I'm just going to start very quickly, there's quite a lot to get through in this presentation and I won't be able to cover all of the technical elements but I'm around during the day for anyone who wants to follow up. I really want to talk about a really strange, ambitious idea of using the blockchain to send financial value to wild animals which are threatened with extinction. And I use just to start with this example of a giraffe and you can imagine if the animal actually owns a digital wallet and that wallet is full, the ranger's family, the local community, the government itself are all potentially incentivized to mine the value of that animal in order to improve its life quality and critically to raise the number of endangered animals in the wild. And why are we doing this? Some of you will have seen this picture, this is from Kenya, this is Sudan. He was the last living northern white rhino and he died a couple of months ago so that species is dead now, it's gone from the planet and it's unlikely that we will find a way to return it. I really want to just emphasize some simple points about biodiversity because it's really important to get a sense of scale about what's happening at the moment. First point is the most obvious point that we as a collective, as a species have massively failed so far to be good stewards of the planet which we have. We have at the moment the sixth mass extinction event happening on the planet. We can see in Africa the numbers are actually higher but on the planetary basis we've lost 60% of large animals on the planet. In Africa it runs up to 80% in many areas. And obviously the large animals are important only because they are an indicator of what is happening underneath them. So when you lose a giraffe you're also probably losing the ecosystem underpinning it and that includes plants, insects, soil and this is a critical problem which is only going to get worse. I always think about this problem for a long time and it seemed to me that one novel approach is offered by the blockchain. An animal doesn't have any value to offer in and of itself unless it's an elephant or a rhino in which case the value it has to offer is the reason why it's destroyed. And so I feel that giving the animals financial value it maybe empowers them and gives them some agency in the world that they would not otherwise have. And just this point which in the Ministry of Science and Technology I think you're all very aware with. You won't be able to see all of the detail in the charts but you'll all see the uptick. So on the left hand side we have the socioeconomic trends. So what is happening to human population, what is happening to GDP and on the right hand side what is happening to our planet in terms of the pressure on the planet. And when we think about Ethiopia, the critical point I want to make is that Ethiopia is going to double its population and try to become a middle income country at this point in all of these graphs. So the pressure on Ethiopia is quite staggering. We can talk about climate change, we can talk about degradation of living systems, we can talk about the rising cost of food and materials. The pressure which Ethiopia will come under during its transition is quite significant. In terms of biodiversity, most of my work is in very advanced technology in the tropical bells of the planet. So I'm very much interested in this bells of the planet. And you'll see the red indicates population growth and these rings indicate areas of very high biodiversity. And you'll see that in Europe and North America the more north you go the less biodiversity there is. So we're in a situation now in this tropical bell particularly here in Africa where human population is growing, continuing to grow very fast. And the biodiversity which is contained there is of planetary importance and is not properly valued by the planet itself which is a critical point. If we just speak specifically about Ethiopia, most Ethiopians in the room will know about the Simeon Mountains and the Bali Mountains and in terms of botanical plant life they are very, very rich. But the area that I'm most interested in in Ethiopia, a little bit up here on the border with Eritrea and Sudan, but mainly it's this region bordering South Sudan and Northern Kenya where we have extremely rich biodiversity which has survived. And what we'd like to see is to try and trial this project, maybe in Canbella here, maybe down in Omo here and obviously there are a lot of operational challenges but we think it's a really good possibility. And the obvious point to make from an Ethiopian government perspective is Ethiopia is committed to a green economy future. So when you think about this project think of it in a 50 year, 80 year cycle. So what would your great grandchildren want to inherit in Ethiopia? Do they want to inherit an ecosystem which is biodiverse and rich and alive? Just the numbers, the lion is the symbol of Ethiopia. This is the great symbol of Ethiopian civilization. There's about 900 to 1000 lions left in the wild in Ethiopia. And in 1970 there were probably as much as 10,000 lions here. So we've seen a complete collapse in those animals. The same with giraffes and we can talk about all other species. But in particular with this project we're really interested in giving digital wallets to these large animals and seeing what happens and whether that helps the local community to protect them. I think the most essential point about this Linnaeus project is the idea that you use the planetary capital and direct it towards a small number of creatures for maximum effect. We often talk about wild animals as being priceless but the opportunity for them to actually have value and to spend that value is something that the blockchain can provide. And I'm using the word, I haven't really thought of the right word here. I'm hoping that the minister will come up with a good verb to blockchain. But the idea is very simply that if the local community understands that an animal has a large amount of value attached to it and if they understand that they can change their behavior and be rewarded for that behavior in incremental financial payments then maybe that will have a positive effect on the ground. We named this project after Linnaeus. Obviously we're here in the Ministry of Science so many of you will know him but those who don't Linnaeus was an 18th century Swedish taxonomist and he really left a legacy which we still have today of species and subspecies and the idea with this project is that we build on his legacy by directing value towards these species. We don't have time to get into all of the details but I think the main idea around Linnaeus and the concept is to develop as it were sovereign wealth fund for life forms and the capital flow will come into Linnaeus but it will be highly targeted towards endangered creatures. And we have a very good scientific underpinning on which animals are the most endangered in which places and in the early stage we'll direct the digital wallets towards those creatures and see if that can have a positive effect. What attracted me most towards Cardano and Charles and more largely into the blockchain community is this idea of smart contracts. The idea is that if you were actually to physically go and negotiate a financial transaction with the local community for example not putting their cattle into an area where lions are that would be really prohibitively expensive but it's possible to architect and to write smart contracts which are quite sophisticated and they change according to time and they change according to circumstance and they change also spatially so it's possible to write a smart contract for one ecosystem and to build in certain conditions for example they might have a drought and if there's a drought then maybe they're allowed to use water in different ways than they would otherwise. And the ability of writing smart contracts I think is the absolute killer app of blockchain even above trust and transparency because it allows you this flexibility and we know one reason I moved into this space is I studied very heavily micro insurance schemes that we have in Africa at the moment which is often run off mobile phone payment systems so a farmer will buy a micro insurance for his crop or for his animals and then that will pay out automatically according to the climactic conditions and that is a really really positive outcome we've seen from that. You lose a little bit of accuracy but in terms of cost it's quite affordable. What we'd like to see which is very ambitious is to get a billion euros or equivalent into Linn we call it Linn before 2030 and obviously in the early stage we have to test quite extensively and we need to work out exactly what are the operational pitfalls and what are the effects on the ecosystem of actually handing animals this money. Just a few key points we want to build it on the next generation blockchain and we really hope we could build it on ADA which is the currency of Cardano. The Linn as we said is a digital wallet sent to the animal. This is a really important point it's kind of like reverse life insurance concept so the value exists in the animal when the animal is alive and then when the animal dies it's redistributed back into the fund and then redistributed to another animal. I really like the idea that local people will get to see how much animal is worth and I think that the money and value really do help to change human behavior in that way. As we spoke about the idea is to it is to allow local communities to change their behavior and be rewarded for that. We talked about grazing and cattle which is probably the biggest single problem in terms of destruction of these other species and then cutting down trees for charcoal possibly poaching lions subject to poisoning and again that's related to tension with cattle. The idea as Linnaeus matures if it can prove itself is that this sovereign fund will invest locally in other income streams so it should be possible if you bought a thousand dollars worth of Linnaeus in three or four years time to imagine that over a long term you would have a low rate of return on that investment. It's obviously not going to be a high rate of return but it should be a safe rate of return and in that case Linnaeus is really a prototype of a natural capital product of which we're going to see a lot more. One of the most interesting elements for me about Linnaeus is the idea that built into the value of it is the monitoring ability. The one problem we have and Ethiopia is a good example but not the only example is that we don't have enough money to send scientists out into the field and they haven't been particularly efficient at counting animals or knowing where they are at any given time and Linnaeus would build in a new layer of intelligence into that and we can imagine open source database for different regions for example Gambella may have a database in five years time in which you know most of the major species where they are at any given time what is happening to them and this obviously I'm coming at this from an artificial intelligence point of view and artificial intelligence is really really critical for that and we talk about convergence of blockchain with artificial intelligence I think this is one of the most interesting elements for me so this is a cheap monitor which is now available for $12 it has a Raspberry Pi computer built into it and you can hook it up in a wild area and then download the data of Bluetooth at a later date one of the most interesting points is machine vision so now we are developing drone technologies and satellite technologies which will allow you to track and to monitor animals in ways that have not been possible before and of course when we talk about local community there's a lot of interesting stuff that can be done using smart phones you can distribute smart phones in the community they can take photographs, gather data and so on this is something which just came out last month these are primates who have been thermally imaged from a low orbit satellite and you can actually identify the species of monkey just from that data so we are in a position to move to a much higher level of resolution but the question of course is about money and how you finance that and we think Linnaeus might be a way to do that in terms of partnerships we'd love Minister to partner with the government of Ethiopia in the early stage so we run a couple of pilot projects and really try and understand the complexity of the challenge obviously in the first few years probably for the first decade you can be working mainly with major conservation groups who've had a 50-60 year history on the ground working with local communities and essentially become a finance and intelligence mechanism for them to do their work we have already very strong cooperation in the artificial intelligence industry I actually think the insurance industry is going to be one of the very big players in this space and I do think the applications that we develop here will have direct crossover to the livestock industry so I think for Ethiopia obviously livestock is a huge industry then as Charles has developed very well the connections with universities is quite critical and having peer reviewed work which is very open source, very transparent I'm just going to click now to just a couple of points I mean my previous life before I worked in technology I was the Africa correspondent for the economists so I have a lot of experience on the ground in Africa and what I really love most of all this is a Samburu tribesman in Kenya I love most of all connecting the very most advanced technology in the world with the absolute ground level and thinking in a very realistic way in terms of those communities their education level, their income that's available to them the challenges they have in their life and thinking about what are the opportunities for them so I think this is really ground truth this I think is just a point to end on maybe the reason I'm on this stage right now and having this conversation about blockchain was that when I arrived in Africa most of the stories I initially wrote were about this Kalashnikov and then in 2002, 2003 this Nokia 1100 phone arrived and it was known as the Kalashnikov of communications in Africa and I remember really profoundly having discussions with development actors with African governments who said that there is no chance whatsoever that ordinary Africans would have access to a mobile phone that would never happen and they would say things like well you know, the village how would they take care of the mobile phone mast who would pay for that how would that network work and what we've seen is that they have underestimated the power of new technology by 20 to 50 fold and I think it's exactly the same situation we're in with blockchain right now people are finding it very hard and difficult to see how it will become operational it's never going to work for poor people but I think exactly it can and it will so thank you very much


This is the luckiest fountain pen unboxing we've done all month. This is the Heinz B24 Irish Isles fountain pen I love how clean and functional their packaging is with the white box and branding and the instructions included in the box As well as the fun sticker. If you've watched other Heinz fountain pen unboxings You'll notice the logo on the finial again, which we really love that And it's fun to see some consistency across different models from different brands. It's a threaded cap And it's a cartridge converter fountain pen The resin in this pen is a beautiful green cream and brown And it just reminds me of the Irish coastline with the waves crashing and it can't be more Perfect that it's paired with this turquoise trim and plated nib and that's an electro plated nib so you can expect more durability and improved ink flow The pen comes with a converter already installed ready to go So you can just ink it up with your favorite fountain pen safe bottled ink and start writing I hope this Heinz B24 Irish Isles pen brings you a little bit of luck. Subscribe at Pinchley for more pen reveals


What's going on everyone? Sam here with Leighton Sports Cards and I am doing a two-box mixer for Tom B, one of them being a 2021 Bowman Draft First Edition Baseball and the other being a 2022 Topps Tribute Baseball. So good luck Tom. Start with the Bowman Draft and we'll finish with the Tribute. JD, you're going next as well. I'm assuming you're probably still here somewhere, but you are next in queue with your Bowman and your Inception. Box. So all cards will ship out of this, which is nice. I'll sleeve all the color right now and then we'll kind of go from there. Base pack. Some baseball finally, I know honestly. So I used to see in Flawless up here. Alec Thomas to 75 on the yellow for the diamond backs. Nice one there. First edition. See like a black foil of some sort. This one seems like it has more cards in it for some reason. Maybe an auto. Aqua, Ronnie Marusia. I don't know why these packs seem thicker than normal. I've opened some of this, but Jose Salas got Releves Martinez on the Aqua. That was as well. Let's get top loaded. Down to Williams first. So probably got Marcelo Meijer. Now he's got Doug Nickezi first. Aqua. Got Austin Martin Aqua for the twins. So funny that his first is in like his Blue Jays uniform. It was actually unreal, Mike. Like I was thinking about maybe buying one, but I was like, eh, I'll wait a little bit. Not a good idea. Michael Harris Aqua. Not a good idea at all. Andy Rodriguez. Jackson Job got Leo Verpeguero on the Aqua. But Ryan Webb Aqua first. The Guardians. This is actually unbelievable how fast the Personal Almond XL is about. That's going to be, I cannot wait to look at that. Got Alexander Mejica to 150 on the blue. Like Lane, I went into like Lane's office today and he showed me like the spreadsheet for what's in it and some of the cards are unbelievable. Absolutely crazy what's in there. It's going to be so much fun. Got Aqua first, Cal Conley for the Braves. Got Maximo Acosta, nice to 150 on the first edition. Yes, I will be working on Saturday night with Caleb. Oh my God, it's going to go miles quicker because we have them all stacked up in the back, like over my left shoulder. Blue Brennan Davis to 150 for the Cubs. Nice color match there. Yeah, they're all stacked up over there already. So now all we have to do, everybody picked their spots, which is good. Now all you have to do is basically look it up. Oh, we have an Orange. Got Orange. Logan Henderson first to 25. Nice hit there, Tom. Grats on that one. Seven of 25 on the Orange. Oh, let's go, Mike. Oh, I'm pumped, man. Heck yeah, good luck on that. Hope you pull something big. Big Yankee maybe. Got Kevin Cops on the Aqua. I will say I'm not going to spoil many cards, but I know Lane took a picture of this. I believe he's going to post it. There is a Jeter Judge Dual Auto in there. Got Dominic Hamill on the first goal to 50 for the Mets. Nice one there. Yeah, good luck on that one, Mike. Hope you hit something big, big Yankee. Yeah, he saw the Judge Jeter. Okay, good. I thought he posted it. I know he was taking pictures of it today. Got Aqua of Landon Marcel. Angels. Yeah, Jeter Judge Dual is going to be wild for sure. G-Rod on the front there. Base Pack there. Oh, he posted some on Discord. Nice. Yeah, I haven't looked in the Discord, so that's awesome though. Base Pack. South Frelik on the back. Yeah, that'd be like going to literally the perfect home. That'd be so awesome, Mike. Base Pack. Aqua, Tyler Black first. Nice. The Brew Crew. White on the top. Got Aqua JT Schwartz first. And Aqua of Riley Green. Nice one there. So that'll do it for Bowman first edition. Do some tribute. I'm pumped. I want to pull like, I haven't pulled a huge auto out of tribute yet.  Jesus. Why is that? Is he injured or something, JD? That's not good. All right, we've got Base of Matt Chapman for the A's Dale Murphy. First hit is going to be a Triple Relic to 99. That's Green Raphael Devers. Nice Rafi there. It's Forrest's boy. Nice hit. Next pack. I feel like a trout from out of this. That'd be cool. Or a Soto. I guess I did pull a Soto out of here, so I can't really complain too much. Got Paul Goldschmidt Base and Andre Dawson on the base as well. First autograph is going to be Tori Hunter to 175 for the twins. That is two of 175. He's got such a beautiful autograph. Yeah, honestly, pulling a book out of this would be so sick. Manning Machado Base and Jay Ram Base for the Guardians. Second hit or third hit is going to be nice to 199. Big Poppy on the dual jersey. Game used as all tribute is. Very nice there. Not all of it, most of it. What's up, Bradley? Congrats on both you and Brennan. Congrats on the abs today. That must have been exciting. Nerve-wracking, but exciting for sure. Got nice. Green Mariano Rivera to 99. The Sandman. Best closer to ever do it. And Corbin Burns Base. We've got Solid Gold Greats of Rod Carew. Very nice. 131 of 199. Heck yeah. For the Angels. Nice Rod Carew. Oh, that is absolutely a Hartford Whalers shirt. I'm rocking. You know it, Mike. It's our only protein we ever had in Connecticut. So got to rock it. Got Randy Johnson at Houston Astros legend. Randy Johnson. Ryan Sandberg. Nice Rhino. And we've got nice. Giancarlo Stanton stamp of approval to 199 for the Inks. Mike and Chat likes that one right there. Got a little bit of the pinstripe going, which is cool. Big fan of that. Nice Giancarlo. Get into a weird mojo during games. How so? A Rotteroo. Got base of Don Mattingly. Donnie Baseball. Salvador Perez. And last auto is going to be Jake Burger. Seven of 99. Green for the White Sox. Nice hit there. Wrapped on that one. Tom. That'll do it for your two boxes there, Tom. Thanks again for jumping in and ripping with us. We'll get those cards right out to you. Appreciate it.


Yo, what is up guys and welcome back to the Johnny Q channel. Thanks so much for watching. Here's an unpopular opinion. I don't think the Low Pro backpack is the best backpack for photographers out there.  This is a review. It is not a dig on Low Pro. This video is not meant to trash anybody at Low Pro or their products. I'm just going to give you my genuine thoughts and review. This Low Pro backpack is so popular among YouTubers, videographers and photographers. Lots of YouTubers have reviewed this bag. Lots of YouTubers use this bag. But is it functional? Is it reliable? Does it fit your style? Does it fit my style? And that's what today's video is about. So what do I look for in a bag? Great question. I want portability, reliability and overall ease of use. It's very simple and I want lots of space. So that's where I thought this bag came in. The ease of use isn't there. And so what I mean by that is this. I don't like the way that these backpacks open up from the back. I understand that when your backpack is on you, you don't want anybody to take their stuff. But the fact that I have to open my backpack from the back, like the fact that I have to do this.  Do that and then go through all my lenses and all my gear and figure out what I need. This laptop sleeve is way up here and this sledge because it's just so thin and slippery in there. And when I put it down, like I don't, to me that's not very easy to use. I don't like that I have to put my bag on the ground. And this part of the backpack, the front, which makes it look like really cool and out of a SWAT TV show or movie.  I don't want to make it dirty. I like the aesthetic. I like the look. I understand. So for those reasons, I can totally understand why they would want to make it this way, right? Why they would open it from the back or save their reasons. I get it. This top, it's not as sturdy as they said that it was going to be. I open this up and there's no, at least the whole front. Like I know I can leave a compartment here so I can just use this top space to put storage, phone, cables, et cetera, but I really want something permanent besides its looks.  It feels good. That's one other thing that I do like about this backpack. It feels incredible to have on. It's sleek. It's simple. It doesn't get too heavy depending on what kind of gear you get. But all the support actually goes onto these straps and these straps are actually well supported, well built for your shoulders, for long hauls and heavy gear. Is it breathable? Yes, it's breathable. I'm on set, out in the field filming. I sweat a bunch and this thing keeps me cool. It's weird to say, but it actually does and this video is not sponsored, no one's paying me to say that, but it actually does. So I just walked all the way from over there to over here. I don't know why you need to know that, but new shot. I gotta say, now that I'm actually holding this once again after like five months of not using it, it makes me want to use it only because it looks so good and it really does feel nice. I'm not saying this bag is bad, just for my needs, it just wasn't fitting. The more I play with it, the more actually take it out here. I'm like, oh, I guess I wouldn't mind just throwing it on the ground and grabbing my gear. If I just drag it, I mean it should be fine. I guess that's kind of the use of these bags to get them dirty, to build character on the fabric and actually just use them, starting to like it. Even though this isn't a negative review, it was my overall experience with it. There's these pockets on the side here, on both sides, okay, and they come out like this. I would say they're great for like passports, cards, keys, business cards in that sense, but it's not like I can put a lens. I can't really put anything of significance or a chunk, if you will, because they're just so tight and there's not enough room to fit something that I would really want or need that I would find useful out in the field. Those are nice to have, but I just wish that they were just bigger on the side so I can just really use them to my needs. One other thing that I didn't get about the quality and build of this backpack, that's this. As you see here, this is the full backpack and there's a zipper on the side here and I can grab stuff from the side so if I'm literally out and about and I'm like, oh, there's a cool thing of something I want to take a picture of, I don't know, there's literally like a squirrel over there, I go out, put it aside, I unzip, grab my camera and I'm good, I'm good to go and I shoot. I put it back in. Most camera bags will have that, but to me, I don't really use that side as much and I don't find it usable for me. You may, in some scenarios, you may find this very usable and very applicable, but I just don't know why it's there, I don't get that side pocket. As far as like keeping gear inside, there's tons of room for all your gear, all of your lenses, anything you need within here and it's, I mean, it's pretty wide, like it's, again, nothing that I have gripes with, I just, I would want something that I can close up and actually open up, come up here, open up this way and go in there and grab something out versus trying to open it up on the ground and doing this, opening up the whole bag and, you know, now it's out in the elements, anything can get in my lenses and gear, anybody can take them, so, I don't know, I mean, it still looks cool though, I mean, look at that, it just, it really does look so cool. I've had this for what, less than a year and there's already some, some, I don't know if you can see that right there, some of these little threads coming out. I'm pretty rough on my gear, like there's some stuff on the bottom here that you can see there's like threading or unthreading, if you will. I'm sure if I really put this back through its cases, there'll be a lot more wear and tear, but I'm sure the bag would overall keep my stuff safe and that's what it's meant to do. As someone who is always searching for bags and the best bag and the coolest bag out there, would I recommend this specific bag for photography, video, and video creation? Yes, but also no, I don't know, I'm a big-looks guy and I love the way this is sleek and I just wish there was better storage and a better way to actually manage that storage within and just these pockets to me don't make sense, I don't understand this whole, but if you're willing to shell out three to four hundred bucks, then yeah, get this bag, this bag will do you just fine, gonna keep your stuff safe, it's rugged, it looks good, and it's gonna work with you and your needs and whether you're out in the field or studio, it's gonna handle all those things very well. I think I'm gonna go have fun, it's a beautiful day right now. Also, someone stole my shades over the weekend and I'm really, really salty about it because those were expensive Ray-Bans and now I don't have them anymore and I feel like I'm squinting and I'm like, oh, all right guys, thanks for watching and I'll catch you next time on the John and Hugh channel.


In today's video, we're going to be talking about TikTok spy tools and how you can use them to your advantage for your product research. As we all know, product research is absolutely crucial in dropshipping. And what better place to find trending products than TikTok. So to help aid you in your product research and make it that much easier, this video is going to be dedicated to the six best TikTok ad spy tools that you can use for your dropshipping business. Let's go ahead and roll that intro and let's get started. It's going on everyone, Mara here with AutoDS. And if you haven't done so already, as always, please make sure to hit that subscribe button as well as ring that little bell notification so you don't miss out on any future dropshipping videos. On this channel, we cover anything and everything dropshipping related going from some of the best products to dropship to some of the top tips and tricks to help you succeed in the business. So if that's something that interests you, just make sure to hit that subscribe button not to go along with this video. I am going to have an easy to reference cheat sheet with all of the different links and information that I'm going to be covering in the video. Now, if you want access to that, all you have to do is comment down below hashtag TikTok spy and let me know which one of these TikTok spy tools is your favorite. Once I see that you want to head in commented, I'll go ahead and reply back with a link to the cheat sheet. So to get started, what exactly is a TikTok ad spy tool? Well, it's pretty simple. Really, all it is is it's a tool that helps you find the top performing TikTok ads and posts. Honestly, this is something that's extremely useful because it can really streamline your product research. What this ends up doing is it saves you tons of time from going to different websites or from simply just going on TikTok and searching up hashtag TikTok maybe buy it and looking through all of the different posts and finding what's trending and by helping you filter out the posts that are really just sitting there with no interactions at all. Now, whether you're just getting started dropshipping or you're already a veteran in the game, there's one thing that we can all agree on. And that's TikTok is the place to find trending products and to market your products. So focusing a lot of your product research time on TikTok can be very beneficial. So these tools that I'm about to mention are really going to help you in that process and are really going to help you at the end of the day streamline the whole thing. So you can get a lot of time back so that way you can reinvest that either into your own time so you can just sit back and relax, or you can reinvest that time into your business to keep scaling. So without further ado, let's go ahead and start counting down the six top TikTok ad spy tools to help you out in your dropshipping business. Kicking off our list at number one, we have the AdoDS TikTok ad spy. On here, you can find all of the different types of ads all shown on TikTok with some of the most trending products. Now, if you're interested in checking out this ad spy tool, then you can currently join AdoDS for a trial period for just one dollar. If you want more information on that, just go ahead and check out AdoDS.com. Also, the link will be down below. Now, the TikTok ad spy tool can really help streamline the entire process of product research, especially through social media, because it has tons of different filters so that way you can look up exactly what you're looking for.  And to top it off, you can also search by keyword. So if there's a particular product that you're looking at, let's say the slushie cup, then you can look for that through here and you can find the different ads that are currently running for that product. So let's go ahead and take a look at one of these posts really fast. And what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to filter it for posts that have over 50,000 likes. Typically, that means that it is trending, especially with 50,000 likes. So let's see what comes up. So we have a few different videos here and see what we can come up with. All right, so I started scrolling through and I found this one right here, which is actually pretty interesting to me because I've seen this quite a bit on TikTok and this is the pocket play. So let's go ahead and scroll down and let's see the TikTok ad. So once we go ahead and click on see the TikTok ad, then we're going to come across this screen. That's going to give us all of these different analytics. So as you can see, this video in particular has had over 909,000 impressions. That's a lot of eyes on this video. So out of those 909,000 people that have seen it, about 52,000 people have actually liked the video. Then as far as comments, it has 785 and 1.7,000 shares. So out of those 909,000 people that have seen this video, about 54.5,000 have actually interacted with it. Now, this takes into account the comments, the likes and the shares and just adds them all up together. And out of those 54.5,000 total interactions, that equals out to about a 6% interaction rate. So about 6% of people who have seen this video have interacted with it. Now, that's honestly not that bad. 6% is pretty good. Typically, a lot of the times when you go on TikTok, you're going to see most videos have about a 2% to 3% interaction rate. So 6% is pretty good. Now, on top of that, you also get a bit more information. So as you can see, you have here ad information and this ad actually aired on June 29th, 2023. And the last time that a few people saw it was on July 18th, which is actually today. Now, to give you a bit more information, you also have the entire video description and the hashtags that were used. Now, as a last added bonus, you have two more buttons. So you have the option to see the original post. So you can click on that and it'll take you to the TikTok page that has the video. Or if you want to go directly to the link in their bio, you can skip going to the TikTok page, clicking on their link and then going to their bio. You can simply just click on bio link. And as you can see, it takes you to the pocket play. This TikTok ad spy tool is extremely helpful because really, as you can see, it does streamline the entire process for product research when it comes to looking up products on social media. Specifically TikTok, which again, we all know TikTok right now is probably one of the best places that you can start posting on. So you can start getting some organic traffic. Using this tool, you can really start to analyze your competition and start getting some valuable insights as to how you can start pricing and marketing your own products. Up next in our second spot for TikTok ad spy tools, we have Minia. Now, in order to use the Minia ad spy tool, you do need to sign up for the premium plan. And that runs at about $99 per month. Now, Minia has a very user friendly interface and it lets you see all of the different analytics for all of the different types of ads that there are. You also get quite a few different filters that you can use to your advantage. So as you can see, you can search either by keywords or by a domain. On top of that, you can filter out results based on date, the countries that they're running in, the e-commerce type, which I actually think is pretty interesting because you can filter out ads that are either running for Shopify or people that are selling on Wix, big cartel, WooCommerce or any of the other different platforms. You can filter out by the number of likes the video has or how many times the video has been played. On top of that, you also have a couple of presets and the ability to set your own presets. So here you have the quick query, which by default they have weekly winners, the best of the month and the season cash machine, or you can set your filters to your preferred preset and just save it as a query. So that way next time you wanna jump on Minia and look for a particular set of videos, you can go ahead and search a quick query. Up next in the third spot, we have Big Spy. Now, as you can see on Big Spy, you have tons of different filters that you can choose from. So you're able to filter out by the site type, whether it be Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce or any of the others. You can also filter out by the different types of platforms. So Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, the different countries that the ad is running in, the engagement rate and how long the ads have been running for. So have they been running for seven days, 30 days, 90 days? Now, even though it does look like it could be overwhelming or it could be a lot, Big Spy is actually very easy to navigate. Their platform is very user friendly and it gives you some pretty detailed metrics. Let's take a quick look at one of the ads that are on here. And as you can see, this video is actually in Arabic. So this is from a different country. This video has 109,000 different impressions. It has a popularity score of 62, which the popularity score is actually specific to Big Spy. They have their own scoring system for this. And here you can see how long the ad has actually been running for. So it started today, 7-18 and currently has only been running for one day. Now aside from that, you also do get some pretty detailed information. So as you can see, this is only running on TikTok and it was uploaded through an Android phone. Now, I don't know how much information you can really gather from posts that have been uploaded either through an Android or an iPhone. But if that's something that you need, it's right there for you. As you can see, the country or region of upload is the United Arab Emirates with the language being in Arabic. Type is video and you have the link to the original post here. Also, you get the engagement rates which currently it has 1.1,000 likes, 46 comments and 91 shares. And if you want the link in their bio, it is also gonna be here, mega-saudi.com. Coming up next on our fourth spot, we have PP ads. One thing that PP ads has that's unique to it compared to some of the other spy tools on this list is that it has an advertising section. Now, on that advertising section, you can actually see your competitors winning strategies. Now, what does that mean?  Now, a few of the different things that PP ads offers are gonna be targeted ad filtering, ad performance analysis, a pretty long free trial and an intuitive interface. Now, once the free trial is over, you are gonna have to pay for the monthly subscription. And that starts at $77 per month for the basic plan and can go up to $263 per month for the pro plan. That's monthly. You also have the option to pay annually, which starts off at $54 a month, but you are gonna have to pay the entire thing at once. So that'll total out to about $649 for the entire year, up to $181 a month, which will total out to $2167 for the entire year. Up next in our fifth spot, we have the TikTok creative center or the TikTok ads library. Now you can use the TikTok ads library to be able to get inspired, to create your own content and your own ads. Here you can find a bunch of different trends that are going viral. So that way you can start incorporating them into your own content as well. Now, using the TikTok ads library, you do get access to different performance metrics. So let's take a quick look at one of these videos. Let's go ahead and click on one of these videos. Let's check out the first one. All right, so here you can actually see the video itself. Apparently she should have never bought that thing. And here you can see the different regions that the ad is running in. So just hover over this and you can see that it's running in South Africa, Spain, the US, Canada, Portugal, and a few other places. The industry that it's in. So in particular here, it's on sports and equipment. Then you can also see the objective of the ads campaign, which is pretty cool. So the objective of this campaign is conversions. The source is the TikTok ads manager. So this was done through the TikTok ads manager rather than being a video that was promoted on the app itself. And you have some very helpful keyword insights. So the keywords on here are gonna be hula hoop, try it for yourself, all women, sale ends in six hours and process.  So here you get the CTR, which is the click-through rate or the CVR, which is the conversion rate. Then you also get how many clicks there have been, the conversion and how many viewers remain watching all the way to the end of the video. So as you can see, you can get some pretty valuable insights using the TikTok creative center. Now, one thing about the TikTok ads library is the fact that certain creators can choose not to disclose their ad data. So there could be a few things that are missing on here if the creator chooses to hide them. But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter too much because you have a bunch of other videos and sources that you can choose to be able to get all of the information that you need. And honestly, the best thing about using the TikTok ads library is the fact that it's completely free. The whole thing is free to use. You don't have to pay a subscription and you can access it whenever you need. The last option on this list for top TikTok spy tools is gonna be AdWins. Now, when you first sign on to AdWins or when you first go to the website, it could potentially be in a different language such as Chinese. Now, it's an easy fix because this happened to me and it had to poke around a little bit.  And then the entire page will be translated to English. Now, right off the bat, you have a few different ways to be able to search for different ads. For one, you can search for keywords or you can search based on the country. On top of that, you can also search by the call to action button or the e-commerce platform that these ads are being advertised for. Then you also have an advanced filtering method. So you can filter out by different impressions, how popular the video is, which just includes likes, comments and shares. And you also have a few other methods to filter. Now, clicking into one of these ads, you can see the ad performance on it. So this one in particular has 7.8,000 impressions with a popularity score of 585. Now, what exactly is the popularity score? Well, it tells you right here, the popularity score equals the likes plus the comments and the shares. So it's pretty much all of the interactions added together. Then you have a bit more information on it and the advertising strategies. So this was uploaded on 7.18 through an Android and the call to action is Saver Mice, which actually means learn more in Portuguese. You have the ad text so you can see the hashtags and the description that was used. And you also have a link to the original post. Then if you scroll down, you are gonna have some more analytics, but you do need to sign up for the premium plan for this. Now, if you're paying monthly, the premium plan does start at $49 a month for the basic. And that can go up to $169 a month for an entire team. But realistically speaking, if you do decide to go with any of these different plans, the basic or the starter for any of the different ad spy tools that I talked about in this video is usually gonna be enough for what you need. And those are our picks for the top six ad spy tools that you can use for your drop shopping business so you can speed up product research and start getting some more sales and making some more money. Huge thank you to everyone for watching today, especially if you made it all the way to the end. Remember that if you want access to the cheat sheet, all you have to do is comment down below hashtag tick tock spy with your favorite spy tool from this list. Once I see that you went ahead and commented, I'll go ahead and reply back with the link to the cheat sheet. Huge thank you to everyone for watching especially if you made it all the way to the end. Once again, my name is Mario with AutoDS. And if you found this video helpful, if you found it entertaining and if you found it informative, please make sure to leave a like and also make sure to hit that subscribe button and ring that little bell notification so you don't miss out on any future drop shipping videos. Once again, one last time, my name is Mario with AutoDS and I'll catch you all next time.


Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Let's see how you want to do it. Our first reading today is the mystic, the scientist and the activist from the tapestry of faith, a UU curriculum. One day a religious man approached a mystic and asked, does God exist? Allow me to go within for the answer, the mystic said. After meditating for quite some time, expanding her heart consciousness to embrace the totality of existence, she answered, I do not know what you mean by the word God, but I do know that this world is more mysterious and more wonderful than I could ever imagine. I know that you and I are part of something so much larger than our own lives. Perhaps this is the something you seek. Then the religious man approached a scientist. Does God exist? he asked.  And so she thought. She thought about the vastness of the universe, 156 billion light years, and the almost immeasurable smallness of a quirk. She thought of how the energy of the big bang fuels the beating of her own heart. And then she answered, I do not know what you mean by the word God, but I do know that this world is more mysterious and more wonderful than I could ever imagine. I know that you and I are part of something so much larger than our own lives. Perhaps this something larger is what you seek. Then the religious man approached an activist. Does God exist? he asked. Let me remember, the activist said. And so they remembered. They remembered all the different people of different faith and no faith, with whom they had worked for justice over the years. They had seen people in desperate circumstances who had lost everything, still willing to reach out and help one another. They thought of how working for justice had saved them from a life of despair. And then they answered, I do not know what you mean by the word God, but I do know that this world is more mysterious and more wonderful than I could ever imagine. I know that you and I are part of something so much larger than our own lives. Perhaps this something larger is what you seek. The religious man then thought to himself. He thought of what he knows and what he does not know. He thought about how he knows what he knows, and how he knows he does not know what he does not know. He thought about his experience of the world and how it is, but one infinitesimal fraction of all experience. He thought about his dependence on forces larger than himself. And he thought about the interdependence of all existence. He experienced wonder and pondered mystery.  And then, only then did he think about what he'd call it. Our second reading from Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pincola Estes. A part of every woman and every man resists knowing that in all love relationships, death must have her share. We pretend we can love without our illusions of love dying. Pretend we can go on without our superficial expectations dying. Pretend we can progress and that our favorite flushes and rushes will never die. But in love, psychically, everything becomes picked apart. Everything. What dies? Illusions die. Expectations die. Greed for having it all. For wanting to have all be beautiful only. All this dies because love always causes a descent into the death nature. We can see why and we can see why it takes abundant self-power and soulfulness to make that commitment. To preach love is at best. Those are the words of prominent UU theologian James Luther Adams. Well, Dr. Adams, I'm afraid this sermon is going to be in bad taste. When I am asked how this year went for me, I can honestly say that I loved it. I snuck into this building my very first night back in Madison and stood at what would have been this pulpit. It seems like just a few weeks ago and wondered what it would be like to preach here, to preach to a crowd gathered here. And it's top notch. This sermon is about what I found here and what I found here and there and there was love. But I get where Adams is coming from. There is no word in our language, he argues, that has been so much misused and prostituted as the word love. Love may be all you need in life, but it isn't going to make for interesting sermons. Adams' response to the abuse of this word was to give to ministers the unavoidable duty to make a cool and critical analysis of the phenomenon of love and to unmask pseudo love. Doesn't that sound fun? So let's get to it. Let me start off by talking about my love of the sermon. Writing a sermon actually is a fairly lonely experience. You gather up some books, do some background reading on Wikipedia, maybe look at a few academic papers and studies if you're really trying to impress. And then you flounder around like the Dickens for something original to say. I don't know if Dickens flounder. I don't know what to say. Which mostly looks like staring out into space and heading to the kitchen for more snacks and playing a slow game of chess. But you do all of this mostly alone. On the late stages of my sermon preparation, I will let one or two people look over it to see if it is completely off. But I have yet to cultivate a sizable group of pre-serman readers, which is the practice of some. Now, this process isn't too different from most writers' methods, except their experience doesn't culminate in their writing being the hypothetical center point of a community's worship life every weekend. This mix of the solitary, the social, and the spiritual is a real unique, and at least for me, a highly rewarding experience. So, to make this process a reality when writing a sermon I, like many others, learned to cultivate a trusted group of internal conversation partners. Obvious ones are the writers of the materials you are consulting, but others come from other places in your past. I've tried to carefully craft this group of internal advisors. Seminary professors and theologians for my three years of study in Austin stay with me well. More recently, my internship supervisors, Michael and Kelly, as well as my dedicated and appreciated ministry team have been added to that list. I also try very hard to listen to the voices of race, gender, and class theorists and activists who often have very legitimate critiques of the status quo of liberal religion and politics. But some voices you don't get to choose. One, for me, is the authoritative voice of my Mormon past, to which I spoke a little bit last month.  But that voice is starting to fade, or at least deeply shift. A voice that I would have never chosen, but yet persistently remains, find as personification in a man I met here at church several years ago. Actually, I didn't really meet him. Rather, I sat next to him in the library for an hour during services, and we never talked to each other. But he definitely talked. First to himself, and then to what I assumed was his partner on the phone, he talked about how much he hated being dragged to these hippie-dippy services, where people get touchy-feely for an hour to pat themselves on the back for being good white people. I'm not a fan of this voice, but he is almost always there in his ripped jeans and two big jacket. That day, as most days, I was actually really enjoying the service I'd chosen to give my Sunday morning to. But when he started talking, I immediately began to see things through his eyes. Like when an uninvited guest comes over to your messy home and what was cozy and eclectic becomes scattered and depressing. It's that voice that society has trained me and plenty of the rest of us to listen to. He's on the cover of rock albums and the star of many films. The person who has been, who has seen behind all of society's surface niceties to see the real ugliness underneath. Consumerism loves him, encourages us to listen to him, because when he sells us something, we know he really means it and that he would never sell anything because the man tells him to. And he sits across from me every time I write a sermon, jeering at my attempts at sincerity and insight. I've learned to tolerate this voice, learn from it, if not appreciate it. Because despite how much I dislike him, I must acknowledge that he is just a little bit right. And he is definitely not alone. We all know those people who somewhere along the line got an extra dose of cynicism and too coolism. But society makes sure that all of us got a dose of the same medicine at some points in our lives. I've seen the eyes cross. The arms cross. The arms cross. The eyes roll. The passive against the female that got sent. All with the same underlying message. I see right through you and I don't like what I see. What ripped jeans and baggy jacket taught me more than anything else is that what we have here is very fragile. So very fragile. And it is fragile not just because of the appearance of hypocrisy, but its constant unavoidable presence in our midst. I read the other day that hypocrisy has become the cardinal sin of the millennial generation. And I knew right away this guy who used to be a church. We owned the sin of hypocrisy since way before Al Gore invented the internet. Whenever I try to explain unitarian universalism, we are a value based church is most likely to slip out. But basing our whole communal lives on values is just throwing the doors right open for all the hypocrites to show up. I'm reminded of the man who was asked why he'd started attending church and said, well I heard that Jesus called the last of all sinners to come to him and I'll be darned if I've ever felt more invited anywhere in my life. I don't necessarily want the vilest of all hypocrites because there are some real nasty ones out there. But I think the time is far past that we should make our welcome of hypocrites official. I am really surprised that during my time here as an intern no one asked me to write a new motto for FUS. But if it was up to me I'd hang a big sign right out from the prow of the landmark auditorium where that old copper bell used to be. First unitarian society home of hypocrites and hippies. But mostly just hypocrites and I mean this in the very best sense because this is my story as much as it is yours like all my sermons. I once saw a cartoon graph that I adored one line rising steadily up was what I expected of myself. Another line crawled up much slower and was labeled what I actually achieved. And in this graph the increasingly large empty space between the two lines was filled with one word, beer. I think we should make a good attempt to try to fill that space with church or at least some of that space. What my 32 years and the human family has taught me is that living up to your values is a choice for almost no one. We are far too human to live up to who we want to be. I think most of us most everyone I've met is exactly 32% a hypocrite and it's going up 1% each year I'm alive. I plan on being a very cynical 75 year old. And while most of us don't get to choose to be that 32% a hypocrite I do think what we get to choose is what our hypothetical 100% looks like. This button. I do think what we get to choose is what our hypothetical 100% looks like. So low expectations for ourselves might make our 32% hypocrisy feel smaller but it also makes our 68% authenticity feel that much smaller. We are the church of unusually high expectations for humanity. The sign is getting a little long. Where we thrive is in helping people find the strength to expand their vision of the possibility inherent in human nature. But we very often fail to recognize that we are also opening ourselves up to the deep vulnerability of similarly expanding our experience of the hypocrisy inherent in that human nature. I'm not arguing that we be proud of the size of our hypocrisy but I think we can and must take pride in how and when we have forged on in spite of that hypocrisy. When the temptation comes to shrink at the dark parts of our soul to gain distance and security our great effort must be in approaching that darkness and giving it the care it needs to be transformed into something else. This place from the moment I walked in was a place of life renewed of courage found of community unfolded but reflecting on my reading from Clarissa Pinkola Estes I am forced to admit that this place was also a place of great death. In love everything becomes picked apart which reminds us.  All this dies in a very welcome way the birth of a new kind of faith a new kind of religion death do led my Mormon faith to its mostly peaceful end but much more sorrowfully it also saw the death of many of my expectations about what a life free from the constraints of that conservative religion would look like. Yes I had my first coffee here yes I had my first beer here yes people were much more politically aligned with me than I had come to experience in Mormonism but the people here much to my chagrin turned out to be no closer to perfection than anywhere else. What I did find at FUS was a more perfect mirror. I often have said that I've taken the spiritual development track of all the different possible tracks seminary and an internship could take. I was and am still deeply unsure if I am a good fit for ministry or if it is a good fit for me. So I tried to look both deeply inside of myself and deeply inside of the institution I had thoughts of dedicating my life to and what I have found deep inside both is nothing but a mirror a terribly wonderfully fragile mirror. Now we all know that the best mirrors are the most fragile. I don't know if that's actually true but let's all pretend it is for the sake of this metaphor. It has been both wonderfully comforting and terribly convicting to find that there is nothing deep inside except what I bring there and what we bring there the experiences, the connections, the convictions and yes the hypocrisy. I feel like most of my life I have sought out sturdy hard mirrors that I can trust not to break like this faux polished granite and found that they reflect back only the bright parts of life and blur them into near meaninglessness. The destination, the goal I've learned is not an end but a clear picture of the journey both in its wonder and its wretchedness and while this internship has almost certainly been the year where I've seen where that 32% hypocrisy has appeared in its most awful clarity it has also been the year where I'm humble enough to admit that 68% authenticity has shown most clearly through in its soft golden hues and I wouldn't have it any other way. Yes, what I found here was a church full of hypocrites and hippies but mostly hypocrites and I fell immediately in love because I knew because I knew it was a place where my concepts of love and its limits would be challenged in a way that would help me grow into the person I knew I was supposed to be where a more perfect mirror would be held up to my life both the good and the bad because as Pema Children says when we truly confront our wretchedness and hold it in balance with our gloriousness wretchedness can soften us up considerably gloriousness and wretchedness support each other one inspires us the other softens us they go together I keep looking up at the balcony crowd and they're just not there let us recenter for just a moment in this space when Frank Lloyd Wright designed the meeting house and yes, I've been to the archives all your tour guides and confirmed this he had plans on installing multiple water features to balance the blue pools with our red floors including a large reflecting pool where our parking lot is now that's included in most drawings, most sketches but also a below ground pool that extended from the terrace outside of the loja under the floor of the loja right up to the western doors of the landmark auditorium it would have been awesome of course the pools were apparently the first things to get cut with the budget and the floors stayed certainly a wise choice if we struggled to repair the roof imagine how we would have done raising funds to repair the koi pond but since we have no physical pools to soften our backbone of stone my charge to you today is that we each of us must become those soft pools we are each one of us called to preach softness to a world that has grown so incredibly hard on this Memorial Day weekend I think we can all recognize that our country has consistently communally and most often disastrously chosen the hard appearance of strength over the soft and the lives of thousands of our men women and gender queer folks who chose or were compelled into service have suffered the life altering consequences along with countless others who have been receiving ends at the receiving ends of those shows of strength right now this line and it was a mistake right now we are actively witnessing children torn from their parents from their parents arms from their parents arms on a daily basis all in the name of border security yes our hard strength to take so many forms beyond brute military might does often in reality protect us and there is so much in this world that needs real protecting but it is not it is not our hardness that will save us but our softness that strength and hardness will not do and not a softness that comes despite our hypocrisy but the softness that comes from learning to hold our hypocrisy and our lust and our sloth and all our failings and the tender embrace of our full selves the great pseudo love of unitarian universalism to get back to James Luther Adams is the love that says when you're good enough when you're right enough then you will be worthy of love the great temptation of the liberal church will always be to use our machinations of moral strength to attempt to turn our soft parts hard but the great redemption will be when we are but the great redemption will be when we are able to use our soft parts our weaknesses to turn our hard spots soft only this tender embrace will save thank you before we go on I'd like to thank our volunteers for today our sound operator David Briles am I saying that right David Briles? I'm sorry Dorit Bergen is our worship associate our greeter is Pamela McMullen our usher is Tom Dolmage and Ostrom, Marty Hollis our coffee is being made today by Nancy Kosiff Sandra Plisch our flowers today are offered by Joanne and Alan Heitman and our tour guide is John Powell and if you'd like a tour of this building I don't know if John's here do I see him? I think I did well you can gather here underneath this window and the tour guide may or may not I'll show you around the building our offering today our offering today goes to a group that even in my poor days of seminary I tried to support 100% of the gifts received today's offering will be given to the Unitarian Universalist Association to help fund their promise and practice campaign for the black lives of Unitarian Universalism this nationwide campaign asked congregations to take the lead in the effort to collectively work to dismantle white supremacy culture and connect our finances with our theological values please be generous I presume he's coming back for the benediction there he is so T.K. is the 10th and the last of the ministerial interns that I have had the pleasure and the honor of supervising during my time here at First Unitarian Society and each of these men and women have been distinctive in their own right and each has brought to us here at FUS fresh ideas, innovative ways of conducting worship and of educating members of the congregation while I as the supervisor and you as the congregation have provided these interns with opportunities to find their footing as prospective ministers they in turn have served us with a rich assortment of gifts and talents as someone who found his way into our faith tradition via First Unitarian Society and who then decided to prepare for a possible career in ministry as the result of that experience it was especially gratifying to have spent the last 10 months working with T.K. Browning there is no doubt that T.K. has a mind of his own and he has exhibited a willingness perhaps even an eagerness to take calculated risks of time like calling out our hypocrisy for instance and as a result there have been a few surprises along the way these past 10 months and in this respect you know what I recognize myself at the tender age of 32 and for the most part I found at his age that a little audacity served both me and my congregations well it's too easy to get trapped in the tried and true patterns that can lead to a bit of stagnation now as an intern however we all have the benefit of sympathetic in-house mentors and observers who can provide you with invaluable feedback and I hope that's been true for you that is not always true when you have been called to serve your own congregation nevertheless I will miss the rich conversations that T.K. and Kelly and I have had weekly in the course of this internship I will miss the collegiality that I have enjoyed with T.K. as he gained confidence and took on more and more serious responsibilities I will miss Caitlyn and the kids I will miss T.K. and his millennialist challenges to my own baby boomer sensitivities although my own son will easily fill that void and so T.K. you shall be missed while here you have helped to validate the importance of First Unitarian Society as a teaching church, a teaching congregation and at some point in your own work life if life carries you in this direction I hope that the experience of working with the next generation of UU ministers will mean as much to you as it has to me thank you and now Lorna I'd like for her to step forward Lorna has served on our ministerial intern support committees for the last five years maybe even before that but we've had a succession of five interns T.K. being the last in recent history I'd first like to introduce the intern ministry team the Unitarian Universalist Association requires that in addition to professional mentors and supervisors interns have a lay group that gives them the experience of getting feedback of all sorts as T.K. will as he becomes a minister and to learn how to listen to lay people and the feedback that we all give so generously to to our ministers Michael and Kelly can attest to that so I'd like to acknowledge a couple of people who couldn't be here today Ann Gullickson and Luke Anderman are not here Katie Beam, Andy Levy and Kirsten Sieber and I'm Lorna Aronson the presentation of the notebook is one of the rituals that we've developed with our interns for the last five years in case you haven't had an opportunity to leave a message for T.K.'s notebook these sheets will be out at a table in the Commons and I hope that you'll leave a message that he'll carry with you first of all it's our tradition to leave you with these messages that really represent just a few of the people whose lives you've touched over the last ten months and so I hope that as you go on your journey and you begin to reflect back on what this was for you that you will take a look at the notebook and read a message of a few of the people whose lives you've touched for the last year and now Kirsten so we also would like to give you a little bit of the meeting house to take with you you're gonna be my Vanna inside is a chalice that was made by Dave Weber and it was made from some stone from the meeting house and then Lorna made the lovely box with some iconic FUS images and I hope that you think of all of us every time you fire that thing up please turn to 685 and the gray hymnal for the unison reading and rise in body or in spirit what we call a beginning is often the end and to make an end is to make a beginning the end is where we start from we shall not cease from exploration and at the end of all our exploring we will arrive where we started and know the place for the first time hymn number one please stay standing thank you for being here our service here has ended but our service to the world is beginning once again please be seated, go in peace and enjoy the poster