hi guys welcome back to my channel i'm sorry this is like a different view this is not where i normally film but my mom's actually like in the living room and she's watching her days of our lives so i was like i'll just film it in my room and i already like kind of cleaned up so this is week five of doing Chloe Ting's workout pretty consistently taking two days off and it was a wild ride let me just tell you i don't know if there's a huge difference let's first just get into what i did each day and then we'll get into the how i feel and everything and then we'll get into the photos like normal so saturday i did the 45 minute workout in arms and abs so saturday my shaman sister lindy d was still here so you kind of can see her in the background and everything then on sunday the 16th of february i did the 30 minute workout the arm workout and the ab workout i'm kind of just talking right now because i know the b-roll isn't going to match up with what i'm saying but i always i like to add it in there because i think it enhances the videos so you can see me and it just i don't know i really enjoy showing you guys so i'm just talking to fill up a little space and then on monday monday is when i left for new york and if you're watching this video i did not vlog new york because i forgot my camera i'm thinking about just doing an ig tv story because it'll just be easier and i can just overlay photos and just talk to you guys monday i'd get up super early to get in a workout and i only did the 15 minute workout because i had to shower and like get all ready and get on the airplane and everything so i just did the 15 minute workout which is fine again like normal i do not work out on tuesdays so there is no footage for that moving on to wednesday i did the 15 minute workout plus the ab workout and i did it in the gym area that it was kind of small basically in the next clip which i'll play you can see where i worked out and i just kind of give you a rundown on what i did so i did my workout in here i did it like right in this little hallway because there was somebody else working out right here and using like all this equipment which i don't use because i'm not that fancy but i want to take a cute picture because i never really get to go to like a gym like this and i just wanted to show you guys for my workout update i don't know should i take the picture here should i take it here i'm thinking like here i think that's cute like holding a thing even though you guys know i don't really do that but to do that and then i gotta just clean up this mat hopefully this thing was clean i mean i'm gonna take a full shower everything when i get back to the room but this is what the gym looks like of course i didn't really get to feel myself i really wish i could have i was using the phone to watch Chloe's videos since i don't have my tv so i couldn't like feel myself so you just have to believe me like i am sweating that's not what i intended but yeah you can like see like i'm sorry i did work out people and i am a little bloated because i've just been eating bad but i'm on vacation so yep and of course like normal i do not work out on thursdays now we are here on friday february 21st today this morning i did or this afternoon i should say i was kind of getting unpacked and everything i did the 30 minute workout the ab workout and the arm workout i just got done doing the arm workout so that's always fun kind of still really tired for my trip um because we did so much stuff but um now i'm going to get on to kind of how i've been feeling and updates foods all that sort of thing clearly this past week has not been very good when it comes to food because the girl's just been eating whatever she wanted so because i was on vacation and when my guest was here my childhood sister we picked out kind of at animal kingdom on friday so yeah i went to disney on friday and during this time too i was not feeling myself i was really really bloated i had fries because we went to hooters and we had wings and she was like just get the fries because you know they're so good and she was like you can't just deprive yourself of everything so i was like okay fine so i got the fries ate them all up so good but i did get the naked wings so they weren't breaded or anything on sunday only had that one meal it was the wings and the fries and then obviously in new york i picked out kind of ate a lot of fast food type foods fast food type foods and just really didn't watch anything but there is a but we walked almost everywhere i can tell you my legs are sore um the last day when i was working out my left foot is so sore like in the arch and so when i was working out today it was just really hard because it hurt a lot and i didn't know why i just pushed myself and i was like oh it'll get better but it actually like is still really sore when i walk or do certain movements with it so i think it was just walking so much maybe it just got triggered or something i have no idea but i can just tell you it still hurts to today and i'm hoping it gets better yeah my legs are so sore from all of the walking i feel like i walked all of the stuff that i ate off when i was in new york because even though it was like all crappy foods and really bad for me we walked everywhere like i just said and we didn't i know this sounds bad but we had like jam packed full two days two and a half three give or take so we didn't eat a lot i know that sounds kind of not healthy but like we were just so busy and everything that we didn't eat a lot so we were just like always like sightseeing or doing an activity or seeing a show and obviously like you don't really eat a lot i am a little bit bloated just probably because of the carbs and like the pizza and everything so during sometimes my belly was like a little bit bloated but it wasn't anything drastic that's pretty much how i've been feeling i actually don't really mention this in my videos but i lost a couple pounds which i'm like okay i see how it is i do track it a little bit that's not my end goal like numbers don't define you it's how you feel in your body and how you looking and feeling your clothes not necessarily a number because remember muscle weighs more than fat and everything and if you're building a muscle you shouldn't be like so concerned about number on a scale but i have lost a few pounds so i'm happy about that honestly i feel skinnier than when i before i went to new york i think it's just because i like de-bloated because obviously my period's over and i just walked off a lot there moving on to what you guys have been waiting for the photos so this is me last week on the left and on the right is me this week this is the front view of me i feel like um my stomach's very much more toned and defined i don't know if it shows up in the pictures but i definitely feel it within my body this is the side view so the left is alex last week and the picture on the right is alex this week i don't know if this is a huge drastic but i could tell like my back fat's a little less and that's always good because i'm telling you guys it's so uncomfortable now here is the part where i don't know if this makes you guys like the videos more but i like showing you guys and i like to see for myself so this is alex pre workout anything on the left front view and then this is alex now on the right front view obviously and i definitely feel and see a huge difference and knowing this is the fifth week that's just like so cool and then here is the side view of that pre workout alex left and now alex on the right so those are the photos hope you guys can see something i love how motivating you guys are in the comments thank you so much and if you guys are on this journey with me let me know how you're doing i really would love to know this week has just been not regular it's just been crazy since i've been out of town i still kept up consistent with the workouts as best i could and the food let's just not talk about it um next week is also going to be a little weird because i'm working a five days this week kind of to make up for the time that i was out of town so my workouts will probably be a little less intense i'll probably be doing more just the 15 minute workouts because your girl's tired when she gives home and 15 minutes isn't that long to do a workout so i'm just prefacing next week so you guys can know hope you guys enjoyed make sure to give this video a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe and i'll see you guys in my next video bye


So, okay, Bismillah Allahumma Sayyidina Muhammad, the breezes of Ramadan, I'm so excited to see my brothers, Masha'Allah, my sisters They're already here, like look at this We're so lucky to be Muslim Seriously, we're so lucky to be, we're so lucky to be Muslim. It's it's the only truth remaining and You're you've been invited and You've grabbed onto it and that's why you're here right now and and it's amazing right so Malik and and so Islam is submission not to yourself Not the American way submission to yourself. Okay, by the way, Shaytan every generation Tricks people and every generation he has different tricks. It's very important. So, you know Historically he tricked people and he said hey bury your daughter alive Or your son and that's a good thing He tricks people in the Quran of Allah says he says he Zuyina lahum soot wa hamali him. He makes that their ugly act beautiful to them and Every generation there's different tricks that Shaytan does so the tricks the way he told other Generations in the past is not the same trick. He's telling us today Right and the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he doesn't exist All right, so he told people he told people bury your child alive and people will do that And and they would be proud of it. I did something noble. Yeah, and people were like wow I need to respect that person. He put his daughter under the ground. Wow. What a noble person like Shaytan did that That's nasty. That's disgusting. That's crazy. Well, what is he tricking us today? That we think is beautiful, but it's actually ugly Isn't that wild isn't that frightening that we think is beautiful. It's in the air. It's in it's accepted by the culture It's normalized That it's beautiful and honorable, but it's actually disgusting putrid Demonizing this ugly. What is it and for for our for our for our time? I propose that it's individualism It's actually individualism, right?  You're free. You're not you're a slave to God obey God Okay, so he takes this wonderful concept of freedom distorts it distorts it and takes it to an extreme Right, and then he tells you your feelings to define for you right and wrong is all based on individualism our feelings are important, but they don't define right and wrong and then and this is all related to individualism and then And then he comes in a tricks us and he says that Ah, yeah, that you need so much personal space that you just doing yourself you alienated yourself and made yourself lonely and Anyone who breaches your feelings or who breaches your personal space or who breaches Your feelings your was the victim victim mindset. These are the tricks of Satan today Right, so it's in other words submit to myself Right and and religion is an alarm clock. It wakes us up wakes us up from our slumber And Ramadan is one of those beautiful amazing moments with this divinely designed religion Where we're invited we came from God. We're returning to God and in this small temporary period You know, there's like not a page in the Quran that doesn't talk about the temporary nature of this world We weren't even made do you guys know we weren't even made for this world. We're not made for this world We're just here visitors. We're just at best. We're strangers or visitors at best We came from God. We're returning to God, and we're here for a few years Be with God right so Allah sent us this amazing messenger. So Allah Al Hamid and He sent us this amazing message called Islam to tell us in between our beginning and our end Hey connect with God and it's called Islam and don't surrender to yourself in the satanic demonic way where shaitan's tricking us, right? Right and instead submit and surrender to God, right? And the muddaan is one of those ways now. I didn't come to talk about that, but I was passionate and wanted to share that anyways Because I'm excited about that, right we came to talk about but it's related, right? We came to talk about Preparing for Ramadan, which is inshallah Allah ma balliqna Ramadan say I mean May we reach Ramadan safely and may it be beautiful I Need some help can we distribute these papers I need everyone to have a paper Thank you. I need everyone to have a paper And here are pens as well There are more pens there and there's more papers there. I need everyone to have a paper everyone to have a pen We're gonna do something beautiful. I have about 15 minutes remaining and it's gonna be amazing You're making you're making you're making a beautiful thing. You know why? because scientific studies have shown if you write down if You write down your dreams if you write down your aspirations if you write down your plans and goals You are about 300 percent more likely to actually achieve them It's amazing. That's all you have to do is write it down And you're about three hundred percent or something like that more likely to achieve them. Okay, so Now this paper, okay, I need a board nice and prepared the umma is rising. This is a sign This is it will lie. This is a sign Seriously, the umma is doing good There's a beautiful verse in the Quran that says surat al-Baqarah 2 18 I think I The people they had They had difficulty They had tribulation and they had earthquakes until or they were shaken until they said When is the help of Allah coming? Indeed the help of Allah is near so the umma Just had difficulty had tribulation and just had Earthquakes so the help of Allah is near say I mean, okay, so Khair Muqba inshallah All right, so I have 14 minutes, okay So we want to benefit from this this notion this concept.  Can you list them off one two three four five? Do you know them because if not then what are you doing? Eating sleeping good. I mean, yeah, that's enjoyable right? And it's beautiful and you can get rewarded for that. Oh, we want to dream we want to be dreamers I'm not afraid to dream one of my teachers said they'll all bless and say I mean I'm not afraid to dream and neither are we We want to dream Your potential your ability your pricelessness with God. What can you do? Who can you be? Seriously Seriously every human being has amazing potential If they actually know that they have that potential and if they don't know it then they don't have it and You have it every human being has it right and so we want to dream. Okay, so on this page This is my page. We're gonna we're gonna put it. We're gonna put it landscape Okay, landscape. Okay, so, you know, we put it landscape. We put it sideways like that Okay, and we are going to break it into eight Into eight Cubes eight sections. Okay Now this is you This is you you're defining yourself and I'm gonna ask you eight questions and you're gonna fill in eight sections. Okay Well, I'm sorry, I said no Muhammad. All right. Bismillah. Rahmanir Rahim. Now I Love how this this was actually set up body mind soul amazing mashallah Okay, right these Write these down want to make sure I don't myself. Bismillah Bismillah write these down And interestingly this roadmap Actually encompasses the previous two sessions that you guys did here it is Okay, number one I am taking license to tell you your first dream And it is to be a Wally everyone write that down. I am taking advantage of my teacher role and Telling you your first dream Right, and it is to be a Wally It is to be a Wally is to be a Wally is to be a Saint is to be a friend of God What else is there? What else do you need? Well, how amazing would that be? What else?  Oh, how amazing, you know There was his father and he actually took his son out one day His son was like 15 years old and he took him out And they were walking in the streets and he said son. You see the garbage on the floor there He said yes father. He said if I knew that The pleasure of God was found and picking up garbage son.  That's our first goal. Yes I asked one of my teachers one time if it was permissible to ask that we could be a Wally. Yeah Okay, yeah, thank you. So be specific. Yeah, yeah, that's actually it's a good point Thank you. So we want to be a Wally of God Be a Wally of God, right? In the only yeah, Allah, you know, hope on them. Well, I don't know. It says in the Quran the only yeah the Wally right And uh the Wally Or the Wally are the only yeah, laa hoofun aleyhim wa laa yahzenoon. They have no fear and no sadness And what does that mean? That means they don't fear the future and they're not sad about the past They're in their moment and in their moment. They're with God That's the Wally, right? They're in their moment and they're in their moment. They're in their God So so okay, so I'm I'm taking the liberty to I know your first dream. It's all to be a Wally, right? And I'm a serious no if this wasn't your dream Consider it and explore it because what else is there? Why are we here? What what else is going to make us happy Islam is the recipe to be happy The recipe to be happy individualism is the recipe to misery It's kind of ironic There's actually the correlation of happiness and thinking about yourself is inversely correlated. So the more The more you think about yourself the unhappy or you are the less you think about yourself the happier you are Right and so if you empty your heart from yourself And you fill it with others and service of others and God you're actually a happier person It's it's wild when we think it's the opposite. Oh, you know Anyways, I'm not going to get into that right now Um, okay. So Bismillah, let's jump into it. I have 10 minutes left long so yeah, say no Muhammad. All right Now this one this first box. I want you to think deeply for a moment What is What are this box three? What are the three most Desperate I'm the keyword is desperate Things that you want from God There was a woman she's been married for 16 years unable to get pregnant Tried every single medical every single medical procedure to get pregnant with her husband They were married 16 years didn't get pregnant She got pregnant in her 17th year of marriage My Wife asked her, what did you do? She said masek the dua be ramadan She said I gripped dua and ramadan That was her answer. I'm just sharing it with you. There was a man. He was 380 pounds His whole life he was 380 pounds When I saw him he was this Beautiful muscle man, and I was like doing with mashallah. He's like, this is me 10 months ago and he showed me his picture 380 pounds I was like, what happened? He's like, I'll tell you what happened he's like he's like Last ramadan In the last 10 days, I desperately asked God for three things It's like what is it? I asked him to lose weight. I asked him to For for me and my wife to get pregnant. They weren't able to get pregnant for like five years And I asked for for some third thing and he's like all three of them came true Right, so the key to dua is being desperate Why the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him was promised victory at bedr, but what did he do the night before bedr? He stood up and he raised his hand so high his cloak would fall off and say never becker What's that? Yeah, that's enough. That's enough.  That's enough and you put his jacket by his cloak back He can't read it's enough get some rest The sahaba slept and he stood up. Why? Siddique is Siddique is showing the truthfulness in his Neediness his neediness. So desperation is the key And in the hikm Ibn Attaillah says if you want gifts from God to come your way Then perfect your spiritual poverty My desperation and the opposite is Man humans went out of bounds when they saw themselves independent. I don't need God Independent, right? That's the opposite Right, and so I want you now In the next 60 seconds to think Deeply and desperately when you call God with these three things Your heart just shatters and trembles and feels the closeness of God What is it? And the reason I want you to do this is not necessarily to get those three things But I want you to use your want of those three things to get God You see the difference Does that make sense? I want you to use your desperation in those three things to get God Because you call on him So I want you to write the three things that you want and put them here Right, and it's confidential right if you want to put a key word So no one you know a symbol so no one knows what it is that you're thinking about you can do that And go ahead take the next 45 seconds and write it down Now these three duads you are going to make Every prayer every prostration In terawih You're going to make these three prayers more than any other prayer and therefore your Ramadan will be a Ramadan of connection Because du'a is the core of connecting to God Du'a is the core so you're going to use this desperation this neediness to connect with God and making it a Ramadan of connection Okay, so it's important to identify these and listen Remember if you write that these down you're more likely to fulfill this and do this shaitan's whispering right now Shaitan's whispering. Oh my god.  I hope the person next to me takes this seriously. They really need it You know So make this a meaningful moment Make this a meaningful moment not a forgettable moment write these down Okay All right, Bismillah now we're going to proceed now I want you okay in the top half of this box in the Quran. I want you to dream remember we're dreaming I'm not afraid to dream. I want you to write down your high aspiration and goal of how many pages of Quran You're going to read every day in Ramadan How many pages of Quran you're going to read every day in Ramadan? Don't be afraid to dream Okay Quran is the greatest form of zikr The greatest form of zikr is reading Quran in prayer and after that it's reading Quran outside of prayer It's the greatest form of zikr and zikr is remembering god Keeping your tongue moist. Nice. Mashallah. What's your name, darling? Mashallah. What's your name? Yes, yes Iman, how old are you Iman? Eight Allahu Akbar. May Allah bless you Iman. Everything I mean.  Inshallah, you're going to be a friend of Allah. You want to be a friend of Allah? Isn't that amazing? Take me with you to Jannah. Okay, inshallah That's right made a deal Iman. Mashallah Okay, so I want you to write it down. Okay, so you're you're high go. I'm going to read this year. I'm going to do 10 Khatim. I'm going to do five Khatim 100 pages a day 50 pages a day 20 pages a day. I want you to dream. Okay, whatever it is. Okay Whatever you write. Okay. I'm going to do 40 pages a day.  Okay. Now, Bismillah. We're proceeding because I have I know you guys are looking at your clock You're like, yeah, six minutes left. Okay. Now, Teraweeh. I want you to dream. How many rakhaz of Teraweeh? How many prayers of Teraweeh? You're going to pray every night Dream, dream big. Think big. Okay. How many are you going to do? 20 12 8 How many and this includes night prayer when you're by yourself? I'm going to pray 40 I'm going to pray 100 Every night. How many rakhaz you're going to pray? Okay.  Okay. How much you're going to pray? Bismillah. Write it down 10 seconds. I'm moving forward. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on Next box is dhikr down here. Now remember dhikr is the only thing this is actually pretty remarkable The only thing in the Quran that Allah says to do a lot of It's so amazing We're never a dhikr as mentioned Allah says Remember Allah abundantly. So you may have victory. It's amazing.  Keep your tongue moist in dhikr. And by the way, this is important Because when you get tired in Ramadan and you know it's day 10 day 15 you get tired in Ramadan This is your fallback plan. Just hold those prayer beads It's your fallback plan my prayer beads It's your fallback plan and intend intention. I want to regain my energy I need to eat some ice cream You know, just don't go to salt and straw 13 dollars a pint. You know They have an endless line yellow leaf, right? This is your fallback Your fallback dhikr when you get tired in Ramadan. Just keep this And this is a tool to remind your tongue your tongue is a tool to remind your heart and then Your intention I need to regain my energy. Okay, so write it down here. Think high dream dream dream dream 500 1000 10,000 Okay, dream next now this box relates to your body Taking care of your body things about exercise things about staying healthy What what goals you do you need to do to stay healthy with your body? Right.  Are you going to do 100 push-ups a day? Are you going to do what are you going to do? Write it down here and dream dream be that noble elegant human being, you know, this person once said Uh, this person once said You know when that like person they're just like amazing and looks like what they did is a miracle It looks like a miracle from the outside. He's like from the inside It's actually he did the same little thing every day For for many days Allah's most of all the consistent even if small That's a hadith Allah's most of all the consistent even if small it looks like a miracle from outside from the inside He just did the same little thing every day for many days. Okay, so physical the exercise. Okay. I'm going to do 100 push-ups I'm going to walk 30 minutes. Okay Next intellectual, right What do you need to do to stay healthy mentally? What do you need to do? Do you need your zen time? You want to go do your meditation? You want to go do your your yoga?  I want to read this book this text I want to listen to this lecture. I want to listen to sheikh. Hamza may Allah bless him or any other teachers Okay, so I want to read this xyz Okay Now, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Good. We're moving forward now. Bismillah Now here is I want you to put Here is something very important now. We're taking these boxes and perforating them In half no not this one perforating them in half and now my brothers and sisters ladies and gentlemen We are writing the bare minimum The bare minimum and when I mean the bare minimum, I mean like I'm going to floss one tooth And this you're going to hang this up and you're not going to go to sleep before doing the bare minimum I don't care if it's one push-up I'm serious I am Very serious And I want you to write such a low number.  I want to make it high. No You pray of the devil. No, I want you to write a low minimum number Okay, so and my bare minimum number. Okay, I'm gonna read.   So we forget dads, right Now write the bare minimum go ahead fill that out, please write that down Okay now Bismillah our last box And remember I didn't fill out these dreams because if you don't know your own dreams Take a moment and figure them out Okay, but this last box it says contract and this comes from the Islamic tradition of our civilization And this is how we build habits and grow and and the steps are Number one you're going to choose One habit that you want to make or break And this is going to be your contract with yourself Okay, and we're going to make a contract and we're going to think about the consequence if the contract is breached Now i'm going to give you advice on how to choose the consequence because it's very important The remedies and how to cure the contract the breach of contract. So first of all the contract step one We said musharata. Okay musharata. You make a contract. What is it?  I have an unhealthy relationship with her. I'm going to call my mom every day Think of a habit. You need to make or break. I am going to You know pray fajr on time I'm going to x yz Think of a habit.  I have 60 seconds Commit to this contract. I am going to x number two is muraqaba So number one. I will x number two is monitor yourself That's step number two. Number three is musharata. Witness god Witness god because that's that's what everything is about musharata I'm going to write that in arabic letters transliteration witness god. He's he's observing you And number four, this is the important part muraqaba the punishment for breaches Now you have to choose what that is right now. For example, no coffee for the day The punishment is very important Because it can't be too severe and it can't be too easy. It has to just sting a little bit Because if it's too severe, you're not going to do it and if it's too easy then it has no impact no effect No consequence. So you have to choose something that's going to sting a little bit. I'm going to donate $100 to zaytuna college I'm serious. We're lying. I'm serious. This is just right on the bond. You couldn't continue it after But you're going to do this just right on the bond. So maximum you miss your goal every day. You donate it $3,000 Or maybe it's donate $20 to zaytuna college. Maybe you're really rich. It's donated $1,000 whatever, okay But you have to think isn't that stings a little bit no coffee For one hour when I wake up because you know, we're on that it's too severe Okay, no coffee for the first hour when I wake up or something like that Okay, so think of the punishment the muraqaba and do this and train yourself Because the greatest enemy is in between your own two sides. It's called our ego Adi adi wika bayna jambaik according to our prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam And this is our Ramadan road map on how to be a wali may Allah make all of us olyat Right and our soul is going to continue on after we die When we leave our money behind us when we leave our looks we leave the mirrors when we leave our Friends and we leave our family. We're going to take our soul with we're going to take our soul with us and so we're here To beautify our heart and we ask Allah For victory and we ask Allah for openings And we ask Allah to accept this gathering And we ask Allah to bless the organizers and to give them openings and victories and we ask Allah to We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to To answer all of our duha.   Allah. How amazing are you? Ya Allah, thank you for inviting us to islam. Thank you for sending us prophet Muhammad peace be upon him Ya Allah, we ask you to bring aid to the umma this ramadan Amin and send breezes that carry us forward and give us victory over our own egos Give us victory over shaitan and the whispering devil and give us an ability to see To see clarity in this time of confusion Amin and to see truth as truth and follow and see falsehood as falsehood and protect us from it And we ask you for everything good. Ya Allah that our teacher Our beloved teacher prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam that he asked you for and we seek protection from every harm that our teacher our beloved prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam that he sought protection from and send peace and blessings on him and his family And his companions and and all of those who follow him until the last day


Welcome to Knight Foundation Discovery, a weekly show webinar thing where we talk about arts and society and its role in our communities. I'm Chris Barr, director of arts and technology innovation at Knight Foundation. And this week, we're excited to talk about how we might reimagine monuments in our public spaces and beyond. And my guests this week are Paul Farber, he's artistic director and co-founder of Monument Lab and serves as a senior research scholar for the Center for Public Art and Space at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Design. And Karen Olivier, who's a Philadelphia based artist who works across a range of media, including public art, sculpture, photography and installations. She's exhibited her works at the Studio for Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of Art, MoMA, PS1 and many others. And she's an associate professor of art and sculpture at Temple University. Welcome to you both. Thank you. It's really great to have you here to discuss this topic. It's one that obviously is in our media at the moment. I'm sitting in Raleigh, North Carolina, as you know, where several Confederate monuments have come down in front of our state house. We've had other monuments in our city come down. And there's a public reckoning with monuments. And where I thought we might start, because you all have been thinking about these issues for a while, is just to grapple with what is a monument, how do we start first defining what a monument is and what its role is in our spaces and really tap into the question of why are we reckoning with them right now? So maybe we'll start with you, Paul. Well, first of all, I just thank everybody for being here today with us and see some names of folks who recognize and others looking forward to getting to know. And of course, thank you, Chris, and to the Knight Foundation for your ongoing support and it's great to be thought partners with you. And to be here with Dear Collaborator, Karen Olivier is always a treat. For Monument Lab, we define monument as a statement of power and presence in public. And that definition has kind of come out of research, curation, art making for the better part of a decade that was meant to account for the ways we think traditionally about monuments in bronze and marble, elevated figures that are kind of put above us or as spectacles. But we also wanted to know when we thought about monument, all of the ways that people powered commemoration, resistance, activation has informed our idea of history. Monuments, despite what some apologists for racial terror, for example, would tell us about Confederate monuments, monuments do more to shape the past than the past shapes our monuments. They're as much products of the moment that they're produced than they are about any kind of eternal statement on history. And so we've looked to the ways that everyday residents, artists, activists have left imprints on their city and history. And it is possible that whether it's visual artists, poets, musicians have powerful things to say. And we're as interested in what is officially known as a monument as to what's unofficially marked, because that's where the interesting interplay and also new possibilities for justice and democracy go hand in hand when we're thinking in public. Yeah, absolutely. I was also thinking about how monuments traditionally offer a single perspective which we know is false because it's supposed to be the universal and history is always multiplicitous and simultaneous. So there can't be this one representation of an event, because we know that can't be true. I was also thinking about what you were saying in terms of invisibility. I was thinking about Robert Musil, who wrote this quote, says something about monuments are, by definition, they become invisible. Despite their material weightiness, despite this spectacle, despite their intention and declaration of being permanent and being authoritarian, in a way we don't see them anymore. But I started to think, what does it mean if we don't see them? Is it because, on some level, that invisibility is put into the monument, the idea that if we don't see them, they become a natural part of the landscape, which could be almost like a repressive act, the idea of it being invisible. We think it's natural that this is. So what does that mean, the range from the status quo to this repression it represents? Yeah, I'm so interested in this tension between the idea that many see these things as eternal and permanent. And what both of you are pushing back on is monuments can and should be about the present. And I think a lot of the work the monument lab does is about prototyping, is about trying these things in public. And this is where YouTube came together to collaborate. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that work that you did together and the impermanent nature of that work. Yeah, no monument is permanent despite its aura, despite its weight, despite even the way we talk about it. Monuments require maintenance funds, mindsets to stay up. And when you take those things away, we're reminded monuments like any other kind of element in the built environment, but us too, no one's permanent. We can communicate across generations. We can communicate in long-standing ways. But I think it's important that and why I am so grateful for collaborations with Karen and with the other artists from Monument Lab is that they've pushed the idea of what's expected. And they're reminding us of that fact that there is no such thing as permanence. There's actually relationships and contingencies and investments that we make for stewardship and care. So just the story of our collaboration, back in about 2015, we started working on a citywide exhibition in Philadelphia that was a public art and history project. We partnered with Mural Arts Philadelphia, 10 municipal agencies, numerous community organizations, and our organization, which we co-founded with Ken Lum and a number of other really great researchers, artists, and organizers. We set out to ask a question to the whole city, what is an appropriate monument for the current city of Philadelphia? And we worked for a few years with artists on this project before it went live in the fall of 2017. And Karen Olivier, as an esteemed artist, we now think of her as a Philadelphian after many years of teaching in Philadelphia. We wanted to think with Karen about how she would answer that question in a park that was close to where she lived, Vernon Park in the neighborhood of Germantown. And then while our project took place in the five central squares of the city, including City Hall, right now square, neighborhoods were really important to this project. And just for those who don't know the area, Vernon Park marks a site going back to, of course, Indigenous time and Philadelphia pre-colonial, where the Lenape people who were the ancestral people of the land had a walking trail adjacent to where the park now sits. During the colonial period, the Revolutionary War was fought nearby, a key loss by General Washington's troops that is commemorated each year. And then since then, all kinds of other historic events, including former President Barack Obama speaking in that park a few years ago, and we asked Karen, what do you see in this park? What would you wanna build here? What's an appropriate monument? And I remember the site visit that we did a year before the project and just that's in the fall of 2016. This is before Charlottesville and they unite the right rally. This is before Dallas and New Orleans taking down Confederate monuments. But let's be clear, this is still years into the movement that we're seeing the fruits of right now, the full reckoning and re-imagining of monuments. And I just remember this moment when Karen, you said something to me that really stuck with me, which you said I'm really interested in bringing something to this park, but I wanna work with what is already here as a way to mark presence, but also absence. And that as a philosophy for monuments, like it really shook me and it stays with me today. And I'll pass it off to you to go from there. And I'm just gonna pull up for folks. I'm just gonna pull up an image while you're talking Karen so folks can see what we're talking about. I feel as though I'm always thinking about the what if, I'm always thinking about what is presented, what is here, but knowing that there are things that are always hidden for reasons of class, race, power, all those reasons. So I'm thinking all I need is already here. So what can I do that kind of reveals a history that we don't know about? And then if we think about this history, what does it mean to consider that with a present day narrative? So I was very intrigued by this, the Battle of Germantown Memorial, Memorial, which I wish I had an image of that as well. So that was about, that was a failed battle, the only revelational war battle that took place in Philadelphia. But in the far corner of the park was a monument dedicated to Francis Daniel Pistorius, who was an early German settler who led the first Quaker protest against slavery back in 1688. And I found out that during World War I and II, his monument was boxed over. So you think about what does it mean for that monument during those wars? And if you can kind of imagine why those were boxed over, because we're seeing the repetition of that today, the xenophobia in that way. So I thought what would it mean for me to transcribe history from one time onto another history? So I thought if I boxed over the George Washington Memorial, one, it speaks about two different men fighting for liberation. George Washington fighting for America's liberation for British rule while owning slaves. You have a German who's trying to become American who's fighting for blacks and seeing a population. So what would it mean to me to put these, these monuments in conversation with each other? I always think about history, how history isn't revealed to us kind of like on this platter, things get unearthed, evidence gets revealed. So all of a sudden this new evidence of what is highlighted or spot lit, all of a sudden makes this question of what we assume there are assumptions about what our history was. So by covering it, I felt like that was a way to kind of dispel or take away the hierarchy of monuments or the way we think about the y-axis. What would it mean for me to engage the y and x-axis? What would it mean for you to kind of see a monument that's never sitting still? The monument is never static. Every moment it is shifting because of the temperature, the climate, because of the people walking. So what would it mean for this thing to be unfixed, mutable, alive? Was it mean that I am reflected in the monument? So was it mean for me to have to become the monument? I'm the keeper and the protector of democracy. Was it mean for this to be another reenactment, very similar to a way that the battles get reenacted every year? It's another way of understanding history. Yeah, and I wanna just, I wanna add a note of profound appreciation for Karen's brilliant intervention and her broader work. Because I know that there are a few public art officers on this call and others who are part of the public art and history community cite her work, but also call Karen because she had an approach that I think could play out in any number of cities. This was, as we were talking about with like many invisible monuments, this monument is known, but it's kind of the everyday furniture of that space. It's not looked upon as a controversial site. It's not a Confederate memorial or clearly, right? It is dedicated to a lost battle of the Revolutionary War. But Karen asked, put into play this idea, we asked how monuments reflect us and reflect our values. And while making that literal by making a mirror that reflected everyone around, it was so sophisticated, it was so thoughtful. And we talk about community-engaged art and there's all kinds of different ways that that's measured or calibrated. Sometimes it's artists have a multi-year project where they get to know people in a community or they're of the community. There are other ways, but I will tell you, like when the monument was going up, before it ever went up, there were meetings with local artists and local community organizers that Karen is a part of and just the care that put in there was precise. When the monument was going up, the installation is not a neutral time either. And so I know Karen shared with me and I saw firsthand all of the conversations back and forth that's part of the artwork. And then once the artwork went up, we had all these plans, like what would happen if it was vandalized or what would happen, what people would say about it. And Karen, you said, trust people, trust that people will understand it. And not only was it never vandalized, but it was cleaned once a week by like a self-appointed conservator, a woman in the neighborhood who took it upon herself. There were prayer circles. There were of course selfies, but there were also other kinds of gatherings and just when you went to the park, sometimes you'd see it as the most important symbol there and other times it would disappear from the landscape. So that's why I say like site Karen's innovation and think of her as part of already, when we're thinking about what are our solutions in 2020, Karen's body of work shows us that over a long period of time. Oh. And Karen, I wanna see if I can ask you to talk a little bit about your work witness in Kentucky as well, because I think there are similar strategies happening within that work. And for folks who aren't aware, this work is being talked about in the New York Times. And I think we just shared in the chat, Karen's Washington Post op-ed around how her work witness works in relation to another mural in the same space. And if you wouldn't mind talking about that. No, I think it started with, well, okay, I'll speak about the work. At the University of Kentucky, there's a New Deal era mural by Anne Weisel-Hanlon, the Kentucky Inn, and the chargers to make a illustration of the history of industrialization of Kentucky. So looking back at the mural, of course it shows a sanitized version of history. It shows on stereotypes of a Native American, only one lone Native American, looking as though she's about to attack the little white woman, slaves in the center, black musicians performing. So you see, so they're things that are problematic, definitely problematic, but also it reveals obvious racism. And it's been contested for about 30 years. I was brought in, the president decided to cover the mural for a couple of years to figure out what the community, what we should do. And he'd spent two years of talking to the community in the meetings, the rigor I had to go through to get my proposal to go through. So it was pretty intense process, but it was great in a way. But I decided, why don't I, I don't want to add something new again. It's already there. Why don't I use what's there? So what I decided to do in the vestibule was to, in the dome ceiling, which means you think, why is there a dome ceiling here? I decided to go with it. And all the black and brown figures from the original fresco, I replicated them and put them there. So all of a sudden now, these anonymous subjugated figures are now seen, or they're allowed to exist without whiteness. It could also speak about being able to think of them in reference to Renaissance churches and Byzantine churches and the Gilded. And now I start thinking about George Floyd and his, the gold casket by relationship to that. And then I also, there were these four medallions in the space. And I decided to have porches of four underrepresented Kentuckians. And it's caused controversy because of course with the George Floyd, the movement, it was a moment where the president of the university thought of a quick thing to do. I could take, people have been complaining about this mural, let's take it down. And I just felt as though this was such an extraordinary time. This is not the time to make a rash decision. And I was thinking about the decision to make right up that happened after that HBO decision pulled down with a win and they're gonna reinsert it once there's context. And I was like, maybe think, okay, Confederate monuments have to go. Columbus statues have to go. Are there works that are in, that are, are there problematic works from the 20th century that could be useful? Are there any that are nuanced or that could be a tool or catalyst? And I thought maybe this is, we're at a place of higher education where this is the site where we can reckon with and actually go in and deal with the pain and the horror. So what would it mean to like kind of use these works along with programming and all this? So that's kind of like the background to it. But then the end, the president has kind of decided, instead of doing the hard work of kind of making, using these as two tools, he decided the quick symbolic act is to take this down as opposed to dealing with the fact that the faculty is saying, why there's so few black faculty? Why is there no this? Why is there no this? This is the easy one. And he's like, you already set it up to make this useful. Like artwork should be a catalyst. It's a space for discourse. There's a role for polemics. Like things can't be, it shouldn't be, it's not. And I said to them, I can't tie the waste problem up into both of you.  But this is like a site like James Bowman says, artists, the role of the artist is to ask the question, the answer hides. So this is to add a space for questioning, a space of pain. It's also like the protest, a space for healing. Absolutely, I love that. And this idea that art creates the space for discourse. I know Paul, that a lot of your work is around the critical examination of monuments. And I wonder if you could share a little bit about the field trip project that you all have started and the toolkit that can potentially help communities and others around the country go through these critical examinations and create discourse around what exists in the symbolic realm of our public space. Yeah, you know, inspired in part by the pandemic, inspired by the movement for Black Lives and the reckoning around monuments, but also our kind of years of work thinking with people about public spaces in public spaces. We wanted to create something called the Monument Lab Field Trip. And you know, this is a tough year profoundly to say the least, where there won't be field trips as we know them for schools. And so we thought, well, what's a way to imagine a Monument Lab Field Trip?  That there's no neutral public space, there's no neutral monument. You know, as I see a number of people in the chat and the Q&A point out, you know, that kind of legacy of trying to just add new layers on top without dealing with what's beneath it or what's behind it or who is missing, who's been displaced and what forces have displaced them. We thought, let's come up with an activity that anyone can download for free. That is, of course, kind of looks like it's for kids, but it's truly, it's all ages. We worked with two fantastic artists from Portland, Superfund Nature Adventures, who we met because one of the partners, Mike Murowski, is one of the kind of instigators of the hashtag museums are not neutral, along with Latanya S. Altry. And we started thinking, like what would a field trip be that could do the work in part to put out some tools for anyone? But we said, like let's imagine seventh graders, let's imagine I've done lead tours for amazing groups of retired folks, of social groups, and you work with what you have. And so the idea is, one, you can do it from home using virtual tools, but if you feel like it's a safe context to be outside with a monument and go and find one as a case study and really take a look at it, don't walk by it, don't drive by it, but really see what you can know and also what you can't know. And then we try to ask a question of, because so many monuments are to single figures of history, we know history doesn't happen because a white guy on a horse looks off into the distance, yet we settle for that. But we said, all right, every time you see a person on a pestle, come up with a list of the people who made their elevation and our knowledge of them in history possible, everyone who was associated with them, everyone whose work they benefited from. And of course the context here because many of our monuments are dedicated to people who also benefited from the institution of slavery is a thing about their role and exploitation. And there's not one kind of monument. So with this field trip, you may go to a site of Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson, but you may also see a monument to Harriet Tubman. And how do we think about collectives of people who are making history, not in one instant or flashpoint, but across time? How do we speak across generations? And part of this also is going to pick a place that doesn't have a monument, but try to imagine both with your speculation, but also with a little bit of research. What was there five years ago, 100 years ago, 400 years ago, especially to think about forms of representation that are often missing from our monuments, especially acknowledging not just the past of colonialism or systemic racism, but the way that those legacy shape our present. And then finally, there's a part to design and propose a monument and think about what that would be. And I think what we've already heard, we led a group talking about the field trip of high school educators in LA, New York and Mexico City. I know of a few graduate schools that are using this, but also fourth grade classrooms. And I feel like while we are definitely in the midst of a profound challenging moment, how actually can we have intergenerational conversations about all of the things, and Karen, you mentioned it, that it's both the symbols, but it's also the systems. Where, how do we resource our spoken values of inclusion? How do we acknowledge the systems of exclusion that are actually really important to talk about because they're still in operation? But how to put the fun in fundamental and bring that in with field trip so that it's something you can download and we'd love to hear from people who use it because it might lead to future chapters. And by having it on a piece of paper, you can break it and answer whatever question you want to and take it in your direction. I love this, because I love that it's proposing a what if, what would it mean to be reimagining what citizenship is? I can, and I love the idea of like having people think yes, a drawing could be the monument. I think about, I always think about that. It's supposed to be the most dispersed monument, the memorial, with the brass plaques in front of the homes of the Holocaust victim. I like the idea that could exist as this dispersed thing. It could be ephemeral. It could last for, it could be one conversation. I still think about this one conversation I had with a neighbor about that piece. To me, that was a monument in itself, even though it was fleeting.  That's the thing, the reimagining. We have a question from folks who are watching and this one plays into my space at Knight Foundation. Does tech play a role in this process? And if so, how can we use tech to reimagine monuments? And I know Paul, you have some experience here. Yeah, I mean, we've, we think about it a lot and for us where it's interested, we're interested in technology in context. So the analog and the digital and where they meet and even where they break down, that's the area that we're really interested in. We've had the great opportunity to be supported by the Knight Foundation, including the Art and Technology Prototype Fund to think about and experiment with augmented reality as one of those examples. And it's complex because I feel like technology in and of itself will not save us. In fact, technology has the propensity to harm us. So what is the practices, the values behind technology? How do we think about technology and context? And just to give an example, for Monument Lab's work, we are, we always are collecting data. It's messy data. It's data that we do the work of putting it into municipal repositories and open data systems, but it's handwritten paper forms that are entered manually and then translated into data and then can be utilized and have been to argue for new monuments, new historic markers. But I think back to like early on, we first started, we had a group of student advisors and I came to them with an idea. It was a very bad idea, but I'll just say what it was quickly. I was like, all right, we're gonna make an app that can design any monument and will have all the different kinds of features and it'll be on an iPad and it will take five minutes. What do you think? And this group of students said, no one has five minutes for you, they don't know you. Have you ever tried to use an iPad outside? What if it's raining? What if there's no power?  More heavy-handedly. So think of the whole experience as the interface. Think of when someone sees you from a hundred feet away and you're doing a project outside and they're looking at you for a month and they need to see from that far away that they feel safe, secure, and that's a welcome space for them.  So go to great lengths to show them it being scanned, show them a dot on the map and that has guided our principles where the whole interaction from the moment we step outside is the interface to the moment you see it in a data stream. And for me, that's the kind of thinking around technology, understanding can do harm, but it can also do good if you have relationships face-to-face or person-to-person that are part of the equation. So I think one final question as we come to the end of our time and this is to both of you. How do you think cities, governments, parks departments, folks who are concerned with public space, place-making enthusiasts, how do those folks work better with artists, with activists and communities to really bring to life new ideas around what monuments and public memorial, public memory is really all about? It seems like such a no-brainer. Have us included at the beginning. Don't bring me in. Here, we need a memorial for that. We need to, no, we should be part of it from the beginning and listen, right? And trust that our skills, our skills have the same amount of value as the organization that has the money. Like you have to trust us, you know? That to me is like listen and trust us and include us from the beginning. Yeah, I just echo that. Artists have their ear to the ground, they're prophetic, they see things before they come into the kind of larger recognition. And I've seen this go really well where someone says, we're gonna build a memorial we're actually gonna start from the same point. We don't know what that will look like. We have values that we need to work on. We need to think about that. Let's put our values in our budget and in the time that we spend. I've seen it on the flip side, where artists come in, where everything is cooked, where people clearly wanna check off a box that says community engagement. And I'll ask people when they're sponsoring community engagement or participation, what do you wanna learn? Do you have anything you want to learn? If you already know the answers and this is Performa, then you're gonna have pushback. So I think just to be clear, like it's especially at this moment where everyone is sacrificing around COVID and the economic crisis we have, investing in artists is not just money well spent, it's about your values and your visions. And so this is true of a public art office, but this is true of the sanitation department, it's true of the city manager, it's true of public property, it's true of schools, artists from the beginning through the middle and the follow-up there in the end are gonna push us and are gonna help us think in holistic ways that are about the reckoning that's necessary, but also the reimagining and the fostering connectivity. I really love that. And one other thing with that is like, and it's not resolved. That's right. And the other thing is done, it's not resolved, there's always a bit of perpetual resolution that should be happening, right? Because if we're open to that resolution, it will lead to the next. So it can't be like done, right? I think to that point, like I was talking about this recently, the rush is to not fix a problem to make it go away. The rush is to repair, to listen, to understand. And that's going to have long-term profound impacts for the way we, our democracy lives in public and the way we live together. Well, that's so wonderful. And with that closing thought, invest in artists, I think is the ringing headline. I wanna thank you both. Karen and Paul, thank you for joining us today. I'm sure there are more questions that folks have and you can find us on Twitter, you can find us on Facebook. This will be on Facebook Live, it's archived there. Folks want to watch back later. And I'm not sure that the chat is on Facebook, but there are comments on Facebook as well. And I'm sure we can engage there more if folks wanna head over to that venue or tag us on Twitter. Again, thank you so much for your time today and the great work that you're doing in our communities. Really, we can't express our thanks enough. Thank you so much for having us here. Great. Thank you, thank you, this was wonderful. Take care.


Joe Chico, what do you think happened to the 70 plus, I think 112 Joe Rogan podcast that have vanished from Spotify? Do you think Spotify removed them or Joe Rogan did it himself? I think Spotify removed them and I think Joe Rogan knew about it because I believe he's come out and apologized for using racial slurs, whatever that means, right, in some of the podcasts. So Joe Rogan, the worst thing you can do to a bully is given to a bully, right? Joe Rogan should know this. I actually didn't like the story where he said, oh, he was hired on to be a bodyguard, but not a bodyguard, to be a bouncer basically in a club and a fight broke out and he wasn't being paid enough to take on a task of stopping this fight and then he hopped into his car and ran away. To me, that was crazy because he took on a job where he was paid a certain amount of money to do something, right? Now, I don't know the situation. I don't want to trash talk Joe Rogan, right?   So he hopped in his car and put his tail between his leg and ran. And then he said that was my last day on job.  I fire his ass, too, if he worked for me as a bouncer, took on a job to work for me as a bouncer. And then when the time came to be a bouncer, he hopped in his car, ran away.  So his mistake was that apology. And then after that, I believe Spotify removed 112 now episodes. And I believe Joe Rogan has done a second apology saying, oh, sorry for using racial slurs. Now, I'm not going to follow this story along anymore, right? Because we know what the technocrats want to do. They want to shut everybody down. That's what fascists do, right? Boot on the face of humanity.  This is my podcast. I will say what I want to say, and I will do what I want to do.  And Joe Rogan can go on rumble disclaimer family has, has, has a position in CFVI, which is the holding company for rumble that's going to go on the markets, right? So I'm just gonna just kind of. But if I was Joe Rogan, I would go on rumble or in another platform go to Rockfin or whatever, start doing your podcast there live streaming there, set up your cryptocurrency donations coming in, cryptocurrency subscriptions set up, set your subscribe star, pay whatever platform you want, you got enough money after money, stand up for what's right, put the work in right now, reap the benefits of what humanity is about to bestow upon you until the end of your days because that respect brother you cannot buy. Okay, that's my advice to Joe Rogan.


Welcome to another edition of RCE. I'm your host Brock Palin I have again Jeff Squires from Cisco Systems the open MPI project and the author of the wonderful MPI performance blog Well, there you go. It is a fabulous blog and I truly recommend everybody read the pearls of wisdom the drip out of it Actually is a great place to kind of get a view into What's happening in the upcoming MPI standards and stuff you put comments on deep dark secret world of MPI And we have a link to that blog off of the RCE website at RCE dash cast calm And from there there are RSS feeds and the regular iTunes subscription link if you are into that sort of thing And there's also a nomination form where you can recommend people we should talk to or topics we should talk about And actually that's something about today Normally we talk about a software project today We're talking about Something all of us had to go through at one time who run a cluster We're talking to brand new high-performance computing sys admins Yeah, change it up a little bit today So it changed the focus off learning about new and interesting things in HPC But rather talk to people who are are new to HPC And and see how we as a community are doing about you know Welcoming new people and getting them up to speed on education and hardware and software and stuff like that because Brock You and I have been doing this for forever It's so easy to get jaded and to forget that you know, it's it's actually our responsibility to bring new people in so yeah Yeah, so we were supposed to have two admins that were nice enough to agree to join us But I'm guessing one is unavailable Probably because of a problem with his high-performance computing cluster as we've all been there We've even canceled one of these recordings before because I had a system not quite literally on fire, but it was very very close So our guests that we have on right now, and if our other guest becomes available We'll call him in later is André Gaultier from Yale if I have that right I So why you tell us a little bit about yourself and specifically Why did Yale decide to get into the high-performance computing realm? Well first off I've been in IT for over a decade I was a sys admin before that before HPC and I worked for a research lab that had Very Had Big time huge compute requirements that They were there they were constantly running out of CPUs and storage and they had multiple discreet servers and so I saw an opportunity to fix their their problem and and I Thought of HPC and that's sort of how I got started, but they're they had They had dramatic requirements for a CPU and storage and they were IO bound and They had many discreet servers. So There was constant manual load balancing going on so users shuffling from one server to another and it was an ideal So as you can see that that would probably be a good fit for HPC because they're a lot of their processes were We're not necessarily parallel, but sequential So they would do parameter sweeps hundreds at a time So it was perfect for HPC So what what department what kind of field is this in is this somebody who you know HPC just doesn't normally occur to like? When I first started in this lab, this is a computer science lab in at UMass that specialized in search engine So at the time Google hasn't Google wasn't on the scene and a lot of people weren't talking about HPC So it wasn't something it wasn't something that someone would think of instantly, you know as a solution a possible solution to their their dilemmas so So the requirements for this cluster then was the ability to have large IO and then to run Large numbers of serial jobs or or perhaps even embarrassingly parallel jobs. Is that right? That's correct and so I Knew that there had to be a better way of doing this Rather than manually shop shuffling users back and forth and moving data back and forth So I came up with an idea of stringing a few computers together and I started looking at Schedulers and things like that and then I sort of you know came across a lot of HPC stuff and Figured that's the way to go The being be an IO bound that that's a little different most people always think about What's your top lint pack performance and how many CPUs and how many cores do you have and what's their clock speed? Yeah, so I wasn't at that level of HPC yet, right? So it was more about how do I solve their problems so that they get Better throughput in their research rather than always waiting on IO or Having to move stuff around so it's more of a practical solution, right rather than I want just high performance So I'd also solve their problems of having down times on servers that people relied on so When I first started we had a bunch of big Big Solaris boxes, you know and people would log into that and do their research and run their processes and they would do that You know on multiple machines and sometimes they would hog more than one Sometimes one would be completely loaded and they want to move on to another one and so they would have to copy their data So I thought first we have to centralize these resources And NFS was way too slow for what they were doing So it seemed at the time and so So this sort of just came into fruition just over time as I thought about it's like okay I want to centralize the storage. I want to I want to create easy access for the researchers so they don't have to jump from machine to machine and I really was naive about HPC and then it sort of you know fell into it And I started putting together what our requirements were going to be for this thing Requirements did you end up with what what was the final set of things that you started shopping around with? Well, it had to be NFS for worst-case scenario At best case scenario it had to beat our local drives, which at the time were not that great So I knew I could do it So NFS, you know, I think back then I was getting like not really horrible performance I you know, we were just getting into gig E. So it was like 20 megs per second at first I think and the disc was not that great either local drives. We had Raid five scuzzy attached. I Don't remember what the RPMs were but we weren't getting more than 40 to 50 megs per second. So Our so the new infrastructure that would be in place could easily beat that, you know So that was my worst-case scenario And so I knew that NFS on a dedicated network could beat that performance if I couldn't get a cluster file system too So like I said before you're talking about your main focus here was IO bound because you understood your specific problem One thing we'd like to talk about is is your experience with vendors Getting quotes even knowing what to get quotes for or bidding for things. Here's what they always ask me Well, what's your application and we'll give you this set of tunings. I have 500 unique users on the cluster I run none of them run the same thing so Right, yeah, I know that's that's that's sort after So that was in the beginning right and so as we matured a little bit more into that space We knew exactly what our parameters were for the given processes So we you know for the next gen HPC that for our lab I had, you know, five megs per second per process And if that if we were to have eight cores that would be like 40 megs per second and If you had, you know X amount of nodes and you multiply that by the nodes and that's what our file system would have to deliver But after that, you know after it was a success where I was working other people wanted to mimic what we were doing So we started building more generic general resources and that's where you know I had to generalize the performance more Is the group you work with now a generic research computing resource for Yale? Yes, yeah, that's right. So it's a It's the HPC group for all of Yale So it's for all the research scientists at Yale So what kind of resources do you do you make available? Do you have a couple of large-scale general purpose clusters then? We do we have we have Two right now that are online and we have a third coming online soon that's in beta and Then we have multiple clusters that we support for specific groups So why did you go the route of having separate clusters and not like confine them inside a reservation concept? So you have one management domain or one point of login Yeah, so I find this is a common problem in academics when I was at UMass. We had this situation where I Wanted to create this common HPC group and I wanted or resource right? I wanted a common cluster. It was really difficult to convince other professors or groups that had specific funding from NSF to Co-mingle with other research There was political considerations. There was you know There was considerations will my resources be used available when I need them and then there was the Legal considerations right because it's grants from NFS or NSF. Oh, you know Can you actually share that with anyone else if it's dedicated for a specific type of research? That's funny because we're actually At the University of Michigan Ann Arbor where I work. We're currently fighting with this right now in the College of Engineering. We've done the monolithic cluster users get cluster nodes That they buy with their funds either startup funds or grant funds and they're bolted on but they are theirs Yeah, we're going to an allocation model and making sure that it's oh was it called section 17? section 14 something like that basically NSF funds can go towards it That's a lot of work that's still in progress and it's amazing how much work has to be done just to get past the grant process Before any you even getting a hardware bid on right and so are you cut out there for a little bit? So I didn't catch the first part of that statement. Oh Well, we're doing the condo model like we have one big cluster where everybody who buys knows they get bolted on But it's dedicated to them. We we put a Moab standing reservation on it and only they can use it But to us it looks like one cluster. It runs one software load. We have one loading system We have one resource manager one set of log. Okay. I like that. Yeah, so we're looking at a maybe an allocation based model in the future But anyway, what kind of hardware do you do you have in your in your two? Let's call it two and a half clusters, right? So you have two clusters and one more that's coming out of beta there What what kind of nodes how many nodes what kind of interconnects? What did you end up getting for your general-purpose HPC? So the two older clusters we have DDR I believe I be for for the network and Actually, we it split up. We have one cluster has regular gigi and the other one has ddr and We generally go with chassis with blade servers We find that that you know the power consumption is better the cooling is a little better The cooling requirements and A little bit easier to manage With the newer stuff, I'm more familiar with the newer stuff because I just started at Yale this year And when I came on board That was what we were gonna start working on the equipment. It's just starting to ride so We have two clusters Or I'm sorry. We have one that's general that has 128 nodes dual quad core Nehalems each with 32 gigs of RAM in each node and Their disk list and the Interconnect is quad Qdr I be and we're using the Q logic switch For the master switch and each chassis has a met a milanox switch And that milanox which is actually pretty interesting. It's it's a module that sits in the chassis that has 16 ports that face inward to the nodes or The back plane and 16 ports that face outwards to To the network It's kind of funny because the first system you talked about how you got started down this row was a IO bound serial farm Right, so right and that's I mean this but those after this was at UMass so You know, that's how I gained my background in HPC just over time and You know at some point I knew that I wanted to be in HPC. So I moved on to Yale, but When when I was at UMass after these resources Were put in place after these clusters were put in place the requirements changed, right? So it was no longer that way I mean it was that it was that way in the beginning where people would submit these You know 10,000 jobs that were parameter sweeps But as they evolved to use the resources better a lot of processes started to become more parallel and The world came to HPC By the time that I was getting ready to move on we were adopting a Hadoop So were there new things that you had to learn to come into the HPC like for example in finnaband and open fabrics and MPI particularly coming from a serial job farm and and parameter sweeps and things like that How high was the learning bar that you had to get to to effectively be able to deploy and understand and manage this kind of stuff? Yeah, actually, I thought about that and that's a good question. Um That was one of my major concern was the OFED stack The learning curve on that is huge I was and I that was I was sort of in the dark before coming to Yale So that was the thing I had to focus on and I really started learning more about IB as we had issues with it. So You know, you really don't Learn until you get your hands dirty But yeah, it's I found that dog thing compared to anything else you have to learn in HPC I mean the MPI OFED and I be are probably To me the most complex piece of the puzzle I'll tell you it's very complex software to just right right Even like I mean if you consider like scheduling you think that would be complex and that's not that's not trivial either You know, I I was I was an SGE shop moving to a PBS pro shop now moving to a torque Maui shop you know or move so and If you come from the SGE world, it's it's it was really difficult to wrap my head around PBS pro or torque Maui's Way of doing things because it's kind of different kind of different. Yeah, they're totally different right The way I look at it is SGE is like learning Java before learning C++ because When you start, you know, when you look at PBS pro, I'm sorry if you want you look at Maui and torque you have, you know, all these parameters and it's more broken down for you and It's I think it's a little bit more complex in the beginning To set up and configure correctly But it's more powerful in the end So in regards to your experience of you know Learning all this new stuff and able to deploy, you know, a large-scale system for general-purpose HPC Give us one positive and one negative in your experience You know something that worked out really well and something that was just difficult to To overcome or difficult to understand and learn and deploy Okay So I think what was really difficult for me was wrapping my head around Customization here at Yale Wasn't used to that because I you know, I would stand up clusters With rocks and so that's sort of a really easy way of doing it, right? So rocks you can you know throw in a DVD and hit go and Have a cluster up relatively fast if you didn't have to do too much configuration So I had to wrap my head around a lot of customization so that took some time and that was very difficult And I think that as an organization I would probably recommend to stick with something that's adopted widely So we're so we have moved to rocks on one of our clusters and that was that went pretty well We're looking at X cat as a possibility So that I think is very difficult and I think that would be difficult for anybody Coming into a new situation So that sort of speaks to standards So one of the things that went well well dig deep you got to find something for us Well, you know this setting up the storage went really well We went with a vendor this time rather than building luster from scratch So that it took no time to get that up and going So that was pretty cool You know and we also when we moved to the new clusters we moved to new scheduling So that was a challenge I but I I enjoyed that challenge and I got to learn a new piece of software which was torque Maui So I enjoyed that a lot and I'm still learning it. I still have a ways to go As far as the the Maui portion goes You know, and we're not we're not going into full Moab yet So you sort of have to work around the shortcoming to Maui But so But I in general I thought it was pretty exciting it was a you know, I got to learn a whole new layer of hardware You know, we had I think we had a lot of difficulty standing up our new clusters because we're you know pushing the cutting edge of new equipment With the QDR stuff and we had some bugs we had to work through there So, yeah, but all I the way I look at is all these challenges are interesting and fun to me, so So I should Admit here that I ran into Andre and offered him to be a guest on this show at Moab con where I assume you were That was kind of where you were getting spun up on torque and moab and Maui. That's correct And I can tell you as a place that uses Maui on two machines and Moab on our big machine. I Know it costs money, but go to Moab. Oh my gosh all the problems that have existed in Maui for so long And people are still working on Maui.  Yeah, and I mean like I have to solve an issue with floating licenses, which of course, you know Maui Maui does not have You know doesn't integrate with that, you know, it doesn't have an option for floating license. It doesn't integrate with FlexLM Were you the one who asked that on the Maui mailing list? That was you okay, it was funny So actually I'm the Maui list. Yeah Moving on from this so you ended up using all these things but also sounds like you're responsible for Loading and tying together and running your own networking How much integration do you guys actually do and have you found is successful integrating with like your normal central IT? Yeah, so I think that I so again this I think this is a academic issue as well Where Where traditionally your traditional networks are you know maintained by your network services and your central ITS departments or groups and so trying to pull that back into your domain is is is it's it's not easy to do and and so that's that again that has to do with centralizing our resources and and Making sort of one big HPC domain I think that that would be a goal of ours in the future But yeah, it's it's it's a challenge And especially when you you talk to other groups who really don't understand what it is that you do yet So, yeah I think that's a challenge that But I think over time HPC is really growing fast, right? So people are starting to understand what it is and what what you have to do and what the networking is all about And how important that is so the understanding is is is Is being disseminated out there? So you mentioned a couple of packages there already so, you know Moab and The scheduling and things like that what what other Software packages are using both middleware and applications and things like that and then they keep this kind of on the theme of integration here How well did they integrate into your existing environment? Like does your MPI talk to your scheduler? Though does your scheduler talk to your enterprise authentication system? Stuff like that. How well did that mesh together and how much did you have to glue and duct tape yourself? Yeah, that's a good question and because The open MPI We had to we use a lot of different versions of MPI and But we are primarily supporting open MPI and of course that all broke all broke when We Put torque and Maui in place so we had to recompile everything for the torque and Maui libraries, right? because Previously they were reporting to them. They were pointing to PBS pro To integrate with the schedulers properly And pitch as you know does not integrate with any scheduler and you have to you have to institute some sort of cleaning Cleaning up script, you know, you have to clean up the The Lurking processes on various nodes, so That's one reason why I would like to move away from M pitch now, how about other stuff like your your enterprise authentication and and Accounting and any other, you know central Yale resources, right? So that was a that was another concern and Actually, it wasn't too difficult for us It really really really was simple. We didn't have to worry too much about that Everything just kind of worked out of the box, so We got lucky there We you know, we use various we have our own central Authentication service that we point the PAM modules to and it's just not an issue. I can tell you at Michigan I'm the main user support software guy and I have a software library of a couple hundred titles of multiple versions of MPI Math libraries and then we have a bunch of commercial codes, too The end user commercial codes have been the biggest fight If they support a batch system because they wrap around MPI run if they have one They never let you just run MPI run. Yeah, okay, if they support a batch system. They support in QS I don't even know what in QS is.  Jeff yeah, I've never heard of that It's a much older batch system that I don't think anybody uses well no never say never I'm sure there's somebody still using it out there But it's it's one of these, you know Schedulars from gosh, I don't know the 90s the 80s I I never used it myself, but I remember it was kind of right before my time and so in my experience the whole process of Every applications way of how they want processes none of them use TM or some other TM's PBS is a Process launching mechanism. So you don't have to clean stuff up Um, so what do you do with these these multiple? instances of open MPI and And different versions of probably GCC and things like that. How do you maintain user environments? Um, we use modules We use modules. Yeah, that's what we do too. Yeah modules that are good. No modules. Good. Yeah, no Yeah, no, that's what we do too. I was just curious if you were doing that as well And I find that actually You know, I wasn't using that before at UMass before I came here when I really I find it useful and you know, it's funny I I found that Modules is kind of like the best-kept secret in the world. It tends to be used very heavily in HPC environments I haven't really seen it used elsewhere Even though it's not specific to HPC at all and the guys who developed it had nothing to do with H Well, no, that's not true. It originally came out of cray But you know, the people who do it now are not doing it specifically for HPC But this is still, you know, we are at least from my limited little view from my foxhole That's where I see module use the most. Yeah, I was really shocked that I've never heard of it before I came here It seems to be a very effective tool. I ran into an interesting problem where I One of our software developers Came across where a user was You know doing a bunch of system calls in his C++ code and that Was loading his environment every time so he was loading all of the modules so it is his System call was like four times more expensive than it was on his desktop computer And he couldn't figure out why I thought that was really interesting. Well, so this is a great transition Let's ask how, you know, how are your users reacting to these HPC environments because it's not only, you know Becoming mainline in the enterprise world is becoming a mainline in in academia as well But it's still a new, you know, it's still new to a whole wide range of people So how do you educate your users and how well do they utilize, you know, your HPC resources? Actually, you know, I can't speak too much about You know Yale's environment because I've only been I haven't even been here a year yet So and my interaction with the end user has been pretty limited until now so but they seem to be you know, they seem to catch on really quick and Before you know it, they really, you know, they really understand they really get HPC and You know, they're digging down an MPI and and doing all kinds of crazy things So I'm really impressed with how fast the user community here You know gets up to speed on HPC And we have we've always get, you know new users that we're just, you know, not expecting like You know people from forestry, for example So, you know, the word is getting out there and I think that's something we are now Moving towards is being Doing more outreach So I think that will be part of the the group in the future So I think that should be part of every HPC group because it's not it's not something that for For now, it's not something a researcher will have background in when they're you know When they want to do research and they haven't experienced HPC. I think in the future though I mean a lot of a Lot of universities are now starting to teach that how to you know, distribute your code and And even in you know, the general sciences, I think they're starting to teach that a little bit Yeah, I teach the introduction classes to PBS and even some concepts and MPI and I just finished out a round of sessions and I had 90 people come to those sessions At our institution alone and I do this three times a year It's three times a year. So once every semester and then once for spring summer. And so yeah, no training and it's amazing People's willingness to ask questions in person and it's what a great way to really facilitate research because we have to remember as admins We're not just running boxes and keeping our head down We're facilitating research in the wide words of my boss. He came up with this great thing We don't like computers. We like computing and if we have to have some computers to do it. Well, damn it. We'll have some computers I mean everybody wants to have the big box, but if it's not enabling anything like what are we doing Now Jeff your situation is a little different. I want you to have a bunch of computers and make sure this stuff works So then we can use it to enable science, but Yeah You're thinking we'll consume So Andre, let me we're running a little short on time here Let me ask you one kind of wrap up question here if you know knowing what you know now What would you recommend to somebody who's who's just starting down this path from from the admin Side, what should they learn? Where should they go look? What should they pay attention to? um That's a good question. Um I think I think you have to be a very curious person to be in this field and I think about I think you have to have a sort of a wide brush of knowledge of science Uh, or a general knowledge of science, right? So because there's so much Different types of research that happens on hpc. So Having the ability to speak the language Is I think a big help, right? So Uh, you know, I think when you're in college, I think chemistry is important.  Um There's a lot of writing that goes into our job, right? We do a lot of documentation a lot of communication with the end user And I think that's very important. Um So I think those things those those skills tend to get overlooked So I think that's I think to me those are important. I mean just your general curiosity, right? um, and your willingness to learn new things because uh, hpc is always we uh, it's always changing and and revolving and and or evolving and, uh, I think that if you if you're not, you know, a curious person, you just you're just not going to grow in this field. Um But far as of what to look at, uh, you need to know your networking. Um, you know get strong on your networking. Um, but, uh Infiniband is completely different than tci tcp ip of course and and There really isn't a lot that translates between the two of them. Uh, But if you can come across some ib resources, that's great Uh, so and then of course you're scheduling. I think that, uh, learning, you know, maui and torque are really useful. Um And also think about if you were to stand up on a club if you were to build your own cluster What sort of things? Uh, how would you automate that? You know, that's one thing you might want to think about you can look at rocks or how they do it But having an understanding how that works or how you would want to Approach that I think is a important thing too okay, well andre thanks for your time and um sharing your experiences with us and how you transition from regular it and what you found differently in the hpc research computing world and How you progress from a serial farm to a parallel Shared resource, um inside your entire institution One thing if you don't mind me adding a great resource I found of course is the mailing list for all the different pieces of middleware Um that we've talked about open mpi torque um sge. They all have these mailing lists have great resources of people Who have experienced lots of problems and of course there's always the bale wolf list, which is great for just standard standard guinea started questions So andre thank you very much jeff. Thank you for your time and this show will be up soon. Thank you All right, thanks


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