Afghan culture in the forefront of any production that involves Afghanistan. So what I do as part of my work is to bring in the local community as well as making sure that whatever is in the script and the casting and all that reflects the Afghan culture and one of the challenges I've had is that there aren't that many Afghan actors that are trained to be in theater, present company not included. So it's very often I find that non-Afghans are cast in roles. And what happens is that the research that's done is very much what is just available online which isn't extensively, it doesn't go into the nuances of the culture and that history and why the Afghans do what they do and we're not a monolithic culture. So an Afghan who lived in Afghanistan in the 70s in Kabul is going to behave and talk in very different way than an Afghan who lives in Kabul today in let's say Herat. So those are the kinds of things that I feel that I have been doing this type of advocacy work for a long time. But as far as the past few weeks is concerned along with the video that I created a hundred year history of Afghan women five months ago anticipating that this is going to happen because the US was directly negotiating with the Taliban excluding the Afghan government and Afghan women and Afghan people. So this was bound to be an explosive situation when you go and make a deal with the enemy of a country and then you expect them to work together that's not going to work. So that video was meant to really how people understand the history of Afghan women that it was not always the Taliban it was not always the US occupation but there are many, many stories that goes with Afghan women's history. But for myself as far as my work is concerned a lot of my artists through writing and I really saw the power of storytelling in the past two weeks. I wrote about the director of our schools I'm also co-founder of Afghan Friends Network a nonprofit that I started 18 years ago we've been educating women and girls in a remote province of Afghanistan and we had to get the director of our school out and she was able to get up but without her family and I wrote her story with a call for donations so we can assist in getting her six children and her husband out of Afghanistan and it's been incredible in two weeks we've been able to raise $40,000 my goal is 57 I'm very comfortable we will reach it hopefully people will go on my blog Afghan culture unveiled and read the story of this woman that's been so brave she does not work with the US government she does not qualify for an SIV but she has done so much to help Afghan girls and women and basically work side to side with the US mission in promoting women's rights and she's basically one of the people that would have been collateral damage if we were not able to help her so I feel like strong storytelling has been my way of advocacy as well as I started a social media campaign called Action for Afghans and every day for one week we posted social media posts letting people know what is going on in Afghanistan as both an education as well as a call to action and now we do it three times a week and it's really meant to highlight the corrupt system of war that feeds the US economy and how that actually affects human lives these are 40 million Afghans we're talking about as well as the US veterans who have lost brothers, sisters and aid workers all of those lives were lost for what we don't know absolutely thank you so much for sharing all of that I'd love to hear from Fatima from especially for you're an actor and a writer and Sylvia shared a bit from a writer's point of view how telling that story, elevating that story can be a really clear way of advocacy and I wonder as an Afghan-American actor how have you found that you've brought your identity and your advocacy into your work and maybe that also connects to your writing as well? Yeah, thank you and thank you, Humaira, for that was all really wonderful to hear helpful information as well Yeah, you know, unfortunately as an actor I struggle to figure out how to bring forth my identity or really amplify the story of Afghan people a thousand splendid sons at the Rep was an incredible start for me I was really grateful to be a part of that production I never thought that I would as an actor get an opportunity to play my own ethnicity so that was huge and then coming across Selling Kabul which I'm so excited to see was another really exciting thing for me to see as an Afghan actor that our stories are being heard they're being told people want to hear them and people are taking the time to write them and produce them so I've actually been focusing a lot on writing as well because it always happens when I start looking for monologues or start looking for a new place to read and I'm like, why isn't anybody writing something that I could be in or that somebody who looks like me and shares my identity could be in and then I just thought like, well, why don't I just try to write it myself? So I've been working on a couple of different projects but the one I'm pretty excited about most recently is I started writing what I envisioned to be a TV show but who knows where it'll go that's how I'm writing it right now about like my family's experience being Afghan Americans because I'm really interested in Afghan stories that aren't from like the colonial perspective or not from the perspective of a US veteran or an American person I want to see an Afghan family deal with growing up in America because that was a huge struggle for my family and it was a hilarious struggle I mean, when you think about it like the story of an immigrant it can be very tragic and sad and full of a lot of heartache but it's also kind of a hilarious conundrum that you just appear in this land you had no intention of coming to but for whatever reason you find yourself here and now you're raising your children and they're gonna grow up in this other world that you're figuring out so there's all kinds of scenes that just bring me so much joy that I think would be really interesting for an American audience to see and one of the things that I feel like I'm working on highlighting the most in this project and in other projects is Afghan women because as an Afghan woman other Afghan women are very near and dear to my heart and it just saddens me that all the imagery we see of Afghan women is just depressing and those are certainly true stories that are happening but my experience with Afghan women my memories growing up is my mom and my aunts sitting around drinking tea laughing hysterically playing baria drums and singing old songs and I just love that and I want to see that on a stage or on a screen I want to see these women experiencing joy the way that I saw them like despite everything they went through they still got together every Friday night while all of their husbands went and played volleyball at the community center and drank tea and just laughed and I would just really love for anybody to put that on stage or on screen and so that's something I'm working towards and it's also something that I would like to act in should it ever get produced or should I ever get to shoot a web series or something so that's kind of what I'm working towards but connecting with people like Humaira who I was lucky to meet during A Thousand Spotted Suns and now with Sylvia who's I'm just so thrilled that she's interested in our people and telling our stories and connected to it as a non-Afghan this is just really exciting for me as a young artist. May I jump in there for a minute? Fatima I just want to let you know that a play I've written just got residency at Golden Thread Productions that has four Afghan character female characters. I got my name for girls so you too. I wish you were in the Bay Area because we're doing a workshop in October but if there are Afghan actresses that are watching this please let me know because I would love to cast Afghans in these four roles and it is that story that you're talking about of Afghan Americans and these four women are going on a pilgrimage to Mecca so it's a story it's a fun story lots of humor and you know secrets family secrets and lots of connections so I'm hoping at some point it'll be produced in New York and we can cast you. Well my sister lives in the Bay Area so you know it's just a flight away. We'll talk. Yeah, yeah please. Okay let me know. Is there a public presentation Humaira or is it a workshop? It's a workshop. We will do a presentation at the end of the workshop but it will not be public. It'll be invite only just because of COVID restrictions and such so yeah. But Fatima, right contact me. On it, thank you. This is so lovely. I love that this is happening right before our eyes. Women supporting women. We will be looking for a public presentation of that and for your play as well Fatima. And you brought up, everyone's been sharing so much that I wanna dig into. The question issue of representation is something I think about a lot as well as a Middle Eastern woman and artist myself. And as you said at Humaira that there's so much specificity across the Middle East and North Africa and South Asia within each of our cultures, within each of our countries even. There's so many different ethnicities, there's so many different experiences and there's also that balance of sharing all the crucial conversations and histories that are happening in our countries. But also sharing the joy and the individual and more personal experiences. And I love that you've kind of identified that we see so many narratives about, so many dark dramatic narratives especially about Middle Eastern women and especially about Afghanistan as well. And I would love to hear from Sylvia in making this place, Alen Kabul, what your process was in grappling with that representation and perhaps how advocacy might have been a part of that writing process because you were drawing from your husband's experience working directly with immigrants and refugees. How was advocacy actually perhaps a part of that writing process and how did you approach that question of representation in this particular very specific story? Yeah, so for me, the issue of representation is a big one and I kind of recognize that I had a platform and I recognized that there was a real injustice being done for a really long time that no one knew about. And that was kind of the impetus for this was really that after someone would see a reading in my play, they would go, this is happening and that was really shocking to me. So I think that was the intention behind it. And then moving forward through casting and these conversations, there's really not an easy answer. I will say, I don't think that American theater, I think we have learned a lot of the limitations of American theater in recent years, a lot of limitations of America. But I'll say there's a lot of institutional questions that get posed. And yeah, I don't think there's an easy answer to this. I think I will say that having tried very hard to cast Afghan actors in these parts, it's been difficult. And I think if I had known the extent to which Mayra can get it, I honestly didn't know the extent to which you are available to help on that level. Like if I had known that a bit earlier, which I probably could have, but I was very deep in COVID in the hospital, if I'm honest, that's what was actually happening. But I think that efforts like that are very important. And like for the production at Seattle Rep, that would be something that would be really interesting to me is like, how can we more actively engage in this, because I actually think that casting, especially now with our restrictions on everything is very difficult. And then also trying to say, no, we need Afghan actors that have these specific qualifications and these specific credits until you start casting, you can't, you'll never have those people at that level. So it's a very frustrating conversation and one that I think we're a bit stuck. I think people like Kumaira are invaluable. And honestly, I wish that I had just been more educated about that even like a year ago. It's such an ongoing process. And that's also where I know that, so many people are talking about coalition building right now that there's the newly formed Minatma, the Eastern North African Theater Makers Alliance. I believe it's Alliance that I know folks here know about or a part of. And in that, like we just saw, that in that connecting with each other, we're kind of building the tools and knowledge base and community base that we need to support greater and more accurate representation across our art. So it is absolutely a process and you really did articulate that, the nuances of that really, really well. I just wanted to add something to this, Sophia. Actually, when the play was having its world premiere at Williamstown Festival, I reached out to the producers and let them know about my work. Obviously they didn't share it with you and they said that they've got the cultural part covered. So I just thought you should know that. And I think those were the conversations. I've talked to many, many levels of people all the way to that artistic director. Yeah, the work continues. We need to keep advocating, keep pushing. And I'm seeing it improve as time goes on, as a better understanding at all levels of organizations becomes around the importance of representation. That is a huge part of this. It's every part of a theater understanding why representation is important and therefore making that effort to really understand the nuances of our cultures and put them on stage and behind the stage as well in a legitimate way. One thing to keep in mind is that one of the things I've realized that the playwrights feel that responsibility but when something gets produced, there are so many levels of decision making and budgeting and goals and interests that some things just do not really seem as important than other things. Especially around cultural authenticity and cultural advocacy and production. I feel like it's still kind of a new thing even though people know they need it but they're like, yeah, we're not gonna do the work and so it's really not, I feel like in many, many cases, place where the playwright can influence. I mean, I've worked with playwrights in developing a whole play and they wanted me to be part of the production and then the theaters couldn't come up with the budget or like he had to go scramble. So it's many levels that I think has to commit to this representation, whether it's with BIPOC, Afghan, Mina, Swana, whatever the acronym is. The predominantly white institutions really need to assess where they're going to put their efforts.  Absolutely, that it absolutely needs to be on the producers to make sure that that's happening. The playwright can not, they've already written an entire play about this. So it's like, and represented through that storytelling that a lot of that responsibility comes upon the folks who are making those greater decisions. I'm wondering for all of you, given current events in Afghanistan, I'm wondering how your work has shifted. Humaira, you talked a little bit about what you are, how you've been responding, creating that video, which I know came before our full withdrawal, but and doing of course specific fundraising campaigns around folks who you're trying to get out of the country. I'm wondering if each of you can speak to if and how your work or maybe even life has shifted since the US started withdrawing from Afghanistan. I've been hearing so much from basically like every Afghan American that I know that they're doing work, so much work on their own time to get people out of the country to write visas, to write letters, to send money, which just takes up so much time and effort. And so I'd love to hear if you're willing to share about both your work and maybe how this, these current events have shifted your personal life. And Gazelle, thank you so much for joining us. Hi, I'm so glad you're power outage delay. That is totally fine. Can you actually, you could jump in and if you can please introduce yourself and maybe talk to start this question that I know you came in the middle of, what you're doing right now when it comes to advocacy, as well as how your art is responding to current events, but please just also just introduce yourself. It's great to have you here. Okay, sure. My name is Gazelle Samezai. I'm a member of the Afghan American Artists and Writers Association, also known as AWA. And I'm also a visual artist. I work in multimedia and a lot of my work deals with my Afghan American identity and being a woman in both of those spaces. And for the last month and a half or so, AWA has been helping to evacuate several artists that we have worked with in the past. So it started with just first of all, trying to get them out before that August 31st deadline, but then now has moved on to filing humanitarian parole applications to help hopefully get them out of the country. We also have a fundraiser to help with that as well. And yeah, I think that about covers it. Did you also have another question? No, that's wonderful. We'll let you get settled and continue to continue. You can respond to this question kind of when you're ready to, but I was asking how folks art has shifted or changed due to current events in Afghanistan, whether both your art, your work, but also perhaps your personal life at this time if you're willing to share that, but anyone can jump in. Sure, I would just say that I feel like this whole crisis kind of engulfed my identity. And so art was just like pushed aside. And it's only, I want to say in like the last week or two that I was kind of reminded of the value of art to like process and also like talk about issues related to Afghan identity and probably like in a year or something, I'll end up making art about all of this once I've had time to process it. That's all I was going to say exactly what you just said. Yeah, very similar. Everything was just on hold for a solid two weeks. I was participating in getting my family out. I had family who were visiting from the States and then also lots of family that live in Afghanistan. A lot of them are concentrated in Kabul because my family is from the rural parts of Afghanistan. My family is from a region called Wadadag which is near Ghazni, which you might hear in the news often. It's a prominent region. But they've all in the last few years relocated to Kabul because it's just so dangerous. The rural areas are where the war was really happening, where the drone strikes were happening. My uncle's house was getting shelled every day and he had to abandon his apple orchard, which was his livelihood. So I had been working, I basically had two full-time jobs for two weeks. And then with the time difference, communicating with my family in Afghanistan, I was up almost every night until four or five in the morning and then getting up in a couple of hours to go to work. So it was incredibly overwhelming. It's not over yet. I was luckily, thank God, able to get six members of my family out. But I had six others that qualified for evacuation that for some reason got turned away at the gate after their third attempt at the airport. It was just kind of at the discretion of whoever was working the gate that day. And those family members actually have visa petitions because it's my uncle who was a US citizen. It's his wife and children that he had applied for a while ago and they had their final interview scheduled at the embassy on September 13th. And of course, all of that just disappeared. So what I've been doing is I had to transfer all their paperwork to Qatar because that's where the US is doing their operations now that there is no embassy in Kabul. So that work continues for sure. And major shout out to Care Washington and specifically Breonna Frey, who's an incredible attorney who was doing all this volunteer work, helping hundreds. And I think even thousands of people try to evacuate. So Care was an incredible organization that did so much volunteer work. And, but unfortunately in my many calls with Breonna, she was working with so many families and my family was one of the only ones that got out and it wasn't even everyone that we were trying to get out. But anyway, all of that is to say that art has definitely been on hold. Now that my family got out and we're kind of in this limbo period with the other folks were trying to get out, I have had a moment to breathe. I binge read like four plays because I just needed to focus on anything else, which was really nice. And reminded me that as difficult as this time has been that I should probably remember it. So I've been trying to like journal and kind of just write down whatever thoughts have been coming into my head. Because yeah, similar to Razzal, I feel like this is something maybe in a year or two, I want to explore more, but right now it's so fresh, so traumatic. So just exhausting. And I'm just one of so many people in the diaspora who are helping thousands of people try to escape. And like I have Afghans who found my website and just were sending me emails like, hi, I have this connection, can you help me? Like just because I'm American and there's nothing I can do for them. And so the work definitely continues, but for now it's these moments like this really make me pause and reevaluate like, okay, what am I doing with my time?  When it's not, it's so essential to my culture and being on stage and having people see people who look like me or helping other people who look like me get on stage or on screen is important. But I do, I definitely have that survivor's guilt for sure. And it always makes me reevaluate like, what am I doing and kind of recommit myself to my artistic mission and just making sure that I'm working in equitable spaces. I'm working to amplify voices and not just my own, yeah, scattered thoughts. It's been a crazy few weeks, but conversations like this give me a hope and make me really grateful. Well, I'm just going to say everything Fatma said applies to me as well. I'm actually wearing a very fancy Afghan dress. This is not my normal Friday night garb. I'm amplifying Afghan women's voices through a social media campaign called Don't Touch My Clothes, hashtag Don't Touch My Clothes. And basically Afghan women are going on social media in traditional or non-traditional Afghan attire and showcasing how Afghan women dress to counter the propaganda that Taliban are putting out there with putting out these women. I heard that half of them were men dressed in these Darth Vader-like robes from head to toe and black gloves is just laughable. So one of the things that I have found myself doing is being on social media a lot. I am not a Twitter fan and I'm a Twitter all the time. The first week I was messaging using my computer, being on WhatsApp that I had carpal tunnel. I mean, both my arms like they hurt so bad. So I started using voice messaging. I have not been on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as much as I have in the past three weeks. And I feel that I have a privilege, I have the privilege to be here talking to all of you about art while today we heard that the Taliban have banned girls from, sorry, this is very emotional for me, continuing school beyond secondary school. I spent 18 years in the province of Dasni next to Wardak where Fatima's family is working with educators there. We have supported girls that became midwives, doctors, actually one of the women who was the head of Ministry of Women's Affairs, which also got shut down, is a graduate of our schools. So this to me is really a stab in the heart. And I would say the first couple of days I think I cried a lot, but then I was inundated with a lot of press inquiries as well as people asking for help and such. And you feel, aside from survivors guilt, I had tremendous amount of PTSD because my family was in Afghanistan when the Russians invaded and I was 11 years old. So I remember the panic and the fear that my parents had at that time as to what is going to happen to us, we can't live in this country. So seeing the people trying to leave and talk about what pictures can do, the people trying to hold onto the airplanes and such, it was really terrible. I'm a really good sleeper and I couldn't sleep at all. So aside from all that, I would say that the one thing that really saved me along with helping our director of our school get out and sending some funding to our teachers because there's so much inflation right now, this action for Afghan social media campaign that I basically met a graphic artist who works in tech and she's like 22 or something incredibly young. And she and I work really close together to put this campaign together. And it's all basically very intricate messaging that she's put together to these beautiful graphics and music that we keep sharing. And I feel like that really saved me on the first week because I really got immersed into, first of all, doing something that was completely foreign to me. Like I said, social media is not my strength to put this messaging together. What is it we want to say? What is it that we want the world to know? Yeah, there are the 200,000 that had to get out but then there's 40 million people who are left behind and what did we leave them? And what is the legacy of our country? So that has really saved me. And then of course, two weeks into it, I got the good news of being accepted for this residency. So that's been wonderful, but I have to say like my brain is completely clogged. I can't write. I'm hoping that it'll come back. But I can see how cultures can get destroyed during war because if you are in this kind of situation where you're in this fight and flight mode, you're in the survival mode, how can you create? How can you think in a creative way? How can you see the joys and beauty of life that you could express in your art? And that is one of the things that really scares me about the future of Afghanistan and what will happen to the artists. So I'm really happy to hear that Gazelle's organizations getting people out, but then there will be musicians that are left behind. All kind of visual artists, writers, and that makes me very, very sad. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. You really have kind of articulated some of that feeling of overwhelm that the current events news right now is and I, as a non-Afghan, I feel overwhelmed. And so I can't imagine how you all are feeling as well. You know, you each have kind of shared specific ways that folks can support right now and we'll share out those links and everything that you've been mentioning throughout this conversation. But also, as you said, Homeira, as people leave and as the current regime, everything kind of settles in and it starts to inevitably, as it kind of heartbreakingly does, leave the news and leave the front of what we're seeing, there are still people that will be there left in Afghanistan, there will still be artists there, there will still be women and girls living there and needing support. And so I wonder how can non-Afghans or folks in the United States support Afan people in an ongoing way? What should we be keeping in mind or committing to now that can continue that support after it starts to fade from the front page of the newspaper, which it inevitably will, which is again, always just heartbreaking because it never fades from the front page of our lives. But what can we do now? What can we commit to now that will be an ongoing support? I think it's just always, first and foremost, so important to amplify Afghans. We have so many experts in our community in the diaspora and in Afghanistan and other places that are professors, historians, scholars, artists. There's so many people, activists who are working on the ground working to get people out, working to assist people. And I've met so many folks I believe they have nothing but good intentions in their heart who are American or especially white who set up these organizations or donations or something to assist. And they have like these really great intentions but it's always about saving Afghan women instead of supporting Afghan women or supporting Afghan orphans or supporting Afghan people. And I think we really need to let go of that like colonial white savior mindset and really direct that energy towards the Afghans who are doing the work on the ground because there are so many of them. You don't have to look far to find someone who is truly an expert and doing some really incredible work. So I mean, that's just always kind of what I go to first is just finding those Afghan voices and supporting them and supporting the work that they do. I'll add that I think that when I think about what Americans can do, I think very much about how they can influence American policy and American conceptions of Afghanistan. And I think Fatima's suggestion of listening to the voices there is very important in understanding the complexity of what's going on there. I also think at least in the context of this immigration crisis, American citizens can be pressuring their representatives to change the laws around immigration. For example, with the humanitarian parole and a lot of the visa applications, they expect Afghans to go to a third country before their paperwork can be processed. So imagine you're in a country where all the borders are closed, you don't have money because you're not being paid anymore. And you can't leave the country without a visa and yet you're being told in order to get a visa you have to leave. It's like completely insane. So I know like some of the lawyers that I've been working with with the humanitarian parole, they're trying to like pressure US senators to change that rule because it's completely in my mind inhumane. I think a second thing that American citizens can do is to really be mindful of the rhetoric that's being shared about what it is to be Afghan or Muslim. For example, someone on Twitter in Missoula, Montana said, oh, 74 Afghans are coming and they're not welcome here. There's a lot of people who are gonna be coming in and we already saw a lot of anti-Muslim, anti-Afghan, et cetera sentiment after 9-11. And there could be another backlash again. So I think to Fatima's point of understanding like the complexity of stories, we just like those who are interested in helping need to continue to like keep the conversation alive and like educate their fellow friends on these people and like humanizing them in their situation. Not to speak twice, but I just wanna add to what Fazel said because it's really important, specifically with that humanitarian parole, one of the biggest things in addition to having them change the rules about going to a third-party country because this is exactly the problem that my family is in right now where they're somehow have to get to Qatar. Don't know how that's gonna happen. But also the US government created this problem of refugees and is now charging each individual refugee $575 to apply for humanitarian parole per person. $575. So there's also an effort to pressure representatives to waive that fee as well, which is really, really important. So that's another cause that you can get politically active or in your local community and pressure your representatives to do something about that because it is completely inhumane as well. I can jump in. On my website, hamyragilzai.com, I have a section called Action for Afghans and it has, I have around like 15 easy things that you can do, whether it's to contact your representatives or to volunteer to welcome refugees to update Afghan voices. And I keep updating that with more information as it comes. So that's one way to engage short term. But I also think that the Americans have the right to know why was the US and Afghanistan? What happened in all these years and why did our government lie to us? And now I'm talking from an American perspective, I am an American who lives in and there's currently a book that's just published called Afghan Papers. I think it should be reading material for every single person in the United States over the age of 35. So you can better understand how we go in other countries and we topple their governments and we change things up and we push our own agenda. And then when it's time to leave, we just dump them and move on to the next place. And then once again, we do the same thing. And this has got to be stopped. We need to move as a country from an economy of war to an economy of support, doing good in the world, saving the planet. And unfortunately, this is something that is very hidden in plain sight to be, I mean, you don't have to dig very far to actually get to this point. If you look at who benefited out of the two and a half billion dollars that the US spent on Afghanistan, it's six major US government and the military contractors who benefited the most. So this is something that seems complex, but it isn't. And I'm really tired of Afghan politicians, I'm sorry, American politicians shifting the blame on the Afghans saying there's corruption and infighting. Yes, those things are true, but there's a lot of corruption and infighting in our country as well. And what we do is export a lot of that into other countries and we destroy their systems and we make promises and then we don't deliver. And to me, we have got to stop this because this is not a sustainable way for our economy to thrive or people to thrive because war is basically cancer that's on earth and it's going to eventually affect all of us. So if you were to really be interested in engaging with Afghanistan, first we need to understand what the culpability of our country, our politicians and I'm talking about George Bush, President Obama, Trump and Joe Biden, they're all involved in this. So it's not Republicans slash or Democrat. So get a copy of Afghanistan people, please read that. That's going to give you a shocking insight as to what a mess we have made in Afghanistan. We could have gotten out of there within five years but we didn't. And it's not because the Afghans asked us to stay. Real quick, while we're still on the subject of things people can do and good things to know, we're talking a lot about Afghan women as three of us are Afghan women and the US has really used and weaponized Afghan women in their mission and going into Afghanistan saying that they need to save us or that our rights are being violated. And while that was occurring under the Taliban rule for sure, I just really want people to make this distinction or to note when talking about Afghan women, when supporting incoming refugees, to really pause and ask yourself if what you're about to say or what you're about to write on your protest sign is Islamophobic because that is rhetoric that has really been poisoning the dialogue around Afghan women. Certainly I 100% agree that nobody, no government, no group should ever enforce rules upon what women can do, how they can move, how they can operate and especially what they can wear. But it is important to remember that some women choose to wear burqas, some women choose to wear a bias, Afghan and elsewhere. So I just really hope that people take that into consideration when talking about Afghan women and when they are wanting to do something to support us is leaving the Islamophobia at the door because that is a problem in the web, I'm sure. Thanks. Thank you so much for bringing that up. Everyone has shared so much that's so powerful. I think a lot of what y'all brought up bring me back to that importance of arts and humanities in regards to humanizing in regards to sharing a variety of perspectives and art being not only theater, of course, but also writing to check out the Afghan American Writers Association to find videos or writing or testimonials from Afghan women, Afghan people in Afghanistan that can better inform advocates as to how to advocate, how to change culture, how to change their own opinions and how to best support. And I love that you bring up culture change, Humayor as well, both political culture change but also across the United States and across the world when it comes to what our priorities are and how we welcome other cultures. This is all incredibly important. And so I hope that that helps for attendees to better shape how they're advocating and kind of take this overwhelming situation and begin to approach it again through those personal stories and through better understanding, understanding the culture, understanding current events, understanding our history and each person's personal role in especially as Americans in this history. I would love to end, we only have a couple of minutes but I would love to end on your, I guess a glimmer of hope or a glimmer of joy asking you each what you love about Afghan art and what parts of your own culture inspire you? I can say one thing I love so much about Afghan art and our culture in general is the use of poetry and word play just in a conversation with my mom. I can't have a conversation with my mom without a proverb or three being slipped in. And I love that, that that's just built into our language that we speak in this really poetic in both Pashto and Farsi. That's something that's really important to me and also the oral storytelling. That's another thing that I'm really trying to like focus my artistic mind towards because my mom and my grandparents, they are the best storytellers I know. It's such a big part of our culture. Like my aunt told me that when she was a kid my mom was their television. They would sit around her after dinner and she would tell these epic tales like equivalent to like Lord of the Rings where it would take her months to tell a whole story every night and there were songs and all of this stuff added to it. And that she's forgotten so much of that just because the trauma that she experienced during the Soviets and immigrating here her brain could only hold so much. And I really want to find that again. I really want to recapture that. I want to try and document those stories and create new ones and really lean into that tradition of poetic oral storytelling. So that's one thing I love about Afghan culture and art. I'll jump in. I love Afghan carpets. They're gorgeous and I have some of them at home and I really love walking on them, looking at them but my real love of Afghan culture is Afghan food. Of course I write about Afghan food on my blog, Afghan culture unveiled. But I don't think you can really understand the essence of people without eating the food. And that's one of the things that any production I've worked on. I'm like, we got to go eat some Afghan food. These artists have to absorb Afghan culture through their stomach. So yeah, so I hope you all get to either supported Afghan restaurant or cooks of Afghan food at home with my recipes or whatever. Yeah, and I'll add that I'm really drawn to embroidery work in textiles in Afghan culture. And another glimmer of hope is that I think that we're in an unprecedented time of activism and organizing in the Afghan American community. And also non-Afghan Americans organizing on behalf of Afghans. And I think that that's really powerful. And I hope that we can continue that momentum to create more change and better policies in the future. Nubra, you're muted. Okay, hello. Okay, great. Sorry. I'm just so incredibly thankful that you all take the time to be here to share your own stories, to share your work with us, to share your advocacy, we'll make sure to get that information, those links and everything out to folks. And we'll be looking out for your stories. Humayun and Fatima will be looking out for these stories that you shared with us, the world today that should definitely be out there to share a different perspective. And I'm just so, so, so grateful and pleased to everyone who's watching. As we've said, you know, as Gazelle really, in a lovely way kind of ended us with that this is an unprecedented time for advocacy for Afghanistan and let's never let that end. Let that's, you know, establish now that kind of advocacy that can sustain for each and every person watching here. Find that way that you can sustain that for yourself. And thank you all so, so much for joining us. Have a lovely evening. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Good night. Thank you, I was trying to unmute. Thank you.


So my name is Bolmani McClendon. I'm a computer science student in university right now. And in the summer of 2016, I worked on the software for an art project called Shroom and Lumen. Shroom and Lumen is an art installation made up of five mushrooms that glow and move. There are about 1,500 LEDs in each one. And the tallest mushroom is over 20 feet tall. The body of the mushrooms is made of translucent, hand-folded plastic. And each mushroom has a pad out in front that you can step on to trigger the cap to extend. So initially, we prepared this for a Burning Man festival in Nevada. But we were also invited to present this at a design festival in Dubai in December. And I joined the team in early July, about two months before we had to take it out to Burning Man. And at the time, we had no software or electronics. So my main role was to build the software and then work with the electronics lead to do the hardware software integration. So previously, I didn't think of myself as someone who'd be contributing to an art project. And most of my experiences in web development so far, so it was kind of unexpected for me to jump into a hardware project. But I was motivated to do it by the creative director for the project who I met at the company I was interning for at the time. He was an aerospace engineer by training, turned product designer that did these large-scale art projects in his free time. So I figured that if he was able to do it, I should give it a shot. But this was a bit scary because I was setting out to build a major art installation that needed to last in the desert for over a week, doing all the software and electronics work within two months' time outside of our day jobs. And it kind of fell on me, someone who had limited experience with developing for hardware to make sure that the software that enabled these things to function was solid. So time was very limited. And one of the things that I found working with other heavily invested designers and engineers was that everyone wanted to try out a bunch of different things to test concepts rapidly. For example, different interactions with the pads, the lighting, and so on. And so because there were so many changes that we were making, I found it difficult to make solid progress in the development of the software, which was becoming more and more critical as our deadline was approaching. So one thing I quickly realized was that we needed to make it easy to experiment. And to explain how I carried this principle into the project, I'll kind of talk about the system that we actually implemented. So each shrooming has one Raspberry Pi that acts as its controller. And in addition, each shrooming includes three subsystems, a weight sensing pad, a cap extension system, and a lighting system. The weight sensing pad is comprised of a weight sensor and an LED strip that changes color when someone steps on the pad. And both of these two components are connected to pins on the Raspberry Pi. The cap extension system is comprised of a motor controller and a linear actuator, which is essentially just an extending rod. And the motor controller provides voltage to the linear actuator when it gets a signal from the motor controller, which is controlled by signals being sent from the Raspberry Pi. And so when someone stepped on the pad, the linear actuator extends the cap's head, leaves it in place for 60 seconds, and then brings it back down. The lighting system is made up of those 1500 LEDs I mentioned in strips that connect to a unit called a pixel pusher, which is essentially an LED device driver that allows us to map images to our matrix of LEDs. And all the pixel pushers from each of the shrooming are connected to one wireless router. From there, animations are controlled wirelessly by a tablet application, as you can kind of see in the GIFs over here. So on the southward side, abstractly, each of the hardware subsystems communicate with a central server that controls the overall state of each shrooming. And the method for communication is HTTP requests. And the reason for this is that it allows the subsystem code to remain really dumb and then moves all the logic for the shrooming to one place on the server. So in practice, when the Raspberry Pi boots up, it uses Node.js to run a local Express server. And in addition, C or Python scripts associated with each of the hardware subsystems are configured to start when the Raspberry Pi boots up as well. And so these scripts are responsible for interfacing with the hardware by writing to or reading from signals, reading from the Raspberry Pi's GPI opens. And essentially, these scripts just pull endpoints on the server to determine what state they should be in or, in the case of the sensor, to report data back to the server at consistent intervals. So given that we have this pretty simple process for communicating with our hardware subsystems, we can focus our attention on the Express server where the logic is handled. And so there, I just chose to use an object-oriented structure leveraging the ES6 style JavaScript classes. And with this structure, we can define the high-level interactions between the subsystems comfortably. The state of all the subsystems are just managed in their associated classes. And then applications that are polling the server, those hardware subsystems, get access to the state through getter and setter functions that are described in the classes. So let's take a look at the basic structure for managing the color of the pad lights. So on the server, we have this class. It has a simple constructor that includes a state variable. And then it has a getter function for sharing that state, as well as a few functions for setting that state, for example, setting the pad to red or to green. And then we instantiate an object of this class, which other classes on the server can then use to change the state with the setter methods. And then in the request handler, which the pad light subsystems scripts will be hitting, we just simply return the state that that object has as a response. And so then the pad light subsystems scripts get that response and change the color on the pad lights accordingly. So the reason why this helped a lot for us was that it broke the software into a set of easily testable, easily reasonable subsystems. It abstract the functionality of each of the subsystems so that it was easy to do quick iterations of relatively complex coordination between the subsystems. For example, writing logic like when someone has been on the pad for four consecutive readings, turn the lights on the pad red and extend the linear actuator for 30 seconds, wait for 60 seconds, then retract the linear actuator for 30 seconds, and turn the pad green again, became really easy to do with just a few lines of JavaScript code on the server. And that was helpful because it just allowed us to test a lot of different concepts with our interaction paradigm really fast. And because the lighting system was controlled by a tablet application, it was actually really easy for us to test out a lot of different animations and colors, choose the ones that we liked the most and then use those ones at the festivals that we took the piece to. And lastly, this kind of played to my burgeoning strengths as a web developer because it made it easier for me to move fast and it gave me the opportunity to potentially include more web-like features in the future. So after many weekends of working and a few tests at our build site in Palo Alto, we were ready to take it to Burning Man. I was working in internship at that time so I couldn't actually go with the team to set it up, but I waited patiently to hear how it went and it turns out that it actually went well. The team sent me these super low-res photos as soon as they got them set up. And then later on, I was able to see higher resolution photos like this one after the festival it ended. And so when we were invited to come to Dubai and show the project, I actually did get to go and it was super cool to just see people interact with the project for the first time in person and I got the chance to do some live changes since, as we all know, software has never finished. So while many tourists in Dubai might have had an experience that looked something like this, for me, it looked a lot more like this. And I was shocked by the different types of experiences that people had around the art. Everyone from small children to the elderly were able to enjoy it. And when people came to me to talk about the project, it was really cool to talk about it not just as an engineer, but also as an artist as well. So in conclusion, before I joined the Shreem and Lumen project, I would have never imagined myself implementing an art project. Yet by the end of 2016, Shreem and Lumen had been enjoyed by hundreds of people across two showings and counting. And so through this experience, what was reaffirmed for me was that software is more than just a tool and that coding is more than just a job skill. Software is really a medium and creative expressions using it aren't limited to just screens. I'll be around to talk more about the installation if you are interested, but as a final note, I encourage all of you to take your skills in computational thinking, engineering, and mathematics and give making art a shot, collaborate, innovate and keep building beautiful things. Thanks.


Another really disappointing loss for the Yankees. 12-7 the final. Look, Jack, this was a game where it looked like, okay, the Yankees got out of the gates quickly. They were able to tack on runs throughout. They set up their high leverage relievers, and then it came apart in the sixth. Yeah, they were in position to win, as you just described. And then Ryan, the end result is a humiliating loss and embarrassing loss. And the kind of game where the Yankees right now should be looking deep inside themselves and saying, what the heck just happened? Because as you said, they're up 6-2 in the sixth inning. They've got their four big relievers ready to go in green, autovino, and Chapman. They never get to the final two because green and autovino struggle so much. Autovino, in fact, allowed six earned runs, did not get it out. Only the fifth Yankee pitcher in the last century plus to allow that to happen. And you look at that inning, Ryan, and it goes like this. 10 runs scored, 67 pitches thrown, 43 minutes and one dark cloud that continues to hover over the struggling team. Yeah, I can't remember seeing an inning with 67 pitches. John, what was your reaction to the way things unfolded in the sixth inning? Well, Ryan, I think I'm just looking at taking a bigger picture view of this whole thing. I mean, the last couple of days, it's been the lineup for the Yankees that hasn't been able to get it done. You can point at times during this bad stretch that the starters have not been good. And today it was the bullpen. And Jack's right, it was two of the big arms that came out of the bullpen. And we know that the Yankees, we don't know that Aaron Boone likes to script his games and with some of his relievers and finding the lanes that they're gonna be effective in.  This is a game that you have to win. Green didn't have it. He didn't have anything to finish people. Walked a couple of batters. But Adam Autovino, and we've heard Aaron Boone say this, he always wants to give him a clean inning and we kind of saw that tonight. You can't bring him in a game when there are runners on base. I mean, the running game, the opposing teams just take advantage. And I thought when I was watching Autovino, he was so concerned with the running game, so concerned with changing up his rhythm to home plate, so concerned with all these things that he wasn't executing any pitches and had a terrible performance. So I have to hear from Aaron Boone after this one because some of the shots that we saw in the dugout, he seemed like a deflated manager. It's gonna be interesting to hear his comments.


MLAEP is a machine learning-based method for predicting the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 virus strains. It uses structure models, multitask learning, and genetic algorithms to identify antigenic changes and correlate them with sampling times. This allows us to infer the order of mutation events along the virus's evolutionary trajectory. We also used MLAEP to analyze existing SARS-CoV-2 variants and found new mutations in immunocompromised patients and emerging variants such as XBB1.5. Furthermore, MLAEP was able to predict the effectiveness of these variants in evading immunity, allowing us to better understand how the virus evolves and potentially develop more effective vaccines. This article was authored by Wen Kai-han, Ningning Chen, Shinjishu, and others.


What's going on guys? Today I am back with another Destiny 2 video and today I have for you something epic exclusive PvP gameplay of the Hunter's new or remastered Blade Dancer subclass the Ark Strider. But before we get into the video guys, if you want to be in with a chance of winning this resurrectionist emblem simply drop a like on the video and leave a comment. Details are on screen now. The gameplay in the background as well was recorded by GameSpot. The full video is linked in the video description if you do want to check it out. Pretty decent Diage interview regarding Destiny 2.  Okay so getting into the gameplay in the background. We see the Hunter's new Ark Strider subclass tearing it up in PvP.  I was going about thinking that it was just going to be the Blade Dancer with a pole in his hand but actually seeing it actually seeing footage of it it looks completely different.  This does the same thing but to be honest it looks like a well I wouldn't say new subclass it looks like a subclass built from the ground up to resemble the Blade Dancer but way more controllable because in my opinion the Blade Dancer isn't that controllable I mean you're all over the place you don't know what direction you're gonna slash most of the time you don't anyway this looks way more controllable in my opinion and the actual look at the thing it looks incredible when he's standing there and the electrics running through that rod I mean I'm seriously digging this I mean Hunter's my main as well so I'm definitely going to be using the Ark Strider a lot more than I used the Blade Dancer in Destiny 1 for damn sure. So what do we actually know about this Ark Strider subclass? Well we know the Gunay's it has it has skip grenade flux grenade and it has arc bolt grenade jumps we have high jump strafe jump and triple jump no blink is returning to the actual subclass so you are not gonna have to blink above people and confuse them because that always happened to me in PvP someone blinked towards me I'd just be so confused I just stand there most of time let them kill me so yes no blink is returning to a Hunter within Destiny 2. The third ability it has is the same across the board it has basically what we know now as the Shade Step it has the marksman dodge which reloads your equipped weapon when dodging or it's got the gambler's dodge which generates melee energy when you dodge near enemies now the other two paths of four perks this actual subclass has is where the warrior which offers combat flow recharges your dodge class ability upon a melee kill deadly reach extends the range of your melee lunge temporary after a dodge lethal current your arc staff attacks hit twice after dodging and shocking blow melee attacks emit lightning on a strike and the other path of four perks is called way of the wind disorienting blow striking an enemy with this melee disorient them leaving them vulnerable then we have a lightning reflexes you take less damage while dodging when your arc staff is active we have battle meditation when critically wounded melee and grenades recharge drastically faster and we have focused breathing with this ability active sprinting reduces your dodge cooldown and you gain increased sprint speed so yes that's basically the loadout of the arc strider subclass now the beta comms are July 18th on PlayStation and July 19th on Xbox and we actually get to try out all three new subclasses that being the arc strider that being a Titan Sentinel and that being the warlocks dawn blade so I can just not wait until July 18th and July 19th so we get our hands on this actual subclass I'm actually really surprised of how decent it looks it looks 100 times better than I expected not gonna lie but guys that is it for another video let me know what you think about this down below in that comments section if you're new around here and enjoy daily destiny videos make sure you subscribe and I will as always see you on that next one


Possibly a lot of people are worried they wouldn't be able to do it, it's available to everyone. Anyone that thinks they can give a nice home to someone and help someone in life and help them move forward, that's all you need to do.


Database is a very flexible and collaborative activity. It allows students to share ideas and upload files and rate and comment on other course participants' entries. To write a database, turn the editing on. Add an activity. Database. Database name. And then introduction. Save and display. We now need to add fields to our database form. So let's create a new field. Choose text. Okay, so we've added four different field types to our database form. Before we make this available, we need to go to templates and save each of the templates. Actually, that can be formatted here, installed if need be, or simply save each of the templates. Okay, so our database activity is now ready for use. So there we have it.


Hey, before you freak out, just give me one second to make my case. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health and what I like to do is pull different topics from pop culture to helpfully help you improve your mental and emotional well-being. So at the end of that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. So first, let's talk about it. You're probably wondering, Chris, why do you got Fortnite up in the background? Because I want to show all of you how young hip and cool I am. Duh. But yeah, I want to talk about Billie Eilish, her music, as well as her fans, okay? Don't get me wrong. I don't think there's anything wrong. Actually, let me rephrase that. I'm not saying Billie Eilish is a bad person. I'm not saying that she has bad music. I am not saying that her fans are bad people, okay? I can definitely relate. So those of you who want to know a little bit more about my age and where I come from. So back when I was growing up, emo music, screamo music, hardcore, all that kind of stuff was kind of getting big. So I can definitely relate to the primary demographic of Billie Eilish, which is angsty teens. I, too, was an angsty teen. Those of you who are in my age range around your 30s, maybe even 40s, I was into bands like The Used, Taking Back Sunday, Under Oath, and I used to go to the Warp Tour all the time and just like, yeah, somebody gets me sick. Around this time was also when I first started developing symptoms of mental illness, right? Depression, anxiety. I had, you know, very, very harmful thoughts. And that's one of the reasons why I want to talk about this subject. Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. So what I want you to kind of focus on as I dive into this subject is what my channel is all about. We talk about the problem, the focus on the solution. So Billie Eilish and her music, personally, I'm not a huge fan of all of her music. I'm not saying her music is bad. It's just we all have different tastes and that's okay. But anyways, I have listened to a bunch of her music just trying to see what all the fuss is about and everything like that. And she has a tone with her music and it's pretty dark, pretty depressing and things like that. One of the issues, and this is just purely my opinion, especially, you know, as a father and somebody who had a lot of depression growing up, just my opinion is that we need to start looking at, you know, the music, you know, the artists behind it and kind of the message that's being put out there. What's always fascinated me about music as a whole is it helps you feel less alone. Okay. I'm thinking about doing some videos on Lincoln Park, because a lot of Lincoln Park songs have, you know, very depressing messages, right? But Billie Eilish, you know, she has this kind of dark depressing like kind of tone with her music and her lyrics and everything like that. And there's this connection you get and you don't feel so alone and you're like, oh my god, like somebody, I think, I think that's where it comes from when you're like somebody can finally put into words the feelings that I'm feeling, the emotions that I'm feeling, the experiences that I've been through. And I think that helps develop a parasocial relationship. Maybe that's even part of the reason why the audience gets so connected with YouTubers. You feel that connection. Like we, as humans, we have this natural desire for connection, right? Like we need it. Like it is something that helps us survive. We have to feel connected. And sometimes even in our own families, people don't understand. Like I mentioned last week, I spoke at a high school and you know, this is an issue that many teenagers deal with. They're going through their own problems and typically the adults in their lives, they don't understand, right? So there's no connection there. Well, who can you connect to? Artists like Billie Eilish. Now, one of the issues is that these songs, they focus on the problem, but there's no solution to it, right? So that's one of the million reasons why I say we talk about the problem of focus on the solution. Because like when you listen to a track, when you listen to a depressing track from Billie Eilish, there's no solution. It's just, it's all problem, right? This is the problem. This is the problem laid out for you. And now we feel connected. And then it's like, see you later. But it's like, what do you do after that? And one of the issues that I find is like, especially like just drawing from my own personal experience, growing up and listening to really dark, depressing music. And if any of you, like we're emo kids, or you can relate to the music that I'm talking about, let me know because I'm thinking about doing some videos on that. But it put me in a very dark headspace. And it really reinforced the negative thoughts that I constantly had, right? Like looking back on it, like that's an issue. You know what I mean? Like reinforcing those negative thoughts, making me think that those negative thoughts were okay, even though my life sucked because of it. Now this isn't the artist's fault. It's not the song's fault. It's nobody's fault in that aspect of it. But this is one of the reasons why I'm trying to increase the conversation about mental health. But for all the teens listening to this, you know, today, it's something that worries me, especially with mental health issues being on such a rise and a lack of resources, especially when it comes to, you know, high schools and things like that. Let me put it in perspective for you. When I was speaking at the high school last week, I asked the teacher, I was like, Hey, do they have like a school like therapist or a psychologist or whatever? And they do have a psychologist that comes in like once every couple months or so, right? We have a school with a thousand kids. Like that's not enough. You know what I mean? So when you think about how kids are being raised and what they're listening to and culture and things like that, like where's the solution aspect of it? Like do me a favor. Let me know down in the comments below. Did you ever feel growing up? Did you ever feel comfortable talking to your parents about your mental health issues? In my experience, it was often minimized or we didn't talk about it. Like if I was going through something, it's just like get over it. Right. So let me know if that's something that you can relate to as well. Like as a kid, I was being raised by, you know, the music I was listening to as well as the TV, the TV shows I was listening to. So when I look at this and I look at artists like Billie Eilish, what's the solution? What's the solution? In my opinion, what I think, like in an ideal world, what I think would happen is because it's very therapeutic. I want to touch on this real quick. It's very therapeutic for artists to write songs and make music. That is a very therapeutic experience. But it's very kind of one way. Right. Like you are a very fortunate artist if the music you're writing and putting out there is helping you out. Right. And then you think of, you know, a huge artist like Billie Eilish, if she needed therapy or treatment or whatever it is, she could afford it. You know what I mean? But it's like, what about the millions upon millions upon millions of people who are listening? This is why when I, when I kind of look at what's out there on YouTube, YouTube can be therapeutic for some people like making videos, but again, it's very one directional. Right. It's only coming one way. So I'm thinking about like just kind of this massive, you know, audience. So creative outlets are great.  All right. Very cool. But when you have a platform in the audience, it's like, okay, where's the balance coming? So going back, like in my ideal world, what would happen? What would happen? I would, I would hope that artists who are putting out that type of music that's, you know, depressing that people can connect to the balance comes in with, you know, promoting, taking care of your mental health. Right.  Because a lot of people, like I mentioned before, are listening to songs because they can connect to the music. So it's like, okay, now what can I do to help? What can I do to help the people who are listening to this and can relate to what I'm going through? Right. That's just something that's a message I've been trying to get off, get out there for, for so long. It's like when we have this platform, we should be using it to promote, you know, good mental health practices, whatever that may be. And maybe that's just something simple as yo, if you're struggling with these things, talk to your family, talk to your friends, talk to your teacher, talk to your counselor, talk to whoever it is. Especially teenagers because it's a very difficult time, you know, and there's so many stresses involved. So there needs to be some way in which artists, and this is again, my opinion, promote these types of services to help the people listening to their, their music. So again, I want to end this video by saying I don't, like just from what I know about Billie Eilish, which isn't a ton. I just know her music and some other, you know, things that she's put out on social media and some of her interviews. But I'm not saying that there's anything wrong just from my knowledge with Billie Eilish. I don't think her fans are awful people or anything like that. But I truly believe that most of us watching this, my primary demographic is like 18 to 34. Most of us, if we would have been getting help when we were teenagers, we wouldn't be dealing with the issues that we're dealing with today. So part of my goal with my YouTube channel, especially knowing that so many young people are on this platform is to help provide resources and pull things that they're interested in to try to teach them about mental health, mental health awareness, resources and getting help and everything like that. So if you happen to be a teen watching this and you're struggling with somebody, get a support group, talk to your parents, if possible, talk to a counselor, if possible, if not find a teacher who, who you like and who you trust, open up to them about what's going on. You need somebody to talk to, don't just bottle it in. I always say be careful about like kind of like online things because some of them are very bad and I might do some videos about that in the future. But anyways, don't lose hope. A lot of us were very depressed, very anxious as teenagers. If you want to prove my point, leave comments down below and let people know that it does get better. All right. It does get better. But anyways, I was thinking about maybe breaking down some Billie Eilish lyrics and things like that to kind of dive deeper into what I'm talking about. If that's something that you're interested in, let me know down in the comments. All right. Anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and a huge, huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You are all amazing. And if you would like to become a patron and get involved in our monthly Q&A and some other exclusive perks and benefits, you can click or tap right there. All right. Thanks again so, so much for watching. I'll see you next time.