How's everyone doing today? Yeah? Cloud Foundry Summit. So it's time. It is time, and we are here. And I'm Andrew. And you're going to hear from my friend Luke. And this is a talk that was submitted and accepted in a week. And they asked me to reprise some of the material that I presented at Google Next. And they asked me to do it in less time. And I added more content. So in the next 15 minutes, I'm going to go through about 60 slides. And I'm going to waste some of them having fun at my own expense. So this is about bringing Google CRE to Cloud Foundry. And what I'm going to spend the next 15 minutes doing is explaining a little bit about myself, a little bit about these trends in the industry, a little bit about SRE. And then I'm going to finish with setting up what CRE is, talking about Google stuff. And then I'll let Google talk about some of the work they're doing with Pivotal and Cloud Foundry. So an alternative title to this talk, which is a talk that's recorded that was from an earlier CF summit. And it's one of the, I think it's a pretty good talk, I gave it, about platforms and how this trend is enabling us to do things in a more DevOps manner. And I actually argue that every DevOps project ever, I'm going to talk a little bit about that, was an attempt to build these types of platforms that we're finally seeing with some of the stuff in Cloud Foundry. An alternative title is also the freedom of constraint. And last but not least, the last alternative title is CRE all up in your business. So Pivotal, some of you might have heard of Pivotal here in the Cloud Foundry ecosystem. And we have an explicit mission statement to transform how the world builds software. And I'd also add to that my personal mission, which is related but slightly different, which I've been working and I'm going to talk a little bit about myself for a moment, to transform how the world operates software, because day two matters. Day one is adorable. Day two is forever. So I'm me, Andrew Clay Schaefer. People know me a little bit from Puppet, from DevOps Days, from Cloud Foundry. There's other things I did. I wrote a book for O'Reilly about web operations, which is related to all this. And then last but not least, I'm the foremost advocate for the best methodology for delivering software, artisanal retrofuturism, crossed with team scale anarcho-syndicalism, which I know you're all familiar with. And if you're not, you should go familiarize yourself. Of course, Pivotal pays me to do this. And for your benefit, this is the most important slide, my Twitter handle and the various shapes and sizes of hair and beard that you might see me configured in in the future. So if you see any of these configurations, don't be afraid. It's the same guy. And if you're interested, I'm available for weddings, bar mitzvahs. There is no talent shortage, some of my Twitter. You should go spend 40 minutes watching that. Moving on with more jokes that only have meaning to me. Pareto and efficient Nash Equilibrium's rule everything around me. I'll explain that in the hallway afterwards, if you're not already familiar. Who knows what that means? See, you haven't watched enough of my talks on YouTube, clearly. Who knows what game theory is? Who knows what a Pareto or a Nash equilibrium is? All right, we'll talk about it later. It'll be fun. 2007, this is the story. This is the story that we're all part of. If you're at Cloud Foundry Summit, you're doing things with platforms, this is the story. Operations is the secret sauce. This is a blog post from O'Reilly Radar in 2007. Who reads O'Reilly Radar? Does anyone know what radar is? So if you're in Silicon Valley, which you are right now, there's this thing called O'Reilly Media. And they wrote all the animal books. Who's ever read any of the animal books? The tech books, and this is their blog that is sort of forward-leaning reflections on technology and trends in technology. And what this is saying in 2007 is that the traditional way that people have done IT is at a disadvantage to this new secret sauce way that people are doing IT. And especially with respect to scaling. So what this graph is showing on the y-axis is the amount of hours spent doing work, which I'm going to call toil from now on. Thank you, Google. And on the x-axis, it's supposed to be the scale of the system, the number of servers that you're managing. So what's arguing here is that there's one old way to do things, which does some work in the beginning, but maybe not as much work, that has a different curve with respect to how many hours have to be spent managing those systems as you scale. And then there's a new way, which has a very different slope, very different linear slope to the growth of the toil that you have to spend managing those systems. This is 2007. I've been saying this and referencing this for 10 years now. And most people still don't get it, right? There's kind of a word now of people to say DevOps. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But this is the thing. You either compete at this level or you lose. That's what I believe. That's what I see. That's what's reflected in the stock price of companies like Blockbuster. Does anyone remember renting VHS cassette tapes? So there's another part of this story that ties into Google. Does anyone know what this is? Do they even know who these people are? Anyone know who James Waters is? Derek Collison, Mark Lukowski, Vadim. Has anyone ever used Cloud Foundry or Bosch? So this is a core team that was hired out of Google, specifically to build Cloud Foundry at VMware in 2009, circa 2009, 2008, whatever. That is the heritage of the project. It is born in ideas that, and at the time, and I remember the days, when if you said the word board in a room with people that worked at Google, they would all look at each other and then they would stop talking to you. In 2008, that was true. The conversation was over. We'll talk about the board a little bit more. So this DevOps thing, everybody wants it. Everyone wants that second thing, the new secret sauce. Who wouldn't want the secret sauce? This is what most DevOps conversations sound like to me. It's like, OK, that sounds delightful. And pan is vomiting rainbows, of course. This is what DevOps means to me. I'm going to tell you what DevOps means to me. Basically, I don't know if I have the moral authority to do that, but I'm going to do it. I wrote a blog post in 2010. So it was seven years from me writing this blog post. And it was a blog post basically entitled what DevOps means to Andrew. And at the time, I wrote about developers and operations working together, which is controversial in some places. That system administration is evolving to look more like software development, which has only continued. So this is four years after EC2. And when I wrote this blog post, I could configure servers with APIs. I could provision servers with APIs. I could add servers to monitoring with APIs. And when I'm writing all this to APIs, I'm doing all this system engineering, system administration against APIs, that looks suspiciously like software development. And I can use all these tools and processes that I leveraged building software in my system administration work. And then last but not least, and I think this is actually the most powerful point, is that this was all evolving as a global community sharing solutions. And that you could have conversations with people in the DevOps community and in the velocity community, in the puppet and the chef. And these communities were building and running these problems together, solving these problems together. And I'm pretty smart objectively, at least that's what the testings things say. But I'm not as smart as everyone put together. And I'm not as smart as all my friends that will answer me on IRC or on email or on text. And being able to leverage the fact that these people worked on these same problems in my solutions is a game changer. So there's another thing that I'm going to call the five pillars of DevOps that other people use. And it's culture, automation, lean, metrics, and sharing. I'm going to change lean to learning going forward. But lean was how it was originally put out there. And that's a nice framing for all this stuff. And I'm going to come back to that. The reason I'm going to put it there will be obviously at the end. But to me, this is my definition of DevOps. DevOps is optimizing human performance and experience, operating software with software and with humans. Whoops. Click. Okay, there we go. That's the definition. And this is a slide I've used over and over for almost 10 years. You can either manage these systems or you can't. I've been using it for a decade. And I used to believe this very strongly. You should automate all the things. I don't believe that now. What and how and why you automate is as important as that you do. Is this automation? It's not. That's not automation. It's a manual toil with some tools. That, my friends, is automation. And I'm sure some of you live this, or you're about to, but the architecture matters. Like the choice that you make and what you automate matters. And maybe it's like, you're just going to take that robot and put it in a container. And then you're going to schedule it on some things. And it's all going to be fine. And I don't know about you, but if Tetris has taught me anything, it's that errors pile up and accomplishments disappear. And that constraints decide the promises that your platform can keep. You make thoughtful decisions about what you're going to do. And it gives you these patterns with predictable scaling and failure characteristics. And people are familiar with this propaganda from Heroku around 12-factor apps. But what I don't think people have been very mindful of, and I should probably have wrote this blog close to a year ago, is the other side of that equation, the other side of that contract, the 12-factor ops that make that possible, that make that available. And everyone's got these buzzwords. Continuously DevOps microservices, of course. These are all one thing. This is the new emergent dominant paradigm that's going to be used to deliver IT for the next decade. Continuously DevOps microservices are di-trying. Patterns, proven successful, building operating highly available systems with predictable scaling and failure characteristics. And you can either scale manageable systems with minimal complexity. You either do that or you don't. You can't scale complex systems. You can feed them with human blood, and it's not very fun, but. And no one set out to do DevOps. No one set out to do continuous delivery. No one set out to do microservices. These were natural Darwinian consequences. Google exists under the Darwinian pressure of serving things at the scale of Google. So don't fixate on any of those words. Fixate on those outcomes. The principles are greater than the practices or greater than the tools. If you see things clearly from the perspective of the principles, the practice and tools are obvious. The next step is obvious. And these problems that we're solving, the problems that we're facing, they're not technical, and they're not social, but they're social technical. We're building these social technical systems that interact with each other, and you have to solve both of those together. So let's talk a little bit about this book. So this is the Site Reliability Engineering book, and you can read it for free. Google has given this book as a gift to the world. Because sharing is caring. And this is giving you DevOps as she has spoken at Google. And when I gave this talk at Google Next, Google SREs came up to me and they thanked me. And then they all sent me LinkedIn invites. And it was like, they were really happy with some of this stuff I'm about to say. So I say developers and operations can't should work together. If you read the book, this is made clear from many, many reference points in that book. And that either solving system administration with software development. SRE at Google is a software engineering role. And they are participating in the global community sharing solutions. The open source efforts from Google and this book stand as proof that that's true. So going back to the five pillars, all of these are represented in that book. And you should read it. And one of the things that'll become clear if you read that book is that the SREs are architects as much as they are operations. I'm just gonna read a little bit from the book. Another way, and this is gonna sound familiar if you're listening or paying attention to Cloud Foundry. Another way, perhaps the best, is a short circuit of the process by which individual, especially create systems with lots of individual variation end up arriving at the SREs door. Provide product development with a platform of SRE validated infrastructure upon which they can build their systems. This platform will have the double benefit of being both reliable and scalable. SRE builds framework models to implement canonical solutions for the concerned production area. As a result, development teams can focus on the business logic because the framework already takes care of the correct infrastructure use. Amazing. This is your homework. I want everyone in this room to go read the embracing risk, service level objectives and eliminating toil chapters from the SRE book. And if that's not enough, the bonus is read the communication and collaboration chapter. And there's this language, this opportunity to borrow the jargon that Google uses and Google gives us in this book to start talking about service level objectives. And I do a lot of work with Pivotal customers and I do a lot of work inside Pivotal. And I don't think we're very good at articulating this. And you're either gonna meet service level objectives. If you don't know what they are, you can't meet them. Or you're not. And it's very simple. I love how mathematical and dispassionate this framing makes some of these decisions around deployment. And then I'd be remiss if I didn't add this, that in the book, and what I actually believe very, very strongly is that monitoring is the foundation of all reliability. That you can't have any of these conversations about service level objectives unless you have baseline monitoring. Unless you have decent monitoring. You can't talk about service level indicators if you don't have monitoring. And that this is the most important sentence from the Borg paper. So has anyone read the Borg paper? The Borg is the spiritual, it's the spiritual lineage of Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry, Mesa, all this stuff. So this paper from Google has a paragraph that says, I think it's lost to most people, almost every task run on a Borg contains a built-in HTTP server that publishes information about the health of the task and thousands of performance metrics.  So wait, you mean Google SREs will review my software with me? And make recommendations? Yes, please. CRE, it stands for customer reliability engineering. And that is something that Google is doing with their customers. And it's something Google is doing with Pivotal. So SRE are fixated on Google's outcomes, the reliability of Google's services, and CRE unfixated on your outcomes. And that, my friends, is the end of the beginning. I'm a little idea, and I'm gonna hand this over to Luke and he's gonna tell you about some of the work Pivotal's doing with Google. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so I'm Luke, I'm from Google, customer reliability engineering. And the idea is we do SRE with our cloud customers so that their apps can run reliably on our system. Duh. Right? Okay, so make this happen. Okay. All right, so it's pretty obvious what we're gonna do based on what he just talked about. This guy's really smart. He knows the space pretty well. We need to work on three different things. We need to work on your application. We need to work on Pivotal software, and we need to work on you, the operator, and your habits, right? So we set ourselves a goal of having a technology partnership between Google and Pivotal with this big, hairy, audacious goal, which is that we can run apps at four nines, which is pretty hard, actually. So the value prop is pretty obvious, right?  So what are we gonna do? Three things is pretty obvious, I think. The first thing is we need to really harden PCF itself so that it works well on our cloud, right? The cloud is a pretty different environment than most people's on-prem data centers. Like it's kind of noisy, there's migration, things move around, you know, Google and the Borg and everything was really built around, okay, you have a lot of infrastructure, you can move things around, you're gonna build the software to be very resilient to the infrastructure, and that means you can just use a lot more infrastructure to get your job done, right? So you're kind of unleashed into this world of having more things to play with, but you have to be a little more resilient, which is the trade-off, okay? So the first thing we need to do is think about how are we gonna make PCF itself a little more resilient? And this is like what Andrew was talking about in terms of make the platform, right? Make a platform that's repeatable across all these different applications. So people have some guardrails and they have some architecture patterns that are good, they don't have to worry about them and people won't shoot themselves in the foot very much. So how do we do this in CRE? Is we go and we look at your application like in detail, takes about six weeks to really go in and like every little thing about your application. And so we did this with PCF, and we said, you know, well, how does the load balancing work? And what happens if the load balancer falls over and what happens if the backup load balancer doesn't come up in time and how much traffic has dropped and how do you know how much traffic has dropped and just like kept asking all those little questions that you know in the back of the head you should be asking and just kept going after it, right? And then came up with a list of, I don't know, about 30 recommendations to improve the architecture and they're chewing through it. One of the big recommendations out there is like better monitoring, right? So that it's really obvious how the thing is performing. And this is really tricky for PCF because you have the platform monitoring and then you also have the application monitoring, right? And it doesn't really help you to know that the platform is healthy if you don't know that the application is also healthy. It doesn't provide the user any benefit to say, oh, Bosch is doing great, but the application is just throwing 500s, right? So you need to really think about how are we gonna combine these together and actually have a good contract between the platform and the application and then also the platform and the infrastructure so that we can all operate this together using science. Okay, so our second, so we're gonna do that. We're actually gonna take another bite at that apple this year, that's a big project, right? Our second project is we wanna review real live applications that run on our cloud.  It'll be a surprise for later this year, I think. And we're gonna review it and make sure that applications developers and operators can achieve their reliability goals based on the tooling, based on their practices and based on the architecture of their application. So I'll tell you the dirty little secret here of all these application reviews is that we come out of them and people say, what's our architectural flaw? We say, actually, architecture is pretty good, but the problem is your operations are terrible. You push the thing all globally, all at the same time. You don't have any monitoring for this and that.  So that's gonna be really interesting to think about what the application developer, what's their experience, the operator's experience, and then how do they escalate stuff to Pivotal and Google if bugs are encountered, right? So we wanna make this repeatable so that we can do this for multiple customers because my team is in the job of making everything reliable that runs on Google platform, right? So this is a great opportunity to make it really cheap. If we can get people to run their applications on PCF, on GCP, then we can review orders of magnitude more applications with the same amount of effort. So we're trying to eliminate toil. Our third project is, of course, to work with Pivotal Labs. So a lot of this is human factor stuff, right? You have to get the people to start behaving in the right way and having the right habits and what's a better place to do that than Pivotal Labs? So Labs is really good at giving people an experience and helping them have agile and helping them develop some muscle around actually doing that. I see agile is really fundamentally a way to trade off product uncertainty versus development velocity. So it's kind of like the steering wheel in the car. You can write software really fast, but if you're not doing the right features, then you're probably not gonna get where you wanna go. So you need to have some agile so you can steer back. And I see SRE is kind of like the brakes on the car, right? You can go fast as long as you have brakes and you can slow down when you're in danger. So they're really pretty similar. And so what we often do when we go in as CRE to customers, we do a bunch of drills and we do, let's do a post mortem together and just see how that goes. And let's do wheeled misfortune exercise, which is an exercise where you basically do a hypothetical outage and you put somebody in the hot seat and you say, okay, you're on call and it's 2 a.m. and you get the following page and then what do you do, right? And that just helps people to kind of build the muscle and to exercise all the ideas about SLO, am I within SLO or am I outside of SLO? Do all the stuff in a low stress kind of environment, right? So we want to do the similar thing. We want to basically have an SRE like experience in a lab style environment. And it really comes in at the developer level, right? It's not like a developer versus operator thing. These SRE principles like having an SLO and error budget, they're really about having a contract between the operator and the developer. So it's important to get the developer to be thinking about SLOs when they're sitting down and they're just ready to type the first line of code, right? They need to just be thinking about, okay, I've already decided what my reliability goals are. So that will be very powerful in terms of just changing habits and getting people going. So I think that's pretty much what we're gonna do. That's our little preview of what we're gonna do in SRE with Pivotal. In general, you know, in general about SRE, I'll give you a little update because we haven't talked about it a lot since we started the program about a year ago. So we've worked with a handful of customers. We are getting pretty good at doing application reliability reviews, which are modeled after our Google's internal production readiness reviews, which is like a pre-launch review. It's kind of like quality control. And we're also developing some workshops for how to develop SLOs. We find a lot of people don't really have SLOs or they don't have the tools to really think about SLOs. Like at Google, we're pretty lucky because we have an org structure that kind of lends itself to having a decider who can actually name and number. And we have that HTTP server that spits out all these metrics. So there's like lots of SLIs to look at. So we're pretty lucky, but we often need to kind of teach people how to get those fundamentals in place before they can even start thinking about making an SLO contract with their developers. And we're also gonna do design reviews because we find a lot of people, they pretty much know what they're doing in terms of being SREs and they have an SRE team that are up and running, but they just are writing something new and they wanna know how it's gonna work on cloud and it has a new shape. So we wanna do some quicker design reviews that are less than six weeks of in-depth thing, which is more typical practice at Google anyway, like a kind of a half day design review. So that's SRE and PCF. I'm pretty excited because it'll be amazing value if we can actually get all the bugs out of PCF on GCP, using one sample application so that nobody else has to suffer through it. When? When, exactly. And we're also really focused on this concept of shared monitoring console, where you can look at the same pane of glass as people at Pivotal or people at Google Cloud and everybody can see that you're out of SLO or you're in SLO, all the same. And so I'm trying to refine this concept around just very basic issue triage. Is the issue, are you barely out of SLO or are you like way out of SLO and you're like on the floor? And then what products are you using? What failure domain are you experiencing the problem in? What region or zone? So if we can just get those three things, like your product, your failure domain, and what metric are you looking at? We get those three things communicated to our support team really quickly. Then we can fix things in real time really nicely. That's gonna be our main trick. All right, thanks for coming. Thank you. Almost all of it. So the question was, does the CR review for PCF on GCP benefit other deployments of Cloud Foundry and it will have meaningful impact? I would say that there's probably a third that are maybe GCP specific and then the others are architectural benefits that will improve CF and PCF on every other deployment. No. It's pretty much your second to last slide there, which is like, go read the SRE book, go read the introduction by Ben Trainer, go read chapter three and four and get everybody on board. And then I kind of sit down with people and say, okay, where's your SRE team? And Moomoo's the last time you wrote a code. And make sure that they understand that's the expectation. But you're right, it's, there's a lot of different engineering cultures out there and I'm seeing some that perform really well too that are not SRE. I don't think SRE is the only way to get good performance but it's just the one that we know how to teach. So what I would add there is that there's a lot of context and nuance from organization to organization. And all the things are in the SRE book give us a nice framing to have a shared vocabulary around things like SLOs and air budgets. But at the same time that I would add that I believe this very strongly, I've never seen anything fix problems in IT and in cultures except for smart people that cared about solving them, trying to solve them. So if you can get people aligned with trying to solve those problems, you'll be able to solve them. And if you've got some cultural incentive structures that are against you solving them, then you won't. Yeah, like SRE actually doesn't solve all your problems but it does give you some good guardrails so you don't backslide and you don't fall into some common anti-patterns actually. Mark and Briaco. As Mark has rightly noted, not everyone is Google. Yeah, I think SRE is actually an instantiation of these principles in a specific environment. And there could be other SRE shaped things or there could be other things that look very different but kind of adhere to the same principles. But that's why we're creating this idea of a SLO workshop to kind of get people to think about, okay, it's gonna take like two years to transform my culture before we're ready to do this. Well, just like you wouldn't try to take a monolith and turn it all into microservices at once, you'd probably strangle it. You can refactor your culture in a similar manner. Like you don't have to change every part of your organization and your culture at once. In fact, you are probably irresponsible if you try. Yeah, that's my best advice to people who are just starting to make an SRE team is take your five best developers and put them in an SRE team. And make them responsible for a very small but broad piece of the infrastructure, like database or something, right? Or whatever deployment. And then people go, but I can't waste my five developers. Cool, that's not important to you. You're wasting them now is the thing. You're wasting them now. Exactly, if you think this is the most important thing, then put your best people on it. And give them room to do a really good job. And otherwise, it's cool to have different priorities. It's okay. Lunch? What's next? All right, next talk. Good deal. Thank you for coming. Thanks for coming.


Welcome. Happy Juneteenth, y'all. I want to welcome you to our session with a really awesome, amazing writer, Hilary Bettis. But I do want to acknowledge again, like I did for the last couple of weeks, that Black Lives Matter, that we all still continue to fight for justice for not only Black Lives, but anyone who is suffering injustice in this country right now. I think it's really important to, and maybe one of the things that may come up in the conversations with Hilary, because one of the things that I really appreciated about Hilary's writing is that she really took on writing a play that examined anti-Blackness in Latinidad. And part of who we are as a community because is that we should be as Latinx people, as a Latinx affinity space. We should be pro-Black, pro-Indígena, pro-worker, pro-mujer, pro-lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, and pro-migrant, because we hold all of these identities. And I think it's what makes us stronger is our unity against shared oppressions. And it should be central in our lives and in our vision for change. And I hope that this is like a really great opportunity for all of us to really look at our own history and examine not only Blackness, but our Indigenous origins, colonialism, and how Whiteness has really kind of affected how we sometimes let it allow it to get in our own way in terms of creating our own work. And so here is like an opportunity to talk about that. And I hope you can all make it for next week's session with Coleman Domingo, who you may know as an actor, but he's also a playwright and whom I've known for many years. And also next week is my birthday, so you better show up. It's cancer season, yo. Yeah, my birthday is this weekend actually. What? Wait, Saturday or Sunday? Sunday, that's when you first. So you're like on the cusp? I'm on the cusp. That's awesome. I knew you were cool. All right, so without further ado, I've talked too much. I want to welcome Hilary Bettis. She is also right for television. She can talk a little bit about that. She had a show that was going to premiere off-Broadway called 72 Miles to Go, and that of course got canceled like everything else. I worked with her at the, what was that called? Salt Lake Acting Company, New Play Festival on Queen of Basil, which was her bilingual adaptation of Miss Julie set in Miami and with a multi-racial cast. It was really awesome. And she's also written a play called Ghosts of Lote Bravo, which was published in American Theater Magazine. And I'm really happy to have her here. Hilary, what's on your mind? What's going on? Oh, and Hilary is a new mom. So congratulations to Hilary. Yeah, and I just had a baby a month ago. He's actually here screaming in the next room right now. Right. You still have the, you still have the glow. So let's, I'm really happy for you and many blessings to you and your new family. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, you know, I, I think just sort of wanted to like have a really organic conversation with all of you guys around like things that I'm personally grappling with, which always affects my work and my process and sort of the bigger things in our landscape right now that I, you know, I think, especially being in like the Latinx community, we sort of straddle both sides of the conversation that's happening right now and like what, what does that mean for all of us? And so just like a little bit about like my backgrounds, where I come from, like how I approach work. So I grew up, my second generation, my mom is kind of my dad's white, which is a whole other complicated messy thing. But I grew up in like really rural parts of the country, including like rural Minnesota, an hour outside the Twin Cities. And so like this particular case with George Floyd, like I went, I went to high school with a lot of people that have very similar mentality to the police officers. And so like the, the, you know, my family was always like very much the outsider family. And, and so anyway, school was terrible. I ran away to LA a week after high school, I didn't go to college, experienced like a lot of like violence and, you know, homelessness when I was there. And then discovered theater, I saw a production of Death of a Salesman. And that was the thing that really like made me want to like learn everything about writing and writing plays and theater. And so I moved to New York and started reading plays voraciously and really just kind of taught myself how to write from reading plays. And then that has, you know, sort of open doors for where I'm at now in my career. But so all of that to say that like my perspective of what it means to be Latinx, I think is, is very different than probably everybody else here. And, you know, and as I've really both worked in theater and in television and Hollywood, I think that there's sort of a box that our stories are tend to be put in. And what I feel like the world really needs now is the complexity and the nuance of who we all are as individuals and having very, very, very different points of view. And really like showing the world that like being Latinx is like not a monolithic culture. So I wanted to start off by just like throwing a writing prompt at you guys, which I'm going to do too. And this is really like the thing that I am sort of wrestling with right now in my own personal life and my work. But the question is like, what is the thing that you are running away from? Like what because I feel like that is always like the heart of what I should be writing and facing and dealing with. And so I just want to take a couple minutes for all of us to like pour something out on paper. We're not going to share it, but I just wanted to use it to start a conversation between all of us. So the question is what is the thing that you are running away from right now in your life? Okay, cool. So I want to really use this as a way to like, you know, I feel like oftentimes these conversations sort of center around like career advice or like how do you, you know, how do you get an agent or how do you get your foot in the door? But I think I actually think that it's important to ask us like the deeper questions as a community. And so I really wanted to use this as a conversation starter about like, what are things that it doesn't even necessarily have to be related to writing or career? Like, what are things that are like, in this moment in time, right now, are resonating with you that you're, you're struggling with that you want to just like voice or ask a question or be heard and, you know, and really kind of see where the conversation goes for all of us.  Yeah. Yeah. If you'd like to join our conversation feel free and turn on your video, you're more than welcome to join us. There is the blue hand raise hand function that I think is the easiest way to join the conversation.  So if you'd like to raise your hand to start the conversation, go ahead and do so now. My first raised hand is from Erdalina. Yeah. Yeah, I just want to get it started just to kind of wet everyone's appetite because I do have something that's kind of scary for me to talk about a little bit. I've been thinking a lot about, I've been thinking a lot about tokenism and you don't realize you're being tokenized until, you know, after the trauma, after the thing, after the experience where you realize and you look back that you were part of a system where you were tokenized and you might have been used in order to, to elevate someone else's sort of agenda in some way. And I experienced that while I was teaching at Iowa, but I didn't really realize it because I thought I was doing all of the things to, to make that program better. And in a way, I almost over, I did my job too well. And in effect, that was the thing that was punitive against, you know, my continuing to work there because it was just like it became so inhospitable to continue my, my work in terms of expanding the, the canon in my classes and also like diversifying the seasons and providing more opportunities for students of color in the projects that we're doing or selecting. And I found that there was just, there was just this great white fragility and, you know, a lot of people don't realize that you know, this whole thing that's happening right now is that, especially with white people kind of being upset that they can't wear a mask, is that they hate the status quo being upended. And, and I think they're finally getting at the idea that what they're, that this, this little thing that they're like, they feel so oppressed by, you know, it's like what we as BIPOC, Black, Indigenous people have experienced in all our lives in our communities, living in fear. You know, people talk about like being, like being tired of being in isolation or quarantine. Well, let's talk about those immigrant communities who have been quarantined in their homes because ICE is just out the door driving up and down the street, ready to pick them out and deport them. And so I think this is all to say that I know that I can utilize and use my privilege working in these white institutions and leverage that or pivot that into something where I can finally like, I need to stop looking for validation from those institutions. I need to start approaching other like-minded institutions, Black-led institutions, POC-led institutions, because I think I'm just tired of having to either adapt or change who I am or my work because of some ideal or some audience that I have to create work for. That was long with it, but there you go. Yeah, yeah. And I'll jump off that and kind of show what I'm, you know, very similar, you know, having a really hard look at my career and like what has been asked of me.  And I feel like that's actually doing a really big disservice to Latinx community.  And also like what kind of worlds do I, you know, want to leave for him? And so, I think that that's sort of the big question that I'm grappling with right now personally, and of course, don't have an answer, but I would love to hear like, you know, what are some of the things that you guys are all sort of grappling with right now? Let's hear from Lenina first. Sure. And your question about a tokenization really, sure. I actually was supposed to be working on your play this fall, Hilary, and it got canceled already. You don't know what's going to happen again. And I'm navigating myself, how I feel about the position that I was brought on to do for that project. So that question brought up a lot for me. But my big one that I, when you're like, what are you running away from? What do you not want to face? I always go back to religion, because I come from a very religious household, and I have a lot of feelings about like, thinking that a lot of our problems that we have right now are stemming from religion and the way that it doesn't allow you to accept new truths. And how like fake news and all that stuff, like I wonder how that like is born out of already being able to convince yourself about something that maybe doesn't, you know, like I'm also saying this differently from faith and spirituality versus like an organized religion and how the rules of that then permeate into other people's lives that aren't your own. And I'm afraid, I'm afraid of addressing that because I love my mother. Yeah.  But I still can't help it. Like anytime it starts with dress those things, I'm like, I don't know if I could tell my mom has come to all my plays and she loves them. And the daughter writing a play that I have to tell her mommy, you can come to this because it's gonna hurt you. It's gonna make you really rethink some of the things that you believe is, is hard and scary. So yeah, that's what I'm grappling with, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's very real and true and brave. And I mean, what, what would it look like writing it, writing it for yourself and not, you know, maybe you don't share with anyone, maybe you do, but, but just like getting it out on paper for you and you alone and giving yourself permission to do that. Yeah, I think I'm starting to get there. I'm writing for the first time ever a play that deals with one character that is religious and one character that is mine. So that has, I'm starting to break that open, I think. But yeah, I guess overall just like the ways that that theme of religion or the way that that affects our mindset can be then extrapolated to the greater like world problems is maybe like, I don't know, the connection that I'm trying to make that I'm not quite there yet. And you know, I'm not looking for an answer. I really just want to express that and see, you know, the other folks have had similar grappling with religion, especially in Latinx communities where religion is usually very, very prominent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My dad's a minister. And so I spent, you know, my whole childhood in the church and it's definitely one of those things that I think is deep. And I don't, you know, I'm definitely struggling with it a lot too. Our next one is Justin. Yes, thank you so much. I had very similar ideas about religion. But I found mostly that what I wanted to run away from was like the oppressive fear that comes with being in institutions that I feel are not designed for me. And especially like right right now I found that I think a lot of the fear that in my childhood in institutions was like during shooter drills or during raid drills. And like in high school, we there was a situation where one of our like somebody in the school was going to a police funeral service. So he had to don a tire like the uniform, the bulletproof vest, the gun. And when that happened, our school went into lockdown for like four or five hours. And like that fear of just like stacking up desks against the door and like not knowing if you're going to get out. I don't know. I want that to never happen again. And I don't know if running away from it is the best solution. But I think it's like the only thing that I had to cope in the time of like not dealing with it immediately and just plain it aside. Now that I'm older, I feel like I have more power to change these institutions. So hopefully that won't happen in the future. Thank you for sharing.  Yeah. And I think part of it comes from the fact that I like 9 11 happened when I was just two years old.  So I don't really know how how to do it. All right, I guess. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting, right? Like we're each each generation has been shaped by something I remember just growing up I was shaped by the the age crises, Reagan, the, the LA riots, Rodney King. And, you know, it's it for some people even younger was like, what is the duck and cover like the nuclear bomb exercises where you all had to hide under the desk. I don't know. I wouldn't know what that was. But first of all, Justin, thank you for making me feel all that you were only two years old when 9 11 happened. Second of all, it was so much cooler that you could you didn't have to go through all the security checks at the airport before that. Yeah, I don't know, Hillary did.  Yes, I was done with school.  And so there was just like, you know, people let me know every single day that I was not welcome in that community. And so I think by the time I was like a junior high school and also again, it was like a rural small public school where like our education was really based on the Bible, even though technically it was a public school. And so there was no room for any sort of like thought or question outside of, you know, evangelical Christianity, like conservative thought, like that's it. And if you even like start to question that, you're really ostracized. And so I thought that that was like for me what school was, you know, I didn't know that like, you could be curious and there was space to like have questions and to have doubts and to like want to explore different points of view and and you know, and again, like, you know, my grandfather was of the generation that like, you have to be more American than American, you know, so we were not, my mother wasn't taught Spanish, we were not taught Spanish. My mother didn't even know that Spanish was his first language until she was in high school. And so there was always so many questions around like, who am I? Where do I come from? But I'm not in an environment where like I can even begin to like ask those questions. And so, you know, by my junior year, I was like, I'm done. I'm not even thinking about applying to colleges.  And so that I think that like, well, where do I belong has really informed this lifelong journey of like, what does it mean to be like mixed? Like, what am I allowed to identify with? What am I not? Like, where does my, what is my own family's history? Like my mother grew up on the border. And like that was very important and really like shaped who she is. And so I think all of my plays sort of tackle a different like, well, what is this? What is this identity? And what is this history? And what is this?  You know, and again, like I went to LA when I was like 18, and then we got to high school. And so I really, you know, I ended up, I was homeless, like my first job was like cocktailing at a strip club when I was, you know, most of my peers, people my age are in college and I'm like trying to survive, you know, the streets of LA and like not getting trafficked. And I'd say that was a joke, but it actually wasn't really a joke. You know, and so like, like dealing with all of that, as well as these questions of like, who are you and where do you belong?  And I think also, like my dad being a minister and growing up, going to church every Sunday, there was something very like familiar about this shared communal experience that made me want to start writing plays and want to like take off a move to New York and, you know, see as many places I could and just like learn as much as I could. And, you know, and so, but I think like, again, it's, it's, it's always for me, it's always like this question of like identity and who are you is always evolving. And so I am, you know, I'm, which is why I like love just having these sort of like open organic conversations, because I think it's really important to have ownership over that. And that there are, you know, I feel like both in terms of like, this is a profession and like American culture in general, we're sort of always striving towards like, well, perfectionism and being very competitive. And like, how do I write the thing that's like going to open doors and get me the results as I want, as opposed to like being okay with the doubt and being uncomfortable and constantly like being able to evolve both in your own work as well as your process. I feel like, you know, everything, everything that I write is, is, I learn a lot from it. And so I'm always like looking back and trying to evaluate like what, what works, what didn't, what do I want to take away from this, what could I do better next time, like, you know, or what is like a new thing that I'm wrestling with. So anyway, all of that to say that like, for me today, like really just wanting to like embrace sort of living in the doubt and the uncomfortable and having this, you know, conversation with like members of our community.  And I'm also like really trying to listen right now more than like yeah, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. You made me think of something about death of a salesman and I, you know, I don't want to go down the death of a salesman rabbit hole, but I'm wondering if America's having this Willie Lohman moment, right? Where it's the America, if Willie, if America is personified in the character of Willie Lohman and they've finally like they've been living in some kind of an illusion, right? Of privilege and success that so at least at the time that was tied to capitalism. But now it's like, like the biffs, the biffs of the world are saying, look mom, look dad, look what's happening around us. Look at who we are and what we've become. We need to change that. And at the end of the day, like Willie still doesn't see, right? And maybe, maybe, maybe Willie Lohman will finally see. Yeah. But it's hard to say right now. It really is. It's, you know, it's it's a huge massive reckoning that I think we're all sort of facing that is historical and, you know, and who knows what kinds of stories will come up. But I think it's important to like acknowledge and talk. You know, so I would love to like, if anybody has, they just want to throw it along. Yeah. Anybody else want to join in? Yeah, we have a question in the chat really quickly. And then next we can go to Alex Hernandez. But Arianna, I think I can't, can't use her voice at the moment. But she said, I've been studying the myosinir acting technique for two years. My studio has recently started having discussions about how white the canon is, how problematic that is. She was talking to someone about this and they said, if we diversify the canon, myosinir will always be racist because it focuses on white behavior. That stuck with me. Racism is so deeply embedded in the technique, but it's hidden under the guides of tradition. So what do you think we can do about this? Do you think it's best to start over rather than trying to fix such a problematic institution?  That's a great, a great, a great, great question.  And I have found this pretty consistently. Like when I work with Latinx directors, there is a huge, there's just an unspoken understanding that like, you know, we're wearing your, your feelings on your sleeve and being passionate and being emotive and, you know, being unapologetic about what you are, but also being able to what you're feeling, but also being able to like pivot in like a split second is, is so ingrained. And, you know, I know for speaking for my family, like who we are and, and our Mexican culture. And I think that white, they're the white, like what is good acting is like you repress and you hide and you don't show and you pretend that you're not feeling what you're feeling, or you've buried it so deep that you don't even know you're feeling those things anymore. And I think those are like, that is what the canon is. And so, you know, I keep going back now to being like, how do I find the community that understands that? Because I, it's, it's, it's, it's a, you can't explain it. And I've tried to explain it to white directors.  But I think it's also again, like being really unapologetic about the work that we're writing right now and our points of view and not trying to fit it into like the, the box of white institutions, which I personally have done in my career. And it is gross. It doesn't, it feels gross. It doesn't matter like what the outcome is at the end of the day. You walk away, speaking for myself have walked away from those situations being like I, I sold part of who I am for, for whites. And so I don't, I do think we have to define it for ourselves because it's just something that is inherently misunderstood.   And the more of us out there writing our stories and owning them, the more the world is going to have to pay attention to them. So that is my two cents. That is so awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Any other questions? I wanted to speak to, I guess, kind of what you talked about, like not actually being like traditionally what they call traditionally trained to go into the arts basically. So I kind of came from a similar background, like I was military, I went to five different high schools. So like I was just all over the place and I somehow got into an arts institution and was studying stage management. And I just, I wanted to speak to like that feeling of like, I was just behind because I wasn't like, I didn't have parents who invested in the arts. And everybody else like, one of the institutions I went to, it was a private school and everybody else had been doing musical theater since they were like five and they had all this knowledge about like what was coming out and who was writing this and it was just like consistently like just being like, okay, well, I'll just, I'll just get in a research it later and feeling like my curriculum was like, they would just jump over things because they assumed everybody had this knowledge, right? Because they were here.  And they're like quoting so and so and this prison theory, like, and just like table work. And it's just like, oh, and they know how to do this and this and this and this.  It's just like consistently, I feel like, okay, like I'm missing like another degree or something.  Yeah, I mean, I think that's like what makes you really unique and special also and like what makes what you have to say about the world necessary. And, you know, like all of that other stuff can be taught. But I totally, I totally empathize with that. I've, you know, I feel like I'm still in so many rooms and I have no idea what people are talking about.   And especially in like the world of theater and TV, I think there's a lot of people, many people tend to come from like, sort of an upper middle class backgrounds. And so I think there's also a huge as much as there's like a misunderstanding about like, what does it mean to be Latinx? Like I think there is also that around class. And so I don't know. Yeah. Just to add to that, it's just that, yeah, I was also in the very, I mean, I came to theater really late too. Yeah. Yes, people, you know, there's an expect, yes, there's, there's sort of an expectation that you need to know what streetcar named desire and death of a salesman is or what cherry orchard is. But imagine a world now or we can actually like, we can hold up, we can hold up Marie Irene Fornes and Luis Valdez and Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson alongside those people. If we could have like, there's a way to kind of like, expand whatever the commonality is, expand the canon or reinvent the canon or, you know, revert, you know, like talk about theater in ways that that is non-western based. And I think that's going to take a time because some of the stuff is like rooted, like the some of the racism is rooted in like high school theater, like that they're like the worst. High school theater is the worst because I think they come, I remember getting students from high school and all they knew was like, Greece, or, oh God, or being in West Side Story and, you know, brown face or something like that.  I imagine it's the same for film or television as well.   Are there stories or characters that you gravitate towards in terms of like, being in the writer's room or creating a play for yourself?  I mean, I think that looking at all of my work, there's that is sort of a reoccurring character and everything that I've written. And, you know, and I think that was part of why I got hired to work on the Americans, you know, because that's very much who, you know, Paige ultimately became and I wrote a lot of her scenes and Elizabeth as well.  And I think oftentimes, you know, both in TV and theater, I see stories that are sort of like ideas of that, but not actually like the lived.  And so that that's, I think that is really more than a character is like the reoccurring theme that I come back to in my work. And, you know, if you guys like have any questions that like are not also about this, like please feel free to throw them. So we're not like awkwardly staring at each other also. We have one from Shelly. Oh, hi. Can you hear me? Okay, cool. I remember seeing Alligator, like a reading of it at the O'Neill. And then like years later seeing in the city and just it's so raw. It's exactly that. It's just like unapologetically dangerous and beautiful and vulnerable. And just to start with that, thank you for that show. It meant a lot to see. I don't really have a question just like frustration, I guess. I'm not Latina. I joined this group as a mixed-race black girl because I saw it on Facebook. I was like, I'm coming. But so there have been these opportunities bubbling up in the past couple of weeks. Unfortunately, because of the killings of all of these black people. That said, I'm trying to like take a hold of them, right? So there was this virtual coffee week this week. You might actually be a part of it as a TV writer, I'm not sure. But where I met today with like a writer and producer of a TV show that I love that is particular to my experience as a mixed-race woman. And I was like, roll excited about it. I'll literally do anything for you. I'll make you coffee. I'll be a fly on the wall in the writer's room. And I left feeling a little, I also was like, if you like, he offered to read my work and like a web series that I wrote. So that was cool of him. This is no shade against him. But like, man, it just felt weird. He's a white man, right? He's like working in a room that I dream of working in. And I left offering to make him coffee just to like be in the room that may or may not exist. Like we don't know when we'll be able to even like, I guess I don't know how that's working now with the virus. But I'm just babbling now. I'm feeling a lot of things. I'm sad and angry and mad. And just thank you for listening. And also maybe how do you deal with all that shit? Man, how do you do?  But I, I am like, I think the thing is really keeping me sane is always writing something that's for me, like that's private and personal and that I have to like remind me of who I am and why I do this. You know, because TV, it's, it's, it's hard and it's gross and it's brutal. And, you know, I think there is a lot of the like, you're so hungry to be seen and to have an opportunity. And yet, you know, and, and also like oftentimes, like a room that's a story about, you know, people of color and like there's, it's all white people or there's like one like diversity hire, but the diversity hired is like the staff writer or, you know, maybe they're a PA or something and they don't actually really have a voice in it. They're just there for the optics.  And, you know, I, Tracy Scott Wilson, who is amazing playwright, she works on the Americans with her. She's a Black queer woman, if you're not familiar with who she is in her work. But she like the one piece of advice she gave me on that show was like, you have to, you have to be very specific and calculating when you, you know, bring up racism or misogyny. Because if you do it too much people won't listen to you. But if you're too quiet and silence, like, you're also not being heard. And so it has to be like, which is a really shitty, sucky thing. But it's like that was like her one piece of advice in terms of like how you survive that world. But I do also think that there is a huge shift like happening both in TV and theater that there are more women and people of color at the helm of stories. There's much more recognition and like how vital and important and necessary like having all of our voices and brooms are. And so, you know, I'm hopeful that in another couple of years there will be even more opportunity to feel heard in that world, you know.  Girl, I started therapy. Yeah. Good. That was one good thing to come out of all this madness. Anyway, thank you. Of course. Of course. We've got a couple of things coming up in the chat. Next, we have Eresa, who I think was, yeah, you're up. Yeah, thank you. First of all, it's like comforting to hearing to hear a lot of what you're saying. Kind of echoing coming from like white dad and like a Latina mom, I can totally relate to a lot of the identity things that you're talking about. And I think you've sort of touched on navigating these spaces.  And it is that I feel that thing of like it is something that I feel is such a part of me and I want to claim, but then this weird thing of it being tokenized. And I do wonder like how you navigate these spaces of these writing rooms and like staying true to your identity, but also not allowing it to be tokenized. Yeah. Oh gosh, it's really hard. I mean, I think also like being mixed is its own complicated thing because I mean, I don't know what your experience is, but I feel like for me, I'm always asking permission to be seen to be in a to allow to be in a space. And you know, a lot of code switching as well. Anyway, that's like a whole other conversation. I feel like we could do like one of these I'm just like being mixed and like what that is like. But you know, I in terms of like, you know, I'm really pragmatic also about my career and who I am as a writer and really like constantly try to remind myself of the long game. You know that it's not like a one off opportunity is not going to define you. So I, you know, have been diversity hire and shows, I've certainly I know on multiple occasions have been like the play that is like our POC female grant play and we sort of aren't invested in whether it does well or not and we're going to put it in the small space and that's what it is. But it's like being for me, it's like, I know this, I know this walking into the room. And so how can I subvert their expectations and what they think of me and how can I also take away something? How can I learn from this? How can I get better at my craft from this? Even if like I'm not going to be seen by the powers that be or, you know, no matter what the reviews are, they're probably going to hate my play because it's going to be like old white men that don't understand this point of view anyway and don't want to. But so like how can I learn and get better at what I do? And how can I continue to like use this as an opportunity to like hone my craft? And so I think like for me leading from that, like both having something that I'm writing that's privately for me as well as just like, this is it, you know, this is you're getting something out of me, but I'm also going to get something out of you.  Our next question is in the chat. Do you do connection errors? Here we go. I wanted to ask, speak about the issue of being visible as a Latinx playwright, write about anything outside of a quote unquote Latinx narrative. Basically white people can write about anything, while anything we see we write is seen as a Latinx story. Proud to hold these Latinx narratives and expand them, but do you have thoughts for how we fight to expand what we're given liberty to be seen writing without being put into that box? Yeah, I think you just write it, you know, and I say that like that's so much easier, so then done, because I, you know, I feel like this is something that I'm actually like very much struggling with in this moment. You know, the first couple of plays that I wrote had nothing to do with being Latinx and it wasn't until I wrote a Latinx play, which like was not like it came out of like a genuine like this is something that I want to understand about who I am and my family and, you know, our history and culture and like I want I'm going to give myself permission to like research this and write this and own it and like have these conversations with my family that we've never really had a conversation with.  I've written like enough and that's like not really my story. Like I don't know what it's like to cross the desert and be undocumented in this country. And, you know, I certainly have my own family and I, you know, my grandfather and I can find a personal way into those stories, but it's not my story. And I am I am really tired of being put in that box also. And so I think it's just like, you just write it, you write it and you own it and you be unapologetic about it. And again, you know, I think the more of us that are doing that and saying, no, like, here's a story about like a family in the Midwest and they just happen to be Latinx, they just happen to be Dominican or Cuban or whatever, but it's not about that. It's about like getting into college or whatever BS that like, you know, white male playwrights can write about and saying, this is Latinx and this is Latinx and this is Latinx and this is Latinx. And again, like not apologizing for it. I think part of like tokenism, tokenism, diversity, inclusion, all of these like, you know, boxes are are about having one identity and one narrative and that being the focus and saying like, if you want to, to even have an opportunity, you have to force yourself into this box. But I think we have to not allow that to happen to us as a community. Anyway, which again, I know is like so much easier said than done because you're like, I think we're all so hungry for like, just to have a place at the table and to be in the room, but but we also have to, we've never been defined before, like the United States, America has not defined us. So we have to define who we are and show the world this is who we are. And it's complex and it's nuanced and we're all an individual. Well, anyway, so that's, that's, that's, you know, that was great. Thank you. Beautiful. We have one more minute. We have time for one more question. I see Daniella. Does Daniella have a question? All right, I can ask the question. All right, yay. I'm thinking, Hillary, this is great. I guess my question, when I was writing about what I'm running away from, and by the way, what resonated for me just now because I grew up in the Midwest. So lots of stories. I think what's hard for a lot of us as Latinos and artists is like self care. And you talked a little bit about that, like writing your own, I love that, like your own private thing while you're in the midst of this, you know, dynamic in the TV world and stuff. And just, I know that sometimes it's hard for us to, for me anyways, to go through, like I wrote just, just on a personal level, like I have to go through things like old stuff that I have and get rid of stuff and just taking care, and I guess it comes to like self care. So I was just, because even that can be like a radical act to take care of ourselves and not just be constantly having to respond to other people's needs or especially groups run by mostly white people and stuff. So what, just curious how that aspect, if you have any ideas about that for yourself or what you did in these moments or? Yeah.  Congratulations. Crying in the next room as we speak.  You have to constantly prove something. You have to like please everybody.  There's no room for you to fail or take a risk, but also you have to like be pleasant and especially like also as a woman on top of it, there's, you know, and that is impossible.  And so I think like for us, for me, like cutting out anything that is toxic or takes away from me being able to be a full person in my life.  And so that's like my guilty pleasure, life, passion, whenever I have time to do that. Again, like, now that I have a small human, I don't know what time to do any of these. But, but, but even if it's just like, you know, a simple, I think is like, making sure you're drinking enough water, which sounds like such a cliche, but it's so true. Like, that's, you know, again, like, we're all like in this, we're playing the long game and like part of it is, is making sure that you can get up in the morning and be fully who you are.  So, yeah.  No, I said eat vegetables. We'd add a hand raised from Hazel. I look like she cut out, but I think she's back. Can I ask you a question? Yes, I'm here. Oh God. Okay, I already wrote it. So I'm just going to read because I'm way more articulate that way. Thank you for having this conversation around tokenism. I normally have just enjoyed listening in, but this sparked a thought in me because I have a friend who's currently just starting out as a writer, and she's staffed on a show where she's the only person of color in the room and she's the only Asian. She was hired specifically because they were writing about a Chinese American character.  And also, she's finding that she's not valued as a writer because she's seen as like this diversity higher. So my question is, are there safe spaces structurally that exist for writers of color in Hollywood? And if not, or even if there is, what does that look like? And what does mentorship or allyship look like? What are the safe spaces for writers? And for her especially, it's because she's just starting out. So she's afraid to rock the boat and she's trying to speak up on her own behalf, but it's also really tough because her boss is also white. And for the most part, while co-signing the other writers in the room.  That's a very you know, I know the Writers Guild is trying to have more programs and mentorship specifically for writers of color. You know, CAA is trying to start something also. I don't personally like I don't have like anything specific other than I, you know, I know the conversations around that. But I think, again, like for myself and sort of how I've felt like survived those worlds and navigated it is like finding finding your community, finding other writers that are kind of in the same position. And you know, I was I was on a show with two other writers of color and it was frustrating because there was a lot of racism in it.  But since then, we have like remains really close and like continue to like, you know, reach out to each other whenever we're dealing with something frustrating. I wish that I could have, you know, a concrete like here's a great place. But I think we kind of have to build those for ourselves right now, unfortunately, as well as like building it for ourselves and building a community and then making sure that we're also like reaching out to other people and bringing them in so that we continue to collectively grow as a voice. So anyway, but I'm I wish her luck. That's that's I've I've been there and I've had friends in that position too. And it's it's it's not easy. It's definitely yeah. Thank you. Hopefully this moment will create more avenues where people can report the these kinds of yeah, microaggressions or Oh, she's keeping receipts. Good.  We maybe we'll just wrap up by I think I asked you before we we went on if we could see your baby. Yeah, let me go. Let me go grab them. I bet you it's baby Yoda, right? It's baby Yoda. You want to tell us what's coming up next while we wait for Hilary to come back? This Monday is Fernanda Coppell, who is will be here on Monday. And Daniela remind me, did you go to UC Santa Cruz? Me? No, no, I didn't. Okay. I almost went there, but I went to West Atlanta. Geez, why did you go to West Atlanta? I think Fernanda just logged on here too. She's right there. We both went to UC Santa Cruz. Yeah, I should have gone there. Now she left. Oh, there you are. We're going to see Fernanda on Monday. Everybody say hi to Fernanda. The pride of Los Cabos. Can't wait. That's what we're going to do. Los Cabos. Didn't you come from Los Cabos? Masatlar. Oh, so just just a ferry ride. Okay. Oh, here comes the baby. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This is our first baby. This is a historic moment on the Super Friends. Congratulations. He just had his lunch and... Oh, my God. What's his name, Hilary? Ziggy and Tonio. Oh, my God. I love it. Ziggy. Oh, my God. Ziggy. This is my existence. Congratulations. I speak for all of us that we all commit to try to make a better world for Ziggy. He needs these stories. That's right. He's even more... He's going to be even more confused than I am about his identity because his dad is also... His dad is white and Panamanian and I'm white Mexican and so this poor kid is the mutt. Oh, well, we should let you go and take care of Ziggy and we want to thank you again for being here. Thank you, guys. And come back anytime. We're going to go take a nap now. Okay. Thank you, everyone. We'll see you on Monday. Same time. Same channel with Fernanda. Sign up. Happy Juneteenth. Happy Juneteenth. See you all next week.


My favorite moment in sports of the entire 2023 year was the night the king went for the all-time NBA scoring record. It was a spectacle from the jump. My man showed up in the all-black fit. He meant business, and he needed 36 points to get the record. He filled up the stat sheet, and by the third quarter, only needed one more bucket to set the record when he hit this fadeaway jumper in one of the most iconic sports photos of the year. Everybody's got their phone out, except for Phil Knight, and officially became the NBA's all-time scoring king. We're lucky enough to have Karim on hand to metaphorically pass the torch to LeBron. Hey, here's the record. It's yours now. And he's still adding to the number. It's one of those records that just feels so big. It'll be years before anyone even comes close. So I thought this record-breaking performance was the coolest of the year. Are there any other record-breaking performances from 2023 that you enjoyed?


My name is Anand Basappa and I'm a coffee planter from Kuru.  And I got myself checked and then they said I had hernia. So one day one evening I was walking in the Bangalore Club where I go for a swim and I go for a gym to the gym there. I work out quite a bit. And I happened to meet Dr. Govind Nandakumar and he also comes to the gym. So I told him about my symptoms of the pain which I had on the upper portion. Then he looked at the records and he said Anand, please come over to Manipal Yashunpur. I'm a specialist in this line and I will check you out. They did a check out for about 2-3 days. Then he said my condition was very quite serious and I had to get it done within 15 days. It was a pleasure to take care of one of our patients who came to us with a diagnosis of bowel blockage. We worked it up and found that he had both a colon cancer and a background of Crohn's disease. This is a complicated situation. He also came to us with an obstruction. We counseled him extensively. He was quite alarmed and perturbed by the information. But eventually he signed up for surgery which is what he needed initially. So I went back to Coor, came back and then I went in September 11th that was 2019. I was operated on a Wednesday and on Thursday I started my walking. Thursday evening that was in the hospital. They had taken on 3 feet of my colon and my toilet habits were a little bad at that particular time. But then they said that it will all settle down in due course. And I was discharged on a Sunday evening. I came home and I was back in the club on a Tuesday on a Wednesday. There was exactly 7 days after my operation.  And we were able to connect him back, a small intestine to the rectum and avoid any kind of an external bag. The surgery went well. The patient recovered and now has been cancer-free for several years. The patient chose to limit any other therapy that we may have recommended. And with surgery we were able to get him back on his feet. And I met Dr. again there in the club and he said just do everything lightly. And I continued. Immediately I started my gym and after about 10 to 15 days I started my swimming. And this is what has kept me going. So that doesn't say that a lot of people said that you are prone for infection. But I was not bothered. I didn't care about anything. I just continued with my life. And my family supported me right through the whole operation and all things which took place. I was proud to see him in the gym within a couple of weeks of surgery. That is not always the case. Some patients take longer to recover and that's okay. But his motivation and personal determination to overcome colorectal cancer stood by him. And he has really done wonders.  Eating habits of course was a little poor. But it did pick up. I lost a lot of weight. But I gained it back immediately. And now I hope I'm perfectly alright. And I go for a test once a year. Blood test and scopy they do. Colorectal cancer is curable. Corolectal cancer is treatable. With the right combination of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, we can certainly cure colorectal cancer. Manipal Hospital Zeyeshanpur has actually helped cure many of these patients with the expertise of all our doctors and the hospital itself. We are a high volume center for GI cancers. And certainly this makes a difference in the care that we provide and the outcomes that we have. At present, I'm perfectly alright. And I'm good. Nothing has stopped me from doing what I was doing earlier. I should also thank the doctor, basically Dr. Govind and the staff and the nurses and all that who attended on me in Manipal Zeyeshanpur and for my recovery. Basically it's all in the mind. And get back to what you're doing and continue with your life. There's no point sitting down and saying, I've had this problem. You had the problem but continue with life. That is how I looked at it. And I'm living my life as normal as every day which I was doing earlier.


Hello friends welcome to another session on factorization and in this session we are going to discuss factorization of quadratic polynomial by splitting the middle term. Now this is a very famous technique and very commonly used technique as well to factorize quadratic polynomials as well as few in few cases polynomials which can be reduced in the form of quadratic polynomials and it is also used while solving quadratic equations so hence it's very important to master this concept. Secondly it will not you will not be able to learn this process overnight for any mathematical concept learning you have to solve a lot of problems and get exposed to variety of such problems so that you can understand where and how this particular technique can be used either either for factorizing a polynomial or solving a quadratic equation. So let us first try to understand the concept and then we'll take series of examples which you must go through to understand how this particular technique works. So first of all let's try to understand what the topic says factorization so we are understanding this particular we know what factorization means we have to convert a given polynomial into its factors and product of its factors we have to express it like expresses express it like and now you have quadratic polynomial so what is quadratic polynomial so any polynomial of the form so I'm saying p of x is a polynomial of the form ax squared plus bx plus c where a is not equal to 0 and a b and c are real numbers any such any any such polynomial will be called quadratic it is called quadratic quadratic comes from Latin word quadratus quadratus which meant square in Latin correct hence if you see the degree here is 2 so hence it is a square polynomial you know the degree is 2 so degree of px is 2 so hence we call it quadratic polynomial now how to factorize it so basically we have to express px into two factors so px is equal to ax square plus bx plus c I am saying after factorization let us say px will be of the form of px plus q and rx rx plus s these are the two factors right now any quadratic factor polynomial we have will have at max two linear factors why because if you have let's say any you know let's say three linear factors let's say tx plus u then what will happen if you see when you open this bracket all the three what will happen you will first multiply this term with this there will be a case when px will be multiplied to rx will be multiplied to tx right so you open up the first two bracket you will multiply px to rx and then when the second bracket these brackets are open then px would be multiplied to px times rx so there will be one term which would be like px times rx times px which will be nothing but p times r times t x cubed now in the LHS there is no cubic term no cube term so hence it cannot have more than two linear factors right so always remember if the degree is to the number maximum number of linear factors possible is n itself though if the degree is to then two linear factors if the degree is three three linear factors like that what is the linear factor so these are called linear factors right why linear factors because the power of x is here one similarly this is another linear factor where power of x is one okay so let us say that after factorization it becomes px plus q and rx plus s if you open these brackets what will you get you will get px times rx is so open this bracket so px times rx first term then px times s plus q times r times x plus qs so if you club them together it is pr x squared right and then plus you if you see this is nothing but ps plus qr times x plus qs isn't it now if you compare you know if you really want to if you if both the px are same then you can compare the two coefficients if you see here this coefficient a must be equal to pr so I can write a is equal to pr correct similarly b must be equal to ps plus qr correct so b is equal to ps plus qr and c is nothing but qs if you check the c is the constant term here qs isn't it now basically what you need to do is what you need to do is then how to find basically you have to find out p q r and s is it p q r and s if you get p q and r and s then you can you know the factorization know the factors so if you if you notice clear carefully if you multiply these two terms ac what is ac guys ac is pr qs correct now b the b has been divided into two parts pr so we have split b so imagine b to be split into two parts ps plus qr such that their product as well so if you multiply ps into qr you get ps qr which can be rewritten as pr qs and if you see this is same so if you see b has been split into two parts b1 and b2 whose product b1 b2 is nothing but a c this is the catch of splitting the technique so what you need to do in any such cases for again repeating it once more so ax square plus bx plus c equals 0 so what you need to do is multiply a and c okay so first find a and c so you got ac okay now split b now you'll say how to split it what is the rule so initially you have to use a lot of trial and error but there is a rule also to do it and I will take examples to understand it better but you have to keep this in mind that b has to be split into two parts b1 and b2 splitting means let's say that is b is equal to 10 so either you split like 5 plus 5 or 6 plus 4 or 7 plus 3 likewise whichever suits the case so you have to split it in such a way that that b1 times b2 must be equal to a times c right so keep this in mind you have to split b in such a way that the two parts when multiplied gives you a times c let's take an example and understand let us say we have a equation or polynomial px is equal to x square plus let's say 5x plus 4 okay now what is a here a is equal to 1 b is equal to 5 and c is equal to 4 multiply a and c right multiply a and c what will you get ac is equal to 4 now you have to split b what is b 5 split b into 2 b1 plus b2 such that b1 times b2 must be equal to ac which is equal to 4 so how can I split 5 5 can be split it as split as 5 sorry 0 cannot be used so 1 plus 4 2 plus 3 right 3 plus 2 and 4 plus 1 these are all the splits of 5 so if you see 1 times 4 gives you 4 right product of 1 into 4 so if you notice this is b1 and this is b2 now b1 and b2 is given to is found to be 4 b1 b2 is 4 which is matching with ac so we can stop here if you take 2 and 3 the product is 6 which is not equal to 4 not equal to ac so these are ruled out option again 4 and 1 and 1 and 4 are same so hence the split of 5 will be 5 should be written as 1 plus 4 let's do that so hence if you see x square then 5 is written as 1 plus 4 x plus 4 correct now you can expand it is nothing but x square plus x 1 times x is x plus 4 x plus 4 right now whatever techniques we have learned before group the terms and take comments okay so it is common from the first 2 x plus 1 I write x into x plus 1 and then plus 4 x plus 1 so hence it is x plus 1 times x plus 4 okay you see you got the two factors okay this is how the splitting the middle term works let's take another example another example is x square let's say minus 9x plus 14 okay this is px I have to factorize it what is a guys a is 1 b is clearly minus 9 and c is equal to 14 so what is a times c a times c is ac is equal to 14 now b is equal to minus 9 has to be broken down into b1 plus b2 such that b1 b2 is equal to 14 right now b1 b2 is 14 which is positive guys so hence b1 b2 either both are positive or both are negative then only the product will be positive isn't it now here b is minus 9 so when you split it you must have both negative so that the sum is negative isn't it so b1 plus b2 is minus b1 plus b2 is minus 9 what could be the possibilities possibilities could be 1 minus 1 minus 8 minus 2 minus 7 minus 3 minus 4 sorry minus 5 oh sorry minus 6 here then minus 4 and minus 5 and then it will repeat right you will see minus 5 minus 4 all are repeating so if you take these two product you'll get it if you take these two you'll get 14 you'll get 18 here you'll get 20 here right and what what do we need we need 14 see this is here 14 so hence if you break it down into minus 2 and minus 7 split it into minus 2 and minus 7 you'll get the desired result so let us do that so x square I can write minus 9x as minus 2x minus 7x plus 14 now again take commons x common x minus 2 minus 7 common x minus 2 again if you see you can even directly write this factor here and just try to match with the multiplication so that so if you write x minus 2 here what should be written over here so that the product gives you minus 7x so clearly minus 7 should be fitted in here right what I mean is let us say the moment you get the first factor x minus 2 so you write x minus 2 here directly now if x minus 2 is the factor then I have to get what minus 7 and 14 so what should I multiply here what should be written over here so that it gives you minus 7x and 14 so clearly it is minus 7 now you just take x minus 2 common and this is x minus 7 correct so this is what is the factorization now problem arises when you know it is you know of the form x square plus 3 root 3x now radicals are being deployed and this is px I'm saying px is equal to x square plus 3 root 3x plus 6 now again the same thing happens here so what is ac if you see a into c is 1 into 6 that is 6 now I have to split b is 3 root 3 so 3 root 3 has to be split into two parts such that the product is 6 right I'm saying b1 plus b2 is 3 root 3 and b1 b2 is 6 correct now b1 plus b2 is 3 root 3 now 3 root 3 is an irrational number guys so b1 and b2 yeah both have both have to be irrational right because because if one of them is rational and one of them is irrational then the sum will not be pure ration irrational number you understand so 2 plus root 3 will never be pure irrational it is rational plus irrational correct to get 3 root 3 we have to split into 2 irrational number and that to carrying root 3 in them for example what I'm trying what I mean to say is 3 root 3 can be expressed as let's take some examples 1 root 3 plus 2 root 3 this will be 3 root 3 is it and this is the only possibility of splitting right because the other possibility is 2 root 3 plus root 3 which is same as the previous one right now we have to just check whether the multiplication the product of this leads to 6 or not it indeed leads to 6 why 2 root 3 into root 3 is clearly 6 so hence we got our splits so it is x square plus root 3 x plus 2 root 3 x plus 6 now you can interchange these two the order will not create any difference now so hence now what to do x I know what is common between the first two terms x so x plus root 3 the moment you get that you just write x plus root 3 directly no issues now what you have to find something here okay now what is look at this what should I multiply this x here to get 2 root 3 x obviously 2 root 3 so you got the other factor as well 2 root 3 here now you just check 2 root 3 times root 3 must be equal to 6 which is actually true so hence I got the factors x plus root 3 and x plus 2 root 3 this is how factorization has to be done using splitting the middle term now we will be taking up more examples in the subsequent sessions


So let's hope you're not affected by this. This is the buggy Windows 10 cumulative update. This is the fall craters update So the 1709 and It is the specific patch KB 407 4 5 8 8 And it's causing for lots of problems with blue screening and working USB So there's an article here on computer world, but let's dig into the details of the solution because hopefully it's why you're here So we've been seeing a bunch of these come into the shop It's a super aggravating problem because it disables USB on a lot of computers that we run to well At least all the ones that have come in so far and we've had to go out and do service calls There's not really any easy solution for this if you have remote access So our managed clients were people that we have maintained remote access for it's easy We go in and we can unroll back the update But if you lack the ability to use keyboard and mouse you can't roll it back So I'm gonna leave a link here to some of the descriptions of how to fix this how to roll back the update And it's this is the update numbers KB 407 4 5 8 8 and you can just roll it back If you can get into your computer if you can't get into your computer We're gonna jump right to that problem. So method for last resort This is when you can't get anything going and you've tried different keyboards and mouse now Kind of the crux of the update problem is if it's a standard HID device Which a lot of keyboards and mice fall under they don't have their own drivers They use just the standard keyboard and mouse drivers. These are the ones that just don't work So if you can find another keyboard that is a special that uses its own driver It may work not a guarantee, but it may work We've actually found where sometimes they have a custom mouse or like a gaming mouse and the gaming mouse works But the other ones don't Odd, but it's it's inconsistent But this is the unfortunate way of the design of Windows 10 Meth is why we're getting here method for you have to crash the computer a few times on purpose For whatever reason they've decided that Windows 10 you shouldn't have access to things like safe mode and pressing F8 Like we did in previous versions of Windows. So the solution is keep crashing a computer and hope you can get into there And right here is the command prompt you want to run so if you can get the windows into its automatic repair mode and get its command prompt and Then you can run this tool here And this is the roll-up fix that will fix that as well. So you can actually remove this package. You're removing that Specific update to get it to work and once you do that it should reboot and start working And this will actually fix if you're even more unlucky than the keyboard and mouse people where you have inaccessible boot device If you can get it into that it's the same thing. These are the same updates I'll leave you a link to this. I just want to throw it out here because I'm throwing it out here for you for all their Clients and people that are maybe searching for this So there is kind of a fix besides just reloading the computer But it's just a pain to apply and sometimes breaking windows breaks it even more because you have to basically get it starting up And unplug it before it starts up all the way basically forcing a shutdown forcing the problem So you can get to this mode Because it's so crazy because it just boots up and doesn't let you do anything Because it just says nope. You don't have keyboard and mouse access, but it does work in a BIOS. So it's yeah, it's an infuriating problem Thanks Microsoft. This is the love hate I have with Microsoft because all those computers they're coming in from their retail side for this It's how we make money and then I feel bad for all the people are going Why did I have to spend money on something that just broke that I'm not at fault for it? I'm like welcome to Microsoft. They don't like to give easy ways to fix things They want to be auto magical on all their updates without any easy way to go Hey, let's just roll it back to the previous version They didn't want to give you such easy tools to do that. So this is the method by which you can do it I will leave the link in the descriptions below. Hopefully you found this helpful And hopefully you can get it fixed without reloading windows. If not, good luck on reloading windows. Thanks