U.S. Marines and multiple African partner nations are participating in exercise Western Accord in Chez Senegal. Most engagements take place at short ranges, generally speaking, in modern combat. So being able to pivot and move into position and fire under more realistic circumstances than a known distance range, it's highly effective. It's training the way you fight. Coordinating training with partner nations was one of the main focuses of Western Accord. The ECOWAS countries are our allies and the potential is always out there that we may find ourselves side by side fighting. The commander of the Gambian forces said that while their army conducts marksmanship training on their own, it was important to understand each other's tactics. From Chez Senegal, I'm Army Sergeant Nick Lloyd.


So we've discussed in many of my videos here on how to recognize the early warning signs of certain organ dysfunctions. Now in Chinese medicine because we're very concerned with how things relate to each other and not how these disparate or unrelated parts, for example, topain or bloating and headaches, we're not concerned with how they're different but what links them together and I think that is a very unique aspect of Chinese medicine that makes it very very clinically effective in the right hands. Now in this video today I thought I would talk about one of the most common pathologies I see as well as some of these key warning signs so that you could know if your body is moving in that direction. Hey I'm Dr. Alex Hein, author of the health book Master of the Day, licensed acupuncturist and doctor of Chinese medicine. Now before we jump in today I have two very important links right below this video. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, the contact info for me and my private practice is right below this video. Besides that there's also a free download for you for daily rituals that could potentially help you add years to your life so if you want to get that PDF it's right below this video as well. So let's talk about what's called the Xiaoyang organ network. In Chinese medicine organs are often linked by pairs and based on their shared relationships. Now what we're going to be talking about here in this video of course many of the symptoms of gallbladder issues are really in digestion so one thinks of it as the stomach or intestines but in Chinese medicine we think of the Xiaoyang organ network as being the gallbladder and the sanjiao. And the gallbladder people are familiar with is also gallbladder removal surgeries are very very common at this time in history. The sanjiao the triple warmer is considered an organ that has it describes more a physiological function than it does a physical organ. I mean it's literally called the organ with no form but a function. So the sanjiao is a little bit more difficult to explain so we'll focus on the gallbladder today. So these Xiaoyang organs are often related to what's considered the wood element and many of the digestive organs are considered the earth element. Now common pathologies considered wood overacting on earth and that's what we're talking about here today where the person is experiencing gallbladder issues and signs and symptoms. So let's talk about what those are because they are very common very chronic and very often undiagnosed. So the first thing that I notice with people and I've experienced many times is sour or bitter or odd taste in the mouth. You know a lot of people will feel this when they're about to get a fever or when they are febrile and a lot of people get this at the beginning of COVID as well. So one of my first questions is often are you noticing a weird or sour bitter or metallic taste in your mouth? And for many of us that is the little bit the baby warning sign where we have too many cups of coffee in one week when our digestion needed a break and then we notice like my saliva tastes a little bit sour. That is one warning sign of this Xiaoyang organ network involvement and maybe that is the sign where I need to lay off the coffee a little bit this week or the alcohol the wine or the fried food or maybe just fast a little bit and eat a little bit lighter. The second sign is frequent indigestion or reflux. So indigestion can range from I just feel like food doesn't go down very easily. I feel a lot of burping. I don't feel like my stomach is descending or emptying feels too full all the way to burning sourness indigestion can't fall asleep wake up in the middle of the night with burning and sour and reflux. All of those can be categorized into this kind of indigestion or GERD pattern. One of the most common problems modern people face today and some of the best selling drugs the top five I think is a PPI for treating indigestion and GERD and reflux. This is obviously a big issue in modern society but I would say getting more and more frequent indigestion is another sign as well. A third sign is dizziness and or pressure in the head. Very common for people with this kind of indigestion pattern and gut problems to also manifest with stuffy noses and frontal headaches or brain fog or head pressure. Again, this is the area of digestion and Chinese medicine. One of the reasons for headaches and head pressure here is that there's something going on pathologically in the digestive system. But dizziness is one of those symptoms as well and even though dizziness can have many myriad different causes, I would say most commonly what I see is that people with this pattern who also have digestive problems will often manifest this frontal headache or frontal head pressure. It's very common. I've experienced it. Many people have other people though will experience more of the more stuffy noses and so it's more gut or small intestine related as opposed to strictly gallbladder related. The fourth symptom is pressure and fullness in the chest or ribs. So from our perspective in Chinese medicine, I mean, obviously, logically, anatomically, your gallbladder is tucked under your ribs. And so it's common to feel gallstone or gallbladder pressure, we call it distention, a sensation of sensation of pressure in the ribs or underneath the ribs, sometimes both sides, there can even be a kind of paradoxical gallbladder pain that's on the left side, even though the gallbladder is on the right side. But in general, the ribs side fullness, distention, pressure and pain, especially after eating sometimes for a couple hours, a low grade pressure you feel in your ribs, sometimes on the right side, sometimes it goes down towards the end of the ribs, that you can't quite differentiate. Is this my intestines, am I just bloated? But ribs specifically from our perspective, are often in those those wood organs, that's one of the possible pathologies that can manifest there. And the fifth, maybe a little bit less obvious to people is sleep problems. A lot of the people that I see, and myself having experienced it, a lot of sleep problems are digestive in nature. And so even, you know, our gut instinct is to go towards a sedative treatment. If a person can't sleep, right, just put them to sleep, because that's our cultural thought about what sleep problems come from. But a lot of sleep problems are digestive in nature. In other words, the person is manifesting with these signs and symptoms. I give them a formula for working on the Shayan organ network, the gallbladder off in the stomach, sometimes the spleen pancreas as well. And they sleep amazing. And I didn't give them a sleep formula. I didn't give them a sleep sedative treatment. I gave them a formula to work on the weak link right now, which is digestion. And so anywhere the body is not experiencing proper physiological function, from our perspective, can often produce insomnia. And so that's why jumping to a sedative kind of treatment or sedative formula, a skilled practitioner does not do that. That's why we do our differential diagnosis, our pattern differentiation in Chinese medicine, and GI problems people often find are correlated with anxiety, depression or sleep. So we always want to treat according to the pattern. Now those are five signs of gallbladder or Xiaoyang problems from our perspective. And I thought I would share it purely because of the fact that they are so common. And being able to observe some of these symptoms will help you observe the warning signs of what is building. And so you can recognize that maybe this week, you know, coffee is not usually a problem, but I should maybe just do a couple days this week, or maybe since the holidays, I'm getting a lot of odd sensations in my GI, the sourness, the bitterness. So maybe the next month, I'm going to be really light and really healthy. That's the point for sharing this, just you can observe what may be going on and what may be coming next. You know, there's that saying in our ancient medical texts that the skilled physician treats illness that has not happened yet. And so this is one of the best ways to actually do that. Observe these before they become a problem. Alright, you guys, that's all I have for today. Again, if you'd like to become a patient locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, the link below is the info, my private info for my private practice and the address for my clinic. And otherwise, I will catch you guys in these related videos over here.


My name is Andrea and I had a lot of pain in my stomach for some reason. And now you feel it's gone? Yeah. Thank you, thank you, thank you. What's your name and what was the thing you had? I'm Vanessa and I had knee pain. And as I was getting, I always have knee pain when I get up from prayer, like when I'm on my knees. And I ask God that, you know, if you heal me I won't feel anything when I get up and I didn't feel anything at all. Come on, thank you so much. That is awesome. What is your name and what was the pain you had? My name is Ina and I'm a hairdresser, so I do a lot with my hands. And lately I've been having a lot of neck pains.  Well, thank you Jesus. Thank you. What's your name and what was the pain you had? My name is Rinal and I had a lot of pain in my shoulder. I had a lot of tightness after an accident for a few years and now it's all gone. Thank you Jesus. Awesome. Come over here bud. And what's your name and what was the pain you had? My name is Rinal and the pain isn't really physical. It's possibly in my heart. I've been harboring quite a few in my life right now. Everything feels like it's just a down hill and I know I just feel a little better, I guess. Amen, amen, amen. We're going to pray that the Lord completely changes your life. My name is Mark. I had a really bad injury when I was in a snowboarding accident after breaking my ribs. Not only did I break my ribs but I had an abdominal injury underneath the ribs. I never knew after a few years and the pain came back after another accident. And this pain wasn't going to heal on its own. I had to do stuff that even I wouldn't be able to make myself go back to normal. And after praying this prayer, I touched where I thought it was, where it tore. I can't even feel the pain just by touching it. Come on. Thank you Jesus. That is so awesome. What's your name and what was the pain you had? My name is Christina.  And during prayer I just felt it shift and just like a warm heat up and down my body. Praise the Lord. Amen.


Crispy Honolulu Hawaii. This is Think Tech Hawaii April 25, 2022. And I am Howard Wigg Hawaii State Energy Office. Welcome to you all. And you are devoted audience know that Hawaii is leading the whole nation in the provision of solar panels, and we are way way out ahead in many ways in energy efficiency. But how about a third alternative to hopefully one day reversing the trend of global warming and reversing the study increase in CO2 carbon dioxide by gobbling that stuff up and not only that but making good use of it, treating it as another natural resource. That's what we're going to be talking about to Christie Gamble, the senior director of sustainability for carbon cure and she's going to tell you all about what carbon cure is. But let me say that, if again we make use of that CO2 what a concept, and it turns out that the Hawaii Masonry Institute which represents all three concrete making companies on a Wahoo, they are fully on board with this program, and they are the movers and shakers and Christie works with all three of them. So, Christie Gamble, and where are you in Canada, Christie at the moment. Well, hi Howard, I am in Regina Saskatchewan so in the prairies where, unlike in Hawaii we still have snow on the ground. Well we're still pretty cool here, it's noon and it's just 81 and it'll get maybe up to 84 today, and then start dipping back down into the very low 70s. So welcome, welcome Christie, thank you for joining us all the way from Canada, and we, it's a nice sunny day out there, occasional drifting clouds trade winds, cooling us down. So on that cherry note, please tell us Christie what in the world is carbon cure, a little bit of background, and then what you do. Sure, well, carbon cure is a Canadian clean technology innovator who is on a mission to reduce the carbon footprint of concrete. And our mission as an organization is to reduce 500 million tons of annual carbon emissions by the year 2030. So that's equivalent to taking about 100 million cars off the road. And how we do that is through providing technologies to the concrete industry that allow concrete producers to actually utilize carbon dioxide that has been captured as a material in construction. So we're providing a solution that allows the usage of CO2 and the actual permanent capturing and getting rid of CO2. And so it's a really exciting innovation in the space of carbon utilization and it's ultimately a path to the global decarbonization of building materials and construction. And Christie, let me ask you, maybe you'll be able to answer this, of all the CO2 produced worldwide every year, what percentage is taken by the production of concrete? Well, the main ingredient in concrete is cement. So cement is the glue that holds concrete together. And cement production alone accounts for about 7% of the world's CO2 emissions. Yep. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest country emitter behind China and the United States. Wow. Sounds significant and taking 100 million cars off the road. That's what's possible through the use of the carbon utilization technologies that carbon cure has developed and is in continuing to develop. Was carbon cure an accelerator type startup? Is that how it worked there? We were, yes. So we're past the phase now of being in a startup, but that is certainly the origins of our company. So carbon cure itself was founded in 2012. And it is a technology manufacturer for concrete producers. And we have been funded through various grants, venture funding, but also accelerator programs. And in fact, the main reason why we're coming to you today in Hawaii is because of the fact that we were part of the Elemental Accelerator program a couple of years ago. And that program really accelerated our adoption across Hawaii. And as a result, Hawaii is one of the most advanced states for usages of carbon dioxide captured concrete.  I think you've got just a few more operations worldwide. That is correct. So as of today, we have over 550 systems sold. So a system is out. We provide a technology to concrete producers. So any operating concrete plants can install our technology to then introduce captured CO2 into their concrete as an admixture, as a material in their concrete. Today, there are over 500 plants that are operating and providing concrete made with our technology in many states across the United States, Canada, and then every continent on the globe, except for Antarctica has at least one representative of carbon cure. So we're actually really starting to get a global reach, which is really exciting because a lot of that global growth really started for us in Hawaii. So Hawaii itself might not be international. It was the first step for us to make those international growth. Wow. Does a key more so know about this. She's the executive director. Oh, yes, of course. Yes. Absolutely. We have to inform her afterwards that star coming back back to a while who here. So, one of the countries that you are in I believe is China, you made inroads in China yet. China is actually not one of the countries currently on our operating map. So in particular, Singapore was one of the first international locations to really adopt the use of carbon care. Because I believe China is still the national the worldwide leader in the consumption of concrete because they do so gosh darn much construction there. Absolutely there's a hugely significant amount of construction happening in China, which means that's where the majority of concrete production is made and so of course China is part of our eventual path to decarbonizing the concrete industry will have to get we're going to achieve that goal of 500 million tons of CO2 emissions that will require full scale adoption across the globe. Wow. And any idea how many cars that will displace. So 500 million tons of CO2 is the equivalent to taking 100 million cars off the road. Okay. That is a heck of a lot of cars. That's a lot of cars yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, why don't you go in more and more into the whole process and how it how it works. Virtues of concrete ice or carbonized the concrete. Well, let's just talk about concrete for a minute so concrete I did mention earlier that concrete through the production of cement accounts about 7% of the world CO2 emissions. So it does have a significant carbon footprint attached to it. But that is because concrete is the most abundant material on the planet. It is the most abundant man made material on the planet second most abundant material period after water. And that is incredible. And it makes you want to think well why is concrete so abundant and that's because it's such a great product. So one of the things that I really want to highlight is that there are so many sustainable attributes to concrete. If you want to build a construction that is a truly sustainable construction, you need to build it to last. It's something that can withstand the elements, and that's really important in the context of climate change where, you know we do see mother nature throwing a lot more forces at our buildings and so making sure to build to last is a really important part of the sustainability conversation. So I think that there are a lot of ways of conversations as well and strategies to, you know, really reduce the carbon footprint of a building to have a sound infrastructure. And just overall enclosure. And just first of all want to highlight that concrete itself has an impact just because it's such a good material. And so what we need to do as an industry is to deploy more solutions to reduce the carbon impact of cement and concrete, so that we can continue within construction to use concrete for all of the good things that it provides, but with less of an impact on overall CO2 emissions. Now, talking about carbon cure and where we come in is carbon cures at the forefront of the CO2 utilization industry. We're really rethinking CO2. So what I mean by rethinking CO2 is that historically carbon dioxide CO2 has always just been a waste by product. You know it is the primary greenhouse gas that is hurting the ozone layer which is contributing to climate change. And one of the ways to minimize that impact is first and foremost to deploy as many solutions as possible to minimize the actual amount of emissions that are going up in the atmosphere. But we also need to find ways to utilize capture and then utilize that CO2 for something beneficial. And that's where we're at the forefront is conceptualizing CO2 is not just this waste by product, but is something that's actually useful. And as it turns out CO2 is a very useful material for concrete production. So what carbon cure does is we manufacture a technology that takes this captured carbon dioxide, and we inject it into the concrete as it's being mixed. And what happens is when CO2 is injected into concrete, a chemical reaction occurs right away with that CO2 converts to a mineral. So concrete just happens to have one of the unique properties of being able to convert CO2 into a mineral, a stone. So that means that concrete can actually get rid of CO2 forever because once it's being turned into stone, it's not going to go back to CO2 it's not going back into the atmosphere. So by introducing the CO2 into the concrete not only does it turn into a mineral we capture forever because we've chemically converted it to something else. But what's even more important is that this process will improve the concrete strength. So if you have stronger concrete that actually allows the concrete producers to use less of the material that gives it its strength which is cement. So cement also happens to be the most carbon intensive material in concrete. And so if you can use less cement, you're further reducing the carbon footprint of the concrete. So it's a win-win solution where we're able to utilize CO2 to then reduce further CO2 through avoiding the use of raw materials that have a high carbon impact. And what about transportation costs? Is that figuring it all? Absolutely. And I assume by cost you're referring to the CO2 cost of the transportation? Yeah, no that's absolutely. So by capturing CO2, purifying it, transporting it, that of course generates more CO2 through that whole process. So this is really important from a life cycle accounting to accurately measure and then report the actual CO2 footprint. So we do that through our process. We understand the life cycle impact. We acknowledge that there are costs involved. The benefits, the amount of CO2 that is captured and reduced far outweigh the costs. So any types of carbon accounts accounting that we report are net benefits that have accounted for those costs. And does, do any of the certification, the green certification organizations recognize this? Yes, that's a bit of a, not directly simply because green certification, so programs like LEED for example. LEED does not, you know, certify products. What LEED does is it has created a platform and a process through which designers can construct to more sustainable standards. So the use of carbon care helps designers, building owners to achieve those standards because it lowers the carbon footprint of the building, which is one of the objectives by LEED. So other building, green building programs are usually pretty similar. Most organizations stray away from trying to put a stamp of approval on one product or another, but rather just set a path for decarbonization that our product is one solution to help achieve that. Very good because we have already quite a few LEED certified buildings in Hawaii and it sounds like if they include carbonized concrete, they may be able to elevate their LEED status a bit. Yeah, yeah. And do you have any applications in Hawaii yet? We do. So we are very proud to work with three ready mix producers on the island of Oahu. So the first producer to adopt carbon cure was island ready mix. So I'd like to give a shout out to Shorty Koon if he is watching today. He is retired from island ready mix, but he was the one of the initial people to really take hold of carbon cure and run with it. And of course say hello to the rest of the island ready mix team for joining today. So we work with island ready mix, we work with HCND and we work with Hawaiian cement. And so all three producers are partners of carbon cure who have been installed the technology and are using it. And this has resulted in quite a few different kinds of construction projects. So one of the first demonstration projects was championed by the Hawaii Department of Transportation. So Ed Sniffin who runs the Hawaiian Department of Transportation is one of the champions for low carbon in Hawaii. And so because of that we did a demonstration on the Kapolei interchange just outside of Honolulu, sort of in the city limits. And it was one of the first uses of infrastructure, like highway infrastructure utilizing carbon cure across North America across our footprint. So that was really great because it accelerated the use of carbon cure by other departments of transportation in other states across the United States. And there's just a few states that are slightly bigger than us so yes, using just a little more concrete than a little old Hawaii. Well and generally speaking government organizations government entities like departments of transportation are, you know, typically slow moving to adopt new innovation. And it's great to work with a very energetic and innovative Department of Transportation to go through the proper types of validation process there's a lot of work to validate and verify the use of carbon cure concrete on Hawaii DOT projects. But we were able to do that at, you know, a pace that wasn't typical for government organizations and as a result of it had a demonstration project that has now led to further use of carbon cure on Hawaii DOT projects and you know it's really important because from the DOT's perspective, they're very aware that there's a lot of construction of highways that they're going to have to manage over the next 20 years because some of the highways will be lost to rising sea levels. So it's, you know, it's really hits home. When you realize that that's rising sea levels is going to remove some of the current infrastructure that exists they have to rebuild. And so the philosophy of the Hawaiian Department of Transportation is that we're going to have to rebuild let's make sure we're not contributing to the problem even further by reducing our carbon footprint of this new infrastructure as much as possible. Speaking of which we, there are several beat a lot of beachfront homes, including here on a wall and on the North Shore which gets the heaviest wave impact. Just a couple of months ago, the picture on the front page of the newspaper was a home that was no longer horizontal. It was diagonal. Why was it diagonal, because it had slipped down onto the wave born beach. And then another headline, just the last week was about a beachfront homeowner who borrowed some heavy equipment, earth moving equipment, and shoveled down a whole lot of sand and rubble on to the eroded to try to save his property to keep his home from slipping into the sea. So this is a very, very relevant topic in Hawaii at the moment. Yeah. It's it's heartbreaking to hear about then of course, knowing that this is just the start of it. And what's also really challenging about it too is that, you know, this tends to hit impact individuals who are coming from, you know, impoverished situations and so there's certainly an element that becomes very heartbreaking and and it's it's very motivating to take urgent action to address this because it's the hardest hitting populations who are getting hit even harder in many cases. Pretty nicely. We have a question from the audience. Is there any relation between carbonized concrete and the 3D technology where you form objects via the 3D. I've seen some 3D concrete in action and it's very exciting and very cool. So no direct relationship. The, you know, that's an innovation in concrete that allows a new application of the material. Certainly it's an innovation that could have compatibility. You know, in theory, you could have 3D printed concrete that is made with carbon cure that doesn't exist today. But it's, it's really exciting because what it does demonstrate is just that there's so much potential for concrete as a material, you know, concrete is kind of this overlooked material it's something to really think about it's, you know, you're walking on it every day and it's the foundation of your home, you don't really pay much attention to it, but there's so much that you can do with concrete between sustainability innovations like carbon cure. And then I'll see a look at these novel types of technology innovations like 3D printing and what that allows for for creating more affordable homes and different kind of versatility of construction so it's all very exciting. Our questioner points out that fashioning the concrete via 3D is a lot less expensive than conventional methods. I haven't heard as we haven't like said we haven't worked with 3D concrete directly so I can't confirm that but I have heard that that's one of the benefits of it so I'm really excited to see that technology, you know, really expand. And since I'm a historian, I'll throw another question at you. What is the oldest existing use of concrete that is still in use today. I think it depends on how you define concrete because there are early Pawsilon type of materials so Pawsilon is kind of like an ancient kind of cement so I'm going to guess that that's probably the pantheon or something like that in Rome. But I actually think the first use of Portland cement concrete is in Nova Scotia believe it or not in Halifax on a place called George's Island, which is not too far from our headquarters. Well, what I was thinking of was in what's now Lebanon, I believe, which was in the time of Christ, if the place was occupied by Romans, and they built a harbor there, and the harbor was partially constructed from concrete, and it is in use to this day. That is very cool. I'm going to have to brush up on some early concrete histories because that's a really interesting story. Because we, we talk about sustainability can't get much more sustainable than that. Absolutely. And what about in terms of looking at the resilience resiliency is a big, big, big factor these days we talk about not just energy efficient buildings and so forth so forth we talk about resilient buildings, because we know, speaking just in Hawaii, we know the big one is coming. We're having beautiful, beautiful winter we're having a beautiful spring, but that ain't going to last forever. Any resiliency related factors in concrete and specifically carbonized concrete. I mean, first of all, the use of CO2 has a neutral impact on concrete durability so there are some properties that are somewhat improved by using CO2 to make more durable concrete which can improve its resiliency to the elements. But for the most part it's, it's neutral. And really when you talk about resiliency we have to look at concrete itself as the answer to that question. And to me, a picture speaks a thousand words sometimes of now I wish I had this visual up and ready to go there's a home in Alabama that had been devastated that the entire neighborhood was devastated by a hurricane, but this one home was built with concrete specifically for the purpose of being resilient to hurricanes and while all of the neighborhood has been flattened. This one home is still standing. So I think that those kinds of examples were seen some more of that you know it's not only hurricanes it could be tornadoes, the different types of really, you know, really terrible type of weather events to best prepare for them. The best way to do that is to build concrete homes. We've only got a couple minutes but another quick quiz. I can't remember when it was, but was maybe 7080 90 years ago there was a horrible horrible earthquake in Tokyo that flattened virtually all the buildings. Yeah, except one prominent building what was that. And who was it designed by. Well you're asking me these trick questions here Howard you're going to have to answer that one yourself. There's a Frank Lloyd Wright building of. I'm going to guess concrete. Only building left with the standing. Yeah. You cited an Alabama example there was a similar example in the pen handle of Florida, which is, which is nearby one building left concrete. Yeah. All of us are going to be undergoing, you know, really terrible weather conditions in the foreseeable future. Yeah. Yeah, well it does go to show that the best way to protect not only your homes but the people in the homes you know you think about the impact on safety and and the potential to save lives and how important that is. So, you know, the first answer to being resilient is to build with concrete, but then the second answer as well is to build with the lowest carbon concrete that you can procure, because you don't want to, you know you want to minimize the impact that your construction is having on overall emissions. And one final resiliency question which you can answer. How good is concrete burn in the event of a fire. It's, it's one of the most fire safe materials by far. So it's, you know, there, there are all sorts of different kinds of fire ratings and codes that could, you know address that more specifically depending on different kinds of applications but ultimately that's another concept of resiliency right there is that you know obviously if you're going to compare it to a material like wood. It's not going to burn nearly as fast. And just for your benefit and the benefit of our widespread audience and we, I'm getting indications we've got a pretty gosh darn good audience out there, thank you audience. We're in in the building cold world, we were resiliency did not occur until about five, six years ago. And now it's all over the place because we know that the big one is coming. And if it's not in the form of a hurricane can be in the form of a monster tide, do the rising sea levels. And we're already looking at showing up showing up existing buildings that are within a tsunami zone or a rise of monster tide so and certainly new construction. Yeah, it's got to be just strong as a fortress now. Yeah. You know I've been involved in construction sustainability for about a decade now and the biggest trends that I've seen really hit a lot of steam over the past decade have been resiliency and embodied carbon. Carbon is the carbon footprint of buildings before the lights are turned on for the first time. It's the carbon footprint that comes from the building materials themselves and from the construction. So that's what we're addressing is reducing body carbon of buildings, but certainly you know just this awareness of how urgent it is to build resiliently, and also to minimize and eventually eliminate that embodied carbon impacts that comes from those buildings. And what we're after is, we're going to be okay, or at least I'm going to be okay my generation, but our children grandchildren we got to watch out for them and decrease that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and on that very very I must bid fond adieu. Thank you Christy Gamble. So much all coming all the way from Saskatchewan. And thank you to all of our listeners and admirers and viewers Howard Wigg, Think Tech Hawaii. See you next time. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.


Yeah, Ingrid has a question here about how when she sits down to write, it sometimes takes too long and then messes up, you know, the rest of the day schedule. You know, this is one of the examples of how without a regular, if you haven't done a project regularly, and you haven't timed yourself for the project, you might not realize how long it takes you. Now, when it comes to creative processes, the reality is that it can take as long as you allow it to take. Right. It's like, it's like, you know, in my in my content creation class. I give people like a seven minute timer several times during the class to write, write an article in seven minutes, social media posts, and people are constantly shocked by how they're able to write a social media post in seven minutes. And it's often much better than I could have done it by George Cal could have done it in seven minutes like you guys are. So I always say, you are a genius. You just need a timer. And that's that I've proven that to my clients again and again and again and again and again so I want to encourage you in grid and everybody here all of us who create to set a timer, like think about the creative process as having several stages. And you can Google this, I have a blog post on this play Polish promote the three phases of creative creativity play Polish promote creative process.  And then Polish is where you reorder things edit things down or up. And you might add in things or whatever Polish and then promote a piece of content isn't going to be helpful unless you promote it. You put it out to the places if you know how to run ads you run anyway so, so you should probably set a timer for each of these. Over time you'll realize how long of a timer you need for each of these and even within the play phase you might have sub stages alright that I'm going to set 10 minutes to play by literally free writing. You know, no judgment at all, completely no grammar, you know, and then oh the second phase of play might be more like just on this one question, what are all the ideas I can come up with. So it's like setting smaller timers helps you to boundary your creative process such that you become more accustomed to to these phases of creation over time and therefore be able to time yourself better. So that doesn't eat into so much of your day.


The Burning Wheel. Is anyone here? I'm just curious, where's your hands if you've heard of the Burning Wheel? Oh, no, okay. Alright. Zero. This is the game. It's THE game. We have a little bit of time. Short story time. So, many of you have probably had that sort of the feminine mystique, but it's the gamer mystique. That you're playing D&D with your friends. Not having a good time at that point, cause combat's in a six hour, and you don't really have an input in the combat. And you know that guy, right? There's always that guy who tries to make his own, his hack on D&D, or he makes his own role for himself. Guys, I fixed D&D. We used the 30s instead of the 20s. Yeah, he never fixes it. Never fixes it.  They're trying to come and play my game. Come play my game, please. You gotta avoid those people like Grim Death. So, I was at this convention in New Jersey called UberCon. I went by myself, and I'm walking around. One of those guys grabbed me, and the next thing I know, I'm sitting at his table, ready for some misery. And the game was actually really cool. I'd never seen anything like it before.  I gotta play something, right? I'm not gonna play one of those weird hacks these weirdos made, right? Everyone knows D&D. We're sticking with it. So, I come back, like, you gotta come to this con if that weird guy's in there again. We're gonna play his game. Yeah, listen. I don't trust any weird guy's game. It probably is awful. I think you only need to play so you can make fun of me later. So, we go back and we play D&D. Well, you know, I have a note. You don't knock it if you haven't tried it at policy, right? It's like, I haven't tried Australia. I didn't form an opinion on it until now. That was ominous. So, we also grab our friend Pete, who played Mustafa bin Mustafa. And we all go back. This is before he was Mustafa bin Mustafa, by the way. So, we get there, and we're ready to play this game. And the guy, Lou Crane, who made this game, hands us three character sheets, and goes away, and says, I'm gonna go to the bathroom, I'll be right back, and you play. So, wait. We're looking at our character sheets. So, you have a picture of the character sheet? I don't have a picture of the character sheet. Okay, so at the top of the burning wheel character sheet, the first thing, the first thing in the character sheet is beliefs and instincts, three of each. And it pretty much says on my character sheet, you are the human thief.  I think it was arms. It doesn't matter. Hands, something. He was gonna chop something off, and I didn't want that to happen. I'm putting the elephant, because that's what I do on that count. I'm one of those people.  So, I'm reading the L sheet, and it's like, that dwarf's family abandoned that sword, and they will not get it back ever, your uncle, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I look at Pete, who hasn't even looked at his character sheet. Who's the dwarf? And I'm like, you don't deserve that sword. We don't know the rules of this game. All we read is the little belief section on the character sheet. We don't know how to play this game. We don't even know what kind of dice we need. So he looks at me, he looks at his character sheet, and goes, looks back at me, and says, your father betrayed my father. He starts getting pretty heated, and Lou Crane, we realize he's back. So we stop, we're like, okay, we're ready to start. And he says, oh, proceed. The game tricked us into role-playing just from the character sheet.  There's rules about that stuff. There are so many things. We don't have time to get into every aspect of Burning Wheel. Burning Wheel is like, it's a big book, right? Most of these other games we've told you about, except maybe Mouse Garden, which is sort of Burning Wheel based, are little tiny books, right? Like little tiny mice. Yeah, Burning Wheel is a big book. About half of it is just a character like life pads and things for making characters, but it's still big. You need to be hardcore to learn all the roles in Burning Wheel. I don't even know all the roles of Burning Wheel, right? But you can play with just pages one through 75 and ignore the rest. So here we're going to go through a bunch of the kind of core mechanics of this game that are interesting and that you might find enlightening. Yeah, and the other reason we use this game is because it's one we're most familiar with. This is the one we play every other week. And also because a lot of these mechanics that are in Burning Wheel, it's sort of a collection of all the good things from all the indie RPGs. I mean, if we want to sit here for days just talking about indie RPGs, like this thousands of them, but this one really grabs like sort of like the best of out of everything. So item number one, Trace. You play the D&D game when you write down my character is 6.8. His eyes, he's an elf. His eyes are, I guess, purple with gold flecks. I guess that's the popular elf eye color. Does that ever matter? No, it never matters. You could make it matter in the sort of, you know, make up your own rules way, but there's nothing in the book that makes that matter. So in this game, you can say your character's Harry. It doesn't mean anything. If you buy the trait Harry. Which costs a point. Your character is Harry. He exemplifies Harry. If it ever matters in the game, Harry is now a mechanic for him. So you write Harry on your character sheet. Anything in your character sheet matters in the game. So you're sitting there and it's like, you want to make a disguise as a gorilla, right? And I'm like, it says Harry in my character sheet.  And the GM is like, yeah, you're Harry. There's a plus one to disguise skill tests. I'm, because you're Harry. So suddenly you're forced, you don't have that many points to spend on this stuff.  It's too easy to make a smorgasbord character in D&D. That you don't write out this big long history. You just put in the important bits and everything else will get filled in as you play. What matters more than my character's factor that is Harry. And I have to decide. And whichever one I pick, that's going to be in the game. It's on my character sheet. It matters. It can also come to bite you.  And Ram, you're kind of fat. Oh, you're running out of food. And Ram, you're kind of fat. Just get back to my uncle, Kelvin Blackstab. In this game, you can spend 15 resource points and tell the Blackstab, this great, powerful wizard, is your goddamn uncle. Oh, he's a wizard, I thought he was me. He's a wizard. You can roll dice to make him appear. You go to the game as you say, Kelvin Blackstab happens to be at this end. He has to let you roll dice to make that happen. Yeah, it might be really hard to make that succeed, but the more points you put into it during character creation, the easier it'll be. Now, here's where you can see where this game is going. It cost 15 points for Kelvin Blackstab, the great wizard to be my uncle. 14 points for him to also hate me. Oh yeah, he's definitely at this end. Shit. It's really easy to make him show up at the end. One point easier, but...  Failure and success are equally interesting.   Not an exciting story, right? Natural one is something horrible happened. That's the story that you tell, right? And Burning Wheel makes that happen every time because like Mouse Guard, every role matters. In D&D, you want to climb over the town wall to sneak in, right? Alright, I roll my D20. You roll your climb test, okay? You succeed or fail. If you succeed, you get into the town by climbing over the wall. If you fail, alright, you fail. Maybe the spalling damage, maybe... In this game, if you fail, failure matters. Failure scars your character. If you get stabbed with a sword, you might never walk again. There are two rules that make this happen. Rule number one is any failed role has a consequence. If there wasn't a consequence, you should have just said yes. It's called say yes or roll the dice. If a character wants to do something, climb over the wall. The GM either says yes, you climb over the wall. Continue, right? Or roll the dice, we're gonna find out. And if you succeed, you succeed.  Something bad happens when you fail. It might not be immediate, right? But if something bad will happen for every failed role, there will be a consequence. And then usually another role to deal with the consequence, right? Rule number two, let it ride, right? D&D, I take 10, I take 20. Let it ride is like, no, you failed to climb over the wall. You may not try to climb over the wall again unless it's a completely different circumstance, right? Like you got a rope, or you... It's now daytime in the town, someone's helping you. Never again, the Game Master continuing to roll, making your role stealthy until you eventually fail. And he can do the thing he's been planning to do all along. Right, it's like you succeeded in your stealthy, you are now stealthy until the situation changes pretty significantly. You're just hit, period, end of story. Now we're only about five minutes left, so we're going to move a little more quickly. Three more really interesting mechanics. One, currency, buying stuff, that's a stat. I roll that just like everything else. Do I want to buy a sword? We'll roll some dice. Yes, I know I have a sword. Nope, I couldn't afford it. Oh, you couldn't afford it, by the way. You now have less money, you're taxed. Oh yeah, I spent all my money. Yeah, there are consequences to failing to buy something too. Advancement, you advance by failing.   You have to fail at sword to make sword get better, just like the real world with practicing. There's actually practicing rules all the time. Three, there is a really interesting combat system that's really crunchy and it has this thing where you simultaneously script three actions that you reveal one by one.  Yeah, well, I scripted, run away, run away, run away, whatever we did. There is an equally crunchy system for social conflict. I scripted a point, then a rebuttal, then an incite. I did incite, incite, dismiss.  So suddenly, That's a really powerful attack. If there's that guy with the bolt stuck on his head, we want to talk about it. We roll literally the same number of dice as we want to kill the guy. And there's also tons and tons of skills to help with that arguing, right? My favorite of which is Ugly Truth, best skill in the game. But there's also persuasion, oratory, course persuasion, and a stentorious rhetoric, stentorious persuasion, stentorious violence. The stentorious ones are off of the dwarves, mostly. Burying wheel is the be all end all of everything we're talking about right here. So if I'm going to tell the story of my character here, I'm not going to talk about my strength stat. That's not interesting. And it turns out that that's the only part of my character that is character, that is story, who he knows, what he's done, where he's going, why he fights for what he fights for. That's it, and that whole character sheet, that's it. So trying to tell me this is a role-playing game, but what percentage of it has anything to do with role-playing? That percent, and most of that is a picture.