Hi, welcome to the All Things LGBTQ Interview Show, where we interview LGBTQ guests who are making important contributions to our communities. All Things LGBTQ is taped at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which we recognize as being unceded indigenous land. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show. I'm here with Amy Hoffman, who is a longtime activist, writer, member of the literati of the All Things LGBTQ community and the LGBTQ community in general. Welcome Amy. Thank you. It's great to be here. It's great to have you. We're here to celebrate this terrific novel that I finished last night, Dot and Ralphie, and we'll talk a little more about that soon. But first, let's start with an introduction that I will read, and it's from your website. And I'm going to use various persons, maybe second, third. Not first. Okay. A writer, editor, and community activist, Amy Hoffman is the author of the novels Dot and Ralphie, which we're going to talk about, in the off season, which takes place in Provincetown, looks great. And three memoirs, Lies About My Family, An Army of Ex-Lovers, My Life at the Gay Community News, and I think that's such a fabulous title for that book. I've always admired it, and Hospital Time. An Army of Ex-Lovers was shortlisted for a Lambda Book Award, and both an Army of Ex-Lovers and Hospital Time were shortlisted for the New York Publishing Triangle Judy Croan Award. Amy is currently a freelance editor, writer, and consultant. She was editor-in-chief of the Women's Review of Books for 14 years, from 2003 to 2017. And that's an amazing accomplishment. Thank you. I'm very proud of it.  That's a wonderful publication. You are a faculty member in the Solstice MFA program at LaSalle College. Is that how you pronounce it? You've been an editor at Gay Community News, Southam Press, and the Unitarian Universalist World Magazine. You taught writing and literature at the University of Massachusetts and Emerson College and served as development director for the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and the Women's Lunch Place, a daytime shelter for homeless women. Your creative writing, feature articles, and reviews have appeared in Boston Review, Gay and Lesbian Review, a publication that I also write for, women's review of books, and other publications. And I've seen your work over the years many times. And I was just commending you before we taped on your entry in that wonderful anthology put together by Richard Schneider about stonewall in search of stonewall. It was a great article. To continue, Amy has a BA in English from Brandeis University and a master of fine arts in creative writing from UMass Amherst, from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.   I can't believe you did that. What a lot of work. It's crazy, but I don't think I'm going to do it again.  As you write in Lies About My Family, you grew up in New Jersey, the oldest of six children. You've lived in Boston since 1973. When you're not writing, you enjoy meeting, playing the violin, basically yoga and hanging out with your wife Roberta Stone. Very impressive. Thank you again. Let's start with your writing career. Have you always been a writer? Um, I wrote. Well, I guess the answer is yes. I mean, I wrote a lot as a child and as an adolescent. I wrote lots of poetry like a lot of people do. Unfortunately, when I started college, I stopped writing creatively and I also had a terrible time writing anything for a long time. But I started writing again in my late 20s, early 30s, and that was when I decided to go to graduate school and writing, mostly because I thought it would give me time to write. I don't think I realized that it wouldn't totally fund my writing, that I'd be doing a lot of teaching and other jobs as well as being a graduate student. But it was a wonderful experience, I have to say. I went to graduate school at UMass Amherst. I met a lot of really wonderful students and a couple of my teachers who I remained friends with for a long time after that. It was very inspiring and I didn't expect that when I went because I was writing openly lesbian work and I did not expect to get much support for that. But I was pleasantly surprised and, you know, people, there were a lot of people who didn't get it or who felt uncomfortable with it, but for the most part, it was okay. I mean, Northampton and the Pioneer Valley in general, where UMass is located, has a very active lesbian community and did at the time, and I think that that helped a lot. What year was this? I was there between 1985 and 1989 when I was kind of going to school and working and teaching and writing. You came out in the 70s, though, you said, you believe I read somewhere. Yes, I came out probably around 1976, 77. I worked at Gay Community News, so I was sort of very publicly out starting in 1978. And writing the entire time. Yeah, I mean, at GCN, I wrote a lot of news articles and opinion pieces, and I think it was mostly after that that I really started focusing more on my creative writing. Well, we're here to celebrate the publication, as we said, of Dot and Ralphie. How did you happen to write this novel? People have been asking me about that, of course, because I've been doing some of these interviews and readings since the book came out to try to get to promote it. And I realizing that the characters of Dot and Ralphie, that couple, have been in my mind for a really long time. I remember, I think I wrote a piece about going to the Michigan Women's Music Festival, which I did in 1977, I think, in the summer. But I wrote a short story about it, and in that story, there was a lesbian couple, just a glimpse of them, and one of them, they're sitting outside their tent, relaxing in lawn chairs, and one of them, I guess, who's the Ralphie predecessor, is wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and a pair of plaid shorts. So I just had this image of them for a long time, like I said. And so when I started the book, I guess it came out of that image of these characters. And it ended up, I think of novels as kind of rolling snowballs that accumulate all kinds of stuff as they go downhill. So the characters, you know, as we were saying before we started our formal interview, have a lot of, they're getting older. I guess they're older than they were when I first conceived of them. They're dealing with various kinds of health issues and relationship issues. And they have a friend who is a little older than them, who is also passively experiencing the beginnings of some cognitive issues. So there's a lot of different things going on in their lives once I started exploring them and the snowball started rolling down the hill. Well, when I first saw the description of it, I thought I've got to read this book as my life. And then, you know, my experience of reading it as someone who came out in 1975, who is of a certain age, I loved all the cultural reference points, ours and the humor, you know, like God goes on a gay cruise and she says everyone's so nicely coupled and, you know, satisfied with themselves. I mean, they're in Michigan and all that sort of stuff that appears. That was delightful. But also, and I think you might have said this somewhere in the interview, not in an interview, there aren't that many books about aging lesbians that are affirmative and, you know, or at all, really. Jane Rool did write a book about an older lesbian couple, one of whom has Alzheimer's or some sort of dementia and that came out long, long time ago. So she, I mean, and the book is kind of idealized, I think, in that the character with dementia doesn't have a lot of the issues that go along with that. But in any case, she was really a ground breaker in so many ways, Jane. And one of the ways in which she was very original was in writing that book. How long did it take to write it? Oh, you know, I'm very slow and the book is very short, but it still took me, oh, I'd say probably two years at least, maybe three.  And anyways, I think I would say it took me, why don't I say three years. Also, you know, as you mentioned, when you were talking about my biography, I've always had a day job. And so my habit was to get up early in the morning and write before work. So I didn't always have a lot of writing time. But now you're retired? Now I'm retired. I don't know if I have more writing time than I did. I know exactly what you mean. So with this book, did you were able to maybe sit down and just write for eight hours, which I can't imagine doing personally, but... No, I can't write like that. I think, you know, unfortunately, I maybe because of this long-standing habit, but most of the time, you know, two or three hours that is stretches about what I can do, especially when I'm writing new work, I can revise for longer than that. And actually, I have had the experience of going to a writer's retreat. I've gone to the Virginia Center for Creative Arts many times. I highly recommended to any of the writers out there to apply. And the first time I went, I was terrified because I thought, what am I going to do with two weeks where I have nothing on my schedule, but to be at my desk. And actually, it was great. And I have been much more productive during my times there than I ever expected. And my concentration has been great.  What's the difference between writing nonfiction and fiction? Um, well... When words are rushed. The process has felt very different. I mean, for one thing, writing memoir, I think, takes a lot of personal work and excavation. And at least my writing, I'm fairly strict with myself in trying to be as honest as possible. And so it can be difficult, you know, just sort of psychically difficult, which is not to say that fiction isn't. But when I started writing The Off Season, which was the first fiction I'd written since graduate school, really, it felt so liberating. And it felt so light. It felt like a bubble. Because I could just make, you know, I let my imagination go and I made up all these characters. And I, you know, saw sort of how the relationships were evolving, which became a plot. And it just, it was fun. It was fun in a whole different way. So the experience, you know, for me was very different. And the pieces, the way that the structures of the books evolved was also very different for fiction and nonfiction. Nonfiction books I wrote in pieces. And then I had to figure out how to make the pieces all fit together to become a book. The fiction, I had at least the illusion in my head that I was writing from beginning to end. Of course, I had to, that changed. But it felt like I was writing from beginning to end. Let's give the audience a taste of the novel at hand. You've agreed to do a little reading from Dot and Ralphie. And would you mind doing that now? I am happy. Is that good enough for us? Yes, I'm happy to do that. I'll read just a short excerpt from, basically from the beginning of the novel. As we've been talking about the title characters, Dot and Ralphie are a lesbian couple. They're in their late 60s. Dot is a children's librarian. And Ralphie works for the Department of Public Works. So neither of them are retired at this point. Even though a lot of folks in their late 60s are, my parents actually worked right up until their 80s. So maybe that's my role model. But when the novel opens, Ralphie is recovering from knee surgery. And she and Dot are worried about whether Ralphie will be able to keep her job, her physical job, with a bad knee. Because she works, as I said, for the Department of Public Works. She does a lot of work outside. A lot of really physical stuff. Their apartment is also becoming a problem because they live on the third floor of a triple decker in Boston with no elevator. The typical, if you're a Vermont audience, will also be familiar with triple deckers. I think they're all over New England. They're just very typical working class architecture, three floor flats. And in Boston, at least, you don't have to put in an elevator unless you're more than three floors. Another character in this chapter is Dot's sister, Susan, also a lesbian who has just gotten involved with a much younger girlfriend, Jermaine, who is French-Canadian. On their way back from a six-month anniversary weekend in Ogunquit, Maine, Susan and Jermaine notice a sign on the highway. For an independent living community, for people 65 or better. That's what the sign says. And I didn't make that up. They want Dot and Ralphie to consider moving up there and the four of them drive up to look at the place. So that's the setup for this chapter. It becomes an expedition. For the first time, Ralphie manages to bump herself down the front steps on her butt with hardly any help from Dot, which is an accomplishment she's proud of. It takes a surprising amount of arm strength. They drive around to pick up first Susan and then Jermaine, who rushes out her door carrying a picnic basket. For after the tour, she announces, darling, says Susan, how sweet. In the community room, I saw on the website, very pretty and for all to use. Nursing homes have websites, says Ralphie. It's not a nursing home. It's a condo Dot size. And we're just looking. Remember Jermaine looks puzzled. Everybody has websites, she says. They pull up to a low beige building, a shoebox, basically, that matches those in the office park next door. Except for the main entrance and imposing pillard portico. No, over there, Ralphie corrects Dot who's aiming for visitor parking. Ralphie points her to the handicapped space in front of the door instead. Hey, says Jermaine, not fair. The disabled, they need it. And says Ralphie, extricating a permit from the glove box and hanging it on the rear view mirror. I'm a cripple. That's why we're here. Remember? A woman comes out of the building waving at them exaggeratedly. She's probably in her late 60s like Dot and Ralphie, but she looks like she belongs to a whole other generation. Her body is sort of rectangular, and she's wearing a wool skirt and actual hose, pearls and a twin set. As they pile out of the car, the woman smiles broadly, her mouth outlined in vermilion. Welcome, welcome, she calls. Welcome to Maple Grove. And we do have maples, you know, quite venerable ones. They made sure to keep them when they built the townhouses. We're not like those places, Mountain View Lakes or whatever, that are miles from any lake or mountain.  Our grounds here are just lovely in the fall. I always say you can go leaf peeping right from your own kitchen window. Well, some people have to travel miles and miles. Susan introduces them.  Germaine Bellrose, Dorothy Greenbaum, Dot, says Dot. She doesn't let just anybody call her Dorothy. Ignoring her, Susan finishes. Oh, and our Ralphie, as though everybody has one. Ah, the woman nods as though these introductions explain something. Mrs. Daly, she extends a hand and Ralphie reaches over her crutches to shake it. Mrs. Daly takes it hesitantly. She's trying to figure out the relationships among this tour group. Mr. Bellrose, she concludes, aren't you the lucky one surrounded by all these pretty ladies? Ralphie's been mistaken for a man before. And generally, it's not a situation she wants to get herself into. With younger guys, especially, it can turn dangerous once they realize their mistake. She prided herself on giving as good as she got until the night when she ended up in the hospital with a concussion, a couple of black eyes, and three broken ribs. Never again, she vowed. She became expert at deflecting aggression with humor. And these days, challenges are rare. Mrs. Daly, though, has handed Ralphie an irresistible opportunity, and she plays along. You bet, she growls, trying for bustle. Dot catches her eye and Ralphie winks. Against Dot's better judgment, she grins back. Susan glares at them, but keeps her mouth shut. Mrs. Daly leads them through the pillars into the foyer. Dot and Susan in front, Ralphie, who's positioned herself next to Jermaine following.  But then she reminds herself, it's not a strange man, it's Ralphie. Our front desk is staffed 24 hours a day, says Mrs. Daly. Isn't that right, Cindy? Cynthia, says the woman sitting at the desk, who is dwarfed by an enormous flower arrangement. Concierge's service is included, Mrs. Daly points out, by trained staffers like Cindy here. Cynthia, the concierge, enunciates, since this happens almost every day. Ignoring her, Mrs. Daly nudges the group along to their next stop. Impressive, booms Ralphie. Mrs. Daly looks at her suspiciously. We receive a beautiful fresh bouquet every week, Mr. Velrose. Just one of our lovely touches. Now let me show you one of our units. Don't you love it, Susan asks Dot excitedly? All that parking and the grand foyer and the concierge, like in France. She looks around for Jermaine, but with Ralphie on crutches, they fall in behind. I could live here, Dotty, I really could. In a unit, says Dot, what town are we in again? Oh please, it doesn't matter. You just shoot down 95 to Boston whenever you want. I see, says Dot, nodding at this ridiculous statement. No one shoots down 95, encircling a city famous for its maniacal drivers and irrational signage, including an Einsteinian stretch on this very highway where you find yourself traveling north and south at the same time. The road is clogged day and night. Mrs. Daly leads them out of the main building and across a short path to a townhouse. In the first floor apartment, Susan admires everything. Then reiterates to Dot all the features their guide has just shown them. The granite countertops and the silent dishwasher. The waterfall showerhead in the gas fireplace. The view is just as promised. A rolling lawn and the stand of large old trees. All of it cleverly landscaped to imply that over the next tail is a Therovian woods rather than an office park. Back in the living room, Mrs. Daly stops her guests and arranges them on the armchairs and couches the place has been staged with. All of it unobtrusively tasteful and neutral shades that can barely be identified as colors. Grease. She switches on the fireplace. So that's it, she says. What do you think, Mr. Bellrose? Throughout the tour, she's glommed on to Ralphie, having apparently decided she's in charge and addressed most of her comments to her. Ralphie grunts. Oh, enough already, Ralphie says, Susan. And it dawns on Mrs. Daly that she's made some sort of error. Susan turns to her. It's gorgeous, she says. We're going to have to give this some serious thought. Very good, says Mrs. Daly, less warmly than before, handing around her business cards. Do call any of you ladies if you have any questions whatsoever. The community room asked your name. Do you know where is that? We brought a picnic. I think they have them in some of the other developments, dear, but here we are in assisted living, you know. Turning off the fireplace, she ushers them out of the building and points to a fork in the path. That's the shortcut to the parking lot, she says, dismissing them. We are in handicapped, says Germain, for Ralphie's bad knee. Mrs. Daly has been trying not to look at Ralphie, but now she does, and Ralphie gives her a big smile and a wave hello with her crotch. Same way, says Mrs. Daly. She's had enough of this group. She doesn't even know anymore whom she's supposed to be selling to. Just follow it around to the front of the building and you'll be back where you started. Exactly, thinks Doss. What a great excerpt. I love reading that excerpt. My partner grew up in Chelsea. And so I read that section about I-95 to her. And she confirmed it's ferocity that you do go north and south at the same time. That is absolutely true. I did not make that up. Has responded variously. And if I was wondering if you could tell us about that, and also if there's a particular audience you had in mind when you wrote it? Well, when I've done readings to people in person, especially if the audience is skews older, like the characters, people have shared a lot of their own experiences with disability, with the healthcare system, with trying to find appropriate care as queer people. So I've learned a lot actually from the audiences, not much of it pretty scary and not positive. It doesn't make you look forward to dealing with healthcare as you get older. In terms of the audience I thought of, I guess I felt like mostly I think about a queer audience, an LGBTQ audience. You know, that's the world I'm writing about. And so I feel like that's also sort of the world I'm writing to. And that's an important part of how I identify my own community. I didn't think of myself as writing mostly for people in my age group or in the age group of these characters. And in fact, I was worried about the cultural references that I think you and I were talking about before because there's references to lesbian life in the 70s, 80s, 90s. The characters talk about going to bars, they talk about going on lesbian cruises. They talk about things that people aren't doing as much anymore. And I was concerned about whether younger women would, younger readers just generally would get that. And it's turned out not to be a problem somehow that stuff is still bouncing around enough in the culture where people understood it and enjoyed it. And I have a 24-year-old lesbian friend who lives in New York who's always taken for a man. And we were just talking about today that whole butch man misidentification that constantly it's timeless almost. Oh, yeah. Well, lesbians get mistaken for all kinds of things. At one point, is this in Dot and an Alfie?  Me too. I have been mistaken for the daughter of my wife. That's not good. I think, you know, as I think I say in the book, you know, straight people sort of get that there's some sort of vibe that they can't quite figure out what it is. I love that. I underline that in the book because it happens to us too all the time. Tell me about your literary influences. I love this question. I always find it a hard question to answer. I read constantly. I have, you know, a master's degree in fine arts and literature. I think I can say a few things. Lately I've been, well, I just read Kate Atkinson's new book, which she's a British writer. She has written, she writes in many, many forms. She has a series of mysteries that are wonderful and very intricately plotted. That's one of her sort of her characteristics. She, all of her books, no matter what they are, are very intricate. She writes, she often writes in short chapters and she, her chapters often start with a bit of dialogue. And I tend to do that as well. As I said, her books are very intricately plotted. I'm sure she has many outlines. I never outline. I don't outline. I don't know where I'm going when I start. I'm very character driven. Other writers who've been important to me are Virginia Woolf and Maxine Han Kingston and Toni Morrison. I guess I mean for all kinds of different reasons. I think Maxine Han Kingston helped me at a certain point because she's also somebody who's writing sort of totally, I would say transcends genre. It's not even concerned with genre. Her memoirs are full of stories and bits of history and folktales. She's mixed fiction and nonfiction. She doesn't put a value judgment on one genre over another and she, it's just all together there. And that was important to me. In your, let's switch gears for a minute. In your profile or interview or rave review, the piece that appeared in Boston, in the recent issue of Boston spirit in which you are featured. You said, and let me quote you to yourself, community is the thread that runs through everything. I love that line. There are really thoughts to live by. Personally, do you have a writing group? Do you have a writing community? If you've lived in Boston almost 50 years, you must have a million from a lot of communities. I do have a writing group. In fact, I just met with them two days ago, which is unusual. We're very informal. We're not one of these groups that has assignments and meets every two weeks for a certain number of hours. It's quite informal, but we've all been, and there's only three of us. So I don't know if it's a group or I don't know, a dinner party, but we have been all very important to one another in our writing. I think we've all been able to encourage each other or provide criticism and critique at certain really important moments in the writing. So it's been wonderful. How long have you been meeting? I'm not even sure. None of us can remember, but at least 20 years. Wow. That's fabulous. It's great. There are communities in the novel are sort of interesting too. It's striking, I think, because you seem to suggest that there are communities everywhere you just have to find them. I suppose that's true, or at least it's been true in my life. I've written about this, but I worked at a paper called Gay Community News in the late 70s and early 80s, and that experience was really central to me. It was a crucial moment in my life. As I said, one of our focuses on that newspaper was community, which was important at that time because the idea of having a queer movement was something new, and the idea that we had a community was new. We were very much out of the mainstream. I think our community was important to us in maybe a different way than it is now. I think it's still important, but what I was going to say is that just about everyone who's important to me in my life now is someone I know from that time. Really?  Well, I met my partner at the Second Wave Collective in the basement of the Unitarian Church. I worked at Second Wave briefly. Did you really? Yeah. I lived in Boston between 79 and 84, and it had a lasting impact on me, including the literary community. All that wonderful lesbian publishing that was occurring really energized me. The Boston movement was very literally focused. There was a lot of books, newspapers, magazines, small publishers, everything. Tremendous amount of literary production going on in Boston at that time. Not so much now, but then. What are your current projects? You're going around with a book tour. That's time consuming. That's a project, but I have a couple of projects. I am working on a new novel. I don't want to say anything. I can't really say anything much about it. It's been very early stages, and I've been working on it kind of on and off. I've just recently sort of tried to immerse myself in it a little more. I'm also, though, doing something that's new to me, which is working on anthology. My very close and dear friend, Irvashi Vad, died in May of metastatic breast cancer.  One of her sisters and I are putting together a collection of her writings that I think will be really valuable. That's a really important project. Thank you for doing that. Some of her published work, but also Jolton of her sister has been delving into her archives and her computer, so she's been discovering a lot of unpublished work that is also really interesting. So we're going to be working on that. That is fabulous. Oh my goodness. I think, well, I guess I want to reiterate what you were quoting me as saying about community. I feel like to me it's in every one of my books. It's something that's been sustaining in my own life, finding a community and working on creating communities. So I guess I just think if anyone's looking for a theme in my work, that's what it is. And it's a really important theme. Well, thank you. Amy Hoffman, thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for inviting me and for asking me all these interesting questions. It's been just a delight to talk to you. It has been fun. You'll have to come again. Hi, all our viewers. We'd like to welcome Rebecca, Majoia, and Sally Ann Majoia, who wrote Uncertain Fruit, which is a story about their journey trying to have a child. And so, hi, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you, Linda. Yeah. So where are you?  I know that you went from here to Florida, right? And then Connecticut. Massachusetts. Massachusetts. And are you in Massachusetts now? We are back in Vermont. Yeah. Because when I was reading that, I really got ... When I was reading about your leaving, I remember thinking, I would want to leave too. I wouldn't want to be in that same community with all those memories and heartbreak that occurred in that particular area. But welcome back to Vermont. Thank you. It was great to be back. Yes. And you all spent eight years trying to have a child intro, right, in Vermont? Yeah, we did. We tried to go the fertility route for about eight years, and then we started to look more into the foster care and adoption route. So it was actually about 10 years total. 10 years. Yeah. 10 years. And Delilah was an interesting character in your novel. She was the woman who was going to give you in a private adoption. What was his name? Sage. Or the baby. Yes. And that you had suspicions that this might not go well because of her mother. So did you use people's real names here, or did you change the names? No, we were very protective of everybody that was involved. So I don't think besides our own, there is nobody's real name in the book. Yeah. So were you totally thrown when you must not have been when the grandmother, Delilah's mother, had been behaving throughout this whole adoption. So you must have felt a little bit like, did you feel totally blindsided? Did you block that out? Or? Great question. Great question. I think after so many years, our hope was so big. I remember our lawyer at one point saying to us, protect your hearts. And looking at her like, what? Yeah, how do you even begin to do that? How do you begin to do this when you've waited so long? And you're finally holding that baby in your arms from the moment yeah. He was ours. He was ours. The second he came out. We watched him be born. So like, Sally and his skin to skin contact immediately. It was harsh. Yeah. I mean, as I talk about, or we talk about the book too, I mean, I was working on breastfeeding. There was just so much bonding that happened. And I think we were just so excited and welcomed him into the family and the family was so welcoming. And that it was, I can't say that we were totally blindsided. But, you know, it's one of those. Emotionally, we were blindsided. I think logically, intellectually, there was a piece of us that knew that it was getting on winter. What's a teenager to do if they might not feel welcome coming home without a baby? I mean, what? So there's that logical part of you that's saying, Oh, this, this kid's in a really tough spot. What is going to happen here? But hoping that social services would swoop in. Or, you know, something, that something would work out that so emotionally, I would say I was, I was blindsided. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's not one of those hindsight is 2020 situations and we can write about it and, and put those pieces together after the fact even. Yeah. Yeah. See red flags now, but at the time, yeah, I knew from the way the book was advertised that this was probably going to happen. But, you know, even still, I sort of felt like, wow, the trauma that, you know, the dealing with all of these emotions. And how could you really, you know, be prepared for something like that? You really can't. No, no, no, no.  And we almost had a couple babies from foster care system, but it was never something always. It was, yeah, we didn't see them born. It was, it was, it was touch and go the whole time. And it was only a few days kind of thing. It was never, they were never in our home. It was so, it was not like this. Yeah. Yeah. So when you were writing this book, who was your audience?  Well, I go ahead, you go. No, initially it was healing. It was just both of us use writing as just a tool journaling for therapy or whatever. We've always been writers just about what's going on in our life and to heal from whatever. And so initially it was just that. It was just healing. I think in part we were originally thinking, well, we'll put together some kind of a book about surviving the grief of losing a baby in this kind of situation. And when, and we're also readers and we usually turn to books when we're trying to figure something out for ourselves. And we were, we couldn't find any book that had gone where the, you know, parents, birth parents, anybody had gone through a similar situation. It's just got those happy endings. Yeah, we got a lot of like, you know, that's not what we wanted to read. You know, we wanted to allow them to say the words that I was feeling. So we were really looking for some comfort and we thought, well, if we can't find this, there are other people that have gone through similar situations. There are other people going through the fertility processes and the pain of all of this. And so why don't we put this together and, and give this to others so they know that they're not alone in their process. So I think, you know, we wanted this book to be out there for these people, but people are to us. But I feel like the audience has gotten wider and wider as we thought about it too. Yeah, I feel more and more as we were getting closer to publication and Roe v. Wade happened as a political statement as well as everyone should be able to have a baby or not every family. And we hit roadblocks with insurance because we're a same sex couple. And so I feel like it's, it's a little bit of a maybe political platform too now that we can say everyone needs needs access, you know, to say that same sex couples have to try for six months before anything's going to be covered. Yeah. Like, how, how is that equal and accessible for everybody? There, yeah, just a lot of, you know, reproductive rights on the LGBT, you know, platform I feel like that you're talking about here, right? Yeah. Yeah. And we found out things like that there's only three countries where you can go as a same sex couple and adopt internationally. We couldn't afford that anyway. So it was out of reach to us. But there's so many hurdles that we didn't realize were still in place. And just going to get married, it doesn't clear all the hurdles, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And, and did you get any pushback from people like either adoptees or parents who are in the situation that you were in? Did did you get any feedback about how they felt about this? I don't know. I don't, I can't think of anything specifically. Can you? Not specific pushback. Yeah. Or certainly not yet. Support. I think I've just felt a lot of support from different people who have been adopted saying how, how they really appreciated our perspective. And it gave them sort of more of an appreciation for their parents and what they must have, how much they must have wanted a baby when they adopted them. And sort of gratitude for the way they've ended up in life. I think we've also, it's also reached out to people I've heard from various people who have lost through either miscarriage or, you know, in a, a NICU situation or whatever. And the, they've really resonated with just the, the grief experience. And, and, you know, the, all the love and emotion that goes into Yeah. During the process, there was pushback, which we write about a little bit, you know, friends who are because of the age difference and the kids from my previous marriage being older saying, you know, like, what do you want to start over? Like, what are you thinking? And when we did a fundraiser, I remember one person saying, well, if you can't afford a baby, why are you doing this? And it's like, well, no, we can afford a baby. We can't afford the adoption because it's so expensive. And so there was, I guess, different pushback during the actual process. And there certainly was plenty of pushback from the birth grandmother during the process. Yeah. And some agencies we felt more welcome than other adoption agencies. I love when they, you know, the social work comes to your house and you're answering questions. And you're sort of like, well, I had to admit that my brother was a sociopath and, you know, whatever.  So, you know, that was really a very interesting part about what you have to go through just to even qualify to even, you know, and, and it seemed like it was a bit of a class issue too.  But if you don't, yep, it becomes an emotional struggle. So I saw a little bit of class in there, you know, not that, you know, you guys weren't working and really, you know, making good living and doing all that, but, but how much money and how, you know, a lot of barriers there for sure. And they say, you know, the first agency you went to, it's like, you have to have at least $40,000. $45,000. I think it was $45,000. $45,000, like, you better, you better, like, come in with in the bank and it might be more than that. Yes. So like what even hardworking people, like, that was also, I really found an interesting aspect here. Yeah.  And I think, you know, that is to be highly commended. And you talk about here, there's a passage on page eight, which I just thought was very, very insightful and about your idea about the mother and how she would, how could you willingly give over what you didn't even know she was giving or, you know, that was really an insightful question that you asked yourself and the audience to contemplate.  But even through that, I think you found a way to make her really human and really young and inexperienced and emotionally didn't probably have the best support that that a child of 17 might have on this kind of situation. So I thought that was, that was really good. So, you know, what would you mind reading the passage or reading our audience a passage from your books and like an idea? Sure. Yeah. Give me the baby. We would whisper to each other when we saw infants in the store or on the street. Give me the baby.  Everywhere we went, we seem to run into young mothers pushing strollers with two or three babies in them, cell phones in hand, lit cigarettes, dangling thoughts, obviously elsewhere. They meandered along, apparently oblivious to how favored they were to be able to produce these precious little ones. No wonder we were, we felt like saying, give us the baby. Give us the baby to hold and read to and care for. We didn't make a lot of money, but we had a lot of love to give. So why should only those with lots of money or lots of fertility be the ones to get the babies? We are at the will of others. Another to decide that we are the arms that should hold the baby. Another mother will have to choose us to connect to us through photos, to read the booklet we have painstakingly put together. Somehow she will decide from that without seeing into our hearts, much as we had hoped with the sperm donors. Another mother will hope we are telling the truth of our lives that the pictures are truly reflective of a joyful place where someone else will raise her infant to an adult. Again, we are completely at another woman's mercy. Please, please be merciful this time. Thank you. That was lovely. So do you have any last words? I would say here is the book. We'll put a picture of it. Do you have a website we might put up on the site when we do the interview? Yes, definitely. Do you have any last words for our audience before we leave you in this wonderful book? I would say just to know you're not alone. If you're struggling with infertility, you're struggling trying to figure out the adoption system, the foster care system. It's a maze and it doesn't come easily and there are people to support you and other... We are resources ourselves. Yeah, share your stories so other people feel free to share theirs. I think you've done the community of service by the LGBT community but also because this struggle is probably somewhat harder and given to the community in a way that you really was done in a fair and balanced way, I thought really. So thank you so much for doing this and everybody read the book and we'll see you later. Take care. Thanks. Thanks for having the show. Appreciate it. Thank you for joining us and until next time, remember, resist.


Let's take another one. A man travelling towards east at 8 km per hour finds that the wind seems to blow directly from the north. On doubling the speed, he finds that it appears to come from northeast. Find the velocity of the wind. Sir, does this north mean his north or the normal north? His north. His north and normal north will be the same, right? Turn towards the right and then if he is travelling then the north will be like the other side. North is fixed, north is a fixed thing. My north and your north will be the same, right? But if they are facing opposite then it will be different north. Growing from the north. North direction doesn't change if we are facing other side. If I turn round, north will remain north, right? It is not from his north or something. It is from the north. That's it. Are you all aware of the concept of relative velocity? When you see this word seems, seems means relative to the man. See this word seems. So whatever is the velocity of the man, the wind relative to man appears to come from north. This appears to come from north. Let me just make a diagram like this. So let's say the man is moving in this way. So this is your V man. This is what he sees. He sees that the wind is coming from the north. So this is the V man minus, sorry, V wind minus V man. Since it is coming from the north means it is going towards the negative y axis. So you can call it as minus pj. Sir is it a root 2? Correct. What is the direction? Sir, is it once again? Okay, so let's say the wind velocity is xi plus yj. So what is given to you here is Vm minus, sorry, Vw minus Vm. Why am I writing m every time here? Sorry. Vw minus Vm is minus pj.  Now, guys, we have not yet studied about the concept of linear dependent and linear independent. But here let me tell you, since there is no i component over here, you can safely say that this is 0, which means x is equal to 8. Okay. Now, second scenario is if he doubles his velocity, let's say he makes it 69. Now this becomes your new velocity of the man. Then the wind appears to come from northeast. Okay. So let me say it is minus qi plus j. Okay. So this time V wind minus V man is going to be minus qi plus j.  Now, x minus 16 should be equal to minus q. x is already 8. So minus 8 is equal to minus q. That means q is equal to 8. And from here y is equal to minus q. That means y is minus 8. Okay. So the velocity of the wind becomes 8i minus 8j. That means the wind is appearing to come from the north. This is 8i minus 8i minus 8j. Correct. That means the wind is coming from northwest. Okay. And the speed of the wind, that is mod of the speed of the wind velocity will be 8 root 2 whatever units. Clear everyone. Please type CLR if it is clear. Okay. Next question. So how important is this chapter like considering the competitive? Very important. Very important. Vector at least two questions. 3D at least two questions. Vector 3D combined three to four questions will come. Find a unit vector C if this bisects the angle between C and 3i plus 4j. So basically there is a vector 3i plus 4j. Okay. There's another vector C which is actually a unit vector. So C is a unit vector. And there is a vector which bisects the angle. This vector is your minus i plus j minus k. Find C vector. So here's a very important concept which I want to talk about via this problem is see if you have any vector A. Okay. And you have another vector B. There is a vector which is bisecting the angle between A and B. Okay. Let me say C. Then let me tell you that C vector can be expressed as lambda times A by mod A plus B by mod B. Now of course my question would be how? How is this possible? Can you at least justify this? So what I'm claiming here is that the C will lie along. Lambda is just saying that there is a vector along the direction of this vector. At least somehow you get this vector. Lambda you can always justify. Lambda means any vector which is collinear or lying parallel to that vector. Then we'll come back to this problem. So as of now park this problem and let's try to focus on this. Anyone? Any idea? Aditya, Shriya, Hruthu, Ardhara, Samyukta. You can unmute yourself and talk. No worries. Don't know sir. You have muted yourself to just say don't know. Sir, could it be like from parallelogram law of vector addition? And if we take the parallelogram, if we take a special case, then we can prove this. But are we allowed to take special cases? Yeah, go ahead. Let's see what is your special case? How special? Tell me through special case only. No problem. Technically I'm not sure whether in parallelogram angles are bisected. That's why I'm taking a special case of a square. So then by parallelogram law of vector addition, c vector will be the resultant vector and that. Absolutely. There's nothing wrong in that. See you actually, you know, you're doing whatever is required. See if I take a unit vector along a, let's say unit vector is like this. Okay. So let's say I take a unit vector along a cap. Okay. A unit vector along BB cap. Can I say since these two vectors are of the same length, one unit. Okay. This parallelogram will have, will be more or less like a rhombus. Isn't it? So if I, if I take a bisector over here, can I say this bisector angle will connect this point to the midpoint of these two? Correct. Yes or no? Do you agree that bisector angle will connect the midpoint? So if let's say this is your O and this position vector is a cap, this position vector is B cap, then this position vector would be a cap plus B cap by two. Correct. Can I say any vector in the direction of, let's say I call this point as C, any vector in the direction of C, can I say it will be some constant? Let me call that constant as lambda. Not lambda. Let me call it as beta. Beta times A cap plus B cap by two. Correct. So even C lies in the direction of this. So C is nothing but some constant times A cap plus B cap by two. Can I just pull out a two out and write A cap and B cap as A by mod A and B by mod B? And beta by two is just another constant which we can call it as lambda also. So can I now say that any, this is a very important result guys. Let me tell you there's some reason why I'm deriving this all because this result is important. This result is directly used in solving many problems. Okay. So any bisector angle vector, which is bisecting the angle between vector A and vector B could be written as lambda times A by mod A plus B by mod B. Getting my point. Now, can you please use this to solve this given problem? Now come back to this question. Now this C is different. Okay. Don't get confused. This is a bisector. This C is the one which is getting bisected. So now don't have the same C carry forward. Okay. Now solve this. So can I say minus 3 by 5 I cap and 4 by 5 J? No, no, no. The answer is slightly more complicated. Can I say this vector is lambda times C vector. Let's say C vector is XI plus YJ plus ZK. So C vector itself is a unit vector. So you don't have to do A by mod A.  Is that clear? By the same logic that we discussed over here. Okay. This bisector vector is lambda times the unit vector along C, which itself is a unit vector. So I've just written it like this plus unit vector along 3I plus 4J, which is 3I plus 4J by 5. Now let us compare the coefficients. Minus 1 is lambda times X plus 3 by 5. J component is 1 over here. J component here is lambda times Y plus 4 by 5. K component is minus 1 lambda times Z. Is that fine? So now Z is minus 1 by lambda.  Which you can write it as 5 minus 4 lambda by 5 lambda also.  Which is nothing but minus of... Now how do I get the lambda value by using the fact that X square plus Y square plus Z square is equal to 1. Because X, Y, Z are the components of a unit vector. So 5 plus 3 lambda square by 25 lambda square. 5 minus 4 lambda square by 25 lambda square. And 25 by 25 lambda square should be equal to 1. So let us take 25 lambda square on the other side. So it is 5 plus 3 lambda square. 5 minus 4 lambda square plus 25 is 25 lambda square. Let me expand it. If you expand it, 9 plus 25 lambda square here itself I will get. And I will get 30 lambda minus 40 lambda which is minus 10 lambda. And constant terms would be 25 plus 25 plus 25. That is 75 is equal to 25 lambda square. So 25 lambda square, 25 lambda square gets cancelled off. Giving you lambda value as 75 by 10 which is 15 by 2. That means X... Now put it back over here. Put it back at these values. This value, this value and this value. So X will be nothing but minus 1 by lambda which is minus 2 by 15 minus 3 by 5. Minus 3 by 5. You can write it as minus 2 by 15 minus 9 by 15. That is minus 11 by 15 is your X. Y will be minus 4 by 5 plus 2 by 15. That is minus 12 by 15 plus 2 by 15 which is actually minus 10 by 15. And Z will be minus 1 by lambda which is minus 2 by 15. So your final answer will be your C vector is minus 11 by 15 i minus 10 by 15 j minus 2 by 15 k. Any questions so far? No sir. So this is going to be your answer.


We're talking about how to prepare your email subscriber list for the holiday season here on The Journey. Isn't it hard to believe that the holiday season is upon us again? It feels like just a few weeks ago we were digging out our sandals just for the summer. Well, it's time to start pulling out the winter gear and now it's time to repair your holiday email subscriber list. But before you gear up to send out your Black Friday messages, let's get your email list and email strategy ready for holiday sales with these five tips. Same with clean up your email subscriber list. The first thing to do to get your email list ready for the holiday promotions is to clean up and remove any inactive subscribers. Think of it like doing a deep clean before you start putting up the holiday decorations and start by segmenting your list into people who haven't opened in more than 90 days and if you haven't emailed in more than 90 days, well then you'll need to start with people who haven't opened in the 90 days before that. It could even be up to a year since they last opened. Next, you'll send that group of subscribers a special series of emails to ask if they still want to hear from you. Send at least three re-engagement messages to the segment of the list, removing anyone who did click to stay on the list from that segment. And after sending those three emails, they've never clicked to stay on the list, remove them. This might be painful if you're focused on the list size, but a smaller sized list actually helps with your engagement and deliverability. You're paying to send these emails that are ending up in the spams folder in trash bins, all while hurting your deliverability to the people who really want to see your messages. Time to let them go. That's right Nealey, and it's time to update and fine tune your automations. Set aside some time to review all of your running automations and transactional messages to ensure that they're up to date and they're helping to drive improved conversion rates. A good example of an automation or funnel is your welcome series or an upsell series of emails after someone buys a smaller product. And when you're reviewing these, just make sure that they've got relevant dates and offers that align with your upcoming holiday promotions. Oh, and don't forget to check your links. Exactly. And while you're doing that, rethink your call to actions within your transactional emails. Transactional messages are emails that are sent based on someone's activity. The difference is that they are related to their specific shopping and purchasing activities. Transactional emails include order confirmation messages, shipping confirmations, and delivery confirmations. It can also include abandon cart emails. And in these messages, you can include cross-sells, so like other products that customers who have purchased this have also bought this that gets me every time, and upsells including accessories and services related to their new product purchases. And speaking of dates, another thing you'll need to do to get your email marketing strategy ready for the holiday season is to mark important dates on your calendar. Including anything you need to do for those dates like update messages in your automations and transactional messages. As an example, in your abandoned cart email, you may add some text or graphic with your shipping deadlines for holiday delivery, simple as a gentle nudge to remind someone that they don't have a lot of time if they're planning on gift giving. After that initial deadline is passed, you'll want to update that text and graphics to promote expedited shipping. And if all the shipping deadlines have passed, then you may want to promote a gift card instead. And when the holidays are over, don't forget to take all of those mentions back out of your automated emails and transactional messages. And then you really want to make a plan for the holiday season. So speaking of using a calendar, also be marking important dates on your calendar for your business operations too. You'll be less stressed about meeting your deadlines and your list will get well put together emails with plenty of time to make their shopping deadlines. One of the most important things to anticipate this time of year are your last minute shoppers, i.e. me. You'll need a factor in processing and production and shipping time for all your shipping methods. Alright, you can use these tips for any holiday that resonates with your business from Valentine's Day to Mother's Day and beyond. Happy holidays indeed! Today, your journey doesn't end here, we have over 200 videos for you to keep on watching and learning. Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe. Thanks for watching. This is The Journey.


Hello and welcome to this presentation. My name is Badardine and in this video we will learn how to cache the bitmaps stored in SD card. In the first part we saw how to setup the SDMMC peripheral and add FatFS file system to the STM32F746.jfx template. In the second part we saw how to cache the bitmaps stored in the SD card into the SD RAM. In this part we'll see how to load the binaries and run the demo. Now if I have a look at the map file and the debug and the STM32F746 disco.map, if I look at the map file I see that both image background and image 00 are placed under external flash section which starts from others A00000000. Now I will proceed to download the binary to my STM32F746 discovery board. Of course now we will download the binaries to the internal flash and the external quad spy flash. So we see here that we programmed the internal flash and then the external flash memory. QBID didn't download the binary to this flash section, external flash section. Before I proceed to start the execution I will use the TADGFX environment command line to download the binary to the SD card. I will start TADGFX environment and then change directory to the path of the binary. So the binary or the ELF file is located under the TADGFX project STM32F746 SD cache bitmaps, STM32QBID and debug. Next I will extract the images from the ELF file. I will use this non-EABI object copy, dump section, external flash section and images.bin. That's the name of the target file and then STM32F746disco.ELF. With this command I will dump the external flash section from the ELF file to images.bin. Now if I check the files here, if I go STM32QBID, debug, I see here that I have a new binary images.bin and this contains all the bitmaps placed at address 0xA000000. Now I'll copy images.bin to my SD card. I'll place my SD card into SD card reader. I'll copy images.bin and then paste it in the removal disk and paste here. Okay, eject. Okay, now I'll remove my SD card and place it in the SD card slot and the STM32F746discovery board for connector 3. Now that I have the binary available on the SD card, I will start the execution. Here I have my texture mapper animation working fine. Thank you for joining me in this video and we hope that you enjoyed learning how to cache the bitmaps stored in SD card.


Welcome to module 7 of Chemical Kinetics and Transition State Theory. Today we are going to start with one of the important models that is one of the main objectives of this course. So, we will start looking at kinetic theory of collisions today. A little bit of its history and origins. So, it was introduced by Trottes and Lewis in two different papers in 1918. So, this was essentially a build up over what is the transition state theory, the concept of transition state put forward by Arrhenius. Arrhenius being the genius, he had the vision in late 1800s to postulate that the transition state exists. What he did not provide is how to calculate the rate constant. He gave a formula, but he did not give how to actually get the parameters that are there in that formula. So, that is what preceded after Arrhenius. People were trying to figure out, well you give me a reaction and I will try to find out what that rate constant is going to be. And well remember in this time also the idea of atoms and molecules were also emerging. Dalton happened only a 100 years before that. So, people had figured out Trottes and Lewis particularly one way to find this rate constant from an atomistic picture. So, here I have actually provided you the original paper, you can go at it and look at it. This is a very readable paper by the way and I mean this is not going to be a part of the syllabus, it is too advanced for that at least. But if you are interested in this field of chemical kinetics as general, do read this paper. It is a beautiful paper and it has a lot of insights. It really shows you how the scientists thought and developed theories. Even if this theory is not the most advanced theory as of now, but nonetheless it is 100 years before and it is beautiful how the scientists thought. The resources we are following is basically the chapter 4 of the book by Laidler. I have provided you another reference which is this website. So, you can look at this and this will also has a very very good description. So, let us come to this kind of theory and what is the basic idea? What is our model? How are we going to calculate this rate constant? First thing, this model is only for bimolecular reactions that is there are 2 reactants a plus b. This is on the elementary step. So, I have a and b they are reacting together to give me some products. Products can be as many. The main idea how this theory thinks is that it thinks of a and b as essentially spheres moving around in a box in some box of some volume b. So, I have some box some volume b some temperature t and I have these reactants a and b which are basically spheres in gas phase running around. So, what we assume a very simplistic model we are trying to get the first estimate. So, we are going to make a lot of approximations we want to keep the theory as simple as possible. We want to we are going to assume that these a and b move with constant speed some u 1 and u 2 until they collide. When they collide the speeds can change and when they collide is the point when the reaction happens. So, we are not going to get into the nitty-gritty of bonding there. This theory by the way is before Schrodinger's equation. Schrodinger's equation is in 1920s 1925 and 26 this is 1918. So, the idea of bonding is still not very clear in 1918 by the way. People had some idea, but not very clear. So, this theory says let us not get into the nitty-gritty of bonding at all. Let us say this collide and whenever this collision happens a reaction is going to happen. And so, the rate of reaction is simply equal to the rate of collisions between a and b. So, we have a very simple model with us. We have simplified the problem a lot. We have provided a way for you to think about this problem. So, let us think how we are going to calculate this rate of collisions. To start thinking about it, this problem is of course, in three dimensions or why it is three dimensional as you see it. To simplify let us just think in 2D just for understanding. So, let us start with a simple question. I want the rate of collisions, but let us ask a simpler question. Let us say I have a circle of radius r a. It is moving with some speed u and I have some other circle of radius r b which is at rest. What is the probability that these circles will collide with each other in some small time delta t? And let us assume a uniform density of a and b given by n a and n b where n a is the number density which is the number of particles of a divided by total volume. Well, how do I calculate this probability now? So, this probability is calculated. Well, this probability is equal to the probability that b is present in the region that a covers while it moves. So, I have small time delta t. In this small delta t, a will move a little bit forward. So, I have this a, it will move a little bit forward. And so, it is covering some region and if b happens to be in that region, well your collision will happen between these two circles. These two circles will coincide. So, I simplify my problem a little bit further, one step more. I say well, then I find the area that this a is going to cover multiplying by the density of b that will give me the overall probability. So, I have to calculate this area of this region that a is covering. I call this thing as in general a collision region. So, let us try to think about this.  So, if I let this circle move forward with speed u in time delta t, how much distance will this circle move? Well, of course, u into delta t, that is how you calculate distances. Well, so if the center of b is inside this, of course, these two circles will coincide, they will collide with each other. I want you to note something more. Even if the center is a little bit outside, let us say my center is somewhere here.  Even if the center is a little bit outside, nonetheless, these two circles are still going to collide with each other. In fact, I will tell you that the circle can be as far as this when they tangentially touch each other. Any further and these two circles will not touch with each other at all. I can do the same thing on the bottom side as well. So, the point is that my b can be anywhere the center of b in this region. So, let me just redraw this figure. I have a here, drawn a length of r b here, this is 2 r a, that is the diameter of a and this length is u delta t. So, if b is present here, the center of b again, if the center of b is present in this region, which a has moved forward or if b is present here, then these circles will collide. So, I want the area of the shaded region. So, a more clear picture is drawn here and I want the area of this blue region that I have drawn. Take a minute or so and solve this problem. It is a very beautiful problem. It is a puzzle. So, take a minute or two, think about it. How will you calculate the area of this blue region? So, pause the video and solve this area. So, hopefully you have paused the video and now you are back. Hopefully you have calculated the area. If not, please do give it a shot. It is a very beautiful puzzle. How do I solve this? Well, the problem is this semi-spherical region. It is hard to calculate this. You can do it a bit more manually, but a simple idea is as follows. You ready for it? It is a beautiful idea. What we do? We take this little region that is here. Take it out. We remove it and we paste it here. You know that this will fit perfectly here. So, I will get a figure that will look like this. So, I have moved this blue space out and put it in the white space here. Now, you see the problem is much simpler. You simply get a rectangle length u delta t height 2 into r a plus 2 into r b which is trivial to find the area. So, it is just 2 equal to 2 r a plus r b into u delta t. So, I have found the area of collision region which is 2 into r a plus r b into u delta t. So, now I can get the probability equal to 2 r a plus r b u n b delta t. So, that was 2d. That was just so that we have an understanding of how to calculate these areas and build a basic picture. Reality is in 3d. So, the question remains the same. Now, I have a sphere of radius r a moving with some speed u and let us assume again b is at rest. We will come to it. Do not worry. I know you have questions. We will come to that. But let us start with assuming b to be at rest. Bear with me. What is the probability that these spheres will collide with each other in some time interval delta t? Again you have the number densities and the total volume is v. Idea is the same. Probability will be the volume of collision region into n b. So, again I have to do the same trick again and find this collision region. Yeah. Now, let us see how good I am drawing its spheres. That was my abilities of drawing circles. So, this is my depiction of a sphere. Much more beautiful picture can be found on the right. But the idea is I have a sphere which is moving forward just like circles. Same analog. Well, a collision will happen if b is found inside this region or if b is a little bit outside, b can be here as well. Worst come worst, b should be here. So, b is also a sphere. So, what I get is essentially a cylindrical looking shape like this. And b must fall inside this cylinder. So, let me clean this up a little bit. This is my a. There is basically this cylinder here. This a had length radius r a. While this cylinder has radius r a plus r b. b can be as far away as r b outside this region, the center. And this is moving forward and I get this cylinder of length u delta t. And here is again my a. So, once more a little bit of a is poking out of the cylinder here and a little bit of gap is left here. So, we do the same trick there. We take out this patch from here and put it back here. Fill it in from the side. So, the area effectively will be the area of this cylinder ok. So, the area will be what is the area of a cylinder? Area of the cylinder is the area of the circle my bad I should be using the word volume now we are in 3D. So, volume is area of circle into length of cylinder. So, this will be equal to area of circle you all know very well is pi r square and here r is r a plus r b and the length is u delta p. I have used dt here it should be delta t. So, a much cleaner picture you can find here it is taken from this website. It is the same resource I provided earlier.  So, if the center of p is inside this cylinder you have a collision if it is outside it is a miss. And so again getting back I have the probability is the volume of collision region into n b and volume of collision region we found to be pi r a plus r b square u delta t. So, I get probability of a collision is equal to pi r a plus r b whole square u n b delta t good. So, what though we wanted the rate what am I doing why am I calculating these probabilities it will come helpful yeah I promise you. So, this probability the rate the rate of collisions by definition is the number of collisions per unit time per unit volume. Remember this this is how rate is defined of any quantity what is the number of that events happening per unit time per unit volume.  But the number of collisions happening per unit time is the total number of molecules of a that I have multiplied by the probability that a will collide in unit time delta t in this small time d t this is where probability finally enters you see it now. So, you are convinced that the number of collisions is equal to this I find a total number of a's and I find how much is this 1 a is going to collide what is the probability that this a 1 a is going to collide with b. Well probability of collisions we have already found and I am just showing you here pi r a plus r b square n b u delta t this is what we derived. And the total number of molecules of a is nothing but n a into v remember n a is the particle density if I multiply it by v I get the total number of particles. So, the number of collisions per unit time I multiply these two quantities and I divide by delta t this is the total number of collisions but I wanted to find it per unit time. So, I divided by delta t good and so the rate of collisions or note that here delta t cancels and so the rate of collisions was the number of collisions per unit time which is here per unit volume. So, I take this pi what I get from here and I divide by volume. So, again volume cancels and I end up with pi r a plus r b whole square u into n a into n b. So, that is the rate of collisions that is what you basically get in kinetic theory this is our model. I know you have still some questions one is of course what is u as an experimentalist one would come to me and tell me a reaction he will not tell me what is the speed. There is also you may notice there is no temperature here anywhere. I was performing a reaction at a given temperature I mixed two reagents at some volume and temperature. Temperature is also not present something is fishy and last thing you also notice that I had assumed b to be stationary and a to be moving of course that is also not true why should you assume that. So, these questions we will address in the next module. In summary for today what we have developed is a very very simplified idea of how to calculate rate constants which is called the kinetic theory of collisions. And within this kinetic theory of collisions the rate is equal to the rate of collisions of two hard spheres of radius r a and r b. There is no real notion of a bonding here and what we have shown that if a is moving and b is stationary and a speed is u this rate of collision is given by the following formula pi r a plus r b square u n a n b. In the next module we will get into more details we will see how temperature enters. We will look into how u is calculated and we will look at how do we include motion of b. Thank you very much.


So you've installed Linux Congratulations, that is definitely an accomplishment to be proud of I think that you have joined a fantastic Number of people who have installed the best operating system on the planet now I might be a little biased of course But I truly think that if you've taken the jump to switch to Linux full-time you have accomplished something fantastic But the question becomes Now what you've installed Ubuntu you've installed Arch Linux you've installed Manjaro Linux Mint Fedora whatever distribution you've chosen the question becomes once you've installed it you've surpassed the hard part What comes next? Well after you're done patting yourself on the back There are a few things that you should do or at least learn how to do and that's what we're gonna talk about today So today I'm going to talk about the five things you should do after you've installed Linux for the very first time So let's go ahead and jump in the first thing you'll want to do and this applies and actually all of these apply no matter What distribution you've chosen the first thing you will want to learn how to do is how to update your system There are usually at least two ways for you to update your system Sometimes three sometimes even more than that now That's one of the things you're gonna have to get used to on Linux is that there's almost always Almost universally. There's more than one way to do something and while that might frustrate some people It does give you some options based on your level of skill So if you are very used to Windows chances are when you update Windows it has popped up to tell you that there's an update and it does it for you For the most part, that's not how Linux works So you have to develop some skill in actually updating your Linux system. This doesn't mean that it's going to be hard It's just going to be a little bit different So for example the vast majority of new users probably update their system through their GUI software centers So if you're using Ubuntu, you're going to be opening up software clicking on the updates tab up at the top and then clicking on update all or whatever it happens to be That's the same on Fedora for the most part It looks pretty much the same if you're using GNOME at least if you're using a KDE based distribution Chances are you're going to use Discover or something similar like that if you're on Manjaro They have their own tool called PAMAC which will do updates for you and a lot of similar But arch based distributions also use PAMAC as well So again, how you do it is going to vary a little bit depending on what distribution you choose So that's why I've said the first thing you should do is learn how to do that And the easiest way to do that is to Google it to get on Google and search for how to update blank distro So if you're on Manjaro, how to update Manjaro? That will help you out and get you the instructions that you need in order to update your system Now one of the things that you're going to have to get over is get past the myth that is out there and That myth is that you never have to restart your Linux system because you do have to restart your Linux system from time to time And it's almost always after an update now now where it differs from Windows is that Linux will never force you to restart your computer You can do an update and then continue to use your computer for as long as you want weeks months years whatever you want Which you'll have to know is that your updates Specifically the updates to things like the kernel won't take effect until after you've rebooted rebooted your system So just know that you do have to reboot Linux from time to time in order if you want your updates to take effect So that's just kind of a mini tip there for you The next thing on the list of things to do after you've installed Linux is learn how to install applications Now this is actually fairly similar to how you update your system So if you are using Ubuntu or some other distribution that uses GNOME you're gonna probably use the software center to install software and You can do that very easily You don't have to worry about where that software comes from just open that application up find the piece of software that you Want and install it now obviously just like with Windows and Mac There are other places you can get applications from so you can get things from like flat hob or you can get things from PPAs if you know what those things are it doesn't really matter what they are now Just know that if you can't find the piece of software that you want in the software center Do some googling and you'll probably find out that the piece of software that you want or at least an alternative to the Piece of software you want is available somewhere for you to install It's just a matter of learning how to install those things So the easiest way obviously is through the software center But you can learn how to do things through the terminal So if you're using Ubuntu or an Ubuntu based distribution, you'd use apt if you're using fedora You'd use DNF or pack or Pac-Man if you're on Arch so like I said in the first one there are multiple ways of doing this and They are going to be different depending on what distribution you choose But once you've used Linux for a small amount of time and you've probably floated between different distributions You'll notice that there are some similarities So while the syntax might be different if you're installing something in a terminal the process is Almost usually identical No matter what distribution you're on there are obviously some exceptions to that But just know that for the most part Installing software works basically the same across all distributions except for the Specific so, you know you use GNOME software if you're on a version of GNOME You're gonna use discover if you're on KDE You're gonna use the terminal if you're more interested in using the terminal things like that now Moving on to the third one the third one is going to be a little bit more technical for the new user And I have a video on how to do this if you're interested in being instructed on how to do this But unlike Windows Linux does not come with a firewall for the most part There are some distributions that come with a firewall, but the vast majority of them do not now the easiest firewall to install is UFW it's called the uncomplicated firewall It's very easy to install very easy to set up and usually just set up and forget like it just you turn it on It turns on whenever you start your system and you're done You never have to even remember that you have it there And that's very similar to what you'd expect in Windows only Windows has one built-in from the start It's a GUI and From time to time it's going to ask you if you want to let this thing through the firewall That's not gonna be the same on Linux, but that's because it doesn't come with a firewall So I highly recommend installing a firewall. It'll just add that extra layer of protection to your Computer. This is especially important if you are a avid Internet browser. Let's just put it that way Again, I have a video on how to install and manage UFW I will link that in the video description below the next one is probably the most important part of using a computer No matter what operating system you're on you need to develop a backup plan and This is even more important on Linux Especially for new users because when you are a new user you're going to be messing around with stuff You're gonna be tweaking stuff and learning how to do stuff and just being a complete nerd when you you know Turn on your computer in the morning and you're just gonna say this thing is new I'm gonna just you know discover as much about it as possible The problem with that and it's not really a problem is that as you go through and do stuff that's new to you You're gonna mess things up. It's just a guarantee.  Just like there are on Linux Some of those things are built into the system So things like one drive are there on Windows and you might use that whatever you can use that on Linux if you want you can use one drive or Google Drive or Things like pCloud on Linux, whatever you want to do those clients do exist drop blocks is here, too there are also open source alternatives for those things or open source Applications that allow you to create your own local backup. So things like timeshift exist now for the most part timeshift has Transition to doing butterfest snapshots, but you don't need to know what that means It also still has something called rsync built in and that allows you to just to make basically make a copy Of whatever you want to back up to whatever destination you want to back up and it can be automated That's what timeshift does. There are other tools as well that allow you to do this So again, I highly recommend hop on Google how to back up Linux or apps to back up Linux perhaps and Find some options there for you to back up your data because that's very important because like I said You are going to mess something up eventually you don't want to be in a situation where you messed up your Linux distribution and That means you're going to lose all of your data. You don't want to do that now The last one on the list is more kind of highfalutin and I say this because it's not something that is necessary because I know a lot of people who use Linux and They never get involved in the community because they Either don't want to or they expect they have to develop something or they set to start coding or they have to start Growing a neck beard whatever happens to be they don't want to be involved in the community That's perfectly fine. And there's nothing wrong with that. You can you're free to use Linux however you want to use it But I think that you would be doing yourself a disservice by not getting involved in some way And that doesn't mean you have to go out and learn Python or C or Haskell You can do those things if you want to but you don't have to in order to be involved And I'm not even saying that you have to contribute to the community just go to r slash Linux on reddit and look through the posts and get involved in conversations go to the forms of your favorite distribution get involved by answering questions or asking questions or just reading even just get involved in The community as much as you feel comfortable with because one of the greatest joys I've had of Linux isn't actually using Linux and That's kind of saying something because I love using Linux But one of the greatest things for me over the last five years since I switched to Linux full-time is getting involved in the community I've made so many friends through the Linux community and it's just been amazing and even the people that I would you know Can't really consider friends. Just the average passers-by. I have fantastic conversations with and it just kind of Makes the entire experience so much better And it's not something that you really have an opportunity to do when you use Windows It's kind of different with Mac because there is an Apple community. You're everybody has there has spent thousands of dollars on Apple equipment and stuff like that and they've that kind of pulls them together into an Apple community and they can you know get involved in Like YouTube video community, you know, like youtubers communities and like logs and stuff like that for Windows It's Windows has become such a tool That there's not really a community there. Yes, there is but it's more of like an IT If you if you know what I mean with Linux the community is all over the place And it doesn't matter whether or not you're a new user or not, you know, you can get involved and just get into a community and Float around and you know have conversations with people who enjoy the same type of stuff that you do and you'll just meet So many fantastic people. Yes, you'll meet a whole bunch of assholes But that's the same as any community, right? It's just the nature of humans when you put more than three of us together one of those people is definitely going to be a Dick, you know, that's just kind of the rule of nature but for the most part you're going to meet so many nice people and it just kind of Enhances the entire experience of using Linux. So those are the things that you should do after installing Linux for the first time I think that those are the most important things, but they're not the only things one of the pieces of advice that I always give to new users is that I Really truly do think that you should not be afraid to break things when you're brand new at Linux One of the best things you can do is experiment, you know That's why I put on the list of backing your stuff up because if you try out new things and you break stuff You are going to learn how to fix those things. That's part of the fun part of Linux Is that yeah, you're gonna learn a whole bunch of new stuff just not breaking Linux But when you try to try out new things and move from here to there and move to different distributions and try out, you know different package managers and different audio interfaces and stuff like that, you know, you're going to experience problems and part of the pleasure at least from my point of view of using Linux is trying to solve those things and Maybe that's not for everybody. You just want a tool that you can use that is stable and just works That's fine. You're gonna find that in Linux as well You can use Ubuntu or Fedora or whatever have that experience and never break it But it when you do come up against a problem part of the fun part is at least for me is to learn how to Fix it and you know, maybe it's just because I'm a nerd, you know the glasses and the neck beard You know kind of give it away, but you know, I think that that's one of the greatest things about Linux is that you should just embrace the idea of learning this Wonderful operating system that has so many facets to it So that is the end of this video if you have comments about this You can leave those in the comment section below you can follow me on Twitter at the Linux cast You can follow me on Mastodon or any of my other social media networks Those links will be in the video description You can support me on Patreon like all of these fine people you can do so at patreon.com Slash the Linux cast of course you can also hit that join button there below the video That will allow you to support me here on YouTube if that's something that you're more interested in Thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon and YouTube. I truly do appreciate it I cannot begin to tell you how much It just makes me so happy that you guys find my content enjoyable enough to support me So thank you for watching. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time


We're joined by Dr. Dan Bilsker, who is a professor of psychology at Simon Fraser University, and the co-author of the paper, The Silent Epidemic of Male Suicide. First of all, thank you, Dr. Bilsker, for joining us today. That's fine. For those of us who are not familiar with your research, could you give us an overview on your paper and the epidemic of male suicide? All right. What the paper does is take a look at the prevalence of male suicide in Canadian data, and observing that there's quite an extraordinarily high rate of death by suicide among men in Canada and the US and in European countries and many countries of the world. This has been true for quite a long time. Looked at the patterns that have been changing over time in terms of which age group among men are most at risk for suicide, which is now looking like we're talking primarily or at the peak about men who are in their mid-50s, which is a new phenomenon. It's not something that's really been noted before that middle-aged men in our Western society would be most at risk of dying by suicide. In the paper, we pull together some of the knowledge about this or what might be going on and really try to identify the gaps in our knowledge, how little we know about this phenomenon, about factors that drive male suicide, about differences between the genders in terms of propensity towards death by suicide, how that fits into people's lives, their means of coping, their emotional status, their social position. There's so much that we don't know about this very dramatic and extremely troubling phenomenon that's observed in the data. So this paper was an attempt to start to highlight what the problem is, the magnitude of the problem, and to highlight areas where we have gaps in our knowledge and at least to begin to suggest what we might do to start to fill in those gaps of knowledge and respond more effectively to this very substantial problem. Now, I saw in the paper that suicide attempts were still higher among females than males. And it's always been true in the data that women are three or four times as likely to attempt suicide, and yet, men are three or four times as likely to die by suicide. Very, very interesting and surprising discrepancy there. It really challenges our model of what suicide is and how it fits into a phenomenon like depression, et cetera. But what it's telling us at the most elementary level is that when men are attempting suicide, they're doing so in a much more lethal way. They're using more lethal methods, far more likely to use firearms. They are intent to die, and they don't seem to be carrying out this attempt in a manner that's likely to be rescued or be reaching out to others or warning or alerting others of their intention. When men become suicidal, on average, as a tendency, they're far more likely to help what's called a subtle intention to die. They've reached that point where they're feeling hopeless and cornered and without options. Far more dramatically, perhaps, than is true for women, and when they make that determination to attempt suicide, they do so in a manner that is going to be far more likely to be lethal and to end their lives. So there's something different about the way men even think about suicide once they're in that state, once they've reached that level. There are a number of factors that seem to be contributing to that difference. Women may attempt suicide, and it may be part of what used to be called a cry for help, but at least getting at the idea that there may be some element of communicating their distress or some sense that they might be assisted or rescued, where men seem to not have that belief. They're not acting as though they're expecting any kind of rescue or assistance. They're acting as though they simply have decided to end it and are not seeing any alternatives. Suicide is often linked with depression, and two are very closely intertwined. What can you tell us about each gender's susceptibility to depression? Are men more likely or equally likely to suffer from depression as women? What this drives home is how little the concept of depression actually tells us. We don't really understand what depression is. We don't really have a lot of knowledge about the situations, the patterns that drive people into severe depression or into that point where they feel so hopeless that they actually contemplate suicide. So what's remarkable is for all of the talk we've done about mental health, how little substantive knowledge we have about what's going on inside, the thoughts, the emotions, the experiences of those people who become so severely despairing, so severely hopeless that they actually contemplate ending their lives. With men, they're far less likely to be diagnosed with depression, to report depressive symptoms, but truly what do we make of that? Really what suicide is about is hopelessness and emotional suffering. Not the same as depression. It's a much more complex idea. The ways in which people can suffer emotionally, the ways in which they can feel hopeless and despairing are far more various and far more complex than a very crude concept like clinical depression can possibly capture. And I think that's what we see. We see men who are obviously suffering so intensely that they're willing to end their lives and yet may not be appearing or reporting the symptoms of depression. So I think we need a much broader and more complex understanding of human suffering and despair and hopelessness than is given to us by the very crude clinical concept of depression. So where does that begin? Where do we, or where do you as professionals start to tackle that problem? Well one of the factors that needs to be looked at are a few things that have begun to be identified about the way men cope with emotional suffering that may be raising their risk for depression. One of these is a tendency for men to deal with emotional suffering by increasing their use of alcohol. Now being intoxicated on alcohol has definitely been shown to be a contributing factor to suicidal behavior. An individual who is not thinking clearly because they're quite intoxicated, who has lost many of their normal inhibitions in the context of that intoxicated state is someone who is far more likely to act in a dangerous, self-injurious, or life-threatening manner. So there we have one of those factors and men are far more likely to be abusers of alcohol than are women. Again, these are huge discrepancies. So when you have a man who is dealing with a situation of emotional suffering, perhaps it's a relationship loss or a job loss or other kinds of interpersonal conflict, when that individual is not very good at dealing with interpersonal problems and not skilled at interpersonal problem solving, for example, and I think in general, that is still true that women are better at interpersonal problem solving and that individual is not good at reaching out for support or assistance from friends or family members or more health providers for that matter. And again, men have been shown to be far less likely to reach out for help when they're in some kind of psychological crisis that are women. You put those things together, the propensity to rely on alcohol, the lack of health seeking, the difficulty with interpersonal problem solving, and you can end up with someone who really is not very skilled at coping with emotional suffering in a way that is going to be effective. And you may have someone who really runs out of options very quickly or believes they have and feels that they've reached a dead end. That experience of feeling that you're at a dead end, there are no options, there's no hope, and your situation is unbearable, is the situation where people will consider suicide or become actively suicidal. So you really want to be giving men coping skills and tools for dealing more effectively with interpersonal problem solving, with relationship or occupational problems, with coping with their own emotional suffering more effectively, with reaching out for help, not relying on alcohol as a means to feel better when they're in an emotional crisis. Put those things together, and I think those at least are our best bets for improving our response to this very problematic, quite terrible social phenomena. What are also like the social factors that contribute towards this disparity between suicide rates? Well, there's been a lot of attention lately to this finding, I noticed, that while it used to be true that the peak for suicidal behavior would have been in late teens, let's say, early adulthood, and another peak in some of the data occurs where people are in their 80s or suffering from serious illness or debilitating functional impairment, et cetera. But now to find that the peak for suicidal behavior in men, in fact, is in the mid-50s, is a new phenomenon. So a lot of people are trying to figure out what in the world is going on that would be causing this huge shift. One of those social factors that has been suggested is perhaps it's something to do to what's happening to men in the workforce. But perhaps there are situations where men who are in their mid-50s have expectations of their career, which are no longer being met. They may feel relegated to more powerless-type positions within organizations. There may be a kind of ageism which is starting to operate so that what once was respected as experience and acquired knowledge now may be seen as simply having outdated skills or outdated forms of knowledge or approaches. So maybe the men are being pushed to one side in decision-making. They may actually be being fired from their positions when they would have expected to be doing well at the peak of their career. So you may have a discrepancy between what an individual expects to be happening and what is actually going on in the social structure in terms of their roles. Those discrepancies can cause people to feel a sense of despair, of frustration, and so forth that may drive that kind of emotional suffering and that kind of very dangerous behavior. So do you think the solution is gonna come from addressing the social factors more or the individual factors more? Well, I think it's pretty difficult to shift something like how society responds to individuals at different age groups. I mean, I'm not quite sure how you go about doing that kind of social experiment, but I think there's more potential in terms of reaching out at a population level to men in terms of enhancing their capacity for coping with distress, enhancing their interpersonal problem solving, training primary care providers, family physicians, and so forth to identify men who are getting into a sense of desperation or hopelessness, even if they don't present as depression. I think a lot of training in the primary care setting might well be quite helpful. There are also things that are being done now called gatekeeper training, where you may go into an actual work site and you identify certain individuals who are trusted by others and you train them to be good at allowing others to identify when they're going through an emotional crisis when they may even have suicidal thoughts. Not really counsel the person but at least give them some good advice, refer them appropriately to services they might get. So you have someone who can become the go-to person within a setting and some of these studies are being done in traditionally male settings or locales or employment areas, whether say construction or the military, et cetera, and you're enhancing the ability of men, you're lowering the barriers to seeking help to identifying their problem to being referred appropriately. So when you identify and train these people to be gatekeepers into a support system, you can make it much easier for men to speak about their distress and to be helped with it. Now you mentioned earlier that most of the research was done with Western cultures. As far as I know, now if there has been research in other cultures, then I know there was some interest within China in the last few years because of a number of suicides that were happening at a particular kind of industrial setting. And evidently, there were a number of people, I think it was primarily men, I actually am not positive about that data, who were committing suicide in the context of feeling essentially overworked, feeling desperate, cut off in their families, et cetera. And there began, I think, to be a lot of awareness that you couldn't ignore these as personal problems, but they affect, well they affect the whole workforce, they affect the whole society. So I think there was the beginning of real interest in how do we respond to this? I don't know what's happened in the intervening years. I'm hoping that there was continued progress with reaching out, providing more support to individuals who are feeling that kind of desperation. So finally, I wanted to ask you what advice you might have for people who are currently dealing with depression or perhaps thoughts of suicide? Well, when someone is actually dealing with thoughts of suicide, it really is a good idea to talk it over with family members, with a healthcare provider, usually in primary care, to at least start to get a sense of what sort of support systems therapy might be available, et cetera. On our website at SFU for our research group called CARMA, which is Center for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction, going to our website where we have a number of self-care tools, anti-depressant skills workbook, is a self-care workbook for learning how to manage depression better. There's even a handout called coping with suicidal thoughts to help someone begin to get on top of this, but really there's no substitute for reaching out, generally to the healthcare system, to learn what kind of counseling or therapy or support is available to get on top of these thoughts and to stay safe. Thank you very much for your time. Absolutely, I'm glad to do it.