Welcome back to the original gangsters podcast. I'm Jimmy Buccellato here in studio at the og command center with my colleague and Friend the intrepid mr. Scott Bernstein. Hey now and we've got Benny the producer and engineer extraordinaire in the house as well Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Just want to remind everyone before we get started to please subscribe to our YouTube channel It's growing. We're pretty excited about that. Please Share it leave comments. We're also active on social media Facebook Twitter Instagram I enjoy interacting with people on these through social media and we appreciate your support It's a it's a big help in terms of spreading the word. So so please keep that in mind We have a pretty exciting show today a popular topic We can tell from the analytics that whenever we do an episode about outlaw bikers that it's very popular And this is a very timely very hot topic going on here we're going to talk about the Hell's Angels and We're also going to talk about the Hell's Angels and their feud with the pagans So we're gonna deep dive this you want to get a start at Scott just well There are you know kind of two pieces of this And and it's in it spans the nation, you know goes yes from one side of the country to the other So in the last couple weeks first there was a Search warrant That had been sealed an affidavits that were tied into that search warrant in some court filings out in on the in New England That were unsealed in the last couple weeks that have revealed that the Hell's Angels have a Quote-unquote green light order on the pagans and it's a fallout from the pagans Blue wave expansion campaign that we've talked about on this pod that was launched about five years ago and has has Had quite a few ripple effects And and it's I think it's been successful there They're expanding rapidly across the country and it's the brainchild of the The kind of Sven golly Godfather of of the pagans right now Conan the Barbarian Keith Richter will be coming out of prison in the next couple weeks or probably the next couple months But so there there was some conflict that was Stem from the blue wave Where the pagans were moving into New England and we're going into territory that the Hell's Angels Had previously claimed there are some dust-ups last year no murders, but some Very very violent clashes where people got stabbed and shot and From that unrest there was a Search warrant of a pagans clubhouse in Fall River, Massachusetts, which is kind of the the middle point between Boston and Providence It's a real, you know, it's a factory town very a working-class very multi-ethnic and From that search warrant we found out that there was a Hell's Angels There was a meeting of bosses on the West Coast in At some point in late 2021 so this is not that long ago and there was a confidential informant in In the meeting and as the meeting came to an end the confidential informant stole What's being described as a minutes sheet where they they took notes on what was being discussed at the Meeting and in those notes it said that there was a vote and that Because of what was going on with the pagans moving into Hell's Angels territory not just in New England But around the country that the the bosses in the Hell's Angels put out a green light order Which is a is a shoot-on site order and in order to engage violently any pagan that they see So that's one part of it and then just a couple days ago There were Guilty verdicts and a very big Hell's Angels Racketeering and murder case out in San Francisco that had some ties To New England and the Hell's Angels Boston boss Chris Ranieri who they call the Rain Man People that I've talked to said that the impetus for the pagans pushing into Massachusetts was Rain Man's Inclusion in this big 2017 Murder and racketeering into a matter of California pulling him off the street and getting him put behind bars and that was part of the Reasoning or part of the first Portion of the first part of the blue wave was to go into New England knowing that the Hell's Angels boss there had been taken off the streets So I just want to ask you something you said they raided the pagans clubhouse But that doesn't make sense to get minutes from a Hell's Angels. No, no, no The search warrant to raid the pagans house. Yes, right was based on was based on or not be Mentioned in that search warrant. Yeah, was the fact that a confidential informant had stole a minute sheet From a meeting in in California months earlier and that was Part of the search warrant That gave the feds the right to go into the pagans clubhouse and I believe they also used That information to raid Hell's Angels clubhouse in In a part of Massachusetts as well Yeah, so I know it's confusing. No. Yeah, so let's let's break it down So as you point out, there's this blue wave mandate and My understanding was New England traditionally was Hell's Angels territory and the outlaws came in there in the 80s a pretty heavy but yeah And so according to these documents Salem is like the sort of the nexus of Hell's Angels boss It's I think the chapter is called the Boston Salem, okay Salem's like 45 minutes Yeah, I'm not I'm maybe not really familiar. I mean, I've been to Boston, but not the larger area so It seems like for a while The Hell's Angels were I don't know if you want to say dormant, but they there wasn't a lot of activity there in that particular I Don't know about Hell's Angels presence in Boston proper. So I don't want to speak yeah out of turn the the unrest or the The tensions that have boiled over according to this reporting in the Daily Beast shout out to them for for first reporting this this What this information we've gleaned off of the search warrant that was unsealed a couple weeks ago That You know The I'm sorry. I'm losing my train. We're just I was saying that the it seems like the Hell's Angels had neglected right Okay, I thought this kind of area near Rhode Island. So this area is is considered the southeast coast of Massachusetts It's not Boston, right? You're probably an hour and a half out of Boston. Yeah, so it's it's Cape Cod it's other cities in Southeast Massachusetts and and the two Major players here territorially were Cape Cod and Fall River and the Pagans had no presence at all in Massachusetts Hell's Angels again, I'm not positive about Boston other than the fact that we know that Reneering the Rain Man was leading that Salem Boston chapter But I'm not exactly sure if they have a clubhouse in Salem or they have a clubhouse in Boston but what as you mentioned the the Fall River Hell's Angels had kind of gone dormant, right which In boldened or Inspired, I guess the Pagans to not go to Boston or Salem where Reneering and and that that Hell's Angels camp was they went to a place that had been Abandoned by the hell's by the Hell's Angels and in Fall River planted their flag there and then in response that previously dormant Hell's Angels Southeast Massachusetts group Regrouped right and opened chapters on Cape Cod, right, right? And so they Reestablished their their presence, which you know, I imagine the Pagans found provocative and Then we know from the court documents here that This was not going they were not going to coexist peacefully that the the Hell's Angels also Gave the order the green light order to go attack right falls We're gonna drive them out of here. Well, and they went and they staged a group attack on the Fall River Clubhouse the Pagans Fall River Clubhouse where Over a dozen if not two dozen Hell's Angels showed up in like vans and unloaded a Lot of artillery and came out with with knives and bats and hammers and Attacked the the the fall the Fall River Pagans headquarters and there was a hour-long Brawl in the middle of the street one of the Pagans I guess was left like impaled He survived, but then there was blood all over the yeah This was pretty yeah pretty pretty gruesome and pretty public It's interesting to this reporting because it's actually even even more dramatic than that according to the reporting And which is based on this court documents more than a hundred Hell's Angels. Oh, I'm Even more I said a dozen or two dozen. Yeah, okay five dozen. It's even more dramatic Yeah, that a hundred gathered at a rest stop in Bridgewater, Massachusetts and That along with support clubs like the Sidewinders were there too, so it's just really extraordinary like a hundred dudes I mean, that's no joke. You know what I mean? Yeah, and this was last year. Yeah, this wasn't like right This was in 2022 not like in the 70s or something. Yeah, so it's interesting that also according to the documents That they they took pictures for social media. Yeah in route And I wonder what you think about that because we were just having an off camera discussion about Certain wise guys that have a presence on social media and that doesn't go over well with the OGs And I wonder what with with the biker world. Maybe someone could comment and share with us But you know what my first How they feel my first impulse in terms of where my brain goes here is Is that there is probably a difference in motivation or at some levels of motivation where I'm guessing that when Members of the Hell's Angels are posting on on their socials as they prepare to go take Take the fight if you will to a rival group. I think that's probably a promotional tool Flexing right and recruiting tool. Yeah, as opposed to some of the Italian Wise guys or the you know African-American drug dealers who are just kind of glamming out. Yeah. Yeah, good point Just kind of boasting and and showing off. Yeah, I think with the bikers. It's more of like come join this You can be part of this. Yeah, it's more of a cultural than an individual kind of thing So there's something else that that was in this reporting. I want to ask you about So the reason why they know this obviously they monitored social media after the point But it says cameras. I'm reading from the reporter cameras operated by the Fall River Police Department tracked the 100 strong group of bikers as they rode to Fall River and carried out the attack now If that if that's true, my question is why didn't they intervene? Why didn't they stop it? Why didn't they stop? Yeah, if they if they knew that was About that and I realize if they if they got a hundred dudes, right, you know Throw themselves in the middle of that tornado, but you have they have access to other resources They could have called in SWAT or something like that So if that's true, I don't know if you have any thoughts on that if you if you've talked anybody I don't think that's an outlier of a situation. I mean in on this podcast. We've talked about scenarios where You know law enforcement will In some cases Create yeah, I will manipulate variables to create a crime to watch and then Used to you know that as a predicate for indictment, but I think a lot of times that There there be there's this push and pull between Well, if we stopped it now The bust is a lot less sexy No, I agree with that and and and as we've talked about in the world of law enforcement you it It's political you you rise. Yeah, the more high-profile bust you make the further you rise in in whatever department You're in whether it's federal or state. So I think a lot of times there's like personal personal motivations to Allow the situational play out as much as it can play out without Causing a murder, I guess. Yeah in some cases. I think there's been Situations I shouldn't say I think I know I mean with with the whole scarpa FBI Whitey bolger where you know, they were being allegedly tipped off by FBI agents who to go kill right and and while they were in the process of planning hits We're being told where surveillance units were so they would know to avoid them. Yeah, yeah And also, we know from from that in some cases informants, especially in the biker world Informants all the time try to incite all sorts of things You know one one here. Let me sell you a gun. Let's sell that help again Well, it's it's a self-preservation factor. Yeah, they know the more bust they can they can feed to their handlers in the government the more leniency the more money. Yes, you know the the more Prison time cuts reduction they'll receive. Yeah, so it gets it gets can get pretty can get pretty sketchy But that's one thing. What about that? What about the fact though? that a There was an informant in this meeting of National bosses. Yeah B that informant had the balls to steal The notes from the meeting and give it to I mean, that's pretty yeah I think that's in some ways even being lost in some of this reporting is how did we get the knowledge that there's a green light order? Yeah, it must be someone well placed. Yeah to have access to that kind of information and feel yeah confident enough They could walk away with it.  No one was no one was killed but It's again says here investigators surveilling the property watched as cars and Motorcycles sped away again. It doesn't seem like the investigators were too interested in Actually arresting people right intervening here, which which I think is I don't know. It could be that could be problematic so the It says here that the informants as investigators that Hell's Angels plan the attack because the pagans emcee members had Disrespected the the Hell's Angels Now I don't know it's not specific enough. I don't know if there was like some specific altercations or do they just felt by opening up a clubhouse there in the first place that was an Side in the flag wearing the colors of the pagans In that area Whether it was you know offensive to the Hell's Angels or offensive the outlaws because there's been a lot of dust ups there and and on an aside and We're monitoring the situation, you know, I'm getting really really good Sourcing on the fact that over the last five six months. There's talks between the Hell's Angels and the outlaws Who are like the the biggest rivals in the history of the biker world are considering Calling some type of truce and and joined forces to combat this blue wave and you got We got Richter coming out of prison in August Under normal circumstances he would have hit a halfway house by now But I'm guessing they're gonna keep him for the last possible second. He's doing two years on a Violation of supervisor lease. He was caught with a weapon leaving a pagans party and I'm confident in saying that there's a Informant in his inner circle house within because he gets pulled over, you know shortly after leaving that it's too Convinced and they and he wasn't even carrying the gun the gun was in a like a secret compartment And they arrested him initially and they didn't find the gun for another like five six seven hours when they they knew where to look So it's a powder cag of a scenario right now It again to give context the pagans until Richter's plan to Expand was was a very big deal in places like Maryland, Virginia West Virginia, Pennsylvania parts of New Jersey, New York But Florida, but that was it People didn't you didn't know about the pagans west of the Mississippi. They didn't know about the pagans in the Midwest They didn't know what Kentucky was another they didn't know about the pagans in New England and Now There are literally pagan chapters that are now being opened or that have opened in Washington state Montana, Oregon They're going down to Texas Oklahoma, right? They're making alliances with with The Mongols So it's a it's it's a very Real-time I don't want to necessarily compare it to what's going on in the mafia in Canada But it's it's not it's not the same thing But it's there's a destabilization factor there and an unpredictability factor there that I think is a parallel Yeah, I mean it was interesting a few years ago or a year ago whenever we did an episode about this and the pagans Expansion and I and I said well, you know, it doesn't seem like anyone's like really standing up to them Well, now that's we see that that's not ever since that episode That's actually not true. It seems like like you mentioned some other prominent clubs are starting to reorganize and I think the recognize that this is You know, maybe not in their best interest to just I heard as the out of the way as the pagans and Mongols have fortified their Alliance or quasi alliance. I've heard that the outlaws are aligning with the bandidos Hmm for the same reason. Oh Yeah, and the outlaws don't have a presence really west of the Mississippi And I don't think they want to have a presence west of the Mississippi other than you know, your your enemies Enemy is your friend. Yeah Wasn't there shooting in Texas not long ago bandidos and Probably but that had nothing to do with Okay, the outlaws are a Midwest down south. Yeah east coast Oh, go almost probably as far west as they go, right? Yes, I would guess But there were some outlaws dudes who were who were wearing their patch around Texas. Remember that story No, you're right though with the outlaws I've heard Have kind of a I don't want to say free pass But where before it would be difficult for them to go into Texas and wear outlaws here because of this Relationship that's forming between them and the bandidos. They have a call all clear. Okay so By the way talking about the pagans on the east coast that I've I've heard from people and I know that sounds vague and some people there's Haters out there gonna say well, that's bullshit, but I don't know what you want me to say I'm not I'm not going to sit here and tell you who we talked to yeah That's never gonna happen. So you can either believe us or not, but we're just never going to happen. So And I hope you know, I think our a lot of our fans respect. I think our reputation Right. It is pretty our batting average is pretty good. Yeah But but but I've heard that you know The Hells Angels in New York have good relationships with cosinostra which makes the pagans nervous apparently from what I've heard But then I've also come across information you and I said we're gonna look into it That the pagans have their own cosinostra right ties in New York So that's kind of interesting. Yeah, and the pagans have always been closely tied in Philadelphia has always been a home base for pagans even though they were founded in Maryland But Philadelphia has always been a real power a power base for the pagans and There's a little bit of a love-hate relationship. There's been some blips Over the years where there's been some Issues between the mob and the pagans, but for the most part in Philadelphia the pagans and the mafia are are aligned Yeah, you know Joey Merlino Has really good relationships with the pagans again. I don't want to everyone loves Joe. Yeah I don't want all the other the five families I don't want to do the digress too far, but I hear there's some new Relationships burgeoning in the Merlino camp with the modern, you know, the the the pagans Current leadership in in Philadelphia, which is another what's old is new again The gorilla a Stevie modern mind of Eugene. I know I'm butchering his name. It's called the gorilla He was the pagans boss in the 90s and was actually the national boss fell out of favor I was on the shelf for a little bit and then Richter who was very close with the gorilla in the 90s when when Conan the Barbarian Richter was was rising in the Long Island pagans He brings Gorilla back into the fold in 2017-18 when he takes power and he makes gorilla a big part of this blue wave and puts gorilla back in power in Philadelphia There was he's an Italian guy, right? Manda, Virginia. I think he's French. Oh, is it but maybe I'm wrong I'd have to yeah, I can't remember. I he's got a weird last name.  Manda, Virginia is the Taco Bowman of Philadelphia, you know, the face of biker. Oh the face of the biker world in Philadelphia over the last 30 years even though he was shelved for part of that, you know, is is the gorilla and Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm I just I don't know as much about the pagans. So I didn't know that name didn't sound familiar to me but I'm He there was a internal Mini I don't want to say it was a war but a power struggle In the early 2000s late 90s within the pagans were were gorilla Yeah, how do you pronounce it left? I don't think it's Manda, Virginia. Yeah, it could be so Where where the gorilla got into it with a guy named Tim flood who they called Timmy casual and Lost the power struggle flood took the club over The gorilla was like kicked out and then flood ends up flipping And the power and filly with the pagans went to somebody else and then The gorilla makes his way back into the fold underneath Richter But again, the last the last thing I'll say about this and then you can look forward to some reporting I think in the next couple months. We'll try to touch on it the more I learn about it. There's a picture That surfaced in the last month on social media from Joy Merlino's underboss Handsome Stevie Mazzoni. Oh, and it's in prison.  Yeah, well it makes sense. Yeah, although It's ironic Merlino with his that family's history with the pagans back in the day Complicated. Well, what's what's funny is that Merlino was really close or is really close to a lot of these pagans What Jimmy's talking about is Chucky Merlino, right Joey's dad Who was erratic at times right big-time drinker? Yeah, I lost his stripes because he was such a drinker Yeah And the incident that you're referring to was I think one of the if not the impetus one of the straws that broke the camel's back is that Chucky gets into a Pretty big-time beef with the pagans in the mid-80s and they start threatening to kill each other and kill each other's families Yeah and Chucky took his got drunk one night and took his BMW and Slams it into the pagans like outside the Pagan's clubhouse where all the bikes are are lined up and and and that that was kind of interesting because It started off where Merlino actually was close with those guys Chucky wait Chucky and Nikki were through the drug connection, right? They were kind of the liaison with Raymond with Long John Marrano They're moving a bunch of drugs together. So he he he started off getting along with the pagans, but then things went sour I think that had to do with a power shift where a new guy had taken over from the pagans who wasn't the same guy that had been I Again, I could be I know there was a guy named the Egyptian And I'm not sure if the Egyptian was the guy that left or the guy that came that some of the issues came with but uh it part of the blue wave is the pagans fortifying their connections and their network with Groups like the Mongols groups like Italian La Cosa Nostra. Yeah, and Hispanic Street Kings Latin Kings the Owl Oz have responded by Fortifying their alliances with LCN and I've heard making some strange bedfellows where they're Aligning with some Black Street Kings to try to combat what the pagans are doing Um, let's segue to that. Yeah. Yeah, what one of the It's interesting because we're talking about Owl bikers on the east coast and one of these prominent guys from the from the New England Hells Angels is also linked to a big bust out west. Yeah, which is something you previewed at the beginning And I just want to add something Um, if for people who watch our program or listen to the podcast and they're not from out west Um, you may not realize like the Hells Angels are reported on all the time. Yeah, if you're out in, California I lived in Arizona for a while Nevada it's it's pretty calm go a week. Yeah, you won't go a couple days I don't think with with Hells Angels activity not being reported on by the various newspaper Yeah, I mean a nightly broadcast and so if you're from the Midwest You you've probably heard of the Hells Angels because they're so iconic and famous but but you you may not Be aware of How active they are those are their super star those are their superstar criminals the way that the Joey Merlinos and the John Goddys and Joey Lombardo's from Chicago are the for the Midwest or the other parts of the East Coast Yeah, so this was this was huge news, especially out west. Yeah, this this and let's that the New England guys connected Yeah, and let's draw a line. I Think that it's noteworthy that When the Rain Man Chris Rainier the Rain Man who is the boss of the Hells Angels? It seems like he's the boss of the entire state of Massachusetts But I think officially he was the boss of the Boston Boston slash Salem Salem chapter He's taken off the streets neither. I think it was 2017. It might have been 18 and That coincides with this move that that Richter I think strategically Looks at the Hells Angels losing Their top. Yeah, their top skipper in that region and pinpointed it as a place to expand to sure Yeah, now let's talk about what brought Rain Man Rainiery off the street So he was indicted in 2017 I believe With a number of Hells Angels on on the West Coast But most prominently a guy that I want to make the the focus of the second half of this episode on is Ray Ray folks and Maybe outside of California Ray Ray folks isn't a big deal but in California Ray Ray folks is The modern-day Sonny Barger from what I hear he is the most powerful most respected most feared Hells Angels shotcaller At least in the United States And he kind of took that Reputation from that from what used to be in that Barger crew Even though Barger has been out of California for a while. He's been in the end of his life He was down in Arizona, right, but uh Northern California is traditionally a Hells Angels like stronghold right so This barge was from the Oakland right area. So Ray Ray folks I'm just kind of learning about him and talking to some people and doing my due diligence But just what's on paper is pretty scary. I mean the guy is is a is a real Hurricane of Criminal activity and a seems to be a real you know cowboy and and a lot of his behavior and and What he was convicted of last week a Rain man was convicted of a murder and we're gonna get into that in a second and that murder actually ties back to a Hells Angels Rally motorcycle rally in in New England But the Ray Ray folks part of this case was tied to in Ray Ray's done a lot of Prison time in the last 15 years and I think he's got a probably another four or five years left but he'll be in his I think mid-60s when he gets out and Early early 60s, maybe mid-60s and he'll have some time You know at the top of the heap so He was in jail for something He was a leader and let's also be clear that the Ray Ray folks comes from or was a little that is the head or was the head of the Sonoma Valley Hells Angels chapter up in wine country and He was serving time in the early 2010s and Got out Found out that when he was in prison one of his lieutenants was sleeping with his wife They take that lieutenant They beat him near death Ray Ray folks leaves the beating Summons this guy's wife to the clubhouse in Sonoma Valley Sexually assaults his wife After sexually assaulting his wife returns to where this lieutenant is beaten and bloodied and They jump on top of them hold him down and tattoo his face It was just a vicious Retaliation and vengeance plot with minus killing this guy It to assert his authority Ray Ray folks and I believe very shortly after that he was Picked up on that assault which was then rolled into the racketeering case that went on trial This past couple months. Yeah, I don't I don't think just to be clear I don't think folks was convicted of sexual assault. It's I think it's alleged that's part of the okay But I don't I don't think he was Convicted of that the allegation right is that he sexually assaulted his victims? Right, right, but I I don't I don't I can't say that he was convicted of that just to be just to be fair here But he was convicted of some of these other things Racketeering assault So, yeah, let's let's unpack this a little bit have an age for him there No, it doesn't So Look it up because part of part of the well as you point out This is an invest this this is stems from an investigation An event investigation that went on for three years. That was one of these joint task force investigations feds state local Of the Sonoma County 57 Ray Ray folks is 57 right now So this will be a young dude I mean at least he'll probably have about it will be a 10-year sentence for this But he's already done five waiting for trial He'll be out by the time he's 61 62 So this was a joint investigation of the Sonoma County chapter and There were charges for murder assault home invasion extortion witness tampering 11 indictments But it also includes a murder conspiracy, right which dates back to 2014 I believe which involves Ray man out. That's the connection between Out in out in New England.  Yeah. Yeah, not other right clubs but like I mean any other clubs too, but yeah, but yeah, just to keep everybody in line and I Think there was another group within that chapter that called themselves the young guns that were a group of younger Initiates and so forth. So this was a real heavy group Out of the Sonoma Valley guys that were quick tempered quick triggered and You know, at least amongst their club or in the biker world, this was their calling card They were tough guys and and they were, you know, relentlessly brutal. So Doughboy Begins to get a reputation in the in the 2010s in addition to being the head of this crazy unit under Ray Ray Becomes a drug addict or maybe he was a drug addict before but the drug Habit that he was dealing with begin to get increasingly worse and it was causing rogue behavior and When they were in new New England when they were in New Hampshire in the summer of 2014 for this rally You had all the West Coast guys and all the East Coast guys there and I guess Doughboy Threatened Rainman Rainier he's right-hand man his his I don't know who that is but what was his best friend and You know top lieutenant. Yeah, and And According to testimony and and court records that very Afternoon or evening that that happened a Contract was placed on Doughboy Silva's head The California bosses and Rainier II. I guess let wherever the wherever the altercation occurred They removed themselves from that went and held a impromptu meeting between Rainier II and I believe the boss of the Fresno Hells Angels chapter and they decided that they were going to go back to California Get Ray Ray folks to sign off and which we don't know if he did or not. He's not Implicated in the murder but They allegedly put the contract on his head out there and they planned it for a week or two and then Silva was was lured to the Fresno Hells Angels chapter Under the pretense of marijuana deal a deal that that had that I think the guy said he needed Doughboy his muscle that he was afraid that the other Hells Angel was going to be Confrontational, but it was it was just a ploy to get him there.  So, yeah, I mean, that's one of one thing I want to ask you about and I Texted you earlier about this and privately about your legal analysis Among your many hats you wear you also have a law degree So I'm interested in your legal analysis here. So as you point out right, he's lured to the clubhouse according to this one of the guys who's convicted shoots Silva in the back of the head and they take his body to a nearby funeral home and the Cremation oven with another body that was that was there legitimately Then they set the car on fire So so these guys two of these guys were Convicted last last year of this right of this murder conspiracy and and the one thing that stands out to me as I'm reading this is How do you get convicted of a murder conspiracy when there's no body if the body is cremated allegedly? How do you like no body? I don't understand how it's rare. It's rare indicted on a murder case when there's no But no when there's no body. It's rare, but it happens I There have been a number of high-profile cases The one that I can think of immediately and I texted this to you today was the billionaire boys club case Which was made into a television movie in the 80s with Judd Nelson. Oh, yeah, actually that was a great TV movie The murder that put him away for life They never found the body and To this day Joe Hunt who Judd Nelson played in that movie who I think is in the 60s now Insist that the guy's name was Ron Levin Insist that Ron Levin is living, you know on a tropical island somewhere drinking a pina colada laughing that I'm in This is Joe Hunt saying it laughing that I'm in prison and that it was all ploy to get him locked up I think in both that case and in this case You can Get around it if you're a prosecutor and still get a guilty verdict if you put people on the stand That claim that they participated in this. Yeah, and our same firsthand I did this either with the person at the defense table or at the behest of the person at the defense table Yeah, and you're believing The first-hand account on the witness stand more so than than a physical evidence of anybody But it seems like it'd be very difficult to make that yeah I mean that's what happened here because they have some they had some high profile snitches here who testified that they were That they participated in this murder But if I'm a I mean I I wasn't on this, you know, I didn't sit on the jury obviously, but if I'm on the jury and and you've got The relying on the testimony of presumably someone who's probably a sketchy dude in their own, right? And and there's no forensic evidence. I know you obviously you can be convicted without forensic evidence that's been sort of this myth of like the The CSI effect right like now everyone thinks like oh if there's no forensic evidence Yeah, you don't get convicted. That's a myth people get convicted all the time without forensic. I get it But a murder like I mean that that's I mean Wasn't Well, I whatever I don't it seems like that would give you a leg up as a defense attorney That's what I'm trying to say they're trying to take my client and pin a murder on and we don't even know if there was a murder That's precisely that's what if I'm the defense attorney. That's what I'm saying right precisely this guy For all we know this guy took off and is living with his girlfriend in Switzerland, right? Yeah So I'm I find it really interesting go find go find him or go find his body or Let my client go home because yeah, there is no there's no body. There's no murder. That's what I that's what I would say And I presume that these defendants will appeal this.  Well, we're talking about if we're gonna tie this to the Cosa Nostra First is Jimmy Hoffa. There's no there's no body. Yes So I don't think they're ever gonna bring charges, but if they ever were going to bring charges They would have had to bring charges with nobody right and then, you know more recently out of New England Cadillac Frank Salemi Had I don't want to say had skated on a murder. There was never any murder charges brought on The death of Stevie Dessaro because there was no body right the body had vanished for for 25 years and was unearthed via a tip from a guy that got jammed up in a Drug case didn't want to go to prison and said oh by the way 30 years ago I helped the 25 years ago. I helped dispose of a body in my backyard of my Business and they dug it up and then all of a sudden Salemi who didn't have to worry about that case because there wasn't a body all of a sudden has to worry about it because there's a body Yeah But to your point the prosecutors in Massachusetts Or I don't know. I don't remember if the case came out of Massachusetts or it came out of Providence they found the body in Providence, but the murder took place in Massachusetts I'm pretty sure that the case was out of Boston But the prosecutors in Boston were not going to charge anybody with Stevie Dessaro's murder without a body Even though they had been told from pretty early on by wetty Bulger's partner Stevie Flemmie who flipped that Flemmie was present When the murder took place. Yeah, so they knew back in the 90s that Salemi was involved in it Yeah, so even if you're pretty confident based on your Sources even if you're pretty confident that that's what happened without a body That's tough to make isn't that but that's all isn't that always the if you're a mob boss And you want to or if you're a mob if you're any criminal that murders somebody and you want to Get rid of the body, right? It's because the idea is nobody no crime, right reasonable doubt Yeah, I mean so I'm that was really striking to me and and and nobody no physical evidence Yeah, and I know like, you know a lot of people might think well, let's just talk about the The crimes and it's you know, it's kind of fascinating, but this legal part of it I think is interesting and I think our audience appreciates that we do like to talk about criminal justice policy And sometimes we like to get in the weeds about the legal things here, but I think it's relevant I mean I was really striking to me that they could get a conviction on this and when we're talking about, you know legal Order of operations or proper protocol, you know folks's attorney was saying My client it's very rare to be locked up for five years before you see the jury Yes, it's normal to be locked up for a year and a half to two years three years is kind of once he hit five years Yeah, that's a little extensive the the good thing For him is that he's done five years of a ten-year bid right which will count right, right? So he probably only has four years left to do and if and if you're in it from a you know a Tactical war point of view If you're Conan the Barbarian Richter and you're thinking I mean that's where his mindset is You haven't eliminated Ray Ray folk. It's not like Ray Ray folks is gonna have to be a A Incarcerated shot-caller, right? Maybe for a couple years be on the street, but he'll be on the street by the end of this decade. Yeah formidable Yeah, Conan's relatively yeah, Conan's relatively young too. I think Conan's 62 or 63 Yeah, so with Conan Ray Ray folks and then Tommy Oh who's the the national or international boss of the Outlaws out in Buffalo. We got three Shot-callers of the three or three of the premier motorcycle club brands in this country with you know very robust And and energize leaders. Yeah leadership. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere No, I mean it is interesting one thing. I'll so I'll point out as we wrap up it It is, you know pretty dramatic examples here assault Allegedly there's just a way to see but notice and You know, they beat up the guys at the Pagan's clubhouse, but I Don't understand that all that's illegal, but they didn't get anybody on any organized crime stuff here, right? Even what they got Ranieri on It's a murder conspiracy. It's not the murder itself and he's only get ten years for it. Yeah Yeah, I mean, I look at it if I was involved in a murder and I only got ten years for that murder That's a win for me. Yeah. Yeah, because I think the sentencing hasn't been set yet No, but the I read the sentencing recommendations. Oh, okay recommendations, or it would be ten years. Yeah, okay for both of them Yeah for Ray Ray and But there's there's nothing in it dramatic it's worth reporting it's worth talking about and and I think it's fascinating Well, but they didn't get anyone on any narcotics gambling And I should say that Tommy. Oh the Outlaws boss isn't facing any cases right now. Yeah, he's in his I think early 50s Who knows how All of the Buffalo La Cosa Nostra Investigations could eventually yeah blow back on him because if he has he has very close ties to the Magadena crime family He's the head of security at the strip club that the the godfathers Nephew owns and that nephew is going on trial this summer for drugs and racketeering and prostitution Yeah, we need to do it just based on in that club a buffalo or sorry We get a lot of requests to do a Buffalo episode. Yeah, we should base in that strip club It's called Faro's right so like I said, you got three bosses that are you know in terms of Shot calling age are kind of in the prime of their careers in that world. Yeah, that's pretty young in that world I mean a lot of other professions maybe not but in that world Leadership usually are senior, you know guys guys around that age so two more quick tidbits Of some nuggets that I would I'll pass along that I've gotten fed to me Take it with the Any amount of salt that you want I haven't fully vetted these two things first I've been told that I Don't know if Ray Ray folks. I don't know what his take on this potential merger or Ceasefire or truce with the outlaws is I wouldn't be a merger. I know right wouldn't be a mergers the wrong way, right? I don't know What his opinion is I'm gonna I'm gonna try to find that out mm-hmm What I've been told though is that these Conversations have been taking place In the Midwest that that there are Michigan right something took place. I've heard they've I've heard they're taking place like in Indianapolis But there was an issue in Michigan that got kind of nipped in the bud by these conversations where okay, there were there were some kind of reports last year in an indictment that Informants were talking about a war between the Hell's Angels chapters that had just came into Michigan the last couple years and Outlaws, but I was told that whatever Conversations are being held has put that dispute on hold. Yeah, and that they're that Indianapolis This is what I was told that Indianapolis is the only major city Where Outlaws and Hell's Angels operate like within a couple mile radius of each other and They might not be friends.  Yeah, and that they're using that Relationship I guess and Hell's Angels just came into Indianapolis. I think in the last 10 years as a kind of a jumping-off point or if they're going to be able to Join forces to combat the blue wave So that's that's one little piece of evidence or one piece of information that I've gotten which I found interesting sure Peace some biker peace summits in in Hoosierland. Yeah, they go play basketball after after after a hard Hard afternoon's work of trying to carve out a peace deal.  Yeah, I mean It'd be interesting to see hopefully they can you know for for the sake of everyone co-exist and Keep violence for everyone I mean not to sound too Trumpy, but some sometimes you got to show strength and As a means to create peace at least in these worlds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah in that world But we it's interesting We do get feedback from some people in this world who Who do their sentiment is? That the different clubs should try to get along with each other Because they have more in common than they don't and that the real enemy is The FBI But you know, but if we're talking about outlaws and Hell's Angels, I mean you're talking about Bad blood sure goes back a half century. Yeah, I mean the war erupted. I think in 73 or 74 Related to some murders down in Cal up down in Florida from a dispute at a New Year's Eve party in New York and They were Massachusetts Hell's Angels that were at this New New New York Hell's New York New Year's Eve party got into it without laws these For these three Massachusetts Hell's Angels beat the outlaws down and then the outlaws invited these guys down to Florida Fainting wanting a peace agreement and yeah killed them like and I'm in like a triple slain and that erupted this war that's been going on It is interesting that the politics of it because we know there are clear examples where There are times where these guys do coexist with each other and and I've heard from guys who say I don't have a problem with with a dude from another club and But obviously things get complicated sometimes and we know from our interview with George Christie Yeah, as well as the former Hell's Angels boss as well as this was documented in court filings that in the 90s There were peace talks sure. Oh, yeah with George Christie and Taco Bowman. Yeah, and I'll talk to Quash squash the beef Between the two clubs and according to George It was all derailed by this guy spike O'Donnell who was the boss of Milwaukee or one of the bosses of Milwaukee who? There was always a lot of bad blood in Milwaukee between Hell's Angels and and outlaws and well Harley-Davidson is yeah from Milwaukee sure and That he he put a wrench into it that O'Donnell made it so Christie couldn't make the peace, right? So it's not unprecedented that they're there there are talks and then the end with Colin Richter Conan the Barbarian Richter is supposed to come out in August Officially, he's not the boss anymore. He gave up the boss title to a guy from Virginia big Bob Francis and Big Bob is a an OG a guy. I've heard a guy that everybody loves is known as a you know salt of the earth Gets along with a lot of different factions and doesn't have ambitions of Anything more than being a seat warmer And that I had heard that it was possible Francis was gonna get removed before Richter comes home, but Francis has been in according to Some some affidavits that were signed by D agents a couple years ago Francis has Had taken over for Richter when Richter went to jail in 21 and The common belief is that either Francis has already stepped aside or when Conan the Barbarian comes out of lock up in August Will step aside and Conan will then become the boss again So officially Conan even though I've been calling him the boss. I've been calling the president Officially, he has not been for the last two years when he's been in federal law Detainment, but it sounds gonna be a peaceful transition. Yeah, I don't think Bob Fran I think that that was the reason they put Bob Francis in there They're like you've done great things for us in the last 30 40 years You got a ton of respect you want to give you the title for a couple years so you can say you were the boss the national boss But really it's not a it's not a long-term thing You're just here to kind of make sure everything's steady when Conan goes that happened with and now we're geeking out But that happened with pre Tola in Detroit with the in between Is there really in? Yeah, Jack Tocco. It was a similar they gave it right Well, you you'll have the title for a couple years. Yeah, because pre Tola was an OG while we're internationally Really geek out it can it can go wrong. I mean Jimmy Hoffa. He thinks yeah He's putting Frank Fitzsimmons Yeah, his right hand in as a seat warmer right and Fitzsimmons was like I kind of like this seat Yeah, yeah, and I have ambitions and I I want to be the boss. Yeah, you had your time in the Sun. Yeah So I don't think that's what we have here And I think Richter will come back and they'll be a seamless transition the question becomes Does Richter Take it into even a higher gear Oh for the wave the way now that he's out because there's been a lot of activity when he was when he was in lock up I mean the fact that there's a chapter in Montana right now. It really blows my mind. Yeah. Yeah, that's really far west. Yeah, so We'll see and we'll keep we'll monitor it and We'll keep giving you the information on the biker politics Because there's quite a bit of outlaw biker politics that that's permeating or yeah collating in the United States It's really interesting a fascinating subculture. And so we we thank everyone for listening and for watching Again, please subscribe follow us on social media. I'm Jimmy Buccellato Scott Bernstein. We're out


All right, thanks for the introduction. So I'm Laurent Cohen. I'm working at Azure Systems. And I'm a security software engineer. And a fun fact about Germany, calling yourself an engineer is quite a protected job title. So I can call myself an engineer because I have an engineering certificate, actually. But yeah, so I'm a software engineer there. And I'm going to talk about how we secure teammates where I got encryption. So first of all, I wanted to pose the question, why do you encrypt? And if you ask people this question, you get two kinds of answers, essentially. You either have people saying, a company requires us to do it. We have a government agency which tells us to do it. So if you are in a protected or regulated branch, for instance, finance or health care or something, all you have people saying they would trust that came up a lot today. Defense in depth is another keyword. But in the end, it will boil down to, I don't want to leak any sensitive traffic. And of course, compliance should somewhat enable security. But if that's really the case, this is another talk. So if you go into the user MD, you have at least 10% of users saying they use psyllium encryption. But a lot of them just say, yeah, we use psyllium generally. So I imagine that the percentage is a bit higher. So why do we encrypt at Azure Systems? Why do we use psyllium? We don't trust a cloud provider. We don't trust infrastructure. We don't trust the network. We don't trust the nodes and so on and so forth. So let's do a bit of threat modeling. So for us, this is how we see the world. So threats everywhere, threats everywhere in the cloud, ranging from the connection towards the QAPI, towards the nodes itself, actually, of course, in transit and storage. So how do we go about securing all these against all these threats? So first of all, we need to secure in use, address, and then transit. So I'm just going to go briefly over how we solved the first two points. And data in use is, I guess, the most interesting point. So what we do is we use confidential computing technology, like Intel TDX and AMD SEV, to shield your node from the cloud provider. So the hypervisor can't even access the node's memory. And because it's encrypted and isolated, and you can also verify that your node is in a trusted execution environment. This is a similar technology. I don't know if you've heard of the Confidential Containers Project. Those also have a talk at this KubeCon and last KubeCon. They've been around for a few years.  And what we do, we put the full node inside the trusted execution environment. So this is the difference. A secure in data address is sort of a solved problem. The key difference between what we do at address and what some of you might do, if you trust, for instance, a cloud provider, is that you might say, OK, AWS, please encrypt my traffic. Choose a key and encrypt it. And what we do is we, for instance, with the disk, we mount them with the encrypt and the severity. And with a key that's just inside our trusted execution environment, which itself, of course, is not available to the cloud provider. So we encrypt within our trusted execution environment, and therefore, they extend our security boundary here. And this is the most interesting point, which I'm going to expand on. And how do we secure data and transit? Of course, for Kubernetes, for the Kubernetes components itself, so for your Q-blads and so on, you have your TIS configuration that you should all have done. And for the workloads itself, we use Cilium. And how are we going to do that is what I'm telling you about. So this is a constellation. This is our Kubernetes distribution. What's interesting about how we use Cilium also is that we need to run on all cloud providers and even OpenStack and everything that our customers want to run Kubernetes on. So we have heard about Cilium being cloud agnostic, and this is what we leverage here. While we choose Cilium, I guess those are the main points. This is why we are sitting here, I think. It's fast. Observability is great. It has great policy features. It has proven track record, a strong open source community. And of course, it has recently graduated as a CNCF project. Just go a bit about nomenclature and what traffic types you encounter in your Cilium network, just that we are all on the same page. You could have POTs talking to each other, both of them being a POT network. You could have a POT talking to a host POT. You could have the other way around, a host POT talking to a POT and a POT network. And of course, host POTs talking to each other. Host POTs would be the same as the nodes, of course, talking to each other. So those are the endpoints. And this is how we call the traffic. So we essentially named them after from which network they come from. If they come from the POT network and go to a POT network, it's POT to POT traffic, and so on and so forth. So POT to node traffic, node to POT traffic, node to node. Of course, POT to node and node to POT is essentially somewhat the same traffic. And yeah, if you use encryption, these are the key aspects you want to be aware of. And so the first point is only covered by POT to POT encryption. And all the rest are covered by node to node encryption, generally. Yeah, and maybe let's compare. So what Cilium does is Cilium, of course, offers IP second wire guard. There used to be an IP second node to node implementation, but this was un-maintained. You can find the discussion and the issue and the slides. I've also uploaded them, so you can read about that more. So I guess if there's anyone willing to implement and to maintain it, I guess they are welcome. And what this talk is about is about strict POT to POT encryption. And I'm going into much more detail about why we need this. There's also something strict node to node encryption. This is being talked about currently. There's also the issue linked there. Yeah, this is also in comparison to most other enterprises. If you actually dive deep into their docs or if you dive deep into the implementation, most of them offer just POT to POT security. So if you have any node-level component talking to a POT, this will not be covered by IP second wire guard. So now we have a little quiz. And the question I want to pose is, is this traffic encrypted? So for that, I'm going to switch over here. And let's do that quickly. Okay, up here. Yeah, so this is how I installed, I think it's really a bit somewhat, this is how I installed Cilium. And I enabled encryption. We use wire guard encryption and we don't use any node to node encryption for this demo. So let's go back inside this cluster. And what we have here is just a normal cluster with a healthy coin just running. And I'm going to go into the namespace I've prepared. We have some hosts POTs, some POTs in the POT network. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to ping the POTs on the second worker node from the first POT. So ping this and how am I actually gonna observe if this is encrypted? So for this, I'm using just a basic TCP dump just for simplicity reasons. Yeah, so please raise your hand if you think this traffic will be encrypted. Remember I've installed it with encryption enabled, Cilium. So yeah, this is just some background noise I will go about the ping. So what do we see here? We see that the ping leaves the POT interface and goes over the wire guard interface. So this traffic is actually encrypted. So now a similar case. Again, we have the same setup, the solution is the same, but the only thing that is different I will show you that someone let the operator crash, deployed it wrong or something happened so the operator isn't there. And as a side note, I'm using for, since I wanted to scale my cluster in the future, I'm also using a Cilium endpoint slices to have the endpoints listed in the Cilium endpoint slice. So it's much more performant to consume them. So Cilium endpoint slices enabled, operator is crashed but POT to POT encryption is enabled. So now I'm going to do the same again. I'm going to ping the second POT on the worker node here. This one I'm going to ping it and please raise your hand if you think this traffic will be encrypted. Raise your hand, okay. So actually what we see that it's still egressing the interface of the POT but it's leaving it via the Cilium VXI interface so it's just being tunneled and not encrypted. And actually if you have the cloud provider sniffing on the wire between the nodes, the cloud provider can see the full traffic. So why is this happening? Why is this happening? So those are the backup slides, what we saw. Yeah, so this is again just a reminder as 10 traffic from POT one to POT three essentially. And we saw it leaving the LXC interface either over the VXI interface which was then it was then being sent out unencrypted or over the wire guard interface. And if we look at the EVPF code which is attached to the LXC interface from the POT you have this call stack and somewhere below you have your wire guard maybe redirect your encrypt function. And what does this function do? It redirects it maybe to be encrypted. So this is a simplified version. This is even more simplified version. And what I wanted to point out is here below on the redirect it's redirected to the wire guard interface. So this is what we want to happen. But this is only the case if the destination has a key set. And where does the destination come from? The destination is looked up. The remote endpoint is looked up. Where is it looked up in the IP cache? And you can list your IP cache in the Selium agent with the following functions. So Selium BPF IP cache list and you'll see if the anchor key is set or not. So for all the POT IPs for instance here we have an anchor key set. But how does those value come into the IP cache? So the values come into the IP cache when a new POT is created. So the Selium agent then pushes the Selium endpoint to the Qube API. And if you have Selium endpoint slices enabled then the operator consumes the Selium endpoints and puts out Selium endpoint slices. And only then they are consumed by the Selium agent too. So on the other note and the IP cache is updated. So at the full red path here, this is the critical time in which traffic will be sent out to the POT that was newly created unencrypted. And what is also important to mention, I've let the operator crash in a second example. Just to increase the critical path time here essentially to infinity. You saw the operator was crashed for four days now. So this makes the critical path very, very long. But the critical path exists even if you have Selium endpoint slices disabled because you have still some delay between the endpoint being pushed and the IP cache on the other note being updated. So this might of course not what you want. If you have encryption enabled and you have a regulator saying you must encrypt your traffic and quickly recall the threat model. So we have someone sniffing on a wire. And our solution was to essentially have a strict mode which looks at the traffic either at the equals on the weak side interface or on the equals on the native network and do additional filtering on that. So you can use a filter to decide if you want to send out this traffic or not. And how have you implemented this? This is a simplified version. This is even more simplified version. And we essentially do a CIDR check. So if the destination, the source address is in the strict CIDR, we give this function. Then based upon that, it's decided if it's sent out encrypted. So if we use, for instance, we could install similar like so. And if then the destination and the source is both in the pod CIDR, for instance, you can choose any side you want in the pod CIDR. And we see this traffic leaving, wanting to leave the VXN interface, then we simply drop it. Yeah, and I'm going to show you how that looks like. So let's go over here. Yeah, so what happens now? As I said, we have essentially the same setup as before. So the operator crashed and let's go into the namespace. And we have exactly the same as we've done the last two times, we are going to ping the pods that I do the right check. That's going to namespace again. And go to on this node and ping the pod on the other nodes just to show you that it works. Yeah, so what we already see that the traffic is not being, or that the SMP response is not being received, but that could just mean that we leak traffic. But the node, the other node just decided that to drop the traffic, this would of course still leak the traffic if it's being sent out. And just to prove that to you that this actually and dropped. Yeah, we see just the traffic just leaving the LXC interface and not going over the VXN interface. So it's not sent out at all. So it's not leaked. In any way. Yeah, so this is actually an update. I've looked at the slim repository this morning and they decided to change the default. So I just showed you that there's a decision being made if the traffic is sent either over the tunneling interface or to the Viagard interface. And we have a new pull request running here. Let's see if it's already merged. No, but it was opened 10 hours ago. So this is the improvised part of the talk. Yeah, but the great news is still will be secured by default when you're using tunneling. Because what then happens, right? What then happens is you do double encapsulation. So you route over the tunneling interface then over the Viagard interface again and then only then you route to the other node and which does double encapsulation which was one of the reasons I think because why we had the other architecture before but I don't know if you need to ask the maintainers there why they suddenly decided to change the routing here. So what about the SIDA filter now? So I talked to the engineer that opened the pull request and one of the, so this feature will still be an upcoming feature in 1.15 as of right now at least and why you still would want the SIDA filter is if you use native routing. Of course, using native routing and using Viagard encryption on all your traffic is a bit somewhat questionable because you're not using native routing and you're tunneling over the Viagard which does tunneling for you but still in this architecture you only tunnel you encapsulate your packet once and not twice as in the other architecture. So there's a still a problem which the strict mode solves here in this architecture. So to wrap up, first of all if this was news to you, carefully read the docs. This was documented for all the versions in which the old architecture applies. Think about using a strict mode or upgrading to 1.15 in the future depending on what architecture you have then using architecture actually fits your needs. So if you are okay with double encapsulation then you'll speak slown if you have requirements for native routing and encryption of course then you might be looking at the strict mode. If you have other requirements of course use an architecture that works for you. And the last point is engage in a community. So as I said, we've implemented that feature for our threat model, for our security model because we didn't want to our architecture before was funnel over Viagard which we handcrafted and we shared the keys over there at CD because we hooked into that. And this is of course not a great architecture. So we used Syllium for the Viagard and for the key distribution and all that and we just contributed a feature to make the security fit our needs. And yeah, that was the summary. Are there any questions? Let's give Leonard a big round of applause while we think up some questions. I see a question over there. Do you wanna come to the mic in the middle? What's the performance overhead of using encrypted traffic between pod to pod? So we have performance numbers of our committed distribution which some basic performance numbers but there are of course also performance numbers of Syllium itself which you can look into the can just look into the documentation of that. It's not that huge. I don't know on the top of my head actually but for us it's much more about since we don't trust the cloud provider we have no other choice but besides encryption. So yeah, so we have performance numbers which you can look and our docs Syllium has performance numbers. Those are of course a bit more fine tuned. Yeah, so I guess it's a few percent depending on what metric you want to look at. Any more questions? As you're trying to debug and make sure that this encryption is happening this approach of hey, I'll do TCP dumps and sniff on everything. Are there tools that you found that accelerate that or make that a little bit easier to try to troubleshoot? So what I did was a bit of test-driven development. So I've implemented in the first iteration I've implemented the test in the same test suite before hand and then just ran it until they were happy and essentially doing the same thing I did here. So I'm scaling down the operator, scaling it up and they actually also use TCP dump for that. I think you have other introspection tools are also good. I haven't used Hubble for that for instance but if you want to actually have a look at interfaces how it's routed over there I think that's going with the old school tools isn't that far off. So that's what was I used.


Hello, NJRoot22.com here for another video.  It's freezing cold again, it's winter, and I find a better studio to do my fruity little videos here, which I'll keep doing because I just like doing them. I'm going to wear this oversized jacket. So we're not doing cheap wine reviews anymore because, I'll make sure it's recording, lights on, recording, okay great, three bars out of three, anyway, I'm not doing cheap wine reviews anymore because I don't like the way I feel when I drink wine, I'm done with it. So today we're going to do, I guess, how to make a really good drink that can keep you going for a long time, and I highly recommend it. This is the Smirnoff Spiked Sparkling Seltzer. Now these things here, I'll show it under, I have a new little system here, I'm not trying to be like a YouTube person, but this is Smirnoff Spiked Sparkling Seltzer. As you can see in front of me, I have a third camera, a second camera set up. Everything just fell and I don't know what it is, I think it was batteries, some double A batteries that rolled off, anyway, I'm not drinking red wine anymore, I'm doing the Smirnoff Spiked Sparkling Seltzer because they have zero sugar. So we have these things, I'm starting off with my least favorite flavor, it's cranberry lime, as you can see, cranberry lime.  So here's my Starbucks cup filled about half way with ice, this is a 30 ounce jug.  So what I'll do is, I have my ice, right, and what I do is I take some, I go to the health food store and I get 100 capsules of the ginger root, that's ginger root there, it's nature's way, I can't really find another brand of this anywhere. So then I take one capsule out, this is like my medicinal healthy, and I'll put one capsule in, into the drink, like so, and as you can see here, it goes into the, into the drink like that. And then what I do is I'll take my, today I'm using polar seltzer, this is, I got them from Job Lot, Ocean State Job Lot for about a quarter or 30 cents a can. And what I'll do is, I forgot one thing here, I'm opening up my Smirnoff seltzer. I normally use fresh lemons, but when you're out of fresh lemons, take this cilia, Sicilia brand of, make sure you get the organic, the organic ones. There's some bad ingredients, forget some sulfur, something, something or another. In these squeeze bottles, these lemon squeeze bottles, this organic one's about the only one I can find, there's one at Wegmans too, but that doesn't have a bad ingredient in it. And it's really nice. Two or three squirts, one, two, three, four today, for this purpose there. So I got lemon, ginger, this is going to be fantastic. And then I'll take my, what do you call it, spiked sparkling seltzer, pour about half, and then take, I'm going to get all fuzzy, and then it'll get all fuzzed up to the top, you wait a minute, and all the ginger's getting infused, as they say, infused. And then I'll finish off the thing, just to make sure, so I want the whole can in here, because again, this is four and a half percent alcohol, it's just somewhere on there, four and a half percent alcohol, zero sugar, and you can read the fine print there. And when I make it about 50, 50 seltzer, I mean, it's maybe, the ice melts, so the seltzer really more than makes up for it. It comes out to about like a two and a half, or two to two and a half percent alcohol drink, and I made a mess, great. And then I have the lemon, the ginger, my spiked malt beverage, and some seltzer. I put about eight ounces of seltzer into the ice, it will melt. And not only is it refreshing, it's ridiculously refreshing. It's also a very good way to pace yourself with drinking. It's sort of like a weak mixed drink, when you get a mixed drink at a bar, let's say I want a vodka tonic, it's like 40 percent alcohol in the vodka, and they put an inch or whatever, the rest is soda and ice and whatever else you mix your drink with. That's ridiculous, that's like a glass of wine. And I've always drank my wine half or a third water. This is the ultimate in low alcohol, it's like low fat, whatever. What happens with these mixed, these malt beverages is profound when you make it like this, because you can't water down beer, and most wines, like some wines are not good at watering down, this at two percent, you catch a buzz after two or three. And what I've noticed is, the first time I reviewed this I drank a whole 12 pack, which was the equivalent of two bottles of wine. I felt okay the next day, but that was just too much, even with water, I think I ended up drinking almost three gallons of fluid. My oh my, that's probably not healthy. But I've noticed that my consumption level varies quite interestingly. First I've had only two cans of this, that's the equivalent to a third of a bottle of wine of alcohol. I think I hear the phone ringing. No, I'm hearing things. Because six cans equals one bottle of wine, alcohol, give or take, I'm not going to be like perfectionist here. So having two cans of drinking, what, that's like a glass or two of wine before bed. Sometimes I've had three, sometimes I can get four or five, I mean, the other day it took me like five days to finish the 12 pack, or four or five days, which is amazing, because I used to drink two bottles of wine a night, and that's really, really ridiculous. So this is the recipe for the new drink that I'm drinking regularly. Feel the foreseeable future, unless something comes up that I might like better, that's very low sugar. My weight has dropped a little bit since I stopped drinking wine, and I just feel better the next day. My liver pains have subsided almost 90%. It's amazing. But that's it. That's this incredible drink, adding the supplements, and it's just such a refreshing drink. It's ridiculously refreshing. And I don't crave it, by the way, as much as wine. I can milk it. It's amazing. But what we're doing with this channel now, I used to publish cheap wine reviews every Monday, which I'm still going to have a new video every Monday, and this is, you know, Monday, the 17th of December, but I'm going to divide my, I'm adding new channels to my YouTube channel, and here, njrude22.com. This is a rough draft, but it's going to break down into four new channels, basically. And I'm having a little bit of trouble here ironing out exactly what it's going to be, because I have to think about how I'm going to create content regularly. So it's not going to be a new video every week, a new video from the same channel every week. I'm going to have about four channels, and there's going to be a new video once a month for each channel. So over the course of a year, the four channels have three new videos in each one. I'm sorry, not a year, if it's one a month about. So it's going to be 12 new videos a year, basically, my math isn't getting all messed up. 12 new videos a year for each of the, the 12 or 13, 13 new videos a year for each of the four channels.  It could be a review for a business, a store, a restaurant, a product. It's going to be some kind of review. It might even be a haul, one of those product hauls. It's going to be a general review about something. My second channel, and this is the one I'm probably the most excited about, and it's also going to be the one I'm, it's going to involve the most amount of work. It's a helpful hacks and tips. I don't know where I'm going with this, but a couple of things I'm going to do are like repairing things, like live on camera, whether it's a toy for kids or, or just some sort of life hack.  And I don't go on YouTube looking for hacks. I do, I figure out my hacks on my own. Most of the time, I'm not saying I haven't checked something out on YouTube. When I'm really stumped, I might check the interwebs. But I really take a lot of pride in figuring out things on my own because there's a long lasting benefit for figuring out things on your own. And that is muscle memory and trial and error and learning what not to do is just as important as learning how to do it. Because if you get the instructions of how to do things all the time, what do you do when the instructions stop coming? You don't have any experience doing things the wrong way. I'm going to turn the garage light back on. There we go. Motion sensitive. I must be really not moving much. Sorry, that's the second channel I'm going to do is some sort of fix, some sort of hack, some sort of tip. It's going to range from a 30 second to one minute video to maybe a 20 minute or 30 minute tutorial. I'm going to figure out something. I enjoy making videos, so I will see. I'll get my groove eventually. I'm doing this very, very much part time. And the third channel is going to be the kitchen zone. Anything related to the kitchen in your house, whether it's cooking, like I might do a recipe, that's a long drawn out.  They have six or eight cameras, and they're cutting and chopping. And they make a recipe into like a two minute thing because nobody has attention spans anymore. They don't want to hear the subtleties in conversation, body language. They just want to know how to do it. And that makes me feel kind of bummed out because I miss the days of picking up little things for people. But the kitchen zone will be either, you know, also may include products or tips for the kitchen. It's everything specifically related to kitchen or eating or food and that type of stuff. And I may just run that for a short period of time and add a new channel in its place. And the last thing, the last channel is, I could probably contribute the most amount of content to this last channel, but I'm going to try and go easy on because I think I'll come across as somebody who's like a little bit of a cynic, which I am and which is fine. But it's going to be more like societal issues, society, societal, not just from the human being standpoint, but from the products that we get, like how everything's getting cheaper. And I'm going to point out these things, how the quality of things is declining before our very eyes. I mean, I could just do a channel on declining quality. And that doesn't sound to, you know, uplifting or anything like that. But it's important to document for posterity, for history, for just society. Society needs to have both good and bad. You can't be positive all the time or look the other way and not say anything when something needs attention. So if you don't bring it to the attention of these companies that are really skimping for whatever reasons, whether it's their own profit or it's to appease the people crying about the environment, something suffers. And it's usually me and you or you and I or us that suffers as a result. Because when things start not working and you have to spend more money, who gets less? We do. And I don't feel good about the environment when I do something like, oh, I put this in a different bag today. That doesn't make me feel any better, OK? Whoever does feel better because of that, they're full of themselves. It's all fake. It's completely fake. So those are the four channels that I'm going to start adding content to. And I hope one day that my readership will go up or viewership will go up. And that's that. I will edit this video and put it online. And I'll see you next week. And we'll see which my first of my new channels will be. My guess is I really want to do a repair video. And I was filming one. And it got way too complicated. It was a much harder repair than I anticipated it to be. So I had to scrap that. And in its place, this video of me doing my lat, like a very good drink that I'm going to be drinking probably for the next six or 12 months. And my announcement about the new channels coming. So that's it. I hope I get some more readers or viewers. And that's it. Have a nice week ahead. And oh, it's going to be Christmas Eve the next time my video goes up. Maybe I'll do something Christmas themed. Take care.


So it's Sunday morning and we're starting off the day here. You see my plate with the fabulous homemade bagel. And that is a nice way to start the day. Hubby's already bit into his, what does it taste like? I tore it apart. Oh, try it. I'm not gonna catch us on camera like because we're in our pajamas, but. It is very doughy. Yeah. Feels like it could be cooked a little bit longer, I think. Okay, so we did 23 minutes, the recipe said 20, so. Yeah. I mean, you can see that it's still doughy inside. Uh-huh. So. What does it taste like? It tastes good. Yeah. So we'll be trying this again, I think. All right, that's it for the moment. I'm gonna dig into my bagel. I'll be back. Good morning, everyone. It is Monday morning, January 22nd. I thought it might be. I didn't want to speak if I wasn't sure. Anyway, it's Monday, January 22nd. I'm in some workout clothes because I'm headed off to physical therapy. And I am loading a video, a little short tutorial for when a member of my design team, really quick before I leave. It's taking its sweet old time, loading. Ugh, I need to leave. Anyway, so that's working and cause she's having trouble with iMovie. And I do wanna walk to therapy. I want to get some steps in, so I'm gonna do that. And I have a few channels here on YouTube that I'm helping out today also, so with their watch time. And I gotta catch up on laundry and I wanna make a few fun journal pages, just for me, no cameras. So I'm gonna be working on all of those things today. Maybe a trip to the grocery store, although I don't know, I guess late last night, there was a drive-by shooting at the grocery store where I take y'all and I go shopping. Yeah, that's different. So anyway, we'll see. All right, I will be back. Therapy's all done, my shoulder hurts, and it's drizzling. Let's go home now, I think. All right, I'll be back. Hey guys, how are you? Oops, sorry about the windshield wipers. There we go. All right, so we're headed out, excuse me. I have to go get the mail. I need to put gas in my car, my little light's on. I do have a load of, probably drive it over to donation on my way home. It's literally right across the street. Let's go do that, shall we? Look out, my local thrift shop, the Goodwill. So, I'm gonna make a donation. January 23rd, I'm 15-ish.  I am headed out to go brave the grocery store. The one where the drive-by shooting happened. The whole neighborhood's in shock because we don't generally have any crime even close to that.  It goes in the middle of the street when cars are coming. I got the camera facing the wrong way. To just do a quick update, I made some more bagels from the bagel recipe that we did on Sunday. I'm gonna include the link to the recipe in the description below. It's a two-ingredient recipe. It is self-rising flour and yogurt, basically. There's a lot of different kinds of directions of ways that you can cook them. And you guys, I encourage you to experiment with the recipe and try what works for you. I discovered for us that I needed to skip the whole boiling thing because if I boiled them, they look more like bagel pancakes. And they're still, like, sticky inside. They're not cakey or bread-y enough for what we want. So I didn't boil, I did one batch trying boiling them longer, cooking them longer. Like, they still came out. Like, that's one of the ones from that batch. If I skipped the whole boiling thing altogether, then much better. But I didn't make the whole quite big enough so it looks more like a bagel muffin. But anyway, I'm still working on it. But it looked much better. So without, I recommend not boiling it, but try it for yourself. I did make some with blueberry yogurt instead of just plain and no seeds on top. I did eat one, like, right away. It was really good. So it was non-fat blueberry Greek yogurt. So anyway, trying to be healthier, which means I have to cook more. Damn it, at least occasionally. All right, that's it for the moment. I'll be back. Anyway, it is Wednesday. Probably should drive, but I haven't got my steps in yet today. So I'm gonna walk. I do have one box I need to ship out, but it's not too heavy. So I've got it in a grocery bag and it's over my arm and I'm carrying it. So we're gonna head, sorry, about the weird camera angle. So we're gonna head over to the postal place and then one big day. So I need to empty all the household garbage can to get all that out. Nothing exciting. I did spend a couple hours this morning packaging up some new stencils that came in for inventory and doing inventory on the stock that we have in and getting some listings already drafted so I can just hit publish when the time is to release them for sale. So anyway, and that's it for the moment. I'll be back. It wasn't heavy, but by the time I got over here, it sure did feel like it was.  By the time everybody sees it, she's probably already got it. But anyway, I'll be back. Probably a good thing I'm almost on the way home. Is it just me or does it look like it's gonna storm any second? Hear the, what sounds like a barking horse? Let's see, I'll walk this way. He'll bark more. Hear that? He's the sweetest dog, but my neighbors have a great name. He barks at everybody. He's huge, very sweet.  Then they have little dogs trying to keep up. My dog, of course, is like, he doesn't bark anymore unless it's the gardener. You know. Good morning, everybody. It is just before 8.30 on Thursday morning. I am getting ready to go over to physical therapy. I've got to drive across town. I accidentally ran across some family tree information in a bunch of random papers from my grandmother who died quite a few years ago. You know, I think about four years ago now. We're still coming across bits and pieces of paper. She's stuffed in books that one or more of us hung onto and anyway. One of those random little pieces of paper written all in Italian, which I can't read most of it, looked important. So it had names on it. I recognized from the family tree. So I did a little bit of Google Translate and what little bit Google could translate because they either spelled it wrong or it wasn't a dialect. It didn't recognize or something. Just made it sound more and more important to the family tree. So I took a picture of it and put it in. We have a family Facebook group, private for family only. And I put it over there and immediately my aunt, my dad's sister came on and said, don't do anything with that piece of paper. So anyway, it is important. I'm taking it over to her house this morning. She's going to add it to the other papers she has. And hopefully we're going to be able to fill out some more of the family tree. So I'm going to go do that after physical therapy this morning. And I'm not sure what else I'm going to do, but anyway, I'll bring you with me and we'll see what happens. All right, I'll be back. I'm going to head over to aunt's house and drop off some stuff to her family tree stuff. And we might stop by university art while we're over there. I don't really need anything, but we are over on that side of town and it's one of the only or very few. We don't have that many fine art supply stores in San Jose. We only have a couple of them. And university art really is the one. There's another one called, I think it's called Arsenal. I never seem to get in there because whenever I go by it, it's closed. So I don't know. But let's go to university art. I don't really need anything, but let's go walk around and yeah, let's go to my aunt's first. All right, I'll be back. Okay. Hey guys, I just wanted to show you this cute little neighborhood here in San Jose near the Rose Garden. And I love this neighborhood. I wish we could afford a house here and not go into debt up to our eyeballs, which at this stage in life is not where we want to be. It's, we couldn't afford this neighborhood when we bought our house that we have now and that hasn't gotten any better. I shouldn't say that we could afford it, but we have a mortgage and we're trying to not have a mortgage. So anyway, but it is the cutest neighborhood. If I could afford a house here, I would stay in San Jose because I love this neighborhood. Anyway, all right, we are off to the next place. I'll be back. I'm gonna take you on a little drive here. We're gonna go over to university art. We're gonna see a little bit more of the neighborhood. And so yeah, let's go for a little bit of a ride. Two things I'll share with you on camera. They did have free samples of Quar watercolor.  So they had this and then they had a couple of booklets, one on the Quar watercolors and one on the Liquitex cadmium free paints. For those that don't know, cadmium is a toxic material and it is in some paints. Liquitex, among others have started making paints that are similarly pigmented without the cadmium and I have been wanting to try them. I have the cadmium ones at home in my bin of artist paints and I've been wanting to try them, but I didn't really wanna mail order them. They had them here in a small two ounce tube. This is cadmium free orange. Yeah, and this one I got cadmium free red medium and cadmium free yellow deep, which I'm pretty sure those are all colors I have in the regular paint at home so I can compare. And then art graph. I have some water soluble graphite by them. I know I do. I wasn't aware that they made these other little cakes and other colors and so I got, they're kind of pricey. So I got only two of them. I got the ochre, which looks like this and then I got the dark brown, which looks like that. So that'll be fun to add to my water soluble graphite collection and play with those. So I didn't get too many things. That was pricey little bag, let me tell ya. All right, so that's it for the moment. I will be back. Good morning. It is Friday, January something, I think it's the 26th. I'm starting to lose it, people. I have to figure out what I'm gonna do for dinner tonight and I went the wrong way. Off to go pick up the mail. I forgot my sunglasses, it's a little bright out. It is Saturday morning, January 27th and we, as you saw, just got done donating blood. I'm drinking some water. We're at a shopping center. My husband's gotta do some banking stuff for his Masonic Lodge and yeah, I'm not all up into that. So I'm gonna actually walk over and go to Barnes & Noble and pick up a couple magazines and then I think go around the corner of the shopping center and upstairs to Bed Bath and Beyond and pick up a couple things I need there too. So I'll be back. Japanese department store, we have one here in San Jose and yeah, I hope you got some good clips there. We got some gel pens and things to try and of course, I had to get a bag because you know, the bag, see?   San Jose Museum of Art, this is where we normally have ice rink in the winter and what? Oh yeah, KQED, it's our local public broadcasting station. It used to be the Mercury News. Yeah, not anymore. And this is the Fairmont, right? Backside of the Fairmont. Backside of the Fairmont. We just got told by a homeless young man to go have an effing good day, so yeah. So we're gonna go do that. He didn't use that word by the way, but I am because I don't want to have to edit out the audio. Because we're gonna have an effing good day. We are. I hope so. I hope so. We'll see. Here's some prettier bits. Hey guys, so I hope that you enjoyed this vlog and you've had a great week. It's been fun for me too. Fun fact, I'm filming this week's vlog closure on Sunday morning because after donating blood and running errands, yeah, we were just dead for the rest of the day and I forgot. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this week's vlog. I will put any relevant links in the description. If I forget, somebody remind me and yeah, anyway, it was fun. I really love Muji by the way. I can't wait to go back. There are a few things that I'd like to go back and take a second look at and there's another one in Palo Alto, I think at Stanford Shopping Center, which isn't too, too far away, so I might have to make a trip. All right, that's it for now. Don't forget to have a great day, have a great week. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. Like, share, and subscribe. If you are new here, I have new content every week and that's it for right now. I'll see you later.


This lecture is entitled Willem Klez Hedde and the Dutch Broke Still Life, or Luxury Without Opulence, the Anti-Pronk. Now Hedde was one of the most popular still life painters in the Dutch Republic from around the middle of the 17th century and a little bit before and he was really representative of the general taste in still life painting in the Dutch Baroque. So he's a really excellent example and we're gonna take a look at some one particular painting of his. We're gonna take a closer look at this painting on the top but here at the bottom is another example of his still lifes and the top painting is this is called Still Life and it dates from the 1630s and the bottom painting dates from the 1640s. Now before we move on and take a close look at his still life I want to take this opportunity to review, right? I call this Luxury Without Opulence the Anti-Pronk and hopefully that's ringing some bells. Now what is a prank? Well this painting on the right is a good example of a prank still life and you might recall that this painting is a still life by the artist Jan de Heem. Jan de Heem. And Jan de Heem painted this painting in the mid 17th century and it's an excellent example of a prank still life and prank simply means hopefully remember ostentatious, ostentatious. And I think you can see this is an ostentatious still life, right? Remember we had the luxury items, imports, often items that people might never have seen in their whole life like this exotic bird. So you have fancy import items, you have beautiful luxury glass and silverware and it's all assembled in a very ostentatious almost chaotic way, a very dramatic way. We have this curtain up at the top and it's even set in almost this fantasy landscape. Remember we've got this wall suggesting ruins and this fantasy landscape in the background. Now we're going to take a look at Heda in a second and you'll see he uses some of the same objects, some of the same objects that suggest wealth and luxury, but he doesn't depict them with the same opulence and over the top display. So let's take a closer look at that top image here from the 1630s. Okay, so here's a larger image of that still life. And when you get a view of this up close like this, you can really see the wonderful attention to detail. And I think one of the first things you might notice having just looked at the prank still life, one of the striking things about this painting is it's much more monochromatic. Monochrome. The primary color in this painting is really sort of a tan or a brown color in almost all of the items in this painting, the back wall, the table cloth, even the silver has kind of a brown tinge to it. The only real bit of color is the lemon right in the center here. And interestingly, like I said before, we have some of the same objects that we saw in the prank still life. Silverware, glassware, we had appealing, appealed lemon, oysters, all of this in the prank still life that was that ostentatious over the top painting. But this painting shows a great deal more restraint, restraint. And what do I mean by restraint? Well, we have for one thing, not nearly as many objects being displayed as we saw before. We have a smaller scale. We have a more modest setting. Maybe it's a little hard to tell what the setting is, right? It's just against this blank wall. But you get a little suggestion. If you look at this glass or this goblet, there's a reflection of a window pane, which is a wonderful detail. But the reflection of the window pane does tell you this is in some sort of room. So we have a sense of a real setting that we could perhaps imagine ourselves in. This is possibly a home, a room inside of a home. And that knowledge almost provides this with a kind of narrative. And that coupled with the fact that there's a much more modest setting here almost makes it seem like this is a place setting at a table. You can imagine a narrative of someone having been enjoying a meal at this place setting and they're not there anymore. Someone has come enjoyed this meal and left. And many people view that sort of narrative of someone having been there and not being there anymore as a vanitas. This makes this a vanitas image. And again, this should be something you're familiar with now because we talked about this before. What is a vanitas image? It's a reminder of human transience, the inevitability of death. And you might think, well, that's sort of weird. I mean, this is just some food items. But in subtle ways, it does evoke mortality. And I'm just gonna scroll down and show you this compared to another image to hopefully hit home the point. Let's get this down there. Okay, now the image on the right, hopefully is familiar to you. That's Jacob van Roy Stiles, the Jewish cemetery. And we discussed this as a vanitas landscape. Vanitas landscape. And there were just certain details within the painting. I think the most obvious, of course, was the fact that it's a cemetery, which obviously is a much more something that hits you over the head more with these messages of death. But you see some similar things in these two paintings. We have this church in ruins, and we have things in ruins on this tabletop. This glass right here is broken, for example. And even the fact that this lemon is halfway peeled and cut open. It's not in its pristine whole form anymore. Even if you look over here, there's walnut shells so a nut has been broken into. We have oysters that are open on the tray. All of these things will perish just as human beings will inevitably perish. And just as we had the stormy landscape in Jacob van Roy style, we have kind of a bit of chaos and disorder with this overturned silverware, the broken glass again. So some of the same very subtle devices at work to suggest something much more meaningful than just an array of food items. Really, these items convey a much deeper meaning. And I think it shows how the Dutch could suffuse a lot of meaning and importance into something that at first glance really isn't all that significant. And again, I think this really shows how diverse and meaningful still lifes really are.