Aloha and welcome to your Thursday afternoon. Thank you Think Tech Hawaii for giving us the space and time for the Hawaii Food and Farmer series. My name is Justine Espiritu and this is my co-host Matthew Johnson. Every week we feature farmers as well as other individuals and organizations that are growing food or contributing to our local food system. It's great when we have the farmers and producers and distributors and also great to have like today organizations that are touching on our food system and also other elements that bring in culture and community. So Matt, if you could introduce this week's guest. Great, thanks Justine. So this week we have Kaulani Odom and Kashiho from Kukua Kalehihi Valley. Also with Roots Program. And we've already said that we're gonna need much more than just 30 minutes to get through all the amazing things that they're working on. But basically talking about a cafe and cultural food hub that they've been working on to help really restore the health of an entire community in Kalehihi Valley. So thank you so much for being on the show. And we've had the pleasure of hanging out for the past 16 months through Hawaii Investment Ready. So I'm really excited to have you guys on here and just kind of get in a little bit about what you're working on and talk about some of the different programs. So to get started, Kashiho, why don't you give us a little background on Roots Program? Sure, thanks for having us, by the way, nice to be here with you. So the Roots Program is a program of Kukua Kalehihi Valley. We are a community health clinic located in Kalehihi. And the community health clinic has been around for about 45 years. Started as a really grassroots community effort. Some aunties in the community who were going door to door, knocking on people's doors and asking them what kinds of needs they had. And at the time, the needs that they were really lifting up were about healthcare access to doctors and dentists. So we had a community effort for a local church to donate land. We had a trailer on there with doctors who were volunteering their time. And then community outreach workers who were making sure that the community got the kind of healthcare that they needed. Since that time, we've expanded into, I think we have nine different sites now. We have all sorts of different programs. And our program that you and I work on is called the Roots Program. It's kind of the food side of things. So in addition to the health center that has sort of your traditional exam rooms with doctors and dentists, part of the community health center is also a 99 acre nature preserve in the back of Kalehihi Valley, where we grow food and share food with the community. It's also an agroforestry program. And so we're sort of stewarding the land up there. And I feel really fortunate to work for an organization that really sees the health of the community as connected to the health of the land and the health of our relationships with each other. So that's what we do with the Roots Program, is we use food as a vehicle for healing. So healing our bodies, but also healing the land and the process, healing our relationships in the community, healing our cultures. And yeah, food just really provides us an opportunity to do a lot of that kind of work, so that's what we're up to. Now for those that are around, the very first Crater Festival was actually a fundraiser to get money to build our very first clinic. It was within Diamond Head Crater. It was in Diamond Head Crater, yeah. Dory Rotland, who was our first ED, as Kashi said, got his church to convince him that what a colleague he really needed was a health clinic. And so they sold their church and land, and we built the clinic out of that. And it was in 1976? It was about 45 years ago. And then, so the very beginning of our program was these super anti-Zekashis talking about. And some of the others that had been working in our community a long time, they sat down and we had an opportunity to apply for a grant. And they wanted to know what were all the, when you hear about Kalihi, everyone always thinks about gangs or lower socioeconomic or all the immigrants come again. And what they did was they sat around the table and they thought about, what are all the real strengths of Kalihi? Let's be strength-based, let's be really positive and look at it. And what they realized was in talking about the strength that food was this connecting factor through everything that you could tell your stories, whether you're from Samoa or Hawaii or Micronesia, that you all use the same plants. You may call them different names, you may use them in different ways, but you all use the same plants. And the very act of sharing food or passing down stories, that cultural connection ran through all of our valleys. So our very initial roots were starting off using food as a connection. And then how did it connect us to our land? If you don't care about your land, then you're unhealthy. And so all those connections that make us healthy, food connecting us to our spirit, food connecting us to our grandparents, food connecting us to our stories, a lot of times Western medicine thinks of health as food as a carbohydrate or protein and a fat. But we realize that the really healthy part of food is the great connection and that feeling connected to your community is just as important as knowing what your blood pressure is when it comes to being healthy. Well, so I mean, it's obviously a real holistic approach of what you guys are doing, so it's taking a lot of planning. So in the back of the valley, you have the agroforestry, the forest restoration, the health center, and then all kind of connecting. Like you said, if you don't have good food going into the community, then you're going to have bad effects on the other end. And I guess that's kind of where Roots Cafe originated where you guys were growing all the food, having connection with different farmers. Kato, can you talk a little bit about the origins of Roots Cafe and also talk about what can someone expect when they walk into the cafe? Sure. So we do have out of the 100 acres that's attached in the back of the valley attached. And I really believe we're the only federally qualified health center that has a land base attached to it because we believe in the transformation that the land can do on your health. And so that I just want to interrupt and say, I mean, that's huge, what you just said. I mean, actually have land where people are growing on that's directly attached to the health center because it's a typical health center as you just go in and you get some kind of medicine or whatever your problem is. Well, we're not just growing food. I mean, we have the forest. And when they started, first started the forestry program, people said, you can't grow coal. You can't reintroduce it organically. You need to control for this and that. And it's been shown now that, yes, our cause thriving up there. And so you can do it. So it's the whole overall health. It's not just about food. The iron can be transformative in many, many ways. And so we use all of those ways to do that. But the cafe, when we outgrew, like Kasha said, we have nine sites. We have our clinic. We have our elders. We have our Kvi program. We have our sewing program. We kind of outgrew our clinic. And so we brought what those people again that have been around was the old PMP supermarket, which was in Kalihi, right across from our clinic. And that became the wellness center where our dental and our pediatricians and our OBs are. But we had, there's a little certified cafe, certified kitchen that could be a cafe. And the first intent was to lease it out to someone, but we didn't want to do that. We wanted to run it ourselves. And so that was the very beginning of it. And then Kasha was brought on when we started to really expand and to look at all of the ways that this cafe and the food hub could be beneficial in the community. So in addition to the cafe, which is open for lunch, open to the public, actually, for lunch Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 to 1, and it's situated right in the health clinic. So you kind of have to know it's there. But we serve lunch during those times at the cafe, but we're also at two farmers markets every week in Kalihi Valley. And we actually run a farmer's market at KBT Housing on Thursday afternoons from four to six. And we run an ABT double bucks program there. So if you have SNAP benefits, you can come and swipe your ABT card for up to $20. And that money is matched so you can spend up to $40 with local farmers and fishermen who are selling at the farmer's market. It's such an additional benefit and an initiative for someone who is using ABT to focus on using the ABT money that they have on preferably better local food. And it started with Wholesome Wave. It was a mainland initiative that we partnered up with and we started, but now Aloha Care has picked that up. And so they're also subsidizing. But it was being reactive to what our community needed. And Cuyil Park Terrace is the largest public housing unit on Oahu. And we're right on the corner. And what we heard from them, that transportation to get good food, to get local and fresh foods and vegetables was difficult. And so we decided to do a little farmer's market right in the parking lot there. We ran a competition. And one of the kids came up with the name of the crop shop. And so that's what we call it.  We also have Pakua fishermen that goes to the auction and gets fresh fish. And families are able to, sometimes they can't afford a whole fish by themselves, but they can pool their money together and get a whole fish. And this will last them for a longer time. And they're also able to, we provide space where they're able to share their stories about food and how to grow things and different recipes. And so at the market, are you guys participating as a vendor with the cafe serving prepared food or selling some of the produce that you're growing? Or this is just a space you're giving for other vendors to come in to share their produce? Yeah, we're actually just running the ABT booth and managing the market. So we do run what we call a mobile farmers market at the same time. We were noticing that a lot of the patients and staff who are in the clinic weren't able, even though it's like right across the street, weren't able to make it to the farmers market before six when it closes. So we started just piling up a push cart of vegetables and wheeling it around the clinic. And people loved that. So we were really just meeting people where they're at. If you're sitting in the exam room or at your desk, you're able to just buy your groceries for the day right there. And so we do run a mobile farmers market where we have some of the produce there that we're selling for the farmers too. So that's one of the many things that we're trying to do. The mobile farmers market has been really quite popular. So we just took it to the seniors because our two senior centers are not at the same site as our clinic and wellness center and they literally get mobbed. And they want them to come every week. And we don't quite have the manpower for that. But now we've also been asked by several community organizations and schools, oh, can the mobile market come to them? And so there's definitely a need in the community. And we're finding that, you know, for all of the whatever it be, transportation and other issues that if we can get the fresh produce and and our cart and that right up to that space, then people have better access and we're able to serve them better. I like your guys focus on on access. It's one of the things Aloha, I'm Katie, the president of the grass root Institute. Realizing that the conveniency needs to be there. You can say, yeah, you should be supporting local farmers. You should be eating this kind of food. But if that convenient and if it's not affordable, then it's just not going to happen. So it seems like you guys are addressing both those issues very well. Yeah, we're also learning because we're not doing a great we're not we have almost barely any markup on it. And so as we're trying to get bigger and bigger, we're realizing that, and you know, even for stuff like poi in our community, we don't market up at all. We just want our community to have access to poi and kalo. But as you get bigger, and as you have to start ordering more and have to figuring out, you know, laws and not selling and all of that kind of stuff, we're still trying to figure out a way to make it a win win situation for everybody involved. That's great. That's a great segue into the cultural food hub. And so we've had different groups talking about food hubs before, but you guys definitely have a slightly different twist to it. Kasia, why don't you talk about the food hub you guys are doing? Yeah, so the food hub is sort of new effort, but it's really sort of a conglomeration of the efforts that we've been engaged in for the last several years. And we really try to source everything that we do from what the community actually needs. So we're constantly getting feedback from people about what they want, where they see things working, where they see things not working in the local food system. And one of the things that kept sort of coming up in conversation was that folks in Kalihi really don't have enough access to, especially the culturally significant foods to the different cultures in Kalihi Valley. So unless you kind of know somebody that's growing those things, it's hard to find them at the supermarkets, even hard to find them at the farmers market. So, you know, Ulu, breadfruit, Uwala, sweet potato, kalo, cassava, some of those major sort of culturally really significant foods that everyone is wanting in Kalihi are there's actually just more demand than there is supply. So we heard that and thought we could really start to bring in some of those foods into the valley and get them out through this cultural food hub. And it provides a service to farmers too, in that especially with the Double Bucks Program, farmers are able to get the foods that they love growing to the communities that actually really love eating those things. They know what they are, their grandma used to make them or they used to grow them back home. But rather than having to export them to a different market, they can actually sell them to local folks here in the community and make a living doing that too. So we're just trying to make those connections between local farmers, local communities that want that food. That's awesome. And I think you're doing that in a bunch of ways, other than just having the farmers market, you guys have a lot of great creative events that you put on. So we're going to take a quick break and then get more into some of those things. Aloha everyone. I hope you've been watching Sink Tech Hawaii. But I'm here to invite you to watch me on Viva Hawaii every Monday at 3 p.m. I'm waiting for you. Mahalo. Good afternoon. Howard Wiig, Cold Green, ThinkTechHawaii.com. I appear on Mondays at 3 o'clock and my gig is energy efficiency doing more with less. It's the most cost effective way that we in Hawaii are going to achieve 100% clean energy by the year 2045. I look forward to being with you. Aloha. Aloha and welcome to The Savvy Chick Show on ThinkTech Hawaii. I'm the weekly host at 11 a.m. Honolulu time. I'm very excited for the next six weeks. We have the Aspire series, which is all about the coolest careers I could find and interviewing and getting insights from these amazing people who want to share it with you and help you live your dreams. Look forward to seeing you on the show. Aloha. Aloha and welcome back to the Hawaii Freedom Farmer series. I'm your co-host Matt Schutton here with, as always, not actually always, but most of the time Justina Spear too. And our guests today are from Kokua Kilihi Valley. We have with us Kasha and Kaya. Thank you so much for joining us today. And yeah, unfortunately, we don't much time, so we're just going to get right back into it. Kasha, you had left us all talking about how you guys are connecting farmers growing indigenous crops with the communities that are really looking for those crops and have a tough time accessing that. Can you talk a little bit about, let's talk about some of the events that you guys are doing, the Pena events. So I recently had a Ulu event. I know there's another event. There's a banana event coming up. Can you talk a little bit about those events? And what's kind of the purpose behind those events? Sure. So we have a network of folks as part of the cultural food hub, ranging all the way from farmers and food producers to community members, schools, organizations, folks on the eating end of the food chain, who are really interested in kind of building those relationships to start proliferating cultural foods in Kalihi. And we try to get together fairly frequently, about once every quarter. And we've been having working meetings, but also an opportunity for people to get together and share their stories behind the food, which has been really fun.  So we kind of transformed the cafe into this really nice sort of mood lit Laohala mats on the floor. And then we had, oh yeah, there's photos. This is our co-worker, Menina Opet, who is Chikis. And this is the Chikis version of Ulu Pa'i'i, essentially. So they make kon, which is pounded Ulu, similar to the way that we make pa'i'i in Hawaii. But the board is shaped a little differently. The pounding stone is made out of coral instead of out of stone. And she was able to show us how they pound it, how they wrap it up in the Ulu leaves. And then she shared the stories from her culture too about all of the different uses and preservation methods. And it was a really wonderful cultural sharing opportunity and kind of informal groupings of people talking about breadfruit and its different uses and its different significance to themselves and their families. So we're just trying to create those kinds of spaces too for food to really bring in all that it has to offer to the community. It also gives us a chance to be creative with our menus and our servings. So if we have an Ulu thing then everything is great.  And sometimes we get stuck into thinking we can only do it in certain ways. So we try and take those foods and make all kind of foods out of it so people can see that they can do a lot of things with the foods. For the bananas you know most people are just interested in I mean are just used to eating the bananas but really there's all difference there's a flour there's the you know the fruit there's we can use the stems for plates we can use the whole banana and how do we do that and so that something will be focusing on when the banana event comes up. I'm also serving Iholena banana in our cafe or at some and this is one of our indigenous varieties of banana that we're purchasing from one of the farmers in our food hub and it's a really nice creamy it's got almost a light orange color it's higher in beta carotene and so bringing back some of those foods you know it's not all dull Chiquita bananas out there there's other bananas and so how do we bring back those varieties and have them in our community. It's great I think you know when we talk about the the reputation of the stories people outside of Kalihi know about Kalihi you are doing this work as a resource to the community that's there but it's also great for those outside of the community to get a different perspective do you have a lot of folks coming from all over the island to kind of join in these events? In the Paine gatherings yeah we do we have we work with farmers from all over the island and so folks are coming in from different places and then Kalihi's really our focus but like you said I think what we're doing here is kind of inspiring all kinds of work within and outside of the valley as well. We also do this series called Decolonizing Diets where we try and focus on an aspect of the food system that we'd really like people to think about and so we've done things around bees around colo around pesticides you know but our last one was our invasive species dinner and so we talked a little bit we really about well our food and we'll let Kasha tell you about the menu because she had so much to do with it. Let's see if I can remember. It was so the dinner was called Decolonizing Your Diet Eat Your Weeds and we really just created a menu pretty much exclusively based on weeds so we used even from the proteins were venison and feral pig we had a chiave flower roll we had several different mugwort jelly yeah yeah that's right we made a a mugwort jelly that went on the roll we had several different weed based salads including the gorilla ogle limo then our dessert was Honohono grass ice cream with a mugwort brownie amaranth hush puppies yeah it was really good but it and so we like to bring people you know there for good food for conversation and a really relaxed atmosphere but really raised some serious questions and issues about our food system and what can we do to be sustainable and what are the effects of colonization on our food system we have to discuss that and so a lot of times people can get defensive but if you can set up to a space that's safe that's nurturing that the food is feeding not just your physical body but your spirit and your mental you know realms then you can really have some good conversation and so yeah it makes for great conversations um i want to make sure we have time because i want to hear a little bit about the your guys's background so cut you how long have you been with with roots and kkh uh kkv yeah just like how did you get into about five and a half years and my background is i'm a dietician by trade but i've also um as from a cultural perspective have been a practitioner i've been a hula dancer and indigenous health has been my area of focus for about the past 25 years and i came to kkv through puny fratis or jackson who runs ho online and we have been friends and we actually were part of a hui of cultural practitioners trying to make sure that our cultural healing practices were alive and thriving and well and we especially you know besides food we do have um a birthing um a cultural birthing practices class and group that works together to promote all of those cultural practices and puny and i were friends we were working together and when this opportunity came up to work with food from a cultural healing perspective um that's when i came over to kkv and i'm very fortunate grateful for the opportunity seems like a great set kasha how about you um i've been with the roots program for just about two years now and um before that i've kind of done food systems work since i've been back in hui but i've also worked on both social justice and environmental justice efforts across the continent and then back here and um i think that this um work that we're doing right now really kind of marries um all of my interests in terms of um both working for change and trying to shift systems that are really not working for the majority of us but also at the same time that we're trying to shift those systems we're also building the alternatives and going ahead and doing that creative work as well so it's a nice blend of things and in my mind yeah kasha came in with a really strong social justice and making sure that you know we always are looking from that focus it's not you know we get so used to saying what's wrong in the world and we have to really if we need to fix something what are the alternatives and so we're happy that kasha came to join us and that we really have the opportunity to always look at that in our work and so it seems like you guys are are covering a lot of bases and addressing three different programs and events where do you see um what are some long-term goals that you haven't kind of reached yet or that you're still kind of looking to accomplish or take on for me we have all this healthy food we have all these things going on and we still see um food insecurity and food inequality in our valley and when until we can get to the point where everybody has first access everybody wants to eat the stories our our cultural practices and protocols and stories are still being passed down you know we once did an um uh um it's kind of like a Hawaiian emu but it's for that we did in the Chucky Chucky's fashion and there are um young adults in there that had never seen that being done and so it's like putting me in the middle of New York and telling me to build an emu and I have no resources and so how can we make sure those resources are available for all of our groups in our valley and that um they see food as a connection to hell yeah I think in addition to that I'm really um always kind of trying to work myself out of a job and that I would love to see right now we're being the connector and connecting local farmers with local communities but I'd love to just see that happening without us in five or ten years that there's really an established relationship between um local farmers who love to grow are able to um provide food to local communities and have their families be supported by that at the same time that local families are able to support themselves through those foods that they love and they are connected to the traditions and cultures um that sustain them so yeah I'm hoping that that keeps growing and keeps magnifying I mean you know for a health most physicians don't take a nutrition course at all you know they're taught to prescribe with medicine and so the thought of prescribing um you know you have this is what I'm going to prescribe you know eat these green vegetables and work in the Aina and do all of this kind of stuff until we get to that point we're missing a whole um diverse way of healing people if we think we're still you know in our medical system is one that sometimes they don't even get reimbursed unless they're prescribing a medicine every time the client visit we need to be prescribing all of these other things that physically and spiritually heal the body and so that's also what we work towards with our connection to food awesome great super great to feature you guys um can we for the last 30 seconds maybe just say how we can for us the community can come and help with what time the cafe is open can we go to that or work days on the farm so the cafe is open every Tuesday and Thursday from 11 to 1 lunchtime Tuesday and Thursdays we also have community work days where you can go up to the back of Kalihi and get dirty and help grow the food those happen every um Wednesday and Thursday morning and the big community work day happens every third Saturday and there's lots of volunteer opportunities at KKB so if you have a diverse interest you can work throughout our clinic and our community as a volunteer awesome all right that wraps up our time thank you guys so much for coming on and we'll come back next week thanks


I know it's gonna sound sad, but This is gonna be a mole fighting for the life of his team Now does a mole need a new costume? I feel like a mole does need a new car Oh, I feel like there's only one right costume for this.  Oh my god.  I don't think you can see me.  My character looks like he might sound like me your character looks like you Literal bullying Shut up and play me a rock, paper, scissors. How do I play rock? All right, three two one go Yeah, yeah, you're gonna have to try a little harder Hmm Best two out of three though Yeah, I knew your dumbass wouldn't win in the best two out of three One maybe you already go. Yeah, I'm already I'm staying stuck.   You know what this one's for my guy Wait, wait, hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it dynamic entry.   Oh lord, bro.  Yeah, it's pretty good Also, I I thought we were winning for a second. We are getting our asses gig Yeah, I know we can breathe. We lost an email bro. No, we can we can breathe this back.  Oh, we only need four more. Let's go. I know. All right. All right. Just no one get KO'd again Dynamic entry. Oh my god. I've almost gotten my eight gates I'm willing to risk it all Let's go night guy Did he sub night guy?  I uh Yeah, no, you got nothing nothing you say could help what I just did What did you do? So in the heat of battle, I said I'll risk my life and use the eighth gate. Okay? It was it was an honorable decision. It kills me after I use it, but I we had one life left Yeah, and and I and I missed I crashed into a wall broke all the bones of my body and died and Unfortunately, we lost. So that's what makes you feel At least even remotely better. I am not in the least surprised that you're a dumbass Oh best map daughter when I have actually never lost another combat battle and another chance to prove that I had the best hygiene All right, there they are I'm gonna plant my thing dynamic entrance I'm back that one up. I got knocked off of the map. They got they got combos. They got combos Oh, I should have just used dynamic entry. Oh All right, these guys are good. I'll give them that but better than us The healers running the healers running dynamic entry. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. What's up? You notice they're an actual team all their names say nyg good.  He's out He's got my boot here. Oh, he is the frogs here to support us Where's he at so I can hide under his coat? Oh another ko. All right, I'm doing good now. We just gotta we got to support our team Oh, he's up another ko Don't let these guys get an inch. We are making this comeback Nobody else can die because I'm gonna I'm gonna risk it all. I'll say I'll tell you that right now Dynamic entry We're moving now stay together stay together. They're healers running Oh, they got an ultimate Yes, yes, wait, so do I all right that it's time. Do you know it's time eight gates open Sibu Sibu Siki's up Siki's up I'm locked off.  All right. All right on three One two three wait. I mean no, no, no, no Literally on three. I just think it's funny. We probably broke down an entire group's friendship Like they probably like did they're probably yelling at each other right now. You know in the discord call them on like this Um, yeah, I'm gonna get offline for tonight. Yes.  All right. All right. I'm kind of feeling confident in our team All right a little less confident little less. Uh, yeah, me me too.  I'm trying to get this kill quick so I can teleport back I just want to throw a rock at him. I'm coming from the flank What up healer Yeah, you better stuff. You don't know who you're up against Come here. Come here.  Where you going? You thought it was all games, huh?  Come here.  Come on Come on go down fall fall fall. Hey, where you going? Nope. Nope Oh People's That was so close Dynamic entry Dude, this game is crazy. Come here. Are you thought I'd care about something like that? Nah Let this man. No. No. Is this the flawless victory? Oh my god, not the sand waves. No, no I brought I got brought back to life Our healer's so good. They resurrected my dead body. Let's go I almost have it. No, I haven't. I'm done with this video game right now. I am as well It's time the eight games You know what this guy's dying just for the fun of it night guys Okay, that game was over that game was over bro. Look at my stats, bro Hey, my death shouldn't count. I got revived. That didn't happen. I'm seven and oh my death was filler Ben.  I've been looking all over for you. Hey Does anybody remember this guy?  I was doing a survival I was playing survival and this guy named ben was using that almighty book Don't don't do that to me ben. All right, ben right now for the for the sake of our rivalry Play me in rock paper scissors right now If he throws it out, I'm throwing my out. That's all I gotta say All right, I'm gonna throw mine out now.  Let's go ben. You can't pick the same option as me ben I'll I'll talk about this with you later. Man.  Oh, what I said at the end. Yeah And so now I just got some look at that. I'm scared, bro. You saw that an organized Yeah, you saw those two. I was gonna say right there here. They're here Oh, he has the same jutsu as me. Hey, yo, he just liked me for real He just liked me for real. Where are you dotto? I feel like I'm getting I'm getting yeah, we are separated Hey, don't be up here. Don't be up here when I'm up here. I'm burning to death. Where is this guy? I see him now.  Hey, what you doing down here? No Oh, that was sick. I went right through his jutsu Oh, put the hands on him put the hands on him Go run. Oh, okay. This guy's good. This guy's built different. No helping No helping I see you saw the same guy My goal almost every time I use those hands is for it to just happen in your view Shut up Yo, why is why did guy teach me the best moves in the game? Oh I didn't know guy had such good things to teach Also deon I are you dead? Yeah, now I am I understand I'm so close to my ultimate though. I might as well use that to win bro I'm making a choice now deon Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. We only have two lives. I don't look. I've made my choice Oh, no, I've made my choice deon. I don't know how long I have It's like you wrote. Did you kill that guy? I can't see anything in here.  I couldn't see Bro, I'm gonna see you. I activated my ultimate last I can do Dude night amalo Amalo What am I'm old?  Damn it I've watched the line and died. I that would be that would be so embarrassing to realize amalo That would be so embarrassing in real life one two Three team on three. Let's go All right. Yeah, we got to work on that time. Yeah, we really we really do. All right.    Ah You thought I you thought I didn't have a plan for that. I come right back. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah Look at that. I bet you don't have any subs for this Uh, that was sick. Good work. Oh my god.  That was so needlessly my god all 64 poms I can't see oh bio, can you see anything we're getting jumped? Oh, never mind. He's getting chum. My god I hope that they're not all gathering up in one claustrophobic spot on v Uh, they kind of are eight gates Get out of my house. Get out of my house Nobody's allowed in my house. Damn. I am fast Hey, get off that point. I have my oh, I gotta just use it on someone.  I think I'll be Spreading spread amongst the clouds It's a real high five the genuine high five from from brothers, you know I'm just pressing it We made a friend already Jack I don't think I think that's a no I think


So about a month or so ago Dave Rubin announced that him and his husband were having two children now We talked about on my show how the backlash from his conservative audience was overwhelming They absolutely thought that that was unacceptable because they don't believe in Gay parenting and they barely believe that homosexuality should be permissible, right? So he for the first time since talking with Glenn Beck afterwards is going to respond directly to the backlash that he faced and Predictably, he's gonna say something deeply disingenuous because this is Dave Rubin. He gets paid to lie. So Candice is gonna bring this up to her credit, but let's let's listen I think that there's no question that the conservative side is much more tolerant and Able to have a civil conversation and say I respectfully disagree with this one thing But I see you as please There's no way that she believes that the right is more tolerant I feel like it's inconceivable that even conservatives think that Inconceivable the right is not more tolerant. That's demonstrably false It's just absurd that she says this with a straight face human being and this is I'm gonna treat you like a human being And it kind of but as I was saying earlier credit to her for saying I view Dave Rubin as a human being And I'm gonna treat you as a human being, you know Even though Candice Owens has very odious opinions on things the fact that she's saying this I think that that is important But still I mean she contradicts herself. She's said homophobic things before But you know credit where it's due it's the bare minimum to acknowledge a gay person as a human being But in these dark times where the Republican Party is a fascist Movement at this point you kind of have to acknowledge the small things right and give them credit for the small things Where typically you shouldn't have to give someone credit I mean you'd think in theory just not being a shitty person is like the basic expectation But no it's not not in America. So I guess credit where it's due Candice jumps into this And I know this is you probably talked about this ad nauseam But it was such a fascinating thing to see you kind of go through the ringer With your announcement on surrogacy and I gave my opinion on the show But I felt like when you made that announcement suddenly you became a conduit It really wasn't about you But there was this much larger debate happening and the conservative movement about surrogacy and what it means and notice How she just said that conservatives are more tolerant But she had to contradict herself there to bring up how he was put through the ringer. That's her words You know Ali stuck. He was kind of deep diving on what happens in this industry. Most people don't even know about this It's so you know, it's so new in America and Within America like the surrogacy process is a lot different than it is overseas, which is something that I learned when I went to England What was it like going through that and and you know just making this amazing announcement where how you know It's life two boys are going to be born and Seeing this side and then also seeing the left one a dunk on that like oh, this is what he gets for Having friends that are on the right. Well, how was it like going through it?  It felt horrible. It made me question my life decisions It made me think Jesus Christ. I've been trying so hard to Rehabilitate the rights image, you know, they've been seen as intolerant for years rightfully so because they are and I've tried to Help them and then they shit on me and it just pissed me off Like if he were honest he would say that but of course that's not what he's gonna say and he's going to blame the left Now she talks about how the left was dunking on him for this and she's right We were dunking on him for this because I mean you chose to align with far-right extremists knowing that they are Homophobic and he's claimed like he's the one person in this whole movement who perhaps more so than Candace Owens Who's used his identity as a gay man to claim that?  He's going to blame Yes The left now not as overtly as as before but he's going to he's gonna take a shot at the left here Well, there were like so many different layers of it So let me just hit the last one first because all of the tolerant lefties were seemingly so thrilled to tell me how The people on the right hated me. It's like, well, are you guys showing me tolerance? I didn't get any love or affirmation from you guys So the left is intolerant because we showed him how intolerant the right is That doesn't even make sense The right was enthusiastically telling you that you're a kidnapper.  He knows and look Dave Rubin is an imbecile, right? His IQ is probably in the single digits, but he's at least smart enough to know who really is and isn't Tolerance.  There's a reason why he moved to I think it was Florida And he didn't choose to move to Alabama, right? He wanted to get out of these blue states But he didn't choose to go to Alabama or Kentucky. He chose to go to, you know The most bluest or purplest red state that he can find, right? Probably in a very liberal city Because he knows deep down. He knows if he absolutely believed that the right was more tolerant than the left Then he would go to the deepest red county in this country and hold hands with his husband in public We know he's not going to do that because You would subject yourself to abuse potentially even in liberal cities. It's not like you're necessarily, you know immune to that So he knows but he's lying because again, that's what he's paid to do now The irony of course is that I got 99% love now the internet's a weird freaking place There's a lot of mean people and trolls. I wouldn't say it was 99% Like it seemed like it was a pretty significant portion of your own fan base who turned on you Now I'm not sure just like off the top of my head.  You're one of them percent of what I got Especially from the public people that I'm associated with some of the names who I mentioned already was all love and by the way I don't expect everyone who I'm friends with or associated with to have to acknowledge something publicly a lot of people Texted me privately or called me and that's just fine You know Forbes wrote a piece that said that Dave Rubin's audience and allies turn on him And it had a picture literally a picture of me and you on your set that you're sitting on right now It did not even mention you in the article But I mean like Okay, the picture maybe Wasn't relevant, but the headline is absolutely Correct because they were trying to say that my audience was leaving me my friends really doesn't mention you in the article I had my best month ever across all platforms last month.   I realized this I swear I said this to my executive I said I said Michael and do you know how many times I've been a picture in an article But then I'm not mentioned at all and I said it must be because I have a very clickable face So I'm going with that theory can this you got that million dollar smile and they know it's gonna generate clicks No, that's what you wrote in the tweet. You were like, well the two of us do look pretty good But look most of it was love look are there going to be some people so we there's two separate issues here in terms of a Same-sex couple having kids and then there's the IVF thing So so are there gonna be some traditional religious conservatives that are not happy with same-sex marriage and same-sex couples having kids Of course there are I believe in religious liberty and as long as your beliefs Don't impede on my life and my ability to have a family and all that stuff Then I still think we can live in the same country and I would hope that they can too But Dave they're saying that you shouldn't be able to Do what you're doing. They're saying that You adopting children should not be allowed. There are so many conservatives who still think that you shouldn't be allowed to be married I mean the Supreme Court in the draft decision Alito claimed that Lawrence v. Texas that decision which said that you can't criminalize sodomy Which means anal or oral sex by the way a lot of people don't know that So it would apply to straight people too, but would only be enforced against gay people But either way, you know Alito claimed that that wasn't explicitly enumerated in the Constitution Therefore, it's not a right.  They know who I am and they gave me a standing ovation but the thing about that is that You weren't talking about your gay identity. You see Conservatives assuming any of them are willing to tolerate you at all which some of them are not but if they're going to tolerate you they will tolerate you in so far as You don't talk about your gay identity unless Huge caveat.     Because if you agree with the right that kids seeing Homosexuality or just seeing that gay people exist is going to turn them gay and groom them.   How are you gonna do that? It's it's completely infeasible by their standards.  That's what he needs to understand Doesn't mean that they all love me at you know, they all agree with me on everything But I actually do think most of them love me and and that's what America is all they don't they're using you First off, I expected a little pushback just on the religious side. That's one thing I expected a little pushback you think On the IVF side, it's look, it's very very complex We can we can do a deep dive into the science on all of that and I don't want to share every little bit You know more privately on on how difficult it was and you know, there were all sorts of things related to COVID There were more My fertility doctor told us that he saw more abortion not sorry not abortions. He saw more miscarriages In the two years of COVID that he had ever seen in his whole career And they couldn't chalk it up to anything other than general states of stress So it's not like we had all of these Embryos that were viable and that they're gonna be aborted and a bunch of other things We can get into a more of that if you want, but I understand that there are some ethical issues around that I really do but also, you know, it's funny because now there's this whole abortion Conversation and I actually have a lot more firsthand knowledge of the science behind pregnancy because you know when you do it through IVF You know, they put the sperm in the egg together not to give you remedial science from eighth grade But they put the sperm in the egg together not to sperm. It's not to sperm. I do acknowledge that I have not a It's not to sperm Really two men can't make a baby. Hmm. Yes, you this is the problem because they are going to say this to you And they did say this to you. It's a natural But I'm curious like I think that's basically all that he says about the backlash He's switch Lee quickly switching gears because he doesn't want to talk about this because I'm assuming it hurts like he's a gay man and I know that that hurts. I have first-hand experience homophobia sucks It hurts and it's painful. He probably doesn't want to talk about it But I'm wondering if he's gonna say oh well because of this experience It made me think twice a bit abortion like I wonder what the conclusion is gonna be from this They can tell you the gender the day later and yet we live in a society that will tell you a that's not a life and Be gender doesn't exist.  Maybe life does exist. It's funny Okay, they're going in a different direction Dave nobody is saying that gender doesn't exist There are people who are gender abolitionists that don't want there to be a gender but still they acknowledge that gender exists Sex exists.  That's what you're finding out I love that the overall takeaway from this is not to rethink his worldview It's to double down on his conservatism and think actually the takeaway isn't that I was wrong and that the right is actually more Intolerant the takeaway is that abortion bad trans people bad as well.


I believe you have seen that OpenQA is a tool you are using for software quality assurance and automated tests when CIPA is available for Fedora as an additional installable sites of DNF. On the other side, we are using DNF now in OpenSUSE at Tumbleweed. All of you know that you are using the RPM from the package format. You know that it is well known as the Red Hat package management. And our goal is to integrate that also in our case with the same version so that in the future we can work better together. What is the benefit of cross collaboration? We can watch us as friends instead of competitors when we are working together on core technologies which are used in every Linux distribution. We bring new technologies to our partners if we think that is useful for all. That is what we have watched in the last presentation about volunteering and everything else. I am a 390x maintainer here at OpenSUSE and I make it a little bit faster now. I went through the community collaboration, sharing of technologies, benefits of cross collaboration. My role at OpenSUSE is what I want to achieve there and then we are coming what I want to achieve with containerization for all and afterwards perhaps to the Q&A session. We are a community collaboration is building relationships to other communities that we can work together as partners where we provide upstream contributions that everybody can use our technologies everywhere and we share our technologies and our knowledge as we are doing it here. OpenSUSE provides Fedora some software from us. OpenQA, you are using that for automated tests that is a web-based automated testing tool. We are developing it as OpenSUSE software and Fedora contains ZIPA as an additional installer besides of DNF. What we have integrated into OpenSUSE, additionally you know that RPM comes from Red Hat with the Red Hat package management as a package format. We have adapted our RPM to the same version now so we want to improve our collaboration in the future. The benefits of cross-collaboration is that we watch us as friends instead of competitors. We are working together on core technologies which are used in every Linux distribution and we bring new technologies to our partners. What has been highlighted in the last presentation has been that developers like their technology, upstream and in other Linux distributions and we share knowledge at conferences. My role at OpenSUSE is that I am an S390X maintainer for IBM C and Linux one since around one year. I was nominated from a community for this role as an IBMer and I became a team lead for the S390X port. I am a member of the release engineering team so I am responsible for packaging, QA development, communication, everything in this direction and I want to expand that to other Linux distributions. That was not possible inside of IBM therefore I have changed my job to reconciling. Mainframes are largely performance computer systems for people who don't know mainframes. You can call that big engines and that's the architecture S390X besides of x86 power and everything else. You have got x86 on your laptops and this architecture is used for mission critical data and you can run thousands of virtual machines on such a system. As I told you, I have received this message from IBM, don't contribute upstream, other Linux distributions may have a benefit of that. I wanted to contribute also to Fedora the same as we had somebody for power in the community. I like cross-collaboration therefore I see a future of community distributions for this architecture. The problem in the area of containerization was that IBM didn't publish container images for S390X to public registries but open source Fedora and Debian are running on S390X2. Therefore I thought community distributions can give access to open source container images We can receive latest packages and everything else and provide a really good foundation for all Kubernetes distributions the same as the three Kubernetes distributions and then we can enable all Kubernetes platforms for that. The collaboration is possible with that then our open source technologies are joining here. We build packages and container images with our open-base system and we have got our own container registry where we can test our container images afterwards. We build multi-arch container images and we are receiving daily or mostly weekly based on open source a tumbleweed with latest container images with software updates. That is planned with open source and I want to do that with Fedora and special software which requires that event to so that everybody can use community distributions for their container platforms. That is the overview of that. If we are building with open build service you can receive latest container images inside of registry.opensusa.org. If that is working really nice we want to publish that to Docker Hub also that is the main container registry for and most used container registry which is public and then you can use that based on open source Fedora, Debian or Ubuntu and it should not be important which container platform you want to use. You can set up your own Kubernetes. You can use open source a Cubic, OKD or Minicube and then you can use our container images. When I have achieved the end in the right time that was really fast, oh no need to cut the session off. When let's come to the Q&A session that was really fast now. I did that a little bit longer before and I ... Yes, impressively fast I put as big slower as in the point. It is difficult to do that in 7 minutes instead of 15 or 20 minutes. Yes, that's really loud if you have to be fast then you would be louder I believe. Are there any questions? Yes, and I can reference the collaboration panel at the last day of our conference where you can see our contributors who are contributing continuously, Neil and other people who are cross community members. So you can hear what has been happening together with open source and Fedora. I am happy that I am allowed to contribute upstream again since this month too. I am not an IBM anymore so I have got more freedom now. Yes, Luna is also a cross community member inside of OpenSUSE and Fedora. We have got multiple cross community members. Thank you if there are no questions anymore. And let's join to the next session.


your girl has been experiencing postpartum shedding first of all excuse how I look I was in the process of recording another video and this is my hair prep for a twist out and I'm not trying to cover it because I needed to dry by like this afternoon so I think I've been in complete denial about this whole postpartum shedding thing I've been getting shedding more than usual however I kind of just been ignoring it and just saying okay I don't wash my hair every week like I used to because now now that I work from home I don't really care how my hair looks during the week like I usually just have on a bonnet or a scarf on my head unless I'm trying to record a video or if I am going out which is very rare so I'm like okay I'm not washing my hair every week so of course I'm gonna have more shedding because you know naturally I think we shed our hair shed about 50 strands a day so if you build that up you know you don't have a bit of shedding this is just me being in denial however I can't be in denial any longer I'm pretty sure people have seen it in my previous videos that my edges look a little thinner than usual because I naturally have thin hair so that's just how it's been on my life thin or sparse whatever word you want to use but this is ridiculous like it's starting to grow back especially like right here my close to my temple area it's just left me it went some vacation somewhere and is not trying to come back to work so right now I'm making this video because I kind of want to track my progress and see if what I'm about to be doing actually works so this is how my edges look right now I'm gonna start using this Haitian black castor oil I got this from my local Whole Foods and I've actually never used Haitian black castor oil I've only used Jamaican black castor oil but I've been out of that for a long time now and I have not repurchased yet but I'm gonna try this out it's actually pretty expensive like $16 for this 3.4 ounce model however a little goes a long way so I know it's gonna last me a long time plus I'm gonna be the only one using it and it's mainly gonna be focusing just to use on my edges so I'm gonna use this it says the direction says to apply directly to the scalp and well if you try to gray eyebrows and eyebrows three to four times a week and massage well apply oil to entire hair two to three times a week and seal in moisture so I'm gonna be using this three to four times a week I'm gonna make it part of my nightly routine and I'm also going to be since I don't wash my hair like weekly anymore I'm gonna try and make sure that I at least make sure no product build up my edges has no product build up so at night in the shower I'm just gonna push my shower cap back and make sure my edges are always clean and I'm in this bottle I have rice water if you guys don't know the benefit of rice water I advise that you go and do your research but I do have a previous video talking about it up a little bit in my DIY African black salt rice water shampoo so I have rice water in this bottle and I'm keeping this in my shower as well so as I make sure my edges are clean and product free I'm gonna spray a little bit of this on my edges three to four times a week rinse it off and when I get out the shower I'll get up with this so I'm gonna do that and see where my edges are in about a month three to four weeks or so so yeah that's what I'm going to do put it next three to four weeks and see if it helps my edges grow back faster because they are growing back it's just taking it's time and it's so sad like I even have some like in the middle of my hair I notice that I have some really shorter strands so you can tell that I've been having some shedding up here and it's been growing back which is where the short strands come in so it's like shorter than the rest of my hair being that my hair is pulling back out so yeah hopefully this works because it's one thing to have naturally thin here but then to be even thinner due to postpartum shedding is kind of depressing if you ask me so to the new mamas out there old new mamas did you experience postpartum shedding and if so what did you do to combat it or maybe help your hair go back faster or minimize the shedding or whatever comment below leave your girls some tips they're welcome so yeah today is actually today is March 3rd so I'm gonna put that in my calendar that I started actually started this last night so I can say I started like March 2nd so are you hungry are you hungry so I'm gonna be consistent using it three to four times a week and see if it helps my edges fold back out and hopefully it does because this is ridiculous like I've seen worse but this is not what I'm used to at all anyways that is all for this video I'm gonna keep you guys posted on my progress and we'll see if this works if you haven't already again like comment and subscribe and hit that bell so that you're notified every time I upload a video right baby and you guys will see me in my next video say bye bye look at the camera see subscribe to mommy channel he's doing this bottle you can't have the bottle because you're just completing him out here he does not like this toy and I don't know why


So the last time we ended with our civilisation crumbling around us, and today we face a heavy responsibility. So Pryor's article makes a very, very simple point, but as so often with these very simple logical points, it really has a lot of resonance, it's very far reaching the point he's making. So what we've been doing so far in looking at Wittgenstein is shaping up to throwing out the idea of semantic value, throwing out the idea that notions of truth are reference, what the sign stands for, the contribution the sign makes to the meaning of a sentence containing it. That has anything to do with notions of truth or reference. So in the case of knowing what it is for something to be round, for example, the idea is that if you give yourself a verbal definition, or if you give yourself an image of roundness and say that's what I mean by roundness, that can't be what drives your use of the term round. To characterise your use of the term round is better just to think in terms of the inputs to you making the judgement that thing is round, what kind of perceptions would lead you to make the judgement that thing is round, and what the implications are for action of you making the judgement that thing is round. And forget about the bit in the middle, that doesn't do any work. You can't derive that way of using the sign from merely having the image. Two different people could both have the same image in their heads, but keep using the sign in different ways. Okay, that's the point we've gone over many times now, is that? I mean, do I need to labour that anymore, or is that pretty straightforward at this point? Okay. Well, that's in general true for names. We don't need the notion of the object that the name refers to. We just need the inputs to our use of the name, and what implications we draw from our use of the name. For predicates, we don't need the idea of a map from objects on to truth or falsity. We throw that out for propositional constants like and or or. The semantic value there is not the object it stands for, it's not a map from objects to truth values, it's a map from truth values to truth values, and we throw that one out too, right? So we just throw out semantic value altogether. And the argument is the same in all cases. Just by being given the truth table, you can't derive the rules of inference for a term. You already need to know how to reason logically to get the rules of inference from the truth table. So forget all that stuff, and just characterise for and, you just characterise the meaning of and using the input rules and the output rules. So the input rule is if you get A and you get B and you get A and B, so you get Rolly Smokes and you get Isaac Fishes, and then you get Rolly Smokes and Isaac Fishes. That's all right. Let me just lay that down. That's fixing the meaning of and. And if you get A and B, you've got A. So that's the output rule. If you've got Rolly Smokes and Isaac Fishes, then you've got Rolly Smokes. And can you guess what the other output rule is? Yes, you've got Rolly Smokes and Isaac Fishes, then you've got Isaac Fishes. Okay, and then you've explained the meaning of and. And if you operate that way, if you use the sign that way, that's all there is to your understanding of the sign. Okay, so that's a full characterisation of the meaning of and, and you don't need any talk about truth or falsity here, any talk about reference, anything like that. That's really, I think, the natural way to read the upshot of what Wittgenstein's doing, talking about following a rule. There is only the use of the sign. Talk about what it means in any sense over and above this is just idle. Now if we do this for A and B, can we do it for R? Yes, we can do it for R. What's the input rule? If you get A, you get A or B. And if you get B, you get A or B. Right? What's the output rule for R? If you get A or B, what can you conclude from that? Can you conclude A? No. Can you conclude B? No. Can you conclude anything at all? Well, you must be able to conclude. Sorry? You can conclude A or B. Yes. Thank you. The way we actually work, let me put it to you, is the reason like this is you get A or B, and then you say one or the other, A or B, and then if from A you can derive C, and if from B you can derive C, then you can say, well, look, either way, C. You see what I mean? You know it's one or the other, and whichever way it goes, you get C. Therefore, from A or B, you can conclude C. So if you say, look, either Romney wins or Obama wins, I mean, presumably, prior to the election, people were sitting in smoke-filled, well, maybe not smoke-filled, committee rooms are going through just this kind of reasoning. If either Romney wins or Obama wins from Romney winning, it follows that UC will need more money. If Obama wins, UC will need more money. So either way, what conclusion follows? UC will need more money. Please give generously. Okay? No, that's by the way. That's how you reason with all, right? Either way you say C, therefore C. You see what I mean? Yeah. So that's how you state the output rule for all. And the thing is, you might need some other premises. That's to say, when you're arguing from Romney winning, it follows that UC will need more money. You might need some other premises, right? It's not just because Romney wins. There might be other factors on play, meaning that UC will need more money. So call them X and Y. And then if from A or B, together with the hypothesis of X, and together with the hypothesis of Y, then from A you can derive C, and from B you can derive C, then forget about the A and B here. C follows from A or B, together with the other premises, X and Y. That should be very simple. If it doesn't seem very simple, then I'm not explaining it correctly. How does it seem? You give me that one? So if I do that, then I've characterised the meaning of R without talking about truth or reference or anything like that at any point. So that's throwing out semantic value and just describing use. It's doing it now for and or. So now, what about criticising the use that you make of a term? If you think about Descartes and skepticism, then Descartes really seems to be operating with the idea that he knows what it is for all the propositions he understands to be true. He just doesn't know if he's using them in the right way.  He knows what it is for all those things to be true. He just doesn't know if he goes about verifying them in the right way because he uses his sense impressions. And his question is, do my sense impressions really give me a good way of finding out whether things are that way? I mean, the analog for a logical constant would be to say, well, I know the truth table for and or or, but is this really a good way of finding out whether a or b is true? So once you know what it is for a sentence to be true, you can start to challenge your ways of finding out whether the sentence is true or whether the truth of the sentence really has the implications you take them to have. So that's what Descartes does. He says, well, I know what it is for there to be the regular world around me, but maybe my usual ways of finding out are no good. So if understanding a sign means knowing what has to be the case for sentences containing that sign to be true, that's the objective of your way of finding out. Your way of finding out is going to tell you, is that thing true? Your way of drawing implications is going to be what follows if that thing is true. Then like Descartes, you can criticise the ways, the use that you usually make of the sign. You can say, maybe I'm not using it the right way. So you've got your input to applying the term. You know what has to be so for an application of the term to be right, and then you've got your output. You're drawing your conclusions from that. But the picture here is that knowing what has to be so, and this is a natural way of thinking of it, if you've got your ways of finding out whether a sentence is true, then the truth of the sentence is the objective of this procedure. Finding out whether you're doing things right here, that has a point. His point is to find out whether this thing is true. Let me give you a parallel here. Suppose someone says, look, I play lots of bridge. I love playing bridge. Someday I'm going to be rich and famous because I play so much bridge. Then you can argue with them if they say, well, why are you playing so much bridge again? Because it's going to make you a lot of money because it's going to make you famous. And you can say, that's crazy. There's only a handful. I don't wish to be disrespectful, but you might say there's only a handful of cranks in the wall after you play bridge. You're never going to get famous or rich doing that. I mean, how much money do you make doing it anyway? And you could check, right? But on the other hand, you could have someone who is just a bridge nut. They just wake up in the morning and they think of that as drawing their hand for the day, and they spend the whole day dreaming about their next game. And they just play bridge for its own sake. And if someone is doing that, then you can't really criticise or justify it. I mean, everything else in their life is just about allowing them to play more bridge. You have no leverage against a person like that to say, why do you play bridge? He does everything else in order to play bridge. Playing bridge doesn't have some further point for him. That's the point of everything else. So if someone is doing something just for its own sake, you have no leverage to justify or criticise it. But if they're doing it for some further point, then you can say, how am I going to justify or criticise it? Does it get me that point? So if you've got the notion of the truth condition of a sentence as specifying the point of what you're doing and you're trying to find out if it's true or not, then you can criticise or justify your ways of getting that objective. So Descartes' kind of scepticism says, are the ways we use to verify statements really good ways of finding out whether they're true? But suppose that with Wittgenstein you just throw out the idea of semantic value. You throw out that notion of truth or falsity or reference and say there's only the use. All there is is just our ordinary practice of talking the way we do. Then there is no point that is meant to be serving. There is no objective that is meant to be getting you. That's all there is. You can't criticise the way we ordinarily talk. You can't do the thing Descartes was trying to do of criticising the use of the term. So if you've got something like this picture, your ways of finding out whether something's a cube and your image of a cube is telling you what it is really to be a cube, then you can say is that really a good way of finding out whether something's a cube? But if that truth condition has gone, then there's no possibility of scepticism. You just talk the way you do. That's what it is to assign a particular meaning to the sign. Similarly, if you've got these rules for and or for or, then there's no way of justifying or criticising them. The thing is that that's really quite general. These are very artificial lab examples, but often enough there's such a thing as bits of language that people find offensive and say you ought not to talk that way. And we do say things like you ought not to use notions like, well, I don't want to start some conflagration, but right now there's a whole string of words that if I used any of them, it would just make you see red. Suppose you take an ocean like Rich. If Wittgenstein is right, there's no way of criticising our technique or custom or practice of using an ocean like Rich. So if you come upon a community that just has this as the input rule for which X floats when pushed into water, right? And that's your input rule for which. And your output rule for which is from X is a which so you can conclude X should be bummed. You have no way of criticising that, right? That's all you can say is this is the way of my people. This is the use we have for the term which is not something that can be justified or criticised. It makes no sense to be sceptical about this notion. So that is one somewhat disturbing consequence of Wittgenstein's approach. If all there is to learning the meaning of a sign like which is learning a custom or a practice or a technique then you have no way of criticising the custom or practice or technique. But I mean this is close. The way I put it there is very, very simple. But that's close enough to real life examples to make you think can't you criticise? Is it really true? You can't criticise a way of using a term. Now Wittgenstein's, sorry, prior's example of tonk is a really simple laboratory example where things seem really to be going wrong. Yeah. So let's just lay out what tonk is. The general background to what prior's discussion is Wittgenstein saying things like a person goes by a signpost only and so far as there exists a regular use of signposts, a custom to understand the language means to be a master of a technique. There's no way of grasping the rule which is not an interpretation. That's to say it's not a way of saying what it is for the use of the term to be true or false. But it's just exhibited in what we call obeying the rule or going against it in particular cases. So suppose you've got a technique or a custom or a practice of using the sign tonk in the following way and I'll ask is there any possibility of criticising it? So the input rule for A or B was from A you can get A or B and from B you can get A or B. So that's the same as the input rule for tonk. Okay. From A you can get A tonk B and from B you can get A tonk B. Watch me very closely here. That's all right. I can define the term like that. That's the way we use it. Okay. So from A you can get A tonk B. So from Rolly Smokes you can get Rolly Smokes, tonk, Elvis is alive. That's all right. That's just the way it works. That's the way it all works. So it must be all right for tonk to work like that. Now you now consider the output rule for A and B. Well that was from A and B you can get A and from A and B you can get B. So the output rule for tonk is just like that. From A tonk B you can get A and from A tonk B you can get B. So if you get A tonk B, if you get Rolly Smokes, tonk, Elvis is alive, you can conclude Elvis is alive. And then vigorising thought. Right? Okay. So that's the introduction rules and that's the elimination rules. So this is just like any regular logical constant. This is just how you explain the meaning. That's all there is to explaining the meaning, right? We don't have any notion of semantic value. We don't have any notion of truth or falsity. We're just describing the use. We might come upon a people, some little known tribe of logicians somewhere, who use tonk exactly that way. And that's all there is to the sign having a particular meaning. It's got that regular pattern of use. And the pattern of use is perfectly well defined. So suppose you have Rolly Smokes. Then from Rolly Smokes you can infer Rolly Smokes, tonk, Elvis is alive. That's all right? And from Rolly Smokes, tonk, Elvis is alive. You can infer Elvis is alive. So from Rolly Smokes you can infer Elvis is alive. But notice that Rolly Smokes and Elvis is alive here. There could be any two arbitrary sentences. Yeah? So suddenly from anything I can infer, anything. Yeah? If I say there's a sparrow in the grass, I look out the window, there's a sparrow in the grass, there's a sparrow in the grass. Tonk Romney is president right now, today. There's a sparrow in the grass. Okay, so I've concluded that. That's all right. There's a sparrow in the grass. Tonk Romney is president. Therefore Romney is president. That's just the elimination rules. So I've proved that Romney actually is president. Okay? You guys are used to shocks in this class. We should tell Fox News. Let's just go over the reasoning here. Okay, suppose there is a sparrow in the grass. Yeah? I mean I can make it something else if you like. I mean suppose there's a laptop in the table or there are people on chairs. From that you can infer there are people on chairs, Tonk Romney is president. And from there are people on chairs, Tonk Romney is president. You can infer Romney is president. So you've proved that Romney is president. Is there any kind of weak spot in the reasoning? Okay. Sorry? Notice how powerful the technique is. Suppose you made it Ron Paul is president. There are people in the chairs. There are people in the chairs, Tonk Ron Paul is president. There are people in the chairs, Tonk Ron Paul is president. Therefore Ron Paul is president. And that works too. They must have some power sharing. A great fit. Is there a weak spot in the reasoning? Yes? One, two. Is there a weak spot that lets you prove anything? That's right. I could prove contradictions. I could prove that Romney is not president. Right? And then what you mean is a weak spot though. I mean it just displays the power of the technique. I mean just saying you don't like the results isn't to show that there's something wrong with the process. Yeah? Well here's the definition of Tonk. Here's the whole story about Tonk. That's the input rule and that's the output rule. Yeah so it's perfectly coherent. It's perfectly well defined. Yeah? So there's no problem with the reasoning. Don't say you don't learn anything in this class.  That's right. And a very short space of time too. And from minimal premises you just need Tonk. Right? Yeah. There's a problem with the conclusion. The Romney is president. Yeah. You might just be reading too much of the mainstream media. It can't be right. But okay but if there's a problem then where is it? This is perfectly well defined, right? Okay so I take that Tonk as being used correctly here. But what if one rule say Tonk doesn't allow us to use another rule correctly? So something like early explosion. Do you mean by the explosion? I think you meant you can prove anything. Right. Okay so there's an explosion. But then we have something like Tonk that doesn't allow us to obey that rule. So we have a conflict of rules. Such that one of them can't do that. Right. There could be conflict in your system of rules. Yeah. Well that might happen. That probably does happen actually. But the question then is how do we, what are the principles for resolving it? We need some kind of trade off. I mean the kind of trade off you get might be well, be careful when you're using Tonk. Right. Just don't use it for political purposes. Use it only to prove things about what's going on in outer space. That would stop the conflict. Use it judiciously. Use it wisely. It does seem that well, yeah a custom might be a complex thing with lots of moving parts. What you're saying is a custom might have things that force you to make accommodations, internal accommodations. But you could make all those internal accommodations couldn't you? And still keep Tonk in play. You could say well we're only going to use it to prove results about what's going on in outer space. And the first person to use Tonk to establish any particular result has the field as it were. So if someone comes up later and proves the negation, well that doesn't count because they were second. That'll be all right. There wouldn't be any conflict there. That would contain the explosion. Okay, so that seems, yeah? Hold without experiencing it.   Okay. That we're experiencing where that would. But how does it go for A and B? I mean, if the rules for A and B are whatever they are, like that, right? I mean, how does that relate to experience? Are they grounded in experience somehow better than the rules for Tonk? And then you have the first thing, you have the second thing, and you kind of focus on either one of those. Right. Well, you can focus on either one of them. I mean, unless you mean more by that than I'm grasping. Okay, come back to that. He was right, but I mean, like conditional. I can say if the sky is green and my hair is blue, neither of those are true, but that conditional is clear. Right, the conditional, yeah. There doesn't seem to be any sense of which is grounded in experience. Is that? Yeah. And with the apple and banana case, with an apple and a banana, I could, couldn't I, suppose I have an ocean of Bapu, right? So the input rule is, I just got one particular banana and apple in front of me, so I can say the banana is F, the banana is bright yellow, right? So I can conclude from that the Bapu is F, and if I've got the Bapu is F, then I can conclude from that that the apple is F. I'm not defining it. I mean, that's the rules. I told you the rules, right? The input rule is from the banana is F, I can conclude the Bapu is F, and from the Bapu is F, I can conclude the apple is F. That's the input and output rules. That's all it is to the use, right? That's the whole thing about the, I mean, you're right. That's the intuitive thing you want to do. That's what I'm talking about, right? But the whole point about the Vickie sign is we're throwing out the notion of very definition, very bit in the middle of the controls, how you use the term in these cases. And once you've thrown that out, why can't we do this? I love any pattern of use I like. Yeah, because there's nothing, there's no contract with which I have to keep faith. No need to lay down what the thing means. Consistency, yeah. These are two different ideas, consistency and some conception of what it is, right? Consistency you could get by the thing I was suggesting about confining yourself to talk about what's going on in outer space and having the first one who makes an argument using tongue be the winner. You could use consistency that way. You still have no idea what you're talking about, right? And similarly with Bapal, you could have some kind of system of making sure that you didn't actually get contradictions, but it would still be true. There's some sense in which you've just no idea what's going on here. What are you talking about? Yeah. So the reason, this is really, this is a, how should I say, this is an artificial case, right? But I will suggest next time, I'll try to bring out, the thing about which shows that it's really quite general. What I mean is it connects to perfectly serious real world problems about how language is used. I mean, which is a good case that, there are plenty of words that people would like to just ban from the language. Yeah, I mean, plenty of words that good hearted liberals would just like to see out of the language. And it's a good question. How can, how can a word in itself be objectionable? I mean, if I say, if you say to someone, you're very ugly or you're very rude, then that might be very disagreeable, right? But the word itself is perfectly okay. You see what I mean? You can see objectionable thing as using words, even though the words themselves are perfectly all right. But in the case of words like which, and I don't really want to give a whole litany, but just because, you know, it is so hot button, right? People really take these words very seriously, very passionately. And well, just to give one example, I was in South Africa shortly after Mandela was elected, and I remember talking to someone on a commission for renaming every single place in South Africa, because so many of the names were objectionable. And she said to me at one point, she said, well, we think we finally got kafir out of every single place name in South Africa, right?   It's that the word itself shouldn't be there. You want to expunge the word. And similarly for which there, the word itself can do damage. And with tonk, what you got is a very pure case where the word itself can be doing damage. You were all right until you let the word into your vocabulary. The minute you let tonk into your vocabulary is very powerful. You can now make all these inferences you couldn't have made otherwise. So you've got to have some way of criticizing and correcting here. This is a very, like I say, it's a very pure kind of sterile laboratory example. But it seems to me that the trouble here comes just because we don't have a truth table for tonk. I want to suggest a very simple diagnosis of what's going wrong in Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein's got a very good point. His point is you can't derive the rules for logical constants from the truth tables, right? That's the thing about in general. The bid in the middle can't explain what keeps us together. So this is very simple for what I'm saying here. But I think this is really, this is what's wrong with a whole of Wittgenstein's rule following discussion. The right part is this. You can't derive the rules from knowledge of the semantic value. Nonetheless, it might well be that we need there to be such a thing as knowledge of the semantic value because knowledge of the semantic value is what gives us knowledge of our objective in using words, sentences, in the ways we do. That's what one of the questions we're saying about. You've got to have some conception of what you're doing. It's natural to put it by saying you've got to have some definition. But it's not really a definition you need because not every word can be defined. You've got to know what it stands for with battle. You want to know which thing you're talking about. And if you've got a sign like tonk, you need to know what you're saying using the sign. So maybe what we need a truth table for is to make the practice intelligible. You could accept the negative thing Wittgenstein says about you can't derive every other aspect of your use of the sign from the truth table, but it may be nonetheless that unless you've got a reference for a name, unless you've got a map from objects of truth values for a predicate, unless you've got a truth table for a connective, you have no idea what you're about in using the sign. And if you think of it like that, the basic problem with tonk is just you can't write a truth table for it. It's not really the things go wild using tonk because you could try and contain the wildness and still something would be wrong. I know not everyone here has done logic, but can you think your hand up if this doesn't quite make sense? It does not quite make sense. Can you put your hand up if you're perfectly happy with the truth tables for and and or? Everyone? Some of you put up a very small hand. Okay, so you see... I hope I don't make too much of a mess of this. These two columns, you could have every permutation of truth and falsity for A and B. They're both true, one's true, one's false, one's false, one's true, they're both false. And then in the third column, you say, well, the truth values are the whole thing for each permutation of truth and falsity for A and B. So for A and B to be true, you need A and B to be both true, otherwise it's false. For A or B to be true, you just need one of the other to be true. It's only false if they're both false, right? So how does it go for tonk? If you get A and you get B, then you can infer A, tonk, B. And from A tonk, B, you can infer A, and you can infer B, right? That's all right. So how does it go then? So if A tonk, B is true, then A and B must both be true. And if both A and B are true, then A tonk, B is true. So that top line there is all right, right? But how does it go if... Well, let's do the bottom line too. So A tonk, B... If you get A false and B false, then A is false and B is false. So A tonk, B... Well, in order to infer A tonk, B, you need to have either A or B. So if they're both false, you don't have either of them. You can't infer A tonk, B. And if you don't have A tonk, B, you can't infer A and you can't infer B. So that's all right. Maybe if they're both false, so the whole thing is false, right? So the last line is all right. But if A is true and B is false, is A tonk, B true or false? Well, that must be true, right? Because if you get A, then you can infer A tonk, B. Right? So A tonk, B must be true. Yeah, that's all right. But then again, if you get A tonk, B, you can infer both A and B. So if you get A tonk, B, then A must be true and B must be true. But B is not true. B is false. Aha. So if you get A tonk, B, then A must be true and B must be true. So if you get A true and B false, then A tonk, B must be false, right? So if you get A true and B false, then A tonk, B must be false. That's all right? Because if you get A tonk, B, then you can infer both A and B. So if B is false, then A tonk, B must be false, right? But if you get A true and B false, then you get A. And from A you can infer at A tone B. So A, B, A tone B must be true. I mean false, right? Okay, so you can't really put anything in there. Yeah, you can't put in a true and you can't put in a false. You get the wrong answer either way. Yeah? And similarly, well, do I need to work it through if A is false and B is true? Yeah? It must be true because you've got one or the other and you've got the whole thing. But it must be false because you've got the whole thing and you've got both of these. So you can't write a truth table for A tone B. There's no such thing as the truth table for A tone B. That gives you a way of saying what's wrong with it. You can't fill it in as true here both times. You can't fill it in as false both times. There's nothing you can fill in. So if you think of it like that, you could think of what's going on here. You could say, well, it's not that you need the truth table to derive the rules of use for the sign. If you're just given the truth tables and told, well, get on with it, then you couldn't do that. You couldn't derive your use of the sign. The truth table can't be what keeps us together and so on. But it may be that nonetheless when you're going to use a sign like and or or or tongue, it doesn't make sense unless you have a truth table for it. So the pattern of use could be fundamental and there is not derived from anything else. But you still only have a legitimate pattern of use when you know the semantic value of the term. The semantic value could be like a regulator controlling which patterns of use are legitimate and which patterns of use are not legitimate. So with Baple, you could say, well, what's wrong with that? The fundamental thing that's wrong with that is you have no idea what the semantic value of Baple is. What does it stand for? Does it stand for the banana? Does it stand for the apple? You can't say either. So you always have to have some reference for a name, some map from obituary truth values for a predicate, some truth table for a propositional constant. That's always got to be there even though Wittgenstein was right, that the pattern of use is not derived from that thing. So what I'm suggesting is this is quite simple but I'll try and bring out next time how far reaching this is that there is really a kind of element, well, I have a sense of thunder and lightning playing about me as I say this, there is really a kind of elementary error in the conclusions Wittgenstein draws from the remarks on rule following that the really deep insight is that you can't derive the pattern of use from knowledge of the semantic value. The mistake is to say therefore we just throw out the notion of semantic value because it may be that we always need the semantic value to make intelligible to us what we're doing with a sign. So it isn't right to say there's only the use. We always have some insight into why we're using words the way we do. If you say why do you use and the way you do, it's because you've got the rules of inference. I don't know how you guys were taught basic logic. I spent the best years of my life drilling people in elementary logic and the way we used to do it back then was you just teach people the rules of inference. So these would be people who had just come straight from high school and before they had the chance to realize they weren't at high school anymore and they had an option as to what they did. We would just do it into them for three or four weeks what the rules of inference for logical constants were and we said don't bother about what it means, just learn this and then once they'd learned the rules of inference for logical constants two or three weeks in they would get the truth tables and the idea was, well at that point you suddenly understand what's going on here you understand why, if then has the rules of inference it does why or has the rule of inference that it does because you now see that this is the truth table and these rules are letting you preserve truth or falsity now it all falls into place I mean that was a theory anyway I mean many of my students spent the whole term in a complete focus to what was going on but the idea is that you understand why if you just get explained to you this is the rule for or then if you just told us what the rule for or then okay you can learn it but to understand why that's the rule for or you really need to know the truth table for or so that truth tables have this role to play for us in explaining and making it intelligible what we are doing with the sign we do not simply use signs like zombies we have some insight into what is going on and that I think is what's right about that thing about we use our experience of the world that we don't just have rules like that rule for BAPL we get the input from one object and the output relates to another object we use our experience to tell us what it is that we're referring to what we are talking about so that the fact that we use the signs the way we do is something that we have some insight into why it's going like that so we could acknowledge Wittgenstein's point that use is more fundamental than knowledge of truth conditions but keep a role for truth conditions and making use intelligible we could still say you only have a comprehensible use of a sign when it has some semantic value the idea was we're going to explain the truth conditions of sentences in terms of the references of the parts and that knowledge of truth conditions derived from knowledge of reference getting us with our knowledge of what we're about in our use of language so that we're not simply using language as well-drilled zombies but we have insight into what is going on so maybe the stuff that we did in the first nine weeks of the class did have a point after all and on that hopeful note we'll back it up for today carry on a little bit with prior's thing for next time


I encourage people to try as many as they can, and the analogy that I keep saying is that if you were to go into a music store as a guitarist, you wouldn't just pick a guitar off the wall and be like, yeah, this looks great, I'll take it. You would play it, and you would see how it interacted with you and how it felt, and a microphone is the same exact thing. We don't often have the luxury as singers to try microphones out for a number of reasons, especially coming out of a pandemic, but there are ways to try them. So I would recommend doing that.