Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name is Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrative Coordinator and co-host of this program with Chairman Bill Gehring. And today we're very pleased to have Jim Groff as our guest. Jim is the Child Support Director, oversees a very important department that in short protects and makes sure that kids are getting the financial support that they need. So Jim, welcome. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm happy to be able to let you know, I know about child support. Well, we've only got 30 minutes. We'll do the best we can. Okay, good. Please start by sharing with our viewers a little bit about your background and how long you've been with the Child Support Department. I've been with the Child Support Department approximately 17 years, 19 with the county and I started off in the Health and Human Services Department as the accounting manager and then moved to Child Support 17 years ago and have been there ever since. And what is the mission of the Child Support Enforcement Agency? Although you're supposed to have it memorized, I don't. So I'm going to have to look it out there. Our mission of the Child Support Agency that myself and all our staff agree on is that we are there to ensure adequate financial and medical support for families through an aggressive approach in locating obligors or payers establishing and enforcing court order child support and medical coverage and in the establishment of paternity and child support collections for non-marital children so that all families can reduce their alliance on any type of public assistance and achieve financial independence, hopefully. I think our viewers can understand why you don't have that memorized. That's quite a mouthful. Why don't you boil it down for us? What are the roles and responsibilities of your department? We are there to establish child support orders for anytime there's a divorce in a family that have children living with one parent or the other and have visitation rights or where families come to us and say my daughter is pregnant and we need your help and we establish paternity for that child and make sure that there's financial responsibility, a portion to someone to help pay for the child's welfare. Many people watching this may not be familiar with your department, but I know that your agency, your department, they use that word interchangeably. You've got some very hard-working staff with a tremendous caseload. Please share a little bit about what is it they're doing day in and day out and what I mean when we say caseload. What's that all about? Sheboygan County has approximately 5,000 4D cases they're called. 4D cases are those where we do most of the work as far as locating the absent parent, coming up with an appropriate order for the non-custodial parent to pay to the custodial parent for the care of the child and then we also have an additional 1,600 non-4D cases which are those cases where we just keep track of the financial income coming in and then we pay that out or make sure that it gets paid out through a trust fund that has been created in Milwaukee. So how many employees do you have and what's their average caseload? We have 16 employees that are in the child support agency. Of those 16, nine are what we call case specialists and two of those nine are paternity specialists and they each have a caseload of approximately 250 to 275 paternity cases because there's a lot of additional work required with a paternity case than just a regular non-support case and then our non-support specialists which total seven have a caseload of about 580 cases each. And these folks have to have some pretty good skills and high level of tolerance because they're not often or always anyway dealing with people that might be happy to hear from them. There's a lot of irate phone calls going on and almost way too many phone calls coming in for the department our size on. We have one receptionist clerk that takes care of all our phone calls as they come in and some of our specialists give out the direct line. Most of them try to but in some cases they just get overwhelmed with phone calls and a receptionist for instance has over 120 phone calls a day that she distributes to someone or another or to somebody's voicemail and then they're expected to return all those calls within 48 hours. So if people are trying to contact your office sometimes they're going to have to be patient just because of the number of phone calls that you're fielding. Correct and the other big thing is that most people that call our agency feel that they need to talk to their specialist but our training has been such that the people that answer the phone have enough basic background and they're able to get into what we call the kids system which controls all the records and and enforcement and dollars that are connected with any case that information so they can see exactly what's going on. So sometimes there's no need to talk to the specialist unless it's something that's unique and out of the ordinary. Now as we touched on again some of the clients that your staff or you are working with may not always be in the best of spirits about what's happening in their lives or what's being asked of them and one of the employees that you work closely with you have an attorney on staff do you not? Yes we do. What's her role? Her role is to take any court any hold excuse me her role is to take all our cases that we have to court when we can't reach some type of stipulated agreement between the two parties or we can't come up with not necessarily a stipulated agreement but maybe an agreement where there is where administratively we work something out so that he pays her directly or she pays because some cases there are she pays someone or there's a compromise where nobody pays each other but something is put into a trust or something like that there's many unique situations but anytime that we have to go to court that's when our attorney comes in and they handle the cases that go into court where we need the judge to decide basically how much the child support should be and then at other times if and when the individual that's supposed to be paying does not pay then we bring that same person in for contempt and that goes into the courtroom also where the judge decides what needs to be done in order to have the the case put back into what we call regular normal 4d status again final question before turning it over to bill um Sherboy and county has 23 departments as you all know and every department has different revenue sources some departments rely more on the property tax levy than others and your department is a little more unique from a standpoint of the the revenue that that comes to your department to support you and your staff please briefly touch on that how is your department funded what's that relationship all our expenditures that the child support agency makes and anytime we contract with anybody for indirect expenditures also um all that is reimbursed to us through federal and county or excuse me through federal and state reimbursement policy at 66 percent then we were we're able to earn incentives on how we perform our our our function in the agency there's a performance standard that we have to meet for establishing orders if we get those established in a certain time frame for establishing paternity again on a certain time frame and then those orders that we collect on that's another percentage incentive program that we can earn money on and then the final one that we have right now is on collection on arrears because when somebody falls behind on their child support payment there is a pot building up that they have to pay back to the the family even though they're the child may be over 18 and that's another incentive program that the state has given us that we can earn incentives on it and shaboggan county i'm happy to say has been averaging about 28 29 percent that we earn in incentives which leaves the the amount that we depend on the county tax levy at about five or six percent of our total budget and our total budget is is just over a million dollars right now very good thank you jim to give our viewers a better idea of what your department how your department gets involved in various cases maybe we can talk about case scenarios in a divorce situation does your office get involved in all divorces they're just certain divorces we get involved when and if there are children involved and then it depends if they want our help they being the people being um that are getting the divorce and whoever ends up with the with the children they come to our agency and apply for services and it's a twenty dollar fee to apply for these services and they fill out the form and from then on we're involved in that case as far as the divorce itself we're not but um then there are those divorces where um the the custodial parent decides that they just can't make it alone because maybe they're not working or something like that and then they um go to the county for um assistance of some type once they go on assistance it's an automatic referral from the economic support agency to the child support agency that there um there's a need for child support services and with that then we open up a case and we start looking for funding um or excuse me we start looking for the absent parent if he's not there once we locate him then we find out where he's working and then we'll issue an income withholding order to um guarantee some of his wages and right now we no longer have a percentage standard that we had several years ago but we use that to establish a dollar amount order because now all our orders must be a dollar amount order in order for us to enforce them. Okay how about custody and issues of visitation how do you get involved in that? custody and visitation is another thing we do not get involved in that is all handled through the family court commissioner's office and she has um our president family court commissioner has several programs that that she can um let uh both the custodial and non-custodial parent know so that they know where they have to go for um for those services. Okay how about the situation where an unmarried woman comes to your office she's not quite sure who the father or the child might be how could you assist her? What we do then is um if she's um um we'll we'll assume that she is over 18 okay in that case she comes to our office and we ask her if she's presently on any type of aid in case she's come over and before we've gotten a referral and if she is then we um get the information that we need to from the economic support department and if she's not on aid or anything like that and she's just a single unwed mother um then we we have her open up a file and and fill out an application form at that time and with that she gives us all the information that that she knows uh and we have several sources uh if for instance the alleged father is um is absent and uh she doesn't know where he is or um he's maybe uh was from where she was going to college or something like that uh we do have a state and federal locate system that we can um connect to through our our kids information system which is the Wisconsin system and that tells us um where this person could possibly be if we don't have anything like a social security number or um any other information about him but we have several of those um uh information sources available what we do is is then find where he is and once we find him and locate him then we do um genetic testing and we do buckle swab right in my office so that anybody who um goes to court needs one to establish preferment paternity will have it done and within 21 days we have a um a reading on it so we know that uh this this person will is or is not the father and all our paternity uh testing comes back at usually 99.9 percent so it's very very accurate okay uh child support payments used to come through the county through your office they now go to a trust fund how has that been working that's been working very well the trust fund takes care of quite a number of calls that normally we would have received and they're again just adding to the number of calls that we get but now they there's a 800 number to um to call for the trust fund they collect the money um it's all the employees are supposed to be sending it to the trust fund in Milwaukee and then they distribute it within two two days within 48 hours they're supposed to just if a client doesn't get a check that they're expecting they should probably call the trust fund directly or call you first they can either call the trust fund directly or go on on um the internet and uh with their every every customer uh gets a um an ID number basically it's called and it's called a pin number and with that pin number they can access the the same kid's system that that my workers access to get information on when the last payment was received um if there's any money being held by the trust fund um where um what the last event was that was was performed by the case specialist so there's a lot of information on the internet that that they can get on their own cases and it's all secured so that only that person with that pin number can get into that information okay you've talked a little bit about already about enforcing an order but could you go through that a little more if a person has a child support order to pay for their support of their kids and they just aren't paying what you do how you might force them to pay okay there's there's several things that we do and uh the first thing that you do is you you try and contact them either by by phone or by mail and then inform them that they have the order and they need to start paying if it was something that maybe they just forgot to tell us that they quit their last place of employment and went to a new job then immediately once they tell us where they're working we send another income withholding to the new job where where they're working and go from there if by um um some chance they are um working for cash it's very difficult to get a in order for cash but sometimes we we succeed but most of the time if somebody's working for cash they will not tell us anyhow but um in a case like that more than likely we will taking that person to court to have the court decide what needs to be done there are several remedies that we can do uh including um we can make them do job searches until they um until they find some some work um and at the same time we'll we'll create an order at probably minimum wage so that there isn't a rearage building up um so that there's some incentive for them to get a get a job and be able to pay that off the other thing we can do is we can put liens against any property that they have or any businesses that they might have and um then we can also suspend their driver's license as well as their hunting and fishing licenses and and uh several other remedies that we have that we can do administratively the most successful one so far has been on putting liens on people's cars as well as on some of their bank accounts where um we um were able to work with uh basically all the major banks throughout the united states in order to put uh liens against any account that they might have so then that becomes frozen until uh the courts decide what needs to be done with it and we've heard in the past that people have moved out of states so they didn't have to pay child support it's my understanding you have a very long arm you can reach we have um we have um wisconsin has a long arm statute that allows us to reach into other states and um and the other thing that we have going for us too is the fact that we can do um direct income withholding into all the all the other states too so that if we have an order here we can send an income withholding to an employer in another state and they must honor it so do people still go to jail for not paying child support yes they do and um most of them will request um huber so that they can get out and look for job if um if they don't have one or continue working so that the the um the child support um our re-reaches do not keep building up because all our re-reaches now unlike years ago have a 1% fine attached to it which is charged on a on a monthly basis so uh it doesn't take long for a child support account to to build up a lot of interest also and that's all due and payable to the custodial parent of the of the child and then finally is there an end date to most child support orders most child support orders and when the child graduates from high school unless um unless they're they're not 18 and then um once if they have to be at least 18 and a graduate of high school for the the order to end so uh and then in some circumstances the the courts will say this child should have receive um child support until they're 19 and those circumstances are at the judge's discretion okay but if there was money owed on an order at the time the child turned 18 or 19 that money is still owed and would continue to correct and um we can continue to collect or try to collect I should say for 20 years after the the child turns 18 hopefully by that time we we have succeeded in doing that okay thank you Jim well speaking of of money at the state and federal level we obviously continue to hear about budget deficits and the challenges of balancing the budget and you mentioned earlier how you receive funding for your operations from the state and federal level are you anticipating any service reductions as a result of those budget deficits at those two levels or changes in priorities as of right now we are not but we did um we the child support agencies agencies throughout wisconsin put up quite a fight when the original budget that was proposed was was suggesting a a cut to the child support funding mechanism and that was reducing it by I want to say two million dollars during the next two years and that would result in Sheboygan county would have resulted in losing about 46,000 dollars the first year and another 40,000 dollars the second year of that which could have resulted in us um losing probably a staff member because right now all our services are are something that are mandated by the state and unless I I can get funding for for for what I have now it's very difficult to get um additional funds when there is they're all spoken for right um but we're lucky enough to have put it through a letter writing campaign that both of you um I enlisted your help as well as um my my committee to um to bring forth a document to send to the governor and he heard our cries for help and um has decided not to pursue any of those funds at least for the next two years now um I know that could still change because of the fact that there are now basically two different budget ideas out there and and no one knows for sure what those are going to um finally come out with but uh we're hoping that we will be able to um continue to do what we're doing without any um hurt coming because of a funding being lost and this is really an example of what chairman gearing and the county board grapple with gearing and year out where the state or federal level mandate a service require a service to be delivered and then based on their own changes and priorities or funding challenges may reduce the funding and then the county taxpayer or local taxpayer often there's more pressure on them to to pick up the difference so um kind of a microcosm of some of the challenges we have in other departments as well where something's mandated and if the funds aren't there to implement it there's more pressure on the county taxpayer and that's one of the things I think we're all going through this prioritization and evaluation project right now and um one of the things I think that's going to be so beneficial and and looking at the various programs that are done in each department and and where the funding is coming from for that and what happens if it if it doesn't get put back in and um what you could possibly stand to lose anything else Jim in a few minutes we have remaining that you'd like to share about the department well as you said and before we do have a a group of hardworking people um there's a a lot of stress going on at times and when people call um I hope they excuse sometimes if if my staff may sound rude or if I may sound rude because um we do like I said have quite a few cases to work at and and we try to do our best and sometimes we have a bad day too uh it doesn't happen that often but we do and the other thing is if you can at all please put your questions in writing because it's easier to keep track of them although our system records and even the secretaries that may answer the phone record um what questions you have and they they send it um via the kids system to the workers um sometimes we we miss place part of it or we didn't hear it all and and when you do leave a message on our phones please please be very slowly and very clearly because sometimes it's very difficult to understand and do you have a general number there that you ask people to call we do we have nine two zero four five nine three zero four one is our um main line that comes in and uh we change that quite frequently so there is um it's not always the same uh information on there so if you're looking for some departments we also give you that information just like if they're calling there have a question about custody or visitation we give them the number of the family court commissioner if they're looking for how to do their own um order which some people do we give them the number of the clerk of court so that they can call that and then as well as uh there's a listing for the attorney if it's an another attorney calling our attorney to find out what's going on with the case or something like that so uh and then after that you can leave a message and we will get back to you like I said within 48 hours so in case they didn't get that number and they have more questions after watching this program or or want to learn more about the services your department provides again it's four five nine three zero four one three zero four one and if they'd like to fax us um a question or anything like that our fax number is four five nine zero three nine nine and that again is where we prefer that because there it's in writing and then we have something concrete to look at and hang up on our boards or whatever and say this is the next one to answer very good well jim thank you for joining us today and for our viewers who may be wondering if you're looking for a base in your church choir or a base in your barbershop uh quartet uh jim is with us today though fighting a bit of a cold and uh he's probably more of a baritone than he is a base so don't don't call him for that reason the other thing you might might be wondering some of you is why does he look so familiar and not only is jim our child support director but he's also alderman jim groff of the shabuigan county city council recently reelected that position so congratulations jim thank you and whether you have questions on child support or on city of shabuigan matters certainly jim is someone who can help you so again thanks for joining us thank you and it was a pleasure being here next month our guest will be veteran service officer jim reasonberg jim's going to be here to talk about his roles and responsibilities obviously provides a very important function to the veterans and their family members in this community and it's also memorial day next month so i'm sure he'll be able to share with us some of the upcoming activities that he's always involved with and helps coordinate so until then on behalf of chairman bill gearing and myself adam pain thank you very much for joining us


First, thank you for being here. I know it's already past five so I really appreciate all the people that are in the room and I would like to start with a confession. This is my first time as a speaker at Drupalcom. So and then please be harsh in the comments. I want to get better for the next time. So About me, I am Lubo. I have been part of the IT industry for the last 15 years and I have a specialization in leadership and management from Harvard University and also, I am a professional scrum master and professional job leadership certified. Why I'm telling you this because for the last five years I'm trying to be a branch between the business and the tech and I'm doing this as my job as group architect and deputy program manager at FFW. So why I joined FFW is actually described in this quote. I wanted to move enterprises and people forward. I wanted to work on stuff that I could see the result every day so I could see it on the TV or I could see people that are using the thing that we are delivering and if you don't know about the company company is already on the market for the last 20 years. We are more than 800 people. We are located in various locations. I'm coming from Bulgaria. So and one of the things that I'm proud is 100% of our clients want to have a second project with us. If you are more interested in the company, please visit us at the boot. Tomorrow I'm on boot duty. And that's for the company. What will be the agenda for today? First we'll go down a tour down memory lane, not the song, and then I'll give you some information about multilingual then guidance for the business, how we managed to optimize the process and last but not least the lessons that we learned. So a tour down memory lane. It all started in Amsterdam. Again a Drupal con. It was in a room similar to this one. We were just releasing a first website on a new platform. So it's like I have a dream. I want to make a new platform. It has to be awesome and let's be honest we deployed some of the stuff in front of the room. Some of the guys here were with me and they did that. But once we managed to deliver the first website, then we got the second question like hey let's make it multilingual. Because the business wanted to have a quick win to show that this is possible and then the business decided, okay, let's make this platform multilingual. And my personal opinion is always choose to start with the multilingual stuff. Don't do it after that because when you do it after that you have way more issues. That's why you could see in this diagram that the first multilingual website was released one year later and once we delivered the first multilingual stuff, then over the next three years we managed to deliver 50 more brands on that platform. And we are coming to this day, which is Drupal com.lil and what we did was during those three years we were optimizing the process when it comes to translation and I will show you what we worked. So you could have a better picture. I need to give you more details on the platform. You have Drupal multisite, multibrand and in there we are actually generating a static version of the website. By the way, the person who was working on this is still in this room. So you could ask him questions after that and then as you could imagine we have static HTML pages. All the dynamic stuff is handled by microservices and those are written in Node.js. I guess you already know where I'm going. We had the translation in Drupal. Then we had to have translations in all the microservices and those microservices had some of them frontend which was in React and now this frontend is in next.js. So we had to support translations in Drupal and then support the translations in the frontend microservices. This is the architecture in short. So with having this problem we had to solve the multilingual for the business and the first thing that anyone should do is make sure that the client understands what the translation means because for some of them it's translation of content and by translation of content imagine that you have a page. In that page you have three different paragraphs and then when you click translate for that note they say on the other language I want to have five paragraphs which are different than the original ones. So make sure that the business understands how translation works. Make sure that you understand what are their needs when it comes to translations and also make sure that the different content in different language is something that they want, they understand and they will receive. Another thing is that sometimes they misuse the translation. So what does it mean misuse at least in my eyes? Misuse is we do have multilingual countries. I'm coming from Bulgaria. In Bulgaria we have only one language, national language which is Bulgarian and for us you might have another language on the website which is English but if you are coming from a country where you officially have several languages like let's say Belgium, you have Dutch, you have French usually you have English as well. For a person from a multilingual country it's okay to have the content in all these three languages which is odd for me, but for them it's okay. So we had a case where the business said I want to have a list of items and it's not a problem for me if the first item is in Dutch, the second item is in French, the third item is in English. I want to have a language switcher on the top and through that language switcher I want to be able to change the user interface but changing the user interface won't change those entities, won't change those items. This is something that's okay for them because they could read through those languages and this is something that you might have to accept and understand if this is not a commenting for your country. Another thing that you could face with multilingual countries is they could misuse the translation with the functionality. So I will give an example specific to France. Thanks to that I know that in French language you have masculine form of the word, then you have a feminine form of the word, then there was one search functionality where the business said if I have added the masculine form of the word I want to see results which include the feminine form of the word. Also, I would like to see results which include all the synonyms related to those and also I would like to see words that has the same root in them which is specific for the language. Yes, this is the grammar. It might be normal for people that are living that country, but it's not directly related to translation. It is related to how you make a multilingual website and the functionality, but this is not translation. By the way, if someone is interested in this case, you could catch me later and I could give you details. So now we have the different behavior. We have the understanding of the translation and the next thing is reuse translations. One of the things that we learned was Canadian French is different than Belgian French is different than the French language that you use in France. It's obvious for you guys. It's not obvious for people who don't know. So we said let's reuse what we have and at the end you have 80% things changed. Still it's better to give them options than start from scratch. And now I'll try to give some guidance for the business. So the guidance is you see this image. It's Google Sheets. We have two columns. One of them is like components. The other one is the actual text and in there we have the like a context saying validation, message required and the other one is filters required. So it's pretty obvious what this is about. Why I'm showing this to you? Well, there are a couple of things that we need to make sure that our clients understand. For example, choose the design language. Most of the clients have their own UX UI guys and most of the time the design is in English, okay? But if you have a solution like we want to have a main navigation, that main navigation should consist of only five items and that main navigation shouldn't go in two rows. But then next to the main navigation, we want to have some fancy component and they did that in English. I guarantee you that probably there is a more than 70% chance that when they translate this to German, it will go to two rows. So always ask them in which countries are you planning to release that? What and how that design should behave if it's translated to another language and I'm not touching Chinese, Japanese, etc. I'm not touching Arabic as well. So always ask that. Another thing is consider the wording curve. So I showed you the Google Sheets image because if there is a new person that is going to use Drupal, at first they have a big wording curve. They need to learn how to use translation interface in Drupal and this might slow you down if you have a limited time to the market. So it might be beneficial for the first launch or just to speed the things up to use stuff like Google Sheets and just give them the Google Sheets because most of the time the business might have a person responsible for that, that person might be an intern and that intern will have to learn Drupal as well. So consider the wording curve. Another thing is this responsible person for the translations. It's always a good idea to have someone from the business responsible for the translations. When we start working on a project, at some point we are that good in their matter that we could help them. But at the beginning we still don't know the business. We don't know the specifics. That's why it's a good idea to have a person from the business that is responsible for the translations and that person is responsible for making sure that gathers all the stuff and that person could say, hey, I know that Canadian French is different than the French used in France, but we start with these. These are the most common things that people change. And also that person will extremely help you when he or she has to update them. So another thing, provide guidance. I said that there is a wording curve and it's always a good idea to have different videos or screenshots just to point to the people where does those translations live. Because it's obvious for you, but it's not obvious for a person that is starting to use the platform. And what we did was we added different videos. We added screenshots. Next to each component inside Drupal, there was a video when you click it and it shows you this is used like that. So you could easily find out what is the translation. A colleague is here. He had a good idea that we could upload those videos in YouTube as a private channel so everything could be searchable. So this is extremely good because if you have those videos, there is no point to have them in a conference page and then no one updates them. So don't forget, if you have videos and screenshots, always plan time to update those. Otherwise, at some point, you don't need them. The last thing, you could always consider an external service. There are a lot of services that you could use to make those translations, but think from legal perspective. Is this okay for all your branches across the world? Also, is this okay for you as a pricing model? Usually, the mistake that is made is like, okay, we have 10 accounts, we will use them, but we have to deploy to 50 countries and 100 people should have access. So we have an issue with the pricing model. Always make sure that you make the math. How we optimize the process? Well, we reinvented the wheel. Like what we did was, that's why we had Drupal on steroids. We have service one, service two and mobile app that have their own translations. We know that Drupal is great with translations and Drupal is the user interface for the editors. What we did was each time when you push a change to any of the services, we are listening for that change. And then inside those services, we have the translations. Those translations are stored inside a translation bucket. That translation bucket, you could see it's not only horizontal, but it is vertical because if it's horizontal, you could have multiple instances and it could be vertical depending on the brand because different brands for the same client might have different naming conventions for specific stuff. Also, Drupal is reading all those and giving you a user interface so you could actually update everything from one place. And last but not least, Drupal is extremely good because it could export the translations for you in a PO file which you could give to any person and that person could make the translations and then you could import them back. In more details, how does it work? Each service has a default text. We need that because if the service doesn't have a default text and for some reasons it could not get the translations, you don't want to break the interface. So always make sure that you have the default text in the service. Then data is added to a common place. In this case, the common place might be in the image registry bucket. I always joke with clients like if S3 is down, we will have way more issues in our wife, but who knows. Then Drupal will import all the translations and how will Drupal know which is coming from which place? Well, if I have the naming convention like a warehouse, if you work in a warehouse, you need to know where a specific parcel is, how you know that. Each parcel has a unique code and there is a convention for that. A context might be we have login page dot login form dot login button dot label. It seems that I know where this is. I know this is on the login page. This is the login form. This is the label of the login button and I could add on the left on this like this is service one or this is the mobile app or this is something else. Then I make sure that everyone knows this. Most of the people forget to inform the rest of the people that are working on the project, how this work. If you don't inform all parties included, you're not doing anything. If only the developers know this, this won't work. Everyone should know how this is done. Then Drupal will export the translations and the translations will be consumed by the services. Those services might be written in any language. It's not a problem. The main thing is make sure that we use the context. What we did was we actually enhanced the context that we have in Drupal by including data from external service. Drupal was okay with that and it actually served really well because now if you need to make any translation, anyone from the editors could do whatever they want. One thing that I didn't mention, cache, always make sure that once any of the services is reading the updated translations, you have a cache in clear. This means that when the service displays that, there is enough time that you are okay. There might be a discrepancy between what has been translated lately and what you're showing to the end user. Also, you don't want to abuse the service. This is the technical part. There won't be any more technical stuff. So what were the lessons that we learned? Well, the first one is be careful with design systems. Now it's extremely trendy that everyone has a design system or it's using a design system. Okay, but one of the main issues with the design system is that those are built usually by teams that are located either in one location or are driven by a person in a location. Why I'm saying that? The dates. The date format. This is extremely simple example that most of the design systems have issues because people said, okay, I will deploy this in France. I will deploy this in Central Europe. But if there is a specific country with a specific requirement, the design system won't let me do that. What is the cure? Make sure that you have international teams. Do your homework and check are there any specifics in the businesses that you want to deploy that so you could make this configurable. Otherwise, you have to use design system and then make adjustments to it. Always that context of the translation. I already explained that with the warehouse so I know where the parcel is. Then the configuration versus translation. You know that in Drupal we could have configurations. Those configurations could be translatable. Okay, but you could also speed up the things. Let's say that you have in the design a error message. That error message doesn't have any placeholders. So instead of making a configuration for the error message, you could make it a translation. And then any editor could make a translation from English to English or from the source language to the same language. Because it's one text, it's not multi one, so it could be used. Another important thing is placeholders. If you have many placeholders, let's say I have five placeholders in the translation, consider seeing five placeholders in Drupal translate interface. It's not really user-friendly. So either you have to think about updating the user interface or you could make this a configuration. The next thing is use as much as possible. That's expected. And be patient. We are working with people. We want Drupal family to be larger and larger. So if you are patient, we will have new family members. And don't forget, you could use a translation manager. The translation manager will make your life easier because there will be a sole person responsible for that. And if someone wonders how could I offer to a client something like this, well, you could have a gatekeeper of the documentation who is responsible for translations and the rest of the documentation that you have in the project. This is, in short, the lessons that we learned. I would like to remind you that if anyone wants, they could contribute. So contribute. The module that I showed you, we are aiming to make it open source and release it. And don't forget to give feedback. Do it in the app. And thank you. There is no question in the app. But if somebody has a question here, raise a hand. And I will come to you with the microphone. Do you think it's an option to, instead of having the default translations stored in the app or the services, to have them as PO files? Yes. Currently, what we have is, you know the situation. So we have them in JSON files, which could easily be translated to PO files. The trick in there would be how you add the context in the PO files. Make sure that you don't lose the context. Thank you. Other questions? Yeah, we're running one minute after the time schedule, but we're good. Thank you very much.


We tend to take for granted all the ways that he does show up in our daily lives because we are so directly focused on how we believe we should be hearing from him. So we're almost like tunnel-visioned in into thinking that's the only way we're going to hear from him but it comes in so many variations and that's what's so beautiful about it. So I invite you to step out of that tunnel vision and be more receptive and open your mind up to all of these different possibilities that God probably already is speaking to you like he was for me. I just wasn't, I wasn't listening.


That song was The Voice of My Great Granddaughter by Kelly Ragsdale, part of the Davis Climate Strike songbook. Earth Day has been celebrated with large public gatherings worldwide for 50 years. This year, KDRT is working with the Davis Climate Strike and a coalition of climate activists from Davis, Yolo, Solano, and Sacramento counties to put together a special Earth Day Sing Out for you. You can join your voice and song and take action from your home in defense of a healthier environment. The lyrics to all these songs that you're about to hear and links to their recordings made by local musicians in honor of Earth Day are on the Climate Strike website at climatestrikedavis.com. It's all one word, climatestrikedavis.com, along with ideas for taking action to protect our climate for future generations. Project Partner, the Davis Independent Music Initiative, is collecting funds to sponsor local musicians to record Earth Day songs released from now all the way until our local Earth Holiday Whole Earth Festival on May 9th. Using the hashtag Earth Day Sing Out, that's hashtag Earth Day Sing Out, all one word on social media. Funds can be donated to paypal.me-davis-i-m-i. That's independent music initiative to support local musicians who've lost work in this crisis. Learn more at climatestrikedavis.com. Now let's get back to the music. One of the great local musicians and a devoted climate activist, David Abramson, recorded the next song for us. This original song is by Harry Dixon Lowe's and the adapted lyrics written by Pat Humphries, a folk singer and nearby Woodland. Here's David Abramson, this little earth of mine. One, one, two, one, two, three, four. This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. This little earth of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. This little earth of mine, I'm gonna let it shine This little earth of mine, I'm gonna let it shine Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine Sunlight from above, I'm gonna let it shine Sunlight from above, I'm gonna feel it shine Sunlight from the above I'm gonna feel it shine, feel it shine, feel it shine, feel it shine River's running clear, I'm gonna let it shine River's running clear, I'm gonna let it shine River's running clear, I'm gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine This little soil of mine Gotta heal it in good time This little soil of mine Gonna heal it in good time This little soil of mine Gonna heal it in good time In good time, in good time, in good time Burst far near I'm gonna help them shine This next song is the Davis Threshold Singers, One Heart Beating. Happy Earth Day everyone. This song was written by Sue Kirkpatrick for the Ubuntu Choir, and it's called One Heart Beating. One Heart Beating, we are one, one heart in force, one in detail. This next song is Maya Elise. The song is Mycelium. She says, From the trees I've learned that growth is slow, but magnificent over time, and we must be gentle and kind to ourselves when we're rebuilding after disasters. Maya Elise, the song is Mycelium. Drink a malice, a man, soak a mala, shade in the summer, comfort it, and if we can't start over, what's the use in getting... This next song is Joel Daniel from the Davis Climate Strike Songbook, We Shall Not Be Moved. Just like a tree is the justice, we shall not be moved, adjusted. Just like a tree standing by, young and old together, we shall not be moved. We are young and old together, we shall not be moved, just like a tree standing by the wall, we shall not be moved. We are fighting for our, we shall not be moved. We are fighting, we shall not be moved, just like a tree standing by the wall. We shall, black and white together, we shall not be moved. We are black and white together, we shall not be moved. Just like a tree standing by the wall. We shall not be fighting for our children We shall not be moved, we are fighting for We shall not be moved just like a tree Standing by the wall And straight together We shall not be moved, we are gay and straight together Just like a tree standing by We shall not be moved just like a tree Standing by the wall We shall not be moved just like a tree This next song is the Davis Climate Strike Singers with the song Why Why Worry performed by Danielle and Raul She says, we can't do direct action today because of the coronavirus, but if we could I'd be sitting in at Governor Newsom's office telling him to stop fracking and protect frontline communities He's issued 24 new fracking permits the shelter in place went into effect This is a good song for a sit-in This is Why Why Worry performed by the Davis Climate Strike Singers Mothers and the fathers To the mothers and the fathers Love to the most Strike to the most To the mothers and the fathers Mothers and the fathers Watch them to watch This next song is the Tom Family performing This Pretty Planet from the Davis Climate Strike Songbook We've got a few more from the Davis Threshold Singers I'll let them introduce the songs themselves We are formed a song from our repertoire by Laura Fanon called Keep On Believing Threshold Singers with a song from our repertoire by Linda Hirshhorn called Amazed That was a couple songs by the Davis Threshold Singers This program is the Earth Day Sing Out a special program put together for you by KDRT, the Davis Climate Strike and the Davis Independent Music Initiative We've got a couple more songs now Now, now, now we need to build a better future And we need to start right now Make it greener and make it cleaner Make it last, make it fast and do it now Now, now, now we need to build a better future As it's fading We must get wise Tell no more lies and do it now, now We must adopt the green new deal and do it now, now, now We need to build a better future To start right now We need to rise up We need to open up our eyes And I'd like to let you know that the songs that you've been listening to The lyrics to all these songs and links to these recordings made by local musicians in honor of Earth Day are on the Climate Strike website at climatestrikedavis.com along with ideas for taking action to protect our climate for future generations The Davis Independent Music Initiative is also collecting funds to sponsor local musicians to record Earth Day songs released from now all the way to our local Earth Holiday Whole Earth Festival on May 9th using the hashtag Earth Day Sing Out on social media That's Earth Day Sing Out hashtag on social media Funds can be donated to paypal.me slash davisimai to support local musicians who've lost work in the crisis learn more at climatestrikedavis.com and all of this is part of the Earth Day Sing Out KDRT is proud to have brought you the Earth Day Sing Out in partnership with the Davis Climate Strike and the Davis Independent Music Initiative We're going to end this Earth Day Sing Out special program here on KDRT to tell you exactly how we started with Kelly Ragsdale singing The Voice of My Great-Grand Daughter


One small step for man. Do we think this VentiC is going to get us to fill up? I mean, we're going to have to. We just need to take it time to flow, right? Let's launch this rocket.


I wanted, first of all, even before I start giving you another programmatic sort of a talk before we get into the real science. First of all, thank you, Inseek, for the wonderful introduction that, for the wonderful introduction he gave with the story of how this workshop came about. And it's important to remember this as part of the entire scene of the Kedel climate variability research. And then, of course, before I run into time crunch to think a few of the people who are extremely instrumental in putting this together, beginning with Inseek, going to the local organization committee with Fred and particularly Anna, on top of also of organizing the activities of the Clive activities on that subject, also put together this workshop. And without these kinds of helps, we would not be at this wonderful place and the ability to get the science together and inspire future activities. Also, of course, to thank the ICTP for providing this place. I think one of the best places to organize a meeting of this kind from previous experience. So it was a real joy to know that this place would be able to host this kind of a meeting. So without much further ado, I'd like to tell you an additional story about how Clive got into this interesting activity and lay out some ideas of what we are expecting to come out from this workshop. Sorry, I also would like to thank the speakers who agreed so nicely to come out here and to give their view of the Kedel variability and of course to all the audience here for making the trip and coming. And so sorry for the people who could not, we could not host here. Hopefully they are watching us now on the special electronic facilities that were provided by the organizers here. So thanks everybody. The Kedel variability is a long interest of the community, of the research community. And I can remember workshops of all kinds and symposia of all kinds that were happening starting in the 1980s, 1990s with interest in the Kedel variability. This has been going on for a long time. So the question is what are we doing here right now? So before that I wanted to say what do we mean by the Kedel variability? Why are we so interested in that? And what are the impacts on people's lives? And this is just a short list of examples of what we encountered in the last 50 years or so in terms of changes that have a long time scale that cause climate shifts or climate variability depending on how you are looking at it. And we'll have some more about whether we are talking about the same thing when we are saying shift and when we are saying variability or not. The Sahel droughts, the big change in the Sahel that happened in the 1970s, which was a devastating event for sub-Saharan Africa. And we still don't completely understand exactly how this thing happened and whether anthropogenic influences were involved or whether it was a natural variability of the sort we can expect more in the future. Tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic. Researchers already in the 1980s have pointed out big Decadal changes that occur in frequency of storms, intensity of storms in the tropical Atlantic which has a huge impact on population, especially in the western part of the Atlantic basin, in Central America, in North America. So that's another Decadal phenomenon that is still debated about what the origins exactly are. Everybody knows sea surface temperatures are involved, but how do these sea surface temperature anomalies get created? The Mediterranean drying trend. I mean we are in the Mediterranean now, and countries in the Mediterranean, all the way from the west to the east, especially along the northern rim, experienced a very long protracted drought. And fingers have been pointing at the North Atlantic Oscillation, but okay, the North Atlantic Oscillation is an atmospheric phenomenon. Why does it present such exhibits, such long time scales? We still don't know. Droughts in the Southwest US, a lot of work has been done on that, and you will hear a couple talks about the origins of the drought in the oceans and so on. Still, why do the oceans exhibit this kind of variability? Can we predict the sort of variability? And more recently, this surprising hiatus, an unfortunate name that a lot of climate scientists and also people who explained this phenomenon to the media don't particularly like because it suggests that something has happened that we couldn't expect. But people did expect changes of that kind, and nobody thought that global warming is just a continuous, simple increase towards the future without any effect of natural variability. And the recent drought in California. So all these phenomena last several years, and of course affect decades, and we don't completely understand why. So just in terms of a figure that shows that, I picked up two figures here. One, the top one shows, it's all based on models, but we can show similar results for observations for the 150 year observation record that we have. The top figure shows a figure that George Bohr already presented a couple decades ago, actually, in showing the ratio between variability on timescales longer than 10 years, on periods longer than 10 years, to total inter-annual, total variability measured based on annual data. So it's the ratio between fast changing climate, the climate system, and the slow changing climate system. And you can see that there are regions where the colors are red where the decadal variability is very strong compared to the total variability. We notice things like that in the northern ocean basins. The very blue color in the tropical Pacific shows that decadal variability doesn't stand out above the strong linear phenomenon, but it's still, despite that if you only examine the decadal spectrum, you still see that there is very strong decadal variability, even in the tropical Pacific, with a lot of implication which we will talk about later in the conference. The bottom figure is an attempt to show the ratio between decadal variability and the anthropogenic climate trend. In other words, using sort of linear techniques, you can separate using the models, using a large ensemble of models. You can separate between the model response to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing and volcanoes and aerosols. You can separate that from the natural viability that occurs in the models. And what you get is the result shown below that in the tropical belt, anthropogenic variability dominates, while in the northern oceans where decadal variability is very strong, the natural viability dominates. And of course, so we do have to understand both in order to predict the future. This is all for the 20th century based on the relatively weak signal, the anthropogenic signal in the century. So, another slide that shows, okay, why are we interested in it all of a sudden? Why are there renewed interests now? And as Nsik described, from different directions there is increasing interest in the phenomenon. And at least for a few of these reasons, there are not all the reasons, but some of the reasons that we can point at, is the fact that we have new instrumental observations, particularly the Argo observations in the oceans that tell us much more than we ever could observe in the oceans. We have observations from space of the kind that is giving us more and more information, quantitative information on the planet. We also have the CME-5 attempt to predict future variability. The decadal prediction effort started under CME-5 and it shows some successes which we need to understand further, but it also showed some disappointments where we were not able to create skill based on initial conditions from the oceans. And the question is why? Why the difference between places where we have some success? Why in other places we don't? And why we still don't have good success in doing decadal predictions over the land where people are actually living? And then the Hayatos that I already mentioned. And on the paleo side, we have a tremendous new reach attempt to reconstruct climate variability on a multi-century time scale for the last thousand or even two thousand years which give us, on an annual basis, which give us a lot of information on decadal variability. And we can learn much more about the natural system and how it behaves from that. And also on the CME-5 there were several modeling centers that joined the effort to create long, multi-decadal century and millennia timescale runs or simulations in which they superimposed what we know about solar variability, volcanic variability, land use changes to see how natural either forcing, external forcing or internal variability affects the climate system. And those two together can help us learn more and provide more information to the scientific group and of course to the public about decadal variability. So these are reasons for why all of a sudden there is renewed interest. And we should pick up those things and go forward with these new observations and modeling attempts to understand better the phenomena of decadal variability. So Clivar was for a long term interested in decadal variation. Actually from the origination of Clivar, decadal variability was one of the reasons for this effort. After Toga, the famous attempt to understand the Pacific, Clivar was created with a focus on decadal variability. This is an organization diagram that you can find on the Clivar website and essentially shows that Clivar works on two different levels. One level is the regional panels and modeling panels which is all the way here on the left. And the other is cross-cutting activities that cut across the interest of each different panel and tries to bring key problems in the climate science and to the forefront creating cross-cutting activity and decadal climate variability and predictability is one of these efforts that was blessed in a meeting in the Hague about a year and a half ago in the Pank Clivar meeting. So several of you were or many of you were there. So this is how it comes into Clivar with the idea with these kind of like broad objectives that are listed here to characterize the decadal variability, to understand it better, to understand its predictability. These are all goals that we have, as I said before, new tools to try to understand them and address them to a different level. And of course to eventually capitalize on the understanding to bring information to the public who is very much in the present day interested in decadal variability facing the changes like sea level rise which is quite obvious in many places that create much more danger to coastal regions even if the storms themselves don't change. Other extremes that have plagued the planet are those extremes natural or anthropogenic. All these things the public is very interested in and is beginning to act in a way to prepare for a difficult future to many of the world's populations. I'm going to skip these slides for just the sake of time so we can move on and I'm going to just say that to address these problems Clivar created this sort of ad hoc working group many of the members of this working group are here and we will meet later this week to essentially put together a lot of the things that we prepared before but mostly things that we are learning in this conference to propose to Clivar an action plan forward, the science and how to implement it. So for this reason we are looking to help from the participants of this workshop and from the discussion from the presentations and discussions that we are going to have to hear. First of all to gain from meeting and talking about the subject and learning from the most recent science on the subject. The second thing is to make an effort to identify in as much a precise manner the obstacles that are facing us. So the more we the scientists group are able to define precisely what we want to address and how do we want to prioritize this list of obstacles that we want to address the more we will be able to gain support from funding agencies from the public to be able to continue to do this kind of research. We have to strive not to be vague but to be precise about what we want to achieve. And also in order to start action on the subject to identify existing efforts on the subject that we can invigorate and learn from and to suggest new ways in which we which don't exist at the moment to learn more about how to address the credibility. So thanks everybody again for deciding to come to this meeting. Thanks for everybody who helped organize it and I'm looking forward for a very exciting exhausting week in front of us. Thank you very much.


Greetings everyone from Switzerland and so this week during the launchpad program I've been focusing on measuring the actual IPFS network. This part is going to go very technical. I'm also going in Academy Implementation and KBuckets and Xoristance and all this stuff so if you feel lost, it's okay you can come back for the next presentation. So yeah, I strongly recommend to reading the Academy app paper to understand better the content that is coming to come. So I gathered and computed all of the data very quickly so it totally may be accurate and there may be some human error in it so please don't use the data or the graph as they are here I'm happy to provide more graph later on if you're interested. So the goals of measuring IPFS and more specifically the DHT and so the routing table of the DHT is to understand better how the routing works in practice in academia. So we know theoretically how it works because there was this great research paper but in practice I'm not aware of a deployment which is larger than IPFS for academia so that would be interesting to get to know more about. So we want to detect if some KBuckets that are missing some of the peers that should be included in this bucket which may result in degraded performance or we also want to measure the ratio of dead peers that are in the routing table. So if some of the peer are still in the routing table but are not reachable they are useless so we want to replace them by a new peers. And we also want to verify. So one of the property of Academy eyes that each note has to be aware of the 20 closest nodes. So we want to know if they actually know that the 20 closest node or if they are missing some of them and the goal in all of this is to understand how it works to propose improvement and eventually make IPFS faster. Some words about the measurement so I use the nebula crawler, which was built by Dennis an external collaborator, a very great tool if we want to do some measure or just explore the IPFS network. So we want to explore the data on April 27, around 10 ATC. And so, on the data so one measuring the wall, yeah, crawling the peers and their routing table, and the crawler was aware of 30,000 peers, and approximately half was online and half was unreachable at the time. I just wanted to show in the last few days to just make some graphs and I don't know how meaningful they are, but that's always nice to show in a, in a demo. So that's the feeling status of the K buckets. So, as you can see, it starts from year 220 so I did cut the first ones, because they are not useful as they're going to be empty and only the last buckets are going to be full. And then we can see so from bucket approximately 241 until 246. We have an exponential growth, and then it is kept to 20, which is a parameter of Calemria. And so we can see that for the smaller bucket, let's say starting from 226 to 241, we have a few exceptions that, so some of the neighbors know some peers that are really close in the shore distance. And when we go a step further, we can see then it's mixed so the buckets are not full but are getting full and on average it is quite stable as you can see the 50 percentile and so it's growing and so starting from the 248th bucket. So we have the, so the, yeah, even seven, yeah, everything basically is all of the buckets are full and the points you can see are outliers, but out of 30,000 peers, that's not a lot. That's the count for the then neighbors. So what we can see here so that's an average so a ratio which was amplified to fit the actual number of peers. So the first two peaks are just nice because it's where the nodes don't have a lot of contacts, a lot of peers in those buckets. And so if the peers of is offline, it's not going to be replaced and we're going to have a 100% of the neighbor, but what is more interesting is starting from 248th bucket. And we can see that it is lower and that's the data we actually want to measure. And so we want to understand, so that's the average of the neighbor for all of the peers. And we want to understand why those peers are not replaced. And it is good that this rate is low but we want to have it lower and to reach zero for maximum efficiency. Yeah, that's about what I have for now and I'm happy to hear more results when I have some.


We got a tiktok from a viewer submission here, this one. The wanger, what does that mean?  Okay, come on. Okay, come on. Come on, this is not real. The guy's trying to help him press it. It's not real, come on. Look, I was looking at the camera. Okay, this is not real. This is no way. Okay, come on. It's an arm robot. It's not a full jumping robot. That's not real. He's putting his hand on the table. Okay, this is not real. I'm going next.  The guy suddenly, the interviewer, knows exactly what to do and starts pressing buttons on his thing just to make it worse.


I admit it, I voted. In my home state of Colorado, all voting is by mailed paper ballots.  And then, at least in my case, it sits there, on a table, near my desk. Hello, this is Ryan McMakin, and you're listening to Radio Rothbard. One is supposed to fill the ballot out, and then mail it back, or drop it off in one of the mailbox-like boxes scattered around the city. Sometimes I do it. This time around, as the ballot sat there on the table, I kept thinking about the proposed tax increases I could vote yes or no on. Like many states in the western half of the United States, this state makes frequent use of ballot initiatives and referenda in elections. Voters are asked to vote up or down on any number of regulations and taxes which the policy makers will be more than happy to implement, if they can muster a yes from the majority of voters. I'm certainly not willing to stand in line at a polling place, and I don't care about getting an aye-voted sticker, but I had to admit the opportunity cost of sending in the ballot was really quite low, so as I am not a big fan of new taxes, I filled out the ballot according to my whims and sent it in. Nothing about this little anecdote would strike most people as remarkable in any way. Since at least the 19th century though, there has been a debate over whether or not voting somehow means the voter has agreed to submit to, or even support, whatever the state does. In some cases, libertarians and anarchists who agree with the Voting Equals Consent Claim conclude that voting is therefore immoral, or perhaps even a form of violence. Anarchist extraordinaire Lysander Spooner however disagreed, quote, it cannot be said that by voting a man pledges himself to the Constitution, unless the act of voting be a perfectly voluntary one on his part. Yet the act of voting cannot properly be called a voluntary one on the part of any very large number of those who do vote, it is rather a measure of necessity imposed upon them by others than one of their own choice, unquote. In other words, let's imagine a small business owner were given the choice between candidate A, who promises to tax small businesses into oblivion, and candidate B, who promises to lower taxes. It hardly follows that the small business owner who cast a ballot in this case was supporting the whole system and apparatus that had put him in such an unenviable position to begin with. Spooner continues, quote, in truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that without his consent having even been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist, a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forgo the exercise of many of his natural rights under the peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further that if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself without his consent, so situated that if he used the ballot, he may become a master. If he does not use it, he must become a slave. If he has no other alternative than these two, in self-defense, he attempts the former. It would not therefore be a legitimate inference that the government itself that crushes the voters was one which they had voluntarily set up or even consented to, unquote. In fact, when one adopts the position that voting indicates consent to the regime and all its acts, one is agreeing with the state's apologists who repeatedly assert that, yes, voting means the voter acquiesces to the results of the election and the state overall. They don't stop there, though. Herbert Spencer notes that, in the minds of the voting as consent ideologues, not voting counts as consent, too, as does voting against the victorious side in any election. Thus, it is claimed, quote. The citizen is understood to have assented to everything his representative may do when he voted for him. But suppose he did not vote for him, and on the contrary, did all in his power to get elected someone holding opposite views. What then? The reply will probably be that, by taking part in such an election, he tacitly agrees to abide by the decision of the majority. And how if he did not vote at all? Why, then, he cannot justly complain of any tax, seeing that he made no protest against its imposition. So curiously enough, it seems that he gave his consent in whatever way he acted, whether he said yes, whether he said no, or whether he remained a neuter, a rather awkward doctor in this. Here stands an unfortunate citizen who is asked if he will pay money for a certain profit advantage. And whether he employs the only means of expressing his refusal or does not employ it, we are told that he practically agrees, if only the number of others who agree is greater than the number of those who dissent. And thus we are introduced to the novel principle that A's consent to a thing is not determined by what A says, but by what B may happen to say. Unquote. The only alternative we are told is to move away, to move thousands of miles from friends, family, and property, learn a new culture and probably a new language, and take up residence under a different regime. To define consent in this manner, though, sets the bar of consent so low as to render it utterly meaningless. The horrors of such a definition can be plainly seen if we apply this to the case of women and sexual consent. By the logic of the sort of consent Spencer describes, we are forced to conclude if a woman says yes, she consents. If she says no, she also consents. If she can't run away, then she's still consenting. One suspects that this would not be a terribly successful argument if employed by a rapist in a court of law. And yet here we are, being told that no matter what you do at election time, nothing, short of self-imposed exile, is to be interpreted as actual opposition to the state. Now to be fair, voting four candidates would appear to be harder to defend in this vein than voting against specific policies. Voting no on a tax increase is fairly unambiguous and can hardly be taken as support for any other policy. With candidates, however, there's far more room for state action. Even a candidate who might campaign on a tax cut will, after winning the election, take his election as a mandate to enact all sort of other objectionable laws that those who voted for him based on the tax issue would oppose. Thus, voting yes for any candidate is inherently more dangerous than simply voting no on a tax increase. For this reason, one might suggest that all ballots offer an abstain or none of the above option. Even if no further steps were taken, such as requiring a runoff in cases where abstain won a majority, the option of voting against everyone would do wonders to illustrate the lack of legitimacy that political candidates truly have. This, of course, is how we ought to interpret the vote of every eligible voter who prefers to not vote at all. Every non-vote is essentially a none of the above vote. And many people choose to express their opposition to the candidates in this way. That's a perfectly acceptable course of action, but it's not the only acceptable one. Thank you for listening to Radio Rothbard. Have a wonderful day. For more content like this, visit Mises.org.


How do you change your visa to a new employment? Remember, when we are talking about domestic workers, when we are talking about housemaids, when we are talking about helpers it is a different scenario. And when you look at all situations, We are talking about different contracts at the end of it all. Remember, for example, when we are talking about housemates in Katal, their contracts, their probation period is far different from other workers in Katal. Remember, your probation period is supposed to be nine months. That is according to the government. It's supposed to be nine months. And you're supposed to serve that nine months. Otherwise, if you don't complete those nine months, that means your recruitment agencies has to refer or has to refund back the money to the person who was hiring him or to that family that hired you. That's why normally it's always very important for you to first finish up the nine months. But apart from that, remember, you always do what we call your sign contracts and those contracts that are being signed. But what I can advise you, before you think of changing in one war with the other, it's better you first finish up that contract. If you finish up that contract and you feel you cannot go with that family anymore or if you feel you cannot go with that employer anymore, there are a lot of situations that are challenges that may face in one war with the other. For example, if your employer or if your family is not willing you to let you go or transfer to a new employment, then that is well and good.  But again, this does not stop you because remember, its perseverance is the best weapon and yours have to be positive whatever you have to do in one war with tuition. And this is what I will advise you to do because someone will say, how can you change the housemaid visa? It's possible. First of all, the first situation, the first instance of first situation that you need to understand or you need to have in your mind is that have you got a new offer? If there is someone else that is willing to take you on and you finish your contract, you can resign from your contract, you may not sign an extension of your contract and go to someone else. But remember that when you look at the procedure, you are going to follow the same procedure like anyone else who is changing from one employment to another. In case you are going to change from that employer to a new employer within the country, there are two different cases. If you are going to change within the country, it is another situation. If you are going to exit the country and come back as a new entrant on a new visa, it is another situation also.  The other workers in Qatar are entitled to the gratitude. You are also entitled to gratitude. I mentioned that.  You are also entitled to break times at intervals because you are not supposed to work a full consecutive 12 hours without a break. It is five hours consecutive, then you have to get a break of one hour. I don't know whether some of you are out there, you get those breaks, but you are entitled to those breaks. You are entitled to prayer time. In case you have to go for prayer, you are entitled for that break to have the prayer. I am trying to say that if you are winning, if you really gear up to changing from the house maid to a new employment, first of all, first look for someone to give you the job. Look for someone who is going to take you, who is going to give you what you call a job offer. If someone gives you a job offer and is willing to take you on at that situation, that means yes, you ready to let it go, you ready to start up to go. But remember when you look at the government requirements or the needs of labour requirements procedure for you to change a new employment, you need to get approval. You need to get approval from your former employee or your former family has to approve that we have let it go in a very good harmony. That is how it is very different. You need to get approval, you need to get signature approval that I am letting this person to go. Then still much as this new person has given you what you call a job offer, he also has to approve, he also has to sign that I have accepted to take up this person. That is where the whole process is going to start from.   Please don't contract within the contract. For example, you send a contract of two years and you want to break after one year contract. It is going to be a little bit very hard for you because I don't think that family is going to allow it to let you go unless you are going to exit the country. If you are going to resign and go out of the country and you get a fresh visa, then that is okay. But if you are thinking of changing from here, it may be a little bit very tricky and very hard because this person will not approve you going to the next person, to the new employer and for the means of labour, the requirement is that if you are domestic worker, if you are helper in one or the other, you are supposed to get a signature, you are supposed to get an approval that this former employee or former family is letting you go without anything attached to you. That is what you need to know. But if you are going to get someone that is willing to take on you is accepting you to go, then that is where you go. You have a right, they will sign for you, they will go and change. If there is any amount this one has to give this one, then probably they will say to that one. That means even the new employer that is going to recruit you is going to get it very easy to process all the documents for you. That is what the whole situation of it all is.  Because if you don't finish up that contract, that recruitment agency that took you there or that hired you to that family will have to refund part of the money to the family. That is by the requirements. You all know what we call the price caps for different nationalities who are working as housemaids. Different nationalities from different houses from different countries have what you call different house caps. The hiring caps are very different. So this recruitment agency will also not be willing to agree to refund because of you leaving the job. So that is why I say normally the advice will be for the first advice. Before I can show you the procedure on how you can do it manually. But the whole procedure of it all first finish up the contract. If it is five years and you agree to first, it is two years and you agree to first finish up the two years. And finish up the two years then you can move.  You willing to take on, you can take on. It's no problem, you go on. But remember if you are going to apply within the country, you are changing from your kataidi to a new kataidi which is of a different job, then you have to go under the same procedure of the Ministry of Labor where you need to get approval, you need to submit your contract, you need to submit a copy of your asserted contract. Yes, that is very important. Yes, when you get to those families, get a copy of your asserted contract. A copy that is certified by the Ministry of Interior. Ask your own, ask your family, ask your employer, where is my copy, have that copy, keep it. That copy is going to be very important for you if you want to change, it's very important. Have your passport with you because when you are going to change, they will ask for a copy of asserted contract of the former employee. Why are they asking for that copy? They definitely want to find out whether you've completed that contract that you signed with that person. So get that copy, keep it with you. Have your passport. Get a job offer from the new person who is willing to take you or the new job that is willing to take you up. Make sure that that person is also genuine, is going to process the documents for you until the end.  If this company when the new job is willing to recruit you definitely send you the visa to come but for housemates the first advisor will give you, first we need to have that contract if you want to change. If you want to change within the country, otherwise apart from that you definitely have to exit the country and get a new visa for you to return into the country for the new job that you are willing to take. Hope I've tried to share something little bit. Let's get in the comments section tell me what do you what do you want us to talk about in the comments section drop in Alore is very more than happy but remember you have to follow the same procedure if you are going to change within here it's quite possible if you get someone that's going to give you a job offer. Normally what is happening with the change is a job offer and your former employer willing to let you go and a copy of your contract is where it's quite very important and sometimes someone is asking why is it taking so hard for the means of labour to approve or to let people go. First of all I told you something that you need to know you are not going to leave a housemate job and again go to a housemate job these are two competing entities these are two competing jobs so this one will not willing to let you go because you are still in the same line of business he might think you are going to get out of the secrets from this family to this family always people need to take their safety so if you are willing to change and you are going to change as a housemate or a domestic worker think of something that is far away from what you have been doing if you are looking for something look for something that is far away from what you are doing if you are going to change within the country if you want your kataidi if you want a new employer because there is no change of details it is only going to change employer to a new employer kataidi will say the same but again if it is going to be the same competing line of business if you are going to move from a housemate to a housemate you must finish your contract first and this former employer or you former family must be willing to let you go that is what I can let you do thank you so much if you are a driver and something still I also love to let you if you are a driver or a house driver you are entitled to gratitude yes recently I was getting one of the subscribers saying I worked for this family for 10 years yes you are entitled to gratitude if you are going to go baba mama is not going to let you to stop you entitled to your gratitude you have the contract what is very important have that contract with you wherever mama, baba you can feel recruited have that contract with you ask for that contract it is not the contract of mouth it is the contract of words have a copy with you keep it safe because even if you go to the minutes of labor asking this is what happened I have been working for this family for the last 10 years they will definitely ask what is the copy why is the copy of the contract because the contract is the copy of the contract sitting from there so normally if you go in those families make sure you keep the copy of contract with you safe if it is your recruitment agency that hired you to go to that family ask that recruitment agency to have that asserted copy of the contract that is approved by the minutes of interior thank you so much for coming back this channel is mixed from the next question see you again in the next video as we try to discuss more of this important by the way don't forget to hit that notification bell it will be the only way that will be updated only upload a new video see you again in the next video


Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Being Human podcast. Thanks for watching on YouTube. Thanks for listening wherever you listen. I was watching, uh, Lord of the Rings yesterday night. Please give this a like or subscribe or comment. Let's talk about Lord of the Rings. I will see you in the comments, my friends. But this is when I worked at Best Buy years ago and, uh, I remember I, ooh, am I supposed to say this? I broke a bit of a rule about 12 years ago at Best Buy. The Lord of the Rings extended editions came out, right? You know, you get the whole booklets of all special features, the artwork, the costumes, everything. And, uh, it came in on the truck and there are only a few left and I put them out on the floor and I kept one in the warehouse for me to buy after my shift. It's still, I still got it right here. And I cracked it open yesterday and I was just like, man, do I want to be part of a project like that where you have all of these people working on a single thing.  It was like the most unbelievable thing to watch to see how these movies are made. And, uh, Peter Jackson goes to, I forget what, what the spot was called, but it's where they filmed like the Shire where they had to build it all there. And I saw, um, they kind of drive there and they just knew right away that, oh, this is where they're going to have the unexpected party. This is where, um, uh, Bag End is going to be all of that. And I was like, you know what? In that Windows XP kind of background looking area, that is very easy for a human being to soak in life around them and in them. Think about how easy that is. If you went on one of those Lord of the Rings tours and I'm going, I got to go within the next five years. I'm there. I'm in New Zealand. Follow me. You'll see me there. That's just how life will work. I will literally be there. I can predict that part of my future. I know something will bring me there. And it's so easy. Think of yourself there. It's like, boom, you see the grass, the trees. You're just, it's so easy to maybe not think about a million other things and to really take a step back and have a pause. And what we're calling, maybe this episode will be, uh, sitting in the middle of your life, sitting in the middle of your life. It's easy in the shire, but it's harder if you're like me or if you're like you and you're not in these beautiful rolling hills all day with these beautiful trees and all of that. Our minds become occupied with other things and responsibilities. And oh my gosh, there's so much out of our control and what we need to do to survive and to get money and to save and to embrace and develop relationships, take care of children, our loved ones, shovel the snow, you know, rake the leaves, cut the grass. We got a billion things to do. While we're doing things, we can take a step back and realize and sit in the middle of life. But I thought we could do an exercise right now where no matter what you're doing right now, why don't we sit in the middle of our lives right now? Because imagine if you were in the shire, there was a book called, uh, The Way to Love by Anthony DeMello. And he talks about if we're going through life and we're going through this amazing landscape, like the shire, but we're on a bus and we're all together we're chatting and the blinds on the bus are also pulled down and we're completely in the dark. We're not enjoying, we're not seeing, we're just arguing the best way to get to the grave. So why don't we just sit with ourselves and what's around us and I'll kind of take you through what I do through the day. And you know, there's going to be no background music here. It's just going to be you and yourself, me and your ears. And let's just take a seat or maybe you're raking the grass, cutting the grass. Whatever you're doing right now, metaphorically, we're going to take a seat in the middle of our life right now. Let's first start off with what we see. Pay attention to what you see right now. What's around you? What's around you? And don't just, you know, you can say there's a screen in front of me. No, no, no, but what are you looking at? Colors and the shapes, contrast, right? I'm seeing windows here and drops of rain on the glass. A tree outside the front here, gently swaying in as bright or green as it's spring. What do you see and just what the label anything quickly? Just notice what you're seeing. That's all you're doing right now. Gazing, a soft gaze at what's around you. You're just looking. This is what you're doing right now. This is it. This is all you're doing right now. I know you got a to-do list, right? I know we got things, but this is the thing at this moment. So if you're looking, that's the thing. You're doing a great job. And now from that sense of sight, move and shift your attention to your ears as you pull back that focus to your ears, your drums. And you can close your eyes if you'd like. Now you shift your focus into what you're hearing around you. Maybe if it's really quiet, you can hear what's happening inside you. If it's a swallow, a heartbeat, and I'll be quiet for a few moments while you take in the sounds of life. When we do that, sometimes you hear the air conditioner. You never really heard what it really sounds like. Sometimes you get the gurgle in the belly and you really, like almost for the first time, really paid attention to what a gurgle is. What's that called? Anamanapia? The thing that sounds like the thing, like crack, boom, smack. So you get that gurgle or whatever it is, your heartbeat, you feel your heart. When we pay attention to these things, they become real. Now shift your focus and take a seat in the middle of your life. You now have the sight, you heard the sounds. Now touch something around you. And with all of your focus gently shifting, touch. This can be something that you're sitting on and noticing what your back feels like on the chair.  What your feet feel like on the floor or maybe you're walking. So what's that sensation of walking like? Now for me, the touch, the heat of the glass with my peppermint tea in it. And I'm with you all at the same time because I'll sip a tea. Just chug it. I won't think about it. I'm doing my work. I'll sip it. Don't really notice the heat and the temperature. What can you touch around you? And really feel it. Got the bic pencil here, mechanical pencil. Amazing how sensitive our skin is to these fibers and small hairs on our arms. I was outside the other day and Aunt was crawling on my forearm.  You feel that. You know something's on you, something so small. So you notice what you're touching and now something weird just noticed taste. What's in your mouth? Hmm. Yeah. What does it taste like? Dry, gross. Did something you regretted last night so not tasting too good. What's that taste? And now if you have a beverage, water or even the sensation of swallowing, if you want to feel that and taste that, what's the taste in your mouth? Come back to whatever sensation, the fullness of the whole body. Of how you exist and how you are right now. Everything combined. You're here. There's very moment right now doing whatever you're doing. And just take it all in. And thank yourself even though this was fairly short. Thank yourself for taking a pause in the middle of your life. It's almost like a snapshot. We're in video mode all the time, all the time. But it's nice to take those photos once in a while. Take a screenshot of life. Take a pause and see what's really happening in our bodies, in our environments, in our mouths. All of these things. This is important for me to do because I have these seasons and these impulsive months where I can just work, work, work. I can go crazy and just nonstop and completely laser focused. And I'm just on, getting up early is easy. Everything becomes so much easier too as far as my focus and attention span and the ability to absorb information. And that is dangerous if I don't take a stop and a pause like this because I get ahead of myself. And then that can lead to some sensation of burnout and then needing a day, a week, a month off because we went too hard. So if you get into patterns like that, this is also really important. In times where we start to overthink and our mind just gets 10 years ahead of us, 10 days ahead of us. Even sometimes 10 minutes ahead of us is too much to think about. Come back to a task that has structure. We need that kind of structure. No, I'm not talking about daily routine, but that's also important. But a structured exercise and something that's predictable for you to come back to. That's the beautiful thing of these tools. If it's something new you have to learn every single time, it's a little harder to be in the moment because you're worried. I don't mind doing that right. Okay, this is my first time. Am I going to get that right? How long is this going to take? I got to be back at this meeting at that time. I'm not sure. It's my first time. Once you develop a bit of a routine with this kind of thing, you just know, okay, here we go. Sight, sound, texture, taste, whole body. Taking a pause and a step back and sitting in the middle of life. And for me, that's really helpful, right? And I hope that's helpful for you. And just to play this recording again and listen again. When you need just a bit of a pause, come back here. When we think too far ahead, add a bit of structure. Sit in the middle. Thanks a lot, everyone. Appreciate it. And appreciate you listening. And I hope you have a wonderful day. And all the links are in the description. Of course, take care of yourself. And oh man, just enjoy. Just enjoy if you can, those little things. I'm excited to watch the Lord of the Rings, more of those special features. I'm so going to do that tonight. That is my Monday night. I can't wait. So thanks a lot. Have a great day. Bye-bye.