All right, good evening, everybody. Welcome to a special edition of Classic Tuesdays on Monday, Election Eve 2020. We're very glad that you're taking some time out to join us. I want to just say, first of all, thank you to everyone for all of your support. The good news since our last gathering for Classic Tuesdays and one of the reasons why we decided to make this sort of an election special is because the Bedford Playhouse has now reopened at restricted capacity and with all COVID protocols safely in place. So our hope is that going forward, we're going to be able to do this series as sort of a hybrid. We are actually going to screen the film in the theater, but if you want to participate in the conversation, we're also going to stream it. For those of you who may not be comfortable coming into a theater yet. So our next installment, I'll just say right now, we're trying to get the Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn, which we were originally going to do back in March before COVID happened. And we're going to try and do that one again towards the end of this month on the 24th. So for those of you who are feeling comfortable and are interested, by all means, we hope you'll come in and watch the film with us on the big screen. It's going to be phenomenal with the Technicolor and the Great Score, and certainly all of the sword play in that film. But if you're not, you can certainly tune in and we'll be streaming it and we'll be able to have these conversations. And you can still enjoy these from the security of your home. That being said, tonight's film, we're talking about The Candidate, which was a great movie starring Robert Redford, Peter Boyle, Don Porter, and Mel Ovan Douglas, directed by Michael Ritchie, which was made in 1972, filmed in a semi-documentary style, as if you're watching a news report. The screenplay was written by a man named Jeremy Larner, who had actually been a speechwriter for Senator Eugene McCarthy during the 1968 presidential campaign. And Larner, who actually he's still alive, he lives in Northern California in his 80s.  And he worked very, very closely with McCarthy, starting with the Wisconsin primary, which is right around when LBJ announced that he would not be running for reelection, through the California primary, which we all remember ended with Robert Kennedy's assassination and then through the infamous convention in Chicago. Larner's biggest claim to fame was that he wrote the famous seconding speech that Julian Bond, for those of you who remember Julian Bond, gave for Eugene McCarthy, which really kind of launched Bond's political career. And they had never met before. He wrote the speech for him, having never met him or knowing really much about him. And then Larner wrote a book about his experience on the McCarthy campaign, which was serialized in a number of magazines in the spring of 1969. And then he more or less turned to the anti-war movement. He became very active in the anti-war movement before he wrote the screenplay for the candidate. So talking about it as we are on the eve of a presidential election, you can't help notice, if you've all watched it recently, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Most of the messages that are delivered in the film, although meant to be presented in a satirical fashion, sound like they could have come right out of today's news. And the contrast that is drawn between the incumbent senator Cropper Jarman, which, in my opinion, is one of the all-time greatest movie character names ever. And Bill McKay, who is the candidate of the title, could very easily been taken from the current headlines. There's many moments where if you close your eyes and imagine that it's not Robert Redford, but it's somebody else, you can hear the similarities. So the film was co-produced by Robert Redford and by Michael Ritchie, the director. And they had worked together on the film Downhill Racer, the skiing film Downhill Racer, prior to making the candidate. And Robert Redford had initiated the idea of wanting to make a film about a candidate who quote unquote, sold his soul. But the only way it would get made was if Redford agreed to also be a producer. This is the period of the new Hollywood that had started with films like Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider, and films could speak more directly on subjects that previously had been box office poison. And while there were certainly examples of political dramas going far back as the industry can go, certainly the one that comes to mind is like something that Mr. Smith goes to Washington. This is one of the first times where the entire system came under scrutiny. The character arc where Bill McKay starts off as an idealist and he ends up as just another cog in the machine is one of the foundations of the counterculture. And because he's embodied by Robert Redford, there's that sense that different audiences probably had different takeaways to it. The parallels are drawn, so it's not really a stretch to suggest that Crocker Jarman is a stand-in for Richard Nixon, who was president then, and the establishment, and Bill McKay is a stand-in for Robert Kennedy in a potential what might have been scenario had he not been assassinated after the California primary. So Warner Brothers was really not willing to finance the film unless Redford was willing to take responsibility for it. They were fearing some sort of backlash. And so even though he was really not crazy about the idea, it turns out that he actually was a very conscientious producer. And that's one reason why the movie reflects the personality and the values that we've come to know and associate with Robert Redford today as an environmentalist and humanitarian of all of the causes that he supports. So Redford and Richie spent the summer of 1971 working with Jeremy Larner on the script. And there were certain things, there were plenty of things that Larner had lifted directly from his experiences working for McCarthy. There's the scene where McKay is in the men's room and he gets accosted and paraded by someone and that is based on an incident that actually happened to Eugene McCarthy. Also in the original script, there was a subplot and some dialogue that was planned for the character who was supposed to be Bill McKay's mistress. She's represented, you've noticed if you watch the woman in the film who wears the glasses, her part was drastically reduced. So there's some sort of innuendo we see her smiling and making eyes at Redford, some suggestive glances. It was actually a much, much larger subplot that he had a mistress. But it was all removed, that subplot was removed specifically at Robert Redford's request because he felt that the public would not accept the character and it created a lot of friction with the character of the mistress. And it creates some friction with Larner because he was surprised, genuinely surprised that Redford was so conscious of his own self-image. Larner, in addition to that, in the process of writing the script was mentored by the legendary screenwriter Robert Town, who is a huge figure, particularly in the New Hollywood, probably is most famous for his work on the script for Bonnie and Clyde and shampoo and particularly for Chinatown along with many, many others. The character of Bill McKay is actually based on US Senator John Tunney, who served one term from California from 1971 to 1977. Michael Ritchie had worked for Tunney's campaign, during which he had run against the incumbent who at that time was a man named George Murphy, who was himself a former Hollywood actor, very much in the mold of Ronald Reagan, who at the time was governor of California. And during that campaign, they had made use of the actual campaign, had made use of the contrast between the fact that Tunney was so much younger and Murphy so much older, very much as you see depicted in the film. And even though California at the time was a much more conservative state than it is now, it did split the vote. So in that year, in that election year, Ronald Reagan was reelected as governor, but John Tunney was elected to the Senate from California. There are many, many cameos and appearances by well-known and political figures, media figures from the time. And that's mostly through the use of very strategically edited news footage. So if you have sharp eyes, you probably might have noticed George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey, John Tunney himself is in the film, Alan Cranston was another senator from California. The journalist, Van Amberg is the one who moderates the debate within the film. And Howard K. Smith, who was the one who gives the commentary about Bill McKay's campaign, losing its principles. But certainly the most prominent one is by Natalie Wood, who at that point in time had semi-retired from acting. And she had previously co-starred in two films with Robert Redford, which were inside Daisy Clover and this property is condemned. So there's that brief scene where Natalie Wood as herself meets Bill McKay, and it's sort of an inside joke because she had worked with Redford a couple of times and they were very, very close friends. Robert Redford, of course, at that time is one of the most popular actors in Hollywood. And after he made a name for himself in the 60s doing films like Barefoot in the Park and the previously mentioned films with Natalie Wood, he was very, very concerned about being stereotyped as a blonde romantic lead. And so he started turning down a lot of roles that were offered to him that would have probably been interesting to see. Like he turned down the George Siegel part in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. And believe it or not, he was originally slated to play the graduate. It wasn't Dustin Hoffman. It was Robert Redford. But he and Mike Nichols, whom he knew from their work together on the stage, soon realized that the graduate would completely not work if the character is Robert Redford and not Dustin Hoffman. And then of course, they linked up a little bit later themselves. So he tried to focus on what he thought was much more serious work. And so by 1972, he's coming off films like Butch Casting and The Sundance Kid, Downhill Racer, which he did with Michael Ritchie, both of which were very well received. And right after the candidate, he's going to do Jeremiah Johnson, which was a huge box office success. He's going to do The Sting, which he gets his only Oscar nomination of his career for, The Way We Were, The Great Gatsby, Three Days of the Condor and All the President's Men. And several of these films, certainly the last two, Three Days of the Condor and All the President's Men, have strong political content that could arguably be traced back to Robert Redford's participation in the candidate. Peter Boyle had first gained notice for playing the title character in a movie called Joe, which was kind of almost like a precursor to Archie Bunker. He was about a bigoted factory worker and had a very, very controversial one that was released because of the violence and the language it contained. This was in 1970. So although Boyle himself was very much involved in the counterculture and the anti-war movement, when he saw people cheering his character in that film, he started to turn down roles in films that he believed glamorized violence. And one of them was the lead role in the French connection that went to Gene Hackman. So his role in the candidate was something of a cleansing of his conscience, although his role as the campaign manager masks that a little bit because he's clearly someone who's supposed to be on the inside when he really, really wasn't. And nowadays, of course, when people think of Peter Boyle, the first thing that comes to mind is either young Frankenstein where he played the monster or it's his role on television and everybody loves Raymond. Those are, of course, two of his most enduring roles. Don Porter, who plays Crocker Jarman, had a very long career on stage and in films in the 1940s, but he really found his niche on television. First, he was on the Ann Southern show where he played her boss. And then probably the one that he's most well-known for is he played Sally Fields' father on Gidget. But he guest starred on many, many popular television series. He was on Green Acres. He was on The Six Million Dollar Man, Hawaii 503s Company, and really worked up until he passed away in the late 1980s. The role, interestingly enough, the role of Crocker Jarman was originally offered to Jimmy Stewart, but he turned it down because he felt that it was derogatory towards conservative politicians, which, let's face it, it was, I guess that sort of went over his head a little bit. Melvin Douglas, who plays John McKay, the former governor of California, for those of you who tuned in when we were talking about being there a couple of months ago, was also featuring Melvin Douglas in kind of a similar role. It's 10 years, almost 10 years later, and he's playing another political, very influential political figure. But Melvin Douglas was a product of old Hollywood. He was a very, very suave leading man in the 1930s, best exemplified by his performance in Ninochka with Greta Garbo. And he did many, many films as a studio contract player up until the late 1940s. He usually played the best friend, some sort of variation on the best friend role. The best version of that short sidebar is in a film with Carrie Grant and Myrna Loy called Mr. Blanding's Builds His Dream House, which if you have never seen, is absolutely worth seeking out. Anybody who's ever owned a home and remembers films like The Money Pit or things like that, they all harken back to that film and Melvin Douglas is great, Carrie Grant is great. He did start to age rather quickly and he looked quite a lot older than he actually was. So for a period of about 12 years, he moved to working on television and on Broadway before he came back to films. And then when he came back, he was playing fatherly roles and received Academy Award nominations for HUD with Paul Newman. He also was nominated for his role and I never sang for my father and as well as being there. And he won the Academy Award for best supporting actor twice. He won for HUD and he won for being there. So Michael Ritchie, just to round out the main participants, was a director who was best known really for satires and comedies. In addition to the candidate, his best known films are Downhill Racer with Robert Redford and The Bad News Bears. I don't remember that one. And then he did a lot of very broad comedies in the 80s and those included the two Fletch films with Chevy Chase. He did a film called Wildcats with Goldie Hawn, also sports themes. And he did a movie with Eddie Murphy called The Golden Child. He's very hard to pin down. Many people have commented, many film critics have commented that it's really hard to think of a director who had a more quote consistently uneven career. He was up and down. He did a handful of really great memorable films. Although in retrospect, his reputation has recovered somewhat as people kind of appreciate the subtlety of his humor more than they did. So the concept, the entire concept of the film is built on the present premise that there needs to be a candidate or a Senate race that is unwinnable. Crocker Jarman has been, as he says in the film, has been in the Senate for 18 years and there's no viable opponent to him.  And what makes it more unusual is the idea that since Jarman can't lose, then McKay is free to campaign and say pretty much whatever he wants. And so the chance to spread his values and his message is what appeals to him to make him agree to run. However, when it looks like he's going to lose by an overwhelming margin, then the campaign has to change tactics because now they're afraid that they're gonna be humiliated and they can't have that. So in order to stay in the race, his message has to get more generic. And so naturally, the less he actually says, the more his poll numbers rise. And the media also come in for indictment tremendously via a couple of different ways, mostly through the character of McKay's father. They interpret his silence as an endorsement of his son's opponent, which forces Bill McKay to ask his father for help and clearly doesn't wanna do that. It surfaces again after they have the scene about the debate, at the end of the debate when they're making their closing arguments and he's been given the script and told to keep it generic and keep it bland. And his conscience gets the better of him. And so while the natural presumption is that this makes him a more serious candidate, if you're watching the film, your reaction is he's become a much more serious candidate. The reaction of the campaign and of the media in the film suggests otherwise and they're ready to crucify him until his father shows up and conveniently draws all the attention away from the issues again. So it's one of those moments where, if you really watch the film and look for those, all those ironies and satirical elements, they're all presented, but yet they're all presented as absolutely straight up true to life. We actually have a couple of clips we're gonna play. We're gonna play one right now, which is a little bit of the, that scene I just referenced, the end of the debate. So can we play that first clip, please? We're gonna clear the hall, I'll be just a couple of minutes.  He's split a little while ago.  Other clip, hang on. Out to our concluding statements, each candidate will have one minute. The order was picked by the flip of a coin and Senator Jarman will go first. Senator Jarman. To me, this country was never stronger, but the test of a strong country is how it faces its difficulties. And now and then, when I hear the barking and the baying of those who would knock our system down, I am reminded of the last days of the great Roman Empire. They argued about what vices they could legalize and what happened was an onslaught that nearly spelled the end of civilization. Now I am not suggesting that that is what will happen if the people do not send me back to the Senate. I just promise you this, I will continue to stand up for the philosophy that has made this nation great and is more than ever called for if we're to face the future with hope and confidence. I have that hope because I believe in America. I believe that our greatest moment is yet to come. Thank you. Mr. McKay, you and I have one minute to sum up. Mr. McKay, in the beginning, I think it's important to note what subjects we haven't discussed. We've completely ignored the fact that this is a society divided by fear, hatred, and violence. And until we talk about just what this society really is, then I don't know how we're gonna change it. For example, we haven't discussed the rot that destroys our cities. We have all the resources we need to check it and we don't use them. And we haven't discussed why not. We haven't discussed race in this country. We haven't discussed poverty. In short, we haven't discussed any of the sicknesses that may yet send this country up in flames and we better do it. We'd better get it out in the open and confront it before it's too late. Gentlemen, now just a moment. You had to do it, didn't you? I never dreamed that my opponent would stoop to encouraging violence. I very seriously doubt that any man could do that. Gentlemen, it's paid in there. Why not do it? This has been the job of a paid debate. So, you know, some kind of familiar buzzwords in there. I mean, they shot it in that documentary style that really kind of gives it that air of authenticity. And if you remember, they said to him as they were coaching for the debate, they said, don't take your eyes off him. Stare directly at him. Don't take your eyes off him. And he was about to give the canned response until he went off script. And if you remember what happens following that is his media advisor is gonna lay into him before he gets sidetracked. They shot the film. It only took them 41 days. It really was a very, very rapid schedule for the time. And that sort of gives it that realistic flair. The other scene that I think resonates a lot is if you remember when it actually seems like he's got a chance and the absurdity of the whole situation gets exposed. When he goes into the television station and he's running late and they have time for him to do a quick announcement to film a campaign spot and he can't stop laughing. Everything makes him laugh and the microphone and all that. And it's dawning on him that this could actually happen and what had been sort of a fluke or a long shot, he's now in a chance to actually become a US senator. All of this obviously culminates in the closing sequence when right before that, if you remember he compromises to get the labor vote and he gives the speech before the union hall and he's told by his father that now he's a politician. And then he has probably what's one of the more prophetic responses to the entire system of government. He's gone from running just to get his message across to actually wanting to win so badly that he does compromise. And so we're going to play the second clip very quickly. There's a, and we're going to watch that scene real quick. We're going to clear the hall, it'll be just a couple of minutes.  No, we're ready. Here he comes. He's not supposed to be here. You've got about 60 seconds of privacy before they find out we're here now. So what's on your mind, Senator? See, I told you they'd be here. What do we do now? I mean, I wonder how many of those people we elect today find themselves reacting to the exact same way in the exact same situation. Interesting thing about that clip, two things that come to mind to me. When his father smiles at him after he tells him he's a politician, I wonder if he's smiling because he's genuinely happy for him or if he's smiling because he knows that he has no idea what he's just gotten himself into. And also, if you noticed, when he walks out of the room in the right-hand corner is the woman who was supposed to be playing his mistress in the subplot and she was there again. So I think that sort of signals that he really isn't any different from any of the other stereotypical politicians that we may think about when we think about what's the stereotype of the senator. Adding to the irony, of course, is the fact that the film was released in the year of Watergate and politics started taking on a whole new meaning for the public at large who may or may not have been paying attention previously. The film was actually released a month prior to the 1972 California presidential primary. And the promotional posters, they put up promotional posters for the film all over the state that simply had a photo of Robert Redford and it had the slogan that they used in the film, which was, McKay, the better way, which actually caused people to write in Bill McKay in the primary. I guess the fact that he looked a lot like Robert Redford must have worked in his favor. There's also a prop campaign button from the film which is on display at the Smithsonian Institution at the Museum of American History, hidden among many other authentic campaign items. So if you ever are down that way, whenever things get back to normal slightly, you can, it's become a little bit of a game to find that button in that exhibit. Over the years, a lot of politicians, many lifelong politicians, really did not seem to realize that the movie was intended to be ironic. The main story, some example of that is Dan Quayle. We all remember Dan Quayle when he was running for vice president in 1988. He spoke frequently about how the film, the candidate had inspired him, which caused the filmmakers to erupt. Jeremy Larner ended up writing an op-ed for the New York Times where he just blasted Quayle for completely, completely missing the point of the film. Upon its release, it garnered mostly positive reviews, although in this particular case, to me, the negative reviews are the more interesting ones because the critics who did not, who faulted the film, did it for a couple of main reasons. One major one was that they thought the message didn't go far enough that somehow they just, they didn't go as overboard as they probably could have. And another interesting, very common criticism was that the character of Bill McKay in the form of Robert Redford was considered kind of, for lack of a better word, vulgar casting. Because he so clearly, the implication was he so clearly could have been mistaken for a Kennedy and many considered that to be opportunistic casting coming so soon on the heels of RFK's assassination, which was an interesting take that had never really occurred to me before. Although I do think that the California primary aside, this is one of those films where because of the nature of it, the marketing and publicity campaign for the movie really speaks very, very well for capturing the essence of it. And so if you remember the poster, which is basically Robert Redford in what would normally be a portrait pose as a senator, blowing a bubble, he's blowing bubble gum. And I think that that's the perfect contra positioning of imagery to market a film. That tells you in a snapshot exactly what you're about to see when you watch it. The film missed out on most of the major awards, although Jeremy Larner did win the Oscar for best screenplay. And then he later went on, as I mentioned, not only did he become an English professor, but he also wrote on a number of different topics, basically playing off on issues like sleep apnea and environmentalism and cancer, cures for cancer, alternative medicine therapies and practices, really very interesting guy, kind of flew into the radar. So I hope that on this night before an election that the film proved to be a little bit of a distraction, certainly as we go in and whatever happens tomorrow happens that there's always the candidate to revisit. So if there are any thoughts, any comments, any ideas, anybody wanna campaign for someone on their own, feel free to do so with the Q&A. If not, I wanna thank everybody for coming and we will see you hopefully sooner rather than later back at the Playhouse. As I mentioned, November 24th, we're doing the Adventures of Robin Hood and then we'll be continuing the series into December and probably doing Miracle on 34th Street, the original Miracle on 34th Street. And then we will see what the new year brings with regard to our ability to open a little bit more, increase our capacity and hopefully not would start going back towards some normalcy. So thank you very much again for tuning in. We really appreciate your time. And if there are no thoughts or comments, have a good night, everybody. Thanks again.


Think of something like a nacho cheese sauce. Think of something like chicken. Think of something like fish. Think of some real food. All right, guys. Welcome back to the channel. If you're new, my name is Bobby. Guys, it is reaction time again today with the find guru. Alkaline vegan comfort food. It is 2020 and we are still talking about Alkaline food. Unbelievable. Let's do it. This burger, y'all. She's very orange. Okay. So. I don't believe you. I just did the beyond burger taste test. Oh, this Alkaline, yeah. Frying in vegetable oil. What's up, y'all? And welcome back to my channel. So little to say, if you're new to my channel. So in today's video, I'm going to be sharing some of my favorite plant-based as well as Alkaline comfort foods. So let's go ahead and jump right into the recipes. Let's go. Now, this first meal is kind of like a sweet potato bowl. It's something that's filling and hearty. Think about an acai bowl, but instead of an acai base, you have a sweet potato base. As far as the toppings for this bowl, I'm going to add banana, blackberry, walnuts and hip seed.  All right, wait a second. You're going to use a scoop of amaranth for protein just because it comes in a scoop doesn't mean it is protein rich. Amaranth has around about 14 grams of protein per 100 grams. This scoop here is maybe 20 to 30 grams. That's not even five grams of protein. Amaranth is a super grain. It's packed with so many nutrients, so much protein. Amaranth has become one of my favorite alkaline grains. I like to make this, whether it's up with something sweet or with something hearty, I actually use this in my last video. So you can go ahead and check that out. To make the amaranth a super simple, you just boil it over water and it takes anywhere about 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the thickness or consistency that you like it. For the base of my bowl, I'm going to also boil some sweet potatoes and after both of those are boiled, I'm going to add a tiny bit of amaranth on the bottom. I am making a larger portion.  I'm going to actually milk prep this. A teaspoon of vanilla, one fourth tablespoon of cinnamon. This is very creative. And a half a teaspoon of cinnamon. You can also do this to taste. And because I want the base of this smoothie to be very, very thin and milky, I'm going to add about one fourth cup of hemp milk. You can also do this to the consistency of your liking. You have to replace dairy, as always. Now I'm going to go ahead and put this in my ninja blender until it's really have to give it to her. I've never seen anything like this before. Really simple, easy meal to make. Looks pretty disgusting. The amaranth into the sweet potato and add some milk. This is going to be a very smooth consistency. Then I'm topping it off with more amaranth because I feel like it gives it a nice texture. Think of something like grapes or cranberries. And the sweet potatoes as well as the fruit give it a sweet taste.  So I'm going to add some date nectar. Majority of these items are. Yeah, the sugar cravings are real. So what we see here is nothing but carbohydrates. Here you have the blackberries. Here have the bananas. The whole base is made of amaranth and sweet potatoes. It is simply carbohydrates. And because that is not enough, she's pouring date sugar on top. No matter if it is the natural sugar or not, it is still sugar. And therefore will lead to diabetes in the long run. This is what we see here. Nothing more and nothing less. Unfortunately, because we do not have any protein in this meal, despite of what she believes, and we do not have any micronutrients. The alkaline beside the sweet potato.  But this meal you got. All right, listen, your body has buffering systems in order to regulate the pH levels of your blood. Do you understand what would happen if your blood pH would drop or rise? You would die, Dr. Sabi, that all the vegans follow was a scam artist. There is no food that can influence the pH level of your blood. Please wake up. We delicious. It's very filling. It's sweet. It's hearty and it's very healthy, depending on how much date nectar you have. Why is it healthy? The vegans have no idea about nutrition. Explain why? Because it has a banana, because it has a potato, because it has a blackberry. Why is it healthy? You have no idea why it's healthy. All you're eating is non essential carbohydrates. How is this healthy? But dates are natural. So it's nice natural sugars that you're getting. This is perfect for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, midnight snack. It's super sweet, super tasty, super filling. And even though it's comfort food, it is relatively healthy. How? Again, so amazing, so amazing. And it's so filling. You guys will love this, especially with the date nectar. Try date nectar instead of agave. Switch it up a little bit. It's also alkaline. This next meal is. Yeah, no matter what you will pour day trigger on, that stuff will taste sweet. Therefore, you will recognize the sweet with your tongue. You will recognize it as energy. And therefore, you will trick yourself into believing food is down my favorite. These are my plant based crab cakes, and they are bomb, y'all. I'm going to be making the crab cakes out of part of palm. What is that? These are actually really nice because it gives it a really nice texture. I found that with vegan food, as long as the texture is pretty accurate, you can pretty much never seen anything like this. Right. So I'm going to pat these completely dry or as dry as I can. One, it's easy for them to pull apart. And two, it's going to make for a better crab cake. So as you can see, when you pull apart, it kind of looks like crab. Or it might look like a is that Zari me depending on what you think. But I personally think it looks like crab. Super easy to pull apart. And as you can see, it's very meaty, nice job, very meaty looking, you guys. Very meaty looking, nice job tricking your body. Vegans, please understand this. I'm not coming from hate. We all come from a place of love. We just try to save you. When you are craving meat or seafood in this case, ask yourself, why is that so? Why is your body craving animal foods? No, it is not the emotional attachment. No, it is not your mommy that brainwashed you. It is your body wanting nutrition. Every time you put something in your mouth, your body, your tongue, tries to recognize nutrition. In this case, you're fooling yourself and your body believes, yay, we're going to get some protein. Unfortunately, you like to taste as well as a garlic, pepper, raw onions, about two tablespoons of lime juice. And this is also to taste. I'm a very limey person, so I'm going to add lime and then to get that sea taste, I am going to be adding some nori. I found that this actually works good if you kind of roll it up and then you grade it with the cheese grater. Or what you can do is chop it up and then put it in. I add about one fourth cups of nori and a few drops of liquid smoke. You want to be careful because if you OD with this liquid smoke, it'll be too much, but it's going to give it a really nice flavor. She's just trying to replicate that. Well, I'm going to add one fourth cup of garbanzo bean flour. Honestly, you guys, whatever you like your fish to taste like, season it with it's not fish. I like a smoky. OK, let me interrupt you again, honey. Listen, the reason why you cray fish is because of DHA and EPA, vitamin D and bioavailable protein. This is what your body wants. This is what your brain wants. This is what you need. It is very, very simple. Now you mix up this concussion and you are making your body believe that it will get nutrition after this meal.  Ask yourself why lemon garlic type of fish. So that's the kind of seasonings that I wanted to add to my cooking. Oh, man, as you can see, it's starting to look really good. And I also forgot to add my one tablespoon of nutritional yeast, which is going to give it kind of disgusting flavor. So to coat my crab cakes, I'm going to be you must be starving. Honestly, on the one side, you're craving fish. On the other hand, you are craving cheese as well. And therefore you mix everything up. It's really disgusting. Garbanzo beans, as well as a little bit of lemon pepper seasoning and a little tiny bit of nutritional getting as it reflects. Nutritional yeast is going to give it a nice flaky texture. So that's why I also added it on the batter for the breading. And now it's time to turn our little mixture into little crab cakes. And if you guys are concerned with the type of seasonings to use, just use whatever seasoning that you would use to season any type of fish. If you like Cajun, do a Cajun. I don't use anything to season fish because I eat it raw. It's delicious and nutritious. Try it someday. Seasoning style. I personally like a smoky, lemony crab cake. So that's what I'm going to be making for my crab cake seasonings. Now I'm going to be you like smoky, lemony fish.  Dipping all of the crab cakes into the mixture. And then to give it a nice crunch, I'm going to actually take these puffed camoos, which is an alkaline grain. I'm going to dip my crab cakes into the camoos puff. Dr. Sebi, what have you done? And it wouldn't be crab cakes without some type of remoulade or some type of sauce, taking one cup of brazil nuts, a tablespoon of lime juice, adding about one tablespoon of soy sauce, garlic pepper to taste, a little bit of grape seed oil, remoulade is made out of eggs. And I'm going to blend that up in my Ninja blender. As you can see, the consistency is very thick. I also added a tiny, tiny bit of spring water, but as you can see, it's super thick still. So I'm going to actually add a little bit. The whole recipe just tries to replicate the real thing. This is very typical for vegans. More water because I like mine to be a bit more creamy. I'm going to be super heavy handed because this is comfort food, y'all. So I don't do this all the time. So I'm going to go with this grape seed oil and then add my crab cakes to a very, very, very, very, very hot pan of grape seed oil. And I'll see what all of those cravings let you to. Now you're using all of this processed gunk, you mash it together. It is terrible for you as is you're lacking all the vital essential micronutrients. And now you're going to deep fry it in vegetable oil. Don't you see how bad this is for you? If you would go to KFC, at least you would get some protein. Absolutely sad. It's sizzling really nice, the camomile puffs look beautiful. It's going to give it a nice touch on the top. But after about two minutes, I go ahead and flip them. Completely burnt this year, this cancer causing in case you didn't know. I know vegans have issues with understanding what nutrition is. Over until they're golden brown. And now I am highly annoyed because this somehow got out of focus. But now I am plating this with some grilled squash as well as some green beans on top of baby kale. Now everything's in focus and you can actually see how beautiful this meal came out. These crab cakes, y'all are so bomb. But these are absolutely amazing. They taste very, very similar to crab cakes tonight. So nothing on this plate is bioavailable. Nothing on this plate is nutritious. As I said, a thousand times now you're lacking all the micronutrients and you're eating an excess of fiber. This will lead to either constipation or diarrhea. Either way, it will lead to digestive stress. Congrats. Love these. I could probably make these every other day if I wanted to eat that much oil. I was not playing when I say I love my citrus. So I'm going to add even more lime on top. And I don't have a fork, so I'm going to just grab it with my finger. But look at how meaty it looks. I'm sure that underneath all that makeup, you're actually a very beautiful lady. Why do you do that to yourself? It really breaks my heart seeing young people just destroying themselves with this new age agenda, with this absolute brainwashing from the government. Don't do this to yourself. Reclaim your health. Eat animal foods, please. And I'm going to take some of the sauce because the sauce is bomb. The sauce, the Brazil that kind of creates a cheesy taste. So this sauce is kind of like a kind of cheesy. Why do you want cheese? Yet again, people, please use your brain. It is that simple. Your body craves foods because it needs nutrition. All you crave is animal foods, fish, cheese. Why if we are herbivores, if we are frugivores, if we are supposed to be alkaline vegans, why don't we just eat the plants and enjoy them as is? Why do we have to replicate animal foods? I can't. This is so. Right. No matter if I take a piece of paper and fry it in oil, it will taste good. This is why we fry stuff, but by no means is this healthy. The liquid smoke really sets the whole thing off. Yeah, it reminds you of meat. Hard flavored, like barbecue, like, yeah. But this hearts of palm. You can see. It it's amazing. These make these. If there's one thing, make these bomb. All right. I won't. Let's get. Now I'm going to take a little break and mention today's sponsor. It's a pretty good wig that you're wearing. Looks good. Taking a quick little break to share a new plant based. No, I don't want to watch this. And this last and final meal in this video is going to be my alkaline chicken nuggets. These are going to be made out of mushrooms. Vegan logic. Alkaline chicken. Fantastic. Alkaline is a scam. Alkaline is a lie. You cannot change the pH level of your blood.  I already told you that now chicken. Really? Ask yourself why? Why do you torture yourself so much? You want the flesh. You want the fatty, greasy chicken skin. You want the nutrients. Why do you do this? I'm going to take two very large portobello mushrooms and rest and chop them. I'm going to take a half a cup of saltfowl. One teaspoon of ginger powder. One teaspoon of sea salt. One teaspoon of onion powder. And a half a tablespoon of oregano and add a little bit of spring water. And mix that till it's well combined. Add my portobello mushrooms into the bowl. And then after those are mixed up, sometimes I actually like to... So you're going to replace chicken with mushrooms. Ah, chicken has bioavailable protein. You do understand this. Mushrooms have none. It doesn't matter that it's choose similar. You're not getting nutrition. Sometimes I actually like to leave them a little bit longer so that it actually soaks up the seasoning that I've put into the flour. And then I'm going to add that into a bowl of just plain spelt flour. You can season the spelt flour if you want to and just be O.D. Like I usually am with heavy handed with the wet flour. So I don't really feel like I need to season the dry flour. And I'm also going to make a dipping sauce for this. So I don't really need to season the dry flour. Now I'm going to be heavy handed again with the grape seed oil. So I'm going to cover the whole bottom of the pan with grape seed oil. Because you're on KFC. I'm very, very, very, very, very high heat. Then add my mushrooms in. You want to make sure that the heat is high so you can get a nice crispy. I leave it on for about two minutes. Alkaline. It doesn't make sense. These mushrooms are so good. But this is something that I want to make that's quick and easy. And as I mentioned, I am making this with a dipping sauce. I didn't really need to go ham on the seasoning for these mushrooms. After this is cooked for a total of about four to five minutes. I am then going to put this on a bed of baby kale so that it can burn it to the ground. This is 100 percent purely alkaline. I'm also going to be making and showing you guys. OK, guys, there you have it. Dr. Sabi, this is what you created. This is 100 percent purely alkaline. Burnt veggies, burnt veggies in vegetable oil replicating animal flesh. This is 100 percent alkaline. Super healthy for you if you want to get cancer. An alkaline sauce that I like to pair with this using a red bell pepper. I'm going to be starting with a cup of brisket. Then adding cayenne pepper to taste. Half a teaspoon of ginger powder. This is a tragedy. Then a half a teaspoon of onion powder. Sea salt to taste and some spring water. Then after roasting my red bell pepper, I'm going to add my bell pepper into the combination and also add a little bit of lime juice and put it into my ninja. I can't even follow. This sauce is super good. Think of something like a nacho cheese sauce or if you think of something like a nacho cheese sauce, think of something like chicken. Think of something like fish. Think of some real food. Now, this is not alkaline, but this is also a comfort food that I have been making, which is a spicy chicken mushroom sandwich, but minus the chicken. So I'm going to be adding and adding some chalula hot sauce. I know I had sauce on it, but I love me some chalula. And this is going to be like a spicy chicken sandwich. And no type of burger is complete without any avocado. So I'm going to put a few slices of avocado. This is comfort food. This burger is so bomb, y'all.  The sauce that I made really sets it off because of the food chain. 2020 top of the food chain, all the resources in the world. You are living in America. What do you do to yourself?  A cheesy nacho taste. Cheesy. She can't get enough. She can't get enough. She needs animal foods. Look at this. What is this? It's one of those things that I can't really believe it's vegan. Cringe. But it is even the mushrooms look meaty. But these are my comfort foods that are plant based and alkaline. You can obviously tweak the ingredients to make it more alkaline or purely alkaline. But I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thank you guys so much for watching. And if you guys are interested in Green Chef, all the information will be down below in the description box. Thank you guys so much for watching. And I will see you in the next upload. Maybe. Beesoo. Mwah. Beesoo. Fantastic. All right. And this is it. The video is long enough as is. What you saw is a typical display of a starving vegan. They all want the real thing. It is normal. Don't deny yourself. God gave us animals to eat. Now you're starving yourself with manmade foods with creations that come in a plastic packaging made by industries for you. You are brainwashed. You are following a slave diet. All right, guys, but this is it for today's video. If you liked it, leave it a thumbs up. If you haven't subscribed already, guys, please do so. And if you want to support this channel, all the links are in the description box below. If you want raw grass-fed liver, but you cannot stand the taste, grassland nutrition has the solution. Grassland nutrition takes grass-fed organic beef liver raw and freeze-dries it for you. It is a convenient, fantastic way to get the nutrition of liver without the taste. We have Amazon links for you. You can head over there, buy whatever you might want to buy, and it doesn't cost you anything extra. We get a small share that is a fantastic way to support Bobby's perspective. If you want grass-fed beef delivered to your doorstep, butcher boxes for you. And we have CBD links as well. On top of that, guys, consider supporting Bobby's perspective through subscribe star or Patreon. We have a VIP community there where we have Skype group calls every single week where we can discuss any topic, no matter if it is health, lifestyle or nutrition related. On top of that, by joining you straight away, receive your comprehensive nutrition guide. It is an e-book that teaches you the basics of nutrition, but goes beyond as well and is catering to your personal goals, no matter if you're keto, primal, paleo or even raw. All right, but this is it for today. Thank you very much for your support, guys. And as always, much love and peace.


When it comes to top-down adventure games, most of us are used to sword and sorcery fantasy type stuff. But in Star Tropics, you play as Mike Jones. Who? Mike Jones, who's visiting his uncle Steve, a famous archaeologist. Only he's gone missing because he's been kidnapped by aliens, so we gotta find him by going through mazes, defeating monsters, and finding out information from talking animals.  What? Well, Star Tropics is a bit more science fiction than fantasy. However, while the story is unique for the 8-bit adventure genre, everything else is pretty much what you'd expect. There's the familiar overworld view, and the dungeon or town view. There's puzzles. There's dungeons. There's the usual array of enemies. There's the heart meter. There's the heart containers to increase your heart meter. There's special items. You get the idea. It's all borrowing elements from Dragon Warrior, and of course from Legend of Zelda and Zelda II to a certain extent. I mean, the file select screen here is exactly the same as Legend of Zelda, which is odd. Star Tropics does have one notable unique puzzle, however, where the game instructs you to take a flyer that came packaged with the game and soak it in water to reveal a code. Now, that's cool. However, I can't imagine how mad I'd be if I rented this game and got that far and wasn't able to do that. But yeah, while this game looks very similar to games like Legend of Zelda, it's much more linear. Point A to point B. Anyway, the action here is top-down adventure-style stuff, where you can move in four directions. Unlike Legend of Zelda, you can jump, however, so that's nice. One odd aspect is that you have to turn to face the direction you want to move before you actually move. That's kind of annoying at first, but you get used to it. The structure here is similar to later games like Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia, where you either beat all the enemies to progress, or you have to solve a puzzle. That brings me to one flaw in Star Tropics. This game is pretty hard. Once you get to about level 5 or so, it picks up big time. And the last couple levels, woof.  Another aspect of Star Tropics that people may not like is that this is one of those games where you have to talk to everyone to progress. Every single NPC, even if they have absolutely nothing to say. But on the off chance you miss someone, you'll be stuck. This doesn't bother me that much, because I'm one of those detail freaks when I play games like this, I have to go everywhere and talk to everyone anyway, but I can see why this would be annoying. Despite those two flaws though, Star Tropics is a very good game, and one of my favorite things about it is the music. You spend a lot of time in dungeons fighting monsters in this game, and it would have been the game's death now, had the music been annoying. Thankfully though, it's refreshingly cheerful.  Anyway, yes, Star Tropics is worth playing today, and no, it's not just tropical Zelda. Yes, it's a lot more linear, yes it's really hard, and yes it's easy to get stuck in the story if you forget to talk to someone. But the game looks and sounds great, and the story especially is something different. It's pretty funny at times, if it's not really effing weird. Star Tropics did get a sequel, Star Tropics 2's Zelda's Revenge, but I have not played that one. But yeah, if you haven't played the first Star Tropics, get the bananas out of your ears and go check it out, it's on the Wii Virtual Console.


One thing which the deliberation was very clear that there are linkages across bio-physical and social and economic world. For example, you know, the trades, investments impacting forests, you know, pricing a structure for the forest products causing deforestation. So that brings the need for trans-disciplinary approach to understand the problem and to design the intervention and response policies for effective and better management of forest resources. So this was one part, but that I thought was a very good, you know, lessons from that discussion. Nearly everybody, every panelist, they accepted the need for having a methodological, you know, pluralism in the sense that different methodology comes together to address the problem. So that was another interesting finding. Third, that it was very clear from the panel that we don't have no choice whether we should go for a different paradigm called green economy or not. The issue is how to do it. People are buying a large convince that, yes, we need. If we really want to cater to the aspiration and needs of 7 billion people, 195 countries in the world, then I think the best approach is to bring the economy on the path of sustainability where you address the problem of climate change, halt the land degradation and loss of biodiversity. So that very clearly came from the discussion. There are very interesting findings in terms of solution to the local problem. Now, how to upscale that local solution at the regional and national scale? I think that requires a lot of thinking and if we are able to come out with, if not solution, then the condition that if these are fulfilled, then you can upscale the local solution at the national scale. I think that will be very helpful and very good in moving towards green economy and durable growth and economic development. To tell you the truth that some of our hypothesis have got reinforced about transdisciplinary approach, about the linkages of one sector with the others and again the issues that how to create political buying in and capacity. Those are the things we are struggling in operationalizing green economy and that also emerged from this panel discussion. So that gives me a kind of confidence that we are on the right track. It will be very motivating for my fellow economist and the resource managers and the fellow diplomats in the UN system that the scientific community coming from Earth Institute and C4, they also conform to the issues which we are struggling with.


Hi, this is Allison Sheridan of the NoCillicast podcast, hosted at podfeed.com, a technology geek podcast with an ever-so-slight Apple bias. Today is Sunday, October 22nd, 2023, and this is show number 963. If you've ever needed to get feedback from a group of people, using the free Google Forms is a great way to do it. You can create surveys, give feedback on a class you've taught, help organize a family reunion, or even create quizzes. I've used it to organize the party we used to throw for the NoCillicastaways at Macworld, and during the pandemic we created a form for what food our friends wanted delivered on Thanksgiving, and I once did a survey to determine the first five apps Mac users install on a new Mac. Spoiler, one password was number one by a long shot. Anyway, I mention all of this because last week, ScreenCast Online has published my video tutorial on how to use all of the features of Google Forms. Go sign up for the free trial and watch it at ScreenCastOnline.com. Right before Steve and I left to drive to Utah, Steve realized that he couldn't find his iPhone. This happens pretty often, but this time, you know, the car was packed, the windshield was washed, the goodbyes were said to the animals, we were ready to go. Now as one does, Steve used the side button on his Apple Watch and he tapped the icon to ping his iPhone, but we didn't hear the happy chime from his phone. Now this feature rarely fails us, and it was even more surprising because he has a brand spanking new iPhone 15 Pro and the Apple Watch Series 9. This year's newly released iPhones and Apple Watches sport the second generation Ultra Wideband or UWB chip. This new chip is supposed to pinpoint the location even better than before. Instead of the watch just being able to ping the phone, the Apple Watch now shows you an approximate distance as you look for it. It's just like that kids game where you're trying to find a hidden item and everyone's yelling, warmer, colder, warmer, colder. Anyway, since Steve couldn't hear his iPhone responding, he started wandering around the house while watching the distance change on his watch. Concurrently, I used the tried and true method employed by spouses everywhere. I looked in all of the weird places where I'd found Steve's phone before. After a few frustrating and unsuccessful minutes, Steve and my searches converged near the downstairs powder room. Steve said that the lowest distance he had been able to find was nine feet and it was while he was standing in the powder room. But whenever he went out of the powder room, the number went up. I suddenly knew where the phone was. Like Con in the second Star Trek movie we had been thinking in two dimensions. I decided to think out of the plane and I went directly upstairs from where Steve was standing. Sure enough, his phone was in our closet directly above the powder room.  Think inside the box, but remember the box is three-dimensional. Last December, my buddy Ron and I had a chat for the NoCillicast on why we both love Stage Manager on the Mac. In the last 10 months, my love for Stage Manager has not dwindled a bit. Even with my devotion, there was one thing that still felt really clumsy. Let's say I'm writing an email to someone and I want to add an attachment. With mail in the foreground of Stage Manager, I can get to the finder in two different ways. I can command-tab to it, or I can click on a finder window that I see in the stacks on the left. If there's a stack with just a finder window open, that window will pop into visibility and the mail window will go into a stack. While I can drag the item from the finder, now I don't have the mail app visible to drag it into. In order to get both apps visible at the same time, I have to have one app visible and then click and drag the second one on screen. That's dandy again if the finder window is the only thing in that stack or if it's on the top thing in a stack. But sometimes the finder window is in a stack with another app, so I have to drag the first app into visibility, then drag the finder into visibility, and finally hide that second app again. This is a glorious example of faffing about. Now at this point, if you're not already a fan of Stage Manager, I may have convinced you to never try it, but please bear with me on a tiny tip that solves this problem. I was listening to the HomeKit Insider podcast from the fine folks at Apple Insider, hosted by Andrew O'Hara and Steven Robles. It's a great show. Anyway, I heard one of the gentlemen briefly mention a better way of moving windows around when using Stage Manager. He said that you can hold down Shift Command while clicking on an app in the stack, and then Apple immediately joined the current main window. It is awesome. No more dragging in and out and command-tabbing around. I can't believe how much more efficient Stage Manager is with this tiny trick. Now, I've been using the drag and drop problem to illustrate the value of this Shift Command click trick for Stage Manager, but remember, there's a lot of times you just want to see two apps at the same time. It rocks for that, too. Sometimes you have more than one application open in a stack. Let's use our mail example, and you need a Finder window, but it's in a stack with Safari, and you can see in the stack it's actually behind Safari. If you can get your cursor onto the edge of that hidden Finder window when you hit Shift Command, then just that Finder window will come forward, not Safari. Sometimes it's a little tricky to get just that window, but most of the time I'm pretty successful with it. Now, in September of this year, I explained how I use Yoink with Stage Manager. It solves the drag and drop problem, and I'm still a fan, but it doesn't solve the problem of bringing up a stacked application window, and it requires buying and installing a $9 app. I'm gleefully happy about Shift Command click in a stack to make my Stage Manager experience even happier. Well, next up, we've got Steve, or as he likes to call himself, Steve the husband, on the show here to talk about some of the things he did from a technology perspective that are pretty cool while we were viewing the Eclipse this last weekend in Utah. So let's listen to Steve. In August, I gave you my review of the Insta360 X3 Action Cam. My ending line of the review was the camera has so many features I haven't discovered, let alone use them all yet, so I have a lot of fun ahead of me finding out what this action camera can really do. I've continued discovery of features, and one of my favorites is the X3's ability to capture star trails in the night sky as they appear, at least from our view in the Northern Hemisphere, to rotate counterclockwise around the North Star. In the Southern Hemisphere, the effect is opposite, where they appear to rotate in the clockwise direction, but there is no prominent Southern pole star around which they rotate. Living in the depths of Los Angeles County, we're lucky if we see a few dozen stars due to light pollution, but we took some recent trips to more remote locations where I could give it a try. Our latest trip was to Utah with the goal of seeing the annular eclipse that occurred on October 14th. Our first stop was to visit our friends Dean and Suzanne, who live in Springdale, Utah, nestled next to Zion National Park. Yeah, it's a difficult assignment, but someone has to do it. Coincidentally, Springdale recently earned an International Dark Sky certification because of the town's successful efforts to eliminate light pollution, so it was an ideal place to try to capture star trails. I had to study up on how to capture star trails with my X3 camera, and then I did my first test while we were up in Mammoth a month or so ago. It worked pretty well, but a nearby cabin light was going on and off during the night, so it wasn't ideal. Now that I had a successful test case, I made some notes for myself and I could reproduce the effect for the trip to Utah. I'm going to list the steps and settings to capture the star trails that I used with my Insta X3 camera. They aren't meant to be a tutorial, but if you have an Insta 360 X3, they'll give you a good starting point for your own experiments. OK, to capture the star trails, first connect the Insta 360 iPhone app to the X3 camera. Then select the camera icon at the bottom of the screen. And then select manual or M mode. Now we set the shutter speed to 30 seconds, the ISO to 1000, and the white balance to 5500K. Then we connect the X3 to a power bank so that we can shoot all night without running out of battery. But before begin shooting, tightly wrap the camera, except the lenses of course, with foil to prevent bleed-through of the display light and other lights into the lens. Be sure the camera is in the 360 mode and click the shutter button to begin taking an overnight series of star laps photos. After you're done shooting star laps in the morning, click on stories, slide down to star laps, and select the video just captured to create the star laps video. Now the camera will take some time to create this effect. Optionally you can do further edits by adding music or titles or other effects that the X3 offers, finally we'll export using the custom settings, color plus, remove grain, highest resolution, and highest bit rate settings. We'll export that video using reframe to get the perspective you want, and then be sure to update the keyframe to save that perspective before you export. And that does it. If you're interested in seeing the result, I've included in my blog post that a background music added for effect. For those who watch the entire video and are very observant, there's an artifact near the end of the video where a passing car momentarily lights up an object in the foreground. That, of course, was unintentional. Leave a comment in the blog post if you can identify what that object is. You also might notice a few streaks that appear in directions different from the star trails. The streaks that appear dotted or dashed are passing aircraft, and a few of the streaks are more continuous and are possibly overhead satellites, particularly if they appear near the beginning, just after sunset, or end, just before sunrise, of the video. From Dean and Suzanne's, we traveled to Torrey, a small town in southern Utah. We chose Torrey since it was in the path where the annular eclipse would be fully formed. From this location, we were able to view the sun for a little over four minutes while the moon was perfectly centered over it. Unlike a total solar eclipse where the moon fully covers the sun, leaving just the glowing corona surrounding the moon, during an annular eclipse the moon is farther from the earth and thus appears smaller than the sun. As a result, the moon doesn't completely cover the sun, but instead creates the classic Ring of Fire spectacle. You can read about our exploits in filming a total solar eclipse from our trip to Vecunia, Chile in 2019, and there's a link in the blog post to see that. Since the X3 does not support magnification well, it's really designed for wide angle shots, I took video of the annular eclipse using a 4K camcorder, the Panasonic HC-WXF991 with 20 to 1 magnification and a solar filter over the lens.  You can go to the blog post to see the time lapse video I created of the annular eclipse as we viewed it from Tora, Utah. Now if you watch the video you might notice a couple small dark spots in the sun in the lower left quadrant. These are not dust particles on the camera lens, but sun spots on the sun's surface caused by active regions where the sun's temperature and light is reduced. They often appear in pairs that we see in the video. Now for the bad news about my filming of the eclipse. The main draw for viewing this eclipse is the 4 plus minutes where the moon was perfectly centered over the sun. During this time, the sun's outer ring appears as a brightly glowing annulus against a somewhat darkened sky. As I mentioned before, we traveled all this way to view that ring and the weather was clear so we got a gorgeous view of the Ring of Fire. As you might imagine, I'm hoping to capture that Ring of Fire with my camcorder. Now I was successful in collecting all of the phases of the eclipse from beginning to end on video, but if you look closely you might have noticed that I did not capture the moon perfectly centered on the sun in the video. When I got back home to download and start processing the video I discovered, much to my dismay that I had accidentally turned off the camcorder just before the eclipse and turned it on as the ring phase ended. I think this happened because I was already recording but thought the camera was off so I thought I was turning on the recording. Imagine my disappointment after all of my preparation and travel finding out I did not capture the main event. Let this be a teaching moment to anyone else. Confirm your video camera is in record mode when you really want to record something. All was not lost though I was able to make lemonade out of lemons by creating the time lapse video of the eclipse phases. In the blog post I leave you with a photo of a nearly full annulus which is the closest I came to capturing the ring of fire just before I turned off the video camera. As Maxwell Smart used to say missed it by that much. Okay Steve, that is exactly the perfect description of this. Now the good thing is I have never thought I was taking video when I was actually had just turned off the camera and I know none of you have ever done it either but I was amazed at how well Steve took this because he did so much work to carry all the equipment, get it already and get it set up and everything and then to have missed just the some might call it the most important part because we could have seen a partial annular eclipse from our house. We drove eight hours and then another three and a half hours to get there just to see the full it's just called an annular eclipse. Anyway I still think his videos came out really cool and the time lap star trails are fantastic. Yes, that music means we have yet another tiny tip. I recently told you about how I made pretty screenshots of my Apple Watch including nice watch frames and pretty watch bands. I explained how in order to accomplish this feat I downloaded the free app Watch Shot. It's an easy to use app and produces beautiful Apple Watch screenshots but you do have to spend a little bit of time choosing which watch frame you want and which band you want on the screenshot. If you're looking for a more quick and dirty method that still clearly shows that your screenshot is from an Apple Watch there's an easier way. Stephen Ramirez, also known as at SR in our Podfeat Slack which you should all join at podfeat.com slash Slack. Anyway Stephen posted a very clever idea to get a screenshot of the Apple Watch with a kind of cartoon watch frame and no band using only native Apple tools. Stephen explained that if you have an Apple Watch Series 6 or newer paired to your iPhone you can enable screen mirroring of the watch onto your iPhone screen. Once he had screen mirroring enabled he simply took a screenshot of the phone and cropped it to square to just show the Apple Watch. I remember when screen mirroring of the Apple Watch was enabled but I had entirely forgotten all about it. Stephen even included a link to the Apple Support article that explains how to set up Apple Watch mirroring. It's a really simple process. You open settings on the iPhone and navigate to accessibility. Under physical and motor controls you'll see Apple Watch screen mirroring. When you select it you'll see a simple toggle to enable screen mirroring of the Apple Watch on the iPhone. As soon as you flip the toggle on you'll see a card slide up from the bottom of the iPhone screen that says the name Apple Watch and shows the Apple Watch screen with a gray cartoon watch frame. It's not fancy like the ones from Watch Shot but it does the job effectively of illustrating that this little rectangular screenshot is actually an Apple Watch screenshot. Now what you do you've got this, so you've got this Apple Watch up on screen with its little cartoon you take a screenshot of the iPhone by pressing the up volume and power buttons at the same time. You have to have that feature enabled also on the iPhone. Anyway Apple Watch launches markup with the screenshot you just took and from there you can crop in on the little image of the Apple Watch with its cartoon frame. Save it to photos or files or airdrop it to your Mac. That's it. No third party app required. When I tested Stephen's cool trick I played around a little bit with Apple Watch mirroring to iPhone. Guess what else you can do? You can actually interact with the Apple Watch using the mirror display on the iPhone. You can swipe up and down and select things on the watch screen using the iPhone. Not only that, you can actually tap the side button and the digital crown to do things. It's really kind of fun. But what problem does it actually solve to be able to do this? I could think of a couple of ways it could be useful. I could see it as a nifty way to allow you to record a video on the iPhone to teach people some Apple Watch tricks. If you connected your iPhone via cable to your Mac you could share its screen on applications like Zoom so you could do live demos with family, friends, or user groups. Now it may work to connect your iPhone to Zoom and other applications without a cable but I didn't actually test that because I'm figuring that since the watch is mirroring to the phone you might not be able to mirror from the phone to the computer without a cable. So I didn't actually test that. Anyway, I made a little video by calling myself on Zoom and I shared my iPhone to the call and then I recorded the call while screen mirroring the Apple Watch to it. I cropped it down and it actually looks pretty cute. You can look for it in the show notes. Now if all this sounds like something you'd like to do more often than once in a blue moon like maybe you teach people all the time and you like to be able to do this you might want a way to enable screen mirroring even more quickly. iOS has something called the accessibility shortcut which allows you to quickly launch accessibility tools with a triple click of the side button on the phone. You can add items to that triple click of the side button by going into settings, accessibility and down at the bottom under general you'll see accessibility shortcut. When selected you'll see a giant list of accessibility options and if you tap Apple Watch mirroring it'll be added to the triple click shortcut. If you only have one accessibility option selected then triple clicking the side button will instantly launch screen mirroring of the Apple Watch. I should say if that's the only thing you have added. If you add more than one option to the accessibility shortcut then triple clicking the side button will show you the list of options you've added and you simply tap to enable whichever one you want. Now this is definitely one of those things we're trying to explain it is much clumsier than just doing it yourself. The only sad thing about all of this is that halfway through writing up this article about it screen mirroring of the Apple Watch to my iPhone stopped working. It pops up just fine and says the name of my watch but the watch representation on the iPhone stays black, spins the watch disconnected. I followed Apple's advice and rebooted both devices I toggled airplane mode on and off and I made sure neither device was set to do not disturb but none of that brought screen mirroring back to life. I think I figured out what was wrong so if this does happen you listen up. The newer watches have always on capability but when you're not actively fussing with the watch the screen goes kind of dim. I found that if I made a point of fiddling with my watch face when I was trying to start up screen mirroring it would always work so that's a bonus tiny tips thrown in there for free. So thanks Stephen so much for reminding us about screen mirroring and giving us a much easier way to create illustrative screenshots of the Apple Watch. So you know who's awesome? Tom Maddock. Not only does he do occasional reviews for the podcast and not only is he a six year patron of the podcast but he just doubled his pledge on Patreon. Told you he's awesome. If you'd like to be awesome like Tom head over to podfeed.com and pledge your support to the shows we do here at the podfeed podcast. I've talked a lot about the process of nuking and paving my Macs over the years and I just finished the process a couple of weeks ago. I've mentioned that I have a giant mind map that I follow to install all of my apps and to configure all of them. I was wondering would you like me to go maybe walk through every single app I install and how I configure them in the pave half of the nuke and pave? It's only like 15 pages long in outline form? Yeah, I didn't think so. But I do a lot of little tweaks to macOS and Apple's built-in apps to make it just the way I like it after a nuke and I thought that might actually be of interest to many of you. So we're going to go through a bunch of different things. The first thing is going to be Finder. There are quite a few settings I change in the Finder that I find makes computing life easier. With the standard Finder window there are three bars that are really useful to have visible at all times. The toolbar across the top is on by default which gives you the access to a number of buttons to control things like changing from icon to list or column view, grouping of files, sharing and more. But two other bars are off by default and I feel paralyzed without them. Under the view menu in Finder you can turn on the path bar and the status bar. The path bar shows at the bottom of Finder windows and it shows you the full path graphically back to the root folder. For example, I have a folder of images I was working on for this article and I could see with one of them selected that the folder it's in is called paving. That's inside this week's no-silicast folder which is inside no-silicast weekly files which is inside a no-silicast folder which is inside of a folder called podfeed which lives in documents which is inside of iCloud Drive. And maybe you don't always need to pay attention to the full path like that but if you do have the path bar showing you can do magical things like jump to a much higher directory in the path simply by clicking on the icon in the path bar or you can even drag files up the path using the path bar. We learned that little trick from Helmuff in the Netherlands a little while ago. The even more critical bar to keep showing in Finder windows at all times is the status bar. This sits below the path bar and it tells you how many files are in the currently selected folder as well as how much space is available on your disk. If the selected folder is in iCloud Drive you'll actually see how much space you have left in the cloud. I use the status bar really often when I'm comparing two folders that are supposed to have the same contents. Rather than counting the files I can quickly tell at a glance looking at the status bar because it tells me the number of files. One of the silliest user interface in my decisions Apple has made in the past few years has been to have certain features only visible when you hover over something. The worst example of this is how if you hover over the title of a Finder window you'll see the folder icon appear but if you move away it disappears again. Who would want this? Anyway that window title icon is super useful. If you're in a save as dialogue box in any application and you have the folder into which you want to move open and finder at the same time you can drag that little folder icon into the save as dialogue box and it will change where you save to that open folder. I use this all day long. One of the first things I do when I set up a new Mac or pave an existing one is to tell the system to stop hiding that icon for me. I have trouble remembering what it's called so it's super hard to search for where to turn that darn hiding off but I'm documenting it now so I'll be able to go back and look it up. It's in system settings accessibility display show window title icons.  I have no more idea why this is hidden inside accessibility than I understand why Apple chose to hide the icon from us in the first place. I don't favor icon view when perusing a folder but it's the only way to view your desktop which is curious now that you think about it. Anyway, for some reason Apple seems to think that most of us are comfortable living in anarchy with our files and folders just sprinkled haphazardly around on our desktops. I'm sure you don't like it that way any more than I do. Up in the finder view menu look for sort by and you'll see several options. One is to snap to grid which is a good first step because at least when you drag things around they'll stay in neat little columns and rows but I go a step further and I sort by name. This option causes snap to grid to be enabled and alphabetizes your desktop files as nature intended and as a bonus prize it puts your drives up at the top. Did you say you can't see your drives in external disks? Take a quick trip to finder settings and choose which items you'd like visible. Hard disks, external disks, CDs, DVDs and iPods and connected servers. I know iPods and connected media right? Optical media that makes a lot of sense. Even hard disks are an antiquated term for internal disk these days but it's sitting up there in that menu. I think it's curious that this setting isn't in the view menu but instead it's within finder settings so I'm always bouncing back and forth between those two trying to find it but I guess we should be happy that they didn't hide it in accessibility right? While you're in the finder settings menu did you change the location of where new finder windows open? I find no value in the Recents folder which is selected by default so I always change this to my home folder. Now let's switch gears and change over to talking about iCloud Drive. I'm a big fan of syncing desktop and documents through iCloud Drive. I get that there's a lot of reasons why you might not want to do that but I personally like having all of my documents available on both of my Macs and on my iPad and on my iPhone all within the files app. I purposely bought my MacBook Pro with a 4TB drive so that I would never have to make compromises on what I could keep locally. This giant drive allows me to keep my 100,000 plus photos in full resolution. Having them locally means I can back them up locally and not entirely depend on Apple to protect my precious photos. When you enable syncing via iCloud Drive for desktop and documents it'll default to optimize storage. This means that it will move files into the cloud that you haven't used recently if it needs to save storage for you. In my experience it does that even if it's not running out of space because with 4TB I'm not running out of space. So just like with my photos I would like all of my documents to always be local. I don't want to have to depend on an internet connection in order to access my own files. To enable syncing of your desktop and documents start by opening system settings select your Apple ID at the top select iCloud then iCloud Drive. In the window that pops up turn on the toggles for both sync this Mac and desktop and documents folders. Now in order to make sure your files are always stored locally if you want to be like me back on the iCloud page you'll see a toggle for optimize Mac storage. This will be toggled on by default but if you have enough local storage you might want to toggle that off. Now let's switch gears to mail.  I have several email addresses but I like my default emails to come from allisonatpodfeed.com when you first set up a new Mac Apple tells you that it knows best if you open up mail settings and select the composing tab you'll see that it will automatically send quote from best account unquote. No idea how it decides what is the best account but I can tell you for me it's almost always wrong. I change mine to my professional email address and if I'm writing to my friends or family I can always change it on the fly to my personal address. I found that this setting is not particularly sticky though it seems to degrade over time on all of my different devices so it's a good idea to keep an eye on that address from which mail is sending. Now I don't think I'm alone in being fussy about what fonts I use when viewing and creating content. In Apple Mail on the font and colors tab within settings you can change the message list font and the message font and you can set a fixed width font. I'm not particular about the colors for indented quoted text but if that blows your dress up you can change that as well. I've become fond of the Roboto Lite font which I downloaded from Google Fonts years ago and Courier is my go-to for a fixed width font. If you're not fussy about your fonts you might want to change the size of the fonts for the message list and for your messages.  You can set them to be smaller than the defaults. If you're a wee bit older you might want to increase the size. All of this is available in the fonts and colors tab in mail settings. I find it amusing that when we continue to use terms and iconography that used to have physical meaning and yet no longer do. A perfect example is that every save icon is a picture of a floppy disk and I would bet most younger folks have never seen one. Another great example is the term CC and BCC in an email. Even if you're of the younger set you may know that it stands for carbon copy and blind carbon copy but like the floppy disk you may not know the origin story. Back in my day before computers came on the scene for typing if we wanted a copy of something being typed we had to put a piece of carbon paper between two pieces of paper. When you typed on the top sheet it would imprint on the carbon and transfer the letters to the sheet underneath. By the way I looked on Amazon and you can buy carbon paper today. It's kind of funny though that still exists like lots and lots of hits. I might buy some just to play with it. Anyway when you wrote a letter to someone it was considered good form to type CC followed by the name of anyone who received a carbon copy letter you were sending. But if you didn't want the recipient to know that you were sending a copy to someone else that was called a blind carbon copy. Now in Apple Mail by default you can see the to field and you can see the carbon copy field but you don't see the blind carbon copy field. If you want to send an email to say a large group of people it's considered good form to hide their email addresses from each other and the blind carbon copy field is where you do that. In order to be able to send blind carbon copies go to the view menu in mail and select BCC address field. If you only want to see the BCC address field occasionally and your keyboard shortcut junkie you can use option command B to toggle it on and off. Now since Apple first introduced its mail app the most recent messages have always been at the top. I wish I knew why but the default is now to show new messages at the bottom. If you open mail settings and select the viewing tab you'll find a nice little checkbox that says show most recent messages at the top as it should be. I also check the box right next to it that says mark all messages as read when opening a conversation. Drives me bananas when I see that blue dot next to a long message thread and I have to scroll through all of the messages trying to figure out which one is on read. Now here's a bonus tiny tip that I learned from the Mac Geek app. If you select the blue message within a thread and hold down command shift U it will toggle that one message unread and read. If you apply command shift U to a thread where every message has been read it gets a little weird it only toggles some of the messages as unread. But if any of the messages in the thread are marked as unread it will mark them all as read with just that key combo. No more scrolling to find the blue dot. I plan on using this often because I like to leave just the very last message in a thread unread to remind me to respond to it and it makes me crazy if the whole thing is unread so like let's say there's 8 I'll be thinking oh no I have 8 unread emails but it isn't true it's only one that I really want to get back to so I'm going to use this control to quickly see and give that one blue dot. Probably the most irritating thing about a fresh install of macOS is when you open an audio file and it imports the audio file into Apple Music. I literally have never wanted that to be the option. I also never remember to fix this until the first time it happens on a clean install. The trick to fix it is to select an audio file in the Finder such as say an mp3 and then in the Finder menu bar choose File, Get Info or simply hold down Command I to bring up the Get Info window. This will give you a lot of fun information about the file. Partway down you should see something that says Open With. May have a chevron meaning to the right which indicates it can be open. Within there there will be a drop down menu which is most likely set to Apple Music. I change audio files to open in Quicktime. Below that you will see it says Change All. When selected you'll be asked to confirm that you want to make such a drastic scary change but just say yes. Once you've done this for mp3 files you have to rinse and repeat for WAV files, AIFF files and m4a files. Pretty much all your audio file formats. It's a bit of a hassle to do the first time but it's a lot harder to accidentally open files in Apple Music and then have to go get rid of all those files that are cluttering up your music library. By the way, you can change when applications open your files of any type not just audio files. For example I set PNG files to open in Shutter so I can easily annotate them or pin them to the screen. I set SVG files to open in Affinity Designer and DocX files to open in Apple Pages. Alright, let's go on Safari now. Years ago, Apple made a very silly decision for one setting in Safari. If you look at the General tab at the bottom you'll see a checkbox that says and I quote, open SAFE files after downloading. SAFE files include movies, pictures, sounds, texts, documents and archives. This box is checked on by default. I suppose it might be pleasing to have files open automatically after you download them but how does Apple know that these files are safe? I mean especially archives they could contain just about anything including executable files. I recommend giving yourself the opportunity to make sure that you were the one who downloaded a file before deciding to open it automatically. I unchecked this box the first time I opened Safari. I have a couple Safari extensions that I really like. If you open up Safari settings and select the extensions tab you can add new extensions. One password for Safari is a fan favorite that gets installed first thing. I like to use Grammarly to check my spelling, grammar and punctuation in all applications on my Mac and I also install the Grammarly for Safari extension. Anytime I'm typing in a web form Grammarly helps me keep from appearing uneducated. Now last year I told you about a terrific Safari extension called Keyword Search and if anything I am a bigger fan today than ever before. In a nutshell Keyword Search allows me to type just a couple of letters into the search bar of my Safari windows to tell it which website I want to search. For example, to search my own site I only type SP before my search term for search pod feet. I use GI to do a Google image search SEO to search screencasts online and SPBS to search the programming by Stealth show notes. I would feel like I have my hands tied around my back now with the Keyword Search Safari extension. I also have an extension called Open Access Helper written by no-silicast-away Klaus Wolf. I don't often need to use it myself but it's an extension that helps you find open versions of research papers that might be under a paywall on your first search. Now it's not bypassing any copy protection it's just searching in other legitimate resources where information is more freely distributed. Since I don't do this kind of research I keep it on my Mac just sometimes I need it but I don't enable it until I need it. If you do, it might be a great extension for you. Now I got a little nerd alert here if you're a developer or if you occasionally want to see what's under the hood on a web page there's a secret menu you can enable in Safari. In the advanced tab of Safari settings at the very bottom you'll see a checkbox labeled Show Features for Web Developers This will enable a new menu from the Safari menu bar entitled Now my favorite tool in this menu when I'm not using the console to play with JavaScript is the Show Web Inspector option. If you select the little crosshairs in the tools that pop up from the bottom you can drag your cursor on the web page and it'll show you the HTML code for what you've selected. Now this sounds super nerdy and it kinda is but there's a relatively unnerdy thing I use it for. When I want to tell you about a video tutorial I've created for screencasts online for example the one I just did when I talked about Google Forms I log out of the SCO website so I can't see any of the paid for content then I use their search for my latest tutorial. In the Web Inspector I can use the crosshairs tool to select the free preview version of my video. At the bottom of the Safari window I can see the URL for this free preview. I copy that URL and I post it into a blog post of my own where I can promote the tutorial. Okay maybe that is pretty nerdy but you know it's just might be just the right amount of nerdy for you. Alright let's talk about some more global systems. I'd like to go through a few of the system settings I change at the finder level. I am very impatient so one of the first things I do is speed up how quickly a key repeats if I hold it down. At system settings scroll all the way down nearly to the bottom where you'll see keyboard. At the very top of the menu that opens I drag it all the way to the fastest settings. I don't remember what the default is for delay until repeat but I drag that slider until it's the second shortest option. This is a perfect example of my preferences that might be very likely different from yours. Maybe when you open up a new Mac the key repeat is way too fast for you. Either way, it's good to know where you can control this. I don't know why it's like a psychological problem but I really dislike clicking on a trackpad. I much prefer to simply tap the trackpad rather than having to press hard to click. There are two settings to control this that I like to change and for no reason other than Apple likes to make settings kind of a fun scavenger hunt they're two very different places. To simply enable tap to click on your trackpad in system settings right below the keyboard settings that we just changed you'll see trackpad. At the bottom of that menu you'll see a toggle to tap to click. Now even if you're okay with true clicking you know pressing hard on your trackpad it's nice to have that feature enabled for when you like to use a lighter touch. Now the other time I normally have to click instead of tap is when I want to drag a window or a file around on screen. You can enable a feature that allows you to gently place three fingers on your trackpad while at the top of a window or on a file and drag without ever clicking. This feature is called three finger drag and boy howdy is it buried. It used to be in the trackpad settings which made perfect sense but no longer is it easy to find. In system settings guess what open accessibility select pointer control. On that page you'll see a button to change trackpad options. Finally one of the options that will be revealed is dragging style and it'll have a drop down where you can select three finger drag. Now it is upsetting to me that they didn't hyphen three finger but you'll get over that transgression the first time you use three fingers to drag a window or a file. Now I had cataract surgery a few years ago and I now have the best vision of my life but I still run into situations where something's printed too small on a website for me to be able to read. My favorite example of things that are printed too small is street names in mapping apps. You can zoom in but when you go to try to read them the cities and streets get bigger but the street name shrink back to the same size. The solution is to enable using a gesture with scrolling to temporarily zoom in on your screen. Open our good old friends system settings again and go to our favorite tab accessibility and select zoom. Look for a toggle to enable use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom. And below you'll see the option to choose a modifier key for the scroll gesture. I just used the default control key. Once this feature is enabled you can hold down the control key and scroll up on your trackpad or mouse. The entire screen will zoom in right where your cursor is so you can read that darn street name. Once you've successfully read the absurdly tiny text simply hold down the control key again and scroll back down and everything will go back to normal. I really like this feature because it simply never gets in your way but it's right there at your fingertips when you need it. Well I've now talked about most if not all of these settings in the past over the years but I really wanted to collect them all in one place where you could see the kind of settings that might make your Mac life more efficient after a clean install or after getting a new Mac. Well that is going to wind us up for this week did you know you can email me at alisonapodfeed.com anytime you like if you have a question or suggestion send it on over I love to help people you can follow me on mastodon at podfeed at chaos.social remember everything good starts with podfeed.com if you want to join the conversation you can join our Slack community like Steven Ramirez did over at podfeed.com slash slack where you can talk to me and all of the other lovely Nozilla Castaways. You can support the show like Tom did double the pleasure at podfeed.com slash patreon or with a one-time donation podfeed.com slash paypal and if you want to join in the fun of the live show head on over to podfeed.com slash live on Sunday nights at 5 p.m. Pacific time and join the friendly and enthusiastic Nozilla Castaways. Thanks for listening and stay subscribed.