All right, everybody, welcome back to OpenShift Commons and to the Transformation Fridays Briefing series that I have the pleasure of doing with different members of the Global Transformation Office from Red Hat and a lot of the times Jay Bloom is my special guest and he is again today and I am totally thrilled to have him here for a topic about saying with the trouble and building systems we can care for. And just a little background on this. The last briefing we did in 2020, we did a sort of a review and riff on a number of books that Diane should read or that Jay recommended or books that we had referenced in past briefings over the past year. And one of them was Donna Haraway's Staying with the Trouble, Making Kin in the Chihousian. I think I'm pronouncing that right. And it was an unexpected book around the themes of systems thinking and I am so grateful that Jay did recommend it. And it may seem an unlikely book for systems thinking but once you dive into it and realize what it is that she's talking about and the interplay, the being with the odd kins and some of the words that she uses and reshapes for her purposes, it really does come to a point where it's talking about collaboration and the collaborations that we need to make to stay in the trenches, whether it's in our tech organizations or in our activism or any part of the world that we live in. And there was a wonderful quote at the beginning and I won't read the whole thing but I will read the last half of it. And she says, Staying with the Trouble does not require such a relationship to times called the future. In fact, staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful and even pass or apococococ Orsalvic futures, but as mortal creatures entwined in a myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters meaning. And with all of the stuff that's been going on over the past four years and the transitions and everything we are, a lot of what she says really resonates with where we're all probably at and thinking about taking our lives forward and our organizations forward. So I'm really thinking that today, I encourage all of you to read the book. It's also on audio. So you can audio listen to it as well. But Donna Haraway is one of I think one of the great thinkers on this topic. And I'm really looking forward to this conversation with Jay. So I'm going to pause and stop sharing and let Jay introduce himself and take the topic away. And again, grateful for the introduction to Donna Haraway and also the movie that was made with her and in collaboration. I'll find the link to that too. That was an awesome treat over the Christmas holiday. So welcome back, Jay. And the stage is yours. Give us your interpretation of this wonderful book. It's hard to do justice to something like quite this big in a brief discussion. And I also, you know, probably want to say before we start, you know, the topics that Donna Haraway is trying to address, certainly, I think are applicable to things like organizational transformation and stuff like that, but also should not be minimized in any way. I mean, I think they're very significant topics. So I will be talking about them in the context of the work that we do. And I think that they give us some tools in some ways of thinking about that work, but we shouldn't we shouldn't minimize them or trivialize them at the same time. Can you guys see my my slide there? We can. We can see the whole slide, including the the sideways. So you're not quite in present mode yet. Yeah. If I'm going to present mode, then I will not be able to then don't don't worry about it. We can read the slides. Yeah. Okay. So Haraway is an interesting character, an interesting thinker in a lot of ways. And I want to introduce some of her thinking really quickly, and then kind of contextualize what she's thinking about a little bit. So Haraway initially was quite famous for having written the cyborg manifesto. And in it, she is trying very hard to to kind of recontextualize this idea of being a cyborg. At the time she's writing this. She's very interested in science fiction, close collaborators with a bunch of science fiction writers. And she's interested in the idea that kind of cyborgs are always at the time that she's writing kind of war war machines, humans that have been embedded with kind of weapons or mechanisms to, you know, be aggressive, angry, war making things. And one of the things she becomes interested in is whether or not she can repurpose the idea of a cyborg from a feminist perspective. How how would a feminist look at a cyborg? What would it be mean to be a feminist cyborg? And part of the reason she's interested in that is because she like like many other philosophers have kind of a theory, a way of thinking about kind of humans' relationships with technology that looks like cyborg. Like it looks like like humans regularly extend their themselves by attaching themselves or becoming entangled with technology, with material artifacts, with artificial systems, both that enable them to do things but also commit them to doing certain things. So in particular humans who become cyborgs then become committed to caring for the machinery that now is part of them. And so Harway spends a good deal of time kind of thinking about this way in which humans become entangled with technology and what that might mean for the way we kind of think about ourselves. And other philosophers have talked about these ideas. But one of my favorite is Stiegler. And Stiegler kind of goes all the way back to the the myth of Prometheus and suggests the myth of Prometheus and Epimetheus who Epimetheus is Prometheus's brother. So and this will kind of like start towards some of the interesting discussions I think. Prometheus means forethought and Epimetheus means afterthought. And the gods basically give Prometheus and Epimetheus who are the Titans, who are Titans, the responsibility of creating humans, like how or creating all the animals on the planet. And Prometheus kind of like goes away and leaves Epimetheus alone for the while and Epimetheus makes humans. And one of the things about Epimetheus is because he's afterthought. He forgets to do things. He doesn't plan ahead, doesn't think about things carefully, doesn't forethought things like his brother. And so he makes humans without fur, without a way of protecting themselves against the cold. And so Prometheus gets upset about this. And so he goes and steals fire from the gods. And and originally he meant to steal kind of the ability to be congenial to each other to like have politics. But instead he steals fire because he can't get to the other thing. And he delivers fire to humans. And this is the first technology. This is the first artificial system that's that is created or is that enables humans to do something they shouldn't be able to survive in the cold. Now they can survive in the cold. But then they become committed to it, right? Of course, all of this stuff kind of plays out in different ways. But Prometheus eventually gives birth to Pandora. And we get Pandora's box and all sorts of interesting ways of thinking about technology and the way that technology allows humans to do things, but also commits them to do other things.  So when we think about these ideas of technology and the interactions with humans, we get different ways of thinking about our relationship to technology and what technology is like. And there's three big ones that I like to talk about. I got this from one of my other PhD students that I worked with, Dr. Ann. I've got a space on her last name, damn it. Anyway, so the three are this. Human-centered design, cyborgs and accurate network, right? So these are three different ways of thinking about the relationships that humans have to technology. So the first one is like what almost everyone thinks about and it's human centered. And the idea of this is that there's lots of human beings and each of them is an individual agent in the system. They control all the agency in the system and they make decisions. They make good rational decisions about things and therefore they can decide to do things like make a hammer, but they use the hammer. They do things with the hammer and the agency is with the human being. And therefore the hammer doesn't work well or the hammer doesn't work quite right or there could be a better hammer. It's because the technology isn't matched well to the human, that somehow you could make a better hammer because it would be more ergonomic. It would fit in your hand better or it would have a better balance or it would somehow interact with other technologies better. But all of it has to do with the centering of the design activity of the technology of the artificial system on matching the technology to the human's cognitive abilities or physical ability. So it becomes human centered. In which case technology is inert. It's objective. It doesn't have politics. It doesn't have agency. It doesn't do things. Humans do things with technology. And you can hear this kind of idea, this way of thinking in things like guns don't kill people.  The idea is that guns are inert. They don't do anything. There's another version of this kind of way of thinking about designing and material interactions and technology interactions. That one's from a guy named Bruno Latour. Latour and Harway consider themselves kind of co-travelers. They work together. They talk together about similar things. But they have subtly different opinions. Recording has started. They have subtly different ideas about how this kind of works. And one of the things that they say is this. One of the things that Latour says is this is that things, objects, technologies, hammers, guns, nails, all the things around you have agency or they are agents. And so there's a little bit of rewiring of what we mean by agency. So agency in a kind of humanism perspective means the ability to make decisions. In Latour's world, he wants to say that technology has agency because it can influence your decisions. It can change what's possible. And so he would say something like guns have agency. And how do guns have agency? Well, if I were locked in a room with someone I was having a fight with and there was no gun in the room, the fight would emerge in a certain kind of way. We'd probably spar with each other verbally. Maybe we would try to talk each other down a little bit, whatever. But if there was a gun in the room and I felt threatened by the other person, the interactions would be very different because I might be worried that he's going to grab the gun or he might be worried that I'm going to grab the gun. In which case the gun, the presence of the gun changes the social interactions that I'm having. It changes what's possible. It changes how I imagine the system is unfolding. And therefore, I react differently. And therefore, the gun has agency.  You are merged with technology as a unit, as a system where the human and the gun become kind of a greater system. But also there's this lack of, it's a network theory. So there's not an entanglement. There's a set of relationships and different relationships produce different kind of outcomes or different expectations of outcomes. Haraway is the third version of this. And one of the things I'll say about Haraway is Haraway also considers herself kind of a co-traveler with Isabel Stengers. And Stengers has an idea that she calls cosmopolitism. And what she means by cosmopolitics is this idea that, so Cosmos is the opposite. The cosmos is the totality of all localities. So in Greek thought, this is the idea that you are cosmopolitan localism.  So there's the locality that you are part of. You govern Athens as a member of the polis of Athens. But you are also a member of the cosmos, which is all of the Greek world. And in this way you get this idea that there's multiple centers of governance. There's like multiple places that are being governed differently, that are evolving differently, that have different ways of being, different ways of thinking about what good and bad are, different ways of negotiating. And that part of that is because they're located in different places. Some places are on islands, some places are on land masses, the places are near the sea, some places are near the fields. And therefore the politics and the relationships that people have kind of emerge from those things. So Isabel Stangers wrote a book with Ilegine Prigigine. And Prigigine is one of the forefathers or one of the fathers of something called chaos theory. And chaos theory is roughly deterministic complexity theory. And what he kind of is talking about with Stangers in this book called The Air of Time is the idea of complexity and multiple interactions and indeterminacy and the way things become entangled with each other in order to support each other. But also that they stabilize their interactions with each other but that they can't be separated. When they're separated, when the parts are separated, the complexity goes away and so do the emergent properties in the system. So Harway is interested in this kind of theory of complexity, specifically this kind of sense in which complexity, calm plexus, with plecture. Plecture means weeding or entangling. So complexity is with entanglements. She's interested in this idea of thinking through a way in which things are entangled with each other. So if human sector is like agents completely independent of each other, an actor network is agents that are in a network with each other. They have relationships with each other. Cyborgian theory, Harway in theory, this level of complexity now is that they're entangled with each other. So that the cyborg's relationship with technology is not temporary. It's embedded. It's in their body and it extends their existence in a specific kind of way. And this stuff leads into ideas by people like Eddie Clark or William James, who we kind of describe what we would call 4E cognition or ecological cognition, where the idea from James would be if you're a blind man and you have a walking stick, you don't use the stick as in a tool.  It is part of your body now. It's part of your way of sensing and being in the world. There's really interesting actually scientific tests around this. One of my favorite ones being that they will take someone have them put both hands on a table and they'll take a hammer and they'll hit the table with the hammer, not the person's hands, hit the table with the hammer so that the person can feel the vibrations of the table. And then they'll say, okay, can you take your left hand down and take the left hand down. And then they'll put a fake left hand there. So the person now looks down and sees what looks like two hands again. And then they pick up the hammer and they smash the fake hand with the hammer. And people have a distinct sense in this experiment of pain that they've been hit by the hammer, right? So this idea that we have these kind of extended sensations or imaginations or ways of thinking about the world in which we're extended seem to be not just kind of like a metaphor, but actually the way our minds work with the world. And Andy Clark would say, you know, there's other examples of this, the way in which he actually has a book called, We've Always Been Cyborgs, and which is excellent, people should read it. And what he would say in that book is, everyone's a cyborg, we all extend our minds using technology all the time. And he says, you know, the really simplest version of this is if I give you a difficult enough mathematical problem, like, let's say six figure addition, or six figure multiplication or division, you'll almost certainly take out a piece of paper and start doing the math on a piece of paper, or, you know, obviously a calculator nowadays, but let's say you only had a piece of paper. And what he says is that the thing to imagine is that you're actually using the paper to extend your mind's ability to remember. It's an extension of memory, so that you can remember where you are, and you can manipulate this complex set of symbols by extending your memory. And so, in which case, the paper has become part of your mind. It's become part of the way you think about things. So, Haraway is very interested in this initial phase of her career, how cyborg theory, this entanglement of humans and technology, kind of plays out in relation to these other theories, I think. So, I also quoted the same quote that you did, so I won't reread it, but the idea here is that we don't necessarily need these, actually this is a subtly different quote than you had, so maybe I'll point out and do it a little bit more. One of the things that often we get when we kind of think through time or through time ideas is that we need to do two things. We need to understand how we got here, and so we need to kind of trace history and understand the decisions and manifestations and materializations that got us to our present location, and so we can understand where we are, and then we also need to have an idea of where we're going. We need to have a future, we need to have a goal, we need to have an imagined future, right? And for Haraway in this particular version of time, she wants to talk about an entanglement of time, and so that the past and the future are somehow entangled in the present, and the way I like to try to explain this is this, I think for Haraway the past is kind of like a forcing function. You materialized or made decisions that are pushing you into the future, you can't stay where you are, but the options that you have in the future make you have to make decisions, you have to choose whether you're going one way or another, and so the present, the present that she is talking about, I think here, is a sense in which what questions are we currently trying to answer? What's the problem that we're trying to solve right now? What is the trouble that we're in? And where the trouble is an interaction not just of the past, but an interaction of the past with the future, and to bring in a little bit of other kind of theorists, it's the agency of being able to change the future, be able to kind of nudge the future in one direction or another, that's the trouble that humans end up being in. Humans end up having to change the natural progression of things. Haraway probably wouldn't like to use the word natural there. So one of the ways to think about it is that without agency, without humans involved in a situation, one would imagine that the situation would simply unfold towards a future that would be somewhat mechanistic, that it would be kind of in in philosophical terminology, it would be a materialistic determination, it would be a deterministic system. Humans, however, because they are involved, kind of embed their decisions and desires and wants and concerns about the future, they embed them in material systems in their technologies, and they become entangled with those materials and technologies moving into the future, so that their future is not simply a set of kind of billiard ball deterministic materialist systems, but instead they're kind of entangled in human desire and the materialization of that desire, and therefore they're trying to figure out how to entangle themselves or disentangle themselves from those things. And so this leads I think for Haraway to want to expand the ideas about which agents are important and how they're important, so that we get this odd kin concepts that she starts talking about where we get an idea that it's not just humans, that it shouldn't be human-centered, it should be kind of centered around all life on the planet for Haraway, where you get other species and the recognition of our entanglement with other species. I think one of the easiest ways to think through that for a lot of people nowadays, just because of the news, is the idea of human entanglement with bees. So we all kind of have an idea or a sense, I think if you kind of follow the news, that bees could go extinct, and if bees go extinct it's not just that we won't get honey anymore, it's that bees are the primary pollinators of most of our crops, and things like corn require pollination in order to produce corn, you can't just plant corn, the corn has to pollinate itself. And so we're kind of like weirdly entangled and enmeshed in a relationship with this other species, in the same way that we're kind of weirdly entangled with our technology, like in a cyborgian theory, right? And then to layer one more thing in there to make sure that we kind of wrap up this other set of theory in really quickly, we're also in a cosmopolitical relationship with these other agents, where like I'm an Athenian and someone else is from somewhere else in Greece, we don't have to end up having the same local needs, desires, wants, goals in order to pursue these things, we don't need a shared concept of the future. What we need is a shared understanding of the current problems, the current ground, the way that things are, so that for Harway when we talk about staying with the trouble, part of what we're talking about is staying, not trying to negotiate the future, not trying to like figure out what we all want together, and somehow like collapsing the future into one desired shared objective goal, but instead trying to figure out what we all need in order to be able to pursue our own goals as members of a cosmopolitical system, right? And so in that way we get this idea, I think, that what for Harway what she becomes concerned with is the establishment of common ground versus common goals. And I think in resilience engineering theory, in a lot of complexity theory that has to do with kind of human systems and human interactions with technology, this idea of common ground becomes more and more important. And I have this weird way of saying it when I talk about it that I think can be useful. A lot of human-centered design and a lot of ways of thinking through how do we know what to do next have to do with identifying a future goal, some designing towards something, and giving everyone to agree that that's the thing we should do, that's the goal, that we should all align around that. And if we don't align around that, we can expect to have kind of lots of divergence, you know, like chaotic behavior and that it will become difficult to achieve that goal. But it seems reasonable if everybody's not aligned to the same goal, you might not achieve that goal. One of the ways to kind of think about the way that common ground works is that it inverts that question. Because what it says is what is the current condition? What is the ground from which we designed from? What are we designing from in order to achieve a lot of potentially different concerns, right? Like we all might have different ideas about what we want the system to be capable of. So you could think about like, again, I hate to trivialize things too much, but like you can think about the idea of dev developers and operators, dev ops. One of the ways to think about it would be that we need to be aligned to the same goal and understand exactly what the system should do in the future and only then will we design and create that system. The other way to think about it would be we all have different goals. The developers want to do certain things. The operators want to do certain things. They want certain properties out of the system. The question then becomes for common ground, what would be required by both parts of the system to achieve their goals? And that becomes the ground. So we're designing from as opposed to designing towards. And the result of this is that, again, we start talking about things like the disposition of the system, the likelihood that the system will unfold in certain ways, the likelihood that the system can or can't do things. And if we think about it in transitionary terms, all of these ideas about designing from then start saying things like, if we want to do something in particular, how might we do it? And what are the different options for doing it? And given the disposition of the system, given the likelihood that the system will do one thing versus the other, when we look at our options, can we pick one based on minimizing the amount of effort required because the system is more disposed towards certain options than it is other options in order to achieve longer goals. So this idea of designing from conditioned consequence thinking is another way of saying these type of things or the ideas of common ground, I think have a lot to do with what Harway wants to talk about here. The idea here, another way I've said it in the past is that huge amounts of like strategy, strategic design, futureing, you know, all these like strategic design activities inside of organizations and firms are frankly escapists. They want to imagine a future without starting from where we are right now. They want to escape the current problems and imagine a better future, as opposed to simply continuously engaging in the most pressing current problems, the trouble that we're currently in, and staying here as opposed to escaping to an imaginary future in which the technology kind of solves all of our problems. One of the things to kind of say there is that for Harway in particular, technology never solves all the problems. It might just move the problems from one place to another, but it doesn't solve the problems. There's no like magical technical fix in the future in Harway's mind. And so one of the other things to really quickly grasp onto here when we think about this stuff and try to think through it with Harway's thought is the difference between like this idea of dynamic balance and what's called anti-foundationalism. I'm actually not convinced that that Harway would use the term anti-foundationalism, but we'll talk about that at some other point. So when we think about this, dynamic balance is this idea that entanglement, the way in which the systems interact with each other, the way in which they play off of each other, means that there's not a complete degree of freedom in the system. Can I freeze? Can anybody hear me out there? We can all hear you out here. Yes, you're fine. Keep going. Great. So there's not a complete degree of freedom in the systems. The interactions between the system create a movement of the system where the system doesn't stay still or doesn't stay completely stable, but it constantly rebalances itself so that the system is reproduced in a way that one can recognize that the system that we saw yesterday is the same system today, even though maybe all the parts significant amount of parts are different or different pieces are involved, still same system just in a different form. And this idea of dynamic and balance becomes really important in relationship to the second piece, which is what's called anti-foundationalism. So foundationalism is just this idea that agency, this idea that we keep on pointing at, that there is an agent and the agent does something requires the pre-existence of the agent. Like there has to be a foundation to the thing. And these ideas have to do with the way in which epistemological systems kind of think their way through things. And any foundationalist system basically says that the agent doesn't actually have to pre-exist its actions. The agents can be created in its actions. And in this way, there's this weird thing that Haraway does where she kind of talks about it's not necessary to completely understand the past. What she means, I think, by that is that there is no need to trace your current decision back through a causal chain to the beginning of time. There's no need for that. There's no foundational decision that deterministically, like a ping pong ball, ends up causing you to make the decision you're making right now. There's no foundation. Instead, there is an emergent complex interaction of things that open a significant amount of possibilities. And those possibilities are offered through this set, through this interaction of a complex system that creates a dynamic balance that opens a phase space. And then your decisions contribute to the future complexity of the system. But they only kind of contribute to the future complexity of the system in that kind of like a butterfly wing kind of way. It would be impossible to trace your decision, particularly in the long-term future. It's only that it nudged the system slightly. So there's no foundation. There's no sense of the causality that you would think of in like a Newtonian kind of way. So that when we think about kind of cyborgs and we think about cosmopolitical systems involving multiple species and multiple technologies and multiple centers of power, one of the things we end up having to kind of think through is that there is no determinism to it. There's only kind of an unfolding of it. And that we need, because of that, because of this constant unfolding, we always kind of have to return to, well, what's the system like now? We have to return to this concept of the present or staying with the trouble constantly. I think it's interesting to think through. And there's all sorts of things I could kind of rant about here about kind of compressive time and our misunderstanding of what it means to be present. And there's all sorts of really interesting things to be said about like, you know, Donna Holloway likes to say things like, it's important to be fully present, but I don't actually think that she means that in kind of like a Buddhist sense of being fully present. I think the Buddhist sense of detached detachment of being fully present, but yearning for a detachment or a lack of, you know, commitment as a form of enlightenment, I think for Holloway, she thinks that in fact it's the opposite. Staying with the trouble is an acknowledgement of our entanglement with the present, our entanglement over time, our inability to extract ourselves. And for her, I think this idea of staying with the present or staying with the trouble is about authentically engaging in the challenges that we are currently facing as opposed to trying to escape them. So two more slides and then I'll stop talking. We get this idea then of process theory versus objective reality or senses of objectivity and independence. One of the kind of things to think through here is that Holloway kind of comes from a set of theory that's called process theory that goes back to Whitehead and to Deluz and others who want to think through kind of how things become ongoing entanglement, how things kind of are always becoming. One of the weird ways to say this is that for Holloway and for process theorists in general, nothing is ever complete. There's no way of saying what something is because it never is. It's never fully there. It's always somehow entangled in the future and the past. Parts of it are always missing and that has to do with commitments and things that we've done and committed ourselves to in order to create the stabilities and the ideas we have about identity and who we are and what we want out of the world. All of those things require imagining a future and committing and making things at least trying to recreate or reproduce things in a way that kind of pulls us into the future because what we want to be, what we believe we are, is a commitment to continue to be the way we imagine ourselves and that is a future state. It's not a present state. So we're never fully there. We're never fully realized. We're always kind of smeared across time in a way and that idea is an idea about expanding what we have a sense of as being present or being becoming. Whereas objective systems have more to do with kind of like interdependence, instead of interdependence, instead of entanglement, it's about the way in which objects are separate from each other and can be evaluated as being unique individual things in the world. And these two theories, they go way back in time, frankly. Heraclitus and Promenides argued that you never step in the same river twice, which is a whole interesting conversation to have at some point. And Promenides argued that time doesn't exist, that everything, time is an illusion. There is no such thing as time. The entire universe is fixed. So the idea that you don't step in the same river twice to Promenides is roughly nonsense. So these ideas, these arguments have happened for a long time. And I will tell you just really quickly, in general, Promenides has been taken more seriously than Heraclitus, by most scientists and physicists especially, and Heraclitus is kind of considered to be a little bit nonsense at times. So last thing kind of call to action part of this. For Harway and for a lot of people who are fellow travelers with Harway, she has this idea like there's a fine line between acknowledging that we're in trouble, that there's problems. We have problems that we have to solve as humans, as agents in the world, as odd kin, as entanglements with the rest of living species on the planet. But that we can't, in her terminology, we can't succumb to an abstract futurism. We can't embrace this escapism of imagining that if we just can imagine the right future and align everybody against that future, that we will escape because we'll know where to go next. And so we can't do this escapism, but we also, on the other hand, we can't go to the past and say all of the decisions that we've made mean that this is a f**k big complete, that it is hopeless, that there's nothing we can do about it, that kind of the environmental crisis, it's too late now. We just have to give up. So for her, that is a little bit of this interesting positioning of we can't escape into the future and we can't excuse ourselves from being entangled with, facing up to our problems in the present by escaping to the past. We can't just say the past determines the future. We have to work together to escape these two extremes, escapism and sublime indifference. And so I think, again, the context that Harroway is talking about these things in is kind of environmental, global, like very large timescapes. But I think these same ideas about sustainability, engagement, understanding, like map some of these ideas onto things like technical debt, organizational debt, the way in which we feel like the technological decisions that we've made in the past are over determining the decisions we can make about our futures so that we feel like the system is in more control than we are and that we give up, that we resign ourselves to those things or the way in which kind of for Harroway, in this cosmopolitical conception, that somehow you have to create a completely aligned ideal future state in order to make good things happen in an organization as opposed to simply having some conception of the common ground that we need to recreate because the common ground already exists. The common ground, the way that we currently are as an organization is based on a set of reproducible ground technologies, ideas, theories about the future in the past that we share. That's the way that the organization kind of sticks together and reproduces itself. So if we want to change our future, focusing on changing the common ground and our common understanding of the technologies and ideas and concepts that we have about who we are and what we're able to do as opposed to reducing autonomy of teams, we can recognize their interdependence and recognize their multiple concerns for what they want as not being the same and still create common ground and stay with the trouble that we have with reproducing that common ground as a way of moving forward through transformation. So I think that's me ranting for a while. And it was a beautiful rant and I really love it. And actually if you go back to the last slide just for a second because I think that quote and I really what I appreciated, I think the most about this book is as you teased out a little bit about staying in what it means to be present and the entanglements we have and having just come out of our 2021 three-day planning meetings and listening to people across the organization having their past baggage and technical debt and trying to come up with a common ground for all of us to move forward with. It's really a good way. It was an enlightening way for me to start thinking about how to move our organizational forward and to find that common ground and where we are all entangled with. And for me one of the things that really, and this is why I like this quote that you ended on, is one of the things she talks about is the apocalyptic despair that many of us may feel at times about global climate change or even though we're working towards something we still, we may publicly present like oh this is, we're going to make the world a better place but we may succumb to in our private talk oh it's never going to happen. So she really creates a space I think for hope and moving forward even in times where there are a lot of things on our plate to try and work out an unentangle or create new conceptual ways of being in there. And also one of the things that I really appreciated about her was she, I think she puts it our comic faith and techno fixes at one point and they could be secular or religious or something else and that somehow technology will come to our rescue and so that for me was really, but she's not also saying go away technology. She's acknowledging that there are lots of situated technology projects that are very important that are going to help us solve some of these issues and help, but it's also for me the important thing was the being with and the collaborations that we have to make in all of our entanglements and in across our organizations whether we're in you know a technology corporation like Red Hat or something and we have multiple silos and lots of products and end users and partners and trying to bring all of those folks together and recognizing them for the entanglements that they are. I just thought that was just a lovely way to think about the work that we do on a daily basis as well as some of the things that we need to do in the bigger world and how even the technology tech that we are in is entangled with the rest of the greater world and our mission at Red Hat and other places and how that is entangled with everything. It was as Joe was saying completely mind-blowing the book and so I encourage everybody who if you haven't read it, it's a great read. So if anyone any further commentary I would happily Mark and other folks to unmute you and let you rant on, but that was for me it really resonated the collaborations and the being with and odd kin. I mean once you accept some of the new vocabulary and new rewording of things it really starts to make a lot of sense and is a nice framework for moving forward in you know this world that is 2021. Absolutely.  So a grumpy optimist is someone who's not satisfied with the way things are, but part of the reason they're not satisfied is they know that they can get better and so you know it's not falling for either side of it.  An interesting example of it for me was yesterday and I don't know you know I know you're on Twitter and everything, but the problem with because I come from an open source community background so I'm always watching for these things that happen out there and Elastic changed the licensing on their projects and Elastic and yesterday AWS announced that they were going to make to create a fork of it and create a truly open source project of it and you know that that is a good thing right but because of all the baggage AWS comes with for around open source and contributing there's a trust issue right and the wonderful thing I got to do on some Twitter stream was quote back something from Haraway just about being in the in the prep being able to be in the present and think of this is a good thing they're doing right we need this right we need this open source project to live on in an open way from my point of view I'm not sure what the rest of everybody in the world thinks of but that by being present and not thinking about not that we deny the any evil that someone has done in the past or may do in the future or what their reasonings are for it but because of the entanglement of their products and their offerings and their end users they didn't have to do this but it was done and it's a good thing and so being able to let go of and I you know we do this all the time in in tech we get pissed off at our competitors or a foundation does something or you know to accept something doesn't but being able to be really present with the people that we are in our entanglement with and to truly collaborate and see when we can work together it's just really again like not foreclosing a future possibility because it may pass transgression right yeah that that's the trick is to say like listen if you want to say that amazon will not do this because they don't really know how to do it and you refuse to let them do it before if you foreclose that future you assure yourself that it won't happen yeah on the hand you know if you open this possibility if you open the space that they could become more like what you'd like them to be like and that this is maybe the first gesture towards making that future a possibility then you would want to encourage it not discourage it yeah so it's uh so I thought it was um it was a really good way um to to be able to and I think that's I people may question why we're talking about harrow way and why we're talking about these these um more philosophical why you're quoting quoting greek folks and stuff like that on a technology podcast but I think it's these um deeper ways of thinking about the problems that we're stuck in today um when we just look at okay I have to get this product to release out the door um and x y and z customers want this and x y and z customers want that and how do we reconcile but how do we bring it bring a true collaboration with our end users our partners our colleagues across silos and things these ways of thinking about how we're related to each other really help um I think help me a lot um and in some ways get your ego out of it too I think there's another whole level of um another conversation about that it's definitely um something that and I look forward to more and I think the isabel stanger books are our next on my list as well as still trying to get through the the sanghae books and there's a whole slew of them so I'm not going to go back and read greek um philosophers this month but maybe in the future maybe that could be a retirement project but um I was going to end with a quote that I really liked um from her and because we're almost at the end of our hour or we are quite close to it but she says this wonderful thing that she says um nobody lives everywhere every everybody lives somewhere nothing is connected to everything and everything is connected to something and I think we she talks about strings and connections and collaborations and I just think that so um is dead on um with how we have to think about moving our our lives our organizations and our world views forward is that um I know biden talked about unity and all of these things in the inauguration speech but it really is when we have such great divides and walls between us um I think realizing that we're you know it's not just six degrees of separation we really are truly all connected and interdependent and it really was a great read and a great way to frame and kick off 2021 so I am again indebted with with you and now I'm going to have to go back and listen to this again and catch all of the the book references um and try and annotate this but um it's it's a wonderful way next week if you're around um Kevin beer is going to do a talk um which he is tentatively in title titling rage against the silos and other windmills and on why many pop organizational truisms are not um so that'll that'll be another fun conversation so if you can join us um we have been with him for eight years I can't it's always fun to listen to always oh yeah it's getting a word edgewise in with with Kevin is always the hard one when I'm trying doing this so thank you again for coming today everyone who's listening um I will post this up um on our youtube channel shortly along with the slides and some semblance of annotation of all those amazing references that you made I'm going to be hitting you up in chat later for a few of them um but yeah great talk again um I just wonder what harroway would think of it not me too maybe we'll send her the link and ask so all right take care everybody be safe and um welcome to 2021 happy new year


I was a communist for the FBI. Starring Dana Andrews in an exciting tale of danger and espionage. I was a communist for the FBI. Many of the incidents in the story you are about to hear are based on the actual records and authentic experiences of meth-cevets who for nine fantastic years live as a communist for the FBI. Here is our star, Dana Andrews, as Matt Severick. I spent nine years living a nightmare called communism, a nightmare from which the awakening is more terrifying than the dream. During those years, I hated communism constantly. And occasionally I hated you too, Mr. because I was afraid you wouldn't recognize the nightmare until you and your wife and kids faced that terrifying awakening. I'm still afraid of that, so take warning from my story. It's a story of communism. In a moment, listen to Dana Andrews as Matt Severick, undercover man, undercover man. This story from the confidential file is marked No Second Chance. And it was quite a meeting, comrade Severick. You didn't ask me to wait until the others had left just to tell me that, comrade Hardin. No. You have no time for anything except party business, do you, comrade Severick? When I joined the party, I put everything else behind me, just as you advised the new members of tonight's cell meeting. Of course. Unfortunately, some members forget that advice. The party knows how to handle those termites. Yes. Now we've reached the reason for asking you to wait a matter of termite exterminating. What do you mean, comrade? I don't know the details. I know only that you have been ordered to Los Angeles to cooperate with the MVD in a matter of termite exterminating. You'll go by train tomorrow. This is your phone booth man again. Get me?  I'm taking the train to Los Angeles tomorrow. Hello? Yeah. What's the deal? Termite exterminating, they call it. No one here knows. I'll find that out in Los Angeles. That you're the termite. Call that hemstead number we gave you. Right. Good luck. It hadn't occurred to me that I might be the termite for extermination. And I didn't like thinking about it. That kind of thinking drives you nuts. So when this girl sat down beside me in the club car and smiled, I was glad to forget the party's rotten business. If I'd known what that smile was going to cost, I jumped off the train without waiting for it to stop. But I didn't know. And the girl was young and lovely. And when she spoke, I made the mistake of forgetting that a man can never mix romance and undercover work. What do you see that's so interesting? What's that? Oh, I'm sorry. I really don't make a practice of speaking to strangers. But you've been staring out that window so long I couldn't help asking. Uh, I was just thinking. Oh, I'm sorry, I disturbed you. You're not. You've given me something a lot more pleasant to think about. Thank you. Are you going clear through to Los Angeles? Yeah. Are you? Yes, it's my home. You know, I often wondered what it would be like to live out there. Oh, it's wonderful. At least it used to be before my parents died. That was five years ago. I haven't been back since. Oh. But you still call it home? Yes. My brother still lives in the old house. He's kept everything just the way it was before mother and dad died. Even my room is just the way I left it. Sounds like quite a sentimentalist. You don't approve of sentimentalist? Well, I don't meet many of them in my business. Oh. What business are you in? I'm traveling at the moment. Well then, this is a business trip. Strictly. No pleasure? No pleasure. Well, we'll have to do something about that.  We'll see the town together. Oh, sounds like a great idea. Glad you like it. There's just one tiny flaw in it. What's that? We don't know each other's names. We were talking so easily. I forgot that we haven't been friends for years. I'm sorry. Don't be. I feel very flattered. My name's Matt Sabetik. And I'm Helen Enright. Would you have dinner with me, Helen? I'd love to, Matt. That's the way it began. No hint of tragedy or a double cross. Just a guy and a gal who were attracted to each other and gave that attraction a chance to develop. And during the several days on the train, it did. The FBI, communism, plots and counterplots all were pushed to the back of my mind by Helen Enright. And if Helen didn't exactly throw herself at me, she made it plain that the only other man in her life was her brother, Jack. Old Jack's several years older than I am. Since mother and dad died, he's been wonderful to me. From what you've told me, he's quite a guy. Oh, he is, Matt. I'm terribly anxious to have you two like each other. Well, he won't have to worry about me because if he's your brother, I like him, even if I hate him.  Can I say something funny? Yes, very. What was it? We'll talk about it some other time. Right now, we better get our things together. We'll be in Los Angeles pretty soon. Our baggage collected, Helen and I sat silently holding hands as our train moved slowly through the Los Angeles Yards and into the Union Station. And before I'd helped her to the platform, I'd almost decided that this termite exterminating mission would be my last job for either the party or the FBI. Then, hand in hand, Helen and I walked up the ramp to meet her brother. The tall brunette and the great sports jacket. Jack! Hurry! You look wonderful, sis. You look even more wonderful, Jack, doesn't he, Matt? Well, he looks good, but frankly, you're more my type. Jack, I'm anxious to have you meet Matt Sabine. Well, judging from sis' attitude, I'd better be happy to know you. I hope you are, Jack. I'm sure I am. You live in L.A.? No. Come on out to the house for lunch. We'll talk it over. Well, thanks, but I have to finish this job first. When will I... When will we see you, Matt? The very first second. I'm free. I hope it won't be too long. I'll make sure that it isn't, Helen. Give us a call just as soon as you can, Matt. You'll find us on the phone book under Jack Enright. Helen and Jack Enright had just passed out of sight when the comrades stepped up and tapped me on the shoulder. At that moment, I was grateful for their waiting until I was alone. Well, after they'd identified themselves, we got into their car and drove to a house on Alvarado where they gave me my orders. This is a delicate mission, comrade Svendink. There must be no bungling. If you don't think I can handle the job... We think you can handle it perfectly. It was just a warning. What's the job? I like your zealous attitude, comrade Svendink. Thanks. We suspect a local high-ranking party member of trade risk activities. This situation is peculiar in that the party member in question has powerful friends back east, members of the Central Committee. We must have absolute proof of his aiding the enemy before we can exert any discipline. Who is the suspect? He's known in the party as Comrade Green. His real name is Jack Enright. Jack Enright? I just met a man named Jack Enright. That's your man, comrade Svendink. We know that he intends to leave the party, that he's engaged in activities detrimental to party interests. Your job is to prove what we know. But how am I supposed to get close enough to Enright to get this proof? You're going to be his house guest. House guest? Party members often stay at Enrights to save expenses. The arrangements have been made. But if he knows that I'm a party member, how can I get any information against him? Enright's sister should be able to furnish you with all the proof we need. And judging from the way she was playing up to you at the station, you shouldn't have any difficulty, comrade. Well, what's she going to think about me being her brother's house guest when she knows he just met me?  Naturally, he invited you to stay with him. Have you ever dreamed you were walking down the street without clothes and unable to run or hide yourself? Well, that's the way I felt when I got out of the cab and walked up to the Enright's house. A shame, embarrassed, and dirty. And feeling that way, I had to pretend that I was happy to be there. And for Helen's sake, Jack played his part too. Just put your bags down over there, Matt.  Well, you go up and make sure that his room is ready, hm? All right, Jack, but don't try to trap Matt into spending all his time talking about fraternity matters. You remember I saw him first. I'll remember. There's something you should remember, too, Svetic. Yes? This isn't a threat. It's a statement of absolute fact.  Later in the day, I reported the conversation to the MVD. They weren't exactly sympathetic. There's a strong possibility that Enright meant exactly what he said, Comrade Svetic. Then what do I do? Follow orders. We must have an airtight case against Enright, and the only way to get it is through the girl. But suppose I can't get the information from Helen from the girl. That would be very unfortunate for you, Comrade.  What witnesses? They can be produced. In the unlikely event that you fail to secure the required information, other witnesses will testify that they saw Enright kill you. Enright doesn't seem to have much chance. None. Hmph. You were sent here to help us eliminate him, Comrade Svetic. And you will accomplish your mission. Alive or dead? Bring us, Matt Svetic. In I was a Communist for the FBI and the second act of our story. You will accomplish your mission. Alive or dead?  Then, while I stood waiting for a bus, a car pulled up beside me and the driver said, I'm going your way wherever you're headed. Get in. I got in and the car moved out into traffic. It was my FBI contact. I told him about the spot I was in and asked for his advice. I can't give you advice, Matt. I can only give you orders. What are they? Get all the information possible on Jack Enright. Maybe he's putting the reds and maybe he isn't. What do you know about him? Well, we know he has lines reaching back to the Central Committee, maybe even further. His party connections are so solid that he may have orders to go underground, unknown to the local goons. But he didn't warn me to stay away from his sister until after he'd learned that I was a commie. Why would he do that if he only intends going underground? I've given up trying to understand any American mind that can accept communism, Matt. It could be any one of a dozen reasons, none of which would make sense to you or me. Hugh, you still want me to play up to Helen, his sister? She seems to be Enright's one-week spot. Okay, but I'll never feel clean again. This was the lowest moment I'd ever spent as a communist for the FBI. If Helen had been a red herself, I'd have had no compunctions about trapping her in any way possible. But she wasn't a red. She was sweet and innocent and naive. And for some reason, she went for me. Convincing her that she was in love with me was the easiest and the lousiest assignment I ever had. Jack's gone now, Matt. You're right with her, baby. I don't know why we have to be so secretive when Jack's around. I guess I'm a little self-conscious because we're fraternity brothers. I don't follow that at all. Let's talk about something else, Matt. What, for instance? Us, for instance. Should I tell you how I smile whenever I think of you? I know the feeling, Matt. And how a room lights up for me when you walk into it. Oh, Matt, I love you. And I love you, Helen. Hold me closer, Matt. Oh, darling. Oh, my poor, poor darling. Why do you say that? I don't really know. I wonder. Wonder about what? If you've just been pretending, trying to be kind. I certainly haven't tried to be kind. That must be why we've always waited until Jack left the house. What are you talking about? My brother. It's because of my brother that you can never really love me. But I do love you, Helen. In spite of your brother. In spite of my brother. In spite of anything. Then you know. No. Know what? My brother, Jack, is a communist. Oh, Helen. You don't know what you're saying. You don't know who you're talking to. I do know what I'm saying, Matt. I'm saying that my brother is a communist. An enemy of my country and my people. And I know who I'm talking to. You do? Who? The man I love. The only person in the world I can turn to. I should have been very proud of myself right then. I'd managed to make Helen Enright fall in love with me. Just the way I'd been ordered to. There was just one small fly in the butter. I was in love with Helen Enright, too. FBI, MBD, patriotism, communism. My love for Helen all whirling in my brain. But in any case, it was still my job to get the information against her brother. And the next day, Helen dropped that information right into my lap. Matt? Matt, darling. Be right with you, Helen. I'll take it that Jack is left. About five minutes ago. And you're just letting me know who's the new man in your life. Matt's a medic. And I didn't call you sooner because I was reading something. Something very important to us. Did someone leave us a million dollars in his wheel or something? Much more important than that. Two minutes. No. Jack is quitting the Communist Party. Are you sure, Helen? Positive, Matt. Oh, darling, now there's nothing in the world to interfere with our happiness. Nothing in the world to interfere with our happiness. Nothing but the FBI, the stinking Communist Party, and me, Matt's a medic. Because I loved Helen, I didn't run to the MBD with my information. I didn't have to. They picked me up on the street while I was out walking, trying to think things through. And in the house on Alvarado, they put the pressure on. You're taking much too long on this assignment, Comrade Spedding. It isn't easy to get the information we want without tipping my hand. Particularly if you're not too anxious to get that information, eh, Comrade? What do you mean? If you were weak enough, foolish enough to think that you were in love with Helen Enright, you might try to protect your brother. Not just a second. If I'm going to do this job, I'm going to do it my way. That takes time. You have no more time, Comrade Spedding. You'll deliver the information against Enright tomorrow afternoon. And if I can't? Tomorrow evening, the local police will arrest Enright for your murder. After that pleasant little conversation, I went to a public phone and called a hemstead emergency number. The FBI arranged to pick me up. Get in, Matt.  What's up? I got the information on Enright. Yeah? He's quitting the party. Oh, we know that. You do? He's going underground. No, no, he's really quitting. He told his sister. We've had other information from New York, Matt. Enright is going underground. But the MVD is really putting the heat on me for information against him. Enright's party orders are apparently top secrets. The local goons don't know about it. If they want information against him, give it to them. What? If these guys get a little overzealous and give Enright a working over, the Central Committee is going to be very unhappy. Someone will come out and work over these guys. Yeah, well, I like that idea. There's just one thing wrong. What's that? I'm in love with Enright's sister. That makes it tough. How can I turn in her brother and ever face her again? I love Helen. I want to marry her and settle down. I don't blame you a bit, Matt. But knowing what you know, could you do that before you finish your job? Beating the Reds isn't all my responsibility. Of course it isn't, Matt. You could quit right now and no one could blame you. No one would blame you. Except maybe Matt Scratty. I hated the FBI right then. And I hated my country too. I hated everything that stood between me and Helen. Most of all, I hated communism. Because I realized that until communism was destroyed, there could be no love or hope for more secure a different people like Helen and me. I went back to see Helen once more before making my final decision. You were gone a long time, Matt. It must have been awfully important business. I guess you could call it that. Well, I feel pretty important too. You're pretty important to me. Well, I'll be even more important when you see this. What is it? A paper with a list of names. I found it while I was cleaning Jack's room. It had fallen behind his dresser. Yeah, let me see it. Of course. See, it says underground contacts memorize and destroy. Yeah. Jack doesn't know you found this. Of course not, silly. He hasn't been home. Well, don't mention it to him. Why not? Oh, it might upset him if he knew that someone else had this information. Let me hold you close, Helen. Oh, darling. Oh, I love you so much. And I love you, darling. I've never felt this way about anyone before. And I never will again. You better not. After we're married, if you so much as look at another girl, I'll... Oh, you better forget about marrying me, Helen. Forget? Matt, what have I done? What's wrong? You haven't done anything, darling. It's just that, last night... Yes, Matt? I lay awake for a long time, thinking about us, Helen.  And deciding that you wouldn't marry me. Not that I wouldn't marry it. That I couldn't. That I couldn't change my way of life. Not at this time. I'm going away. Then you don't love me. That's the reason you're leaving me. I'm leaving you. Because I do love you, Helen. I will as long as I live. Kiss me goodbye. After making a copy of Enright's list of underground contacts, I gave it to the MBD, together with Helen's statement that Jack Enright was quitting the party. This is all the proof we need, Comrade Spedek. Congratulations. Congratulations. You just played Judas Iscariot to the brother of the girl you love. I made contact with the FBI and turned over the original list of communist names. Then I bought a ticket home. I was sitting in a little restaurant that night when my FBI contact sat down beside me. Congratulations, Matt. That list is invaluable. What happened to Jack Enright? He's definitely through with the Reds. The MBD goons beat him up badly before we could get there. Then they wired New York bragging about it. New York isn't going to be happy with these guys. What about Helen? She took it big, Matt. She loved her brother. And you? Helen called for me, and I couldn't answer. Then or ever again. If I didn't know it before, I realized then that you can't mix a woman and undercover work. At least not a woman you love. Of course there are women in the party, women who are interested in other party members. But I've known Helen, and I choose to walk along. Anna Andrews will return in just a moment. This is Dana Andrews. Although the struggle between freedom and communism hasn't flared into open battle here in the Western Hemisphere, the enemies of freedom never stop their efforts to destroy it. Although to protect innocent persons, the names, dates, and places in this story are fictitious. The danger they warn against is very real. Next week we'll bring you another strange adventure based on the fantastic experiences of Matt Sevetic. Join us, won't you?


You'll see I have a few tricks up my sleeve like electrical tape. Oh boy. So this is a five minute exposure and I still can't see my nebula. This either could be genius or Trevor's going to wipe the floor with me. Man, I've never been so like scared to show one of my images. I'm going to get some tips for imaging in the winter. I really hate shoveling frozen snow. Okay, I'm in the car. I'm about to drive down to a spot in Rhode Island where I know it's dark because I've been there before, but it's also supposed to be both clear and still tonight according to the forecast. All right, I've arrived here in Rhode Island and the first issue is that we have some snow to deal with. In my experience, I've always had better stability when I actually have the tripod feet touching the ground. It really does feel still tonight. I don't feel or hear any wind and that's very good because I'm going after a very faint object. So I'm going to try to push my exposure so that I can get the histogram on the back of the camera, at least about one third over from the left. That's a good rule of thumb, but from a dark site like this, it can be hard to achieve and still have round stars on a Star Tracker. So I'm going to work extra hard to dial in balance and polar alignment to make sure I can really push the exposure like this. Okay, time for polar alignment and first off, here's a new secret weapon of mine. The folks at Hunt's Photo and Video sent me this Mini Max stool and it's an ingenious stool for astrophotographers because it has multiple positions that you can put it in and the lowest position is quite low like this, which is great position for polar aligning. So now I don't have to actually sit on the cold ground. I can just put this down and have a nice stool. Hunt's was kind enough to give a discount for viewers of this channel, so if you'd like one of these stools, you can get a nice discount and the link is in the description. Okay, here's the thing with polar alignment that I think confuses a lot of people, especially with the Star Adventure and other trackers, where once you loosen this RA clutch and you go to your target, you can see the whole polar scope rotates with the RA axis. So why is this an issue? Well, let's say you have polar alignment completely dialed in here, you know, I'm facing the North Celestial Pole, but then I moved to target and I recheck my polar alignment and it's confusing, right? Because the whole reticule has rotated. But this is the key thing, has Polaris actually moved because it shouldn't have. If you didn't bump them out, even when you do this, Polaris will actually be in the same position in the circle. All that's happened is the circle has rotated because you've rotated the reticule. Okay, so this is one thing to understand conceptually, but here comes the actual tricky part, which is getting a good polar alignment, then moving everything, so you're lined up with your target and not having bumped the polar alignment out. There's two keys to this. One is good balance. So you can see how this is very well balanced. I can move it around and nothing down here is moving. The second is don't over tighten these clutches, right? So we just need these to be just sort of finger tight here. And then when we get them, when we get it to the right position, again, we just need to go just finger tight and then just a little bit more, no need to over tighten them. The same thing with this clutch up here. This one's even trickier, I think. I think I have it too tight right now. But the cool thing about the declination is we have these slow motion controls here. The next thing I'm going to do here is I'm going to tape down the zoom exactly how I want it with a bright electrical tape. This lens does not have a zoom lock. So this is necessary if you want to avoid the zoom drifting just from gravity or from accidentally bumping it when checking focus. So I'm just going to find 105 here. And then I'm going to go ahead and tape that down. So that's sort of like a lock. OK, now that I have that taped, I went ahead and got my do-heater strap. This one's USB-powered. So I have a little USB battery that I can use it with. And this just makes it so that we can be sure that the lens isn't going to frost up here. This is especially important with this lens since it doesn't have a lens hood, which does provide some protection against doing frost. Lastly, I have this little cheap Bodnov mass for focusing. It's not at all designed for this focal length of 105 millimeters. You can see the spacing on the pattern is pretty coarse. But it will do OK for me tonight because my object is right next to the Brightstar Rigel. That might give you a clue. And with a Brightstar, even a non-ideal Bodnov mask like this one will still work. I'm just going to probably end up taking one second test exposures to get the pattern bright enough. Tonight, I'm using a wireless intervalometer. Wired ones work well, too. But with a wired one, I usually need to figure out a way to make sure that there's no possibility of the cable catching on something and ruining the exposure. And this time, I'm just going to eliminate that possibility by using my wireless intervalometer. I did put fresh batteries in it to make sure. Speaking of batteries, I only have one for the Canon T7. So we should get to shooting because batteries don't last as long in the cold weather. And I already feel behind. So let's take our real first test exposure. So this is a five-minute exposure. And I still can't see my nebula. This either could be genius or Trevor's going to wipe the floor with me. I think it's going to be OK, though. I just have to remain confident in my plan for this challenge. Let me show you the histogram here. We just go to Playback and click the Display button. You can see this is how I evaluate exposure and know if I've exposed long enough in a single light or single sub-exposure. With a tracker, you want to get this histogram peak at least off the left-hand side of the chart. And ideally, you want it somewhere between one quarter and one-half over from the left. I'm going to really try to get as many photons on the object as I can in each exposure, which is why I'm exposing to one-third. And we'll just have confidence that when we stack and stretch it, it will be there. All right, the battery's on one bar. We've gotten about three hours out of it so far. So I'm pretty pleased.  I'm going to take the bias in dark frames later after I can charge the battery because I think that the temps have been pretty good night to night. So it's more critical to take the flats right now so I can capture this exact zoom and focus position as it is. And to take the flats, I'm just going to put this tablet with a white screen on top very carefully. I'll get that histogram peak about half over, which is a good flat for a DSLR. And once we have that dialed in, I'll take about 30 flats. So I'm just going to place this very carefully while holding the zoom position, just like that.  I don't think I can film at the same time, but I'll figure it out. We're now going to look at some highlights from a great conversation I had with Trevor Jones, also known as Astro Backyard, about this kit lens challenge. And I'm going to occasionally pause our conversation to emphasize or elaborate on something that we're talking about. So if you've already seen some of these clips in Trevor's video, you can think of this as watching it with the DVD commentary track turned on. Hey, Nico, how's it going, man? Hey, I'm good. I just got back from shooting my deep sky object with the kit. I did the same. Actually, the turnaround for how quickly we were able to use this setup after it arrived was surprising, especially for the weather I've been getting lately. I actually got to use it. I think it was about four days after it arrived. Yeah, yeah, just a few days after. And it was also just good timing because it was a night where I got in my imaging time before the moon rose. I think I did like 9 PM to midnight. And that was right before the moon rose at around 1 AM. OK, the moon thing. This is something that I don't talk enough about on my channel, and I'm going to try to do a better job of it. The moon is basically just like another light pollution source.  And the closer your deep sky object is to the moon in the sky, the worse it'll get. And you'll have really bad gradients and all kinds of problems. There are solutions for imaging during the moon. The most effective is using an H-alpha narrowband filter because the moonlight is broadband and is very blue. And so if you're imaging in the deep reds, you can mostly avoid the effects of moonlight. But that's just getting into sort of an advanced topic. This is about beginner stuff. So the best solution is just to, when you're going after faint objects with a DSLR, try to shoot them either before the moon has risen, which is what both Trevor and I did, or after it's set, or during new moon. So one interesting thing about using this lens is that some zoom lenses have a lock, a focus lock. So basically it's just a little switch, just like autofocus or manual focus, but it just locks the focus position. This lens doesn't have that. So I can just push the lens like that and it changes the focus position, right? So to prevent that, one thing I always have in my bag when I'm out shooting is electrical tape and usually have a bright color like this so I can see it in the dark. And I just tape the lens. So I just tape it so that it can't move. So funny story about that, I too have a blue electrical tape that I keep in my little bag of gear stuff at all times for many reasons, whether it's taping a power outlet in or something, you always need tape. And I knew that going in. I even wrote in my notes, tape the lens down, the focal length, because yeah, it doesn't take much to lose it. I totally forgot, I framed up my target, got the focal length that I wanted, did not tape it, continued to shoot for three hours, adjusting focus, all these situations where I could have easily knocked it out got so lucky that I didn't. So as the battery was dying on that one bar left, I was like, oh, should I take a few more exposures or should I start taking darks right now? Temperature matched darks. As I thought about that, I knocked the focal length. I'm like, oh my God, like that's it. I'm done for the night because I've changed the focal length. There's no way I'll get it back other than eyeballing it to where it was. And I was like, wow, I could have really screwed myself because I didn't tape it. And I really should have. So did you get flats? Like no, took no flats. Oh, wow. That's interesting. I just wanna point out here that Trevor wanted to take flats. It's just that he couldn't because he didn't tape his lens and the zoom position changed. So there's a big difference. Flats are always a good thing to do, even with a clean lens. There may be a little bit less necessary if you're sure there's no dust in your system but there's still always a really good thing to do. They're one of my favorite calibration frames in terms of the difference they make. But if you don't have the same conditions that you have when you're taking your light frames, your pictures of the night sky, for when you take your flats, then they could do more harm than good. So that's why Trevor, once the lens zoom position changed, was just like, well, now I can't take flats because it's very important that you have the exact same system optically and with a lens like this, where it doesn't have any kind of stops, there's no way to know how to get back to that exact same position you were in before. So flats are difficult. I'm not going to like sure code it and say that for a beginner, flats are just the easiest thing. But I feel that once you sort of develop your own system for taking flats and doing it correctly, then it becomes pretty easy and routine. So one video idea that I want to do is all about flats and different ways to take them so that you can find a system that's easy for you and that works for your system so that you don't have to worry about flats and whether they're going to mess up your pictures because really they should only help if they're done correctly. Okay. One thing about using a new kit for the first time in doing a real project and not testing, because like I'm such a tester, usually what I would do if I got a new lens or something is I would do test shots at different focal ratios to see how the star performance changed. And I didn't do that at all this time. So I was just flying blind thinking, okay, I'm just going to let in a bunch of light and see what happens. Yeah, it was interesting. I will say I found out that I actually had used this lens, I sort of forgot about it because I must have sold it, but actually my first tracked deep sky photo was with this lens. So I got to show that to you because I think you'd get a kick out of it. That's really cool. Yeah, because it is a kit lens, one of my first DSLRs came with it and I actually tried to use it for nature photography, which if you can imagine a lens this slow at 300 millimeter in the daytime trying to capture a bird flying by, like it was the epitome of frustration, a lot of blurry photos of robins and birds that I saw around me. Yeah, it was a terrible lens for any type of nature photography. That actually brings up a really good point. A lot of people think if they're coming from one style photography to astrophotography that they know about a lens, like they're like, oh, this is a great lens. They try it out for the stars and it sucks, you know?  That's right, yes. All the value in a lot of those expensive lenses is for what it can do in the daytime and the quick focusing and all that stuff that doesn't apply to astrophotography at all. One thing I do like is that, you know, some lens makers are thinking about astrophotography now. I think maybe because we all sort of came and started buying their lenses, then they've now started marketing lenses to astrophotographers, which I think is cool. Like Rokinon does it a little bit and Sigma too. Yep, those fast manual lenses. Yeah, it's perfect for us. Yeah, cool. So I guess I could say the F-ray shield that I shot with. And so I stopped down to F 6.3 on the 75 to 300 millimeter lens. How about you? Did you shoot wide open or did you stop down as well? I shot wide open. Yeah, I mean, this might give another clue, but I wanted as many photons on this object as possible. And so I didn't want to stop down. And also my style of processing, I know that I can deal with stars being a little wonky. So I'm less concerned about stopping down to get really good star performance because I know that I'd rather sort of deal with it in post-processing because I'm a very like heavy post-processer. I do a lot on the image. That's a great point. So the settings that you choose, others might say, well, you know what? I think it would be better if you did this, but it's like, well, no, based on my processing style, you'd rather sacrifice some star bloat for more photons on your sounding like a very faint deep sky object. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I figured stopping down one stop might sharpen things up a little bit because I was scared these stars were gonna be really, really bad. And I was pleasantly surprised at the fact that they weren't, they were totally acceptable, especially considering this is a very budget lens. Even though everything that Trevor and I are talking about in this section is correct, I do think that once you get some experience with astrophotography, you'll realize what works for you and what style of processor you are. On the other hand, with this particular lens, I think Trevor was completely right in retrospect after we saw each other's images to stop it down a stop. Okay, I guess it's time to show you my picture.  And I've honestly, I've been staring at it for too long. So hopefully when you see it for the first time, you'll be amazed, but I think I'm just tired of looking at it at this point. But I can at least say that, I've done pretty well for the amount of data that I actually collected. Okay, so I'm gonna share my screen now. Nice, wow. Did we shoot the same target? Yes, we did shoot the same target. Come on. We took a very, okay, and we took very different takes on it, which I am so glad about. And yours looks amazing though, Trevor. This is really well done. I appreciate that. And this is also my biggest fear that we'd have a direct head-to-head comparison of my processing skills versus yours because I know you're gonna win that battle. Oh no. No, I just think they're just very, they're just very differently. I went for a different scene and I also tried to bring out the other stuff there that I really shouldn't have because my picture got so noisy because I was going after stuff that's actually even fainter than the witch head. The witch head is the brightest object in my scene. While you just focused on the witch head which is actually much smarter, that's really what I should have done. So it's really just a strategy thing and I think your strategy worked out better. One thing I really wasn't happy with was the way these yellow stars turned out inside the witch head. And as I'm sure you did too, there was a lot of selective masking and curve stretching of specific areas of the image. And I really pulled up the dust for the witch's head so you could really see it.  And yeah, it was quite the process to get it here. And I still feel like it's a little too punchy and contrasty where it's just like, boom, and you see the shape of the witch's head there where I wish there was more of the subtle dust in the area that I'm sure I'm gonna see in your image. Well, it's funny, because I mean we always see someone else's image and we're like, oh, I wish I would have done it like that. Cause to me I saw this and I was like, oh, his has so much more punch than mine and you know exactly where to look. I like the composition better. I like that it's, I like the widescreen cause I went completely different with composition. And so it's just, it's one of those things where it's like, whenever I see someone else's image, I'm like, oh, I wish I would have done it that way, but you know, and the other funny thing is like, we're always our worst critic. And when you, I didn't notice that thing you were telling me about how you brought up the star.  And so then they look a little bit different than the other stars. And I didn't notice that until you pointed it out. And then of course, cause you pointed it out, I can see it now. But it's like, if you hadn't said anything, I probably wouldn't have noticed that. That's right. Yeah, we look at images, you know, from the standpoint of like, I've been looking at this for six hours. So yeah, I've noticed every little thing about it. So yeah, now I really can't wait to see yours and what you've done. Of course, there's that bright star Rigel it is, right? And so there was my focusing point and you can see some artifacts next to it thanks to this, you know, budget lens we're using. But overall, the stars looked a lot better than I thought they would with this lens. And yeah, so there you go. That's why I chose this Target, a reflection nebula, those really cool blues and the dust, all the things that it doesn't require an astromodified sensor. I haven't shot the witch head nebula in I think like nine years. So it was something I wanted to do again and I just thought it would be a great choice for this combo. So and when I said, you know, it's not necessarily the crowd pleaser object.  Like that's what you shot. Like she's expecting to see a really beautiful like rosette nebula or something. And I was like, no, hopefully people appreciate how difficult this target actually is. It's a hard, yeah, it's a hard balance because it's like, you know, I'm this exact same way. It's like, if you're trying to please astrophotographers, which head is where you go? Cause it's like, we recognize this is a hard thing. It's like, it's like a dusty reflection nebula. It's so damn that you can't see it in a single exposure or if you can, you could barely see it. I don't know if you could, but like, so even framing it, you're like, the first time I saw it is when I actually put it in a Photoshop and stretch the single exposure. I could not see it on the display screen at all, but I knew it was there because of the star pattern. And speaking of that, this field actually has a very, very useful star pattern configuration around it for reference, not just Rigel, but these other three by the top here and the one right next to it. So they made framing this target actually a lot easier than it could have been. Yeah. And just to go back to Rigel, another thing is like, it's just, it just makes it so much easier if you have a really bright star in your field to focus on. I know we've already talked about this, but Rigel is a very bright star. It's like, in the winter sky, it's like Beetlejuice, Rigel and Sirius, those are the three brightest. And so this is a very bright star. And so you can just put your bottom of mask on. You might be able to even see the pattern in live view. If not, you could take a one second exposure and you'll see it. Absolutely. And I did try to manually dither the images a little bit. So I used the actual, the slow motion controls on the Star Adventure, just shifting the frame ever so slightly between every, say 10 shots or so. I don't know if that made a difference in terms of the noise after stacking, but it was something, a little trick I tried to just help deal with some of that noise as opposed to, and also actually more for avoiding walking noise or something that if I didn't move it over time, that could have created a noise pattern that I wanted to avoid. So I don't know if you did anything like that. I didn't. I was so concerned about messing up my polar alignment like I said earlier that I was just, I wasn't gonna touch the mount. I was only trying to touch just the lens to focus or to check focus, but I didn't want to mess anything with the mount, so I didn't do any manual dithering. That's actually a technique I've never tried. I really should, because I bet it does help. Yeah, I don't think it could hurt unless you do throw off your polar alignment, which makes a lot of sense because you were shooting longer exposures. So yeah, for you to lose five minutes at a time, you really had to just let it, you know, get it right and leave it as long as possible. So yeah, I'm ready to see your image now. And I still don't know what focal length you shot at or how you framed it. So I'm really excited to see it. Oh man. There we go. You did, okay, so Rigel almost near the center with all the surrounding dust. And you even got some of the red hydrogen from a stock camera pulled out of there. Yeah, it's pretty noisy. But that's the tip of Barnard's Loop. So Barnard's Loop extends to Rigel basically and then goes all the way up to almost Betelgeuse. It's this huge hydrogen bubble around the Orion constellation. And so I just think that getting a little bit of Barnard's Loop in there is sort of cool. I cannot, can you believe that we shot the same object? It's insane, yeah. Like there's unlimited amount of targets in the night sky.  So one thing that's interesting to see is that because your Rigel is closer to the center of the frame, that halo is more central, whereas it's hanging off the side in mine, which makes sense, right? Cause it's near the center. So that's cool to see. Yes, and actually that was in my plan mostly just because I was like, okay, I know that the whole witch head is gonna be in at 105 millimeter focal length if I just center Rigel. So then I knew that I could very quickly frame it up too. And I wasn't even thinking about the halo, but you're right, on a lens like this where you're gonna have halos, if you can get the bright star centered and it works with your composition, then you'll have a very centered halo. And I think it does look better. So, and Deep Sky Stacker used to stack, right? Right. Yeah, so I mean, I think that, you know, we limited ourselves to Deep Sky Stacker Photoshop and StarNet if we needed it, but I really don't think that any techniques or using Pixinsight or anything like that could have really done too much more to this data that we collected.  It was, you know, three hours of data of some faint nebulosity shot with a stock DSLR camera uncooled. Yeah, and because we were both going from dark skies, you know, and I didn't have gradient issues either. So I didn't, I really didn't, I didn't do any gradient extraction with this. I just took it out of Deep Sky Stacker, brought it in, balanced the color channels, and then went into processing. The reason that I often like Cyril or Pixinsight is because they have these really nice gradient extraction tools if you're shooting from a light polluted place. But from a dark sky, you really, you could just do DSS and Photoshop and it works just as well. Yeah, I, it was a Borrel Class 4 site that I drove out to for this project as well. And I mean, this, like, I could not attempt this from home in the backyard in the Borrel Class 7 skies. It would just be, I would need at least, you know, quadruple the exposure time to get what I got. And that was just a practicality thing, right? Like, it's not to say that it can't be done in a light polluted area, but we were shooting without filters and with limited time. So I'm pretty impressed with, you know, what both of us were able to achieve with this system in a limited amount of time. And it's really cool to see that we shot the same target, but in a very different way. So cool to see. You've now seen what Trevor and I could do with just a kit lens and a stock DSLR. And like Trevor, I was really pleased with our results. But I want to see what you can do. You can share your photos taken with the kit lens with me by tagging me on Instagram and use the hashtag kit lens challenge. I plan to make more videos using this kit, including the other lens that came with it, which is the 18 to 55. And if you share your photos with me, I may feature them in a future video. Well, till next time, this has been Nico Carver at NebulaFotos.com. Clear skies.