Okay, so recursion. Let me go here and share this screen with you. Look at recursion. So this is, I couldn't find a better definition than from this site. They had a really good definition, I guess, or recursion is, and, you know, how do we use recursion and programming. So here recursion is when a solution to a problem that uses a smaller instances of the same problem itself. A little bit hard to explain but in terms of programming, recursion is usually referred to when a function that calls itself. Okay, that's the recursion. So another example of how recursion can be seen is like the Russian dolls. I'm pretty sure you're seeing this already. If you look at it, it's like the bigger version, right? You open it up and have a smaller version until you find a really simple version of that. So that's the example of where recursion is. It's the same shape, same function, same data, right? And repeating stuff. And then of course, you can see a lot of things as well in nature. It's a pattern going on. If you look at the leaves over here, the ferns, like you have gone from bigger and smaller and smaller version of it. Same thing here as well. And also these, you can also find other places and, you know, at seashells and things like that. So every recursive function that is usually referred to when a function that calls itself. The number is calculated by, you're multiplying the number of, let's say factorial five, multiply that by four by three by two, all the way to by one. You get the product of all, I mean the, yeah, the product of all those numbers and you get a factorial. And so if you look at it, it's like the Russian doll, right? Five and four, three, two, one, small and smaller, until you get to the smallest number and then you end there. So when you write a program, you have to establish one or two basic cases to terminate the recursion. If you don't do that, you're going to end up just like an infinite loop, right, and it will crash the program. So this example on the left side is the factorial function to, you know, calculate factorial number. So the basic case will be here if and it's one, then the result is going to be one and I think factorial one or zero will give you one anyway. So you can check that because you pass and the number five in here, if and it's not five, then you skip the return class you go to the next return. And this one says five times the factorial of four, right, five times factorial four. So four goes back into the function. It does it again. Now what is four so four times factorial three. So you can see how that gets through the whole process until it is reduced to one. When that is true, it returns to one. When one is returned, everything gets reversed. Okay, if we curse back. So it can be very confusing. If you're not careful. There's another one that I feel you or some of you might have used before, as an input. Okay, when you write a function to get the input, you call the input function as a user to enter a number, a positive number for example and if they enter a negative number, you print invalid try again. And so if you did not use a while loop in the inside here, and you happen to call the same function again. If you do that, it's going to call the function. But if you keep running that cycle, no, and definitely eventually you're going to run out of memory. Okay, until you get a valid value that they would be cursed back. But when it comes back and the data, you're going to get an incorrect number. Also, so very, very confusing. So this is what's called a recursive call when you call the function itself within the body of the function. It doesn't matter where anywhere the function. If it's calling itself, we call that a recursive call. Okay. Now remember that when you every time when you call a function in the program doesn't matter is Python or Java or as a matter. There is what's called a stack. And there's a stack memory and the computer program that keeps track of all the function calls. Every time we call a function, it puts pushed a function to the stack, it keeps stacking those function calls. So when you end the function, it can go back and remove those with a stack. And then that's how it also knows and tracks where the function was called from and so forth. So to really explain this, here's an example of that. So instead of having the same function call itself because it's so hard to understand, I'm going to use like a three functions here, a B and C. Okay, and then over here on the left and right side have a stack, the stacking is a memory and computer that keeps track of all of all the function calls. So right now, at the very bottom of the stack, think of this like a stack of dishes. Okay, at the very bottom is the empty stack I put a bracket to show that it's empty. And then over here is the output. Okay, so when you make the very first initial call to a. Okay, so I make that version call call a, and then now this is the active function. And the first line is going to print a so the output would see is a over here. What happens is that when you call the function a is going to push that function a up the stack, or down, you're pulling down, but to into the stack. And then that's the active function until the function is done. Okay, so we print a to the output. The next line now we call B. So what happens we will call me that is now bump jump over here now. So we haven't called this print a done yet because we move over here now. So we call B. So it pushes be function to the top of the stack. Okay, and it prints be over here, and then it does the same thing the next thing we call see, and it keeps going so you see the stack is piling up here. Okay, and then we print see CS to print functions only. So we see see the see done. After that see is completed right this normal functions to call normal data to perform so it needs to go back to where it was called from. So that is going to go back down to be. Okay, when we go back down to be because we reverse it back to where was caught from here, then it popped the function see call from the memory stack. So it is now gone. But then when we come back to see, then, after see there is another statement to call print be. Okay, so that's the internal step five here it would print be done up here. Actually, this is, this is not there yet it shouldn't be there. So you print be, and then be is done. So we go back to what B was before. So this is just telling you that it's still keeping it, keeping track of the memory of where was called from. And then we backtracked that way, and then it goes to be that we pop up be from the memory stack, and then we go back to a now print a is done. And then when a is printed and then we move back to where it's being called from, we will get rid of a of the stack, and then everything is done. So in terms of the stack. So there is a limit to how many functions can be pushed to the stack. I think Python has about 909, 900, almost 1000, you know, stack slots on this if you call function 1000 times that it's going to overflow the stack. It's going to turn stack overflow. Okay, what's that is overflowed your program crashes, and then it's done. Okay, so you don't want to do that so you don't make that many, many, many costs. Of course, you can also increase the stack. If you want to do that but I mean we don't want to do that because it consumes a lot of memory. So that should not be the option.


Hi, this is Allison Sheridan of the NoCellicast podcast, hosted at podfeat.com, a technology-eek podcast with an ever-so-slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, April 21st, 2024, and this is show number 989. By now, you've probably figured out how to follow podcasts in your podcatcher of choice. I've just learned of another option that I'm not sure is easy or will be a widespread method, but it's definitely interesting. You've at least heard of mastodon by now, even if you're not an avid user like I am.  It's quite refreshing, actually. While mastodon is a platform, that platform runs on a decentralized social network protocol called ActivityPub. Mastodon is just one of the more than 40 different platforms now based on the ActivityPub protocol. Probably the most well-known platform using ActivityPub is Threads from Meta. Another term to understand is the Fediverse because so many platforms use ActivityPub, it's possible for the platforms to intercommunicate and this collection of social networking platforms is called the Fediverse. Imagine writing a post on Threads and it shows up on mastodon to your followers there. Threads is just kind of starting to open up in this way but you can already do things like cross posts to services like micro.blog from Mastodon and vice versa. Okay, so we've got the Fediverse, which is a collection of social networking servers and we have platforms that talk to each other over the ActivityPub protocol and one of those platforms is Mastodon.  Well, a gentleman named Evan Pro-Dromu and I put his link in Mastodon in the show notes if you wanna follow him, he wrote a post on Mastodon explaining how you can subscribe to podcasts through Mastodon. This is all thanks to ActivityPub using the underlying open source protocol and podcasting depends on an open source RSS. I'll walk you through this slowly and then give you the short version of how to do it again at the end. So I'll get all into the detail and then we'll just do the few simple steps you actually have to do. So it all starts with a service called podcastindex at podcastindex.org. The podcast index is an open database of over 4.2 million podcasts running on an open source API. If you search for a podcast, say maybe, I don't know, the no-silicast, for example, you'll be shown a page dedicated to the no-silicast. It's a beautiful layout with the album artwork and the tagline for the show. You can scroll through the episodes with the most recent at the top and each has a nice player. This is already a terrific site to know about even if you don't think subscribing to podcasts inside Mastodon is cool. The podcast index is funded by donations so if you end up using it, maybe throw them some coins. Now let's talk about using the podcast index with Activity Pub to subscribe inside Mastodon. Here's where it gets just a smidge nerdy. After searching for a podcast in the index, look at the URL for the show. All of the shows in the podcast index will start with the same URL. It's gonna be HTTPS podcasting, I'm sorry, podcastindex.org slash podcast. But after that, they each have a unique number at the end of the URL. The no-silicast unique number happens to be 851643. Now we're gonna need that unique number in order to follow the podcast on Mastodon. All people slash accounts that you follow on Mastodon have a username and a server where they're located. For example, to follow me, you look for apppodfeed at chaos.social. Because of the integration of the podcast index in a Mastodon, you can follow a podcast in the same way you follow a person. But instead of a username like apppodfeed, you follow that unique number on the server at ap.podcastindex.org. And this is all in the show notes, of course. So the account to follow in order to subscribe to the no-silicast inside Mastodon would be that unique number, so at 851643 and then at and that URL for the podcast index. To follow an account, you have to search for it. So just plop that at 851643 and then at ap.podcastindex.org into the search field. You're gonna copy and paste it from here probably. When the search finds the account, it will look like any normal Mastodon account with the album artwork for the podcast, a link to podfeed.com, and even the RSS feed URL will be visible to you there. It'll show one post and one post only, which is to the most recent episode of the show. The body of the episode post will start with the words new episode colon followed by the title of the episode. That title is a link to the episode on the podcast index website for the no-silicast. Now my first thought was that I wish the link took people to my website for the episode, but as I thought about it, the podcast index gives the user a delightful experience. The episode they clicked on is ready to play and they can see older episodes and play them directly there too. There's also a swell little globe icon indicating where to click to jump to my blog post for the episode so you can see the full show notes. Heck, they even give you a link to open a download link to where my audio files are stored so you can have the podcast episode for posterity if you want to. They even make it easy to share links with others. I really couldn't find any reason not to love the interface of the podcast index. I was curious whether all podcasts look and act the same. So I looked for Bodigrim's Kilowatt podcast and easily found the unique number for the show, 52 300. When I searched for it and then followed Kilowatt on Mastodon using the podcast index number, I could see the podcast but I didn't immediately see a post for the latest episode. I'm not exactly sure what causes the latest episode to show up on Mastodon but later I went back and I could see the most recent episode of Kilowatt. It's not that he posted a new episode and that made it show up. It was an episode that had aired before I ever subscribed on Mastodon. It's almost as though the podcast index is recreating this account for each person who asked for it because I had Steve subscribe to the Nocella cast on Mastodon and it didn't show a new episode right away and it says zero following even though I am following the Nocella cast on Mastodon. If my observations are leading to the correct conclusion then it makes sense that the newly created account on Mastodon hasn't had time to pull any content yet and only does after some short bit of time. Now, as usual, I made this long and detailed which I hope is valuable to understanding how this stuff works. It can make things sound harder than they really are though so let's go through the three easy steps of subscribing to a podcast in Mastodon as I learned from Evan. First, look up a podcast at podcastindex.org. Find the unique number at the end of the URL under your browser and then follow that unique number at AP at, I'll get it yet, follow that unique number at ap.podcastindex.org. Then get podcast updates over ActivityPub, that's it. I think this is a cool example of the power of the Fediverse and of ActivityPub and of open source. Maybe too nerdy of a solution for you but at the very least you learned about the podcast index where you can go to find your favorite podcast and listen in a beautiful web interface with links to the original source. While Steve has been continuing to work his little video editing fingers to the bone making content for us and he's got another audio file for a company called Scosh and it's fantastic. This one's from CES 2024. One of the great companies that does a lot of really cool electronics, consumer electronic devices has a name that everybody argues over how to pronounce and I've just been instructed by Daryl Mia that it is Scosh. Correct, Scosh Industries. All right, so you've got a really, it's a funny thing to be excited about that you have a cable that really excites me. Now this is an audio podcast but with some video so describe what you have in your hand here. So this cable right here is magnetic. The whole cable is actually magnetic it's USB-C to USB-C and what's great is it creates a really clean environment.  Strike line cobra. Yep, because it coils up on itself and it kind of resembles a cobra or a snake. So he's not talking about the ends are magnetic he's saying the entire length of the cable. The cable itself is actually magnetic not the ends. Let me feel what this feels like when we, I'm gonna loop it out here and hold it and it actually feels like a noodle. I mean it's limp, it's not stiff or anything like that but as soon as I try to put it into a coil it sticks to itself, right? Yeah, that is really pleasing because I am anal and I do like my stuff neat. Yeah, and as an added feature if you get the diameter just right you can use it as a kickstand on your iPhone 12 or newer. As a MagSafe kickstand I love it. You also said you can stick it to a metal filing cabinet whatever you got, very good. If you have a desk that's a metal desk you can just stick it right along your file cabinet and create a nice clean environment. Okay, I've gotta get a strike line cobra there's no question about that. So now we've got one of the things that my family just swears by is keeping a battery pack for jump starting cars. I've got grandkids they leave the lights on. Every car needs a power jumper. This is our 2,000 P-Camp power jumper here. It'll jump start vehicles up to eight liters and eight cylinders and it has a built-in flashlight and USB-C and USB-A output. Now if the people listening don't already have one of these you should absolutely get one. I drive an EV but guess what's dead in my Tesla Model 3? My 12 volt battery is dead right now so I actually could use this. I don't know if that would actually work in the Tesla but this is great. So you can add the little jumper things the red and the black clips. You can carry it to save somebody else too, right? Yeah, you can jump start multiple vehicles multiple times on one battery charge. The battery charge lasts about six months on these. I'm gonna turn around here. Go down a little bit. Very good. Why don't you walk in front of me and take over on this side? This is baselinks 2.0. It's our second version of it. It is a modular charging system. You can configure it however you want. You can add different components so you could take two or three of the Qi wireless stands and put them together. Let me describe what this looks like. So he's got one block that's plugged into power and it's got an AC outlet. But then it's got a 67 watt USB-C outlet. Okay, so that's just standalone but then he can connect up to that standard Qi charger with a... This is gonna be Qi 2 certified. There you go. So you have a wireless charger here and then down below you can charge your AirPods or your wireless... So you've got a phone and AirPods. You can stick that one on and then the next thing looks like something I'd stand by bicycle up in. This is a BERT stand and it's really good for phones and tablets and it has three USB-C outlets here. It's a shared 60 watts. So you can do up to 60 watts to one device or you could share the 60 watts through...  I have never seen that design. Then what's the last module we have here? This is the Apple Watch charger. Okay. But you can mix and match these within this unit. You can mix and match. This is just a kit that we're showing with one of everything that you can select but you can customize it. You could add on two or three of the BERT stands. You got six kids you could do. And he's on absolutely. Depending on how you want to customize it you could set up a phone here and a phone here so that you don't grab the wrong phone. I love it. So the great thing is we're really known for magnets so they magnetize together. And it just kind of clicks right into place. And through the magnets you run in the power. Well, the power, no, the power is through the... Right here. He's pulling it apart here. Oh, okay. Oh, I see. I see. That's a power adapter on the edge. The magnet just connects them together and holds them so they don't separate. So again, need an orderly like we intended, right? And what is this whole scheme called? This is baselinks 2.0 modular charging system. Very cool. I see like what looks like a water bottle but it also looks like a MagSafe charger. It is not a charger. It is a phone holder which is... This is the Magic Mount Flask. And so what's great about this is it has an adjustable phone holder on the front here. It also has a flip cap so you can flip it, sip it and mount it. So if you're one of these people that carries a water bottle around all the time you can also sit and watch your phone. You can watch your videos. You can watch your phones. You can use it as a tripod. What's great is if you have your pet with you you can pull the bottom off of it and it is a BPA free silicone dog bowl. Oh, that's perfect. Hydrate your pet and hydrate yourself. You know, like that. And that's called the Magic Mount Flask. The Magic Mount Flask. And this will actually be an Indiegogo campaign that starts February 13th. Very good. So if people want to find out more about the Strikeline Cowabra and all the other things that use the Baselink 2.0 where would they find out about all of this? scoche.com S-C-O-S-C-H-E dot com. Very good. Thank you very much. This is great. A few weeks ago I told you about how much fun I was having learning MKDocs to create the user guide for our XK PassWD project. Once I got past the hurdle of fighting with Python mostly by avoiding it which limited what I could do I was able to produce beautiful online documentation. MKDocs allowed me to write the content for the docs in the simple text format called markdown and then using a little YAML configuration file I could link the pages together. MKDocs did the heavy lifting of formatting the HTML pages and made them easily navigable. Now I thought I was done but when I showed it to Helma van der Linden who's running the XK PassWD project she explained to me that MKDocs isn't the only game in town. Tools like this that turn text files into nice web pages are called static site generators and there are several of them. Now since it was a bit of a struggle with Python to get MKDocs to work which stopped us from investigating prettier themes I thought it might be worth investigating some of the other static site generators Helma told me about. The advantage of testing more of them was to see if maybe a JavaScript based tool would work better for XK PassWD. You see Bart taught the programming by stealth audience JavaScript and if others in the audience are gonna help with the development of XK PassWD one of these other tools to create the user documents might be a better choice. Of the tools she suggested so far I've had the most success with one called Docsify from docsify.js.org. Let's start with the initial setup. I've spoken often about installing applications on the command line using Homebrew which is a package manager and we just talked about MKDocs using the PIP package manager for Python. Docsify uses a third package manager called the Node package manager or NPM and that comes with Node.js. Bart taught us all about NPM back in installment 127 of programming by stealth when we were just starting to learn JavaScript. With NPM you can install Docsify with the very simple command NPM I docsify dash CLI dash G. Step two is to initialize a docs directory in a folder of your own choosing with another trivially simple command docsify init dot slash docs. Docsify at this point has already created a working website. Just like MKDocs we can launch a Docsify web server to see our new static website. The command to launch the web server is docsify serve dot slash docs. When the server launches it tells you to open the server by going to localhost colon followed by a port number in a web browser. It's usually but not always port 3000 so it would tell you to go to localhost colon 3000. Just like MKDocs this little web server gives you live updates as you add and edit content. Now the initial website it created is not very interesting. It's created by two files a markdown file called readme.md and an HTML file called index.html. The readme markdown file simply has a heading that says headline and a greater than symbol to create a quoted line that says an awesome project. That's the text of the one web page we can see served by default by docsify. The HTML file is pretty simple too. It's only 21 lines long. The head section is pretty standard. The body includes three lines of JavaScript with one object and then there's a script call to docsify for from a content delivery network. That three line script is where we'll be adding the configuration information to change the way our documentation website appears to the user. I've said, I've always said that I'm not a fan of reading documentation. You've heard me say that over the years many, many times. But I'm starting to think that might not be true any longer. I think maybe Bart broke something in me and programming by stealth with his constant read the fine documentation comments. Well, in this case I was pretty sure there would be good documentation because it was built by people who write a tool to make documentation. You may remember that at the end of my article about MKDocs I said that starting with a new static site generator wouldn't be all that burdensome. This is because the real work is in writing the text of the instructions for the XK PassWD users in Markdown. And those Markdown files will be portable to any static site generator. I copied the Markdown files I created for MKDocs into the docs folder I just created with Docsify and then I got to work learning how to use Docsify to point to them and make them work together. I'm a big fan of left sidebars and documentation. I like to be able to easily jump to the section I wanna read and I want that for XK PassWD users. To get a sidebar with Docsify, you create a Markdown file called underscoresidebar.md and you simply put in bullets with Markdown links to each page. For example, to add my about.md document to the sidebar, I would enter a link into the underscoresidebar.md file. It'd be asterisk and then the syntax for a link to the about.md file. Ordering of the Markdown links defines the order you'll see the documentation in the sidebar. Once we have the underscoresidebar.md file created, we need to tell Docsify to actually render the sidebar. We do that in that HTML file with that wee bit of script that I mentioned earlier. It was pretty simple to add loadsidebar colon true to the existing script and magically I now had a sidebar populated with links to each of my pages. Clicking on any of these links in the sidebar, changed the body of the web page to the content I'd created in that portable Markdown file. I had the documentation working within maybe 15 minutes of when I started to learn Docsify. Now you could create a large number of individual Markdown pages for each concept you wanted in a manual, but that gets kind of tedious for the user. Instead, these static site generators do a good job of letting you create subheadings for new subjects. If you do it this way, there's no waiting for page loads because the user's simply scrolled down right to that section in your documentation. When I first started working with Docsify, the sidebar had the page names I'd identified in the underscore sidebar.md file. And if and when a page was selected, it would unfold and show the level two headings. You create those in Markdown simply by typing two hash marks. But then I also had level three headings with three hash marks, but they weren't showing the sidebar and I wanted them to show. I wanted these level three headings to show because they were the presets Bart has built for XK past WD. And I wanted people to be able to jump right to them in the Docs to learn what they were for. I headed back to the Docsify documentation and I learned that we can add to that we script in the HTML file a simple line that says submax level colon three. Instantly upon saving that file, the documentation now allows easy navigation right to each preset. However, it had also picked up a few heading level twos that I didn't think really merited inclusion in this sidebar table of contents. Back to the Docs where I learned that if you had a simple Docsify dash ignore comment to any heading you don't wanna see, it won't be visible in the sidebar. How cool is that? I get to have the document have a, you know, looks like a heading and it would navigate as a heading with a screen reader, but it doesn't have to be messing up the sidebar. While this does make our generic Markdown files a bit Docsify specific, it's just a comment so it won't hurt anything. If I move the Docs to other static site generators. Our documentation has several Markdown files such as how to help the project, what XK PassWD has to do with XK CD and the maths behind the tool. In the sidebar, I named that page about maths, Barbie dragons. Now that's kind of a standard in the industry, right? Since Bart loves emoji, I added a little dragon emoji to the title. The meat of the documentation though is a very long file simply called user guide. When you click on user guide in the left sidebar, it reveals all of the glorious subheadings I just described. But automatically that long list disappears when you choose another page to read in the documentation and instead expands to show any subheadings on that new page. The magic of static site generators doing all of this without any heavy lifting on my part is just delightful. With a lot of separate documents and sections within the document, the left sidebar is definitely ideal for our documentation, but it's often helpful to have a navigation bar at the top. Just as the sidebar was created with a simple underscore sidebar.md file, you create a navbar and doxify by creating a file called underscore navbar.md. If you wanna have dropdowns from the items in the navbar, you simply create indented, bulleted lists in the underscore navbar markdown file. It literally couldn't be any easier. The default theme for doxify puts the navbar items right justified and they slide to the left as you add more. I added just a couple and it looks pretty nice on the desktop. I'm not found of how it works on mobile though. Because of the small screen, the sidebar and the navbar aren't visible by default. They're both collapsed down into a hamburger menu at the bottom left of the screen. When you select the hamburger menu, the navbar and the sidebar are all in the sidebar together, which is very confusing. It's just one long list. Everything I put into the navbar is a link to something external, like Xhapast.md itself, the GitHub project page, and a link to programming by stealth. So the first thing people wanting to read the documentation are likely to click on at the top in the sidebar takes them somewhere else, which I don't want to do. In the end, I think I'll have to abandon having a navbar and instead maybe put these links at the bottom of the sidebar so people can still see them, but not immediately click them and leave the documentation. Now we have our underscore sidebar.md file and underscore navbar.md. There's one more thing we need to do. By default, GitHub Pages, which is where I'm going to be pushing this documentation, ignores any files that start with an underscore. I don't understand why this fixes the problem and I bet somebody else does, but if you create a hidden file called .nojeckl and you put it in this docs folder, it'll prevent GitHub Pages from ignoring those files that begin with an underscore. You don't put anything in this file. It's mere existence tells GitHub Pages to let you have your sidebar and navigation bar documents. Now, our documentation isn't terribly complicated and it's only a handful of files, but if you're creating complex documentation, you can create subdirectories for your files and each sub directory can have a different navbar and a different sidebar by including new ones in the sub directory. I also figured out how to create a cover page for the documentation. I bet you can guess how. Yep, that's right. You create a page called underscorecoverpage.md. I don't think I'm actually gonna keep it because it's kind of a waste of the user's time to have to click through this page, but it was kind of pretty. It has a nice pastel gradient and it actually changes each time you refresh the page. I think having people go to a page where they have to click through to another page might not make people happy. I'm not sure we could take a vote on it. One of my assignments in investigating other static site generators was to see if changing themes for the documentation could be any easier. The user docs for Docsify give links to the content delivery network, CDN, for jsdeliver.net for three alternative themes. To switch themes, you simply plop any one of these links into the bottom of the index.html file to change the theme. Now I put screenshots of the four themes into the article about Docsify and it's kind of funny. Three of them kind of look exactly the same. I'm not sure that they have slight differences I think, but one of them does look a little different. The default I think is the cleanest and most elegant, but I must carry on and see if I can crack the code on how we could create our own theme just to see if it's truly daunting like MK docs or if it follows maybe a bit more standard way of creating themes. The documentation for Docsify linked to one more theme called Docsify-Themable. This theme is designed to let you change it using standard cascading style sheet syntax, also known as CSS. They give clear instructions for the kind of people who understand CSS on how to link to the CDN for the base simple theme and then how to create a custom CSS file to change the look and feel of your documentation. They even give quite a few examples of ways to modify your theme using custom CSS. I'm not a CSS person, but Helma is, so it's possible she'll become inspired to make our documentation prettier or maybe do something to match the theme of XK-Past-WDD itself. But for now, I like the very simple theme that comes with Docsify and so does she. But maybe with Docsify-Themable, she can figure out how to make there be a nav bar on mobile instead of collapsing it into the sidebar. While I read manuals more than I used to, I'm still a big fan of a search box so I can jump right to what I wanna learn. Docsify has a plugin architecture and one of them lets you add a search box. Again, it's just a script tag to a CDN for the plugin that you add to the HTML file. As soon as I pasted in the script link to the search plugin and hit save, the XK-Past-WDD documentation instantly out of search box. The documentation shows a lot of options on how to configure the search box, but I'll admit I didn't understand most of it. The only tricky thing I figured out how to change was the default text in the search field. It used to say type to search, I changed it to search me with a little emoji or a, well, one of the ASCII emojis for the shrugging shoulders. I felt very clever doing that. Now here's the thing about Docsify search though. While it appears to search all of the markdown files and it returns accurate and complete results, clicking on those results in the sidebar did not take me right to where I found the result of my search. For example, if I type in web 32, which is one of the presets, it finds it in two places, the first of which is under the heading presets as you might expect. If I click on that search result, it highlights the heading presets in the sidebar under user guide, but it does not scroll to the content it found. It doesn't even scroll down to the preset level two heading, which would maybe be helpful, much less the level three heading for web 32. It doesn't start at the top of the user guide either. It scrolls kind of part way down into the copying password sections. This is super confusing because you end up searching the page thinking I should be able to see what I searched for because it took me here, but it's not there on the page. I'm hoping somewhere in all of the configuration options for search, there was a hidden nugget that meant if I click on a search result, scroll to the result of the search. Maybe somebody smarter than me working on the project can find that setting for us. The bottom line is that as much as I adored learning MK docs, I have to say I like the result and documentation much better from Docsify. It's cleaner and more elegant and people are fluent in CSS will be able to make their documentation even prettier with Docsify and the easy theming options. There are more plugins that I haven't even explored yet so there's lots of fun to be had. There's another reason I'm now a Docsify convert. Just like with MK docs, I can push it up to my GitHub repo and you can view the GitHub page to see the beautiful documentation in its current form. I don't even need to run any code at all to tell GitHub to create the page. It just works. But that's not all. With Docsify docs, you can clone my repo from GitHub and then run Docsify serve locally at the command line and you'll have a local copy of the docs and all of their beautiful form. No need to install Node.js to get MPM. No need to install and run Docsify itself. It just works right from the clone of the repo. If you'd like to see the docs and all the glory that is Docsify, check them out at podfeed.github.io, a specific link in the show notes or you can clone the repo at github.com.podfeed. It's that time of the show where I panhandle for money, making the show cost money and if you get value out of the content we produce here and you don't like ads, be really swell if you would consider going to podfeed.com.patreon and choose to pledge some moolah to help keep things going. Thanks for considering the idea. If you did consider it, that is. And if you didn't, well, thanks for listening anyway. In November of 2021, I bought the first M1 Max MacBook Pro. Within a few months, I noticed that the battery life was nothing like what Apple had promised. I worked with Apple and had them replace the battery since it had gone down to 85% in just those few months. After the new battery and a clean install of all my apps because they erased everything when they've repaired it, things seemed to be okay. Then I started noticing it was dying quickly again. I was starting to get like two and a half hours of battery life on a Mac that was supposed to get 10. I dragged my feet on calling Apple but finally in April of 2022, I called them to get this resolved. It has been 373 days since I opened the case. I've had 29 phone calls with Apple and 27 emails. Much of this you've heard over the course of the year but there's news. So I wanted to tell you a bit more about the story. But first a quick recap. Over the course of the last 12.3 months, Apple has had me do a wide variety of experiments, always blaming the problem on my third party apps. They finally convinced me last October to wipe my Mac and do a clean install. I begrudgingly complied. It was hard to measure the battery problems while the Mac was in use, but I was able to show that the Mac lost about 7% every four hours while sleeping.  After the clean install with no third party apps installed, but while logged into my Apple ID, I was able to demonstrate that the Mac still lost 7% every four hours while sleeping. I thought that would be conclusive evidence that the Mac itself had a problem. I even bought a new MacBook Air, which has been a delight by the way, and proved that the problem didn't happen on that Mac with the same apps installed. It's six months later, and I was never able to convince them that it was a hardware problem. Now the senior advisor who stayed with me the longest was Margo, but she actually stopped responding to me for over a month. She'd been telling me that engineering was pointing again to specific applications as being the root cause, even though we clearly know it's not the root cause. Now we can fast forward to last week where I told you about my possibly compromised Apple ID and the lovely senior advisor, Makaya, who helped me work through what was going on. I promised you that it wasn't the last time you'd hear about Makaya. After we got done messing around with my Apple ID, I told her of my now longer than a year old battery problem. She brought up the case to look at it and noted that, well, she could see that I had tried to get a response out of Margo. Engineering had responded to what I had written to Margo, but Margo had never called me back about it. Makaya was much better than any previous advisor giving me detail, and she read me everything engineering had written. Instead of trying to summarize it, she read me exactly what they said. And it's funny, it sounded much more reasonable when you read what they wrote. So they said that they'd understood that I did do a clean install and that they'd tested the battery life after the clean install without any of my third-party apps. But they believed that the battery drain at that time could have been caused by the fact that my Mac was syncing everything from the first time, first download of like all my photos. I have to admit that could have been the problem. I did not wait for my 100,000 photos to download before doing those battery tests. But then again, they didn't tell me to do that. They went on to say that they still saw elevated battery use with a few third-party apps, calling out back plays in particular. I wish I'd remembered while I was on the phone call with Makaya, but back plays had been mentioned a month or so back and I had turned it off at engineering request and it had no effect on the battery drain while sleeping. Makaya and I talked through all of this and then she said something interesting. She said, have you thought about just trading it in? I later kidded David Roth, asking why hadn't he ever suggested this? He told me about 28 times to do it. For some reason when Makaya said it though, I thought to myself, maybe life is too short.  What really pushed me to take her advice was Steve's reaction when he heard her say it on speaker phone. He vigorously nodded and mouthed the words, do it with enthusiasm. We chatted after I got off the phone and unlike David who basically just lost sympathy for listening to my endless stories about this when money could fix the problem, Steve said that he just feels bad for how sad this continues to make me. My two and a half year old 14 inch M1 Max MacBook Pro with a four terabyte SSD and 64 gigabytes of RAM would return me $1,800 on trade in. It's nowhere near the $5,000 I paid for it but it's not that bad. I tutored off to the Apple website to see which Mac I should buy. You may remember an article I wrote in September of 2023 that I entitled, do you really need a MacBook Pro? In that article I explained the testing I did comparing the high demand work I normally do on my computer. I looked at audio encoding, video encoding and audio transcriptions with Mac Whisperer. In the end my answer was that even I didn't really need a MacBook Pro when I compared it to the MacBook Air, it was fine. Not quite as fast but it certainly wasn't bad at all. It is just fine but I'm limited by having only two ports on the MacBook Air and it can only be configured with a two terabyte drive. Those 100,000 original photos at 1.1 terabytes will not fit on a two terabyte drive and allow me to have much breathing room for say things like screencasts online tutorial videos. Clearly if I didn't really need a MacBook Pro for its power I did definitely didn't need the Max chip within it. A regular or a pro version should be fine. The Max chip is distinguished by its high number of CPU and GPU cores. The Max has 16 CPU cores while the pro has only 12. The Max has 40 GPU cores versus 18 on the pro. I highly doubt I would be able to tell the difference but what I did care about was getting 64 gigabytes of RAM. I can't prove I need 64 gigabytes but I can say that I run out of RAM on the 16 gigabyte MacBook Air. I actually get errors that pop up on occasion. Turns out if I go for a lower version of the M3 Max with fewer cores or even an M3 Pro I can't get 64 gigabytes. I'd have to go with 36 gigabytes or 96 gigabytes. So one of them would be too little RAM and the other one would cost me a fortune. Now I considered that this Mac doesn't actually need to be a laptop. Since I bought an M2 MacBook Air to hold me over while I tried to get Apple to fix my MacBook Pro. Unfortunately the Mac Studio and the Mac Mini are not yet out with the M3 chip. The M3 chip I should say so they're quickly dropped from consideration.   So in the end I bought the exact same machine as last time but with a fancy M3 chip instead of M1.  Whoop dee doo. Anyway, it really bugged me to spend $4,900 before tax to replace a Mac I bought for $4,700 and Apple refused to replace. I hesitated over that buy button. Fast forward a few days when I was hanging out with Pat Dengler. She suggested I look at refurbs from Apple. I was certain they would not have a four terabyte, 64 gigabyte M3 Macs but guess what? They did. It was $740 cheaper than list price. I really had no choice but to click buy. So you might be asking yourself how's that battery on the new Mac? I ordered on a Saturday night and by Monday it was delivered by local Apple store. While I was probably gonna keep the new machine no matter what happened, I didn't actually do a trade-in just yet. I can easily find a way to spend $1,800 on a gift card at Apple and do the trade-in later, especially since those OLED iPad Pros are supposed to be right around the corner. That also gives me more time to experiment with the new machine and see what the battery life is like. The first test was just to charge it to 100%, log into iCloud and put it to sleep. This would replicate the clean install I did on the M1 MacBook Pro. Now remember, Apple said the problem was that it was syncing everything and that's why it was draining the battery so quickly. While the M1 drained 7% every four hours, the M3 drained 2% in four hours. Even while syncing the new Mac, it was 3.5 times better in draining. That improvement cannot be accounted for merely by the 86% battery health of the older Mac. In my opinion, the myth that the root cause was that it was syncing has been debunked. For my next test, I needed to let iCloud finish downloading all of my photos. As I've mentioned, this is the Mac on which I keep all of my full resolution photos. I was taught years ago by an Apple senior advisor that the fastest way to get them down is to start from scratch and download originals. If you let it download optimized images first and then change to full resolution, iCloud has to check every single photo one at a time to see if it's full resolution. Back when I had around 75,000 photos, it would take 3.5 weeks to bring them down after optimized were already there. Apple said that was normal and to be expected. So I flipped the switch to download full resolution images. I plugged it into power. I changed the battery settings to force it to stay awake. Every so often, I checked how many had downloaded and how much elapsed time had passed and then I grafted to predict when it would be done as one does. The entire download took about a day and a half and it was ready to run another sleep test. I started the test at 8.36 a.m. and I finished at 6.16 a.m. so just under 10 hours. In that time span, it lost drumroll please, 0%. It stayed solid at 100% for 10 hours while sleeping. I never ran this particular test on the original M1 Mac so I don't have anything to compare it to. Since the M3 lost 2% in four hours while it was trying to do some syncing, it does add credence to engineering suggestion that maybe my clean install test on the M1 did include drain because of syncing. Now my final test has to prove or disprove that the severe battery drain is caused by my third party apps. Now you know I'm a big advocate of doing a true clean install of apps but I had just done one six months ago on the M1 so I decided to use migration assistant to move all of my data, setting and apps. Since a vast majority of my desk is taken up by my photos migrating the apps and data only took an hour or two. I was surprised at how many apps lost their launch and login status and I'm gonna get into that in a later article I think and talk about permissions and things but I really thought migration settings would, you know, migrate settings. I've so little experience with migration assistant I guess I didn't know what to really expect. All right, final battery test. It was finally time for the big test to definitively tell us, was it Allison's third party apps or was it the hardware fault for the massive battery drain on the M1? I unplugged the Mac with 100% charge, it's got all of my apps, is the photos of all downloaded, everything's running and I closed the lid at 9 p.m. I woke it up at 6.40 a.m. the next day for an elapsed time of nine hours and 40 minutes. In that time, it lost no battery at all. Nothing, it was still at 100%. So, there's two ways to look at these test results. One that a rational person who can weigh cost benefit of their own time and sanity might choose, which is to be relieved that the more-than-year-long nightmare is finally over and sell the old Mac back to Apple for $1,800.  I plan another call to my new little friend Makaya to discuss these results. Now, it would be delightful if after I tell her this, the response back from engineering was, golly gee, Allison, we're so glad you ran all of these experiments and obviously we've been wrong all this time. We now understand you've been right all along and we apologize for what we put you through. Obviously we should pay the $5,000 for your new machine and we would be delighted if you would send us the M1 so we can tear it apart in our lab and see what caused this terrible battery problem. But they won't do that, of course. Before I let everybody go, I wanna remind you that there is a transcript of the entire podcast and there has been for quite a while. It's got these great links that can jump you right to where you need to go and if you wanna reread something or you wanna see if you can replicate my dramatic reading of that particular part of the article about the battery. Even though we have the blog post that you can read that are essentially everything that you heard tonight, there's things like the CES interview that we did with Scosh, the text of all that is easily searchable so you can jump right and go, what was the name of that really cool cable again? So I did wanna remind everybody in the blog post for this podcast episode and everywhere you look, you're gonna find that transcript link. But that is going to wind us up for this week. Did you know you can email me at alisonatpodfeed.com anytime you like? You can write to me and tell me, Allison, I'm so glad you were right. Keep up the good fight with Apple. We're so proud of you. Anyway, remember everything good starts with podfeed.com. You can follow me on mastodon at podfeed.com slash mastodon. And if you wanna listen to the podcast on YouTube because the kids do that these days, you can go to podfeed.com slash YouTube. If you wanna join in the conversation, you can join our Slack community at podfeed.com slash slack where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely no-sella castaways. You can support the show at podfeed.com slash Patreon or with a one-time donation at podfeed.com slash PayPal. And if you wanna join in the fun of the live show like Corky Heath did this week, don't show up on my house, just head on over to podfeed.com slash live on Sunday nights at 5 p.m. Pacific time and join the friendly and enthusiastic no-sella castaways. Thanks for listening and stay subscribed.


Today we want to talk about dealing with grief, as I had earlier told you. So how do you exactly do you go through the stages? What are the signs to look out for? How do you help someone who's going through grief? These are some of the questions that we're going to answer today. And if you have any question that would like us to talk about, talk to us at one to five four channel using the hashtag why in the morning. So the guest joining us is a counselor. She's not new here. It's called Zepora Wanieki. Karebusana Zepora. Santisana. Glad to have you back. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. Long time. It's been a while. Yeah. Yeah. But you're good. Yeah, I'm good. Thank God. Glad to see you. So we want to talk about grief. So first, what is grief really? Thank you, Stefanie. The simplest terminology we can use to describe grief, it is intense, intense sorrow. That is cost, all that is felt by anyone who is mourning, who has been left by a beloved one. So that feeling of intense sorrow, that hollowness, that emptiness, that sadness is what you call grief. Okay. Yes. So it's intense sorrow caused by the loss of a loved one. And is it only loss by death that causes grief? Oh, no. And defining grief, I want you to know that loss is not just loss of life, it can be loss of property. You had a very nice building and then all of a sudden it collapsed. You're seeing buildings collapsing all over, isn't it? That is loss. And those people are going to mourn, just they know more the other people mourn. It can be loss of status. Probably maybe you were married and then the husband asked for divorce or the wife. So you've lost your status. Maybe in a job, you are demoted. It's loss. You will mourn. Maybe loss of, something like what, relationship, a friend, loss of a pet, you know, in the western people mourn the pets. When you imagine our own, you don't mind about the dogs moving or, yeah, they mourn their pets. Wow. Yeah. So that is loss. So loss can be in many forms. Yeah. Not just a loss of life. Today we want to deal with the probably loss of life. Yes, sir. You've seen people have lost life all over here, isn't it? Yeah. You had stories in Mombasa and everything. And by the time those people come to further moat is happening in their lives, they realize that they are stuck. And I want you to know that when we shall be dealing with that later, depending on how well you're supported, you can move on or you can get stuck. Okay. Yeah. But people should not joke with, and people should not come and tell you, umelia sana, umelia sana. Stephanie, you see, we watch Hapu Mzike, you know Kenyans, we do things innocently and we, we want to help in all ways possible. But your helping is in the wrong way. Washing the situation. Washing the situation. When you go to Bari and you're comforting the, the, the mourning people and you're telling them, watch Hapu Mzike, he's in a better place. You know, none of those statements will sink to anyone who is mourning. Okay. But it is well, oh watch Hapu Mzike, after all, he was an old man, that's very wrong. Yeah. So loss is loss. Okay. And we mourn it the proper way.  Why is it important to, to mourn? There's a difference between mourning and grieving. Okay. More or less the same, because when we use the word grief, we are touching emotions to it. Mourning is the whole process. Okay. They do not mourn. What they do, they pile those emotions. They pile them. You know, at the back of your subconscious, that is where your memory is. The good ones or the bad ones are piled. When you don't mourn a loved one, these are the people who have the, the most difficult time healing. They don't believe. And that is why you have, I think you've been to the barrio, maybe of a close person and you realize that at the mug, they will come and as difficult as it is, they allow the family members to be the ones, you know, to, to, to, to lock the coffin, you know, drive the, the, the last nail and you wonder, who are they torturing them? Why, why, why must you insist that they be the ones to throw the soil is very important. Very important. Okay. It is making them, it is the beginning of the healing. And it is bringing the closure. It is the beginning of bringing, you know, this person will know after all, so I am not waiting for this person to come back to us. Otherwise, if somebody dies and is buried and you're not involved in the whole process, at the back of your mind, you will keep on imagining that they are coming back to you. Therefore, you don't move on. Okay. So mourning is key. It is key. Your recovery. Very important. And for someone who's maybe can't mourn or, I don't know if there's a standard on how mourning should be done. You know, you've mentioned the throwing of the soil, you know, but someone who's sometimes your loved one dies, but you're somewhere very far, let's say in the U.S. and you can't travel to Kenya that time. So will you have, how would you mourn? Oh, there are different ways of mourning because nowadays I see with the social media era, everything is online, isn't it? So you realize that even during that barrier process, it was live, there was live streaming. So you were able to see even while you went there, they can even make for your very nice video, they view the body, you were part of the whole process. The only difference between you and us is that we are physically here and you are away, but you are part of the whole process. You are part of the whole process, you viewed the body as they were being, but online you did everything. Okay. It's not the best way possible, but still it has made you believe that this person is indeed gone. Yeah. So you, you part and part of everything. And even long after that, I'll come and discuss the coping strategies of this person who has been left because they are, you just have to, you know, mourning, you have to be patient with yourself. And I always tell people, Stefani, mourn your way, mourn your style. If your style of mourning is rolling on the ground and, you know, doing all those things, yeah, do them. The only thing to find and you don't hurt yourself, but mourn, cry. You know, I was listening to your former debate saying these things have been tossed, their eyebrows and they were not, I'm sure you've been to these funerals and you realize that people have really, you know, tons of makeups on them and I have nothing against it.  Making sure you don't hurt yourself. You don't, you don't. That's not mourning. That's pretence. Wow. That's hypocrisy. I call it hypocrisy.  You are not. Mourn your step. Well, that is mourning. All right. And for the people that are usually very protective of letting out, you know, showing their emotions to others, how do they mourn or is it, should they be vulnerable at that time because there are people who naturally can't be vulnerable to others? Yes.  You see, our African culture, you agree with me that we are patriarchal. Patriarchal society is whereby men dominate and as this child is growing up, you keep on telling them. So this boy grows up knowing that you are not supposed to cry, but now in the event where your mother is dead, what else are we supposed to do?   This man is quiet alone, alone, not talking. If they have to talk about anything, what are some of the high cost of living, man da mano. Politics. Yeah, politics. They may not really discuss what is really ailing them. So even as a man, mourn, we are not there to judge. At this junary, we are not crying babies. We don't cry every other time. But when the situation demands that you cry, please do. It helps. Be vulnerable at that time. Yes. Okay. And what are the signs of someone who is grieving? Yeah, there are things that we look at, especially when we are dealing with grief cancelling. Grief cancelling and it's actually very important, we tell our Kenyans, don't just wake up, bury your parent or your guardian or somebody close to you and then on mandu meraukia job, you've not healed. So you need to go through the whole process. Some of the things that we look at to know someone is mourning, number one, this person has no energy, lack of energy. You feel at a magoti, it cannot support your body. You feel you don't have energy to do anything. Two, lack of appetite.  Even your favorite meal, you don't want to eat. Other than that, some people will be the opposite. Increased appetite. Oh yeah, there are people when they are stressed, the stress someone can either make you beyond the extreme.  So someone can be eating like crazy, you're not feeling it. And other than that, a feeling of tightness in the chest, you are congested. You want to release emotions, but you're not sure to who. You just feel like there's something in your chest.  This is a sign of anxiety. When someone is anxious, at the regional levels and you're the one standing there and 1,000 people are looking at you, how are you feeling? Butterflies in the stomach and everything, that is a sign of anxiety. Anxiety first of all is felt inside your stomach, in your belly. That is why some people will have some running stomach when they are very anxious. So anxiety sets in. This person is very, very anxious. You're not sure how to behave anymore. You're not sure on the bar your day what will happen, how will I behave, what you are anxious. Other than that, we always say that this person is sensitive, highly sensitive to noise. Remember you're dealing with someone whose emotions are upside down. So doesn't want noise, doesn't want TV, doesn't want radio or anything, anything, anything. Just a calm environment. Most of them will tend to sleep more. Sleeping has a way of soothing you.  But again, we'll tell you in as much as coping strategies, getting quality sleep is good. Too much of it is not good. It will now be damaging you. So while this person is moaning, you're able to look at these signs. You see that this person emotionally is just not balanced. You're not there, you have no mood. You tend not to talk to people. You feel like you want to keep to yourself.   Because your whole system is not well. Those are some of the signs that this someone is griefing. This sign of the grief. Before we get to the stages of griefing, because I also know that there are stages. Are there signs, not signs, types of grief? Oh yeah, they are quite a number. We may not be able to go through all of them. But we can just highlight a few. This one grief we call normal grief. Just the normal one. We expect that you've received news so and so is dead. So and so has left us. And for purposes of this conversation, the medics and even the cancerans, we don't, you know, sugarcoat information. Because you want to hammer information right into you.  You know, that could mean has gone to the supermarket to be back, right? Yeah. So you have to use the right word. You baby is dead. That's harsh as it sounds. The doctors will not come here telling you, oh, unfortunately, he has gone to be with the Lord. Oh, what if the Lord is Yeswatongarel? You believe he'll be there and back. So they have to use words that are harsh and that will, you know, impact that you will believe that sure enough, that's enough. So we have the normal grief. When you receive news so and so is dead, you feel that sign of loss. You go through the morning. That is just the normal grief. And after some time, you're done. You're done with the griefing. We have another grief we call chronic. Chronic. Meaning, you know, like chronic illnesses. So this person has not been able to grieve the normal way. We've been griffing for one month, two months, three months. You know, okay. We do not have a specific amount of time. I wanted to ask that specific period of griefing. No, no, no. We don't have a specific amount of time that we allocate for grief. Why? Grief is so individualized. It's so personalized, right? For example, if you look at somebody, depending on the closeness between the person who has died and this person who is left. For example, it's a spouse. It's a child. It's a parent. This person might tend to grieve more.  So people will tend to grieve more for closer relatives.   In fact, when you see a call, you see like, it has somehow prepared you. It is not the same intensity with somebody who was hit by a car. He was hit by a normal person. He was hit by a normal person. He was hit by an over speeding car and died on the spot. You might, you know, mourn more because while this one it prepared you. We call it anticipatory. We are coming to that category, anticipatory grieve. While one prepared you, the other one did not prepare you. So you might tend to mourn more. Think of even these people who have seen the parents or the children die in a very cruel way. You know, like for example, the person was murdered. Killed in a very brutal way. These people will mourn more. They feel like, oh my God, where was I? Why was I not able to save this child? This person, you feel? So they will grieve more. As opposed to this other person probably who was 105 years old has lived and seen the generations and everything and died peacefully. We come to celebrate life because we have felt like there is always that pain there is always that but of course now at 106 years old everybody says let her rest but now this death of somebody who just graduated and got his first job it becomes very sad. So we say there is no more grieve there is chronic grieve. Then we have that anticipated grieve. This is somebody you are seeing deteriorating day by day. When you are anticipating you are anticipating psychologically you are prepared. That is anticipated. So these people do not grieve. On the material day they are told he is dead or she is dead. They begin griffing much earlier.  We call it as anticipatory griff. There are quite others. This is complicated griff. This is griff that you have not been able to overcome. We call it complicated. The moment you are going to come out of it more emotion sets in. The moment you are going to more emotion sets in and many more because there is even this griff where you find that when you are about to finish another griff it sets in.   So this has just piled and this type of people we recommend them to a griff therapist. Did you know there is a griff therapist? No I am just hearing it. When griff cannot be handled by the normal counselor because now it has become complicated we advocate that you go to a griff therapist and they will be able to walk with you through the journey with all the patients in this world because those people they need patients enough of it and for purposes of this conversation we tell Kenyans the much you can do to a griffing person to a mourning person is not necessary advice they don't need any of it. The advice is don't give them advice they don't in fact they are not listening the much you can do as a listening just let them talk and vent allow them to vent allow them to talk when they break down give them a handkerchief listen to them sometimes you may not even have solutions but you are there to listen that's all they need if they can repeat their stories to as many people as possible that is their healing right this particular one I think it's called this enfranchised griffing the one that is not really acknowledged or not really taken as seriously as others for instance miscarriage and that's the type of loss still I'll speak about that because I've dealt with quite a number of victims let us just put it this way loss is loss doesn't matter and what is lost to you is not what is lost to me if you lose 10,000 you might mourn if another person loses 100 Bob they might sweep the whole house looking for you you get it so loss is loss this person you've given an example of someone who has suffered miscarriage in fact those are the people who have not learnt how to deal with them unfortunately picture this lady who goes to the hospital has had a miscarriage goes to the theatre they do the process and then is admitted in the ward which one? maternal ward next bed is a lady who has given birth to twins and their relatives are coming a lot of unji a lot of jahe a lot of fruits and everything they are there they are celebrating this baby they are supposed to be feeling a failure you feel inadequate you feel the world is crashing you don't even want to visit in the hospital because that's a form of loss so there are losses in the society that are not treated as loss but indeed they are the impact is the same the process of mourning is the same and if this person is not taken good care of they might get to depression when we are doing the stages of loss that is one of the stages the next one yes the stages there was this American psychologist called Kubra Ross Kubra Ross came up with the stages of loss and was able to analyse all the patients that came to him they were going through the same stage the first one we call it denial denial the moment you receive a phone call and you told so and so is dead the first thing your ego will do is to deny you say no it can't happen we just talked this morning it can't happen I served them food yesterday night it can't happen so the first thing is to deny you deny and deny and deny it is a way the ego we call them the ego defensive mechanism it's a way the ego protects itself so the first one is denial the moment you deny and deny we can talk about people with chronic illness someone comes and tells you ah your parent or someone close to you has cancer the first thing is to say no no no no no and in fact you even hate that hospital and you want to seek another opinion from a different a different hospital and practitioner so you will come to believe well later when you had it maybe the third or the fourth time so deny is the first stage in the news of loss they deny after deny which might take hours to several days you go to the second stage anger you deny then you go to anger anger you are very angry angry you are angry at everyone this is where when I am consoling someone depending on the questions they are asking me I am able to assess what stage they are at so if you meet this person who is telling you but me I know where was God so that person is in the second stage what kind of scene had I done that you did not reveal to me that my soul and soul is dying that person is in anger stage they are angry at God for taking away their beloved one then they are angry at situations they are angry at people if it was a nurse who was maybe giving medication why didn't you give enough medication they feel like you are the one who failed they are angry at the ambulance which maybe could have been driven faster to save their life they are angry at everyone that was in the scenario so this is the stage when someone is angry and we always tell people while you can judge other people in their sober mind this is a statement made by a morning person because if for example Stephanie you are married and God forbid so you are married and the husband dies the mother in law in the process of mourning will accuse you and it is something that actually happened it happens it is very common in the society so this is something why didn't you give enough medication and you tried your best maybe it is only one day you are late and maybe she gets to find out that you are late in preparing a meal but she will say are you getting it so do not blame them when something happens you are trying to it has to be someone it has to be someone who will carry the blame so they will accuse the doctors the hospitals the ambulance they are angry and I always tell people when you are going to console a person preaching to them may not work at that time they are angry at God they are not sure whether they want to hear anything else from that God who has really made them be bruised so they may not even listen to you someone because they have issues with this God you are preaching so after you are done with anger you go to the third stage you call it bargaining bargaining stage and bargaining may start way earlier for example in anticipated grief where you are saying someone is deteriorating the condition is being bad every day while they are bargaining they might come and say something like mungu God if you preserve so and so's life I will serve you forever this is when you give all the promises in this world God if you preserve this person God if only you bring us our baby back you will do this you promise from here to Tabuk to and back but you are only bargaining but after your bargaining stage all these stages after they are not long they are short periods the longest period of them all is what we call depression so you started with denial you came to anger it is not working so you come to what we call depression and depression is the fourth stage and it is the longest in morning period it can last even way from depending on how well you supported it can be six to eight weeks and back is it a stage that everyone has to go through yes everybody as long as this person you know when you are talking about morning for example right here you hear you hear somebody dying in Shakahola probably because you don't know them you have not mourned them but the people who are in the immediate you know the immediate relatives neighbors and friends they mourn they have to go through this stage you get it and so while you are at depression this is now when the height comes and I started by saying even biblically people used to mourn for 40 days according to the holy scriptures but now that does not mean that that is all that is what they recorded there are people who will mourn for one month two months three months six months one year down the line they are still mourning but now I always tell people depending on your support system because if you are well supported you will outgrow depression quicker than somebody with no support alright and I have also seen somebody this is a stage that can destroy you actually it is very very essential if you do not mourn the right way you realize that these people I have seen a case whereby a young man lost a brother a twin brother and you know the way our culture is so I am talking about not just a brother a twin and you know at the same time you will mourn so you people you are intertwined like this and the child dies the boy dies and they are in high school these boy did not the remaining twin did not get the right support and because of that he deteriorated his grades and his everything not only did they lose him because now where he is I do not know we call it psychotic or narcosis but he is he was not able to console himself compose himself back to life he did not move on so that guy is seen and everything so it can be that bad somebody was healthy but did not get the right support system you get it so while you are at depression one of the things you feel is emptiness very empty you have no good reason to wake up the following morning no proper reason why you would want to wake up and go to work work for who what is the meaning of life when you are at depression you realize that life is meaningless you realize that I was supposed to these people do like this they wake up maybe if it's a husband who has died they prepare the water they shower and everything they put the suit there and then they realize he is not there he is not there then they cry themselves out are you realizing so they are now feeling the impact the emptiness and this is where I tell people part of coping strategies do not be very quick to make a major move major move like for example you want to now fit in the shoes of this person I know of people whose their parent died in 2016 and it is this year 2023 that they have managed to go and put their mothers items together the clothes and donate them nobody was ready to go and open that wardrobe how do you take your clothes immediately are you getting it be patient with yourself while you are morning so at this stage of morning you feel empty you are depressed there is no hope you don't feel like you have the energy to do anything not to eat, not to watch movies not to go out, you don't want friends you want to keep to yourself now this is a very dangerous stage and on that for someone who has a child let's say you have lost the breadwinner you yourself as a mom you are going through depression and then there is a kid there so how do you even let the kid go through the grief process should they be told the truth and set up you don't tell the kid your dad is no more, he is never coming again so how do you handle that situation very important and thank you for that question let the child be part of this morning process let them know just the way we engage our children the moment you have a new member in the family you let them be part of it they own that they have a small brother or a small sister, a new baby at home you let them own that process their rights are they are being infringed they are acting last born you let them own the whole process so that they can love the baby let them own the whole process of mourning it is okay to cry and tell them I'm crying because when so left us let them own otherwise they will come to hate you way later or you realize it in class as their performance is deteriorating because you did not even allow them they also have as many questions as you have you know there's not much difference between an adult and a child maybe the brain capacity but they have the same emotions they are mourning, they are feeling they are not seeing their daddy or their mother so allow them to be process of the mourning it is going to view the body let them view the body it is going for that process where people come for devotion, for prayers and everything let them be there it is doing a neurology involve them they are writing what they are going to read there let them mourn so that as you are healing they are also healing otherwise you might pretend that you want to protect them while you heal they start theirs and so you will never come out of that grief alright now all this process before we now get us to the coping mechanism for us to finish and by the way after you are done with the depression you will now go to the last stage we call it acceptance so anyone who has had a gone depression successively irrespective of the amount of time you have taken you go to acceptance acceptance is where you feel like Mahasbad was a pastor now he was running a church the congregation is there and now the incoming pastor you fit in in the shoes he was an MD in a certain company now I am the new MD the CEO of this he was running this business now the new person in this business so you move on he is not coming back to us now life has to continue that is acceptance but if there are people who will be stuck at the depression stage and that is it so if you get help you will move to acceptance stage ok and I want to ask about the morning process all the stages I know some come earlier but does most of it come after you have buried your loved one because I know before you bury the loved one you have to support the people people visiting every evening there is people in the house it is full and then after the burial you are usually alone back to normal and I think reality sets in so is it worse after it becomes worse after during this time you realize you have been given the news your bargaining and everything but reality hits you after you are the first person to get hurt and then after that we are Kenyans we do everything in haste so to memorize the Kurshams Changa we are very hungry, we are looking for food we are looking for food we are looking for food we are looking for food by the end of the day people start leaving after that when you are in Europe and you are alone you are left alone to sink that information you come out of your house, you see a fresh grave outside there so depression and these stages most of them will come way after that is when the weight of the matter is now how does one cope coping strategies and actually this is very important so that we are able to tell people even those people who have got to identify their bodies it is very sad very sad I always imagine you can never never tell somebody that I understand you can never understand you can only imagine so I try to imagine their pain your code to identify your your loved one is not a very good site now one of the coping strategies that we tell people is number one, agree to mourn agree to mourn take it and believe it that it has happened and we are going to mourn it that is one strategy agree that it has happened then number two we always tell people be part of a support group support means it could be your family you could be coming together you hold devotion, you pray as you eulogize and remember the departed person so as part of a family be part of a support group by support group I mean like you've always had wajane the women who are with us they come together, they have an organization then you can also be part of a support group whereby you join other people who are also similarly having similar experiences and believe me Stefanie the moment you listen one, two, three, four, five six people's experiences you realize that yours was better for everybody because they are the worst one so you realize that you have died and your husband was buried and that was it he was maybe probably HIV so the wife was left with it or the husband was left with it so he's been left with the condition and also some children to nurse so this one died and left a court case are you getting it so the moment you analyze several cases you realize that you are better off and it helps you other than support group it is good that you program yourself in a way that you can do a journal write a journal write your feelings, record what you're feeling that day towards that person record the beautiful memories you had with this person like maybe one time it took us to the beach another time she maybe paid for her flight to where their beautiful memories we had with the department write them down it's part of healing if you have his pictures with you and you are okay because most people are not okay they don't even want to see that photo if you can keep an album of the beautiful places we visited together the better it's part of healing and accepting that he is gone occasionally maybe at the end of every year you can do an anniversary but again you have to be prepared anniversary might trigger some emotions that you had so that is the time you need enough support out of it and of course we tell people above every other thing there are many other things that you can do because part of it is taking care of yourself in fact it should come as number one to make sure you take care of yourself eat well eat a balanced diet make sure you're feeding well because if you don't feed well illnesses comes in people that are dealing with grief or mourning butters the immune system I don't know whether you knew that there is a syndrome we call heart heart break syndrome it's a syndrome that comes to people who are mourning dealing with loss it has similar characteristics and similar symptoms like a heart attack so this person the characteristic you would see in a heart attack are with this person because they are mourning so allow your body to heal eat well sleep well do exercises if you are able just the simple ones make sure you're taking care of yourself and if you're not now able to cope with all this see a cancer see a therapist let them walk you through that journey be part of a devotion be praying for the person for everything for your inner healing doing devotion helps in inner healing finally for the people that sometimes it's hard to know how to handle someone dealing with grief and you've alluded to it several times but maybe you can put some more emphasis on it what should someone do when you have someone grieving could be a friend, could be anyone thank you it is very important that people know because there are people who don't know how to treat somebody you're clueless you don't know how to treat the person in crying I'm not saying it is bad but we expect that you're the stronger person there are scenarios that will allow you to join in crying anyway because of where you find yourself but now part of what you'll do as number one as number one be listening, be a listener and a good listener listen to this person let them power themselves to you let them even tell you that you're a good listener that you're a good listener that you're a good listener all these are their fears so listen to them they need somebody to listen to that and as you're listening do not be judgmental at the moment my mom is crying and she's watching the music and allow the person to mourn and mourn her way so be a very good listener the other thing you can do is listen to the person who is mourning and you realize that you're a good listener often to go to the kitchen prepare something for this person sit the person there and drink together assist when you're in bed throw out go to your bedroom try to find out the way you would care for a patient is the way you would care for this person because I have just told you loss deals with your immune system it brings it down and when the immune system is down definitely these other funny funny diseases will crop in so before we don't want to deal with mourning and then with hospitalization at the same time so help this person be themselves help them clean up, tidy up the house they are experiencing lots of visitors help them in taking care of the guest you can be sure that your mother your daughter and they are mourning, you stay hungry so offer help and I thank God because religious organization they come in handy when you're in Saidiya and search and even way after if you want to listen to music if you want to listen to music go and visit this person as regularly as you can there's a question that asked and I want to ask that before we close why does it come years later, grief you think you had healed and then one day you just wake up and you feel terrible I will say this, we began by saying depending on the course of grief, then in the course of death and the relationship between the person who died and the person who is alive and the relationship you had grief intensity will either be high or low so if you did not go through proper steps of mourning you might think you dealt with that problem only to come and realize that way later it reservices so that is why we advise that go through the proper steps of mourning for example let's say maybe you had a court case that was to be had next year July but the person who was dealing with it has died now be sure at that time your emotions will be up and down this was the only witness we had now he is gone so again you will so depending on the the way you were helped to cope with that person if you were not properly helped if you were not properly helped if you were not properly helped it will always be service you even hear people saying I am not a person I am a person I am a religious may not necessarily be that it could be that your subconscious subconscious can make your dreams up so you are really thinking so much about this person until this person appears in your dreams thank you very much because you give out to your social media handle alright alright so my final say is that grief is no more allow yourself to grieve and grieve the right way be patient with yourself don't even wonder why can't I move on even after it is a month also be very easy on yourself and if you are not able to do it please see a therapist we are going to help you so my social media I am Zipora Facebook Zipi Wanieki and YouTube Zipora Wanieki alright thank you very much Zipora always a pleasure to have you share such amazing insight alright that has been Zipora Wanieki a counselor speaking to us about dealing or coping with grief I hope you have taken something from it now we are going to take a short break and then we will be right back with entrepreneurship alright see you on the other side


As a result, we should embrace what a report last year from the Carnegie Foundation called the absolutist position, which is the FF's position, that no backdoors and never, not one, not ever, and that we should all embrace that that is the absolutist position and that we will continue to hold it. We should not resist any kind of false compromise for the reasons that Erica talked about. The nerding harder is not a compromise.


Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty announced Thursday he will run for his old job, ending months of speculation about a return to politics following his short-lived 2012 presidential campaign. Pawlenty joined the race via a two-minute campaign video. The two-term Republican governor had been inching toward a run for months, quitting his Washington lobbying job and filing a campaign committee so he could begin fundraising. My top priority will be to put those in the middle who are working hard and getting squeezed first. It starts with good schools and a good education. They lead to good jobs. Pawlenty was treated as a presumptive GOP front-runner by both parties well before today. His shadow kept big-money donors on the sidelines for months, making it difficult for Republicans already in the race to build their campaigns, and Democrat-allied groups started to attack Pawlenty while he was still publicly flirting with a bid.