Boom, what's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sacian. Very excited to be on site still in Boston, Massachusetts. We are now gonna be talking about what it's like to go through a process of getting into Ivy League schools. We're gonna be talking about a lot of high-level conversation around finding meaning in life. I'm really excited to be sitting down with Whitney Nimit Patana. Hello. Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming out to the show. Thanks for inviting me. I greatly appreciate it. I'm really excited to talk to you. We have a lot to talk about. I'm really happy that Alex Chen introduced us. Yeah, Alex is the best. I'm really glad I got the opportunity to meet you too. I feel really honored because I think if he thinks that I'm interesting enough to be interviewed, well, so be it. We had a lot of good conversation last night. We did. Yeah, I'm super pumped for this. There's a lot of good stuff to unpack about your life and about where we're gonna go with this convo. Excited. Okay, let's talk about this because this, I don't think many people even realize what goes into the process of working someone's ass off until they're like 17, 18, and then going and getting into a bunch of different Ivy League colleges. This is hard work. Okay, so you were born in Brooklyn. Right? No, so actually, I guess. Tell us. So I guess just, where do I start this story? So I'm, both my parents are ethnically Chinese, but my mom is from Burma, which is also known as Myanmar. She grew up around the capital, whereas my dad is from Thailand and he also grew up around the capital there. Both of them immigrated to the US around the time. They were teenagers or they're early dirties. I mean, Tony's, I believe. And then. Directly to New York? Yep, directly to New York City and that's where they met too. Okay. So when I was, so when my mom gave birth to me, we were living in Manhattan in that time around the Chinatown area. Okay. And then when I was very young, around four years old, that's when we moved to Brooklyn. Okay. And then, okay, so this is already interesting because a lot of us have had these sort of parents that have come from other places and immigrated to the United States and were raised children in the United States with a kind of like a cultural lineage from a different part of the world. Okay. So when you're, you ended up now at four years old in Brooklyn and did you grow up with brothers and sisters too? Yep. I have one older sister. An older sister. Okay. And how many years older is she? Two years old. If Susie, if you're watching this, hi. Shout out to Susie. Shout out Susie. Okay. So then you're growing up with her. You're four, she's six. And what is that like with your parents, with you figuring out who you are in the world? Tell us about that. I think that at that age, you don't, I think you don't really know enough about the world or at least like most people don't know about the world in order to, I think to really fathom, like sort of, I think, because especially given that now are very, it's very tumultuous and also some very anxious times. I don't think we knew about all of that going up. I think I'm also very lucky to have lived in a very diverse ethnically, socio-economically in terms of like religious background neighborhood. And so that also affected me based on where I went to elementary school and middle school and high school. Okay, so it was socio-economically, religiously, culturally diverse. Yes, uh-huh. Yeah, in Brooklyn growing up. Yep. It's very interesting because I'm growing up. I think that's something I took for granted when I was younger because I think a lot of people, especially when you live in more racially homogenous areas, you don't really, I think the thing about New York City is that you literally have people from every single ethnic category in like perhaps in the same like square mile. And so you grow up.  And then I think it's just that you grew up in this very, it seems like the world is very tolerant, like it's such a mixing pot.  Yeah, okay, so that right there is a huge point that you just brought up because I grew up in a vastly white area of South Dakota. And when you grow up there, it's odd when you see people that look different than a white person. Yeah, exactly. And that is weird because when you grew up in Brooklyn, you get to see all of the different cultures. You get, they're not different, they're human. Yes, exactly. Yes. I mean, and also they think the thing is even if like people are like, so Hollywood has a long way to go in terms of representation of minority people, I think the thing is that you also grow up with all these diverse, knowing people of all different races and ethnicities. And like you said exactly, that makes them very human.  I think at the same time, I feel like it's a very humbling experience. And I feel like it's, I guess like real is the word that I would use to describe it. Yeah. I'm glad that we made sure to touch on the humanization side of things as we melting pot our cultures together, it becomes a whole, a planet full of humans. And that's moving forward, how we can prosper most effectively as when we treat each other that way. Okay, so growing up in the melting pot and then slowly but surely figuring out what you wanted to do a little bit in your high school. So tell us about it. Sure. I think I didn't, like, so I think everyone's very familiar with the tiger parent archetype. But I think it would, I mean, like actually kind of unique in the sense that my parents like, I was never really pushed to become like, oh, you have to become an engineer or a doctor. Well, of course there's, I was always taught that, okay, to have ambitions and to want to achieve more. But at the same time, I think they were also chill in certain aspects as long as I got good grades and I got into a good school and that's all. And then I chose a lucrative career path and that's all that mattered.  Exactly. Yeah. It's funny because I think, so there's this Facebook group called Subtle Asian Memes that's exploded in popularity in the past month. And I think there's one meme that really stands out to me because a lot of, like especially for like first generation Asian parents, they come here, they teach their children, they enroll their children in music lessons for the piano and violin and usually only those two instruments because there's some sort of, I think clout with those specific instruments. So no like guitar or anything wacky.  But then when let's say, if like you're, but then when they're children, like they, let's say like, you would think that the logical path is to become like to pursue a career in music after all that musical training, but that's obviously forbidden. That's like sort of forbidden because of that, because it's a creative career. So I think it's just like that sort of dichotomy is like something that I just like said that, yeah, it's something that's very ironic. And I want, because I think I feel like down the line, we're going to end up figuring out a more effective way to open up both an equality of opportunity for young kids to figure out what they're passionate about and do it. And also for parents to figure out, you know, motivate the kids, but also give them, you know, congratulate them when they do well along the way and don't maybe thwart off some sort of part of their creativity because it may not be lucrative because we're going to potentially start, the market's potentially going to start correcting and going towards creativity a little bit more. It already is in some regards. I think that's accurate to say, for one thing, I strongly believe that change begins at the generational level. So us, like first and second generation kids who were brought up in the US and other countries as part of this some Asian diaspora, I think we recognize that our parents did the best they could when they were raising us and while their methods may not have been the best, I think it's on us to make sure that our offspring, that we push them in the right directions so that they can achieve their full potential regardless. We don't have to focus on just STEM or careers that we consider lucrative or prestigious. We want them to achieve to the best of their ability. And to your point, I think in terms of rewarding creativity, I think it's just popped in my head, especially as jobs get more and more jobs get automated, just building creativity and other soft skills, especially just being able, I think those will become more and more important as a lot of the current jobs get automated. But the new jobs will, I think new jobs will arise based on how society is changing. Yeah, I'm glad that you're really honing in on creativity and social, emotional skills being super important as automation arises. They're gonna, it's gonna be a very interesting transition that occurs in the next couple of decades. And for us, we are around 25-ish versus for kids that are born today when in 20, 45 things are gonna be incredibly challengingly different to what is it gonna be like to be creative in 25 years? And what is it gonna be like to go through the high school process? So as, okay, so as, I know we can go off so many ways. Wendy and I can talk about a bunch of different things together and let's come to this because you mentioned this already once and I wanna see if we can maybe even identify some of the cultural transgenerational sort of the pressures that occur that kind of, that make it so that parents act in a certain way with their kids that potentially maybe drives them in a certain direction rather than enables them to freely explore and figure out who they are. Sure, I guess like where should we start then? Okay, well you brought up Tiger Parenting and you kind of gave that, you gave it a good example. Because, okay, let's start maybe with this. We've seen time and time again more and more data showing that the more that you are born into low SES, the different your life outcome is from someone that's born into a high socioeconomic status. That similar sort of concept can be applied to your parent, your parenting. If the parenting skills are high openness, high explorativity versus if it's a nope, you gotta follow this path and this is what only things that we're giving you. Something like that. Yeah, I can imagine that being the case because parents who are higher openness and more open to other methods, I think they're more able to adapt their parenting to different sorts of personalities and just provide a fostering environment for their children. And of course, I think like, of course, having more means too also means that you can prepare your child for this rat race sooner. It's like, it's very interesting because I read an article recently on Buzzfeed. They have pretty good long form pieces besides their listicles about millennials being the burnout generation. I think, and one of the tenets of that piece was that where everyone is so, or at least people our age are so burnt out all the time is because we were raised to optimize all aspects of our life from, and not just our career and academics, but even our leisure. So it's like, oh, things that we would do in our off time like exercise or eating or even cleaning are things that have to be optimized as well. Give me a little more on the optimization of what is that like? Tell me about that. I guess maybe one example is that like, I feel like nowadays, especially like with the proliferation of social media and how that gives you like sort of like a panopticon into what everyone is doing. I think there's a lot of moralism regarding how people eat. So for example, like the shift towards organic and vegan foods. I think I can't help but notice that there's also a little change of like moralism there and which sort of says like, oh, the quote unquote cleaner, you eat the better of a person you are.   And I think, and especially for people who grew up in immigrant families, it's also part of your culture and your childhood as well. And who is to determine what clean is or what good is? Well, okay, sure, clean energy. Okay, we can probably determine that solar with. Yeah, exactly. Things that don't contribute to environmental pollutants but with regards to quote unquote clean eating, I think. Who gets to decide?  And that's been a pressing issue that is permeating through culture right now as people throttling the pay of artists and comedians and other performers because they're deciding on whether or not that performer is using hate speech or not. Who gets to decide? How does civilization figure out what of course there's a big difference between things like the KKK, between someone that's trying to make a statement about potentially race or gender or obesity or whatever it may be. And now all of a sudden, they can't potentially do that. What's up with the clean food too?  And you may potentially be stuck in a single mode of thought that's not open to, again, experience looping back to what we're talking about with parents as well. You make a very interesting connection there. In terms of freedom of speech, I think it's especially where we live in an age where we're saturated with information and we have unprecedented access to information through our Facebook news feed, through our Twitter feeds, through everything. So not only do we get the nitty gritty details on what people or our social circles are doing or rather what they want us to see that they're doing, I think we'll probably touch on this topic later. But I think, so once someone release, so let's say an artist releases a song, then I think because of how ubiquitous social media is, people are free, and especially since you have the freedom, you technically have the freedom to say anything you want on the internet. So people feel like people are going to say what they want to say. And then I think it's just that perhaps like in a different age, we didn't have access to that mediums that could proliferate information so quickly and so efficiently. But now I think, especially as societal attitudes change to especially in regards to what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. And so I think, yeah, I guess it's hard to be a celebrity I would just say it's hard being a celebrity these days because no matter what you say, there's always going to be someone who's like, I think who will have something to say about it, whether it's a think piece or whether it's like, I don't know, some random YouTube comment. Yeah, yeah, there was even a recent way of viewing things from a multi-decade long process which I thought was interesting. People that have been around for almost like a half century that they have said things that back in the day it was completely different trying to get press. Now you can just make a Twitter post and it's called press. And so it's just a democratization of dissemination of information, but there's a lot more that that's doing across the world. Okay, so let's jump back to the high school days. So how did you end up figuring out that you wanted to go Ivy League style and what's that whole process like of who you were in high school? No, so now that I think about it in retrospect, I think the only reason I strive for those schools is because like, oh, it's always good to strive for the best. And I think, but now that I think more about it, I'm really, really grateful for having had the opportunity to attend those institutions, especially when bringing up to return to the conversation about SES, like socioeconomic status. There's some, I think when it comes, I think education is one of those things that can really catapult people who are like, from a certain SES into a higher level SES within one generation. Yeah, that's a huge point. It's almost as though if you work really hard for one generation, you can start surrounding yourself with a couple of potentially income brackets higher than your previous generation and then build on that. But then again, it's not to say that it's easy though or anything because of course, I mean, I think so. And not to say that it's all only about SES. Yeah, but it's not only about SES. I think, yeah, there's so many factors that go into college admissions, honestly. I think I feel lucky that like, okay, I got in when I got in because I can only, to be honest, I can only see it getting more competitive unless there's some great revolution. Then I think it's only going to get more and more cutthroat.  You were like a great, amazing GPA, amazing test scores, amazing extracurriculars, amazing essay writing and you got into Ivy Leagues. And then on top of that, then there's the limitation in spots that's going on. There's people from around the world that are applying, not just, yeah. Yeah, and I think it's just crazy because it didn't recur to me until I actually set foot on campus, but they're actually, it's just like, it's crazy because some people have been like, groomed there for their entire lives for success. And then I think especially when you go to like certain private schools too, the way that their curriculum and like their requirements are set up or is that, it actually, it makes you be successful in the college application process is because you have to do extracurricular, you have to take certain classes. So it, and then of course, then it's like your, if you go to like certain private school, then like your parents, it's very likely that your parents likely have access to more resources too. But yeah, I think when I was in high school, to be honest, I hadn't really thought about it and all this college stuff until like my sophomore or junior year. So I think I also, perhaps I got like, maybe perhaps I got lucky a little too. It's so important to identify that we get lucky. A lot of, we see a lot of people run around with the mentality of like, I earned everything myself, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's so important to say that we stand on the shoulders of giants that already made a ubiquity in food, and electricity, and water, and so many of the things that we got to build on top of.  I did, you did, and so many people do. And so it's important to be humble about that. Yeah, okay, so give us, give us the, so it ended up being Harvard is ended up being where you ended up going. And that was a class of 2016. Yeah, so that was from 2012, 2016 at Harvard. This is actually an interesting point.  And then it's like, whoa, because then you're, it's just a total change in perspective.  We're, but we're as in college, okay, you're out in the big open world for the first time with no parental supervision. And then not, and not only that, and in most like public schools, like, you know, it's like, your day is already laid out for you. You have to go to this class, and then you have to go to this class, and you have to go to this class where, but in college, your schedule is a lot more flexible. And also, and it's not like they're going to, and the professors don't hold your hand in terms of the curriculum. You have to become prepared to class in order to learn well.  So there's not, so there's already that like, you know, factor, but then there's also, there was also, I feel like there was also a culture shock for me, but because I think, I guess like, so I came from a high school where a really big public high school, where like I mentioned before, it was really diverse, not only in terms of race and ethnicity, but also just like socioeconomic status. And I feel like places like Harvard and other elite institutions, you don't necessarily have that diversity, where you could say that like, I mean that you don't, yeah, you could say like, you could say that in terms of racial diversity, in terms of socioeconomic status, but I think there's one, but one really incredible thing about these institutions though, is that I feel like you get people with lots of different life experiences and viewpoints even. It's as though you take the best of a bunch of different local areas and across the world and you bring them to one point. And this is very, that's kind of exciting. It reminds me a little bit about kind of like what it's like to be at, like Google campus. Oh yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. And to be there or to be at Harvard, right? To be at these sort of like epicenters of an intellectual group that has already worked quite hard to achieve something in their lives, already that's exciting. And then trying to learn from a bunch of the different ones about what their world perspectives are, what they're doing. You decided on physics, which is exciting. So like what was that like to figure out that it ended up being physics? Well, I guess like going into Harvard, I already knew that I wanted to study physics. I think probably because I had some good physics teachers in high school. And also I think I just felt like, okay, it's interesting. It's also very, it's also very good to be honest, like not going to lie. It's also very, you know, it's like something that you can put on your resume and then people, and then you're like, it looks good on your resume too. Yep. Okay. And then, now, what is the like for you? Give us kind of like a snapshot of what some of like the most profound takeaways were for you in that four year period. Hmm. Well, oh man, I'm trying to like think of all the academic material now. And I'm like, ah! Ah! I'm like, ah, I haven't done physics in a long time. Oh man. Yeah, yeah.  And so, okay. So I guess like to give a concrete example, I really, I sort of regret how I didn't take advantage of all the wonderful opportunities at Harvard. So for like, for example, getting funding to do certain things, like let's say funding for study abroad programs, going to places that you would have like never dreamed of, or getting funding to do certain projects or to pursue like certain things. I think like, especially one, like I guess like one interesting thing about Harvard is that like, like when your club wants to invite a speaker to campus, it just say, like, oh, we're from Harvard. And then that probably pikes their attention.  Exactly. And that's a way to maximize your potential in the world. You end up figuring out that you could have learned potentially so many, so much different information when you went and maybe studied abroad or when you actually reached out to those couple of speakers to have the mentor you, to have them speak at your organization or go and take the risk of getting involved with different projects. I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, exactly. Oh man, I'm just thinking about all the things I could have done. But I guess it's never too late, even when you leave college. Yeah. I think, yeah. Oh, sorry. The Whitney and all the other concurrently running parallel universes are exploring the things that you didn't get a chance to do in this one. I don't know. I hope, I hope, those Whitney's converge into this timeline soon. They do. Yeah, you tap into all of them at the same time. Okay, so now 2016 comes around and you're figuring out, this is actually interesting because you ended up doing a lot of work in data. And I actually thought this was really cool because there seems to be a growing movement for outcome-oriented data in healthcare. Exactly, huh? Tell, teach us about this. Sure. Well actually, I'm not too, to be honest, I'm not too familiar with healthcare, like the nitty gritty of healthcare data science, that sort of stuff. But recently I worked for the Accountable Care Organization, like part of the Massachusetts Medicaid program. So Mass Health provides like health insurance for like let's say millions of members in the Massachusetts state. And I had the opportunity to work within their payment reform division on this ACO program. So I actually, well I didn't work on the policy or the operational side, I worked on data management. It was a really educational experience for me overall. Yeah, we're transitioning to outcomes on the healthcare side of things. And that's so important to make sure that people are actually healthy and that when they come into our institutions that they leave healthier. This is a lot of weird corruption that's occurring that we need to actually take a second, third, fourth glance at and solve. So okay, so what has, what's going on with, okay we're like 25, 26, and we're mid 20s, and there's so many people that are graduating college that are like, they're in many ways, they're struggling to find meaning in their lives. And it's hard because we even go through these ups and downs like one day you're roaring with meaning and the next day you're like, oh it's so meaningless, what's going on? So how does one find a sustained sense of meaning? Well, so for one thing, I am one of those 20-something year old and I'm also struggling to find meaning in my own life. So perhaps this is the blind leading the blind. But I think from what I figured out so far though, I think I would, I guess, like at first I think, okay I started chasing just hedonistic materialistic things, but, and there's nothing wrong in chasing those things too, but more often than not chasing those things. I think they only provide ephemeral temporary relief, but I think, and I guess like, what made, I guess like when some, the first thing that comes to mind in terms of what gives me meaning to my life is having genuine valuable connections with people. And when I say valuable, I don't just mean that in a materialistic or a transactional way. I think like one thing that you especially learn when going to Italy institutions like Harvard is that I think a lot of people there tend to see relationships in a transactional way. Like, who can you refer me to? Who do you know? Can you get me into this like sorority or club? Can you like get me a referral for this job? And I don't blame them because I think it's just, it's just a really cut road environment. It really fosters that attitude, but it doesn't necessarily have to be like that all the time. And I guess having transactional relationships itself isn't a bad thing, especially if like, if they're mutually beneficial, then that's good, but then I don't think it's bad to want to have genuine relationships either with genuine human connection. Well, I like where you took us there. Okay, so there's this sort of, there's a spirit that one can move themselves with through the world that is a loving, kind essence to everyone, to all humans, period. And then further than that, it's like, okay, well what brings you meaning? Okay, well maybe it's for me, it's building this project. And then of course I'm gonna look for people that I think are interesting to sit down and talk to. And so then that's the idea of finding like utility. And I was, I'm really just, I'm hesitant to even like start just trying to intellectualize what being transactional or materialistic or all these different things are. If you carry yourself with that unconditional love period, it's almost as though things kind of just come.  Yeah, that's a really interesting point. It's something I've actually been thinking about recently too. I think one thing that a lot of people especially like when you can't look, especially people who have, let's say, I guess like grew up with like Asian immigrant parents is that I think you just like, you struggle to think about, oh, what value am I giving to people? I think a lot, a theme that I've noticed among like second generation Asian children like those whose parents were immigrants is often it's that, oh, like no matter how well you do it seems like it's never enough. You're always going to be compared to like cousins so and so who plays the piano or even if like you could be a world class violinist and you have three Ivy League degrees and you're an astronaut and a doctor and whatnot but then still like, oh, why aren't you married? Yeah, where's my grandkids? Damn, that's legitimately a parenting conversation that occurs, yeah. Oh yeah, and it's not, of course it's not just limited to Asian immigrant parents. I feel like it's something that like, like it's probably like something that like, you know, a lot of people our generation feel like the idea of just comparing your, like just being compared to other people and the idea that, oh, it's like, am I ever good enough? Gosh, that one sits, ooh. It's, you know, Mr. Rogers did a really good job at telling people that they are good enough and that they are loved as they are and that there is a, it's such a, it's a soothing and calming feeling to know that one is loved and that one is loved and that they do provide that love to others as well. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it's like, it's hard to embrace that feeling because I just think, or at least like, so to go back to your point about like, if you live your life sincerely, if you're loving-kindness, then you don't have to be transactional. Then things, that loving-kindness and like, and I guess like, end of material ways in which that manifest will come to you naturally and organically. It's something that I think, okay, I should notice on a, I should notice already, I should live my life that way, but I guess if I feel resistant to live it that way, because I'm afraid, I'm afraid that like, oh, what if like, I like, I live my life that way, but then I'm taking it, taking advantage of or like, I'm left with nothing. There's a feeling of slight vigilance with love that it's because there will be a slow fading of the malevolent instances that you speak of. It'll fade away over time, but to remain a little bit vigilant as you go is important. So you carry the wake of positivity and love and then stay slightly vigilant as you go through to make sure that you can continue bringing forth yourself fully. Right, like so setting healthy boundaries for yourself. So that you, I guess like one way you could put it is that set healthy boundaries for yourself and you'll be able to love yourself as well.  Yeah, if you take a practice in like future authoring, goal setting, conscientiousness, just see if, maybe if I choose to pursue a non hedonistic thing for a week or a month that I take something off of the list and I just add something else, maybe creative to the list, something else that could unlock a new way of thinking for me. And I do that for a week or a month. What would happen?  You just analyze yourself afterward how you feel after that week or month. These are the sort of ways that you can actually figure out who you are better, yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. But I think like, I couldn't help but think about an earlier part of our conversation where I mentioned how us millennials were so burned out all the time is because we feel like we have to optimize every part of our life.  So we feel bad if we're not being productive and hence even mundane tasks like, I don't know, filing your taxes or like sending a form that are supposed to be, you know, they're supposed, they're technically, they're supposed to be easy. Or I guess filing your taxes isn't a good example. But yeah, sending, like let's say sending a voter registration form or giving a call to like your primary care provider or like going to the pharmacy to pick up your prescription, those things are technically mundane, technically very easy, but you feel resistance to doing those as well. That's such an interesting point because that happens all the time with the mundane sort of, I have to go drop off a physical letter at the post office and it's like, what can I do with that half hour of my life? I could do something else. There's so many things like that that even the optimization for food is just like, I'm gonna drink Soylent instead of have to go and leave. Like what is food anymore? Oh man, I hope, I don't wanna be in a room with people who've only eaten soy. I imagine that was just things to your digestive system. Very strange to test what it is like to consume that for years or something. This is an important subject that we're talking about. There's such a rage for productivity and that is all affecting mental health and where's the meditative spirit? Yeah, I think especially, of course it sounds like I'm raging in social media all the time, but I think I don't have anything against social media. I love it, I scroll on Facebook all the time. But I think the idea that we are supposed to be productive all the time also ties into the idea that we have to project the best image of ourselves all the time too. So when I say that we're supposed to optimize even our leisure activities, I mean that by saying, oh, we have to project the best image of ourselves on our social media. We have to cultivate even our leisure activities to seem like we're doing the best things all the time or at least show the best parts of ourselves. Yeah, ain't nobody taking an Insta story on the way to the post office. I'm going to drop off a letter right now. Exactly. It's always that this super profound moment of my life that I'm capturing and sharing with other people where I look the best and one of my friends, I'm a shout out to Casey and myself occasionally, will purposely take photos that are not the most good looking of ourselves and post those because it changes the culture and it's those little things that if you upload potentially the more mundane or not as pinnacle appearing ones that that could actually potentially let other people be like, yeah, it's fine to not wear makeup or it's fine for me to do a little bit of like this and something or whatever, you know? Yeah, I think I really respect people who are able to post about their vulnerable moments on Facebook too. Like I think, yeah, that's something I really respect. Well, I don't think there's anything inherently bad and wanting to share those wonderful shining moments. Like, oh, I just ate something really delicious or oh, here's a thirst trap picture of me. But I really do have, I think it's like, yeah, I really value people who are able to share like more, how do I, not necessarily intimate, but just more meaningful or like not in like moments on Facebook where like, okay, it's like, okay, I admit I'm not feeling the best right now or okay, like something bad happened to me. So, and then I think like people who can ask for help too, I think is also like, yeah, I think that's like a very valuable utility of these platforms that gets underused. Asking for help and sharing vulnerable stories, I totally agree that that's such an underutilized part of being able to talk to others on social platforms. Okay, I wanna do some power round thoughts. Okay, what do you think is sort of transcendent of the human experience? Some people call it God or all that is or whatever exists past the three dimensional reality. You know, what do you think the simulation? What do you think about that? Transcendent of the human experience. Could you elaborate on that a little more?  Well, without getting into metaphysical things or spiritual things, I guess like one thing that does transcend the human experience is narratives and stories and the tropes that make up those stories. It's something, this is something I've been thinking about for a while, but I think a lot, I think, or at least like I'm the type of person who likes to daydream a lot and come up with stories in my head, scenarios of people, especially like, oh, sometimes like I think about, oh, what would happen if like something else happened or I'm daydreaming about, oh, what if like I got into this, like, or what if this scenario happened with like, you know, with like with the people in my life as the characters or like the NPCs, if this was for a video game. I think that even if the tropes that appear in stories may not always hold true in real life, I think there's something that's very powerful about them that causes us to perpetuate those tropes, even if they don't always fulfill reality. What about, what do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world? Oh, that's another really good question. I guess, I don't want, I think, or I have a couple of things in mind. Do I have to say just one or can I say multiple? Okay, I guess like, well, I guess like, hmm, I guess one thing is just, I guess like, especially, I guess like coming from the experience of someone who studied physics, just like how certain laws of nature just seem to work out so well. I think that just without going into too much detail, I just think that's something that's like very beautiful and profound. Another thing is just having genuine human connection and just realizing that you're loved by so many people. I know that sounds like really cheesy, but I think especially when you're like in a very dark, like during very dark moments or when you're feeling really low, you really underestimate the impact that you have on other people. So while, okay, maybe you are just like one in seven billion people on this world or you, and you might not be the most influential, there are still people who care about you and people who would notice if you stopped existing. But then the question becomes how long do they? How long do they notice? Yeah, I think, well, I guess that's a good question. Then you're done. Well, 100 billion people that lived and died before us today, how many can you name? 20? 100 maybe?  Yeah, out of the 100 billion, there you go. But I guess like, I mean, and I don't think in my lifetime that I can achieve immortality and I wouldn't want to be immortal either because I think I would just get annoyed at this after a certain point, just like seeing the same people. Or I guess if everyone else achieves immortality too, then I just see the same people over and over again and it might get annoying. If other people don't achieve immortality like in a tuck everlasting sort of scenario, then that would actually be sad. Just jump into different designed virtual worlds and then you can go explore whatever you want. Yeah. Different people. I mean, I guess like after a couple of thousand years, I guess like, don't you get bored? Yeah, I guess that's another question, Ms. Zory. Where was I going anyway? Oh, that's funny. So after several thousand years, would you end up getting bored of all of the different things that you can actually do? Yeah. Okay. When is there something else that you think we should cover on the way? Well, we had a really interesting conversation about simulacra on our ride here. That's a good point. And if I guess like, if there was one takeaway that I want to give to this audience tonight, it's that social media like social media and the projections of ourselves that we put on social media has led us to living out these simulacra of what we think that our lives should be like as opposed to what our lives actually like. So this can be described in many ways. So you think that people are living, always living the best versions of their lives. For example, this like, I don't know, maybe Drake, you see a couple on Facebook or Instagram and they always look always so well put together and that their relationship is so harmonious. When behind the scenes, you don't know about like all their arguments or maybe it's just like, you don't know that they took a hundred different pictures and they chose the best one to put online, especially like, so this is something that's especially true for a woman.  That's like really, I think that yeah, that's especially like getting more and more common with like Snapchat filters. I think and I feel like it's also like much more prevalent into East than it is in the West too. Excuse me.  It's not like, it's not the reality. What's real is actually just like these mundane, boring, sometimes ugly parts of our lives. Along with the good parts of the lives. And interestingly enough, a simulacrum could potentially be any sort of a representation of you. You could pick whatever, but it's that we pick the 1% that is the absolute cream of the crop. Exactly. We could pick the most mundane. We could pick the most entertaining. We could pick the most humorous or most artistic. We could pick any of those or a combination of them. That's a good point. Yep. I like that takeaway. Winnie, this has been a pleasure. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much for talking to us. It's been a pleasure. There's a lot to take away from what it's like to actually go through the process of being someone like you. This is good to talk to you. Yeah. I'm like really honored to appear on the show. Thanks everyone. Thanks Whitney. Thanks for tuning in. We greatly appreciate it. We'd love to hear some of your thoughts in the comments below. Let us know. Also do build, go create, manifest your destiny into the world everyone. Much love. Thank you for tuning in and we'll see you soon. And live sincerely. Bye everyone. Bye.


The Velociraptor is a highly intelligent predator, dangerous alone and truly deadly when hunting in packs. Velociraptors can outpace and outwit almost any victim they cast their eyes upon.


And while I could be on the side that Nintendo is this big, evil anti-consumer corporation, and certainly there are times with their pricing that I don't agree, I also think as consumers, we're not quite as understanding at times on why the price of video games are what they are and why, in many cases, they should be increased. Now, look, a lot of this drama begins when I was just sort of glancing around on YouTube and I saw videos such as by Zach and one of our friends from Switch Force over there where he was kind of inferring that another code recollection coming out January 19th being a $60 game when the original releases were never around that price and these are older games and they're not really things that people are going to, it's probably just not gonna be a mega selling game, right? This isn't a Mario Kart or even a Mario spin-off game such as Mario Party or something, right? So games are gonna probably sell a lot, so why is it at $60? And then, yeah, we have this rumor out there which is kind of weird because we've already seen $70 games from Nintendo. Tears of the Kingdom was one such case, over 20 million copies sold, $70 game. What's interesting there, of course, is that we already assumed when we saw that that we would probably see a lot more if not have the standard price of games already changed for Nintendo Switch 2 to around 70 bucks, but now we have a Zippo going out there throwing the crazy out there rumor that we're gonna have $70 games on Switch 2, which, I mean, look, logical deduction could have already told you that and I've seen a lot of interesting backlash both from consumers and also from content creators and I agree with some of this backlash in certain instances. I'll give you an example. I don't think under any circumstance should we be paying $70 for something like a Captain Toad style game. I don't think we should be paying $70 for an HD port of a Wii game or something like that, but on the other hand, I do think $70 is justified in some cases and obviously when we talk about the $60 price points we're seeing now for things like another code recollection, I can understand why people are upset with that, but also there are things that we're not considering in all of this. Now look, obviously there's the basics that everyone will bring up inflation, inflation, inflation, right? Your 60, your $70 today is not worth what it was 15 years ago, you know, 20 years ago when these prices started to become standard right around $60, so there is that and the whole rest of the world is already adjusted. Like this is very much a first world North America, well in particular United States problem because the rest of the world has been increasing prices on games this entire time over all of these years as the money becomes worth less the prices of the games increase. That didn't really happen in the United States with the US dollar, we just kind of kept prices the same but I am also going to offer an argument on why in many cases if Nintendo wants to charge me $70 like they did with Tears of the Kingdom I'm going to be willing to pay it and also cases where if Nintendo does go a little bit too greedy with it they might actually get me to buy less games. So first let's talk about the $70 thing and why I think there are justifications for Nintendo. You see the rest of the industry and again we can't blame every developer and every publisher for this but in many cases in the triple A industry games have found a way to subsidize their income so they might still charge you $60, $70 or more for collectors editions, deluxe editions, et cetera but then they'll have micro transactions they'll have loot boxes they'll have cosmetic items that you could buy on top season passes, all of this sort of stuff that you can buy in addition to and this isn't even including like day one DLC or multiple like little small DLC packs along the way we're not talking about things that feel like full-on expansions like the Blood & Wine DLC for the Witcher 3 we're talking about little tiny dinky ones that might just be a couple new maps in Call of Duty, right? We're talking about those smaller ones where they call it DLC because technically it is and they might charge you $20 for it but you're not really getting a lot of value for that $20 and I know value is in the eye of the beholder so maybe to you it is worth that monetary investment and for you out there you hardcore Call of Duty players might think it's worthwhile. Hey, I'm happy for you. Here's the thing. I do feel in the back of my mind that Nintendo can get away with a $70 price point that idea that Nintendo doesn't subsidize their income as much as people think while we do get major DLC packs like we have side order coming out for Splatoon 3 that is a massive expansion pack level DLC and we know this based on the prior couple of times they did DLC for the previous Splatoon game so we have an already natural assumption that this is going to be a fairly substantial DLC but what Nintendo didn't do with Splatoon 3 is micro-transaction the hell out of it. If you think about Splatoon 3, it is ripe to be set up for the current AAA model, right? You could have season passes. You could have, put it this way, the cosmetics in the game are unlockable but they're unlockable by playing the game and it could have made that a monetary thing as well and Nintendo chose not to do that and I mentioned Splatoon because it's one of those games that is perfectly set up for the current AAA model and yet Nintendo just doesn't do it. Smash Bros was sort of the same way. Yes, you could buy the characters individually and look Smash Bros is maybe one of the closest examples Nintendo has to a more traditional peace-mealing experience but they also offered you to buy everything at once for one price and that one price would give you a pretty substantial addition of content so you could argue almost expansion pack. Like even though you could still buy things on an individual level. I think having options like that are good for the consumer because maybe there's only one extra character you wanted out of the whole extra characters they've added and so then that's the character you're going to focus on and just buy that one. Maybe you just want a Banjo-Kazooie so you only bought Banjo-Kazooie, you didn't buy the rest of the DLC. That is your choice. I believe consumer choice is important but Nintendo doesn't really do this stuff. Think about Tears of the Kingdom and all the cosmetics in that game. Those could have been piecemeal to us. They could have been loot boxed to us and they didn't do it. Same with Mario. Same with the Mario Party games. Same with pretty much every game Nintendo makes. I'm not saying Nintendo never participates in this extra revenue stuff. We see this with their mobile games, right? The Fire Emblem game on phones and all the Jurgalia loss before they shut that down. Pikmin Bloom has some stuff going on with it. We see it with the Animal Crossing pocket camp. So yeah, Nintendo participates in some of this stuff but they're doing that in a marketplace where that's what that marketplace expects. The consumer on a phone expects micro transactions, expects having to spend money for in-game currency and stuff like that. That is an expectation that doesn't exist on Nintendo's consoles, despite the fact that many third party games do that stuff.  This is just permeating all throughout the industry. But Nintendo doesn't do it. And since Nintendo doesn't do it on at least a massive across the board scale with all of their games, to me, this means their games are worth the price increase to $70 because unlike all these other companies that found a way to subsidize their games on top of the initial sale, almost all of Nintendo's money outside of their new subscription service with Nintendo Switch Online or more recent subscription service comes from the sale of these games. When you buy Tears of the Kingdom, there's no DLC coming. This is the least according to the developers. There is no more content. There's nothing else you can buy to make the game better unless you wanna build a streaming PC and do all that modding stuff from fans. But the point is there's nothing you could buy from Nintendo. They just would give you complete experiences. Everything's within the game. And if we want that kind of stuff to continue, then we can't keep getting mad that Nintendo's not gonna charge $70. Even for games like a Mario Party that you might go, well, fine, $70 for the next 3D Mario, $70 for the next Zelda game, $70 for the next Animal Crossing or something Mario Kart, that makes sense. But they can't be charging $70 for Mario Sports games or $70 for Mario Party games or $70 for side-scrolling Kirby games. And again, the argument doesn't change for those games either. If you think about it, all of those games could find ways to subsidize their revenue by piece-mealing and nickel-endiming consumers, and yet Nintendo doesn't do it. So if Nintendo's not going to do that and yet money is worth less today than it's been worth 15, 20 years ago, then Nintendo has to make up some of the money lost in other ways, either by selling significantly more copies, which you can argue cutting prices on games could do that. And again, this is another thing Nintendo doesn't participate in is slashing prices on games. Then Nintendo can find other ways to make up that revenue and that's by increasing the overall purchase point of the games. I do think $70, again, doesn't make sense for every game Nintendo releases, but I think for them, they're more justified in it than most of these other companies. Now the scary thing for a lot of us is that Nintendo doesn't drop the prices of their games. When you see a game coming at 70, if it costs 70 right now at launch, it's probably still 70 bucks, five, six, seven years from now. And that part does suck. And while I understand Nintendo maintaining a certain price point for a select amount of years, say a three, four year period, there needs to be a point where maybe Nintendo starts to bring the pricing down, but unfortunately that's just not the way that company works. Helps maintain the value of their games and adds incredible resale value, but also, man, the idea of spending $60 today to play Breath of the Wild after tears of the kingdom is out, feels a little nuts. And to be fair, if you're buying online, it's pretty hard to spend MSRP on Breath of the Wild because almost every retailer sells it for less because they have too many copies of it. But if you're in store, welcome to your Walmart, enjoy paying your $59.99 for Breath of the Wild nearly seven years after release. It's a little crazy. That being said, there's also the price point that SwitchForce was talking about in terms of some of these smaller remastered remake games coming back that were never expensive in the first place and aren't very long and are very niche, charging $60, $70 a pop. I do think that that might be a little much. If you're trying to just, if you've accepted that another cold recollection is just going to be a flop, right? If you know, no matter what you do, this game is going to absolutely tank, then I can understand charging the $60 they're charging because you might as well get as much money as you can out of the few people that you know are buying the product. That I understand the market demand isn't super high and you don't think decreasing the price is going to increase market demand. So you might as well just get as much as you can while you can and just be happy that you were able to release the game at all. The other caveat is, well, maybe if you did reduce the price to something like $20, $30, maybe you increase the consumer base, which therefore can mean, hey, if this does well enough, we make more games like this moving forward. And that argument is always going to exist so long as you're charging a lot for a fairly niche product. So I am sort of on both sides of the fence and maybe that just makes me a fence sitter. I get what Nintendo's doing, but I also think there are times things are overpriced. I don't know, it's an interesting conversation point and this is why I wanted to have it and then kind of just toss it out to you guys because what I think is just my opinion. And I want to hear your guys' opinions on this as well, be it the overcharging necessarily for smaller, more niche games, this new $70 price point that forget Zippo, we pretty much already knew what was going to happen anyways, especially when tears of the kingdom still sold 20 million plus at 70 bucks clearly, not affecting or hurting sales at all. So you guys let me know if you think about this down in the comments below. And I'm very curious to hear from our international fans as well from other countries besides the US because you guys have seen the prices of games continue to rise in Nintendo games as well over the years. So you're kind of used to this.  I wish my games only went up $10 in the last 10 years. But again, it's very much a first world problem and video games themselves are very much a mostly first world enjoyed thing because of just how expensive they are. Anyways, guys, thank you so much for tuning in. I am Nathan and Robert Jants from Nintendo Prime. We'll catch you in the next video.


Check it out folks. After seeing that thumbnail I already know why you're here. Today we're making grilled pork chops but I got one for you. The secrets in the marinade. Let's get it. Okay so look when you're looking at these pork chops right here I'm gonna go ahead and test you so you guys can see. Look when you grill them I like to have a nice thick one right. Look at that right there. Look at the cap. You know what I mean? Look at the size of that.   So look you can see it's only one two three four five ingredients. This right here is going to turn it right over the top for you folks. Okay so look now all we want to do is we want to go ahead and just start mixing our ingredients right. So listen I'm gonna pour you know my oils in. Get all of this in here. Notice that I'm using a spatula. You want to get it all right. So this is more like a dump and go. I'm gonna go ahead and address this part when it comes to the. Check this out when it comes to you know your clothes. Right when I take my clothes I just smash these. I'm gonna put them in last but I'll show you why. Then listen you just want to go ahead and just mix this up right.  That's what you want. That's what you get from having that that oil in there right. Then if you guys are lucky and fortunate enough to have some of that infused olive oil like I like to use that branch and vine you know what I mean. I like to use that garlic for just about everything. Then when I look for them unique flavors they got them too. Right now when I was talking about this right here all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna smash these.  Now if you guys pay attention to this right here look this is my zip quicker. Man I got it. This is like another hand in the kitchen. Look I don't have to hold nothing and when I want to put something inside of it it's already open and we just start adding our chops. I know some of y'all are just like oh I would have loved to have one of them chops. Then once you got everything incorporated just right the check this part out right there. Remember that spatula look it's key to having the right tools because I don't want none all this on the side I want to get it all right. That's for all my new cooks you know what I mean especially the new people too like the younger generation need to know why. So now you just go ahead and pour it look at that right there and this is your marinade folks and remember the cloves just go ahead and give them a smash we just want to open them up let it's aromatic you know just drop in there I kind of like smash these kind of hard you know we just drop them in like that unroll this you know a little bit of the air out and then we just massage then you can see right here where I put the garlic how I smashed it you just want to get that in there then as you move it around that garlic will start to infuse even more and put that flavor in here on top of the meat right then we let it soak. Now here's the thing listen four hours is okay but overnight you know would be best and seeing how thick these are these got to go on the grill we got to get their marks on there we wanted to make it look right and we want most of all we want it to taste right. So I'm gonna put these in the refrigerator and check it out this time I'm gonna see you guys tomorrow and then we finna put them on the kettle grill. Okay folks look it's day number two right so listen these been marinating overnight these is nice and ready if you guys come on and take a look look at them you can see the color but listen when the long you let them marinate the longer that marinade gets inside of that flesh right look at that right there oh yeah so first thing I'm getting ready to do is I'm gonna go ahead and get my you know my chimney started because we're gonna like I said this is gonna be grilled right okay so look now I'm right my chimney we got that going you know right we building up those you know getting the heat underneath the coals right so I want you guys to take a look this right here help everybody because if you got short tongs or just working over a grill you know it kind of like I'm gonna just do it like this sometimes you got a reach in there you know you feel the heat right so I'm gonna give you guys a little bit of a pro tip a lot of people don't know this you know I mean listen this is a cut resistant glove if you guys got them cotton gloves those work too but look it's just an extra shield to keep you from burning yourself right like I said these are cut resistant you guys can pick these up on amazon for a dime or dozen you can get like three sets or something like that for about 12-15 dollars then you go and put a latex over the top this is how I'm able to pick up anything that's hot even on the grill I can pick it up and transfer it wherever I want to you guys just saw right now just the coals is nice and red right I'm gonna use my don't have to use these now because it's not hot obviously right so listen I gotta divide it on this side will be my direct you know my direct heat right so I'm gonna go ahead and just drop these in now right all right so what I did was if you guys look I just added a couple you know just just like a few you know new briquettes right I just put them in like that just so that these can like ignite I put some of these hot ones on here listen it'll transfer and those look nice right I'm gonna put this lid on the top then I'm gonna go ahead and clean that grill we just want to get some heat I got it vented on the bottom so we're getting a lot of air from the bottom and we want to pull right because I want to get some heat in here look I'm gonna open this up like that and I'm gonna do something a little differently it's a whole bunch of debate about where you put this vented but then the tip gauge is over here if this is my heat just on right that means this is going to be reading at certain temperature but when you get over here it's not going to be the same so I like to just do this folks I'll put it this way all my vents open I want to build up some heat I'm looking at it right now I'm at 200 and as I'm talking look I'm at 225 and it's rising you know I mean so it's super simple folks we just want to get some heat clean that grill I'm finna open up these chops and we finna make it happen folks okay folks listen we're gonna take them out right I'm just gonna shake them like that anything they want to drip off that's fine we'll just go ahead and load them up right here right I got that grill right you guys can probably look over there you can see though that uh that's mesquite wood listen it's smoking smelling real good in a minute somebody gonna come over here and ask me AB what you making today you know what I mean uh look at these right here look at the size of them folks look nice quality meat custom cut gotta have them now look at that right there now listen we're gonna let it sear probably for about two minutes then I'm gonna flip it give it two minutes like that then we're gonna move them over here to the indirect side right then we're gonna finish them up this is pork chop that white meat that other meat right listen we want to go to 145 degrees you don't want them to go to 165 this is pork chop folks 165 and they're gonna be a little bit on the dry side you know I mean uh check with the FDA they say it's cool AB say it's cool um okay so look after I actually went about two minutes 30 seconds when we turn this over like that look at that right there that's what you want to see you know what I mean hey I ain't gonna say nothing but I think the grilled pork chop is something like overlook when you guys think about being outside on that grill right remember two minutes on this side after that we're gonna take them off we're gonna set them over there and we're gonna use that meat thermometer check the center of that we're looking for 145 folks all right I'm just gonna set these here and let these rest while these other two these other three are doing they thing so look I'm gonna go ahead and just cut this oh my goodness hey look when you do it right I don't know if you guys can see that look I'm not gonna put no pressure on it I'm just gonna take the knife and I'm just gonna go like that look man when you grill them and they come out right that's what you come up with right let me just go ahead and get it make sure I don't drop it check it out folks cheers hey folks I'm about to feast but look I just want to bring this to the forefront because if you ask me I say grilled chops or pretty much anything grilled as far as uh pork going on the grill that it gets like overlooked just right here if you guys are eating pork give it a chance and do it like I showed you you seared two two and a half minutes on east side after that move it to the indirect have you meet the monitor here check as soon as you get to 140 take it off it's gonna rise about 145 anyway let it rest for about 15 minutes and then after that eat it folks best serve hot hey with that being said you guys let me know down in the comment section below now if you're new to my channel let me just take your time to say thank you for watching this video don't forget to like subscribe and tell everybody out here there's a channel out here to simplify these recipes and taking a mystery out of cooking and you know what I'm about to do folks I'm about to feast I'm out


Hi everybody it's Sam at Mixed Up Craft thank you for watching my tutorial today. I'm going to be showing you how to make this really lovely card which has got lots of shine to it because I've been using the Dovecraft mirrored cardstock which I'll share with you in a moment. Basically this one opens up it's a panel fold card so I don't know I guess maybe like I don't know I just played around with cutting which is what I always seem to do you can see how it looks from the back there um so yeah some form of panel fold some form of a panel fold card and it just stands like so and you can have it even further out you can have it like that you can just play around with it but you can see the profile that's how you get if it's like that it looks really nice or if you have it slightly further out then you start to see all of the panels you can have it that far out so yeah you can really play around with it and again it's so easy for whoever you give it to as soon as they get it out they know that that's you know how it's going to stand up so you've got plenty of room to write on the back um these are always a good style card if you've got maybe um not very thick cardstock as your card base because there are so many layers to all of this there's one with the cardstock and then you've got another three layers on top of that so it becomes a real solid card and it stands up really really well so this is using the first edition forever free papers the dovecraft mirrored cardstock and these are dovecraft pegs and then the flowers are just from my own stash just from a punch that I've got but I really love how it comes out and like I said this one fits into a five by seven envelope so again mine's got a bit of bulk with the peg but obviously if you haven't got that on there it will post easily so that's that one this is what we're going to use this is all the supplies this is going to hit against my camera now no it's not too bad so these are the pegs so the metallic pegs there's the gold the rose gold and the silver is somewhere I can't find the pack but those are those ones they're really handy nice few cards then this is the rose gold that I used for the card I've just shared with you there and then this is the silver which I'm using today and these are the April premium mirrored cardstock you get 10 sheets and again all of the um links to that will be in my blog that's the paper pack forever free and I've used the cutouts here as well so again it's you know I like those paper packs when you've got everything together so I've already gone ahead and done it loads and loads of prep because you don't need to see me do all of this but this one here is you're the best on the front of it and this is using the silver and just look how great that looks that's the silver peg and with the silver flowers there's just so much shine to it I hope this picks up well in the photos so like I said I've gone ahead that's the sizes of everything that I'm going to go through with you and that's all ready done so to make the main card base you need a piece of 12 by 7 okay we'll go through the scoring in a second I'll just go through all these bits then the mirrored cardstock you're going to need two pieces that are two and three quarters by six and three quarters now this is also the same size yeah the same size cardstock for the two white pieces on the back so you would then need another two pieces in white to go on the back of the card for your message okay so four pieces of that size two in if you're using mirrored or whatever you're using and then two in the white then two layer on top of that mirrored card mat this is then going down I'm dropping down in quarter of an inch increments so that was two and three quarters this is now two and a half by six and a half and that will sit perfectly on top there giving yourself a nice even border and then drop down again and you've got six and um sorry two and a quarter by six and a quarter and that's going to go on top of there both of those sizes you'll need two again of each one okay so that's that then to decorate all of those little square panels that we've got you're going to need six pieces of one and three quartered squared then six pieces of one and a half squared and then six pieces of one and a quarter squared so again each are dropping down in quarter of an inch increments so it's all pretty straightforward cutting there then to decorate the centerpiece it's entirely up to you how you want to do this I've actually covered you'll see when I do it but I've covered this rose gold mirrored card here the very back piece is the whole back piece of that turquoise bit there you see so you may not want to you may want to have a frame like this so once we get to that you'll see what I mean but I've cut mine so that it is the full size so this is three by five if you want to drop it down then you'll want to do it would be the size to keep it all with the same board so it'd be two and three quarters by four and three quarters and then do your kind of mat or your layers you know coming down the same but that's what I've done there and then the one on top of that was would be the one that I said to do before so four and three quarters by two and three quarters is that pink polka dot and then this is just one of the pieces that I cut from the paper pack and again like I said with my own flowers I've also popped it on some foam adhesive so this one in here is lifted and to the same width of the peg and again it just gave it some nice dimension I've done the same with that piece there you can see it's just got some foam dimensions again just just gives it a little something okay so that's everything there so now let's go back to the main piece here now first of all so with your card facing upright because even you know all cardstocks have a front and a back if you're not too sure and they look the same then it doesn't matter but what you want to do is flip it over first and you want to score at three and nine along the 12 inch side okay then flip it back rotate it and with a ruler you want to do a score line at two inches between those two score lines that we just done so just line it up at two inches and make sure that it hits two inches down the very bottom here okay your ruler's got to be completely lined up and then just find the kind of track and you'll be able to just score I've already done it so I just want to make sure I'm falling yeah there we go and you're just scoring within that three and nine inch score line that you done before and then you're going to come along and score it five again in between that three and nine inch score line like so I just bring it up so you can see there there's those two score lines that I've just done between they get a bit better between this is my three inch and that's my nine and then there's that score line it just runs in between okay then flip it back round again so you're back along the 12 inch side and you then want to score it five just down to the first score line seven just down to the first score line and then rotate the card stock all the way around so those two little score lines you've just done are at the bottom and do again five down to the first score line and seven down to the first score line okay so all of your scoring should be done on the top apart from when we flipped over at the beginning your three and nine should be done the other way and that will just help you prevent any cracking so we're going to be folding it two different ways but now you can kind of see how the card's coming together so this is our left panel if I lie this one down here in front you can see what we've got so this panel is there and that panel and then our three squares are these three squares and then this piece here is this larger panel but we're actually going to trim it down a little bit and that's so that we allow it to fit in this size envelope otherwise you may like it bigger and if you're happy to make your own envelopes then that's fine I'm just whacking something over there okay so get rid of the scoreboard and then you want to grab a cutting knife and we're going to cut some bits inside so first of all what you want to do is we're going to cut here we've got our large rectangle in the middle we want to cut from the corner of the rectangle down to the bottom okay so just from here down to here and then here down to here do not cut all the way down this line otherwise the card will just fall apart so just with my ruler I'm going to try and cut out the score line as such because then we're going to be trimming this away even more in a minute but I'm now just going along there just cutting if I just bring that up you can see where I've just cut through there okay so again I'm going to go along that I'm going to rotate it around because I can see the score line better when I've got the ruler on my left and then again very neatly just cut that down okay then what you want to do is from the top left so where we've already now got a cut we're going to continue that cut along to the bottom of the middle square so there's your three squares the middle square the bottom left of that is where you're cutting to just to there then we're going to start our cutting again from the bottom right of that middle square to join that cut that we've done there before so let me go ahead and do it because once you see what you're then creating it will make obviously a lot more sense to you so again I'm kind of keeping above the score line just so it joins up with that cut before I may need to see to help it along a little bit okay so you can see now what I've done cut that piece out and then again I'm just going to join up and there's that piece there okay so again if I just bring that up so you can see I've gone from the top of the rectangle where we'd cut anyway and I've just gone to the bottom left and the bottom right of that inside square so I've not touched this piece here and rotate the whole thing around and you're going to do exactly the same again so again I'm going to cut this one so and then this one here now we've got this whole piece removed now we're going to start doing some folding and then we're going to go and trim this because I'll explain why because like I said some of you may want to choose to keep it there now because of the way that we folded this these first score lines here you're going to fold up okay like so then these ones are going to go down so your first score lines were valleys the next score lines are going to be mountains then a mountain again and then the last one will be a valley okay so there's your valley mountain mountain valley all right now when I fold this down so that one will go behind and then that one over the top all the other way around it doesn't matter you can see you have this style now if you measure that the width of this at the minute is six by seven you would have to make your own envelope because in the UK we don't have six by seven envelopes we have five by seven so what I've done to make that work for me is I've just taken half an inch off of each side of this piece here so for example I'm just going to come in here and I'm just going to pop a little cut line there and again at the bottom a little cut line and then I'm just going to join that up with my ruler and cut it now if you don't want to and you actually want it nice and big and you're happy to make your own envelope using the punch board or just by hand then by all means go for it it you know it still looks great but I'm just going to cut my down a little bit just so that I can use all of my pre-made envelopes again just do that one okay so that is the card I think it looks so nice now when I bring it out can you see where we've removed those half inch kind of little tabs but hopefully now all makes sense and that was pretty straightforward to do I try and you know break it down keep it as simple as I can so now it's just the fun part of decorating it with all of those pieces that I told you to cut out so that one's going to go on last so for example you are going to have one of these here and then I've got my ones here which I haven't done yet because I kept these so I could go through the measurements but I'm going to add those ones to that side then I've got my six squares again if I just lie this down I can kind of then see how it's all going to come together I love this cerise pink it looks just so vibrant against that silver and then this is the one again that I just need to build up because that was the one I gave earlier for the measurements and then this piece covers that whole middle square may need to trim it a little bit because I've got a little bit of score line showing there but I can trim that down but that's how the card is going to finally look and then I just need to stick those two on the reverse of here so I'm going to go and get that all stuck down okay so I've stuck down all my mats and layers there it just looks so and I love the way that that mirrored card to stop just shines it really does change your look of your cards um so yeah so remember I said when I popped that bit on the the cerise pink was kind of showing from underneath all I've done is I've just gone in from the sides here and see I've just taken very small little wedges off so I've just popped my ruler down at an angle wherever such a slight so there it is straight just bring it at a little angle and just with your cutting knife just you know meet up again with the same you know with that score line there just make sure you don't cut over if I just bring it up can you just see where it's just ever so slightly as little wedges taken out and that just means now when that sits over the top none of the pink underneath kind of you know shows through so I'm now going to just pop the last of my glue on this bit here and then just pop that one over the top and there you have it bring this one up so now you just fold that in look at that isn't that gorgeous against just so it stands up however you want whether you want it like that like that like that I just absolutely love this style and then depends you want to fold that one over or that one it really doesn't matter but even when it folds down flat I think it just looks really lovely to that person when they open up the card um open the envelope and again there's my five by seven envelope already for that to fit in and I just love them so that's using the silver with the forever free and this is using the rose gold with again the forever free and um yeah I think they both look stunning I love them love love love so there you have it two really beautiful in my opinion I think very beautiful cards so I hope you've enjoyed it too if you have please give me a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel so you get to see more thanks for watching bye


And as Nigerians also in the new year 2024, the presiding Bishop of Redeemed Evangelical Mission, Trim, Mike Okonkwa, has charged them to focus on God as he is the only hope to survive the challenges plaguing the nation. Bishop Okonkwa will gave this charge during the crossover service in Lagos, says the hope of the country does not in the hands of the leaders as the issues are not peculiar to just Nigeria. Justina Khadani brings us details. The auditorium lights up with dancing and thanksgiving. The faithful are grateful for the year 2023, despite the huge turmoil they went through. Just before the dawn of the new year, they pray fervently, hoping for a fresh start. The presiding Bishop, Mike Okonkwa, then takes to the podium as he makes prophetic declaration for members and indeed the nation. So as the countdown begins, 2024 saunters in a legibulation by the congregants. Bishop Mike Okonkwa declines it the year of great and mighty things. He explains further the reason behind the prophetic word. Specifically, that they come in here, we should expect great and mighty things in different areas of our lives, in our career, in our profession, in ministry, in family, in our health, in different aspects. Indeed, the outgun year could not have come with lots of hardship and difficulties for countries of the world. The man of God shares some insight on what to expect in the new year. The fall is not going to offer any person any good. I can tell you that without fear of contradiction. If you are expecting any good, you are wasting your time. Your only hope now is to focus on Jesus.  You will see challenges the way you have never seen before. With great expectations in hope for themselves and the country, the congregants are speaking with high spirits. There's no gain without pain. And the new hope of the present administration, to me, is a process and not a magic. So the Nigeria has to be hopeful that this new year, 2024, Nigeria will prosper us. It's a work in progress and I'm sure and I'm certain that things will be good. The year 24 for me has a year of great difference. And what I wish and expect, I want God's word to really work in my life. And for Nigeria as a whole, I want a world-structured country and God's plan to really come to stay. The service so far has been great. That's our papa, our daddy, our big daddy. Has impacted a lot of knowledge into us in order to go about this future. And we hope that the Lord will lead us and direct us and keep on blessing us to survive and to keep on going years upon years. So in the wake of the new year, having prayed and given thanks, the faithful are hopeful of a civil lighting after a challenging 2023. Justin Akadone posted in his Legos. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.