So this is a talk on observability at Cisco EN. EN is Enterprise Networks. So it's a group within Cisco, which is responsible for routers, which is et cetera. Yeah, so the normal disclaimer, these are my views and Cisco is not labeled. And also one more thing is that whatever I have put here is almost one and a half year back when we were doing the research and exploration. This might not be very much relevant today because all the stats or whatever explorations might have moved might be not really true anymore, but to the most part, yeah, it should be true. So let me proceed. So who am I? I'm a software engineer working on tools and workflows. I've been in Cisco for almost 13 years now. So I'm working with the developer experience team. So this team caters to a developer community of around 10,000 developers here in Cisco. So it's a pretty big population, as you can understand. You guys can stop me at any point. You can ask me about anything. Yeah, just curious. So you serve the internal developer team in Cisco, is it like? So Cisco has a lot of lateral. So I tend to end up calling Cisco as a bazaar. So because of acquisitions and so many other things, there are a lot of groups. One such group is Enterprise Networks. And this Enterprise Networks has about 10,000 developers. And there is a developer experience team. So we work through the whole developer workflow, all the way from say an IDE to their continuous integration, lot of tools, internal and external facing, testing and reporting and so many other tools, analytics. Okay, sorry, got it. So yeah, observability is important to be, as I said, collectively we have about some 30, 35 tools which we provide to the developer lifecycle. And these are polyglot coming all the way from Java, Python, these days, MLA, JavaScript, everything is there. So the earlier when we were into this business, so it was just that, okay, my application is available or not available was the problem. But these days, quality of service also matters because everything is mostly a pipeline and something slowing up causes a ripple effect elsewhere. Quality of service is really important. Open source has a lot of tooling. Cisco traditionally used to build a lot of tools on its own, but these days we are exploring and embracing open source because there is a lot that can be leveraged. So we set out observability stack around 2019. And these were the high goals. I mean, higher level goals, build on some resilient platform. We did not want to reinvent. At the same time, we wanted something which was very rock solid and then pick up the open source software. We wanted to start with telemetry because the whole observability was a new thing to all of us. And if we say somebody would start with logging, somebody else would start with something else. So we kind of really decided that it is better to start with telemetry. And then because our applications have a lot of history and not all of them are in a CI CD model. So another important requirement was that, okay, we also need to do arch, we wanted some kind of monitoring where deployments and other things could also be tracked. So this is where there is a terminology of synthetic monitoring in our systems also, but I really don't know if that is going to coincide with whatever is the next speaker's. So that is what I meant here. So we wanted to see how the traction is when newer versions are being deployed. So the platform that we have is resource based because it is a proven scale. There was a lot of in-house expertise. There were some systems that were built and explored with missiles. We used marathon as the scheduler and metronome as the other Quran kind of scheduler. So those are the two scheduler schedulers that we had. We have set up of dev and the prod or a stage and the prod whatever you can say. So there is a relatively conservative one with, so we have deployments across three geographies and our del set up has almost at all in the cells. I mean, here we call it UCS. So it's a very capable host, multi CPU, multi core RAM, et cetera, et cetera. And prod also has across three geographies, but 25, 30 hosts. So yeah, when it comes to telemetry, we wanted to do application monitoring. Then we had a separate of business telemetry also, then the normal infrastructure monitoring. So application in the sense where we instrumented things and then got a metrics out of them. A business was more in the lens of say higher level view than what we have, like how many users are there to what is the ROI that they are getting at a much higher level, like you can say a collective kind of aggregation. Then infra, we also ended up building a stack for monitoring the lot of hosts that we support. As you can see, there are around 10,000 developers. So we have about, I would say around 3,000, more than 3,000 hosts, which we are also monitoring. So that was our infra monitoring stack. So this was the pipeline. So once we have the metrics, it is ingested to Kafka through a smaller SDK. Then from there, it is picked on by the telegraph agent, which also does some kind of processing and then it is passed on to Prometheus. And Prometheus is what we heavily use. It is our kind of brain. And then we again have another telegraph in the end, which writes for in-clugs TV. Then ultimately, which is queried in Grafana. I'm sure like you guys will have a lot of questions. I'll probably try to address each of them through individual slides. So Prometheus is our centerpiece. It kind of acts as a metrics aggregator for us. So for Prometheus, the input actually comes from the telegraph, which kind of does a work of collecting, filtering, and then passing on. We use Prometheus heavily for our alerts and custom metrics that are generated. Black box exporter is something which we use heavily. And then we also use it for service discovery. There is a capability where Prometheus can work with the resource. So that is also being used. And then we also use it for Federation. Federation in the sense, we have say around 35 tools. If we want to get a collective view of how things are at our global, that is where we use Federation. And again, a word of caution is that we are not using either Thanos or Cortex or anything. I'll tell you what, because we don't have object storage yet. Or at that moment, they were not even ready. If you guys have any question on this, you can stop and back to answer. Yeah, Ashok, I had a quick question. Why are you like first sending to telegraph and then sending to Prometheus? I think you can directly send to Prometheus, right? I probably, I'll go through the whole stack and I'll come back to that. That's a very interesting challenge that we had. Telegraph, telegraph is our collector and filter. So it collects all the metrics. It does some kind of filtering and then it passes on. Why we ended up using telegraph is also because it has tons of plugins. And then it kind of supports templating in the sense that you can play around with environment variables. That was one big thing that I found very hard to do with Prometheus. I don't know if it has changed, but in telegraph, you can refer things to through environment variables. That helps us kind of template it. And then this is one very useful plugin that we had. Like there is a plugin called as exact plugin where you can execute some shell script at a given interval. It just needs to provide the output in a specific format and then you are good. So we use it for getting some specific metrics from the host, NFS, IO, statistics and other things. Whatever else is not there. If you can write something, you can just use this. So this is on the telegraph. Very useful thing that we found. Then there is Kafka in between. We wanted a reliable transport in the sense that, yeah, there is always, you can push the metrics to a prom gateway, but we did not want to do that because we found that at times prom, what happens if the prom gateway fails? What do we do with the data that is to be sent then? So that is where we thought, okay, maybe we will write to Kafka and from Kafka, we would read it if there is a plugin in telegraph to read from Kafka. All that we need to make sure is that the data is passed in the right format. Then yeah, as I said, it is used instead of the gateway. Something that troubled us were, we had to play with partitions and consumer groups because if we fiddle with this, then metrics start coming out of order and that causes all the havoc. Then the last part of our thing is influx. It is our data store. We don't do any down sampling. I think the latest, we were at 1.8. We still have moved to version two and we had a retention of around three weeks. We have chosen the enterprise edition because it also allows us replication across the sites. And one thing that we had trouble with which helped us was this time series indexing tuning. So with that is when our actual data size shrunk a bit. Otherwise it was going haywire. So this is something that if anybody is using influx, can also look into. Grafana is our last piece. It is used for visualizations and alerts. So we took, I think we started around version six point something, now it is in version seven. It is heavily customized. So we have added some capabilities in terms of PGSQL integration and SSO integration. Some custom visualizations have been built because some of those visualizations were not scaling to the level that we wanted. Because as I said, if I have to kind of say visualize thousand posts, so it could be thousand whatever, some geometric shapes. With its own things. So that was not working. So that is where some custom visualizations have been built. Some newer alerts have been added. One specific thing I think which I bought up previously also that if you have variables, then alerts don't work. That was the problem that we were facing. So that was overcome with that. I hope these things are getting fixed in the latest version, right? So I'll probably now go back to that previous slide. I should have put another copy here. So what happens is the metrics come. We have a custom SDK return. The metrics go into Kafka. It goes in a specific format, which telegraph can understand, which is nothing but whatever is recommended by influx. So telegraph reads all these metrics. Imagine metrics coming from all the tools. Telegraph agents are there per tool. It collects, it aggregates, and then if some massaging is required, massaging mostly in terms of, so we generally don't restrict people to add their own custom attributes. So this is where we kind of filter it off. Otherwise, the cardinality explodes. So once we get data out of telegraph, then we pass it on to Prometheus. This is where we do further white listing of the metrics that we are interested in. Write rules for the ones that we really want, the KPA is out of, and then also pass it on to the Federation. Then there is another telegraph, which there is, this is mostly for conversion of some tags to fields. So I presume you guys have used influx DB or even otherwise. So tags are the ones with which you group by and aggregate when you use influx DB. Fields are just the values. So fields don't really contribute to cardinality, but tags do. So some of the tag to field conversion say it could be in terms of the user ID or some specific thing, which could be boundless. So such things are converted in this telegraph, this second telegraph where those are retained, but they are converted into fields. And then we write it to influx and then query in Grappana. Did I answer that question? Yeah, I got it. Yeah. I just had another question like, did you face also scaling issues with Kafka?  Scale is actually dependent because not all applications send it at the same scale. It also depends on the time of the day, day of the week, so many other factors. I would say we were getting around, I think at 3,000 metrics per minute or something at one point of time. Again, whatever I'm saying is like, you can say one and a half year back. Sure, yeah. So the scale actually really did not hit us that much in the normal application monitoring, but if you look at the host monitoring, the same metrics coming from 3,000 hosts, yeah, the scale was there. So our infra monitoring stack was a bit different. Even though I have not depicted here, what it was was we had telegraph agents installed on all those hosts, all those 3,000 hosts. From there, we were directly pushing it on to Prometheus. So this Kafka piece was not there in the infra monitoring. So it was directly telegraph agent, pushing to Prometheus and then the other telegraph to convert tags to fields and influx. So you were using Kafka privately because you wanted to handle higher scale, right? And also reliability, more than scale reliability. What if the prom gateway goes down? Got it, okay, got it, sorry. Got it. So we faced issues there. So the question Ashok from my side would be the, did the prompt, like did you experiment or did you load test from gateway and then arrive at the conclusion that it might go down? Or was it more a thing that, okay, you were already super, like the team already has expertise in maintaining Kafka. So you decided to go with something you knew and it was stable enough for you. Both, it was both. Because we had applications running all across the globe and then we were really putting data into prom gateway at very frequent intervals. We started seeing some anomalies in the data where some things were not captured. Okay. So that is where we could not pinpoint, was this like a network issue, was this, at times we also saw that, okay, prom gateway had gone down and there were some issues with the prom gateway. So we said, okay, let us do something else then. Ashok, one question from me also. Why did you go with infrastructure as the final data store and not fromages? Retention. Okay. So retention you did not want to have with fromages like using Thanos Cortex or anything, right? Like you said. At that point of time, yeah, we did not have object storage in our realm. So, or we were not even experienced, two experienced with object storage. So Influx DB was available and whatever experiments we had done with Influx DB, it worked well. You called it. And how does this influx DB do the retention? But does it, so I hope you are renting house, right? Influx DB or you use a cloud version? No, we use an enterprise version. It's on-premise, but on-premise. Okay, and how is the retention there? It's on the disk or is it on the disk? On the disk. Okay. So if it is on the disk then Prometheus would have also done it on the disk, right? So Influx, we run as an application per se. Prometheus, we run inside containers with ephemeral storage. We have their retention policy for the Prometheus itself. We have a retention of around two hours. So we are okay. Prometheus goes down and comes back. Okay. So you are relying mostly on the Influx DB due to the reliability and the enterprise? Yeah. So, sorry, Ashok, also to sort of burgeon, since you are inviting the questions. Why have Prometheus at all in the pipeline? Why not just go with pure influx? Yeah. It's a- Cromql. Cromql, the rules. Rules and problems. Yeah. Yeah. Cromql is powerful, that's true. Yeah. And the federation also we use significantly. See, the one thing, I don't know, I should have organized this one better. See, one thing is, if you see here, right, the data actually reduces as we move through the pipeline. So whatever comes in Influx is actually less. So there is lot of filtering and other white listing which would have happened through the pipeline. So some part of it happens in the first telegraph, some part of it happens in the Prometheus, some portion of it, some transformation happens in the last telegraph. So that is where our pipeline was optimal for our use. Same. Ashok, I think just last question. What sort of post-processing you're doing on the telegraph if you can share a few things? The second, so the first one is there is a plugin which reads a Kafka topic and then you get the metrics out of it. So that was like the initial primary use of that. Okay, yeah, that's just transferring the data, right? But you said that you also do some post-processing, et cetera, what's those? That was one. And the second one is we rename some metrics there. That is also possible there. And the third one, as I said, there is a exact plugin with which we kind of capture things which you cannot really otherwise, you know, instead of writing a custom exporter, you just have a script which just runs, gets the metrics and then pushes it. Oh, interesting. Yeah, and then there is a file plugin and all those stuff. The second one that is there, we primarily use it for tag-to-field conversion that is to keep cardinality in check. Got it, thanks. Yeah, so yeah, I think I was at this. The ones that we tried initially were, we tried metric bit, it was very limited but for us, it did not scale. Probably we gave up bit too early also. That was also there. We also tried Victoria metrics. It was very good. I mean, in the sense it was one solution which kind of worked, but it was at alpha. So being an enterprise solution, we could not opt for that. We did try Thanos, but I think it was like very early days of Thanos, things were not refined. Some things were working, some things were not working. And also due to our own restrictions in the host and other things, it did not go forward. We also, instead of before having influx DB as the backend, we thought, okay, we should have elastic search as a backend. So that is one thing, again, that we tried. We were able to capture data with some work. But then the problem is packet seeing was when we started querying, the forming optimal schema was not the issue because before the pipeline, as I said, we restrict our developers from the format but we don't restrict way too much. If they want something, they can always send it. So that is where our schemas were not very strict or very optimal. But then we also noticed that Grafana would lag heavily because the queries that would come out with the result was very suboptimal at that point of time. So that is when we switched to influx. Any questions there? I can take. I mean, elastic search is not really a TSDB by any measure. So it's... We expected to... Yeah, I see. All I would say it's a bit interesting use case. Elastic search is based on Lucene which is a document search engine. So kind of difficult to pair up with the structure of TSDB. Yeah, so what happened there was, as I said, there was a third axis, if you noticed in that graph. So we were also capturing business metrics. And for that, elastic search was the right one. So we still have it in elastic search. So we thought, okay, let's have one solution and try to put everything. But as of today, even the business metrics are still in elastic search, the front end is still Grafana. That portion has not changed. It's just that the schema there is very restricted. It works. So when you say business metrics, what do you mean? Is it like number of visitors to site or is it like something more deeper, like the number of revenues? Or like, can you give me a sense on what is business metrics for you? Business metrics could be like you, if I take, say like a continuous integration pipeline. So how many complete successful runs were there? How many commits, LOC, everything? It could be all the way through. As I said, we support a lot of tools. So to each of them, it's different. And also from the perspective of a customer, for us, the customer is the internal development teams. For them, at their org level, whatever are the metrics? At their aggregation. Got it. So primarily like number of pipeline runs and things like that will be business metrics. Yeah. Got it. And Ashok, those business metrics would have easily be sent your existing pipeline of metrics that you showed us, right? Why choose elastic search for that? Because that part of the solution, right? The business telemetry was already there. That's right, it was already there. It was already there. Yeah, then comes the logging part. We wanted to correlate metrics with events. It was our first step with debugging. We also wanted to see if some kind of log analytics would be done in terms of how many errors per day at a very basic rate or a response time crossing something and is it because of some warnings? Is it because of retrace, et cetera, et cetera? Our pipeline is fairly straightforward. We have a SDK for people to push and then we use Fluent D or Fluent Bit. Then it is mapped on to log stash. Then it goes to elastic search. And then in the Grafana log panels, we map it. Any questions on this? I think this is pretty standard for most authors. So Fluent Bit is easier, but it is not available on some of the older OS versions that we had. That is where we used Fluent D. Filtering is important. For example, we tried hooking it up to Jenkins and there was a huge overflow within a day. So filtering is very important. Data enrichment is easy. We can kind of add multiple things to the logs that we are sending. Fluent D was very good in that sense. And I am not an expert in this field, but when it came to aggregation, Fluent D also can do aggregation, but there were some specific queries which I am not very aware of because of which we ended up choosing log stash instead of the Fluent D aggregator. Otherwise, our initial plan was to have Fluent D through and through SDK, Fluent D, Fluent D aggregator, Elasticus and then Grafana. But there were some conditional queries if I remember correctly, wherein log stash paid much better than Fluent D at that point of time. Because of which log stash came in as the aggregator. Then yeah, we wrote two SDKs. One was for the telemetry where instead of push gateway, we wrote it to Kafka. Then for the logging, it was a custom log handlers. It's fairly straightforward. I mean, you just have another handler and make it right to Kafka. Then if those does not work, we can always use the Fluent D for log. That was on that. I think this is all is what I have. Tracing, we are experimenting with open tracing and open telemetry as I was just telling Joy at some time back, it's moving very rapidly for us to kind of put a milestone and then adapt it. So that is what is delaying us. We are also looking at the ROI of not really instrumenting and see, because OTEL also supports auto instrumentation and some debugging out of that. I would be delighted to hear from you guys if you have tried any of those. And this is like the later realization, if Fluent D, we can just hook it up to our container engine and then that logs, that's like the best log that you can get. And also off late, I'm seeing that, if we have a service mesh kind of scenario, I even just exploring linker D. So you ready to get all the metrics which are off the standard use and write format. Those are some things that we are kind of trying to look at going forward. Some things that has troubled us in the past and some things that we should always be looking forward is, how do we monitor the monitor? We really don't have a standard answer for any of this. Then alert fatigue. I mean, yeah, you can build a best solution, but once people's interests are out of it, then getting people's interest back is very difficult because people have their own ways of finding if their application is down or not performing, which has happened through the years. I'm not sure if others would have faced this because being in an enterprise company for decades. So this is how things are like you, anybody who owns an application will have, these are her own way of, you know, kind of detecting the issues and having things. It could be like simple cron or anything. So it is one thing to promise something good and fancy, but if it becomes a burden, then people are just out of it. So that's another problem. Then capacity planning is something, yeah. But of course, there's no formula to that. I would say it's something that we've been learning, but yeah, this is something that sometimes keeps hitting us. Yeah, upgrade loops as in, so in our pipeline, we have about hundreds of promethiles. Let's say they are in version something, say 2.x something. If there is an issue discovered, we find that, okay, that is fixed in some next future version. If we have to upgrade, we have to do a rolling upgrade of all of them. And in that time, if something goes wrong, then the whole metric pipeline is stuck or even in the best case, we end up losing some metrics, which start showing up as blank in Grappana. And that again raises the question as to was the monitoring system down, was the application down? Because we have people all over the globe and 24 by seven, it kind of, there is a lot of back and forth that happens. So that is what, my first point is the one that I was trying to make. How do we monitor the monitor? That's like the biggest challenge that we have. I guess that's it. That's all I had. Thanks, Ashok. That was a great insightful talk. We don't get to usually see the inner workings of massive sort of enterprise orcs. All right. Let's meet up. So yeah, glad that you could be here. So a couple of questions from the attendees here. I think one person asks here. Sudhir asks that, Sudhir, I will unmute you. Why don't you ask the question yourself? Hey, hello. I'm Sudhir. Yes, Sudhir. This is my second absolute meter, right? Okay. I am from Freshooks. I just want to understand like, what is the data volume that you use for logs and you have any numbers that you can share regarding the metrics or the cardinality or the number of samples you use? Okay. Here is what I have. So I have my colleagues who are actually there. One is Srinivas, other is Raghavendra. Both are from our team. So give us some couple of minutes. I guess they'll look up and then give you whatever we have as the latest. So it's hard because there is things keep rolling, but Raghavendra, Srinivas, hey guys, good to see you. Can you guys share some metrics on the volume of data and metrics that we have? I think a ballpark figure would be just like, because sometimes when we look at certain stacks which work for a certain context, it's also the skill and the volume of ingestion tied into the context, right? So having a ballpark number sort of helps us understand that why this particular thing works. I think the last I remember was around 180 GB in flux for the metrics alone. And elastic search for the logs, I'm not really sure because it was a rolling index, which keeps changing every day. I would say that we were having about 40 GB every day and three or four indices of that sort. Hi, Ashok. Hi Ashok, this is Raghavendra, hello everyone. So from the influx data that we monitor, so there are two kinds of telemetry that we do. One is the host monitoring, like monitoring of all the machines and the other one is monitoring of applications. So for the monitoring of applications, which is the intra telemetry, we have the average points that we get per second in our influx setup is 18 K. So around 18,000 data points per second from all the different applications that we have. And the other one, which is like the host monitoring, the monitoring of the cloud machines. For that, there are around 6,000 of them that we monitor. So the average number of points per second that we get for them is around 670 K. So which is around like 670 K points per second is the volume of data that we get into influx for host monitoring part. And for this host monitoring part because the volume is so huge, we only have a retention policy of three days and that takes up space of around 200 GB. And after that, we down sample it and transform it so that roll it up, roll the data up our voice and then day voice and then put it into another metric. Cool, Sudhir, I think that answers your question. Yep, thanks. Yeah, cool. So Ashok, one request from my side is that when we publish your PPT for like the greater audience later on post the meetup, it would be really nice to have another slide at the end with some of these ballpark sort of metrics there. That would help the readers of the PPT whenever they browse it to contextualize your whole pipeline. And yeah, that's a small request from my side. I'll do that and share.


Namaskaram to everyone. As a large part of the world tries to get back into activity, still due to the nature of what's happening, the activity is not picking up as it should. In India, there are many more things that need to happen to get the activity back. It will take a few months. But as this is happening, as humans are trying to believe things are getting normal, the number of cases in the world, positive cases in the world has crossed seven million. The official death numbers have crossed four hundred thousand, I'm sure it's much more. India has had the highest spike in number of cases in the last twenty-four hours, over ten thousand. Though the positive is it's all contained in a few cities. So it's easier to contain it rather than spread all over the world, country. United States has crossed a million and a half, I think, am I right? Number of cases has crossed a million and a half. Deaths have crossed hundred and twelve thousand. Apart from that, the unfortunate and enduring problem of racial discrimination and the reactions to that is also taking a toll on the nation at a time like this. On the basis of color, creed and caste, much suffering has been imposed, much blood has flown. Too many lives have been taken, but still the problem endures. Largely, by law, the world has become equitable, largely. There are still some nations, which are religious republics, where by law there is discrimination. But nations have matured in terms of law or in their constitution. But many individual human beings, a substantial number of them, unfortunately, refuse to evolve. And they continue the same prejudices, same discrimination and same selective cruelty, either because of color, creed or caste. To fight for equitable laws is completely a different process. But to transform individual human beings is a totally different process. One must understand India's independence movement, till then you must know there was an effective apartheid process in this country. And then the civil rights movement in United States, they fought in a different style because they were fighting against unjust laws. Now the laws have been fixed, but the injustice in human minds and hearts are not gone. This cannot be done by fighting on the street. This is a lot more difficult work. This is about raising human consciousness, about transforming human beings into more conscious and sensitive to all life. We must understand this, I am cruel to the pigs, but I am nice to the people, is not going to work.  It's… it's not far away. So this is very important that human consciousness has to evolve. Human consciousness has to be risen and there must be sensitivity to all life. Well, I chose the example of pigs because just now videos have been circulating everywhere because the meat market in America is down. In some farm, which is a pigry industry, because it cannot be sold, but how long to just keep on feeding them?  They decided to steam them to death, 140 degrees steam coming out and the pigs are screaming away. It takes a long time for the steam to fill up and for them to die. And then after the steam is taken out, a few pigs are still not dead, so a man is going with a gun and shooting each one of them, those who are not dead yet. When we can do this to one creature, we can do it to another creature and naturally it will seep into other human beings that we don't like for whatever reason. Either because of their color or caste or creed, we don't like them and we will do the same things. So the sensitivity has to be towards life itself, not towards this person, that person, a specific problem. Well, in India this has been going on for last few days. An elephant, a pregnant elephant was killed with a pineapple loaded with firecrackers or some explosive. Potassium nitrate, it's an explosive, it's not really a firecracker. Well, this was not aimed for the elephant. Now it happened to the elephant, the whole country's conscience is hurt and there's a whole, you know, social media movement happening against it. But we must understand this was aimed towards the wild boar. Because certain communities have extreme aversion to the pigs, they don't want these pigs to enter their properties, their lands, their… around their homes.  And the elephant suffered for almost, I think about two weeks before it died. With a bleeding mouth it starved itself to death, it came and stood in a small pond to cool its mouth in water and it died there standing. So seeing that everybody is moved, this is our problem, that we are moved by one cruelty, we are not moved by another. So if it happens to me, it is cruelty, if it happens to you, it's not cruelty, it's the same thing. So if it happens to this creature, it is not cruel. If it happens to what I like, then it's a problem. So that is all racism is, that is all religious bigotry is, that is what casteism is. That if it happens to me, it hurts. Or if it happens to what belongs to me hurts, if it happens to them, it doesn't hurt. So this is not going to go away by just changing laws. This is about evolving human beings to a higher level of consciousness, to a more inclusive existence as such, a more sensitive life. Unfortunately at a time like this, at a time like this, when there is a virus and people are dying, America has the highest number of deaths, at this time unfortunately this racism has exploded. Well, it is happening all the time. Nobody who has a darker shade of skin is completely immune to it. Even I'm not immune to it. When I go to America here and there, things happen. But this particular George Floyd case was too stark and cannot be ignored. Just cannot be ignored because the way it happened, there's another video circulating right now of police shooting a black man's dog.  This cannot be solved by fighting. This needs a social transformation and individual evolution. In terms of social transformation, I know many people will become angry with me if I say this, but I have one thing that must immediately happen in the next three to five years east. With a certain scheme from the government or whatever, in every precinct there must be a certain number of African American, Hispanic policemen. This could level this to some extent. I'm not saying this will remove the problem. At least they could also do better law enforcement because they understand the communities. They have more access to those communities. They need not do policing all the time. They can do negotiations and handle crime also a little better because all crime is not murder, all crime is not bank robbery or something like this. There are many crimes which are committed by children, youth, women for various compulsions. Those things can be easily handled if there is somebody who can talk to them, not somebody who just always has a hand on his gun. So, like this, some social situations can be changed, but without raising human consciousness, without making every human being far more sensitive to life. This is something every society in the world needs to think. If we want cruelty against human beings to go away, cruelty against animal... animals also need to go away. Right now I feel we are treating the animals vantonly. That also translates into treating other human beings like that. It's very easy to do that when you're doing it to one creature, doing it to another one is not very far away. I think this needs to be addressed in a more fundamental way. And this movement should not be, now how long will you protest on the streets? Maybe right now already twelve days, maybe twenty days you will do it, then it will die out. That is not the way it should be. When no such incident happens, 365 years of the day, it must be kept up. Not on the street, but wherever we are, in whichever position we hold, whatever place we hold in a society, whatever responsibilities we hold there, there it must be kept up. That's the only way you can change this. Just protesting for a certain number of times may not work, but now it is understandable that people are angry. When people are angry, they will not always do sensible things. It is very, very important that now that it's not about one man's life, there is a history, a few hundred years of enormous suffering inflicted upon people. So this correction cannot happen overnight as a generation of people, if we are committed to making this happen. Before our time is up, we can leave this world with much less prejudice. It is very much possible to do that. Well, there has been lots of, you know, all kinds of inquiries and comments and everything about this Sadguru exclusive, which has been put out of your pictures out there. Why this came up is, well, in the last six, seven years time, or little more than that maybe, my predicament has become like this. Wherever I go, it's large numbers of people. Whether these darshan's or satsangs, almost everything is webcast, it's on the television. When I come and sit in a place in a certain way, it's natural for people to burst forth. Some will scream, some will roll, some will go crazy. Otherwise, what's the use of me?  The significance of who I am is if I come and sit here, something within you must tremble. Otherwise, what's the point? But we've been holding back because a certain number of percentage of people will start screaming and rolling. A certain percentage of people are fearful and they don't know what is happening because not all of them have ever gone through the same number of experiences and programs. There are different kinds of people. There are fresh people who have just come today. There are just people who have done online programs. There are people who have been through immense amount of experience. All sitting together, we are not able to do justice. And these days, just talking, talking, talking and going, we're not able to do any meditative processes because a few people will scream anyway, holding down, holding down, holding down. So I thought we will create a group of a little more exclusive group where they can do whatever the hell they want. And also, and also, you know, everything that is said, a daily quote, a mystic quote that goes out or a poem that goes out, all kinds of people in the Twitter, in the Instagram, all kinds of lumpen are making comments about it without understanding a thing. For example, right now this poem, Life, which came out a couple of days ago, I think, you've seen this? So this is talking about a certain aspect of life. But now I get comments from United States. At a time like this, Sadhguru should not write a poem like this. We are on the streets protesting, people are dying of corona. Now he says the most restless ones rest so well when life is taken out of them, as if the only curse was life. What is this talking about and what are you talking about? I'm saying you're trying to find connection between mysticism and current situations in the society today. So playing this role of being socially that, well, I'll continue to play that on one level, but time is coming where it's very important that there is a space for unbridled expression, not about political things, social things, simply about... See, there are two aspects in the Indian culture, they divided two things, two dimensions of knowing. One is called Shruti, another is called Smruti. What Shruti means is, Shruti actually means a very refined sound. So sound can only be heard, sound cannot be written, sound cannot be understood, sound cannot be explained, sound can only be heard. This simply means something that's direct perception. It is faultless, it is the way it is. It doesn't matter if the whole world agrees with it or disagrees with it, the way it is is the way it is. This is the dimension of spiritual process and mysticism because it's direct perception. It is not a scripture, it is not a religion, it is not a philosophy, it is not a new ideology, it is just what you perceived. Smruti is a reflection. Over a period of time, what is one person directs perception, other people reflect, think about it, interpret it in many different ways, make it socially relevant for that day, that is the job of scholars. So when there is no distinction between Shruti and Smruti, then it'll go out of tune. The sound, the purity of the sound will go away. So we thought we will do Sadhguru exclusive, people are commenting, Sadhguru always said inclusive, how can he do exclusive? You know, people are getting their words from the dictionary straight, pure words. Dictionary words. So maybe we can change the titles. I don't know if they've already invested too much on the exclusive title. But if we want, we can make Sadhguru in close. But now somebody will come up and say, there is no in-close word in the dictionary. So what? When there is no word like that in the dictionary, you can't give a commentary about it. It's my word, not in close, in close, I am close, in close. Well, it's not my word. I think if I'm right, I'm not sure about this, because I read this when I was in college, way, way back when I was at the university. It must be Emily Dickinson who used the word in close, if I'm right. So we can use the word in close, Sadhguru in close, if exclusive is hurting you. And anyway, in this exclusive or in close, if you have for everything your what I say, if you're relating it to today's social realities, you must not be in that. You should not be in that. Because this is not, this is not Smriti, this is not for you to reflect. This is for you to digest, to ingest and digest. That's the only way food works. Right now there are a lot of people analyzing food and they're unhealthy all the time. Because you have to ingest and you have to digest. That is the only way it works. That is the way life works. But social realities are different. So we want to set up this thing probably in the next few weeks, it'll come out more details, we'll come out about it. They may set up a small cost to it, just to see there is a small threshold, but it will be well within the reach of everybody. But if somebody is so hungry and but they have not eaten for three days, only if they have not eaten for three days, it'll, we will make it free for them also. Okay? Somebody is so hungry to know that they have paid for this and they could not eat for three days because of the payment. It's not three days payment, only one meal. So one meal you skipped and enrolled into Sadguru in clothes. It's okay. It's good for you. If you're hungry, you always digest things better, you know? You know this at the yoga center. So that should come out anytime, but those of you, I don't know at what number we want to stop, we've still not decided, still discussions are going on. So it will be on first come first serve basis if you wish to be there just register. Okay? Pre-register rather.  That's better. And also because the virus related services are still going on and it is extending into various other aspects, not just about giving food because this year, kick-starting rural education in Tamil Nadu is going to be a big challenge. With that intent, we're putting out a painting that we called Bhairava, which was done in the honor of our Bhairava, who unfortunately was the first victim in the ashram of this virus. He was more of a... like he did not die of virus. But because of this virus, we could not get a veterinarian to attend to him, so he passed away. So we're putting up this painting for an auction because we need the money. This is made of the background is cow dung, rest is charcoal and a little bit of turmeric and lime has been used. So the entirely... it's a very organic painting, but it will... it will last. It will last better than acrylics. It will last forever. It's not looking great out there, but... There are also a few things we talked about, the kavacha. I think the kavacha is ready. It should be... do we have them? And also it is done with the Indian alchemy called Rasa Vaidya. It's very effective in enhancing general energy levels and above all the immunity will be much higher. By using this, they're made of different sizes and inside it has to be copper. But those of you who don't like to wear copper, you want to be seen in gold, you can have it gold-plated outside. So kavachas also will be available at the Isha shop. It'll take probably a week before we start dispatching them. And Isha masks also have come, different designs. If you want to model for them, you can. I thought I will come with one today, but... How are they there? There's a yoga, yoga, yogishwara chant on it. That's my mask. And also in engineering, for those of you who are in other parts of the world, in engineering has been launched in Spanish, German, with subtitles and French with a dubbed voice. The first question is a video question from a 12-year-old boy from South Africa. What's his name? Vashir Kemraj. What? Vashir Kemraj. Vashir. Vashir. Well, about the question, well the level of violence that children are made to practice on a daily basis. I do not know the numbers and percentages but from whatever just glancing around when children are playing and just looking, seeing here and there, because it never happened very close around me, I see in the airports, in other places, even in the airplanes, children are playing. From my perception, I may be wrong, please tell me. Nearly seventy-eighty percent is all about shooting somebody. Am I correct? I don't see children playing with an animal or doing something on the on the screen, all the time shooting, shooting, shooting. Well, as a young child, if you shoot whatever number of people, let's say a hundred people, evil people of course, they come from. See anybody who doesn't look like you is evil. This is what racism is.  So whether you're taking out a black man or you're taking out an alien, it's not any different because when African people came to Europe and America, they look like aliens for those who had not seen them before. So right now we think it's perfectly normal. The moment any aliens land on this, we must shoot them and burn them and do whatever terrible things to them. Well, this is racism. They look different. That's our only problem. So when you practice this, you're only twelve but you look like sixteen. No, no, that's your words, not mine. I didn't say that. So when you become eighteen, if you've been shooting on the screen for eight, ten years, hundreds of people, when you become eighteen, wouldn't you like to see some real blood? You saw a lot in the movies. With the technology now, you're watching a movie, a bullet comes and brains explode. So that's not enough. You didn't get it. Next time, slow motion. The bullet comes slowly and the brains spill all over. Well, when you pay money to watch these things, we know what you're up to in your head. So when you blew a lot of brains till you were eighteen, at eighteen, wouldn't you want to get real? Wouldn't you want to see some real brains explode? Well, you're seeing it all over the place. When people go out simply shooting, young men just go out simply shooting, unknown people, anybody that they see they're shooting, you're wondering, what happened, what happened? Well, they've been practicing for ten years. Why are you surprised? Why are you surprised? They've been practicing. Now they're just getting real. So I don't know, I could be wrong on the percentages because I've not seen enough movies. But once again, seventy to eighty percent of the movie cannot happen without somebody being either beaten to pulp or brains blown. Am I correct? Percentage, I'm asking. Definitely it's over fifty percent. I think it's seventy to eighty percent. Not... not even twenty-twenty-five percent of the movie can happen without smashing up somebody's face or blowing up somebody's brains or having his intestines spilling out. It cannot happen. A movie cannot happen. So once you create a culture like this, well, you just see there was a time at least in India, our heroes, the movie heroes I'm talking about, the cinema heroes were gentle-looking men singing songs, running around the tree and you know, like that. Slowly it's become like this, a hero means he has to be muscular and fit because he has to smash somebody. Heroic means you just see any... I've not seen the movies but I've seen the posters all over. Wherever you see him like this wanting to smash somebody, whether he actually does or not is not the point. Definitely you are creating a culture of violence. You think this is the way to settle every emotion you have in your life. This is not just about beating somebody. You... you know, I've not watched any single... not a single one of those soap operas and things but when I'm looking for news or something, sometimes I end up with this for ten, twenty seconds. I'm seeing some woman is screaming and throwing plates all over the place. A man is, you know, punching into a door or a wall. You are creating a culture that this is the way to settle your emotions. Well, human beings have emotions but isn't there a more civilized and conscious way to settle our emotions? When something pokes us, some emotion may flare up in human beings. Isn't there a more civilized way to conduct this? No. Just use four letter words, throw things at people, smash food in people's faces, this become a fashion. Smashing food into people's faces, smash utensils, break the doors.  Still fortunately, fortunately, the society or the youth in the world are still not very strongly imitating the cinema and other entertainment fortunately.  So it's time, those who call themselves entertainers, who are not just making a living, they're becoming super rich with this. They must have some conscience as to what is the impact that they're creating. If you create violence in the screen, it must be such that it must produce disgust that I must never be like this. There was a time in the Hindi cinema that there were people who are called as rape experts. In every movie, there has to be one rape, violent rape. Two-three actors were considered rape experts. Now, when rapes happen in the society, you're surprised. Well, you demonstrated. Millions of people, young people saw it. They thought this is the way to deal with a woman. They thought this is the way to deal with their desires, isn't it? So if you show people that whenever your emotions get flared up, this is the way to deal with it. You have to smash up somebody's face or blow off somebody's brains. If this is the example that you set, slowly that is the society you will have and you're beginning to have. And when it happens in your neighborhood, when it happens in your home, you're shocked. I'm surprised why you're shocked. Your television is on all the time. All the time it's happening and you're not shocked. And another dimension of this is, every day when you see people being shot and you're casually eating your potato chip and watching people being shot, when actually if they're shot in front of you, you won't think much about it. It'll be just like normal, okay? You will not be shocked, you will not be outraged, you will not be propelled into doing something positive in that direction because you think it's normal because every day it's happening because as technology gets better, the television is looking almost real or more real than real. As technology gets better, if it becomes 3D as they're promising it will, then these guys will be killing each other in your sitting room or your bedroom or in your dining hall, all right?  This is not the way to nurture a society. Everybody, no matter what kind of activity we are doing, we have a responsibility to create a more stable, civilized and a conscious society. This is everybody's business. This cannot be just by done by the government. What you write, what you create, what you do, what you speak, everything has to have this dimension. Otherwise, well, when problems explode on the street, then you complain and cry, but what is the point? You've shown the seeds. Next question is from Junaid. Namaskaram, Sadhguru. You had mentioned that in Indian culture, everything was geared towards mukti. How was poetry and art used in this direction? What is... what is poetic? You know, the word poetic is a very... it's a poetic justice. It's a very different thing. Well, I was in New York and I visited a very famous artist. It's a large painting. Large means about twelve feet by twelve feet kind of painting. And there is just one... one line like that, diagonally. That's a painting. Maybe that is what inspired me to become a painting, painter. Then I looked at this, such a large canvas wasted, just one line. I said, what is it? What is this supposed to be? See, it's a divide. The society is divided, the world is divided. So just this one line represents the divide. Well, I thought, okay, if this can be art, well, even I'm capable. Once it happened, Shankaran Pillai was going home. Then he suddenly remembered it was his wedding anniversary. There was a message on the phone.  He saw a florist. He went there and ordered a single rose. So the florist got talking and said, what are you proposing to somebody? He said, no, it's my wedding anniversary. Oh, then just one rose? He said, no, I'm a man of few words. So what is poetry? What is art? Essentially, these are aspects of our life which don't fit into a definition. That is why they're important. It, if you talk about poetry as language, poetry can be movement. Dance can be poetry. You know, anything can be what you do. The very way you work can be poetry. But we're talking about written poetry. Now this is language, but it need not necessarily fit into the framework of language. Because language has certain framework. If you write prose, it has to fit into that. So those who don't know much grammar, much language like me, will always write poetry. Yes, because if you write prose, you have to fit into it. And you are not in a mood to fit into frameworks. So you write poetry. And also this art and poetry are two things which allow you to somewhere break the limitations of your own logic. If you write something in prose, I can't think of a kind of an opposite for artwork, prose and poetry are opposites to each other in a way. If you write in prose, it has to be logically correct. It has to be logically correct. You can't write illogical things. But poetry, you can express things which are not logically correct, but maybe true within you. Maybe you're trying to explore dimensions which cannot be expressed in proper framework of logic. I think the same is true with artwork that it gives you a format where you can break your own logical process. In that sense, does it help you, does it help one to find some kind of access to something possible? But I feel for most people it is more an expression than an exploration. For some it is an exploration. For most it is an expression. If it's an exploration, then you shouldn't worry whether somebody reads it or not, somebody appreciates it or not, it is your exploration. As long as it helps you to break the framework of your own logic and touch dimensions which are not logically correct but which are hundred percent true with life. In some way, if you're using art and poetry as an exploration, definitely it assists you towards your freedom to your liberation as a means, as one more means. But if it's an expression, it's like any other expression in life, maybe a word that you speak or what you write or what you do, any number of things, how many ways human beings express, this is just one more form of expression. I wouldn't like to place it above other dimensions of expression. Somebody may just smile and that smile may be worth more than all the artwork on the planet. So, I do not… I do not like to place one's expression or one form of expression as a higher form of expression than the other. There is no such thing. One may not know how to smile, they may just stand there like this. Well, that expression may be worth more than all the smiles in the world. So, one form of expression is not higher than another form of expression. But if it is a tool for your exploration, well, one can use it. The next question is from Ramya. Namaskaram, Sadhguru. How does raising energies through Kriya help in working out the Prarabdha? Sadhguru, in close. This is what I was talking about some time ago. See, people's idea of civilization or so culture or socially what to say, a compromise behavior, they think they must be neutral about everything. This happened. You heard of… I'm getting into political trouble, you heard of Babri Devi government, Bihar. Babri Devi was the chief minister for a few years. It was considered the most or perfectly neutral government because it did not even interfere in its own affairs. So people are becoming like this. Now if we raise energy, different people will behave differently. Some will become still, some will shake, some will roll, some will crawl, some will scream, some will open their eyes like that, some cannot open their eyes, all kinds of things. Because when extra energy is pumped into something, depending upon where that machine is right now in what kind of condition, what kind of issues, this is a complex machine. It's not like a simple automobile or something. It's a very complex machine. It will behave differently. But if all this is being judged, best thing is not to raise energies, keep everybody low. Prarabda, you suffer, what to do? Because if everything that happens on one space is being judged in another space, then you can't do anything significant. So prarabda means it is your allotted karma. How much allotment you choose itself, it's not a conscious choice, but it's a choice. How much allotment your life chooses is dependent upon how vibrant your energy is. If your energy is a very effervescent and vibrant, you naturally choose more prarabda because you know you can handle it. It is not a conscious knowing that I can handle it. Life knows, life has its own intelligence, depending on the effervescence of your thing.  Just play, run, jump around, laugh, scream, because life energy has to become effervescent. When it becomes very effervescent, it will naturally download a huge volume of prarabda. Is that not trouble? Yes it is. But either you can store your trouble in the storehouse, for it to explode in your face sometime, or you can download it and handle it. There are two ways. Anyway it's there. You can't get rid of it. It is there.  People are always going through this because prarabda download happened without them asking for it. Now being on the spiritual path means you want the whole warehouse. I want to see what is in the warehouse. I am not interested in just dealing with my retail business. What is in my retail shop? Let me finish that stock. That is not my way. I want to finish off the warehouse. I want to set fire to the warehouse. If you want to do that, you need lots of energy, but now you're talking about setting fire to the retail shop, not even setting fire, selling off your stock. How will it help? Well, if energies are intense, it will burn out quickly. But you must know this. If you do not consciously welcome new downloads of prarabda, which is naturally fixed into the spiritual process. Nobody, if they're teaching you something or you're a book yogi, reading a book you're spiritual, that's different. If anything has been transmitted to you, always this is there that if you're running out of prarabda, new prarabda will come. Many people who are here around me, they keep wondering why when I'm around sadguru, so many troubles. Because that's how it is. Because I want you to understand what you're calling as prarabda is a certain amount of software.  You need to understand this. This is why most yogis burnt up their karma so fast, between thirty and thirty-five, a whole lot of people have died. Just look back and see in the history. So many well-known yogis all left their bodies at that time because they burnt up everything and they had no business with the world, so they left. So the spiritual process is always calibrated in such a way that we put a hole in your warehouse always. If you think you solved one problem, the next dimension of problems are always trickling into your life all the time. They should be, otherwise you will run out of your software. If you run out of software, even if your hardware is good, you ran out of software, this becomes nothing. So it is important that we are aimed towards the sanctita or the warehouse, not just the prarabda. So these words you picked up from the books here, there or maybe even I have used these words sometime. So troubles anyway, we are coming out with a book called Karma Sutras, being published by Random House in United States, will come out in the month of February 2021, virus, post-virus, you know. Because virus is our prarabda, it's not our sanctita. We want to burn it up and then do the rest. So this is called as Karma Sutras because there are simple fundamental rules as to how to handle your karma. Don't pick up vocabulary which could confuse you. You clearly understand this. It is only because you have a certain amount of conscious and unconscious memory, you're able to function, isn't it?   Many of you have gone through these phases. I shouldn't be talking to you like this, I should speak this only in the Satguru in close, but you know I'm like this. I don't know where I'm in close, where I'm out close. I'm always in close, this is the problem. Anyway, the video department will decide what is in close, what is out close from now on. So people around me are always experiencing this that a time will come, they're sadhanise, you know, reaching a place, suddenly they become very peaceful, very nice, healthy and well. Suddenly unexplained levels of struggles and problems all of a sudden. What happened, my spirituality has failed, Sadguru has ditched me, all kinds of things. No, no, it is just that because we saw, you're handling your software comfortably. Next download happened. Why should we call it a download? Let's call it an upgrade. Software upgrade happened. It became more complex. Any upgrade is more complex than the existing software, isn't it? Do I understand correct? It's more complex. So a software upgrade happened. So now you're confused, you think Sadguru ditched you or suddenly this process is not working, you must go somewhere else and learn something else.  So don't think of all that. There are simple aspects of life. You don't need any other teaching, believe me. There is a simple process, all of you have gone through who are here at least, Inner Engineering. There are five significant aspects in Inner Engineering and there is a practice. These five aspects, every day you live it, every moment. You live these five aspects and practice what you're doing there is fine. But if you want something more in terms of health, well-being, you want to transmit something in your life, then we will teach you other kinds of practices. We can upgrade the practice a little bit. But in terms of fundamental approach to how you approach yourself, these five things are enough. There is no need for one more teaching, one more teaching, one more teaching. Because you didn't get those five things, I'm continuously talking. Yes, five aspects are there. I will make this much simpler in the enclosed because now if I make it, many of you will give up doing what you're doing and try to do dumb things. It is much simpler than five things actually. But five things, Inner Engineering is a simple, very simple program. There are five aspects. You figure it out what these five are and make it a living reality for you. Everything will change. Everything will change. It does not mean everything is gone. No, no, no. You becoming more competent to handle all this nonsense. Your nonsense. All right? It's your stuff. If it's happening within you, it must be yours, isn't it? Hello? It's happening within you, it must be yours.  This is happening, that is happening, this force is happening, then you go to the next black magic man.  I'm telling you, all these things may have some influences. Somebody does some black magic on you, maybe some influence. Maybe the planetary positions are in a certain way some influence. But these five things I'm talking about in the basic program of Inner Engineering, if this becomes a living reality, the planets can spin whichever way they want. Anybody can do, not just black, blue, yellow, red magic also they can do. They can do whatever kind of magic. This will be fine. This will become independent of all that. That's what it means. Please make it happen for yourself.


Now, here comes your second curvature equation. Remember the equation, therefore, acceleration that we have from there. I'm going to do a silly thing, which will look silly. I'm going to take the cross product of those two vectors. I'm not writing, it's a function of t, it's a function of t. Just saving some space. I'm going to take that cross product. What's the cross product of this sum of these two components? Well, that's going to be the cross product of the first one, dT squared. t prime of t plus, I'm going to have here t cross product dT squared in of t. Oh, so I've put the t there. Now, what is the cross product? This is just the scalar. What is the cross product of two of the exact same vectors there? Well, that's zero, even though there's a scalar in front of them. The cross product of those two is going to be zero. So, we dropped this bit. And what is t cross n? t cross n, well, we know that's b. We know that's b, but that's a unit vector. Now, across a unit vector, that's going to be another unit vector. And its magnitude, if I suddenly were to say, well, let's not do that. Let's do this. Let's get the magnitude of this. So, I'm going to be left with this cross set, which is b, but I'm taking its magnitude, which is just one. What I'm left with, basically, is dS dT squared. And what else did I forget? Oh, I forgot the capital there. That looked a bit odd. And I'm left with the capital there. Now, we just have to remember a few things. What is t? Shall we do that one? What can we change? What can we change? Let's play with dS dT. dS dT, well, dS dT like that. That is just going to be the norm of r prime of t like that. So, we can put that in as square there. Let's put that in. We have this r prime of t squared. We've got that bit. And let's do something about this side. What can I write that as? Remember, I'm dealing here with the magnitude. So, remember that that was the r prime of t divided by its magnitude. That was that one. Cross, but I'm dealing all the time now with magnitudes. That was that, which was just the r prime of t. That's a. So, I'm crossing these. And that's going to equal kappa. And that's going to equal kappa norm of r prime of t there. But here, I'm dealing with scalars because I'm taking the magnitude. So, it would be the same as doing this. So, and behold, out jumps my second equation for kappa, which is going to be the velocity vector there. Cross product with the second derivative of the position vector there. Divided by the first derivative there of the position vector cubed. It's getting kappa. Sorry about that. It's getting kappa on its own. So, that's a very simple equation by someone who just played a bit. I suspect there was some deeper thought than that though. Going on, just taking that cross product there and just replacing these with values that we know what they are. And we're just taking magnitudes so we can view these more algebraically. And if I have a position vector, all I need now is a position vector. If I take its first derivative and I take its second derivative, that's all I need. That's all I need. If I do a cross product between those two vectors and I divide it by and I take its magnitude and I divide it by the magnitude of the first derivative cubed, I have curvature again. So, there's my second equation for curvature and it's actually quite beautiful.


Common-sized financial statements are the next logical step in vertical analysis. Using vertical analysis, income statements and balance sheets are converted from dollars to percentages. This makes it much easier to compare companies of different sizes. For example, Target and Walmart are competitors. Most think of one of these two companies when they think about discount retailers. However, as you can see by the numbers reported on the slide, Walmart is more than five times bigger than Target when we look at revenue. When we compare the income statements of the two companies, there's no comparison really. Walmart has significantly higher revenue and operating income. But this is exactly why we need common-sized financial statements, because otherwise the larger company would always look like the better performer. In order to create common-sized financial statements for Target and Walmart, we'd take the vertical analysis formula to determine the percentages of key income statement items. Then we can compare the two companies and remove the impact of the size differential. In fact, now these companies seem much closer and more comparable as you might have otherwise expected. Finally, common-sized financial statements are frequently used in a process called benchmarking. Benchmarking compares a company to some standards set by others, which could be a key competitor or an industry average. The goal of benchmarking is to create goals for improvement.


Hey guys, it's Julia and welcome back to my channel. And for today's video I wanted to talk about some of my favorite audiobooks. I asked you guys over on Twitter if there was anything you really wanted to see and someone suggested that we do audiobook recommendations and I thought that was a great idea because I don't think I've ever done, like out of my 500 videos or something, which is ridiculous, I don't think I've done a video on audiobooks. So we're gonna do it today. Talk about some of my favorite audiobooks and then like my all time favorite audiobook. So just some like basic things to get out of the way. I typically use Hoopla, which is like run through my library. You can also use Libby. I don't really use autoboyl or autoboyl. I usually don't use audible. I've never actually used audible once, but like it's not something that I would use to use Scribd. However, some people it's supposed to be unlimited, but they do cap it. Some people said they never got the cap, so I don't know if it's like five book cap. But some people got that and some people didn't. So I'm the one one of those people who had like a limited selection of audiobooks. So that's why I just stopped using Scribd, but it's still like not a bad service. It's actually a good price. But I just get my audiobooks for free through my library. So let's talk about some of my favorites here. I want to talk about Be Not Far From Me by Minnie MacGinnis. This is a wilderness survival story. I actually have two wilderness survival stories on this list. But this one is about a woman who goes into the woods with her friends and her boyfriend. And she discovers that her boyfriend's cheating on her and she kind of goes from there and she has to survive. So that's what the story follows. It's kind of gruesome. There is some trigger warnings, which I'm going to like start like list those at the top of the screen for those who are interested. But yeah, this is a pretty I would say it's too brutal. But for like YA, it was pretty it was pretty good. And I really like Minnie MacGinnis's writing style. And again, I listened to the audiobook of this and I thought it was really good. Another like really good one that's kind of similar is The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King. This is also this is instead of like a teenager. This is like a young child that gets lost in the woods. But I have like a really old review on this. If any of you are interested in checking that out. But the audiobook was so good and it's like a short little book too. And I like short audiobooks because like I'm not an audiobook. I don't say expert, but like I don't listen to the ones that are like 35 hours long. I just can't, I guess. I don't know, like seven hours is like a good good pace for me. But yeah, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is a girl who gets lost in the woods and she has to survive. And it's a really good audiobook, especially if you get the one by Stephen King. I'm pretty sure he narrates his own for this one. But if you're interested in these two books, they are available in audio format and are both like quick reads and something about like wilderness survival stories, like listening to someone stream a conscious while they're lost and in crisis. It's interesting. Another Stephen King one here is on writing. So this is his memoir about his experience with writing, his experience with addiction, basically just about his life. And this is like absolutely phenomenal, even if you're not like a writer. It's still very insightful and you'll definitely learn something. The audiobook is great. We have Stephen King on the back, but the audiobook is great and he narrates it himself. So it's nice hearing the story of the writer from the writer and then literally hearing them say it to you is it's an experience. There's little corgis down there. But yeah, this was real good. It's been a little while since I read this. I think I gave it like around a four or five star rating. But I know a lot of people say it's like their top memoir and all of that. But yeah, I think this one is great. And it's especially good in audiobook format. Next, I have literally anything Neil Gaiman. Like Neil Gaiman is a great writer in general. I haven't read all of his works, but he's a great writer and his audiobooks. He usually narrates himself, which are also great. So I have a little bundle thing here. So this is the little bundle that I have, but it comes with Coraline, the Gregor book and fortunately the milk. The Gregor book and Coraline are phenomenal. And I would highly recommend them. They're great to listen to an audiobook. I'll actually take take them out and show you. This is Coraline. So what the movie is based off, I would definitely if you like the movie, I would definitely recommend it. If you don't know what it's about, it's about this girl who kind of goes through a portal to another world. But it's like her world, but it's just just slightly, you know, different. And there's some consequences and there's some there's a nice cat. And it's literally about a brave child. So we love that. A graveyard book is about a boy named nobody Owens who lives in a graveyard and was raised by ghosts. So this one is super cool. I just really like Neil Gaiman's writing style. And because these are more middle grade, they're going to read super easy. And I just I've really enjoyed both of these. They're both really, really good. I wouldn't like highly recommend, fortunately, the milk or anything. But I just wanted to bring the box out down. But fortunately, the milk literally just has like a ton of illustrations. So things with a lot of illustrations. You might just want to read, you know, physically. But yeah, Coraline and the graveyard book are so good. Another fantastic audiobook is The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey E. Genides. This is a book that I love that I rave about. But it's basically about the five Elizabeth daughters that all commit suicide and it's about the aftermath of that. And then told by a group of guys that kind of live around the neighborhood and like watched them and experienced like from an outside perspective, experienced them like how people treated them, how they saw them, how other people saw them. And then the context like afterwards after they died, how how they died and all of that stuff. So they tell the story looking back on what happened and it's so good. And the writing is so like the writing is just really, really good. Like the first time I read this book, I remember I wasn't like amazed, but it's when I read it. Like the first time I read it, I think I gave it like 3.5 or 4 stars, which is still a very good rating for me. However, now that I've read it like five or six times, it's it's a favorite. So I highly recommend this one. They have the audiobooks really good. I've listened to I've read it physically and listen to the audiobooks to here. So I would recommend Casey West books on audiobook. I think they're pretty good. I have PSI like you and Love Life in the list. I actually just listened to Love Life in the list like a week ago. So this one I listened to and like I just really like her stories. They're like fun, fluffy romances. This one specifically is about a girl who is trying to get into like an art program and she is crushing on her best friend. She's crushing on her best friend. She's trying to get into an art program and like somebody told her when she submitted her art that she didn't have enough experience, like life experience. So she came up with a list of a bunch of things that she needs to do to have those experiences to then make her art better. So I thought this was cool. It was fun.  So like someone writes a note on the desk or like writes a lyrics on the desk and then the next person for the next class that goes in there and sits at the same desk writes the lyrics back. And that's how they communicate. So it's a very cute romance and they don't know who the other person is. And yeah, these are just they're just so fun to read and especially to listen to. They're just super relaxing. I've listened to a love life in the list while I was doing like other stuff, like while I was working, I was able to do that and then also have this on in the background. And I really enjoyed it. It was it was a fun time. So my favorite audio book of all time, it's got to be Right On Fire by Susanna Cahalem. I do have this physically, but I don't know where it is. Like I really don't because the shelf goes up a little bit more and then there's some hidden at the bottom and there's two rows at the bottom and two rows at the top. So even if it's at the top, I would have to get a step stool or like a ladder to get up there. But this is not the point. Right On Fire is actually a memoir and Susanna Cahalem narrates it herself, which I thought was amazing. This is like the only audio book that's ever made me cry. I remember I left like there was a social family setting and I left the room to sit in a dark room and listen to this audio book. It was so, so good and the movie is amazing, too. But it's basically about this girl who works at a publishing company and everything seems to be going kind of normal for her and going good for her. She has a boyfriend, she has a good job, she has friends. Suddenly she gets hit with this illness that they can't identify.  So a lot of the time they thought it was schizophrenia and things like that. But as you read the book, I don't want to spoil anything. You kind of learn more and more and you see as not only she goes through all of this shit, but her parents, her friends, her boyfriend and how it all impacts them as well. So it's a true story and it's amazing. And it's it's a different experience hearing it from the person themselves. So that's what I really like about like a few of these on this list, is they're actually narrated by the author, which is really nice to see. So there you guys have it. Those are my audiobook recommendations. I really hope you enjoyed this video. If you have any videos that you do want to see from me, definitely let me know. Thanks so much for watching. I really appreciate you all. I hope you're doing well. Hope you all hope you all are doing OK. Yeah. And if you want to follow me on any other platform, I have all of them linked down below, as well as my Twitch, where I've been streaming a lot on. So if you want to hang out or play video games, then yeah, I also have a Discord if you want to join that. And I'll see you all super soon. Bye.


This study examined the seasonal variability of the surface urban heat island, Suhi, in the Tehran metropolitan area, Iran. It found that an inversion of the Suhi phenomenon occurred at daytime with the maximal value of urban rural land surface temperature, LST, difference of –4K in March, while the maximal value of Suhi at nighttime yielded 3.9K in May. Additionally, the study showed that the relationship between all surface properties with LST possessed large seasonal variations, and thus, using these relationships for Suhi modeling may not be effective. This article was authored by Cyrus Hashimi, Kihei Owang, Ali Darbashi, and others.


The paper provides a review of wind turbine condition monitoring, WTCM, methods and techniques, focusing on trends and future challenges, and highlights relevant concepts and theories, while examining new trends and defining research priorities for the WTCM industry to meet the challenges in technological evolution and market growth. This article was authored by Pierre Chakoua, Rene Wong-Koo, Mohandau Rush, and others.


Hi, my name is William Brandt, I'm a urologist here at the University of Utah, the Division of Urology, Center for Reconstructive Urology and Men's Health. We've had another segment where we talk about erectile dysfunction in general, and what I want to talk more about today are the treatments for erectile dysfunction. Obviously, this is a sensitive subject, and I am going to have some props here, so we do recommend this for the more mature viewer, although we won't show anything too explicit. So what are the treatments in general? I'm going to cover these first before we get to the specifics, but in general, there is medical-type treatments and non-medical treatments. The medical treatments that most people familiar with are the pills such as Viagra, Levitra, Silas. There's other kinds of medical treatments such as injections and suppositories, and then there's non-medical treatments such as the vacuum device or penile prostheses, and we'll cover each of these in turn. So what happens, a lot of men ask, if you don't do anything, let's say you just have erectile dysfunction and you just don't do anything.  So for example, men who've had prostate cancer surgery and have had the prostate removed and have profound erectile dysfunction as a result, they find an average of about two centimeter loss, and the longer they go without erections, they tend to lose some more size as well. So we do not recommend doing nothing if you want to preserve erectile size, and this has been true in animal studies and human studies. So the pills are the thing that I think most people are familiar with. Viagra was introduced to the common market in the late 90s, and then Silas and Levitra came out in 2003, and they do work pretty well. So if you look at studies that look at how much they improve the erection, about 80% of men will say that their erections are improved, versus about a quarter of men who are just taking a sugar pill or a placebo. Now if you ask the question, how many men are able to have successful intercourse, of course that's not as good as 80%, because you can't just have a better erection, you have to have an erection that sustains long enough for intercourse, and is hard enough for intercourse, but it's still pretty reasonable. Now the medications are not for everyone. There are certain medications that will not allow a man to take one of these pills for ED, such as certain medications that are used for high blood pressure. That can be dangerous. Additionally, about 30% of men have side effects from using these pills, whether it's headache, or feeling flushed, or nasal congestion, but only about 5% of men stop using the pills as a result of that. And there are some keys to using these pills successfully. They are amplifiers, they are not magic pills, so we always tell men if you take these pills and go watch a baseball game, you will not have an erection unless you love baseball. Another key element is that they work best if you have an empty stomach, so you take the pills either before dinner or after a snack, but not after a big meal.  So one option for patients, if the pills are unsuccessful, is to use what's called a vacuum device. A vacuum device is not a drug at all, it's a mechanical object. And I brought with me models of this. This is just one older model, there are many variations on this, but you can see this has a plastic cylinder and a pump. And if I put the plastic cylinder on my hand, for example, and I start squeezing this, it's going to start creating a vacuum down here.  Now, this, because it's not a drug, does not have any drug side effects, and that's a positive thing. They're also relatively inexpensive, insurances usually cover them, and they work fairly well if a man can get the hang of it. The downside is unfortunately it's so unnatural. It's a very unnatural way to have an erection. The erection itself is not normal arterial blood, and so sometimes the patient will complain that the erection feels sort of cold, the partner will complain that the erection feels cold, the penis may have abnormal coloration, maybe blood vessels are burst, and so forth, and overall unfortunately the success rate is not very high, only at about 20%. So another alternative for medication is to do what's called injection therapy, and I brought this model that shows that the erection bodies are on the sides here and here, and they communicate with each other. And so if a man takes a pill, of course the drug goes everywhere in their body including their penis, but if they want to get a drug in very efficiently then they can draw it up, and you can see this is a very tiny needle, this is used for diabetics as an insulin syringe, and they can place it right in the erection body on the side, this is not painful, they put it right in, they inject the drug, and they take it out. The drug diffuses throughout the penis, and so it gives a very natural erection usually in about five minutes, and so men are very happy with that. The downside of it is what you would expect, is that men who are feeling frisky, you know, grab a needle and put it in their penis, it's not the most natural thing that comes to mind, and that's the big reason for dropout, and the dropout is about 50% if you look at it over a few years. So as another option for those who are either needle phobic or don't want to use a needle, you can use what's called urethral suppository. This is a suppository that goes directly into the urinary channel here, and I brought an example of this with me. There's a little cap that goes off, the medication is placed after the patient urinates directly in, and this is hit to deposit the medication, then it's wiggled out, and it leaves the pill in here, and then that works, it diffuses well there. The plus side of this is that it avoids needles, which is great, and it's very easy to use. The downside is it's very expensive, and there's a certain amount of penile pain that can accompany the drug dissolving, about 30% of men have had prostatectomy experience that. It doesn't work quite as efficiently as the injections do. You can imagine another problem with either this or the injections is that the man has to have very good hand function. He has to be able to see pretty well, and he can't be too fat because he has to be able to see what he's doing, and you can't have him miss. So what about for men who don't have success with these other modalities, or who are just unhappy using them, they don't tolerate the needle, etc. Well another option is what's called a penile prosthesis. These prostheses have been around since the early 70s, and there are several different types. Each prosthesis is a device that stays within the body, and in that sense it's totally concealed, and looks very natural. The simplest kind, I have a puppet here really that I'm going to use as a model, but the simplest kind is what we call a semi-rigid. So it's not exactly rigid, and it's not exactly flaccid. It's a little hard to conceal, but it's rigid enough to have intercourse. For men who have very poor hand function, or who want the simplest kind of procedure, this is a very nice way to go about this. For men who want a more natural feeling correction, there is one called a three-piece device, and I have a different puppet here that shows this, and what it is is there are there are hydraulic cylinders within the penis, and there's a pump in here like a third testicle, and there's a reservoir fluid that's hidden in the abdomen, so when the man wants to have an erection, they just pump on this, and this model doesn't work quite as well, but you can see the fluid starting to go in, they can get a very strong erection. When this is pumped up all the way, it's just as rigid and feels just as natural as a normal erection, and you see it's very rigid here, and when the man has had enough, there's a little button they hit, also in the scrotum, there's no external parts, they hit it, it gets out the fluid, and all the fluid comes out, and they go back to being flaccid. So the positive side of these prostheses is they've been around for a long time, we have lots of clinical data on them, certainly from the point of view of naturalness, these are internal, there's no issues with spontaneity or no stuff to use, and people like them very much, they're very discreet, if you were in the shower, if you had one of these inflatable ones at the gym, no one would notice that you had anything like this, you could even be on the swim team with this, and if you look at this graphic that compares the satisfaction rates of prostheses versus other modalities of treating erectile dysfunction, the prostheses do win with satisfaction, at least 90%, more like 95%, injections more like 40%, pills about 50%. Now the the pros of these prosthetics, they've been around for a long time, since the early 70s, we have tons of clinical data on them, they're totally internal and the man has full control of them, and so they're perfect in terms of discretion and spontaneity. Like everything else, they have downsides, and the downsides are basically three things. Number one is they are mechanical objects, and so if you give them 10-15 years, they're going to break and need to be replaced, which can be done but is another procedure. Number two is, and the thing we worry about the most, is infection. Like any foreign object, like a knee replacement or a hip replacement, these things, if they get infected, the bacteria live on the device and the device has to be removed at least temporarily in order to get the infection to resolve. Now luckily the infection rates for penile prosthetics are very low at about 1% or less, but they're still not 0%, so we worry about that. And the third thing has to do with patient expectations. If a guy comes in and says, but doc, I used to be this big, we say, well first of all, your memory is terrible, but second of all, no matter what size it was, that's not what this prosthetic or any other treatment for rectilus function can give you. It can just restore a function. So if a guy thinks this is a penile lengthening procedure, it is not that. It's not going to do anything other than restore a good function. And if a man thinks of that realistically, they'll be very happy, and if they don't, then they probably will not. So in this segment, we've tried to review some of the treatments for rectilus function. If you suffer from this problem personally, I encourage you to talk to your healthcare professional or contact us, and we're happy to help you. Thank you very much for your time.


I had got to the point where I would do it weekly, then daily, then it was probably about every hour. At that point, I no longer wanted to live. I had bought an ounce. I had did it all. I could not get high.    I surrendered and I gave my life to Jesus.  After I surrendered and gave my life to Him.  My life had completely changed. At one point, I just started feeling really weak and tired and started bruising a lot. I had little concerns, so I decided to go ahead and make a doctor's appointment and waited for a bit. My doctor had told me that I needed to go see the cancer specialist. So I go to the cancer specialist, and then they tell me that I was diagnosed with capillary chain disease, which is a type of leukemia, myeloma. And this is when I got diagnosed. I couldn't work. My kids are going to be without me. The symptoms got very bad to the point where I couldn't even get out of bed. I was told I have up to four years to live if it wasn't bad, which the doctor thought it was worse. So we did bone marrow to find out how far along it was, because it was to the point where I couldn't even get out of bed. So when I had found out about how long I might have, so God kept always intervening. It didn't matter where I was or what I did. He always intervened, somehow, always, just like he did when I was on drugs. But at one time I was hiking, and I was very mad at God at this time. And I was hiking and not knowing where I went, and then I started noticing the pathway. And that's when God had said the same way that you were lost on the road, and you found your way back. That's the same way you're going to find your way back to me. I was going to church, but everywhere I went there was somebody inviting us to go to Hungry Jet. So we decided to go ahead and go. So I think it was the day we were doing communion. And Pastor had said, is anybody wanting healing? And I was like, this is my time. I had put my hands up, and he said, I want people in the sanctuary to start putting hands on people that lifted their hands. And at that time, too, I was in pain. My bones hurt all the time. My calcium was very low. My potassium was low, everything. They put their hands on me. They prayed over me. And Pastor had said, did anybody receive some type of healing? And I had not hurt anymore. My body wasn't hurting. I wasn't feeling pain in my bones the way I was. It would hurt to walk. He asked if I would go up. I went up. We have Jessica here from Kennewick, and she was recently diagnosed with leukemia. And during the prayer, she felt a heat come over her, and all of her pain is gone. Really? What's happening to you? It's called Kappa Light Chain Disease. OK. So they gave you six years? Six years? Yeah. When were you diagnosed? Six months ago. Six months ago? Yeah. In your prayer, what did you feel? My bones have been really bad lately, because that's what it deteriorates. And I just felt heat all the way through, and I felt no pain right now whatsoever. You're going to have to go to your doctor, though. I have another appointment in a week with him. In a week? Yeah. We're going to believe for a clean doctor's report. Come on, church. Stretch your hands right now. Father, we thank you for your healing touch. From the top of our head to the soles of our feet, I ask you right now, Holy Spirit, that your fire will burn whatever is not of the Lord. Receive your healing right now. Receive the touch of Jesus right now. Be made whole in Jesus' name. Lord, may she live to testify of your goodness and of your mercy for the rest of the days. May her family, may other people that would know her be encouraged in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. God bless you, sister. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. God bless. Thank you for being here today. And he told me, well, I was battling, and I told him what I was battling. So two weeks go on, and I'm still waiting for results. How bad my alukimia is, how bad it's going to be, how long I got, but I chose to continue to believe. And so I continued to worship and pray whenever I could, whenever the enemy was trying to come in any single time I would throw on worship music or get in my word. Then I got a phone call, and it was my doctor. And he's like, I need you to come in. And I said, okay. My heart had stopped when I got that phone call, and for the fact that he told me to come in, I knew it was bad news. He comes in with the paperwork, sits down, gets on his computer, and he says, well, all your blood work is fine. Your bone marrow came back negative, you know. And I said, God's the one who did this to me, because he told me, he came to me and told me to trust him, and if I trust him, he would do it, and he did. And now I'm cancer-free. I've never known the peace that I have right now, the love that I feel even when worry comes, it doesn't worry me no more, and that I try to teach my kids the same thing before they get older and they don't need to wait until they're my age to understand that. That the only way that they're going to find what they're missing is if they go to Jesus Christ. My word of advice to anybody watching this or that's going through the same struggles or any struggle at all, and even if you're mad at God, he's still there. Did it even when I was mad at him? He's the one who cured me. He's the one who still loved me even when I was upset and mad with him. He's the one who was there for me no matter what. So now I owe my life to him, but I'm telling you that he's listening. You don't know what's going on behind the scenes. Just don't listen to what the enemy is trying to feed you. My name is Jessica, and this is my testimony.