Hi everyone, this is Chichuo. Welcome to my channel and welcome to another comic book related video. Now what I wanted to do in this video is sort of run you through the process what basically took place when I was selling some comic books on eBay and had a conflict with a buyer that they wanted to return the item, but things didn't really work out the way they had planned or I had imagined really and what I ended up having to do was contact eBay and talk to them and get the situation resolved and just to let you know the situation eBay they found the situation in my favor, right? So they decided that, you know, there was no refund justified and I don't get any negative feedbacks on my eBay account or whatnot, right? So I figured you guys would find this useful information and for those of you who don't know where this information is coming from just to give you a little quick intro of who I am I've been putting out a fair bit of comic book videos for the last five years or so. We've gone through showing collections, reading comic books, pricing comic books, a little bit of grading, not official grading, but grading according to what I consider a comic book to be graded at. We've been doing live stream of those things and then we've also been listing the comic books on eBay, right? Because I'm sort of sharing something that I love about my hobby, which is everything about this hobby from the point of collecting comic books, reading comic books, sorting comic books, grading comic books and every now and then when a need arises, you go to your collection. It's just like an investment really.  And we're going to at some point take all of this information and included with the mathematics content that we've been creating, the ASMR math and the language of mathematics and math in real life, really link it up to personal finance and investing and look at all the metrics that we can analyze and we can look at to decide if it's a good thing doing this and how this works in other industries as well. Now just to let you know where I come from, what my experience is with eBay. I've been on eBay since 2002 for about 18 years now, right? I initially got on eBay to buy some stuff, video gaming related stuff, which I still have actually and we will go through that once we start. I'll show you what I ended up buying once we start doing some gaming related videos and whatnot, right? So I initially got on eBay, bought some stuff, ended up liking the experience so much, I ended up selling some comic books, right? Because I've been a comic book collector for 30 plus years now. So I ended up selling some comic books and really enjoyed the experience and over the last 18 years I've bought a lot of stuff on eBay and I've sold a handful of things, right? Either some comic books where I'm trying to get rid of some comic books where bringing some funds or there are things that we have that we no longer want to hold on to that we decide to put on eBay and sell them, right? As far as the buying aspect goes, I bought some stuff that is not comic book related. For example, this lapel mic you see I bought off eBay, but the majority of things that I bought on eBay is comic books related, right? And I have 100% feedback rating, I've never had a negative feedback and any problems I've ever had with any sellers, we've been able to resolve it without contacting eBay. They're either partial refund or full refund and we sort things out, right? As far as selling stuff goes I'm not sure how much stuff I've sold. Maybe around 200, 250 items over the last 18 years. I've never had any problems with stuff I've been selling. Other than this round of stuff for the last four months, five months where we decided to live stream some of these things that we're selling, specifically comic books that we've been selling, where we've been listing the stuff, where I had basically one partial refund I have to give someone and one time I didn't put a tracking on the package and the package didn't arrive, right? So I had to refund the person and the third issue I've had is what we're about to talk about, okay? So basically the the issue that I had with the listing that I sold was selling Venom number 3 first print from 2018 by Donnie Cates and it's the first appearance of Conalda Symbiot God, right? If you know the Spider-Man lore, he's the God of the Symbiotes, right? And we actually ended up doing a live stream of this comic book because what I've been doing is on Twitch, I've been doing live stream of some of the comic books that we've been selling on eBay, right? So we do a live stream, we crack open the comic book, take pictures of it, grade it and then go through the process of listing it on eBay, right? So we did a live stream of this comic book and the video is available on Bichouda and YouTube, right? So this comic book we ended up listing on November 30th 2019, okay? And it sold on December 7th 2019. Now when I listed it, I listed this thing at minimum starting bid of $40, right? I didn't put a limit on the, you know, what I'm willing to accept. I don't even know if people do that. I mean, I've seen some people do that still. But basically there's a minimum that I started off with and I'm satisfied with that minimum if it sells for more fantastic, right? So we listed this comic book at a $40 starting price, okay? And it's an auction bid. Now, seven days later on December 7th, it sold for $65.   How many people were bidding on this? There was nine bids on this and there was three people, three different people that were trying to get their hands on this, okay? One of these people had bought for me before and the other person, the person that ended up getting it, had never bought for me before, right? So it was a new buyer that I was sending the packages to, right? So the comic sold, listed for $40, sold for $65. And as soon as the comic sells the first day, when the comic sells, I usually contact the seller and say, congratulations on your purchase. And I don't have this email. I'm going to read you some of the communication that we have, right? But I usually send an email saying congratulations on your purchase. Please let me know if you plan on bidding on anything else. That way I'll hold on to the book and if you win any other auctions, we can package the stuff and sell it as combined shipping, right? Because shipping ends up being fairly expensive with me being in Canada as well, right? So that's the sort of the general email that I send people whoever ends up buying comic books for me, right? So I sent that email out and the person didn't contact me for a couple of days. So what I ended up doing or maybe one day, what I ended up doing is invoicing them, OK? So I sent them an invoice to Comic Book, sold for $65. And this is Canadian prices I'm going with, sold for $65. And I sent them an invoice. The shipping cost was $10. So I sent them an invoice of $75. OK, they didn't pay right away. Four days later, I sent them another invoice. OK, the same invoice, $65. Comic Book, $10 for the shipping and sent them an invoice again. And then they ended up paying the next day, right? And as soon as the person pays, as soon as I get the comic books packaged up, this is what I sent them, right? I said, thank you for the payment and congrats on the buy. Actually, I probably sent this out, the email out as soon as I had the package out the door, right? Which would have been the next day. I usually do it within a day, maximum two days, right? So I said, hi, I will call them, hi, they changed their name, by the way, from the time I contacted them at the beginning of this transaction to the end of the transaction, right? I said, hi, thank you for the payment and congrats on the buy. Wanted to let you know that the book is on its way and the tracking number is so-and-so, OK? To be on the safe side, I also added signature, signature required as well, just to make sure it gets to you safe and sound. Aside from that, hope you are having a fantastic December. Peace, chicho, OK? So this is the email I sent them regarding the package. It's on its way and I took that tracking number and I updated the eBay sold listing. So eBay is aware there's a tracking number on there. He's aware there's a tracking number and there's a record of the tracking number, right? Now I left it there because the book is on its way, right? And the shipping actually cost me like $21 or something. I only charged them $10. So I took the $11 hit extra cost because the shipping, for me, for most of the packages that I've sent has cost me more to ship than what I've been charging. For the next set of listings that I'm going to be doing, I'm going to be kicking up my shipping price because that has been a fair bit, especially when adding tracking, OK? If the comics are a fair bit in my listings, I usually say initially I started off with saying if the comics are $50 or more, I'll add tracking for free. But I changed that up to if there's $75 or more, I'll add tracking. Now, this comic book sold for $65, but I added tracking and signature confirmation as well, just because it took a little bit of time for the person to pay and he hadn't contacted me from any of the communications directly, right? So I took a little bit of a hit on the shipping. Now packages are on its way and this package was going to someone in Ontario, I'm in British Columbia, so this was still within Canada. So it didn't have to go through any customs or anything. OK. It got there within like three days. Now, I know it got there because I can track it on eBay. It tells me that the item was out for delivery, you know, where the item is and the item has been sorted and it's in the city that is going to be delivered and it's out for delivery. And if it gets delivered, you get a little tick mark saying it's been delivered. Now, this one said it was out for delivery, but then it didn't get delivered. But because I had signature confirmation on there, it went to the post office. It's it was being held there for this person to go pick it up. Right. So I sent them the following message because I saw that happening and the person hadn't gone and picked it up for like 10 days, right? And I didn't want the package. The post office will hold the package for a certain number of time and then they'll send it back again, right? And then I would have to pay shipping and get this book to them again and what not. So it would just cost me a fair bit. So I sent them the following message and the person had changed their name by this time, right? I said, hi, it's a different name, but starts off with the same letter. Hi, I hope you and your loved ones had had a fantastic holiday. Just wanted to let you know that from my end, it shows that the package has been at the post office waiting to be picked up since December 19th. And this email I'm sending on December 29th. So it's been 10 days, right? So it's been waiting to be picked up since December 19th. Figured I'll let you know just in case you weren't notified all the best and wishing you a happy, a happy 2020, right? So 10 days later, the package was sitting there. I sent them a message just in case there were holidays and whatnot, right? Send them a message saying the package they're waiting for them.  OK, so I got a, you know, I checked the delivery notification stuff and it was delivered, which was great. Fantastic, right? That's what you want as a seller. The comic delivered confirmation that has been delivered. OK, you don't want to get packages lost in the mail. So tracking is a good idea to put on there. And from now on, I'm going to put tracking on everything basically. OK, now it got delivered. Two weeks later, I get a return request from this person. Now, keep in mind that I had sent out the package. It was sitting at the post office for them for 10 days. It took another couple of days, right? I sent them a message 10 days later. It took another two, three, four days to go pick up the comic, right? And this is an expensive comic as far as I'm concerned. $65 Canadian. There's a fair price to pay for a comic book, right? So they let it sit at the post office for two weeks. And then two weeks later, after they have picked it up, they file a return, oops, return request, right? With eBay. And I get this thing and I'm like, oh, man, the return request. And I've never had a return request. I had one, actually, no, not true. I had one return, one person contact me. They didn't file a return request. One person contact me, say the comic was damaged. And they didn't take it out of the bag. I asked them to take it out of the bag, take a picture. But they didn't do that. And I wasn't into dealing with it. So I refunded them two thirds of the cost of the comic book, right? So they were okay. It was a $30 including shipping. So it was a $20 comic book, $10 shipping. So I refunded them the $20 of the comic books, but not the shipping cost, right? So they were happy with that. It was dealt with. I wasn't happy with, you know, make the best of the situation. And I had one other person say the comic hadn't arrived. I never had a return request, not even from stuff that I've sold that wasn't comic books in the 18 years of being on eBay, right? So I looked at this thing and I'm like, oh, man, I had a feeling, bad feeling that this was going to happen because the person had never replied to me directly, right? I sent them emails, messages, but they had never replied to me, right? So I got this return request and I started looking at what I need to do, right? So first thing I did was as soon as I got the return request, I sent them the following message. Hi, I just got received a return request for this book. Is there anything wrong with the book? Can we resolve this without a return? Like, I don't even know what's wrong because he didn't contact me directly, right? And then I went out to eBay and clicked on some clicks and I saw there's a place where they filed a claim, right? And I saw their message in the claim, right? And their message was this, the reason for return was it doesn't match the description or photos, right? And the comment they had put on there was, book has a ding on the top right corner. It goes through most of the book. I don't know if it got damaged in the mail, but it's not a 9.8 grade as advertised. The rest of the book looks perfect. And when we did the live stream of this comic book, from all the comic books I've listed, and I don't know how many comic books we've listed, I've got the data tabulated that towards the end I didn't keep track of the last batch of, last batch or last two batches of comic books we're selling. I just, I got behind, right? But we have enough data to process with the spreadsheet that we have. And if we don't, I'll dig up the stuff and I'll fill up the data. But basically from all the comic books that we've listed, I don't think I've listed more than four books as 9.8. And when we did the live stream of this comic, this comic was beautiful, right? Like I don't usually list books at 9.8, right? I don't, like I never list anything as a 10, right? I list things 9.4, 9.6, 9.6, 9.8. I listed these things solid 9.8 because it was a beautiful book, okay? I know because I bought it myself, right? So this person is saying that the book got damaged and he had some pictures up. And the pictures were the towel, really, if you're a comic book collector, because there's no way this comic book would have been bent over like this. If, I mean, the only way it could have happened, and I packaged this thing up beautifully, like the only way lots of gap with bubble, this comic would not have been bent over like this. The only way it would have bent over is someone took a metal rod and went through the box, through the bubble wrap and put their finger and went like this, right? So he included like five pictures showing that it was bent over and whatnot. I was like, man. And for me, I didn't feel comfortable just refunding them and letting them keep the comic, right? So I was willing to eat more of the cost of this. So what I ended up doing after looking at this, I posted the following comment. Oh, I just saw the, this is my comment. Oh, I just saw the pictures you provided. That's unfortunate. Was the box damaged in the shipping? Would you accept the partial refund? So I posted the same thing as the message, but I had now seen the pictures, right? I didn't hear back from them. Okay. So I sent them the following message. I went on eBay and accepted a return. I have no choice, right? And I said, hi again. It looks like you've marked that I've, oh no, this isn't here. This is the one. Oh, here we go. I jumped ahead a couple of messages. So after that, basically, I had to accept the return, right? So I went into the return thing and this is the message that I got from eBay. You accepted the return for Venom number three. And this is an eBay message. First print 2018, Tony Gates, first appearance of Null, on red 9.8, near mint mint, right? Your next step is to send the return shipping label to M by January 20th, 2020. If you've already purchased the label, upload the label for the buyer or add tracking details so we can follow the package in case it gets lost, right? So tracking info is really important for this. If the buyer doesn't receive a label by January 20th, 2020, they can ask us to step in and help, right? And I don't want to get eBay involved. So I sent this person the following message. Hi again. So I haven't heard from you regarding if you would accept a partial refund. Let me know what you would be happy with. If you don't want a partial refund and still want to return the comic, please send the comic back to the following address. Please include track tracking. It shouldn't cost more than $20 and it wouldn't, right? That's what it cost me. Once I get the book, I will give you a full refund as well as reimburse the shipping costs, right? And my apologies about the hassle. I've been on eBay since 2002 and this is my first ever return request. So I'm not sure how it all works, right? And I sent them my address and I said, please let me know if you have any questions, thanks. So I'm being very polite. As far as I'm concerned at this point, I know this is a scam, right? So because I haven't heard from the guy at all yet, right? So I'm still being very polite because I have to. I have to go through eBay. I don't want any bad marks on my thing, right? So time passes. I don't hear from this guy. There's no tracking number being posted. There's nothing. There's silence, right? And then I get on February 8th. I believe this is on February 8th. On February 8th, I get a notification from eBay. We've asked the buyer to send the item, right? And they say, this is eBay's email now, indicated that they posted the return. The item should now be delivered. Once you receive the please, issue the buyer refund by February 12th. Actually, let me check this out. When the refund is complete, let me read the following, continue this up. When the refund is complete, you'll automatically receive a credit for the final value fee and other applicable fees. If the item hasn't arrived yet, the buyer may not be returning it. If you like, you can contact the buyer. If you can't reach a resolution, you can ask us to step in, right? So, I believe... Let me do this. I believe this is when I checked the eBay thing. I believe this is the email eBay sent me, because what had happened is the person had gone on the eBay listing and marked the package as delivered to me that I hadn't received yet, right? So the person had marked the package delivered to me, which is I found extremely weird because the package was not delivered to me, right? So I was very surprised that the person sending the package can confirm that the package has arrived to me, which I found extremely wacky, right? So I tried to contact this person, right? Where it says you can contact the buyer, right? It's hyperlink, so I clicked on it, took me to the page where I can send the buyer a message. So I tried sending the buyer a message, but the message wouldn't go through. It was giving me an error. I tried this in two days. I tried the first day I got this message and I tried again the next day, and it didn't work. So I sent an email to the person directly again. And this is my email. Hi again. It looks like you've marked that I've received this item, but I haven't yet. Can you please give me the tracking number? I wasn't even aware that you had shipped it. You never even contacted me when I sent you the refund return shipping info. Can you please let me know when you send the package? Where you sent it to and what the tracking number is? Would appreciate it. Thanks, right? Heard nothing, right? And eBay had given me like five days or something to refund this person. Otherwise we're going to refund them and then deduct me and stuff like this. It's just wacko, right? So I didn't hear from this guy for another two, three days. So I went to the page where the conflict is open and I asked eBay to step in, okay? So the first time this didn't work, right? I got an email message from eBay saying, oh, you can ask us to step in on the day that the refund is supposed to be given and I'm like, man, I don't want to wait that long. So the next day I did this again and this is the message I got, right? You asked eBay, and this is eBay telling me this, you asked eBay to step in and help on February 11th and the return was supposed to be, I was supposed to give this person the return of February 12th, right? So the next day I was supposed to return $75 to this person, which I'm feeling very uncomfortable about doing, right? So eBay sent me the following message. You asked eBay to step in and help on February 11th, 2020. Customer support will review the information you provided and provide details on their decision within 48 hours. Please view the case detail for additional information, right? And I got a little message from them saying, you opened the case with us for venom number three, first print, blah, blah, blah. We'll take it from here and review the case, including any messages you and the buyer sent through eBay. We'll get back to you within 48 hours. You can view the details in the case of the resolution, blah, blah, blah, right? And I sent eBay a message regarding this, okay? Because when you're asking eBay to step in, you have to explain what the situation is, right? So this is what I wrote. Let me take a little sip of tea. By the way, this wasn't the end of it. I ended up having to call them. But let me tell you what I wrote, right? So on the eBay page where I'm asking eBay to step in, this was my message. I have not yet received this comic. I'm not sure why the buyer has stated otherwise. I asked them to send me the tracking information when they shipped the book, but they never did. I've sent them an email asking for this information, but I haven't heard from them yet. This buyer let the comic sit at the post office and did not even pick it up until I sent them a message telling them that the package was waiting there for them. I had added tracking as well as signature confirmation. Two weeks later, they requested a refund, which is absurdly long period to sit on a book and then ask for a refund. I've been on eBay since 2020 and I've never dealt with anyone like this. Is this regular behavior for this user? Completely inconsiderate, zero direct communication, doesn't reply to messages, and there I say feels like a scammer. Please let me know what I need to do here. I have a perfect 100% feedback, rating for 18 years, but I can't refund this buyer if I haven't received a comic or heard from them. Thank you, right? So I'm still being polite, but I'm being more direct with eBay. And I said there, I say a scammer because you can't really call anyone a scammer unless you have proof, right? After this, on December 12th, I still hadn't heard from eBay, right? So I grabbed my phone and I called them, right? And if you've ever had to call eBay or any of these organizations that are operating on the mega corporations, trying to get a hold of a person is going to be difficult, right? But I sat behind the computer and doing my thing and I put speaker on the phone and I waited, I called, I waited. And it actually didn't take long. It took like 15 minutes, okay? 15, 20 minutes maybe, 15, 20 minutes maybe, right? And a person came on saying, this is who they are and that's that, that's that. And I said, oh, okay, great. Thank you very much. You know, I've been waiting for a while. I'm glad someone came online, came to answer the phone, right? So I explained to them, you know, they asked me to confirm who I am and this and that and that. So we went through the confirmation thing and they asked me what was going on. So I explained to them what was going on. They read the information and they said, okay, they really can't deal with this so they have to pass me on to the next level. So I'm like, oh man, we've got to go to the next level. So they sent me to eBay's conflict resolution, right? So I talked to this person and I explained to them what's going on. I do let them that I sent multiple messages to this person. They've never contacted me. They didn't send me tracking information or what not. And the person looking at this over the phone said, I have great news for you, Chico. We've reviewed the situation and we found in your favor the money that we locked up that's what they're saying, the money that we locked up on your PayPal account is now free to use and you don't have to refund the person. And I was like, I was like, pretty happy and the person could tell, I go right on, excellent. And I asked them, I go, can I, like, how is this possible that someone like this can operate because obviously they've done this before, right? They, I went to their feedback rating actually and this person, and here's the kicker, this person has 100% positive feedback rating, right? Which blows me away that this person can have 100% positive feedback rating, right? Really, because I'm pretty sure they've been doing this to other people. There I say, they are a scammer. But when I looked at their feedback rating, a lot of these feedbacks aren't from the, there's batches of the same buyer, right? Or same seller, right? But one pattern I noticed was there's a lot of different buyers that they're buying from, right? You rarely see the same person being repeated unless they're leaving feedback and batches. And what happens is, when there's sellers, you know, big sellers that go through a lot of volume, as soon as someone pays them, they leave them the positive feedback. I know the seller here that I buy comic books from. He owns a comic book store. He got scammed by a seller because, as soon as the person paid, he was leaving feedback and when he sent the books, the person said there was problems with it and he didn't get paid for those books, right? And when I was talking with them, I told them, for my listings, basically, this is the sentence that I put on here that just to let you guys know who I am, who I am, basically, this is what I say for who I am. Based in Canada, I'm a private collector with a 5 star 100% feedback rating and I've been an eBay member since 2020. I take pride in my positive feedback writing and will do my best to make sure you're satisfied with your purchase. Feedback will be left once I know that you have received the books and are happy with your purchase, okay? Everything that I list is my own private collection, okay? And later down I say, I aim to please, but I do not feel like dealing with scammers because this is a private collection. I'm not a huge seller, right? I take pride in my comic books, right? So, I asked the person, the eBay representative if I could go and leave, I wanted to make sure that the person can't leave a negative feedback for me and she said no, he can't leave a negative feedback for you and if he does, it'll automatically be removed, right? And then I asked him, can I leave a negative feedback for them because everything that they just put me through, she goes yes, you can. And later on, after I hung up with the eBay representative, I went to try to leave a negative feedback and the timeline had expired. It had taken too long and I couldn't leave a negative feedback rating. That was the message I was getting from eBay, right? So, there was an error when it came to me leaving a negative feedback for this person. So, maybe this person is timing it in a way where he knows how long it takes. I think it's three months, I don't know what it is, 60 days maybe, where once he goes through this whole thing, he knows that the sellers can't leave negative feedback if they're the ones that don't leave positive feedback unless the buyer has left positive feedback. They know that the buyer is satisfied, right? And this was the message that I got from eBay, okay? The case is now closed, right? We have reviewed this case and closed it without funding the buyer. The case will not affect your seller performance. Any feedback left for this transaction will be removed. The buyer did not return the item to you within the required time frame, right? And that's the message I got sent to me through email. And this was the message that was posted in the case. eBay customer service has made a final decision. The buyer did not return the item to you within the required time frame. This case will not affect your seller performance. Any feedback left for this transaction will be removed. Final decision, the case was found in your favor, right? And then for transaction information any remaining funds from this PayPal transactions are available. So they unlocked the funds that they had locked up, which I didn't even know about, right? And what they told me was this is basically eBay's seller protection program, which I didn't even know I was in. I'm assuming they automatically put you in eBay's selling program. I don't know if I've approved it or I required it or I wanted it or something automatically done for all members, certain members, legacy members. I don't know what it is, right? But it's basically called eBay's seller protection program. That's what the eBay representative referred to. Which was fantastic. I was very happy and eBay sent me a little message afterwards asking me you were just in touch with our customer service team and we'd like to know how we did to get started how satisfied were you with your customer services. And I just I never do this. But I went through this feedback thing and I said positive thank you very much. You guys were great and I went all the way to the end and sent it to them. So they get the positive feedback so they do appreciate that they know that I appreciated their service and I'm glad that the automation didn't force me to refund this customer. So that's how I dealt with this thing and I wanted to share this because I've heard some horror stories through eBay both from sellers and buyers. So I don't consider this I mean I'm representing a seller right now. So for sellers hopefully you find this useful. For buyers I've never scammed anyone on eBay. I'm here because I find the service extremely useful this connection extremely useful both to sell stuff and to buy stuff. So I'm here for the long game and there are scammers around both as sellers and buyers right. I bought comic books from people where they described as something in there's page torn out false loose and stuff like this and they're power sellers right.  They either refund me the full amount or half the amount and I've even been satisfied with half the amount right because I don't want to go through the whole bureaucracy of it and it's unfortunate that they pull this scam but I would never buy from them again right and hopefully they lose transaction the cost to do business becomes too much so they can't scam people anymore and hopefully buyers were scamming people there's a certain pattern to this hopefully they get knocked out okay they get removed from scamming people and hopefully eBay didn't refund this person right.  I hope they stay true to their word and they didn't refund this person right because that's the only way that scammers will go away right if the cost of doing if the cost of their scam is just too much for them right heavy topic I guess maybe but it was found in our favor so that's fantastic and now that that's resolved I'll probably start listing more things on eBay more I sort of put things on pause until this was resolved because I wasn't I just didn't feel good having this hanging over my head and then still doing business on eBay right it just didn't feel right. I had to go through the whole thing again. I know I promised some people I was going to listen to on eBay and I promised them like a month ago but this thing kicked into gear and I had to wait until the thing was resolved okay I hope you found it useful and helpful and if you do unfortunately ever have to deal with this be kind go through a bureaucracy cross your T's, dot your eyes make sure you communicate right offer alternatives and if it doesn't work don't automatically if you think you're being scammed don't automatically refund them contact eBay make it known it takes time, it takes effort, it takes energy like it sucks but take the effort to let them know that this user is pulling a scam then you're not happy with it and slowly hopefully that will snowball into there being less scammers doing business on eBay because it's just cost of doing business is too much cost of doing scams is too much that's it for now gang and I'll see you guys in the next video bye for now


Hi you guys, it's Lindsay here. Welcome back to my channel Inside the Hymn. Today we are talking about my November favorites. These are all the products that I have been using and loving in November. And if you saw my makes slash plans video, then you know I wasn't really sewing that much in November. But that doesn't mean that I didn't find some favorite things. As you know, if you were watching that video, all I made in November were jeans, muslins. So as you can imagine, I was doing a lot of drafting, a lot of like altering and stuff like that. So my favorites for this month are kind of geared in that direction. But if you draft your own patterns, if you make a ton of alterations, if you're into pattern hacking, if you use a lot of bird style patterns and have to work with seam allowances, you're going to love all of these products. So the first one I've talked to you a little bit about Luna graphics before. It's a shop on Etsy and they sell like sewing products like out of plastic. They have a button fly guide that I know I've talked to you about before, which is really awesome. But what I've really used a lot of this month are their seam allowance curves. And there's two of them. I hope you can see them because they're kind of see through. But basically, they are typical curve rulers with a couple of exceptions. One is their see through. So you can totally see through to your pattern, which is awesome. And the width of this little piece here all the way around is five eighths. So that's the standard seam allowance size. So when you're making alterations and let's say you're adding width somewhere, you typically add the width and that's your sewing line and then you need to add the seam allowance. So this would allow you to add seam allowance along a curve, which isn't difficult, but it's tedious to take your little seam gauge and to keep moving it around the curve. This allows you to kind of match the curve as best you could and then draw a long sweeping line. And between the two of them, there's like a ton of different curves, different angles, different sharper curves, rounder curves, more overly curves. And then there's this long straight edge too, which I found really, really helpful. Also from Lunagraphics are these curve rulers and basically they are like pizza cutters with measurements all along the wheel. So when I was making my ginger jeans, it was important to keep measuring the length of the inseam for the front and the back to make sure that they were going to be the same that you wouldn't end up with one part of your pants longer than the other. And like around a hip is like super curvy. So it was really nice to be able to just take the ruler, measure around that curve because the wheel turns as you move it along the pattern piece and get your measurement along a curve. If you use like measuring tape, you can do it, but you know it can be a little finicky. You have to go like little inch by inch to make sure you get around the curve just right.  Maybe it's a crotch curve, maybe it's a hip curve, maybe whatever. These I found really great. There's a little itty bitty one for smaller measurements that goes up to I guess that would be eight inches and then this one goes up to 12 inches. So I ended up using all of these like a ton whenever I was working on my muslins. I will link in the description box to Lunagraphic's store on Etsy and you can go look around and see if you think any of these things will be helpful. Also in the measurement realm, I finally picked up one of these 24 inch by 6 inch clear rulers by Fiskars. Joann's was having a Black Friday sale and the rulers were all 60% off. So I finally got one and honestly I don't know what I was waiting for. I know that people love these and I don't know. I had the smaller one, the yellow one that's like four inches by maybe 14 inches or something like that. And so I was making do with that, but this has really been awesome. I love it mostly right now for measuring grain lines. You know, you have to measure the width between the grain line and the salvage to make sure that the grain line is even all the way across. So this just gives you like a lot more space to do that. You know, your grain lines aren't always like super close to the edge of your fabric. So this gives you more space to work with. Your grain line can be further away and you can still get that measurement. So this has been awesome. I will put a link in the description box to where you can get this on Amazon. But honestly, I think you can get it at Hobby Lobby or Joanne or whatever you want with a coupon. I don't know how the pricing would match up with Amazon, but either way, I'll give a link down below so you can at least read the description and see more information about it. So I have those two things and then I would be remiss and I would be a very bad fan if I didn't mention that I have been loving the new Taylor Swift album called Reputation. I'm sure you all have heard about it, at least if you haven't heard any of the songs from it. If you don't know, I'm a huge Taylor Swift fan, like really big. And I had, you know, pre-ordered the album. I have already gotten tickets to the concert next year. So big, big, big fan here. I've had her album on repeat. It's just a lot of fun to sew to because it's, you know, very poppy and just very easy to listen to. I know the words now. So I just love that album. And I would recommend that all of you go out and get a copy for yourself to listen to while you sew. So that's my PSA for Taylor Swift. All my Swifties out there. Love you guys. I know you're, I know that they are sewing Swifties. I found you guys, we've chatted on Instagram. So you know who you are. Anyways, so that is, those are my favorites for the month of November. I hope that you'll go check them all out, especially Lunagraphics. She does a really good job. It's like a little independent company doing things that are just really practical and great for sewists. So that's awesome. So yeah, thank you so much for watching and I will see you all very soon. Thanks.


My talk is on front-end infrastructure with EmberJS. My name is Sam Selikoff. I live in Burlington, Vermont with my wife. I work at Ted Talks, a conference company. And if you catch me outside and want to talk about something non-tech related, I like economics, snowboarding, and music. So I'm going to start off with a story. This is a story about a company, Acne Inc. Their startup. So they're just launching their first web project. They got a handful of programmers. It's a web app. And the code base that supports this web app, it's a single code base. All the programmers are working on it. It's pretty simple. And that's pretty much all there is to it. Now, this code base starts off in this kind of story as a monolith. And I don't say that disparagingly. It's a single code base. And it has kind of a single logical purpose. There's a handful of programmers. They're all working on the same thing. So this is what makes sense. And this is kind of the initial phase. So Acne experiences some growth. And they start to have more demands on their products from their customers and also from internal users, from their company. They start growing. They hire people in accounting to help the customer service. And so a single code base doesn't cut it anymore. So what they do is decide to split this code base up into multiple different back end services. And they kind of make a data layer out of this. Now, at the same time, they split up their front end interfaces into multiple products. They still kind of have this main client facing web product that was the original product of the company. But they've also made additional client facing and also internal web products. And so they've kind of went with this model where they have lots of back end services acting as their data layer. They have a lot of front end interfaces, JavaScript applications, essentially. And then they communicate over this API. So let's take a look at Acne's infrastructure, kind of after this period of growth and after they've been hit with some complexity. Now, the back end, this is really where Acne's programmers shine. This is kind of where the area of expertise is. So their back end systems, as they kind of grew and they became more complex, they had a good process for how to split apart the original monolith and make it into separate services. These services were all independent. They could scale them independently. So if one service needed more resources or became more complex, they could work on it without affecting the other services. But importantly for this talk, the back ends were consistent. And what I mean by that, not the technical term consistent, but consistent in a way that Acne's programmers, both people who hadn't worked on particular apps and new programmers that were hired, fell at home in these code bases. They were all structured similarly. And it made them productive. They didn't have to waste time figuring out how each app was set up, how the architecture was set up, how data moved through the application. So now let's look at their front end infrastructure. So the programmers, they weren't as kind of well-versed in how to scale out their front end infrastructure. And so originally they didn't really have many decisions to make around this. They kind of had the single code base, rendered this web app, and that was pretty much it. But now the picture is much more complicated. They have a lot of interfaces. What happened was every time they needed a new interface, whether it was an internal web product for accounting or something for customer service to help with sales, the programmers had to make a lot of decisions. They had to decide, OK, which JavaScript and CSS libraries are we going to use? How are we going to actually set up our build pipeline for this new front end? What's our data layer going to be? Because now we're building rich client-side applications. We need a layer that is for requesting data from our APIs and worry about caching data within the browser. How are we going to deploy these apps? And how are we going to test them? And so these are, among other things, a variety of questions that the programmers had to answer every single time. And they kind of answered them differently. Different groups of people were responsible for them. They didn't have the same consistent process for spinning up new interfaces that they did for their back ends. And so this caused a lot of problems. But first of all, it wasted time. They were worried about these questions each time, and that just cost programmer time. It's hard to share code across the different interfaces, because these questions were answered slightly differently. Slows down new devs who are trying to get familiar with their infrastructure. Ultimately, it really just kind of hampered the growth. As complexity was growing inside the company, it was difficult to keep up with all these interfaces. So what is Acme to do in this situation? What can they do? Well, I think one thing they can do is start adopting Ember and Ember CLI for these interfaces, for their front end projects. And I think Ember and Ember CLI goes a long way to help Acme with this problem they've kind of found themselves in. Two main ways that this works. First, today, if they started using Ember and Ember CLI within their company, it could improve their infrastructure. So the tools and the principles exist today to start immediately answering some of these questions in a more consistent way. But I think the more important point is that it will help them in the future, because Acme doesn't know kind of where they're going to end up. They don't know what their infrastructure is going to look like in a year or two or five years, and Ember brings the same process to their front end developments as they already have in their back ends. So let's look at these two points. So let's look at first, how can start helping them out today? Well, there's some obvious things that probably most of us in this room know already. So Ember and Ember CLI reduce boilerplate. And this is true within their applications, the Ember framework itself, but Ember CLI brings this as well and gives these commands. And so any programmer working in any of these front ends is going to know how to build or serve or test these applications. It gives their applications a similar directory structure and a similar architecture, not just in terms of how it's laid out, but again, also how data moves through the application. So what it's really doing is providing consistent answers to these questions. One way you could sum this up is by saying that Ember brings conventions to Acme's front ends. Now we hear a lot about conventions when we talk about Ember. It's an important part of our philosophy, the community's philosophy, the framework's philosophy. But it's more than just about, conventions are more than just about reducing boilerplate. I think one way to think about conventions is this. They eliminate trivial differences between our applications that hold us back. And holding us back is the important point here. Again, it's not just about having the same answer, but it actually lets Acme move to a new level, higher levels of productivity and abstraction within their company than they otherwise would be able to do. So let's look at two concrete examples of how this actually happened for Acme. The first is with deploys. So by using Ember and Ember CLI, instantly they had some conventions set across all their apps. Ember Build clarified this notion of what a distribution was for them. Ember Build created this kind of disk and they realized, well, that's really what this Ember app boils down to. And you could say, well, maybe they understood this before like a static app is just a group of static assets. It has to be deployed somewhere. But time and time again working on these apps over and over, running Ember Build and maybe manually copying it up somewhere, they started to see these similarities jumped out at them easier because they were working on a shared convention. So the next thing they did for all their apps that they were just running Ember Build for, they wrote a script, right? And they wrote a script that built the app and maybe synced it up to one of their servers and then they put this, every time they needed to deploy a new interface, they put this script up on one of their CI servers. So they started doing this and this was better than what they had before but they started doing it over and over and over again in each new interface. Again, they were repeating themselves. It's kind of like they were moving up this ladder where the more that was held constant across the organization, the easier it was to identify these trivial differences, the things that were the same and the things that were different that didn't really matter. So they came to understand really what a deploy is all about. Them and the rest of the Ember community, right? This is kind of maybe the development that happened over the past year with some of what Luke's worked on. They came to understand that, well, really when we deploy, we need to just put an index up on our server that's serving up our app and we need to update our JavaScript and CSS assets. Once we configure our backend servers to work with this, we really just need an add-on and that'll take care of the front-end part. And so again, their deploy process evolved and it kind of moved to this next level. And so now each new interface had an add-on and they just, when they start a new interface, they install the add-on, their backends were configured and so it became even simpler. Ember deploy was all they needed to do to deploy their apps. Okay, so finally, there's one more thing that happened. Even though this was even simpler, they still had to set up the backend when they needed to say a new API layer and they had to set up authentication, right? And again, they're doing this over and over again, months and months, one of the programmers realizes, well, why don't we abstract this even more? So why don't we extract some of this off and backend config work, put it in its own deploy server? So we'll have a separate server that has nothing to do with our APIs, has nothing to do with serving or sorry, has nothing to do with our front-end static assets, but it's just gonna be for the purpose of deploys. It's where we're gonna send the static assets so that they can be served up, but it's also going to proxy these API requests to our backend API layer, right? And so some of this is inspired by what's actually happened with companies within the Ember community and some of it is just some ideas that people have floated around, but the point is here that bringing Ember and Ember CLI into the organization established these conventions. It's kind of established the bottom rung on this ladder. And very quickly and consistently, the developers were able to kind of innovate along what it meant to deploy their app and to make it more general, more abstract, and ultimately more powerful. And so you can see if, oh, back when they were kind of all writing their own JavaScript apps and each team was kind of answering these questions their own way, they could say, oh, we're all deploying our apps, like what do we need? Well, that's an easy question to ask, right? The hard thing is how do we get to the answer? And if someone would have said, oh, we need a deploy server, that's too far of a reach because you haven't even identified what's constant across your apps. And so the nice thing here is that by establishing that baseline, bringing those conventions, it gave Acne's engineers a way, a process for discovering the shared things when they were able to iterate and grow and climb up that ladder of abstraction. And so the next example of how this helped them today is in the area of testing. And it's a similar idea. Bringing an Ember and Ember CLI kind of established this baseline convention. So now, instead of having to start from scratch with each of our frontends, Ember set up QUnit, set up Testim, and we all had some helpers to go with. But as they looked across their Ember apps, that's kind of where the similarities ended. They were still writing a lot of their own code to wire up their test harness and they still had to figure out how to get fake data into their testing environment to assert against that. And that was still a decent amount of work that they had to do. They did this over and over again and the similarities started jumping out again. So they realized what they need was an XHR interceptor. So they needed a way to basically plug in a server, something that would respond to the API requests and get data to the Ember app so that the Ember app could be populated and it could start asserting against the data it had. So it's kind of the same process. They kept doing this. They realized the script that had the code that wired up the interceptor was the same and they just wrote an add-on. We see here again something else that Ember has brought. Not only has it established the conventions, which let them identify the things that were the same, it's given them tools like the add-on infrastructure and the Ember CLI build pipeline, which lets them easily experiment with these solutions. So they wrote an add-on and now all their interfaces have this add-on, more consistency across the board, easier for new programmers and existing programmers to work because there's more similarity across the apps. This final level abstraction is okay, instead of just an add-on, we now have this add-on and we still have to wire up the routes for each app and we still have to figure out how to get maybe fixed your data or fake data into this server, the server that's kind of intercepting our API requests. So if you think about it, what we're really doing is we want a backend. We want a backend in the browser to stand in for our server, which is not there. So we have more control over that backend so we can assert against it and test against it. That's really what we're doing. And then additionally maybe eventually we want to be able to populate that backend in a browser with data from our actual server so we're really running end-to-end tests all the way from our JavaScript apps to our data layer.  So again, they're writing even less code, there's even more consistency. So the idea here is the same. They started out, Ember established these baseline conventions, they were writing manual test code, they identified, okay, this piece are the same, what we really need is an interceptor, it's a script that we've shared, now we package it up to an add-on and when we end up with something like a backend in the browser. Again, we see this process which leads to this discovered solution, this thing that they didn't know that they needed, but the process enabled them to find it. And so that's really how Ember and Ember CLI helped out ACME today. It's about giving them a process for identifying redundancies and being able to extract new solutions and identify the abstractions that are gonna work within their company. And just to point out, you can say they had the same apps at the beginning. Why can they just identify these redundancies? Well, it turns out identifying the redundancies is very difficult and often it's less damaging to just duplicate yourself than it is to get stuck with a bad abstraction. That's true with infrastructure, that's true in a lot of programming problems and so it's really important to have a process for discovering the right abstractions. Okay, so that's kinda how Ember and Ember CLI can help them out today. Let's look at how it can help them out in the future. Well, first, it helps them stay up to date. Sember, semantic versioning and the conventions that Ember CLI bring are really important for making sure ACME during this growth period, as they're branching out and they have half a dozen, a dozen, more, front-end apps, all the apps stay up to date and they stay consistent with each other. I think it's easy for a lot of people to dismiss semantic versioning, but with something like the conventions of the CLI upgrade process and the semantic versioning of the libraries, Ember, Ember data, the various libraries, in an organization like ACME that really enables one developer, gives them the confidence to go into a project that they've never even touched before and they can be confident in how to upgrade it because it follows the same conventions as there are other projects. They're gonna know when they're gonna need to contact a developer with more knowledge, but overall, they're gonna be able to take not a lot of time at all to get it upgraded and that's gonna keep things consistent, keep things fresh. This kind of combination also gives ACME flexibility into the future. The stability that they get from having the various interfaces much more consistent and uniform, it keeps their overall architecture much more flexible and it lets them swap pieces in and out. So you can imagine them making a decision to some of the back-end engineers making this thing to split out one of the server-side components into two and because all their front-ends are similar, the front-end engineers know there's only one layer where this is gonna be effective. Let's say they're using Ember data for this data layer, so they're gonna go in and they're gonna make the changes but everything else is the same. So that's kind of the power that this consistency brings and how it keeps their architecture flexible. Now I think the biggest thing that it helps ACME with when thinking about the future is that ACME is gonna have a stronger guarantee that new standards and best practices that emerge from the web community those are gonna make it back into these interfaces and let me explain why. So I think all the frameworks do this. I think all the frameworks are really important and not just the mega frameworks, smaller libraries too but these shared solutions that we all use are really important for helping us discover and identify what best practices and standards are, the new standards that we should be using. They help us discover things that make building quality software easier, better and faster. But I think Ember more than any other framework is absolutely relentless about identifying the best practices and standards that have emerged from the community and rolling them back into its own. And it's gonna figure out some way, it's gonna be determined to figure out some way to make these new best standards and practices available to anyone building an app with Ember. So whether that's promises, whether that's an entire new rendering layer, building your app with ES6 modules or something like rendering on the server, if you think about the longevity and the importance of longevity to ACME, a company like ACME that is growing, has lots of diverse groups internally, has many interfaces. To be able to say that all those interfaces are gonna be up to date and in one years, two years, five years those things are gonna incorporate modern best practices that's extremely powerful for an organization. So just in closing thoughts, when they started out, these architecture questions weren't that big of a deal. There was a single code base, they rendered a single web application and that was pretty much it. But when you move to kind of this environment that's more complex, there's not a one-to-one relationship between your backends and your frontends, it becomes more difficult. I wanna make a point that ACME was right to start with a monolith. The problem was not that they should have sat at the beginning and thought, hey, we're gonna have these services, we should try to imagine we're gonna be in a couple years and split our backends into these five services and make these eight interfaces, that's not what they should have done. But they don't know when they're starting out what their apps will look like in five years and three years in one year. In their server side components, they had a process. They had a process that they were able to follow once things started getting complex and that let them break out their back-end services in this consistent and understandable way, right? And I think Ember and Ember Seal, I can do that for their frontends as well. Ultimately, I think Ember is not just a framework. It's really a philosophy. It's a philosophy about how to create and improve software and it's essentially, if I had to boil this philosophy down, it's what we saw at work within ACME itself. The ACME process, the development process that happened with ACME as they brought Ember in, sort of refining their infrastructure, that's kind of a microcosm example of this. And the philosophy is essentially this. The first step is you want to give real developers the tools to tinker, right? You want to encourage them, real developers with their boots on the ground, building actual applications to tinker and to experiment with what they need. And that's going to let them identify the things that are the same, the redundancies. Then you want to be extremely deliberate, relentless about folding these things that you've discovered back into shared solutions. Now if you think about it, these tenants, they're absolutely embraced by the core team of Ember, right? But they're also embraced by the Ember community. And in fact, this is really how web standards and even the JavaScript language itself evolves, right? It's basically, I think a lot of people have come to believe that, the notion that you can get a small community of people and top down analyze the problem and say, these are the actual primitives and abstractions that we need. That's basically gone, I think. It's clear that the way to actually develop successful applications and identify the primitives that are actually going to be valuable to real developers building real software is to let them tinker, let them innovate. This is the path to consistently letting developers write higher quality software. So if there's one kind of call to action of this talk, I guess it's to embrace this philosophy yourself, is to within your own development, your own company innovate, identify things that are the same, but be relentless about sharing them within your organization and within the rest of the community. Thanks a lot.


The first interactive I.T.U.D. academia network meeting. For creating of an I.T.U. journal. Nowadays, the access to information is not by one journal on paper, but sort of a vast world of search. I.T.U. journal is going to be a center where everybody can contribute. Increasing the participation of academia in our world is one of our priorities. Thank you very much. We know that we are a virgin territory. There's a lot of research that can be done. The I.T.U. Thank you. These are from civil society organizations. Top of what is happening in the I.T.U. activities. There's theory and practice. And you can see the picture of some of the people there in case you haven't seen this before. It is very, very crucial that we share our information. Networking is the most important thing of the future. The agenda for I.T.U. scientific journal because the experts from our university, from other universities and I.T.U. and business companies, I.T. business companies should work together for collaborating for I.T.U. journal. I.T.U. academia can help in study group, make new idea, but the procedure should be defined. I think the most important is that academia members work closely with the ministry or the regulatory body in the country so that they can serve as the technical advisor to the ministry and contribute more to the I.T.U. We are all talking that I.C.T. is very important, but we don't have academic research to prove what we are saying. Sometimes we give figures, people like it, they take it, but they are not academic research. I would like to challenge. This is the challenge.


Hello my friends, my name is Alex and welcome to Cities For All. In this video we're gonna talk why sustainable transportation is important for cities and how to make cities more healthy and liveable by alternative modes of transportation. Let's go. And we will start from public transport, which can give lots of benefits to your city. And these benefits are next. First traffic congestion. Lots of people drive cars every day not because they like it, but just because there is no other ways for them to get where they need. And by providing a viable alternative to driving, public transportation can help to reduce traffic congestion on roads. Lower carbon emissions. Public transportation is generally more energy efficient and produces fewer emissions per capita compared to personal vehicles, which helps to reduce air pollution and mitigate the impact of climate change. Cost savings. Using public transportation can be a more affordable option compared to owning and operating a personal vehicle, especially in areas with high costs of living and transportation. Saving urban land. The more people will use public transportation, the less parking spaces you will need on their destination points, so you can create public spaces and plant trees instead of it, which will make your city much more comfortable. Increased accessibility. Public transportation can provide access to jobs, education and other essential services for people who cannot afford a personal vehicle or are unable to drive. It will make the city much fairer. Reduced dependence on foreign oil. Public transportation reduces demand for oil and supports energy independence. Improved quality of life. Public transportation can enhance livability by reducing noise and air pollution, creating more public spaces and improving the overall environment of cities. So as you can see, public transportation is very important for making your city healthy. You just can't go without it. And as Enrique Pena Lossa said, an advanced city is not the one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport. Next part of healthy city is cycling. Why do we need it? Improved health. Cycling is a form of physical activity that can improve cardiovascular health, strengthen muscles and reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Cost savings. Cycling is a low cost mode of transportation that can save money on transportation costs compared to owning and operating a personal car. On the other side, cycling infrastructure is the cheapest way to move people inside the city. Reduced traffic congestion. Cycling can help to reduce traffic congestion on roads, particularly during the peak hours. The more people on bikes, the less cars in the traffic jams. Lower carbon emissions. Cycling is a zero emissions mode of transportation that produces no pollution and helps to mitigate the impact of climate change. Increased accessibility. Cycling is cheap so everyone can use it to get to their jobs, education and other services. That's very important for people who cannot afford a personal car or are unable to drive. Improved quality of life. Cycling can enhance livability by reducing noise and air pollution, creating more public spaces and improving the overall environment of cities. Increased independence. Cycling also provides a degree of independence and self-reliance as well as the opportunity to explore new areas and experience the outdoors. And one of the most important things is increased safety. Cycling is generally a safe mode of transportation especially when compared to driving. In addition, cycling can reduce the risk of traffic accidents by reducing the numbers of vehicles on the road. So it's very important for the cities to create safe and accessible cycling infrastructure. A bike lanes, safe streets and shared spaces, places to stall the bike and much more things which worth to discuss in another video. And the general criteria of quality of this cycling infrastructure is will you let your child to cycle it alone from home to school or somewhere else? If your answer is yes, congratulations! But if it's no, this is probably one of the ways to improve your neighborhood. That's all for a moment. If you liked this video, please hit the subscribe button and leave your comments. And also visit our Patreon page where you can support our channel. See you in the next videos!


where have the children gone? Three boys aged between seven to 10 years kidnapped a two-year-old boy, tied his hands behind his back and took him to a location not too far from the primary places of residence. A vigilant member of the community found something amiss as he made his way back home and decided to interrogate the boys further when he discovered the two-year-old victim. A father got a call while he was at work from the school where his two daughters go through. His attention was wanted immediately. He was met by the teacher of his oldest daughter that is 10 years old. The teacher, while flipping through the journal, each child was asked to keep as part of their creative writing exercise, read the following sentence. I can't wait till a percentage will enter my planet. The distressed father investigated the trajectory of this sad event and discovered that during the Christmas of 2021, when his 12-year-old niece and 10-year-old nephew came on holiday, they had an internet-enabled device and gathered the children, which included children of his other siblings, numbering four, to watch pornography. This they did consistently for the duration of the break. The investigation continued down the line where it was discovered that the housemaid of the visiting relatives had introduced the children to porn. A 14-year-old was employed in Eugen State as a housemaid in November 2021, by December. She had abducted one of the two children of her madam that had been left in her care during Sunday service as the businesswoman left church to attend to a customer. Fast forward a few weeks later, somewhere on the streets of Eugen, a good Samaritan noticed a young girl begging with her sickly brother and decided to take them in and nursing back to health. Once he got better, the young girl insisted on taking the boy to Emo State single-handedly. This raised the suspicion of the good Samaritan who immediately reported it to the police. It was discovered that she was begging to raise money so she could transport her and her victim to Emo State.  Rocking a 30-BG gang necklace, the little boy drunk with reckless abandon was also dancing to the music playing in the background. So I ask again, where have the children gone? Over to Ruth. Ruth, let's take your comments first. It's so disheartening as you listen to all this that you read because it's just so funny how society is the way it is today. It just shows that there's something missing. And it just ties back to what Kairi mentioned. There's something missing. We are not getting a right in our homes. Parenting has gone wrong. I think if we're going to question the children, we need to question parents. Every of these child you've mentioned come from a home. So is either the parents have been more lenient than they should or they've probably been too busy to take notes of their children. I really don't want to place blames because in today's world, everybody's trying to at least... Place blames. Place blames. Everybody's trying to... Everybody's trying to at least make ends meet. And so there's always that excuse of, oh, I need to at least feed and so who's going to... I don't really need to take care of my children. But I feel like taking care of children is beyond providing for them financially. You need to take care of them emotionally, mentally, spiritually. You're responsible for another adult. So if you were never going to take that full responsibility, then you shouldn't even have even started in the first place. Having been known as my mother of this or my father of this, it shouldn't be the driving... That's not the priority. Yeah, that shouldn't be the priority. You should or I'm a grandmother because sometimes it's usually grandparents that forces people to go and have kids. But it shouldn't be the priority. The question is, if I'm bringing a child to this world, can I really take care of this child aside from meeting their financial needs? So do I have the mental capacity to handle the child? Can I properly discipline them? I mean, I had an experience one day in a store. This was like years ago. So I was in a bookstore somewhere in VI and a little girl walked in with her mother. So we're all buying books and all.  So she, first of all, wanted to get a marker, colored marker. And the mother was like, why do you need this colored marker? So she chewed transoms, she was crying.  You don't need this colored marker. She cried, cried, cried. The mother went ahead and bought it. And then the mother was paying for it. She went again and picked something else. Something that she didn't even have. She didn't even be using it in the first place. I can't remember exactly what it is. And the mother was then shouting at the attendants that you should answer me very fast. Answer me in a country where she's speaking other things. Then he dawned on me that this woman has lost it. Like, you should be questioning your daughter. I'm not the attendant. So it just goes a long way to tell us how bad parenting has gone these days. For me, right, when it comes to parenting, I remember when we were young. I was telling someone recently, I said, unfortunately for me, I've never grown up. I've been that child my mother raised. There are limits I was given when I was young. They're up to now. It's like a goat that was tied down. You remove the violation. The goat is just there looking. I'm just there. I just maintain that same structure. You see, when it comes to parenting, the parent has the first priority of being a parent.  You must become that parent before you get married. Now, it doesn't happen to everybody, but I remember when we were younger, once you give birth, the family that knows you need help will rally around you to support you and give that child the kind of training that they need. Unfortunately, our society now, I don't know if it's because of witchcraft or modernization. Oh yes, because we blame everybody. If it's witchcraft or modernization, we don't allow parents to get close to the family anymore. We don't allow relatives come close. So we're in this contraption where they're just looking for a way to take care of that child while looking for a way to make money and survive. Then again, I also believe that while it is important to have a career path, have a dream. As parents, you must understand that, okay, in life, life is a process. You want to give your child the best.  Yes. Get busy doing some other things. You may not have the billions that you want. Save that amount. Don't look at me like that. That's not always an option. I didn't say the wife. I know, but I'm saying that it's not always an option that one actually gets to take the back seat. It's actually when you think of, if you're living in a place like Lagos where there's so many bills, it may not be an option. It might not be the most, the first option, but it is an option. You know why? Because when one person is working, what that would do to you is that it cuts down probably your class. Probably you can't have all the logs you really want to have because you need to manage. But you know, that's part of parenting. You need to sacrifice that. Okay. I'm dedicating five years or six years to train maybe the two kids I want to have. And after that training, I'll go back to work. Then we can have the kind of life that we want.  God willing, you live till 70 or 80. You have 30 years ahead. Just sacrifice that. I should jump in, right? Okay. So I think that for me, I think the point is we are basing all these premises on the fact that oh, maybe the parents are not available or they're not on ground. Look at that child. The mom was there.  So that has nothing to do with the parent not being there. I think Nigeria, Nigerians, we've just lost our moral compass. We don't seem to know the difference between right and wrong. So I'm telling you this parent, because I think I saw that video. The mom was there dancing. I think I saw people spraying. I'm thinking this will must be crazy. What's happening here? The child has no sense. This child has learned these things. This child, this is a learned behavior. And the child learned it from the parents. So I think that's it. The same thing that spilled into the entire society. And we all know this starts from home. Can you imagine the kind of adult that child is going to be? Not because he couldn't be better, but because he doesn't know better. This is all he knows. He's like a child's soldier. This is what the parents thought. It just breaks my heart. So when I was saying to you, oh, it may not be an option. I was a stay-at-home mom. I have four kids. And my older ones are much older than my younger ones. There's like a 12-year gap between the first three and the last one. So I know what it is to be a stay-at-home mom. And make all the sacrifices. And my heart just breaks when I look at this parent. I don't think anyone wants to be a parent. I don't think any Nigerian wants to be responsible for another person, not to talk of a child. Nobody wants to be responsible. Everybody just wants to. It's just a me mentality. Everybody is interested in themselves. And the children have just become appendages. So we marry so that we can say, oh, I'm a missus something.  But nobody really cares. And that's what I really see. We don't care anymore. And I really well said you ended it very well. And I wanted to say that that's the next topic we should be discussing. How society insists that everyone, as long as you get married, must have kids. We need to come. People need to be allowed to take those decisions based on their reality and who they are.  And I have stopped to one child.  The grandparents say. I don't care what he says. He's one child. Because I know my... Some people are probably praying for you. You know that, right? Some people are probably claiming that you will have more. And that you don't have more because you're unable to. And so we need to honestly take these decisions where have the children gone? Our daily life is next after the break. Stay with us.


This is a recent Australian middle grade verse novel release. It was sent to me by Ellen and Unwind for review, so thank you very much to them. And I had a really good time reading this book. I'm going to start off by reading the blurb from the back of the book. It says Freya's world is turned upside down when she and her mum moved to inner city Melbourne. Stuck in a new apartment on the 11th floor and Freya is afraid of lifts. Stuck in a basketball team where not everyone likes a new star player. Stuck in a classroom of kids who don't know Freya is a donor conceived baby. Stuck just like little Audrey in the skipping girl sign suspended over the suburb of Abbotsford. Being the new girl makes Freya feel like a dark cloud on a summer's day. Can she figure out how to belong on Vinegar Street? A really big part of this book has to do with Audrey who is the skipping girl. This is a real sign in Abbotsford that is very, very iconic here in Melbourne. It's a really cool concept because it sort of ties everything together in terms of where the story is set and it helps to accentuate a lot of Freya's feelings as she moves to this new place where she is really feeling very uncomfortable. Freya and her mum were previously living in Eltham which is very out of suburban. Lots of big houses, lots of greenery and she's moving to Abbotsford which is very much inner city and they're moving from a house into an apartment and on top of that Freya's father who is her biological father has moved into state so she doesn't get to see him all the time. Freya was a donor conceived baby, her parents are friends but have never been romantically linked so while it's not a divorce situation between parents it is a separation situation and she's really feeling the loss of that. Not to mention she's had to leave behind friends, she's having to start fresh in a place, she's the new kid and she feels out of sorts and out of place and she's constantly having to try and prove herself. I'm going to come back to the basketball things in a moment. Found it really interesting that we have a character who is afraid of lips living in an apartment building and looking at the way that she has to adapt to being in a situation like that to avoid stressing herself out but along the way it's that fear of going in a lift that helps her to connect to characters that she previously thought she might not be able to connect to as they begin to reveal things that they're afraid of as well so it becomes this point of connection for her and other characters. Basketball it plays a huge part in this story Freya is a great basketball as she loves the sport it's probably the only thing she's looking forward to about moving because she's got a team lined up but of course when she gets there she is having to prove herself with the new team and she faces bullying and criticism and things like that. She's able to use what she learns from basketball to also help her through those situations and one thing that I really liked that Karen Koma did was she included basketball terms their definitions and then also the definition of the word just in general use so we have steals in basketball that's when a player takes their ball from their opponent or takes possession of the ball and in life it's when someone takes something that is not yours and those definitions sort of break up the book into different sections that highlight something that Freya is dealing with in that part of the story. As I said earlier it is told in verse so that does change the reading experience. I enjoy reading verse novels I find them really interesting to read and to pick up the nuance and to see how the author crafts the story without a lot of the things that we would see in a traditional narrative such as conversations between characters which have to be shown in a different way so you have to really unpack that particularly with readers who may not have read a verse novel before every verse novel does it slightly differently so it's always something that can be a really great thing to unpack you know how does the author show conversation how does the author show tense moments or moments of joy or how do they highlight a character's feelings when everything is told through verse and I always appreciate that so I'm really glad to be able to add this to my middle grade verse novel collection because I love adding to that I think they're just so cleverly done and this was great because this was set in my hometown I know all of these places I know Eltham I know Abbotsford I have been passed a little Audrey many many times and it was just really cool to see some so many iconic Melbourne things in this book and also I really love this cover it's great I will leave links to where you can find out more information about this book down below as well as information about the author I would love to know if you are planning on picking this book up or if you have recommendations for books that you think might be similar feel free to leave them down below otherwise if you just want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a basketball emoji in the comments I hope that wherever you're on the world just staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video thanks so much for watching bye everyone


adeshj いた A 然後  Discord Parliament Met This trust the need for a crop of leaders that will salvage her from the do drums of depreciation and mediocrity. Nigeria boasts to be one of the most talented and heavily resourced nations in Africa and the world at large. But unfortunately, poor leadership has been the bane of her existence. Intellectualism and the rights intact are the ingredients for a stronger Nigeria. In the thick of devices and that plagues her, the nation needs a leader who has thought out strategy and experienced list with good leadership track record to be at the hem of her face. In light of the recent conference held by the Nigerian Bar Association, MBE, deemed bold transition, the speech of the presidential candidates is enough evidence that we have gone past the stage of gullible and unattainable promises from political aspirants.  Citizens are woken to reality and most importantly the rate of political apathy has been on the decline. Since the rise of smart and politically aware candidates and citizens, mediocrity in terms of integrity and intellect cannot be condoned. In order for political candidates to express intellectualism and effectively market their candidates to the electorates, the following should be meticulously considered enormously. Demonstrating competency. Our numerous challenges as a nation is very obvious. So a thickly realistic solution in conversations would go a long way in spotlighting candidates' competence. Empathy. We cannot overemphasize the importance and after effect of genuinely connecting with the plight of the electorates, it is in the best interest of political candidates to listen carefully when issues are presented and be intentional about appropriate response. Embracing criticism. It is expected that whenever we want truth heart or his heart into the ring, his or her actions will be viewed under the public lens of scrutiny. Political candidates should thus learn from criticism from their opponent or even the electorate in improving their plans or ideas. Finally, let us meditate on these words of Martin van Boren, each president of the United States from 1837 to 1841 and the founder of the Democratic Party. It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't. This simply means no excuse for failure. Political candidates be warned. No, not for you. They should be warned. No excuse for failure. I mean, without sounding negative and alright, I would just say that we will still see some failure. The good thing is what you mentioned that you have a citizenry that is becoming more aware. If nothing else, I love the fact that everybody now has a mantra. Do you have your PVC? Have you got your PVC? People are encouraging. It wasn't like that. Even just in the last election cycle, it wasn't even like that. But as you said, you know, it just took four years and people are beginning to understand that I must get my PVC. It was lovely to see the numbers. Now it's not now just getting the PVC, but that we must use it. That you have it, you now must go out. Then after going out, so they're in stages. So maybe we might not get to stage two completely this time, but at least we will get to it maybe next time, which is actually everybody who has a card will go out and vote. Then from the voting, we will now all escort it. I don't know how we are escorting electronically. Yes, yes, yes. I hope they carry the promise of electronic transmission. I think they have done it in Osho and we should switch aspects. So now having seen that the candidacy is awake. I still don't think even your candidates that are running are fully awake. Does he have one? Yes. I don't think that they are. I mean, we've seen flashes of brilliance from everybody who has come to talk. We don't want flashes. We want consistent brilliance when they're talking. I want to when the person is talking and I'm not in my head, I can say yes. What this person is saying is realistic. I can see it. They are not fancy words. They are not fancy words. They are not fancy ideas. I want them to talk in terms of the realism. We have been talking about that because World Bank said this or EU said that or NATO said that. What is the Nigerian system of society throwing up? Right? That they are, what you call it, they are home that the solutions are going to be home grown. Not to understand. I think that is where for me. I think the candidates are losing me. Yes, they are not exactly. They are not giving me home grown solutions. I think that is the next area that our candidates need to start looking in. On top of these home grown solutions are not rocket science or going to be things that are going to be left centre. No. We need to crawl before we can walk. It's fine. If this is when we want to start getting it right, we don't have to jump or run. We just need to get it right. Okay. Thank you so much. In my own view, I think just to portray what you said. Getting the PVC alone is not the yastic for a better Nigeria, right? So the candidacy is not as if they are not aware of the reality. They are using it as a tool. I give an example when your election is coming and poverty is safe induced in Nigeria. Exactly. That's why I said, keep the money and pay it when they think they can manipulate your decision. Sure. Exactly. All the salaries are not paid on time. Close to the election, you see multiple salaries paid. You see 30,000 or 7,000 nair. Somebody that has no heating and has some bills. You're like, okay, if I vote for this person and I take the 7,000, it takes 2,000 nair for my feeding. 1,000 nair for medicals and stuff like that. I think this one is better. So vote buying is easy because it is just psychological. And the funniest thing is the vulnerabilities that we are actually in this stuff, we, the allies, are not close to them. So we don't relate to them. We don't build structure around them. Don't forget that PDP, as we speak today, is the most grandest structure across Nigeria. That every world and you know, they are indigenous. You know, APC is a merger of multiple parties. When we are saying indigenous, like a party that has structure, grandest structure to the grassroot. So if we are saying Labour Party, we are saying ADC and what are the grandest structure that they have. How close are they? As individual, what are we doing in our community? Even our polling units to bring people together. To say, you know what, if you vote this person because of 5,000 nair, you will suffer for it because politics is more like business. I have paid you to get what I want. Then I do whatever I need to do because that money is not for free. So we talk about kabas and whatever you know. It's not just about the candidacy. If I come today and I say take under billion nair for this election, I'm sure of winning the election if I have the right strategy because I will use it to buy, right? And that under billion, if it is two people that bought the under billion on grand, definitely those two people are the kabas. They will collect the money at their own interest rates, at their own time. So they don't have business with the populist gate. So there are a lot of things that we need to start to look into beyond getting a PVC. Let us also start building structures. Not just talking on social media and whatever. Anyway, just like Madam Comfort said, she said that the process, initially people had this buta apati, the wool sand buta skat. That's what we say. Look at Palans, wool sand buta skat. They only get it to open bank account. Right now, the intention about getting it. So I think from hands phones, we are talking about voting. No, that reminds me, young persons will be making jest just to drive consciousness. Some of them will come online and say we will get PVC with wool sand. You understand what I mean? Yeah, exactly. With that, this kind of statement, look at Palans. They go to a restaurant and say we will get PVC by foot job. All those things. So it's a way of driving consciousness. We've gotten a lot of persons that had that consciousness of going to get PVC. So now the next stage is we actually vote for wool sand. Exactly. Just to add to what you said. Let us say for example, like Oyster in the United Kingdom. Like you have an Oyster card. You used to pay for Nondombos and what have you. Think about it when your voter skat gives you the ability to have discounts. Automatically, you know that if you have the right set of persons, this is your voter card as a value. Exactly. That you are getting from it. You know that once you do the right thing and the right candidates are on the seat, we have a lot of discounts. You can look into legal state BRT solutions. Then from ECO, due to CMS, you spend close to 1,000 naira, but in local bus. But when it started just 200 naira, you know you can say okay I'm getting the dividend of democracy. So things like that. We should be looking into the candidates here and what they have for us. So that is an opportunity for political candidates to put in their best efforts to articulate and describe and explain what they have for us. Upness is complete boots. Stick with us.