All right, so we have started this chapter last class, work by energy. OK, read this down. So what we did last class was that we have just introduced the concept of work, OK? And then we have introduced kinetic energy, OK? And towards the latter part, we have got a relation between the work done on a mass, OK? And how much kinetic energy is changing, OK? So we got a very simplistic expression that total work done, total work done on a single mass is equal to change in kinetic energy. So k2 minus k1 is the work done, OK? It's a very simple straightforward relation. So this is for a single mass, OK? Now if there are multiple masses, OK? Suppose there are two or three masses, then the work done, if you consider two or three masses together, fine? So you find out the work done on all the masses, OK? So work done on all the masses will be equal to change in kinetic energy. Let's suppose there are two masses. So we'll take finite kinetic energy of both the masses and subtract it with initial kinetic energy for both the masses, OK? So we can not only use work energy theorem for a single mass, but we can use this work energy theorem for the multiple masses also, fine? So this is the total work done on both the masses, all right? So you'll see that work done by the internal force. As in the force between one and two masses, it will come out to be 0, fine? So ultimately what you will end up with is a work done by the external forces with respect to one and two both objects together, all right? So this is what we have learned towards the end of the session, OK? So we'll start the session with a numerical, OK? So that you properly recollect whatever we have done last, OK? You guys remember the work done by the spring? The work done by the spring force, we have derived it to be half kx1 square minus half kx2 square, fine? So I'm writing it here because we are going to use this again and again, fine? Where x1 is initial deviation from its natural length and x2 is the final deviation from the spring's natural length, all right? So x1 and x2 can be extension or can be compression. It doesn't matter, fine? All right, let us take up this question, all of you. So I'm starting with simplistic of all the questions. This is a spring constant k. There is a mass, right? There is a mass of mass m that is coming towards the spring, the mass is coming towards a spring with velocity v0, all right? You need to use work energy theorem to find out the maximum compression in the spring. What is the max compression on the spring? All of you, find out quickly. Welcome, everyone. You guys saw this question? OK, Bharath got an answer. Others, what is the condition for maximum compression? When the compression will be maximum? See, this mass is moving forward with velocity. When it hits the spring, its velocity will decrease, right? So its velocity will keep on decreasing. But then it is moving forward. And as it moves forward, spring becomes, you know, spring gets compressed more and more, all right? So when this mass momentarily comes to rest, OK, that is the position where the spring will encounter the maximum compression, all right? So after the mass m comes to rest, after that point onwards, it will start going backwards, right? So we need to use this work energy theorem, whatever we have derived in the last class, between this position where the mass has velocity v0 and where the mass comes to rest, right? So between these two points, I have to use work energy theorem. Now, who is doing work on the mass? There are forces like mg. OK, mg is a force. Normal reaction is a force. There is no friction, fine? mg and normal reaction, they are perpendicular to displacement. So mg and normal reaction do not do any work. But the spring is doing work on small m. When the spring gets compressed, it applies a force, fine? And we know the work done by the spring formula is this. So total work done is nothing but work done by the spring. And this is equal to half k x1 square. Now, what is x1? Initial division from its natural length. Initially, the spring is in its natural length. So x1 is 0, right? Finally, let's say spring has a compression of x. So this is the work done by the spring, OK? This comes out to be work done by the spring. This should be equal to change in the kinetic energy. Final kinetic energy is 0 minus initial kinetic energy, which is half m v square, getting it? So using this relation, you will get velocity. Sorry, we need to find x, right? So you'll get the value of x to be equal to v0 under root m by k, it will come, fine? Any doubt with respect to this question? Hello, yesh, Krishna, Shitos. Any doubts with respect to this question? Fine, so let's modify this question a little bit. Let's say that the coefficient of friction between the surface and the mass is mu, OK? So there is a friction between mass m and the surface now, which is mu, getting it? So mu is a coefficient of friction, and it starts acting as in the surface is rough from the point where the spring starts. So before the spring starts, the surface is smooth, getting it? So after this, when the spring starts, then onwards, the surface is rough and coefficient of friction is mu. Now you have to find out the maximum compression in the spring. Now can you find out what is the compression in the spring? Surface is no longer smooth. Now you will see that not only work done by the spring will be there, but work done by the friction will also feature. Getting it? So there will be two work done now. Earlier, friction was not there, and normal and MG were not doing any work, OK? So only work done by spring used to come. Now the friction is also there. So work done by friction will also come in this particular case. Any one of you got the expression? Sukhi, not present today? I think many others, there are at least five or six people who are not present. OK, Bharath sent me an answer, OK? Bharath, x has to be positive. So although you get a quadratic equation, you need to reject the roots of the equation where x is negative. Getting it? So mathematics do not care about a physical scenario. But when you are studying physics, you should use the mathematics, all right? And once you get the answer in to check whether it makes physical sense or not, fine? So x being negative doesn't make any sense. So work done by the spring will be equal to, again, minus of half kx square only, fine? Now this x is not equal to that x, OK? x is a variable. And work done by friction will be what? So friction will act back side, backwards, fine? And since it is sliding, friction force will be equal to mu times n, OK? And the value of n is equal to mg, fine? So the work done by friction will be minus of mu times n, which is mg, multiplied by the distance it has moved into x, fine? So total work done on this block will become how much? Minus of half kx square minus mu mgx. This is the total work done. And this is equal to change in its kinetic energy. Final kinetic energy is 0 minus initial kinetic energy, which is half m into v square, OK? So any doubt with respect to this question? I hope many of you got this equation, correct? All of you got it? Any doubts? OK, I am assuming all of you understood this particular question. In case you have any doubts, feel free to message on the chat box, or you can message me personally or WhatsApp, whatever it is, OK? So good. We'll take up a few more questions, because see, mechanics is more of problem practice, fine? So we cannot just discuss theory, and that's it. So it is 90% problem solving, and only 10% is the theory part. Anyways, draw this diagram with me. This is A, this length is given as L, OK? And this height is given as H, fine? So particle slides along a track with elevated ends, and the flat central part, as shown in the figure. So B to C is a flat central part, OK? The flat central part has a length of L is equal to 3 meters, fine? The curve portion of the track are frictionless. So there are no friction on these curved parts. So A to B and C to D, they are smooth, fine? And for the flat part, from B to C, there is a friction with mu is equal to 0.2, getting it? Now the particle is released from a height of this H value is given as 1.5 meter, OK? And also ignore any bumps it can encounter near the transition between the, let's say, a flat portion and the curved portion, so it smoothly transitions. So there is no loss of energy as such, OK? So you need to find out till what height it will reach on the other curved surface. Let's say it reaches here. You need to find out what is this height? How much is this H? Letting it, you need to find the value of H. All of you, please try this out. See, whatever is not given, you can assume, OK? You can say, OK, mass is M. If it is not given, probably the answer is independent of that. But then if you want, just take it as M. OK? People are getting answers. That's wrong. Sukirt, Bharat, Ashutosh, that's not correct. Anyways, so OK, let's see. Let's try solving this. So between what and what points I can use this work energy theorem, I'm going to use this work energy theorem between two points, OK? Work done is equal to change in kinetic energy. So these two points, I'll directly take A and D. Getting it? So point D is the second point and point A is the first point. Fine? So work done can be split into two parts. Work done by the gravity and work done by the friction. Isn't it? Now what is the work done by the gravity between point 1 and 2? So work done by the gravity can also be split into two parts. Work done by the gravity when it goes from A to B, then work done by gravity when the object goes from C to D. Getting it? Now there is no work done by the gravity when the object is moving between B and C, because gravity is acting downwards and object is moving forward. So it is 90 degrees. Fine? So between B and C, there is no work done by the gravity. So I'm just taking A to B and C to D. Fine? So work done by the gravity between A to B is mg into H. Fine? Because displacement along the direction of force, which is vertically down, is H and mg is down. Fine? So mg multiplied by displacement along the direction of force, which is H. So work done by the gravity from A to B is mg H. All right? And when the object goes from C to D, then the movement of object is upwards. OK? It is against the direction of gravity. So you need to write it as minus of mg H. Fine? So this is the work done by the gravity. And then we need to take into account work done by the friction. Fine? So that is equal to frictional force, which is mu mg into L. And there will be a minus sign coming in here because friction is acting backwards, but the displacement of object is forward. So minus sign will come. Fine? So total work done will be equal to minus of mu mg L plus mg H minus mg capital H. This will be equal to change in the kinetic energy. And how much is the change in kinetic energy? Initial kinetic energy is 0 because velocity is 0. And final is also 0 because at point D, velocity is 0. It comes to rest. OK? So 0 minus 0. So from here, you can get the value of H. You can see that M get cancelled out. Fine? So H, you will get here as G times H minus mu GL, OK? So divided by G also, sorry. So you will get H minus mu L. Fine? So H is what? H is 1.5, mu is 0.2, and L is 3. So it comes out to be 0.9 meters. Fine? So like this, you have to do this particular question. OK? So there is a tendency that you will break up the entire motion into two or three components. Like you can say that, OK, first you'll apply work energy theorem between A and B. Then you apply between B and C and then between C and D. It doesn't matter, OK? You can directly take initial point and the final point. If you're able to calculate the total work done, it does not matter. Getting it? So this is how you have to solve this particular question. In case you have any doubts, please message immediately. Else I'm moving to the next question. Any doubts? Niranjan says no doubts on behalf of everyone. Others also please, you know, you should not feel shy. Just communicate, OK? Anyways, we'll take up a couple of more questions. All of you draw this. Fine. So two blocks are connected by the string as shown in the figure, OK? They are released from the rest. Show that after they have moved a distance L or after they have moved a distance of L, what is the velocity of M1 and M2, OK? Where coefficient of friction between the horizontal surface and M1 is mu, OK? Pulley is massless and frictionless. The string is inextensible and massless, OK? So get the value of the velocity of M1 and velocity of M2 when both the block move by a distance of L. They both move the equal distance, right? M1, if it moves by L, M2 also moves by L. Now you have to apply a vergenge theorem on both blocks together, M1 and M2, right? Velocity of M1 and M2. Bharat, the answer you sent me, it's difficult to understand what you've written. Sorry. Can I send it again? Those who get the answer, you can WhatsApp me. Just take a pic of whatever you're doing and send it across. It's very easy. OK, Sukirt has sent one answer which is independent of coefficient of friction looks like. He's saying it doesn't depend on coefficient of friction, is it? Yes, now it is correct. I'm getting very different answers. I got multiple WhatsApp messages. Anyways, so I'll try to solve it. I hope everybody have tried this out. OK, so see, at times you will get the answer by many different means, but then you need to understand the kind of intricacies that are involved in a particular question, OK? So focus on how it is solved. So I am going to apply this work energy theorem on both the masses together, fine? So kinetic energy for M1, finite kinetic energy for M1, finite kinetic energy for M2 minus initial kinetic energy for M1 plus initial kinetic energy for M2. This is a total work done, fine? And this work done is a work done on M1 and M2 together, fine? So the work done will be some of the work done on M1 and M2. So who are doing work? Friction on M1 is doing work, isn't it? So if this block moves a distance of L, so how much the friction will do the work? Minus of mu M1g into L, because friction is acting opposite of the displacement. So minus mu M1g into L is a work done by the friction on M1, fine? And who else is doing work? You may say that tension, which is acting on M1, is doing work, all right? So let's include that for a while, plus tension force into L, even tension is doing work here, right? Now this is the work done. This is total work done on M1. Gravity is not doing any work on M1 because gravity is acting down, which is perpendicular to displacement. And normal reaction also, same case. Now let's add up the work done on M2. So if M1 moves forward, M2 will go down by the same amount, let's say L, fine? So if it goes down, that is the direction of gravity. So gravity will do the work on M2. So that is M2g into L, right? And also there is a tension acting, T. Now tension is acting upward and displacement is downward. So minus T into L will come, fine? So you'll see that the work done by tension get cancelled off, OK? So whenever you find the work done in a system, you have to only consider the external forces, which is, in this case, friction and the gravity, fine? So this is the total work done. This is equal to change in kinetic energy. So final kinetic energy for M1 is half M1 into V square, OK? Plus for M2, it is half M2 into V square, right? Because velocity of both the masses will be same. They're connected with an inextensible string. So this is the final kinetic energy of the system minus initial kinetic energy of the system is 0 for both the masses, fine? Just you equate these two, you'll get the answer for velocity, OK? So I hope you have got this. Let's move to next question. OK, what is the final answer? What Sukrit has sent is correct. Just multiply M1 with mu. Then the Sukrit answer is correct.


CSS Grid is often seen as this tool to create these big pieces of layouts with different pieces that can move around really easily and stuff like that. And it is fantastic for that. But there are very simple layout solutions that you can use it for as well. So today we're going to be looking at three very awesome use cases for Grid that are very simple and easy to set up. And so let's jump right into it with this first example, which is, I will admit it's a bit of a bigger layout piece, but it's something that I often see people coming up with more complex solutions for, which is when we have a really short page and you need to have the footer stuck to the bottom. I've seen people try all sorts of stuff for this and get frustrated by it. So if we have the head, the main and the footer right there, and we want the footer to be on the bottom, we could do this directly on the body. But I know some people don't like putting Grid directly on there. So one solution for that is to have a div that just wraps all of the content in there and then you can choose that class could also put this directly on the body, whatever approach you prefer. Now on the main layout, I've given it a border right now just so we can visualize where it is on the page. And as we can see, it doesn't actually take up the full space that we need it to if we want to get that footer on the bottom. One solution for that is to give a min height of 100 VH. People will say that VH is problematic, which it can be on mobile. So one alternative is to use DVH instead, which is a newer unit that is a dynamic viewport height that will adjust automatically for those UI elements that can slide in and out on mobile. Because browser support isn't perfect for that, one fallback is to do this where you have it with VH and DVH. So browsers that don't understand DVH can use the VH browsers that do understand DVH will use that instead. The next step is to put a display grid on there. And as you can see, it now stretches all the elements out to fill up all the available space, but it does leave us with a problem of the top of our header and footer being way too big. We can solve this problem by using grid template rows auto one FR auto. So the top row and the bottom row will match the height of the header and of our footer and the middle row gets one FR to use up the rest of the available space and push that footer all the way to the bottom. We can turn off our border now and we can see that it's working in this situation. And if ever you're on a page that has a lot of content, it's still going to work perfectly fine because we used a min height rather than setting it at a fixed height. Another great use case for grid is stacking content. So in my primary header, I have this image here and we also have this H1 right here. And I want to stack these on top of each other. And you might be thinking, Kevin, you could use a background image for that and you would be completely right, but we'll look at one of the benefits of using grid to create stacks like this. The first thing we're going to do is take that primary header, give it that display of grid and then give it a single grid template area. I can then select all the direct children and place them on that grid area. And as you can see, the text is now on top of the image. One problem is my text is sort of stuck at the top, but we can fix that nice and easily with a place items center. One of the benefits of doing this is the image is actually in the markup, meaning we can give it alt text, which helps with accessibility. And it also opens up more layout possibilities if we want to change things at different screen sizes. For example, if we remove our grid template areas and then replace the grid area here with a grid template columns, then we can replace the grid area with a grid row and grid column that are just spanning the full size. This has the exact same effect that we had before. So we're probably asking what's the point by setting things up this way, it's a little bit easier to set up a media query to change our layout at larger screen sizes. So now it's small screen sizes, it's stacked and then at larger screen sizes, we can break into a two column layout. Now, switching over to a new layout, one place that I do see people using grid for regularly is on forms, because it's a perfect use case for them. But we can use grid within grid, which is something that I don't see people doing as often as I think they could. And one thing that's important here is in my form, you can see I have labels and I have inputs. And each one of those is wrapped inside of a form group. Jumping over to the CSS, we can see the simple grid that I have set up for the form right now. And just using my dev tools, I can turn on the visualizer for the grid and we can see just it's nice and simple to go from a one and two column grid and make things responsive. But then inside each one of these cells, we want to take advantage of the space that's there. But then if we turn our attention inside those to the form groups, we can use grid within there instead of the regular solution that I see. Because often what people do is on the label use a display block to get the consistency of having the label on the top and having the input on the bottom. But we also have the problem now of the input not taking up all of the available space to it. Now we can solve that problem by using a width 100 percent and then it will fill up all the available space. And of course we could add the text area at the bottom to have the same solution on the bottom. And then this does work well when we go between our different sizes. But then we also have to worry about maybe the space in between and adding a margin somewhere. And maybe there's other tweaks that you want to make as well. So in my opinion, it's very nice to delete all of that and then take advantage of the fact that we have a form group set up by putting a display grid on the form group. We can do this where we get the exact same result we had before, but we don't have to worry about the fact that we have different elements inside of them. You can see my text area has stretched the full width as well as my inputs and anything else that's in their wood and the items are stacking on top of each other. It's still nice and responsive. And this is just happening because of the way that grid works on the children where they're now stretching to fill up that entire space. The form group is taking up the whole cell and now the items inside are taking up all of the space within the form group. Now let's turn off that grid and we can turn on this visualizer for the one that's inside there. And the reason I'm doing that is because now we can come in and add a gap to add spacing in between the elements if we need to add that space there instead of worrying about where we might be placing our margins or doing other things. And of course it would open up the possibility of creating columns within these if ever you needed to. So using grid for these little micro layouts just to add a little bit of spacing to me is really handy. And since we are looking at this form which is using a grid we might as well make it look a little bit better. So in the HTML if we look at our form group that has our text area inside of it we can go and have something like a form group full width class added on there that we can then use to our advantage. So now if I take a look at that that form group is taking up the entire thing because we're starting at grid line number one and going all the way to the negative one we saw the solution before with our stack layout as well. And just in case you're wondering what those numbers are referring to we can see that we have a one here a two here and a three here but at the bottom those numbers are reversed and we actually count in reverse order. So a one over negative one just means go from the start to the end of our grid. And so from big layouts to small little layouts grid is fantastic at a lot of things and we can come up with very nice elegant simple solutions that give us a lot of control over our layouts and why I love grid a lot but that does not mean that we should discount flexbox. Both layout tools are very useful in different use cases and if you have trouble knowing which one you should use in which use case I have covered that in a previous video that you can check out right here and with that I'd like to thank my enablers of awesome on Patreon Jan, Johnny, Michael, Patrick, Simon and Tim as well as all my other patrons for their monthly support and of course until next time don't forget to make your core on the internet just a little bit more awesome.


Puffer fish, Lagocephalus celeratus is a well-known source of deadly food poisoning due to a neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin. Cases of tetrodotoxin poisoning are common along the coasts of east Asian countries but rare in the Arabian Gulf region. Here, we report a case of a 19-year-old man who presented with signs and symptoms suggestive of puffer fish poisoning. Dietary history was the key to diagnosis the laboratory investigations and imaging yielded normal results. Early diagnosis and proper supportive management are essential for survival. This article was authored by Amar al-Hamsi, Nura's Hassan, Imad Hamad, and others.


I hope everybody's feeling well. One of the fourth questions in the three questions of the Daily Stand-Up is, how are you feeling today? How many people ask that question? This is about Agile and people. And we're all people. I think we're mostly all Agile. It's not about what Agile is. Nuresh once worked at ThoughtWorks, and we worked together. My first Agile class in India was with Nuresh. Thank you, Nuresh, for that experience Maybe each of you would like to, just in one minute, introduce yourselves, rather than my introducing you. And why don't you start, Scott? And we can just pass the mic around. My name is Scott Ambler. I'm the Chief Methodologist for IT at IBM Rational. And I get to go around the world helping people to improve the way that they work and understand what they're doing and hopefully understand the very serious trade-offs that they're making while they're doing all this good stuff. So I get to help a lot of companies to understand and scale Agile and Lean and other stuff. So that's what I do. I'm Nuresh. I'm a struggling startup entrepreneur. And that's what I do. Good morning, friends. I'm Sujata Balakrishnan, heading India operations for Valtek from DeliverySide. And my passion is Agile and people. And definitely we have done a lot of stuff in the last five, six years to really evangelize from traditional to Agile. And it's been working very well. And trust is the one thing which is a one which is driving us to this extent. Hello, everybody. I'm Rebecca Parsons, the CTO of ThoughtWorks. My particular passion is around Agile and the large. What does it really mean to actually have Agile working across an entire enterprise? And there's an entire different set of problems including those wonderful individuals called enterprise architects, as well as standards organizations and such. And so that's where I focus a great deal of my time. My name is Ben George. I am a person who generates the chaos that creates the change that you just heard about how to handle. So I create these problems. So we've got some troublemakers here. We've got some thought leaders. We have people who I've all met at one point in my life and it's a real honor to get to spend some time together tackling some tough questions. So the first question I wanted to ask the panelists is Agile democratic? And in some more detail, what form of government best describes Agile decision-making? Is it democratic, hierarchic, totalitarian, anarchistic? Is it consensus-driven or is it kind of a chaotic, unpredictable process? I'd like each speaker to take about a minute and if a speaker has the same response as one has already spoken, just pass the mic to the other person. We also would like to get questions from you and there are two people who will be helping us with that. If you have questions as time goes by, raise your hand. We won't pass a mic but someone will come to you with a three by five card. You can write the question down and we'll collect them here. And as time permits, we'll ask questions that you've posed. We'd like to start with that question about is Agile democratic? Okay. Well, I actually think in a very real way, decision-making most resembles a benevolent dictatorship. If you're looking at actual existing forms of government and the reason I think that is that although it should be informed decisions and that's where the benevolence comes in, in reality there is an individual or a steering committee that is ultimately making the decisions about how the project will proceed. Now, hopefully that decision is informed properly by all of the inputs from the individuals in the team and I actually think that the input process on a properly functioning Agile team is the most robust but in general you will have some individual or dare I say it and I shudder when I say committee that is actually making the final decisions based on their weighing of the evidence that's been presented to them. Actually, I would agree with what she just said. You need almost a tyrant to make a change in an organization somebody who's going to make that but Womack and Jones talk about it in the book called Lean Thinking that tyrants are always shot and so after the change is in place the person who's probably injected that change will probably need to leave the organization. At that point the change becomes self sustaining where that new higher level of performance and at that point I think a different level of governance comes in place. I'm seeing within companies I work with that we call this anarchy because they basically rule themselves and that seems to be working really well after the change has been injected. I would like to bring in a different perspective when you really look at people on Agile I really bring in customer also into this whole discussion. If you look at customer I think that partially they are democratic because most of the time we think of them as customer asking and you need to do everything whatever they ask and we have very little amount of resistance to say we can't do it. I think from that aspect they have an higher end to really dictate what they want to do and still the Agile team has to do in a collaborative way and deliver research. I think this is my viewpoint on this Agile democratic. So I've worked with startup founders who are extremely dictative about to the detail that the first discussion starts with what algorithm we're gonna implement before even you know what product you're actually making and it's quite interesting because from the background I came from working with Agile teams I always thought that it's extremely democratic everybody gets in the room and we vote and we make the process as far as even deciding people's salary and stuff like that. When I work for some of these startup companies which are extremely successful it just hit me in my head. It's like wow what I was thinking all this while that democratic way of running companies is the best way to do it actually might not always work. So I go back to Steve. Steve is a great example, Steve Jobs by the way. Steve Jobs is a great example of not being really people call him he's the new Hitler in the software world and he's done some amazing things without necessarily having to be really democratic so I would conclude saying that you don't have to be democratic and it really depends on your context. The analogic you use is from Star Trek and because it's from Star Trek you know it must be right and if you remember Star Trek the next generation at the beginning of every episode there'd be some crisis almost always. So the very first thing that would happen is Picard would say to the ready room so the senior staff would all go off to the ready room and they would have some moral discussion about whatever issue they were trying to try to deal with at the time. And the interesting thing about that was that it allowed them to share their ideas to in a respectful manner to and it was interesting because they all had different styles and because Worf would always say we need to blow them out of the sky and Worf was only listened to twice by the way he was listened to but his advice was only acted on twice the entire series and if you wanna really get in trivial and the interesting thing so Picard would listen to all this and then he would say okay now this is what we're gonna do and the entire team would rally around that and it would usually work out but I mean there'd be twists and turns because otherwise you wouldn't have a 60 minute episode but the team would get behind it and sometimes Picard would suggest something that he didn't really hear from everybody you know he pieced the scenario together and they would go forth and do the strategy and things would generally work out because it was Star Trek and everything works out in the 24th century so that I think so keep that in mind if you've never watched Star Trek the next generation then you can download it but anyways go ahead, go ahead, thank you. So I'll answer the question myself I think that there are elements of different kinds of government in Agile but common elements are it's about freedom, empowerment, collaboration, working together better in a collaborative way so it's not about command and control to me it's clear roles and responsibilities so if you practice Scrum the product owner has responsibility to prioritize and provide a budget as Rebecca was mentioning this morning in the business side and the team has responsibility for estimations and for how they're going to do the work and the team is usually working in a collaborative anarchistic or self-organizing way that's not governed there isn't actually a government analogy that applies in the way teams work, in my mind. I think that the next question I'd like to ask the panelists is since I've already write up one thing you should never discuss politics is religion but beginning on a personal level do you feel as a panelist that you're a better person for Agile how have you changed personally? Have you, can you share something if you have something to share about that from kind of a values standpoint an ethics standpoint? I would like to really represent it's not that Agile has brought in these values these were all inherited in our DNA I don't think that we can overnight change the value for example if you really say trust or empowerment or mutual respect these are all in our DNA where we have to really exhibit this only thing what I would really say I come from a traditional waterfall model and when the gentleman who has to come and do the evangelizing to do it at a large level he was just thinking that I will be the first impediment to really go in for this change and he thought that since I come from ISO and CMM background he thought that I'll be the toughest person but I just really think of it seven years back when we started the journey it was very difficult to come from command and control to collaborate with the team and then do it I think it gives us magnificent results and I see we have a lot of potential to learn from our peers and subordinates everybody and especially I would say in fact I really do the transaction even from a personal level at home as well so you really need to learn a lot from everybody around you so that you have a feeling that you're not the ultimate to take a decision on your own and unanimously and then really say that yes I've concluded this is the decision I think it really helped me a lot to really be there to be an agile person what I am today I would say personally when I was quite young I was always right I'm not sure I changed my mind about that but I recognize that when I disagree with somebody now it's usually because we have different backgrounds and now I'm more willing to sort of understand where's our different assumption you're a smart person, I'm a smart person if we're coming to a different conclusion there must be a really reason behind that and I think part of my maturity and agile certainly helped this is let's explore why we disagree on something rather than talk about my position versus your position let's try to get to the root cause of that and I'm much more fluid in doing that I don't get upset when you disagree with me now I probe and I think that's sort of the growth I've got with agile I feel very comfortable probing this environment adding to Fred one thing that's interesting is I always thought it should be one person's way or another person's way and there is no middle ground but what agile personally has given to me is what I call the safe failing experiment mode where because you are working on such tiny pieces you're not making a huge decision and you have to get it right you get into this mindset that let's try this, let's experiment this and either my way or your way does not really matter as far as we can experiment it and adapt and that's something that I think has had a profound impact on the way I try to do things these days one thing that I would like to add to this is in many ways technology can be a solitary business in many organizations they actually talk about a track that someone like me is on as the individual contributor and people are looked at for what they can do by themselves and I think one of the transitions personally that I've made particularly coming from an academic environment into the one that I'm currently in is the extent to which you have to transition your mental model from always relying on yourself and always working by yourself to actually relying on a team and working in the context of a team and it doesn't necessarily have to do with how I do my job differently but just the expectations that I won't be alone in doing what I'm doing I will be doing it with other people who are motivated by the same objectives and we're out as a team to try to achieve something and we will resolve our differences by talking about them and we will resolve our different approaches through looking at what works in experimenting so I think that's been a significant transition for me. I was gonna make pretty much the same observation that Fred had made but I just wanted to tie it back to a story from Star Trek and it's a theme for me now. In the sixth Star Trek movie we saw exactly that when Captain Kirk invited the Klingons onto the ship and they started talking with each other and saw that there was great similarities although some differences as well that they could learn from so I would wanna leave it that. I think it's difficult for some of us to talk about ourselves and to be vulnerable and to talk about how we've changed and what might have not been so good about how we were before and I appreciate the effort that every panelist made. I'm gonna ask the same question again because I'm not really completely satisfied with the answers. I'm gonna ask more clearly if I can. I didn't probably define the acceptance criteria very well. Wasn't being test driven. I wanna know really personally how you have changed and if you feel you're a better person by whatever value system you might choose. I don't wanna impose anything but I felt Rebecca you responded pretty well to that just to name names but feel free to take the mic again and no one's obligated but I just wanted to pose the question again as sort of an advocate for the audience. So I will disagree. I would say I think with Agile I've actually found my emotional home. The one that sort of fits my way of working best. I think that's why I gravitated quite early and don't wanna leave it. So I think it's changed me but it's kind of matched much better what how I choose to work versus processes I grew up with with Waterfall. Am I off the hook since I actually got it right? You're off the hook. Thank you. I don't think that I would say Agile has changed my way of working but it emphasized the collaboration part more and it helped me to really reach out to people to collaborate more and then take consensus based on the voting. So that's a change I would say. I've actually to take it a little further I actually gone a full circle. So when I started I really wanted to collaborate with people but I was working in environments where collaboration was not the thing to do. You would sit by yourself and you would be a hero and you would do stuff and you would get appraisals. So that's how I started. I went into organizations then where collaboration was the way to work and then we really brought in Agile methods to kind of help us do that. And now that I'm a startup founder or struggling guy I'd rather much prefer working by myself than collaborating with other people because I think it's a huge waste of time. Thank you. Anyways, that's an interesting observation that we need to respect. I think Agile has helped me to understand and appreciate the human side of things a lot better than I did before Agile. Very similar to the ongoing struggle that Commander Data and Mr. Spock both had in Star Trek. Excellent, I appreciate that. Thanks everyone for their effort to go a little deeper. I think iterations work well, sprints work well and sometimes doing things repeatedly work well even it may seem a little redundant. I wanna talk a little bit, ask people to talk a little bit now about culture. We're here in India, some of us are from India, some of us are not. I'm from the US, I live in France. I've been living in France for six years. I've worked with India quite a bit and a question in my mind for quite some time has been, is Agile culturally sensitive framework and to the extent that there's a value system in Agile, does it apply equally in all cultures? Does it apply equally in India in the same way or in other countries? So, I'd like to see what you have to say. I think culture is overrated, extremely overrated, especially country culture because there's no such thing called country culture. I'll give you a small example. I used to work for a large sweatshop and, okay, sorry, I didn't mean that.  And I just don't wanna help anybody because I wanna be the hero. I wanna get my stuff done. And I would take the same guys out for, so I used to organize hikes for people. So I would take them on the weekends for treks. So I would take the exact same guys who would not want to collaborate, who would not want to help, who would not move a bone until their managers told them to do so. I would take them for hikes and, you know, somebody runs out of water. Immediately everybody else offers their bottle of water to help people. Somebody slips and falls, you know, without a manager being there, telling them to go help the person.  So this kind of struck me really hard that it's the exact same person with the same DNA. Working in a company wouldn't do a single thing unless being told by the manager. And the same person here, completely self-organizing and helping, going out of their way, you know, giving their last drop of water to somebody else when nobody's demanding that. And it's like, what is culture? So I think company cultures do matter a lot or the way the company's structure and value people and the rate people matter a lot, lot more than the ethnic background you come from. I strongly respect diversity, but I think it's overrated. I have totally an opposite view on this. Definitely it is Indian culture. I would really talk about people coming forward to take any responsibility. Primarily if you look at it, they are more attuned to take orders. I'm telling the truth, maybe people those who are sitting here could have changed the whole way of working in terms of making orders. But most of the time we are attuned to really obey the parents, obey the elders, and we have been taught not to say no to anything, even politely. So we have the opportunity to say, for everything which is questioned, we say yes, and then of course, miserably fail. And that's why we are really in this kind of situation in terms of outsourcing some time. So is it a culture barrier? Probably yes, the way we have brought it. And this side thing that slowly things are changing up and giving them the empowerment to really bring in the best out of them. And the second part is that when you really talk about how they would really help, it's nothing to do with the culture, it is a passion. Supposing they are passionate about doing that, they would give the last drop of order or bring some more water and give them also. But when it comes to the question of competition within the job, they really want to be the best. Which is nothing to do with India, it's all over. It's all over. I've had the fortune to work with people in many countries and working in Agile. I do think there is some differences by country. I remember my first time being in India. I was teaching a class. I walk into the class of brand new freshers and they all stood up. And I remember thinking, oh my God, I have to get them to the point where they challenge me and then we'll have valuable employees. That was something that I just completely unexpected. It was very much part of this, trying to show respect. I understand that.  It didn't take them too long to learn that, however. This is not something you can not learn, unlearn very quickly. So I think one of the things I've seen particularly in India in the last five to 10 years since I started coming here is the entrepreneurs are starting to come forward. They're starting to make their own decisions. They're not necessarily being driven by their parents to go take a job with a big company and get a big title and get a nice spouse. That's not necessarily the priority as the generation's moving forward. So I think it's something that you start at a cultural point, you're starting there, but it's very, very easy when very short time to move off of that and move it to a more productive environment. I do feel somewhat compelled to challenge the diversity is overrated comment. I'm sure Nuresh, you were expecting that. Because I do agree with you that they're trying to say point blank, you were from India there, for you behave this way, you were from the US there, for you behave that way is a mistake and it's a mistake that is often made. However, I do see that when you combine people from different backgrounds, different countries of origin, different genders, that different things happen, more creative things happen. And so there is something that it's not necessarily country of origin, it's not necessarily background, there are all kinds of things that go into this. But trying to solve a complex problem that nobody understands, it's far easier to do it if you've got a group of people who think differently, trying to attack the problem in different ways rather than a group of people who are all looking at the problem the same way. Because if they don't see it the first time, they're not gonna be able to solve it just continuing to look at it in much the same way. Yeah, culture does count and there are significant differences around the world. So trying to get agile working in California with the surfer dude programming culture is a bit different than trying to get it and running in a central European country that was blessed with Soviet rule for 70 years and with people who had to worry about their neighbors and families selling them out. There's not a lot of trust in those situations still. And those are two extremes, the lone differences between India and China and the Philippines and Canada and even the differences between Canada and the United States can be interesting sometimes. So I think we need to respect that just like on Star Trek, we respect the differences between the Vulcans and the humans and the Klingons. Fantastic. And I think also in Star Trek, which is an important theme, you should, but whenever you go to a world, you should leave it as you shouldn't interfere with its culture. Try not, but they always did. They always did, accidentally. Bastards. So. And it was always 20th century earth somehow. And there are always a lot of beautiful women running around and sitting in terror. So speaking of women, I'm interested in gender differences. So men and women are here together. There's no fighting going on. There's nothing untoward going on that I can see. Everyone's keeping their hands to themselves. But I wanna talk a little bit about gender in the workplace and how agile may affect that. On our panel, we have two strong leaders who are women, who have key roles in the organizations they work in. They've gotten there probably not through an easy pathway. At the beginning of today, we heard a story about women who are horribly, horribly abused. And I think we all know that women have had a hard time culturally in most cultures that we belong to. So I'm interested if agile is a way to make the world better in this sense. Comments, feedback? There's some interesting debates going on in the, around the question of gender diversity, particularly as it applies to women leaders. Do we need to turn into men in order to be effective as leaders? Do we need to be brusque? And do we need to be ice cold and unemotional? And do we need to be different than who we are and to succeed in this quote unquote man's world? And there's actually a lot of research that shows that the most successful women leaders are the ones that stay true to who they are, rather than trying to turn themselves into something that they are not. In the short term, that can be a problem. In the long run though, nobody can play a role that they're not suited for and sustain it over time. I do think one aspect of the emphasis on agile, just the extent to which the role of individuals and people are being paid more attention to is something that does help. In addition, when we look at the history of young girls and young women choosing to go into the software profession, as long as there's the stereotype of the individual who doesn't wash very often and always is working in a basement and never talks to anybody, that's not considered to be a terribly attractive profession. The extent to which how we approach software development now is a whole lot more about talking to people, rather than sitting in a corner with headphones on and perhaps the only light coming from the screen. It has changed the environment. And oh, by the way, I also don't believe all the low stereotypes are true or have been true. That they're certainly individuals, but the vast majority of the software people I know are actually quite nicely functioning human beings. But I do think that one of the things that will help is by emphasizing that this is as much a people problem as a technology problem. It can start to give us some ammunition to say, well, women still aren't suited for math and computer science because they're just too emotional and not logical enough. And unfortunately, I still hear that. I don't think for the gender difference, agile is the solution. But I have a feeling that a female working as a scrum master when they have the ability to collaborate more, I think, from the yester years project management technique with the agile, probably they are much better off in terms of interacting and doing the job well. When you really talk about leadership dimension at a higher level, definitely we have the same set of challenges working with all the male chauvinists. It's tough. It's not that easy. Agile is not the solution. I think, as you said, it's after all people. We interact with people and then get to the level of our competency and then show how we are capable of doing the job what is assigned to us, probably in a much better way with much velocity. And I think that these are the things which is going to really help us to grow as leaders rather than just the agile alone. So I got a degree in 1973 in computer science. Half the class was female. Something happened between then and now that I find actually quite disturbing. But what the silver lining is, I look across this audience, and yes, there are not that many women in here, but there are many, many more than I see when I go to a conference in the U.S. So whatever you guys are doing, keep doing it. Keep encouraging your female colleagues to participate. And perhaps Agile is part of the answer, but perhaps it's something else you guys are doing. By all means, please continue. And tell the rest of the world what it is. You want us to continue with this kind of mix? I want more women too, but for different reasons, yes. And Dorian's would work for me. I'm glad Rebecca started talking about stereotypes because I was really struggling for an analogy. And I think Agile does open up opportunities for us to start breaking stereotypes because we can start working more, we are working more with the business people. We are showing that we are just normal people just like everybody else. And we saw this on Star Trek, the original series, where they had these little opportunities to break stereotypes, such as the first interracial kiss on television, such as the first implied sex scene where somebody didn't have to keep one or their feet on the floor during filming. And these seem like trivial things now, but this was radical stuff in the 60s and early 70s. So at least for the United States. But anyways, so I thought I would share it with you. So Agile helps to break stereotypes and I think that's a very good thing. Back when I just finished my engineering and I was up for campus recruitment, I went in for a company's interview and they had a group discussion during the interview. And the topic of the group discussion was should there be reservation for women? And I was like, boy, that's a really hard topic because I don't have opinion either ways. I don't really have enough experience to comment on it. So basically when my turn came, I said, you know, the lady who was conducting the group discussion, I basically pointed her to say, I think she's here because of her capability and not because of reservation. And I got the job. There's a theme in some of the questions that you've been asking, and I'm gonna synthesize a couple of the questions I've just looked at with the next question. But first I'll respond to the one I just asked as well. I think that Agile as a framework or as a set of values, as a way of being, is respectful, collaborative, and levels the playing field for all people. So whether the discrimination previously was gender, racial, ethnic, or your position in the hierarchy, I believe that Agile helps personally. I wouldn't be doing it. It's a reason I'm passionate about Agile. So I hope at least that it's making things better, but I also appreciated what Rebecca said earlier this morning about realism, about seeing the way things really are, and I think there really are lots of problems that remain interculturally from a gender standpoint. Based on authority. So the other question I wanted to ask, which is based as I say on some questions from the audience, has to do with power distance, as it sometimes described, management structure, hierarchy, and the relationships between people who control one another's destiny to some extent. Managers can hire or fire you, and when you're fired you don't have money, in which case you may not have food. So we heard this morning about a horrible form of slavery, but to some extent organizations may have a diluted version of a similar form of slavery. I don't think that most employees feel that they're prostitutes. On the other hand, they may not feel completely free. They may not feel that they can do exactly what they want. And they're, even in Agile organizations, there are still managers who are probably abusing their position of power. So I'm curious about the questions that have been asked. How do you feel Agile is impacting the upper levels of management and the hierarchy in the organizations that you work with? Do you have examples of improvements or is it the same old, same old? Is Agile not really tackling the difficult problems of hierarchy and authority? I worked for a company where they had a very strong hierarchy and you wouldn't be able to do a thing unless your manager approved it and his manager approved it, or her manager approved it, or whatever. Thank you. So repeating what I said, I worked for a company where the hierarchy was really strong and things wouldn't happen unless you had, you went through the whole chain of approval, the chain of responsibility pattern until final approval from the God would be given. And one thing I noticed is in that company, when they started implementing Agile, things really did not change much, things did not really change much, except people started doing more of lip service saying, you know, we're gonna let self-organization and people are gonna decide, by the way, you're working on this. And this needs to be done yesterday. So that organization, I lost hope, I didn't think they would change at all. But then a strong leader came into the organization and this person, I was surprised, you know, you would be shocked to find him sometimes sitting next to you and actually doing his work. And he was a CEO of a really, really huge company. And just looking at him, I think the whole hierarchy in the organization certainly changed, people are making more decisions on their own. The whole, so what I'm getting at is, again, I think Agile does make a difference, but trying to push Agile does not help change the hierarchy unless you have somebody really strong with a vision who can lead by example rather than lip service. I think oftentimes abuse within an organization occurs because people feel isolated from each other. So one of the things I've seen happen in agile organizations is because we tend to sit together, because we tend to tear the walls down between the cubes, you're working very closely with your colleagues. And so it's very hard to create an abusive situation without everybody noticing it as well. So it may move a little bit quieter, but I've seen situations where teams have fired their project manager because he felt the project manager was too domineering and too pushing, trying to tell them how to do their jobs. The team said, this is not working for us. And as a whole they went forward and got him kicked out. I think the openness associated with Agile, the collaboration associated with Agile, it's gonna make it a little more difficult for the abuse to occur. I do think it will still be occurring in other ways. Thank you. So another question that I have unrelated to religion or politics or gender issues or hierarchy has to do more with physics, space and time. So in particular with respect to space, we're here in India and we're talking about people who are maybe working in other remote locations, the management might be in the US or Europe or it might be local, the team members might be dispersed. Many of us have dealt with working in Agile in a distributed environment. We have different feelings about that and things don't always work the way we'd like. I'm curious about your view on does Agile work in a distributed environment and differentiating dispersed teams from distributed co-located teams. So you could have multiple teams, each one is co-located or a team with members in many locations, the nature of the interaction side of individuals in the Agile manifesto, individuals in their interactions, how are interactions across space and time and ideas that you have to share with the audience that would improve trust, improve results, improve culture based on your experience. I would like to really state here, it's very interesting dimension for us. Most of the time they want Indian teams to be Agile and all probably we work with a lot of French colleagues in French projects, it's very tough. They may not be Agile and leave alone being Agile, they won't even follow even simple scum practices but still they really want India to be up and running in everything in Agile. So I would say that it is a diverse way of working with them in terms of some team in India working in Agile and our expected team in onsite not being Agile. So this was the case and then of course you have a customer element where he is totally not being Agile. This really gave us a lot of issues and that's where as Valtech we really got into the customer location and also with our country colleagues to really go in for Agile and then drive them some of the important practices where they have to really go in and probably after six to nine months it gave us some result but during those six to 10 months it was a real period for India to struggle hard because we were also in the transition stage and people were not able to really understand and more of command and control from French colleagues and it's not an easy way, I'm telling you. So I've always worked on distributed teams, didn't have the opportunity to always be co-located so I've always worked on distributed teams except for few and I would conclude that distributed development in general Agile or not is hard. It's hard for various reasons but the thing that really stands out for me is lack of trust because if I don't know somebody it's very unlikely that I'll trust them and if I don't have trust then all the visibility issues and all the other issues that we talk about start surfacing. Agile again does help in some of those because you're retreating, you get to see faster feedback, you give an opportunity for better collaboration so it improves that trust factor but unless you focus explicitly on building trust distributed development becomes extremely difficult. I did have an opportunity to work for a startup company where we were all co-located and at that point I actually much preferred being distributed. The reason was that I was, so it was four of us who were kind of the next line management after the founder and then we had a whole teams of people and anytime we had an idea if one of us went to the founder he would shoot us down because he was way too smart than any one of us were and what we ended up doing was then four of us would go together and after a while one person is talking the rest three would be thinking what would be the next question? So we could actually keep up with the founder and that also became really hard to keep up so then I basically went back to first writing blogs or writing an email, getting all the feedback out there between the four of us and then basically sending him a link to the blog or the article and say read this I'm about to come and have a discussion about this and five minutes later I would say okay go ahead and implement it so I didn't really have to go to him and I would much prefer being distributed and work with him. Interesting. Need to find better employers dude. You do have a better employer now, you're self-employed. There you go. One of the things that I do I run industry level surveys because I prefer to have fact based discussions as opposed to religion based discussions and one of the great myths of Agile is that we work in co-located teams and this is not the norm. Many of us do without a doubt but this is the minority of Agile teams are truly co-located and particularly when you define co-location as having your key stakeholders in the room with you as well and this is something we need to have more coherent discussions about and because even if you're working in queues you're suddenly distributed and there's a measurable loss of productivity of ability to collaborate effectively of your success rate and this is true regardless of paradigm by the way because I've looked at this issue across paradigms I want to be able to compare paradigms is an interesting question it would be does traditional work better for a distributed team than Agile and the answer is no it does not but it could have who knows right because we didn't really have solid data on that so geographic distributed Agile is far more


I needed a hard drive to store videos and then stream those videos using Plex. I got this WD Purple 8TB for cheap. I thought I was all good, but then I went to the internet. According to the internet, it's a bad idea to use a CCTV drive for storage since the firmware or the software brains of the drive cares more about writing data down quickly instead of saving that data accurately. Wait, hold up. A drive is a drive, right? Well, manufacturers now have specialized drives. For WD, green entry level, blue everyday use, black gaming, red network attached storage, purple recording CCTV, and gold enterprise level. But to help with the internet, then I got the drive anyway. I've been using it for 3 months now to save and stream media files. Guess what? It works fine. While my short experience with one drive is hardly conclusive, you may want to keep it in mind if you need general storage and can get CCTV drives for cheap.


USS Bonham-Rishard is actively engaged in the search and rescue operation of a Korean passenger ship that sank off the coast of the Republic of Korea April 16th. The amphibious assault ship has been assigned a search area of 5 to 15 nautical miles from the shipwreck's site. Two MH-60C Hawk helicopters from the ship are conducting search and rescue operations within the search area. The U.S. and Republic of Korea navies will also lead communication efforts during search operations. Eligible sailors and Marines serving on sea duty will see a pay increase mid-May. All pay grades, with at least three years of cumulative sea duty, will receive a 25 percent increase in sea pay. Personnel exceeding 36 months of consecutive sea duty will also receive a $100 increase in the sea pay premium. Read more about these stories at Navy.mil. From our hands update, thanks for watching.


The goal is ethnic cleansing, not defeating Hamas. Notes from the edge of the narrative matrix. The funny thing about Henry Kissinger dying at age 100 is that he lived long enough to become one of the least crazy warmongers in the DC swamp. Not because he got Sainer, but because the US Empire has gotten so much crazier. Almost everyone running the US government today is a worse warmonger than Henry Kissinger was at the end of his life. Sain person, stop murdering thousands of children. Crazy person, you hate people because of their religion. There's a tweet by Ryan Grimm. Netanyahu, according to Israeli Press, has instructed Ron Dermer, his Minister of Strategic Planning and a very close aide, to explore ways to thin out the Gaza population. Comment from Kaelin. Israeli officials keep openly saying again and again that the plan for Gaza is ethnic cleansing, yet the Western political media class adamantly insists on continuing to frame Israel's actions in Gaza solely as a war against Hamas. Hamas isn't the target. It's the excuse. A damning new report from Plus 972 magazine published on Thursday exposes how Israel has been deliberately striking civilian targets in Gaza as a matter of policy because they believe it will quote, lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas. It makes it clear that the IDF is very much aware of where the civilians are and that when they kill children it's because they made a calculated decision that it would be strategically worthwhile to do so. As evidence continues to mount that a significant number of the Israelis killed on October 7th were actually killed by indiscriminate fire from the IDF, Israel has announced its plans to bury the vehicles Israelis died in, in other words, to bury forensic evidence. According to the Jerusalem Post, in order to save space and to be environment friendly as possible, the cars may be shredded before being buried. Are people not tired of having their intelligence insulted? Israel's Western allies keep being confronted with the problem that they've been framing Israel all these years as a free democracy with liberal values identical to the West's. Yet it keeps acting just like the evil dictatorships the West always tries to distinguish itself from. They keep running into this problem because it's not something that Israel can actually change about itself since it's just the stuff that Israel is made of. The Zionist ideological framework which birthed Israel in the first place is what has been guiding its political course this entire time, and that ideology can only steer the country toward racism, apartheid, fascism, theft, murder, and genocide. This has long caused a dissonance between what Israel is seen doing and what Israel is presented as by its Western allies in its own PR, and now that dissonance has soared to unprecedented heights. Westerners are taught, falsely, that their governments embody virtuous value systems prioritizing freedom, peace, justice, and truth, and here's this bizarre ethno-state glommed on to them which very clearly wipes its ass with those values, without even really attempting to disguise it. The Western Empire has destroyed nation after nation on the premise that each of those nations was governed by an evil dictator who couldn't be allowed to remain in power, and yet we're being asked to look past the actions of an intimate partner of the Western Empire which makes those evil dictators look like teddy bears, and believe that that partner is actually entirely in alignment with the values of the virtuous West. There's no way to reconcile these two completely contradictory perspectives, so you get cognitive dissonance. The more cognitive dissonance there is, the harder it is for people to hold on to these contradictory views simultaneously. Eventually it gets too much to hold on to, and they've got to let go, which is why more and more Westerners are starting to open their eyes to both the depravity of Israel and of their own government. Here's a tweet by Steven Donzinger sharing a New York Times article from 2014 titled, Israelis Watch Bombs Drop on Gaza from Front Row Seats, showing a bunch of Israelis cheering on the 2014 bombing of Gaza. Comment by Caitlin. We're meant to accept that it's fine and normal for Israelis to hate the Palestinians, they're murdering and oppressing so much that they cheer for their deaths, but it's outrageous and unforgivable that the Palestinians who are being murdered and oppressed hate them back. Israel Apologia is the world's worst people defending the world's worst actions. You're more likely to support Israel if you're a shitty person, and if you weren't already a shitty person to begin with, you'll eventually have to turn into one to continue supporting Israel's actions. Most Israel supporters are non-Jews, but when you talk about what awful people Israel supporters are, they'll try to claim you're talking about Jews. Israel apologists who aren't even Jewish will accuse you of anti-Semitism for saying things that are really about them. Anytime there's a bombing campaign by the US-aligned power structure, you see attempts made to spin the civilians it kills as imperfect victims, and you're seeing that with Gaza too. The problem here is that there's no way to spin children as imperfect victims, they are inherently blameless. If everyone in Gaza was a Hamas fighter or even just a military aged male, then the imperfect victim's strategy would work fine, but Gaza happens to contain an unusually high percentage of children, and Israel is killing them at a very unusually high rate. You can try to say babies and small children are actually covert Hamas fighters or Hamas supporters, but all you'll succeed in doing is making your own side look worse than it already does. It's a major obstacle for the Western Empire.