Hi guys, welcome to another vlog. I feel so weird with my head caught up right now. Well, I'm really tired. I just landed in Nashville. I'm in my rental car and it is 11.30. I'm not checking into my Airbnb until 4 p.m. So I'm gonna have a nice little solo day in Nashville. I have been really enjoying taking myself on solo dates these days. Guys, I actually like to look crazy. Anyways, I just landed in Nashville for the week. Hope you guys are enjoying this vlog week. I'm posting daily Monday through Friday. But I landed in Nashville. I'm here for the week. Nashville is probably my favorite city in the world besides Dallas. Like it's the only other place I would move to which we'll be talking about later in this vlog week. But I just love this city. Like it feels like home to me. I don't know how to describe it. Look, you get the same feeling that I feel about Texas. I don't feel this way about LA. And I did at one point. I don't know. I just have this very strong feeling towards Nashville. And I love it here. It's so beautiful.  But anyways, I landed earlier today. My check-in for my Airbnb isn't until 4 p.m. I don't have any recordings today. And I decided I'm gonna take myself on a nice solo date to Franklin. I have never actually been to Franklin. Every time I come to Nashville, I'm either with a group of people or I'm here for work very quickly and I have no time to myself. So I really wanted to prioritize this week. I'm here Tuesday to Sunday. Having time by myself, I rented a car so I can like go and do things that I like and see what my life is like here. You know what you mean? I'm in myself to Franklin right now. I'm really excited. I honestly just want like a chill fall day. It feels so good out here. I will say I'm very tired. I got home from a dinner very late last night and I slept like five hours. And I'm exhausted. So I need to put a little pep in my step. Think I'm going to the Bluebird Cafe later which I've always wanted to do but never been able to do it even though I've been to Nashville time. And if you guys watched Nashville the show, you would know, which is also my favorite show ever. I miss Reyna James. So anyways, stay tuned. Hope you guys enjoyed the vlog and I'm taking you guys along on my solo date. What I do when I'm spending a day alone which has been extremely helpful for me, I'm in the middle of doing the artist's way. If you don't know what that is, I'm not gonna bore everyone by explaining it again. So just Google it. It's a book, it's 12 of the challenge, amazing. And I took my solo dates once a week so y'all are coming with. Guys, I cannot say Franklin without thinking about this Paramore song. I grew up on this album. Fun fact, when I was younger and this was like early Warped Tour days my cousin toured with them and it was like actually the coolest thing that ever happened to me up until maybe now actually. At least 15 I would say. But anyways, love, throw it back to the red couch if you know you know. All right guys, sorry for the setup. We're just making do. Doing a little taste test from Frothy Monkey. I got a seasonal drink and I'm totally forgetting what I got. Very good. I also got real milk.  Not really. I also say milk, milk, whatever. It's good. I'm just really sensitive to iced coffee so sometimes it like makes it sick. Still drink it every day. My mom used to own a bedding company downtown McKinney and this is like literally what it looks like. It's like I'm five again in her store. I don't know. Me again guys. It is now 2 p.m. I'm really crashing. My plan is good about 8 p.m. But I am like so tired right now. I had a great little afternoon or noon 2 p.m. I don't know. I had a great time downtown Franklin. It was so cute. It reminds me a lot of my hometown square downtown McKinney. Very, very cute. It was just really relaxing and I got to finish my book. I did some reading and some journaling classic. I just finished City of Likes by Jenny Mullen. It took me like a few tries to get into the book. I'd gotten the sample and it just like wasn't my time to read the book. I think it wasn't in the mood but it ended up being a really easy read. It was always, I have two hours until I can check into my Airbnb and I decided I want to like drive around and look at like beautiful homes. It's one of my favorite things to do. I love doing that in Dallas. Like it is just amazing. And I really love homes in Texas and homes in Tennessee. So I want to drive around, see some houses, listen to some music. And actually Morgan Yates, old, very weaving friends forever, friend of mine texted me and is like I'm also a natural. So the whole day isn't going to be so low but I took you guys to like a still afternoon because now that Morgan's here, we're going to go and we're going to do the Bluebird Cafe tonight, early evening, literally a grandma special. That's like my, that's my weeknight. I'm also like really on a Marcus King kick and he's actually performing at the Rhyman this week. So hopefully I can go to that. I think on Thursday we'll see my plans but I'm like so obsessed. If you're somebody that doesn't really like country that much but you like like calming music to play throughout your house. Definitely recommend. Like he's not, I think anyone would like this music. You don't have to like country to like him. It's really, really good. Okay, I just pulled into this neighborhood and it's very cute. I'm just driving around, getting a feel if you will. I wish I would have filmed the entrance because it's actually so beautiful. You can't even tell how pretty it is in person. I want to go across the street too. I don't have that much time because my plans actually got moved up. But like everything is just so cozy here. I love it. I just love all of the trees. I'm in a new neighborhood now. Like some people might think this is creepy but we all do it, okay? Beautiful homes. It's actually one of my favorite pastimes to just drive around and look at homes. I just love how open it is and the hills, the trees, the leaves changing colors. It's so beautiful. I wish you guys could see like actually how beautiful it was in person and they have like really big lots which honestly I have recently been missing the suburbs which is kind of crazy because I mean I didn't think I'd expect that. I love that house. Last week I drove to my grandma's and as someone who has always said or has said recently in the past few years that I just will always live in Dallas proper. Like the actual city, oh my God guys let me just pull it really fast so you guys can see how beautiful this is. It is just stunning. So as someone who the past couple of years has really been sat on living in Dallas proper forever I'm like, listen, I might be on the suburbs. Okay, this is just like so beautiful but it made me like really miss it and then I loved growing up in the suburbs. It was such a great time. Guys, this is so beautiful. No one's on the road so it doesn't even matter but wow. Look who's here. Lauren's here as well. I haven't seen more than like a long time. Like six months probably. Yeah, or like a year or I don't know. It's not been a year. A few months. I feel a little bit dramatic, yeah. So what do we do? Oh, we went to Cincinnati Airport. I checked in for a movie. A mile for it. Oh, finally, good. And I did say I wasn't doing anything at all tonight and now I'm on my way to Broadway. So, but Stephen's playing tonight so I have to stop by to say hello to friends. I'm a social girl. What am I to do? What am I to do? If you weren't in town right now I would be sleeping right now. I'm in honor. Because I'm exhausted, but anyways, I barely changed. This is it. All right, guys, it's 8.30 and I'm now home. Got to see Morgan and catch up, which was really great and also somehow ended up on Broadway and my friend Stephen was playing and got to see him. If you guys are ever actually in Nashville, I'm on Broadway.  He's the bus that I sent you. I have a lot of work that I need to do tonight and I also want to sell him. I might want to wash my hair. I can't tell. I just haven't been having, I don't know. I feel like maybe I'll wash it tomorrow. Maybe that's a tomorrow job. Anyways, time for an Airbnb haul. Actually, I had two margaritas and I just thought I'm gonna give you an Airbnb haul. Tour, okay, goodbye. All right, you walk in and this attaches to the bathroom but we'll end there. Come in here.  I'm just, I'm also just like so tired that like that's really what's happening right here.  I actually haven't opened this. I don't think I can. I don't know if I can, so whatever. Here I have my fridge. I don't know if anything's in here. Nope, nothing is in here. So nice. Besides, of course, my skin and confidential ice roller. Couldn't forget that. Then we have my kitchen over here. We have the coffee. We have my cute little living room area. I have a lot of space on its way. And then out here, you can go outside and I have a balcony, which is really awesome. Especially in the morning. Like maybe I'll like sit out here and have my coffee. It's really great. I just love natural so much.  I just love it so much. Then this is my bedroom. I'm here until Sunday and I wanted an Airbnb because we'll talk about it tomorrow. I just wanted to see what it would feel like if I would live here, if you know what I mean. So great. This is my closet. I'm actually about to unpack everything. I'm a big unpacker these days. Love my extra pillows. Everything for my suitcase. Extra hanger is great. And then here's a bathroom that has great lighting. And then a great shower. Love that. That was an Airbnb tour. Not at all. I'm gonna shower, get into my pajamas and then unpack and stuff. And I will catch up with you guys in like an hour. I just tanned and I got in my pajamas. I made a mistake because I was overpacking and I decided I'm only gonna bring one pair of pajamas for the week. Because like I go to bed and I wake up and that's it, like I shower and then I wear them whenever they're clean. And I forgot that I was in a self tanned. So yeah, that's unfortunate. Anyways, I wanted to show you guys the one thing that I picked up today when I was shopping. My bag, like I said, was packed. And it was actually 52 pounds. But thank God I am so friendly because it let me through. No extra charge and they didn't make me do that. You know how embarrassing it is when you have to like unpack your suitcase and take things out because it's over 50 pounds. Thank God I didn't have to endure that today. Anyways, I got these coasters. These Dolly Parton coasters. Also, sorry, I don't actually look like that crazy at all. It's just the lighting, but. These coasters are so beautiful. Mia's Dolly. I love them. They're so cute. They're so fun. I am getting a ton of new things from my house in Texas. I ordered all new rugs last night. By the way, I don't even think I've vlogged about that. And I'm just like, you know, I ordered some pillows. Like we're doing some things there, okay? So tonight I'm just going to prep for tomorrow's episodes. I'm recording with Danny, Reina, and then a solo podcast in my fall cozy era. Very excited. I need to make sure all that's prepped. And then I'm gonna read and go to bed early because I want to be very well rested for tomorrow because I need more recordings to be the best they possibly can be. So, gonna give myself done. Hope you guys enjoyed my partially solo day in Nashville was mainly solo. I just like love the city so much. I can't even describe it.  I feel a little bit about Dallas too, that'd be fair. No one else really. New York is like kinda close actually. I do love New York, but anyways, hope you guys enjoyed this vlog. Subscribe and stay tuned for tomorrow's vlog. We're back with three more vlogs this week. Vlog week, hope you guys enjoy. Oh, by the way, this is the story I got these coasters from in case you were wondering. Love you guys so much and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.


Yes, and it was for small businesses of under, I think, 500 employees. And the government published a list of everybody who got a loan, I think, above $100,000. So they didn't bother publishing the small loans, the $20,000, $30,000, just the $100,000 and above. And yesterday, Wall Street Journal and others went through that list, and a Wall Street Journal reporter noticed that the Iron Rain Institute was on the list that it received a PPP, and immediately tweeted that because to the innocent, ignorant, unthinking mind that seems like the height of hypocrisy. Here's an institution that doesn't believe in government bailouts, doesn't believe in government spending on any of this kind of stuff, and it is receiving funds from the government. And that, of course, created this massive storm, anybody from, you know, people like the Wall Street Journal, but then, of course, what's-his-name, Robert Reich, had to step in and publish his old video, which really slams Iron Rain, which I have posted a video response to a few months ago. And then Stephanie Kelton of Modern Monetary Theory, the economic advisor to, what's-his-name, Bernie Sanders jumped in accusing the Iron Rain Institute of all kinds of things, and it's like, everybody's this shock, and then people are just shocked. Iron Rain Institute taking PPP money, horrific. If anybody had actually done the research, which I know, I know today in the world today, you don't expect reporters to do, God forbid. They would discover that as far back as late April and May, the Iron Rain Institute put out a written piece by a board member, Javi Benzwanger, and by a board member, by an employee, chief philosophy officer at the Institute, Ankar Ghatay, which actually said, we're going to take PPP money, and here's why. And the Iron Rain Institute did an entire webinar, I think it was over an hour long, on why in times like this, it's, well, not just in times like this, generally, it's okay to take money from the government in the right context. And we link to an Iron Rain article, where she talks about the fact that getting money from the government, if you are against getting money from the government, is moral, that indeed, nobody else is justifying getting money from the government, because they're the ones who are advocating for, they're the ones who are promoting theft. But if you are actually the one who is against theft, who is promoting actively limited government, limited to the protection of individual rights, government that does not use the excuse of democracy to steal from some, to take from some, to give to others, government that does not destroy the economy by intervening and by oppressing us, and by telling us what we can and cannot do, indeed, if you are advocating against all that, you are the one, you're the only one for which it's moral to accept the money. It would be immoral for you to say, no, no, no, because I'm one of the good guys, I'm not gonna get the money and let the bad guys, let the people who promote these ideas, let them benefit from this, that would be absurd, that would be suicidal, that would be insane. The fact is that the government takes our money. If we can get some of it back, why wouldn't we? I mean, I know that when I do my taxes, or when I have my accountant do my taxes, my ask of my accountant is, use every loophole, every exemption, every possible thing to minimize the amount of money I pay taxes. Even though, when I talk about taxes, when I argue about taxes, I either argue that there should be no taxes, but in the world today, I don't, that's not realistic. I argue that taxes should be flat, simple, with no deductions, no exclusions. And yet, I take advantage of every deduction and exclusion that there is.  So I'm gonna be penalized because I take a rational position. Now, somebody asked, does AI pay taxes? No, AI does not. But it's employees do, every single one of them. Employees who, during the crisis in March, because we saw a shrinkage of contributions, and we didn't know where this was heading, were, the hours were cut dramatically. And by the way, we'll talk about why, why we didn't know what was happening and why, you know, the economy did as badly as it is and why contributions went down. And PPP is gonna pay them salaries. So they pay taxes. They're getting restitution for all the taxes they paid over the years. Our contributors pay taxes. All those contributors who now had a cut they contributions pay taxes. But it's more than that. It's not just the taxes. Taxes is one dimension of this. Well, we're getting restitution. We're getting some of our tax money back, but it's more than that. The government actively engaged in destroying the economy. Yes, there was a virus. Yes, the virus was pretty horrific. Maybe, certainly in some places it was. But it is the government, our government, at the federal and state level that did not get its act together. That held up testing. Indeed, you know, made it impossible for the private enterprise to test, to develop tests, to roll out tests. Treatments are being held up by the FDA, by the CDC. So we have a government that completely, utterly, unequivocally screwed up their response to COVID.  Which led state governments, which had already screwed it up by not testing, you know, testing and isolating and tracking.  By shutting down the economy, they took away people's livelihood. They destroyed businesses. And there was a good chance they were going to destroy the Iron Man Institute because we rely on contributions from people who have businesses, who are now being destroyed through government action. To compensate for this, this is typical government. You do something statist, which is irrational anymore. And then you try to compensate it by doing more irrationally more stuff, like distributing future savings by printing money and handing it out. As an organization that was advocating for a rational approach to the virus, a rational response that would not have required shutting down the economy, would have not have required isolating everybody would home, would have not have required lockdowns. Suffering as a consequence of what the government had done, why would we not take the money as compensation for the damage they were causing us? Compensation for their irrationality. In a laissez-faire economy, in a laissez-faire world, there would be nobody to get this from. We advocate against government bailouts. We advocate against government stimuli. We advocate against government involvement and we argue against government prohibitions and restrictions that made this crisis a crisis. There was no need.  There's no need to have a $3 trillion stimulus package and then to tax people in order to pay that stimulus package back because they borrowed all the money or printed all the money. Either way, we're all gonna pay for it. Either way, it's taxes on us. And while the Einwand Institute per se doesn't pay taxes, everybody else does, including its employees. So of course you should take the money. While arguing against the government distributing it, you should take it. So only the enemies of capitalism should take their money. Only the socialists should take the money. While we all starve, while we all get destroyed, while we all have to fire our employees and have to shut down our businesses. That is ludicrous, suicidal, modern, self-sacrificial. Just as I, when I reached age, I'm gonna take Social Security. I paid taxes all these years. I'm gonna take my Social Security back. I'm gonna take my money back. They shouldn't be Social Security. They should never stolen the money from me to begin with. And what option do I have but to use Medicare? When you're 65, you either take Medicare or you have nothing. The government doesn't allow you to buy private health insurance. So of course I'm gonna take Medicare. Not to mention that I paid gazillions of dollars into it. Why would I subsidize everybody else and not take money out when it's my time? And if the government wants to return some of the money it has taken from me to me, I'm gonna take it. I take it every tax season by taking as many deductions, exclusions that I possibly can. And don't pretend that you paid into Social Security or into Medicare. That is a fallacy. Medicare and Social Security are welfare programs. They're welfare for everybody. But they're not, you don't pay for anything. The money isn't sitting there waiting for you. It's a redistribution program. The money you paid into Medicare and Social Security was paid out years ago to old people who were old then. Every time you send a check to Social Security Medicare, that money immediately goes out the other door. There's a little piece of paper that's left in a closet that says, I owe you. But you didn't pay in. The money was taken from you and given to other people. And when you take the money out, you're not gonna count to see, ooh, how much should I pay in? How much should I take out? You'll take out as much as you can because you paid huge amounts of taxes, Social Security, Medicare and everything else. This is an hypocrisy. This is justice.  So yes, the Ironman Institute took PPP money. It said it was going to take it in April, and it did, and good for them for getting some of their money that's been taken from them back. So there's no hypocrisy here. What there is is justice. We've always said, and Ironman said this in the 60s, in an essay that you can find online, it's called The Question of Scholarship. She said in the 60s that given how much taxes you pay, given the cost that the government imposes on you through regulations, controls, and manipulation of the economy, particularly post-COVID, yeah, if you can get some of it back, go for it, do it, and use it to fight government programs. Use it to fight the programs of the government that they use in order to attack you. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning, any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of the stare, cynicism, and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist broads. Using the super chat, and I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show, many of you stepped forward and actually supported the show for the first time, so I'll do it again, maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity, go to uranbrooksshow.com slash support or go to subscribestar.com uranbrookshow and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this going. I'm not showing the next.


Hello everybody. Hooded Cobra Commander 788 here. I wanted to make sure all of you knew of a great thing Timmer from Half the Battle is doing. From now until December 5th, 2017, you can enter to win some great prizes. Timmer is offering a European exclusive Tiger Force Psycow action figure. I am chipping in a 1985 complete Cobra Eels action figure. Joe Customs is contributing a Vitrivian Hacks Red Blasted Land Orc action figure. One person can win all of it. To enter, all you have to do is donate to a charity that benefits children. And send proof of that donation to JoeChristmasCharityatgmail.com. Timmer will select a winner at random. This charity appeal is important to me. Susan and I will be making charitable donations this year as we always do. We want to encourage more people to do the same. On this channel we talk about toys. These are the things that made our childhoods brighter. But not every child has the same chance for joy and happiness that we did. You can do something to help those who are at least able to help themselves. You can make a difference in a child's life. This brings to mind a quote from Garrison Keeler. Nothing you do for a child is ever wasted. Please help in any way you can. If you can't donate, then share this video or share Timmer's charity video. Do it because it's a good thing to do. And maybe win some cool stuff. If you have any questions about the details of this charity appeal, I will leave the link to Timmer's most recent charity video in the description of this video. So please check that out and please help in any way you can. Thank you.


I told y'all the heat were trash, bro. Y'all ain't believe me when I told y'all the heat trash. Mexican dirtweed, let's go, man. Golden ticket, Matt Ryan. Golden ticket, Collin Johnson. Level 50. Does W win this game first game of weekend league? Questionable bet. Little lazy. Little lazy. What do we say? Little lazy. Single back, dudes close. OK, go get him then. Genard Avery. That's how you start a game, huh, boys? Malcolm! What formations do you baseline against? I mean, I kind of baseline against everything this year, really. Michael Ward, you are a heartless person lurking me with 17 golden tickets on Wednesdays.  Troy, you know. Oh my god. Strong jumbo. He's trying to get low. It's the thing is, you don't know. You don't get low with these guys. Oh, what a tackle by Malcolm. Malcolm's showing out here early, dude. Let's go, Malcolm. Oh, Malcolm's a beast, bro. Bro, how do we not, like, what are dark?  Don't want you to get a tour. Come on, bro. That's why I sold Douglas, bro. What are you doing? Golden ticket, why are receivers are not? Don't try me on that. Ah, stop clicking on here, Chad. I'm telling you, I'm looking at you, DJ. So I'm looking at you. That's what I'm saying. Nah, man.  AJ, snap. All right, that's a big one. That's Julio Jones. AJ, AJ. Eagles win 12 this year. Eagles win 12 this year. Easy claps. Agree or disagree, boys. Agree or disagree, boys. Bro, the Eagles were solid last year. And they got way better. I mean, bro, I could have moved it all right there. Jesus. I mean, he not holding two crays, maybe 900 to 1,100 or something like that. He not a mirror. Oh, I got picked off. Jesus. Sadge. Hate to see it. AJ, boys, what do we grade these Eagles jerseys? 1 to 10. Give me a 1 to 10 on the road, Kelly Greens. 8, 10, 9s, OK. Anthony Harris. Let's go, man. Oh, Malcolm. Oh, give it to a friend, too. Oh, give it to another friend. What do you think he lurks? Do you think he lurks the tight end or AJ Brown? I think he goes to the tight end. Good tackle. That was the guy that was manned up on a running back.  I think the Cowboys are good. That's the biggest, like, what? I think the Cowboys are good. Let's go, Dawkins. I think we'll get new players for Madden. The new Madden? New players? I don't think so. There, that's all.  Let's go, man. OK, what did I get? OK, OK, OK. What's up, boys? Let me tell you about Thrustmaster. This is the controller I've been using for over a month now. I was having trouble with all my other ones. You know, they're not the best made things. So the people at Thrustmaster partnered with me, sent me out their new controller to try it out and show you guys, man, I used it for a month to see if I liked it. I didn't want to tell you about anything I didn't like. I absolutely love it. All the parts are great. They actually make flight simulators and racing simulators for all the professional circuits of flight simulating and racing. So they said, let's take our technology and bring it to Xbox. They've made this controller. You guys can click the link below. Make sure you check it out over there. It has buttons on the back. You know, most people have paddles. This actually has buttons embedded. So much better than that. Every single thing on this controller is customizable. You can actually take off the grips on the side, you know, and they can change whatever color you want. I actually got the standard black ones. You can take these out. If you want blue ones, red ones, green ones, you see, I just got the all black with a little bit of red. That's more of my style, whatever you want, man. I have green ones, orange. You can do all that if you want to change the layout. Switch your d-pad and your thumbstick. You can do that as well. All the buttons are super clean. Love this controller, man. You guys can click the link below and check out the controller that I'm using myself to put all these gameplays together. That's what I'm saying. Yo, the Cowboys then got way worse, bro. My top three is so sexy. Slay AJ Brown Dawkins. Woo. The Vikings game Monday night. What this guy got? The Eagles jerseys too.  Respect.  Oh, this dude's sweaty. Uh-oh. Huskers, my man, would have gifted. Let's go. AJ. I made these. All right, what jerseys you like better? Kelly Greens or the Yellow and Blues? The Yellow and Blues starting to grow on me. I think I need an autograph one hanging up in the office, boys. I need the McNabb or the Westbrook. Y'all agree with that? I need one of these Yellow and Blue Jaws?  Is that con? Bro, player, I've never had a man where players are like this girthy, dude. The girth in this game is like, cuz. Like, if you like 6-4 now, you not tall enough, bro. 6-4 is just not tall enough no more, bro. Yeah, Shantae are like too short now, bro. Look who they clicked me on, bro. That's the craziest part, is who they clicked me on. Was the craziest part about that. It's good defense. It was good defense right there, boys, huh? Ah-ha! Oh, the bullet.  I mean, purple zone stuff, matching, man. Running back wheel, here's my bullet. Putting everybody at 10 right here, boys. Let's go, baby, good slay.  I'm looking at you, Devante. That's that theme team. Y'all don't know, but the theme team give you like 104 speed, bro. The theme team give you 104 speed. They don't really know that.  Oh my, it's just so different.  But when they don't have that deep corner route, because obviously Audible's around, so he don't have that deep corner route here. So, maybe they're going to buy on me with this, bro. That's not going to buy on me. Cover forward, more on it, dude. Go check the e-book, bro.  Reggie White, Hassan Reddick.  I just like, dude, I just like this.  Thank God, they don't got no that. Escape artist, no more, bro. Thank God, you know, escape artist. Oh, that's a good dot. Oh, never mind, Rasool. Too tall, general, shine, run, routes.  Look at you. You got a guy climbing out there, trying to run out routes. That's what you get.  Like, what am I supposed to do? I slide right and block my tight end. We'll get that double team and we'll actually block the blitz, too. This is like, Cover Two or something. It is Cover Two. No, it's not, I lied, I don't know.  Go to ticket this, go to ticket that. See you in the dashboard, partner. Oh, man.


Today we're going to talk about a giant trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. While most Americans probably haven't even heard of the TPP, it could affect everything from internet freedom to access to medicine to how many stormtroopers are going to come crashing through your window if the recording industry finds out that you're violating a copyright. And while trade agreements used to deal mostly with abstract concepts like trade, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is an entirely different animal. For example, the United States is using the TPP negotiations to push for patent standards that would make it easier for drug companies to maintain their monopolies on new drugs. Which is awesome if you're a pharmaceutical company that's tired of competing with cheaper generics, but not so awesome if you're an organization like Doctors Without Borders and depend on that competition from generics so you can stop more people from dying horribly. Then there's the horrific prospect of investor-state dispute settlements. Can we get like a spooky sound effect here? Imagine that there's a company based in another TPP country, like, I don't know, Brunei. But that company still does some business in the United States. Now imagine that the United States passes a new safety regulation. That means that company from Brunei has to bring its U.S. operations into compliance, which might mean they have to dip into their profits a little. But under the investor-state system, foreign corporations, like our friends in Brunei, could bypass the legal system, go directly to a trade tribunal and demand compensation for the profits they lost directly from the American taxpayers. So yeah, that might sound like the craziest thing in the entire universe, but it's already happening under other trade agreements. Like under the North American Free Trade Agreement, American pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly is currently suing Canada to the tune of $500 million, because the Canadian government decided not to extend two of their drug patents. And what makes this so extraordinary is that Eli Lilly's complaint doesn't even have anything to do with Canadian law. Instead, it's making the case that since it's a U.S. company, it should be treated by the same standards as it would in the United States. So for the folks keeping score at home, that's a corporation suing an entire country, because that country's right to govern itself is starting to interfere with that corporation's profits. And if you're having a hard time remembering where President Obama made our rousing call to give corporations a power that used to be reserved for, like, other countries, that's because candidate Obama and the Democratic Party promised to oppose this kind of thing in their 2008 party platform. But given the positions the Obama administration's trade negotiators have been taking, I think it's pretty safe to say that they've changed their minds on this one. Even though there's an entire subplot we could do on the host of threats to internet freedom, privacy, and innovation that come with the TPP, I'd like to take a moment to just talk about why this is even happening, because I haven't even got to the kicker yet, which is that this entire negotiation process was supposed to be completely secret. The only way the public knows about any of the things we've talked about is because they were leaked to the press by whistleblowers, and the Obama administration's trade negotiators won't show the rest of the draft to anyone. Anyone. Except for hundreds of corporate advisors and lobbyists. Of course. And while you're obviously going to want to get some input from businesses, a trade deal this huge would affect the lives of billions of people, and they might not want the same things as that handful of insiders who have been given extra special access. According to a spokesman for an understandably furious Senator Ron Wyden, even the few members of Congress who have been given access to the trade documents have to personally go to the trade representative's offices to see them, while the corporate advisors all got passwords that let them view an online version whenever they want. While defending the need for secrecy in an interview with Reuters, a U.S. trade representative named Ron Kirk cited the example of the failed free trade area of the Americas, which collapsed after negotiators released the draft text. And this is where the flaws in the logic start to show, because if the argument is that being transparent with the public results in widespread opposition and undermines the United States' negotiating position, you'd think the solution would be to just come up with a trade agreement that the public would actually support in the first place. Instead, U.S. negotiators are trying to conceal as much of the negotiation process as possible. It probably doesn't help that the office of the U.S. trade representative is full of people who used to work for pharmaceutical companies in the entertainment industry, and had it actually stayed a secret, a behind-the-scenes trade deal would have given President Obama a nice way to quietly reverse his positions on controversial issues like intellectual property rights and investor state settlements, and do it all without enraging the public. But that still leaves us with the question of why President Obama is reversing those positions to begin with. And I'm sure this is a huge surprise coming from the guy who works at an anti-corruption nonprofit, but it could have something to do with the fact that the same special interest that got a sweet advance copy of the TPP and helped shape it into a corporate wish list also happened to be major political donors. Because while President Obama doesn't have to worry about raising money for another campaign, the next Democrat who runs for president, and the members of Congress from both parties who will eventually have to approve the TPP do. As much as politicians love to talk tough about standing up to those evil special interests, they all know that nine times out of ten, the candidate who raises the most money wins. And since 63.5% of that money comes from 0.4% of the population, there isn't a terribly powerful incentive for most politicians to give a damn what the people who aren't in that 0.4% think. So, should we fight to stop the TPP? Absolutely yes, and we'll link you some tools to take action at the end of this video. But unless we get at the root cause, unless we force the money out of our system and criminalize the casual corruption that's come to define an entire generation of politicians, we'll be back here in the same place a month from now fighting the same fight to stop the same kind of innovation crushing anti-competitive policies over and over and over again. The reason politicians keep getting away with this sort of thing is because they don't see any consequences for their actions. They're assuming that they can get away with pushing through as much lobbyist approved policy as it takes to keep the reelection war chest full as long as they crowbar middle class and jobs into enough talking points. And I know all of that sounds very discouraging, but it really shouldn't. As far as generation defining political battles go, we actually don't have it so bad. We're not talking about ending apartheid or overthrowing a dictator here.  And the first step towards making that happen is establishing that getting money out of politics isn't some fringe issue. That takes a permanent anti-corruption movement. And as it just so happens, that's what we're building right here. I'm Monsour for Represent Us, and I'll see you next time.


Hello, my name is Andrew Burden. I am a technical writer for Red Hat and for the last about four years I've been working on predominantly Emerging technology, documenting technology in the container space specifically. So what do I mean by tech, emerging technology? Well for this talk What I mean is working on something that is pre-release Something that the documentation especially starts with kind of nothing and you're creating something Pre-release technology like Kubernetes maybe four or five years ago kind of thing Something that is at the frontier And rapidly evolving and pivoting changing very quickly The landscape where a feature might be obsolete by the time it's released and certainly by the time it's documented So I'm going to use the term just technology Throughout the talk and please replace that with product project and you know, whatever is For your circumstance And whatever you call it's that breaking of ground that first one or more releases to make something out of nothing In a maelstrom of chaos and stress and few if any dog systems in place to lean on And before we kind of get to that that interesting part of it I want to kind of have a quick look at like a hypothetical life cycle of how we get to that point Here we go A technology is born from the hearts and minds of a single or a small group of developers And through infancy it attracts more developers It grows and maybe sprouts and features and the documentation here if it exists Typically focuses on helping developers contribute to the project By necessity you need to have strong foundational knowledge in order to be able to contribute And the dogs reflect that It shifts into adolescence And this is where things get interesting Like a team manager it grows quickly and it changes quickly Teams form features evolve the technology pivots Documentation then is worked on by their growing list of developers may be independently handled by each team And the doc set evolves it no longer focuses on contributed docs But also on user docs Because it's gotten to a point where you have the desired outside users able to come in and use the technology It's not just contributes But there still remains a developer mindset In adults And you still need a developer mindset to use the product because it's still in its adolescence And the users still require some foundational experience in order to be able to get you going And there's docs Apache And it's not because of anyone's fault and I really don't want to like I'm not playing a blind gamer and I don't want to feel bad. I kind of want to do the opposite In fact, if you work in upstream documentation Like It's great You're a bit of a legend And It's because it's written by a variety of people with a variety of experience with a variety of time constraints Probably in a variety of languages But there's a general inconsistency and incompleteness in the docs that and it becomes clear that someone needs to focus on the docs Particularly in order to bring them up to snuff It's a work Because the adolescent technology wants to become an adult in my analogy it wants to grow up Now in a company like red hat Or a large enough foundation like cncf or safe or something You might have a requisition for a specific docs asset And this is the beginning of what I call The lag period Unless there's someone who can immediately jump onto that technology right away It's going to take time to find that resource and it might be days weeks months All the while the technology is growing and that docs problem is expanding And that coordinated release has also meant the developers are less likely to be focusing on writing the upstream docs You know, they're trying to get their code ready for release and docs becomes less of a priority So when the docs person joins They have to onboard with everything design and create the doc set and catch up that lag period of the upstream docs All the while staring down the barrel of the release Which in my experience is one month to two months And in that one to two months you're coming back to cover the following The scope and scale of the release but from a technology and a doc's perspective You establish the doc structure. What's going where it's going to live Other details of the deliverable And that can be heavily influenced by the constraints of what you're working with and on Um your schedule, it's a no-brainer But you need to familiarize with the code freeze the docs freeze the reviews Etc Understand the hard and soft time constraints in order to work with them and have a rudimentary sense of stability because there's no point Documenting something that's just going to change next week. So you're going to know your windows You've got to meet with relevant people. There's not be joining a few daily scrums weekly scrum of scrums free planning p.m Meetings onboarding progress reports demos. What have you it's good stuff. It's really valuable Um, but it can weigh down your calendar time is precious. So you got to figure out that signal to noise ratio really quickly You're going to learn the technology and the underlying technology if it's required. Now, this is pretty obvious But what might not be obvious is the scale and the breadth of that understanding Um familiar design and write good documentation I need to have a solid understanding of the whole thing All the relevant moving parts in order to understand how to structure the content and how to get into the mind of the user so that I could provide enough information that they can confidently use the product But not so much information that i'm getting in their way. I don't want to push them away from the product That's not my point um, and it's a fine balance and the only way that I find that I can do that is to Trudge through the information Which is in many different places and some of it doesn't even exist Aside from the the the codes amount of that design docs Or maybe just in the heads of the people who are developing it because it fell into that lag yet I'm not so good But also you need to deploy the technology has no better way to learn than to do Now this can be a huge time sink. You got to find the hardware and maybe sort out networking storage problems Um, uh, you know if you're installing if it's An add-on or an peripheral technology on something like kubernetes or open shift You need to install that get that working and then installing the technology on top of that Which maybe still having its installation method kind of figured out And you spend hours trying to debug what has all the appearances of the network issue when it turns out There was a bug in the installer all along So it's a lot to be done in one month even in two And the ground moves a bit under your feet and on top of that you're Designing and creating content and having it reviewed and raising bugs and going back and forth and review A lot to do time is precious So what I'd like to cover now are some uh pitfalls that I've identified over the years usually by falling down them And this includes some advice on how I think you can avoid them And I came up with a better name for this talk two minutes ago And it's things I think to help you do docs quick And it doesn't have a slide Here we go. Oh Oh, no, that's not my slide Well, it was um An art depiction of the wall in gamethrines, but anyway Um, there was a lot of information coming at you and hopefully I'll come at home There's a lot to do and to learn and to establish your starting point and my take home advice is Take notes. It's it's pretty obvious. I know but take notes Write them down and take notes about your notes I think that I take a lot of notes and then invariably down the track. I realize I should have taken more notes I always wish I'd taken more notes and I've never ever thought I should have taken less notes Take notes of meetings take notes of successful builds unsuccessful builds copy paste snippets of your ISE conversations and dislike Put them together and modernize them organize your notes. Don't simply add to your own information or be organized with your notes All the things I think that I remember while I'm working close to technology, especially to release that or the docs Six months down the track. I've got no idea. I'm dumbfounded I look at things I I recognize a reason for the inconsistent, but I don't understand it myself And I just wish I would have left a note in that leave breadcrumb trials for yourself and for others You don't know who'll be working on it in the future. You might be lucky enough to get some new teammates Maybe someone, you know, maybe you've handed over to someone So be good to them and your future self. Take notes. Take notes about notes. I really hope I'm driving this home Leave notes in your docs. Write good commit messages.  So I worked just by myself and I thought it was hilarious Well, when you're in a pickle, it's not so hilarious. So I work on a team And I still write dumb commit messages, but I'm happy to say I write a lot less of them The technology is growing quickly teams are emerging. There's a lot of excitement Features being planned and added, but they're not going to make it to the release with all of their bells and whistles So they get staggered over a few releases next release next release Which means all the conversations and the meetings about that feature also bounce back and forth across Multiple future versions until you lose your head because until you know what you don't know at that time It just sounds like it's all going into one version in that meeting And without the systems in place, it can really easily become lost in it So yes, you do need to know that information eventually, but not when you're pressed up against the release date for 1.0 And be aware too that this problem can exist for multiple versions. You think, you know, that's just a 1.0 problem It's it's going to be better next time and that happens again in 1.1. It happens again in 1.2 My advice, I actually don't have really any advice All I can say is that clarify when you can Ultimately the the the solution the best thing to happen is it's across the whole team It's it's part of the joy of documenting emerging technology and working in this field When the processes mature a bit and things aren't in 100 mad dash mode You get that kind of sense of clarity Administrative overhead is the answer I'm sorry to say and in version 1.0 that might not exist because they've got pushed to version 1.2 So take notes again Clarify the best defense is a good offense and the best offense is organized It's not necessarily a pitfall and I talked about it earlier, but I also can't stress this one enough Yes, it can be a time sink, but it's really really important especially in this kind of area where there's a Very significant sense of genius to it all The first emerging technology I worked on was deploying middleware products as applications in OpenShift 3 And I came to the project not knowing anything about OpenShift middleware or Java And to prepare myself I read up on the docs the internal docs the upstream docs for the existed Follow all the mailing lists I read everything I could I watched a couple of the short demos that the devs had Quite awesomely delivered to me But even with all that information I still only had a partially filled out skeleton for my content I managed to get OpenShift running, but the pods for the app never managed to survive deployment And in five days before the release Friday afternoon, I got access to a developer environment and over the weekend interacting with that technology everything clicked into place on Monday I was able to draft up the doc what's a live demo that night Which finally made sense to me for the first time and then bash together the whole document get a reviewed merge published by Wednesday The information is one thing, but it wasn't till I could interact with the technology as user zero But I had the necessary context in order to understand it in a way that I could then confidently document it for the user So access to the technology is very important and it comes in a few flavors There's the interactive kind. This is the instance that you deploy yourself As far as writing user focus documentation being user zero is the best. It's amazing It requires the process of deploying and Installating installing from scratch I'm a words guy hitting all the prerequisites along the way and then using the environment You know, what do you do first second third? Yadda yadda yadda. It does have a downside And that's that it might be 10 minutes It's time continue to get running. Uh, by the way, so it's better to get someone else to do it The downside then is that you don't get to have the installation context Save sips time. Just don't break it Not interactive so the live demos They're great because you can see the environment ask questions clarify get the presenter to kind of go through the procedures that you need Downside is that you can't necessarily repeat it at a later date So you need to know all that information all the questions to ask ahead of time Can't have any unknown unknowns, which is a problem Again, it lacks that visibility against the installation and setup We can have a demo a video of the demo, which is the same except You don't want to get that controlling interactivity with the with the demo itself. You can ask questions, but not in real time for CLI ASCII demo is ASCII cinema is really awesome You can copy paste your way through a live terminal. It's nice and slender The downside is that it's silent. So if the presenter is particularly awesome, they can add comments as prepared comments to narrate the process and the logic One thing about demos is that Screenshots really handy to condense the information. You get it can then also capture the UI to look at later It's a lot easier to go through small amount of screenshots of the demo then That is to go back and forth a long video Just think twice about before including screenshots in your docs In this world, things change really fast and the maintenance cost of screenshots is often far greater than it's worth Don't know where to start or you're stuck Installation process is still being fine tuned. You can't get the product working The demo makes sense to everyone in the room except you. Where do you start? What do you do? My best is to Create a skeleton and give it to life one piece at a time Luck in any project you're going to be starting off with the MVP the Nim and Byron product Use that creator table of contents leave gaps for your known unknowns The broad view makes it much easier to view structure and negotiate logical gaps than going through when you've got bits of content everywhere Like how can you add a resource to a cluster if it doesn't exist in the first place things like that It also helps to really focus on the the user journey Rather than trying to reverse engineer stories from existing features and then trying to make them fit and shoot home into a doc structure This happens both upstream and downstream docs things are being developed Everyone on the team seems to know about them and be aware of the importance to them And someone started a doc somewhere but what happened to it and then it's just it's lost Um, this typically but always and again, I'm not here to make anyone feel bad But it typically stems from the development workflow And my advice is to be really strict about including the docs in your workflow Issue stories bugs. Does it have a docs impact? Does it have a doc doc component? If there's a change it needs to be tracked Either in the upstream docs or the down or probably both The story can't be done unless docs has been nacked or act and tracked And then oh write that down on slide So that's where this is supposed to be So the last couple of weeks Really quite mental Pretty wild and as the process narrows things get crazy everything. It's really is get lost So my solution it won't be a surprise. It's to take notes to make checklists Yep, more notes What needs special attention in the review? Who is Your review team who do you need to ask to review x y and z because the last minute you don't want to be finding that information out Where's the release notes process find out ahead of time and then put it into a list so you can look it at the end And it just makes your life so much easier have a pre-release or a plea for a pre-flight checklist These kinds of things, although very helpful in version 1.0 Far more helpful in version 1.1. Think about the future Put into that Pre-release checklist all the little things that aren't going to have a bug or an issue to track them things like changing version numbers Changing the package names making sure that the cli commands are all still relevant The syntax hasn't changed under your feet if you use screenshots has the ui changed probably So things change really quick and they obsolete really quick I've documented things that were obsolete before it out put on a note. It's like This has been obsolete I think it's especially true for upstream docs. I think like github is filled with ebripo's that long ago at guru They're supporting docs and happens to the best of us and because the information management is really hard and it's time consuming and My advice is to audit People don't like to be audited But docs love it In fact, they thrive on it Bugs and issues are valuable, but they're reactive by nature and once possible audit your docs Factor into your spring cadence and post release Workflow identify your gaps target your updates systematically work through the content and then do it again and again add infinitum um, so the product i'll work on at the moment Can tenant native virtualization docs. We've just had next week a little old or we'll have had a release and Following up we're going to be planning in on auditing our storage docs with our storage team It's like the ship of these years the component the components have evolved to the point that the structure that once made sense is no more and No one no longer knows where the gaps are So we're going to do a nice big audit And if your team grows if you're lucky enough to have a docs team that is getting new people Have the new person go through the full doc set from start to finish as part of their onboarding experience Raising questions pulling out your consistencies and gaps Fresh eyes are a rare and powerful resource If you already do all of this You're you're a legend and you're making the world a better place by including its coherence Ultimately though Do what you have to do, you know screenshots might have a short shelf life But they're also really really useful in early version documentation Merging technology is by its very nature new And the ux leaves a bit to be desired it'll get there for the screenshot is a good stop gap I tend towards end-to-end walkthroughs starting with installation and ending with creating and using resources I find it's very useful for new products Um, but a small can be captured in you know 12 to 20 steps It's the document version of a live demo. It takes the user from starting Literally nothing and then leaves them with the technology in a state they can then play with Which I think is the point in this kind of fear But it's also unsustainable and as much hard work and love I put into it Ultimately it needs to be shredded because it becomes unmounted unmountable And I've totally run out of time. So I'll just leave you with this little thing Emerging technology is challenging and documenting it is difficult But don't take it personally think of it like a teenager It's still finding its place in the world what it needs is love And that love is best displayed through patience tenacity thoughtfulness and raising a lot of bugs So good luck out there. Thank you very much for listening and I I hope it's up Oh, I've got I've got two minutes for Q&A panel. Yes What would be your advice if some of the technology you're working with is hardware or it's not as easy to replicate Again and on your system beg borrow and steal Yeah, that's that's all I have for yeah All like old laptops are working companies are getting old laptops and building a cluster out of that and trying to get stuff out of that or try and get money for cloud services I was thinking of things like with like drones, for example, where it's not like a laptop or a computer system Like actual hardware hugger Beg borrow and steal man Joshua It did okay, that's awesome. I was no sure you could listen to that tool for two years as a tech writer and just like They could be like the soundtrack for your career Thank you very much. Anyone else? Thank you. All right Yes Thank you very much. All right. Have a good sleep though. Thank you


I joined the Air Force to better myself and to get a college education out of it. My grandfather served in the Vietnam War and my dad had to went to Army basic training. He suffered an injury during that and even though he didn't complete it, my grandfather also went through war for the Army. It kind of gave me a motivation and drive to join the Air Force. I was in in my high school career and I started taught to recruit or I did Air Force JRIT so junior reserve officer training corps and I started to like the lifestyle of it. I started to like the way they carry themselves through that and I just liked the benefits that came with the military and the way people would basically transform themselves and become a better version of themselves. So I've been in the Air Force for two years and about two to three months and I'm currently in A1C and Amur 1st class. So to the Air Force I am a special missions aviator which is AFSC one alpha non X1. So I actually went into depth prior to me shipping out. I went to depth four months prior to me actually shipping out for the Air Force and I talked to my recruiter a little bit about the jobs that I wanted and what I wanted to do in the Air Force. So he sat down with me and he told me that he actually got a pre-slot for which the recruiters get and hooked me up with the special missions aviator jobs. I had gotten this job prior to going to basic training and knowing what I was going to be. This job was definitely something I wanted to do. Prior to me actually picking a job that I wanted to make in my dream sheet I actually went to airforce.com and looked at all the different aircrew jobs that the Air Force had to offer and I came across special missions aviation and I knew it was something I definitely wanted to do. I researched everything I could about the job and about other people's stories through YouTube and just googling and everything that I could. I can only find the actual airforce.com version of the job with the video on there to get the most I could out of it and it was definitely something I wanted to do off the gate. There was another two or three aircrew jobs that I wanted to do but this job to me spoke to me specifically of its mindset and its mission set. So when I was going through the process to join the Air Force there was a couple of the jobs that I wanted to do. If I had to go back and do it again I would definitely put down a loadmaster or a in-flight refueler so a boom operator for the Air Force it would be probably the two top ones I would do. If I had to put down more I would probably do something along the lines of aircrew and if I had to go down I would also do maintenance. So for me I was 17 years old at the time when I joined the Air Force and I definitely signed a four-year contract just because nobody did in my family for recent years of the time and they weren't ever in the Air Force so I only signed a four-year contract just to see how I would feel in the Air Force and if just basically testing the waters with it to see how I would like the Air Force or not but I would definitely recommend if you see a job that you like and that really speaks to you and that you think you're gonna like I would definitely sign a six-year. Me personally I would would have gone back and signed a six-year just to get more out of this job in a longer period of time. So initially tech school for my job was at Lapland Air Force Base so as soon as I graduated to basic training I went straight to tech school on Lapland Air Force Base at the 344th Trans Squadron which is basically at the corner of the base and from that it was a pipeline job so I went to multiple different bases including Fairchild Air Force Base, Curlin Air Force Base, and Herbert Field Air Force Base. Tech school for me was a long I think all in all it took me a year and nine months to finally earn earn my wings and to be able to perform my job without an instructor with me but the year and nine months also included gaps in training so when you're going through the Special Missions Aviator Pipeline they don't have a streamline to where you can basically go through the whole job course by course you're gonna have gaps in training where you're gonna have to basically stop and take a break because there's classes already ahead of you that are backed up so all in all for me it took me a year and nine months. I definitely enjoyed my tech school I came from a small town in North Carolina and it got me to go travel the world it got me to go travel across the United States and see what was out there it allowed me to meet multiple people from different countries and different states and just see their mindset and outlook on their jobs that they have especially as here there was a bunch of different aircrew jobs with us and it also just allowed me to basically better myself I was always a kid that would put stuff off but being a Special Missions Aviator going through the pipeline it definitely allowed me to push myself and to keep going harder at what I wanted to in order to become what I wanted to be. So for a Special Missions Aviator you get to pick your aircraft so like you make a dream sheet of jobs at basic training you get to make a dream sheet of the type of aircraft you want to be on for being a Special Missions Aviator which would include an AC-130J, HA-60, CV-22 or the UH-1 also known as the Huey and so for those aircraft for the AC-130J specifically what I'm on the only base you can go to right now is Herbert Field Florida because that is a newer aircraft to the Air Force they are currently working to set it up I don't know the squadron here and also going to Canon Air Force Base. So about my job through a day-to-day basis a Special Missions Aviator basically is a flight engineer a loadmaster and aerial gunner it's something that the Air Force decided to combine three jobs into one so my day-to-day basis when I go to fly we'll actually have a set down brief with the crew and decide who's going to be on either a one or five millimeter gun on the aircraft or the 30 millimeter gun on the aircraft or you'll be playing as the loadmaster flight engineer for the flight and basically whichever one you decide on you get put on that's when you uh go ahead and do that for the day so if I was a loadmaster the flight engineer of the day I would be managing fuel on the aircraft I'll be running emergency procedures if need be and if I was on the one of five or the 30 millimeter I'll be basically running that gun and operating the gun throughout the entire flight and making sure that if there's any malfunctions that happen with the gun I'll be there to fix that but when I'm not flying on non-flying days when you graduate from the pipeline training and you go to the squadron you will be able to get an extra duty so you're not sitting around all day so for me I'm a MCC so I'm a mission control center airman so basically when I'm not flying I'm sitting on a desk and I am getting aircraft status if the aircraft is parked in the right spot if it's got the fuel on it if it's got the right ammo loadout come to it and if there's anything wrong with the aircraft I'm there to inform the crew and let them know so in a work week the honestly varies for us because we are a flying squadron so sometimes in a week you could be flying three times a week and flights usually range anywhere from four to six hours so that automatically right there is 18 hours if it's six hour flights throughout the entire week but if some majority of the time you're going to have at least one flight a week but if you have one flight a week you'll be for me MCC we're working at six hour shifts so Monday so if I flew Monday then the rest of the week I'd be working six hour shifts so right around probably I would say 30-35 hour work weeks so for a special mission aviator I know for every AFSC you get a degree assigned to you from the community college of the Air Force for us we get assigned the aviation operations degree and basically that can push you towards getting a private pilot's license to allow you to go to the airlines that's currently what I'm working on but as a special mission aviator all in all you could definitely go towards a flight engineer or you can go to as a load master and in a way you can also be a mechanic you just have to work a little bit more towards that one versus going to the flight engineer load master area yeah so for special mission aviators it's definitely a high deployment job because for AC-130Js as specific we are a cast assets so we're close to air support and downrange we're always flying every single day eight hour missions just so that we know the guys on the ground are safe but for definitely for other airframes you're always going to be deploying because a special mission aviator is on an aircraft that's vital to a mission whether you're cv-22s and field x-filling guys if you're on a hh-60 doing kassavac or if you're uh ones they don't deploy overseas but they do stay home station in order to help with states out rescues over in the mountains or anything like that but most definitely you're going to be deploying a lot with the special mission aviator career field yeah so definitely i'm trying to make the air force a 20 year career it might not be as a special mission aviator i definitely want to end up commissioning one day and become the pilot for the air force but if that does not work out the way it's planned i will definitely make a special mission aviator 20 career just because the lifestyle and the people in the job make it so much more fun and uh so many more adventures to have in this job so i would definitely make this a 20 year career of no doubt about it so for me being a special mission aviator right now my top job since i'm still enlisted my top job would probably go next to a load master but a special mission aviator definitely still outranks that to me in my eyes because of learning all the things that we get to do to help support the mission i would definitely stay with this job but like i said once i commission if i do get the commission i would definitely go to be a pilot for su-17s because that is the best platform yeah so brand new air force airman becoming a special mission aviator you definitely want to stay in the books you definitely don't want to you can do other things in the outside life but you don't want to have when it comes to study time make sure you don't have any outside distractions i know when i went to lagland for the very first time going to my job training i definitely had a couple of airmen on my haul that were special mission aviator candidates if you will and i asked him like hey how was that job how was this how was that and they would kind of put you down about it there's gonna be a lot of people that's going to try to beat you down about this job because it is a definitely a hard job to learn but stay in the books and trust yourself you're definitely going to be able to pass this job with flying colors and as air force wide goes i would definitely don't be afraid to ask questions you're going to have a supervisor don't be afraid to go over to them and ask them i personally was scared to ask sometimes just because i didn't want to get made fun of or ask some stupid questions but definitely ask for help when needed and definitely stay in the books and try to understand the best as possible you can when learning this job yeah so if you want to find me to have any further questions with me or just see how my day-to-day lifestyle is i definitely post a lot of it on instagram and you can find me on there at adam underscore honey cut that's adam underscore h u n e y c u t t and also you can uh add me on snapchat adam h three


They are coming. What's up? I'm going to give you some severe here. Welcome to another video, guys. So in today's video, we are going to talk about ticket symbol NIO NIO. There's a lot going on, a lot of updates that I want to cover and make sure that you guys are ready for next year. And we're going to see some price predictions and I'm going to give you guys the reasons why I'm predicting those prices for for next year. So I think NIO is actually right now positioning itself to explode in 2021. But I just want to say that I want to show you and explain to you why I think we're going to go that route. And so and besides that, there's also some really massive news that just came out with NIO that I want to share with you guys before we get into next year. But before we get started, guys, if you're new to the channel, we talk about how to earn money, how to save money, how to invest and build wealth. So if that's something that interests you, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and the notification bell so you don't miss out on new content. So you guys know very well that it's no surprise that I'm bullish on NIO at half for a long time now. And I think this company is currently on the value again. That's my personal belief. NIO recently has actually taken a nose dive. We know why because the Chinese government has been cracking down on Chinese companies for some reason. If you guys can see what happened to Alibaba the other day after they opened up the antitrust investigation, the stock dropped, I think they're sitting now at about $220. That's crazy. That's the stock that was trading over $300. So NIO is no exemption. The Chinese government is actually really pounding down some of these stocks. And for companies that are reputable like that, when they pound these companies down, it's an opportunity for us to buy low and then hope that things will turn around and then we can write it out. So when it comes to NIO, a lot has been going on. Again, like I said, NIO missed their NIO day, which is supposed to be in December because of COVID. The NIO day got moved to January of 2021. So a lot is happening there and they have a ton of information that they're going to share on that NIO day, which some of it I'm going to cover here with you guys so you guys are aware. Again, NIO is this electric car manufacturing out of China. Presumably they're trying to be the Tesla of China, trying to compete with Tesla. And they are doing some great things, even though a lot of people are not talking about them. Just from a design perspective, from a business model perspective, to me it's a solid company. And I think they still have a massive opportunity for growth. So the first news I want to bring to you guys about NIO is the fact that NIO has actually reached a deal to build a hundred EV charging batteries swap station in China. Again, to me, this is massive news. They have actually gone into a deal with Chinese state-owned electric utility greed to build a hundred charging stations across China. Going into partnership with Chinese government or Chinese utility greed company, it's a good thing. It means that the government actually is seeing a good opportunity here. But the only thing that I don't like is just the fact that the government is actually getting their hands into this company. And usually when the Chinese government is trying to infiltrate companies like this, they start dictating the direction of that company, which I don't really like. So we'll see how this pans out. But again, just from a perspective of the company expanding and growing, this is great news. You guys know, NIO has one business model that I really, really like. I haven't really covered that here, but a lot of people are not even talking about it, which I think it's just a disservice to the company. NIO has this thing called BAS, BATI as a service. This is a very, very key play in their business model that people don't talk about. BATI as a service, basically you buy the car. You don't really buy the BATI, right? So you can buy the car and just rent the BATI. You go to a BATI station, a BATI swap station, and under three minutes, they will take out your BATI that is not charged and replace it with a fully charged BATI and you can drive out. Imagine going to a gas station. I haven't think like if you're putting gas, regular gasoline, your car takes more than three minutes. With this, it takes under three minutes.  And I think this is a brilliant idea that is not really being talked about. And I think it's a disservice to NIO. And so when I see stuff like this, I think NIO is really positioning themselves to be a key player in this space. And NIO has also increased what they call mobile charging. So if you are driving somewhere out in the country and you run out of BATI, you can actually call the mobile charging station. They will come to you and charge your vehicle right on the spot and you can drive. So you don't have to do at all. Again, these are services that NIO is offering that I don't see with other companies doing it right now. So I think, again, to me, this is brilliant. So look at the experience that they're providing here. Like this BATI swap on the three minutes, I think it's brilliant. They have on 24-7 roadside assistants where they can come and charge your BATIs for you. I mean, most companies, again, are not offering this kind of service. You have to find a charging station or install one at your house. So even with this, you don't really have to have a charging station at your house because they can bring that mobile charging to you. Like see here at the parking lot, you run out of battery. You call it a mobile charging station. And the beauty about this, again, the CEO was talking about the fact that they are expanding this mobile charging station to other electric vehicles, not just NIO cars. So you can see like Lee Otto can get in all this service from NIO. I think this is brilliant. So they're going beyond just building cars. They're going now beyond. They're actually expanding into providing a service to other EV companies. Speaking of a business model that is really, really built to succeed and win, the fact that they're not being selfish. They're not just saying this is only for NIO cars. It's like, hey, we built this technology. You guys can leverage it. We make money. You guys make money to win, win for everybody. I'm loving what NIO is doing here, guys. Again, these are little things that when I see in the pathway or the future of NIO, I think this company is poised to do some great things in the future. And I think it's going to be interesting. Again, NIO Day is coming up on January 9. That's the main event for NIO. I suppose, like I said, it was supposed to be in December, but COVID pushed it to January 9. And here is what I want you guys to be aware of as it comes. NIO plan to release their new sedan. See if I can find some pictures here. So this is it right here. NIO plan to release their new sedan. This is called the ET8, which is it's going to be competing with Tesla. So if you look at the designs here, I mean, these guys are, these guys are brilliant as far as design goes. Look at that. That's a beautiful looking sedan. This is the issue that I have with Tesla. Tesla, so far the designs, I'm not really, really sold because if you look at the Tesla Model Y, I'm like, it's like, why would you design something like that? The Model Y to me is like the worst design Tesla has ever put out there. That to me, that's the knock on Tesla I don't really like. They need to go back on the drawing board and come out with some really sleek looking vehicles. I mean, the fact that it's electric is good, but dude, like you guys need to do something with that design. Model Y to me is not a good looking car. So you guys need to work on that. So NIO is putting out this new sedan to compete with Tesla in Asia. And then the other thing that NIO is actually doing right now that I think it's going to be huge for them is the fact that they plan on launching in Europe as well. So now they're moving out of the continent of Asia. They're moving now into Europe. That's one step away from start going global. And the next thing you know, they're going to make it to America, to South America, and they're going to be all over the place. So I think to me, this is huge. And then last but not least, the other thing that you mentioned about NIO is that they're going to release a new battery that's going to really increase, you know, the range of their cars. So right now, the thing in the new battery is probably going to give them a range of about 900 kilometers. So who see, I'm pretty sure they're working on new technology every day to kind of improve. So again, guys, NIO is doing some great things. They are really working on getting their technology out there, expanding their business model and, you know, produce, giving new models for cars, new batteries, new services like their battery as a service, the roadside charging station where they're providing charging to other EV cars in China and hopefully across the globe. I think this company is positioning itself to make some massive, massive move in 2021. And again, my price prediction, actually, when I'm doing this video right now, we're sitting with NIO sitting somewhere at about $45. Again, we know that it's been a crazy year. Again, the last month alone, NIO is down now about 10 or 11 percent. And the reason, again, like I said, is because of what is happening in China with the Chinese government going and doing all these anti-trust and all these different things. As soon as this is settled down, you're going to see NIO is going to pop. 2021, NIO is going to break $100. That is in my personal prediction. So if you haven't already invested in NIO, this tip right now is where you can start building a position. And again, when I say building a position, that means you can start buying shares, but I don't want you to go out and just buy everything at once. So buy 10, 15 and see how the market is moving. And then you keep adding to your position if you want to get into NIO. But again, guys, always do your own research before you jump into stocks like this. So again, my 2021 prediction is that NIO is going to crack $100. And I'm still very bullish on this stock. So a lot is going up with NIO. I think that the company is positioning itself to be the Tesla of Asia. And if not, it's probably even going to be Tesla, in my opinion, because of the different services that they're offering, not just going beyond just building electric cars and actually expanding and bringing in the other electric car manufacturers providing services that would help them as well. So I think to me that is brilliant. So look forward to NIO Day, January 9th. They're going to unveil a new battery, get new cars, a new sedan that would definitely compete with Tesla because right now they've been doing SUVs. So a sedan will kind of change their market and expand them into new spaces. So I think this is brilliant. So again, guys, let me know in the comment section what you think about this, what you would take on NIO? Do you see NIO again as I'm predicting cracking that $100 price point? I think it's going to do it. So let me know what you think. Do you currently own NIO in your portfolio? And if yes, what's your game plan? Do you plan on holding? Do you plan on selling some and taking some profit? Or what's your plan here again? Let me know in the comment section. And if you're new to the channel, guys, we talk about how to earn money, how to save money, how to invest and build wealth. So if that's something that interests you, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and the notification bell too. You don't miss out on new content. And also, if you're looking to get started with investing, we will still doing your promotion right now. If you sign up and deposit $100, you get four free stocks to get you started. Links in the description below. It does help me continue to make content here on the channel. And as always, guys, always do your homework, do your research.