Okay, is it working yet? It's gotta be working yet. Okay, today, I just decided to put this on while I'm cooking. Usually, you know, I wanna do these lives around five o'clock and I'm either trying to eat, cook it in and I end up doing it at a different time, but today, I'm just cooking while I'm doing it. All right, so what I've got so far is a pan with some dead cow in it. I'm gonna go put that back on the stove and I'll be right back. Right, when he doesn't know, my stove is outside and it's a, let's see. I cook on a rocket stove. So here, let me, let me just go show you that for a second. You have to excuse, things might get a little tickly while I'm moving for a second here. Turn camera around. All right, so here's my rocket stove. Ignore my plants that I'm trying to start there and these tiles that were left over. This is just stuff. Anyway, here's my stove and it's got some fire going on. Yup, I have to do this all slowly so it doesn't get too pixely, right? Yeah, this is the stove I made a little while ago in a video, it's working great. Duff those guys in.  I can't remember what this thing right here is, but it's something good. Okay, sizzling away. Now what do I want to do with some, some dead cow? You know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking sloppy joes, sloppy ones. I know you kids like them extra sloppy. So I think that's what I'm gonna do. And I've got bread dough I made this morning. Oh, look at that. This is sourdough with lots of coconut in it. It's probably, probably half coconut, half flour and then, you know, sourdough. So that's where it gets the puffiness from. No store-bought yeast for me. Just, man, sourdough is like the easiest bread to make in my opinion. I like it, anyway. Okay, so I think I'm gonna do sloppy joes. That means I should open some kind of tomato sauce. And I'm just opening some can of tomato sauce. I clearly don't have time to boil a bunch of tomatoes down. I also don't have sufficient tomatoes for that or any tomatoes at the moment. So yeah, we're just gonna open the can of tomato sauce. And this one says four cheese, but I've not noticed any significant difference between any of the tomato sauces, even though they claim they have different flavors. It's like, there's a mushroom one and a four cheese one and a traditional, I don't know, they're like basically all the same. Okay, can of tomato sauce open. What else do I wanna put in here? Some garlic. Let's see. We had a couple, a couple little garlics. I want more than that, though. I want some nice and garlicky, oh, this sounds, not going on any dates tonight. I don't need to kiss anybody. So let's put four little bulbs, not bulbs, four little cloves of garlic. Wait, that one's really small, let's put five. Okay, that's good.  Anyway, when I do my garlic, I do the squish it technique and then cut off the ends. And then, because it's been squished, the peel comes off real easy, which is nice. And I don't know what my internet signal is like today. Hopefully it's good because I'm trying to show things here, but I don't know, it comes and goes. Usually it's pretty good, though. But I know the signal can't handle a lot of movement. Still, we're doing what we're doing. And let's see how it goes. Okay, let's get some garlics cut up. Just getting the squishing and getting the shells off the other two, the last two, oh no, the other three. Now, something I've learned about garlic and I presume this is true because the internet told me and when is the internet ever wrong, right? But supposedly, to get the garlic to have good antibacterial properties, it's best to crush the garlic first because the garlic reacts with other parts of the garlic.  It's kind of like those epoxy things where you have to squish it to get the one part of the epoxy to mix with the other part. Yeah, supposedly, garlic's like that. You have to squish it, not just chop it up. So, squished it and now I'm chopping it up in the little bits. Oh yeah, good stuff there. And I could put that, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna put the sauce right in because I don't really want to... Let me just check how this is doing. Oh man, that looks good. Oh, look at that stuff right there. Oh, some good looking stuff right there. And it's got a lot of oil. Almost enough to make popcorn. Now I'm torn. Do I make popcorn with the beefy oil or do I just leave it in there? Either way, I'm definitely eating it. Whenever I cook with meat, animal parts, I always eat all the fat. And I've been told many times when I was young that if you eat the fat, you get fat, but I've not found that to be the case. Because I get tons of fat now. Mostly because, like I just want the calories. Like my economy here is based on calories mostly. All right, garlic's going in. Let's see what we got here so far. Yeah, lighting is terrible in here. Oh, let's move over a bit. Okay, tomato sauce, some dead cow, some garlic. And I'm going to put that back on the stove. I'll be right back. What else do I want in there? I actually made the same thing yesterday. I had sloppy joes yesterday with my kids. And while I was eating it, I was commenting that these would be amazing with some hot sauce, but I never make hot stuff with my kids, of course. And someone sent me this. This is like a year ago or something. I don't know, I've had this for a while. This is my favorite hot sauce. And someone sent me this. So whoever sent me this, super thank you. I'm going to go dump a big old squirt of this in. And the way I do this is, instead of pouring some into a smaller container so that I can dole it out carefully, I just poke a little hole in the safety seal, whatever it is, the sanitary seal. I don't know, poke a little hole. So when I go, it's just a little squirt comes out. So let me put some of this in there. Oh, and I just licked off the lid. Oh man, that stuff's good. This is my favorite hot sauce, totally. You know what? I think I'm also going to put a splash of vinagre. Vinagre vinegar. All right, let me put a tiny bit of vinegar in here. And what else? Oops. Okay, in my garden, I actually have two leafy things that I'm going to put in this here, sloppy joemix. And first one I'm going to go get is oregano, which is just outside right there. So let me grab that. Two oregano leaves. Oh, I'm just good looking leaves, man, look at this. Too bad I'm like lighting is all wrong here. Which direction is better? This way? Maybe that way is a little better. Or is it better this way? Oh, I don't know, somewhere. Anyway, there's my oregano leaves. I'm going to chop them up into little bits. So nice, let me go throw that in and I'll be right back.  I say both depending on what I feel like. Okay, the next leafy thing that I want to put in here, I just got to turn back this way a bit. The next leafy thing I want to put in is katuk, which is this, as far as I know, it wasn't native to here. Someone brought it and has been passing it around.  And it has leaves that are supposed to be really good for you, like spinachy kind of leaves. Although they don't taste as good as spinach, but they're supposed to be really good for you. So I put them on like everything. So right outside this window here, let's just, let's show you real quick. This plant right here is katuk. It also has these little berries, these things, and they taste like sugar snap peas. They're kind of good. So let me grab some of those. Sorry, pixely, pixely.  I'll be right back. Hand full of leaves. And it's easy to get these, because you just, where'd it go? I'll find it like four weeks from now. Anyway, the leaves grow in this little, little twiggy stem that's pretty strong.  So, you know, if I'm gonna do cooking anymore, I totally wasn't planning to do this, but I was like, I gotta make dinner now. And I wanna do this thing now, because I don't like waiting until it gets dark, because it's just nice to do it when the light's still out. Anyway, if I'm gonna do cooking more often, I need to make this thing a mount so we can actually aim down so I can show all the stuff I'm cutting, you know? Not for the day or anything particularly special about it. I'm just cutting the stuff up on a cutting board. And the cutting board I made out of a piece of tree, which is kind of the same. So let me show you that real quick. This was actually in the Adventure Builder movie. I made this cutting board, but you might not have seen, again, the lighting is terrible in here right now. It's evening and the light is coming from the wrong direction. But anyway, this cutting board is much more colorful in real life. And I made it out of, I think, a Myo Rojo, Mahogany, that's what it is. It's a Mahogany. Yeah, they have different names for this stuff here. Myo Rojo is the local name for Mahogany. But I cut it out of a tree with a chainsaw, cut it up into, you know, boards with a chainsaw, and then used a hand planer to smooth it all out. Yeah, that parts all in the Adventure Builder movie. Okay, I'm gonna throw these here leaves into my sloppy stuff over here. I'll be right back.  Oh, there was, there was one other thing put in there. So before I started recording, I had this big lemon, it's like the size of a softball. And I put half the, you know, I squeezed it into here with lemon juice in here now. Whoa, yeah, that's lemon juice. Man, that is strong. Anyway, I put half of it on the meat while it was cooking before I put the tomato stuff in there. So now, I think that would be it. Yeah, there's nothing else I need to put in there. Got some hot sauce and oregano and some, yeah, I think it's gonna be delicious. Once that's done simmering, then I'll put my bread on. And I just cook my bread in a pan or a pot just on the stove.  And it depends how hot the fire is. If the fire is like kind of too hot for the bread, then I'll flip it a lot so it doesn't get burned on one side. But if the fire is kind of, you know, low key, then I'll just put it on there, leave it for like 20 minutes and flip it once and then cook it on the other side. This fire is kind of blazing right now, but it looks like it's gonna be calming down in a minute. Here, I'll show you the, I'll show you my stuff that I'm cooking, what it looks like as it's going. All right, that's what I'm working with right now. I guess I should mix that in. Oh, I guess if I put the lid down, I can actually do that. You know what, I might wanna put some cheese powder in this because there's only like one hamburger worth of meat in here. So it's not really gonna get as thick as would be ideal for sloppy joes. Although, I mean, it'll just be extra sloppy. So maybe I'll just leave it. Only if I put some cheese powder in there or thicken it up a bit, but I think I'm gonna leave it. I'll leave the pot lid off a little bit so the steam can get out easily. So it will thicken up a bit on its own. Ah, so I'm just gonna let that, let that do its thing for, I don't know, a few minutes. It's basically done now, but let's see how it's going. All right, let's see what comments are going on here while I'm letting that, what do you call it? Simmer, I'm letting that simmer before I get to the bread. Ronald C., first. Hi, silly goofball. Terry's happens. Hi, Jamie, you the best. Well, thanks, man. Is that snot bacon? I am actually not cooking snot bacon, but if anyone doesn't know what snot bacon is, snot bacon is basically when you cook anything that you're basically using as bacon. So maybe some fried ham or some thinly sliced baloney or anything, just a piece of meat that you cut thin and then fry so it's kind of like bacon, like fake bacon. And I call it snot bacon. And I call it snot bacon so that people, and this does happen occasionally, it doesn't happen graphically, but once in a while, someone will say, snot bacon, what's that? And then I get to say, well, snot bacon. Well, it's funny to me. My kids think it's hilarious too. Nepsie says, what you, Jamie? I don't know, what me, Jamie? How's it going, Tony? Crazy films. Hello, okay. Closest star to us is Proxima Centauri. I see. Did I say anything about stars? Speaking of stars, okay. So there's this, do I have time to say this right now? Let me just, let me just check on my food for a second. It looks fine though. Oh yeah, it's doing totally good. So, you know, there's all these debates about why they're like civilizations all over the place. Like, is there some kind of barrier between like our current civilization and colonizing the galaxy that we're not aware of? Like some kind of thing that stops races from colonizing everything, right? And what's it called, the great filter? Yeah, there's things called the great filter, I think is what they're calling it. And I can think of a great filter that we've not gotten through yet that we're actually kind of stuck in. And I mentioned this once in a while, you know. So we've got these civilizations that grow and then collapse and grow and collapse and grow and collapse. And this has been going on for a long time, right? Civilizations grow, they get amazing.  So nothing really matters and whatever. And things start falling apart and people are like, ah, but life's pretty easy because they haven't lived in those previous generations when life was hard and you had to build a place. So what happens is, you know, life or the civilization falls apart, right? This happens over and over and over. So how do you break that cycle? I think to really become a long-term species, we gotta break that cycle somehow, right? Or else, you know, just as we're getting started, like getting doing some really cool stuff we're just collapsing again, right? So the way I think about it is, I mean, there are plenty of ways you could theoretically beat this cycle. But the one that I like is to keep a focus on individuals. And that basically means getting rid of the idea of rulers and slaves, like masters and slaves, just getting rid of that whole hierarchy, just sticking with individuals. And it's maybe harder to do certain things in that scenario where people are being individuals. I mean, right now our society, if you took our society and said, no one's in charge of anything, I mean, the whole thing would just explode overnight because most people have become so accustomed to doing whatever they're told, not thinking with themselves, just being slaves that it wouldn't work. But if you're in a society where things have collapsed and you're trying to build things back up and no one's in charge, because everything's a mess, no one, you know, individuals start building things back up. And then as things get going and life gets easier, not so savory people start becoming in charge of things and taking leadership by force, not having authority, rather than people just acting as individuals and any leadership that comes up is because those individuals see that person as someone worth following. And the moment they're not worth following anymore, there's nothing to tie them into that requiring them to follow that person. It's like, okay, once that person is not doing a good job as a leader, now we just find another leader or do our own thing or something. But once you have a situation where one person can rule another person, it just brings all kinds of problems into the world. So if we could, this is like a fantasy for me, but if we could evolve to a point where we are so resistant to the idea of being ruled that no one can have authority over us, it would prevent, I mean, wars, like how many wars, like all the big wars are because some leader decides we're doing this and then all these people are like, all right, I guess we're doing that. And like so many bad things happen because one person can tell a million other people what to do. Some good things happen too, but over time it ends up getting worse and worse and worse and worse because when you have that kind of power, it attracts the worst kind of people. So if we, I think we could get through this, the great filter to become a better space-faring civilization and exist long into the future by getting rid of authority entirely, which makes me, what is it called? I have a problem with authority. Yeah, I do have a problem with authority, which did not go well when I was in school or any time I deal with authority, but whatever, I think authority is something we don't need, is actually really destructive in the long run. I think I'm gonna cook my bread in my popcorn pot and all my pots are black on the bottom because I cook on a fire and I just don't wash the outside, but I wash the inside. So let me put this pot on, it has a little bit of water on it actually. So let me put it on and just dry it out. I'll be right back, I'll be right back. Oh man, that like exes. So here's my sloppy Joe mess.  Man, it's got hot sauce in it. I don't usually have hot sauce. Let me dry out this little bit a little bit. All right, what else do I need? I need to check my fire and turn it into a bread cooking fire, which means kind of a low level fire, not too hot. All right, letting my big pot heat up for a few minutes and then I can put my bread in. Well, I'll put a little bit of oil in there first. All right, let's see that last comment, I really went off them. You know what, I'm gonna move this steaming pan away from the tablet, just in case, I don't know. Let's see, where are we? Proxima Centauri. Yeah, I don't have Starlink. Jamie Van Zandt, the Dutch American wonder. What is that? I don't know who Jamie Van Zandt is. What are you saying? I don't know what you're saying to me. Are you just saying like weird random things? How often do I visit the city, like a city? Well, there's a town that I visit, I wouldn't call it a city. There's a town that I visit, I don't know, a couple times a month maybe. But the last time I was in like a city, like a major city, I don't know, years ago. I don't really like being in cities. It's too crowded and noisy, and there's cars everywhere, and air smells terrible. Yeah, I like to have space and fresh air. So yeah, I don't spend much time in cities. I haven't been to one in quite a while. Streaming is good here in D.C. Excellent, and eat it raw. Okay, this is your, okay, Terry Zaban. Are you just a weirdo just being weird? Or you're answering, you're responding to things as I'm saying it, aren't you? That's what's going on. Okay, Ronald C. says, yeah, gotta extract the essential oil. Is that with the garlic? That's why you squish it to get the essential oil and stuff. I don't know. Garlic killed my COVID when I caught it. Well, that's beautiful. Oh my God, I do that too. Any news on the dragon scales, roof tiles? No, I haven't done anything. I haven't done anything with the roof in a while. I just didn't do another stuff. I don't know, the roof. Okay, so I was making good progress on the roof, and then I got enough of it done that I didn't really have any drips in any important places. So I got, you know, a little bit slack on it.   So then I didn't go up on the roof for a while. And now it's just been put aside for so long that I'm just doing other things. But at some point I will get to the roof and finish it. It's like half tiled. So I'll do the other half at, I don't know when, at some point. Looking buff there, Jamie. Well, thanks, man. I've been, you know, doing lots of work and stuff. Today I spent most of the day over in the jungle working on my camp. So I wanna build like a campground. And I'm thinking it should be like apocalypse camping. So, oh, hold on. Let me check my bread pot. It should be dried up by now. I just need to put a little squirt of oil in the pot and then put my bread in. Let me bring the pan in here. I will put the bread in here. Okay, so here's my bread that I made this morning. It's been rising all day. Here we go. And I think I'll put it dry side down just to make sure it doesn't stick. Okay, it's not sticking at all. That's good. Okay, so that's my bread. I'm just gonna put it on the fire for a while. Now, if I go more than 20 minutes without checking on my bread, someone will say something, but it should be fine. Wait, what was I talking about? Hold on, let me check the comments. Come on, come on, let's show up. Okay. Oh yeah, looking buff there, Jamie. Was that cutting jungle, clearing out some jungle for my campground? Yeah, I wanna make apocalypse camping.  I mean, I don't wanna be militant about it, but just be like, okay, we're here and the rest of the world doesn't matter and let's just enjoy days or a week or whatever in this place. And just totally be present, like you would be if there was an apocalypse and the rest of the world disappeared and then just have like an apocalyptic adventure. I think that would be kind of cool. And maybe I'll dress up as a zombie and run through the camp in the middle of the night. Well, maybe not. Well, maybe though. Anyway, so I'm working on this campground that I'm making and I wanna make some cabins and stuff. And I wanna have this ready for May of next year. And I've been, I mentioned this in the last few lives. I want to have an adventure builder meeting the week of May 3rd next year, 20, oh geez, 2024. This is 2023, right? I don't know. I think this is 2023. So this would be 2024, May 3rd. The week of May 3rd, I wanna have an adventure builder meeting so people could come and camp out for, I mean, any part of that week, the weekend, the whole week, whatever, and just hang out. And I used to have these adventure builder meetings once a year. It started, the first one was on my birthday. So it just became the tradition to, oh, someone just told me, yes, it is 2023. Thank you, Mr. Landfill. Anyway, so the first one of these adventure builder meetings was on my birthday. And that just became the tradition that is always on my birthday week.  And people came from like all over to these things. And I did one when I was in England. And a bunch of people showed up to that and there were some really cool people there too. And then I haven't done one in a while just because I haven't really had any place to host and stuff. But I decided a month ago or something, I wanna build this campground. And I was like, that would be a perfect place to have adventure builder meetings. And if I say I'm gonna do that next year, that'll give me a huge motivation to actually get it done next year. Let me just see, is this better here or up here? This is where I usually put this. I think that now the lighting's no better there. All right, let's just leave it where it was. Yeah, it's really cloudy right now and there's no light in here. I mean, there's light behind me. I'm always back lit in this house. Oh, and this morning I went running. So I've really been enjoying my running track. I made a video a few days ago, a week ago or whatever about just showing the running track I made. And it's maybe like a quarter mile long, like a standard outdoor running track length. It's not that far, but it's just really nice having a place that I can go running without having to go somewhere. So this morning I woke up, my kids were all still asleep. We got on my sandals and went outside and just ran six laps. Man, I felt great. It's not even that far or anything. It's probably a mile and a half-ish. With some hills and stuff, I got my heart rate up, did some work. Yeah, man, I used to run every morning five or 10 kilometers for a while. And then sometimes I do a marathon every morning. Well, there were two different time periods. I used to run track and field. So during the track season, I couldn't do anything crazy. But during the summer, I could wake up, run a marathon, then do some other exercise and eat a ton of food because I'm doing this. And then run another marathon in the afternoon. And I would just do it like the first time I did it, I was like, I'm just going to go out on a run. It's the end of the track season. I don't have to save anything or be ready for some big race or anything. I'm just going to wake up at like five in the morning. The sun's not even out yet. I'm just going to go running. Just have fun and just go running. And then an hour later or whatever, the sun starts coming up. I would just run for a few hours. Just chilling. And after doing that for a couple of weeks, I was like, hey, I'm basically running two marathons every day. That's crazy. And then I actually started measuring it. And I was like, wow, cool. And then I tried to actually make it two marathons every day, which was kind of silly. So I just made it one marathon every day. But anyway, throughout my life, I've done a lot, a lot of running. And a lot of it competitive, like in track meets and stuff. But always my favorite running was just like no competition, no fans. I'm just like out there, just me and the planet. Just running through the woods or something. I always love that. So yeah, I've been doing that mornings here. If it rains, it's a little muddy because there's no grass growing on the trail yet.  Oh, it feels great. It's really good. It's really good to wake up and do that. I always feel amazing. Like first thing in the morning, just get to feel amazing.  Because I just woke up and I'm all like, I'm all stiff. But yeah, by the end of the first lap, I'm like, yeah, man, I'm doing stuff. Yeah, anyway, where am I? Going to work. Just found out there is bus replacements. Rather be on an island like yours. There is bus replacements. Just found out there is bus replacements. I don't know. I would need some context of where you work to figure out what you're talking about. Yeah. Why do you think, why do I think, I try not to too often. OK, why do you think few people manage to do crazy things like building cathedrals as you did? Do you think few people are bold enough? Well, that is the basic gist of it. Like people aren't bold enough. Then the thing is, I was talking earlier about how civilizations, when things get easy, there's a lot of master's slave. Like people are just being told what to do all the time. And we end up just with a culture where people are so used to doing what they're told, it's habit. And to do something they want to do, or something from their imagination, or something unusual like that, it's a big step for people who've never done anything for themselves. And I grew up in the suburbs of Canada, Ontario, going to public school, being told what to do all the time, and just like, this is what you do. This is what life is. And this is you go through school, you do what you're told, you get your A's, then you go to work, and you get a good job, and you make the money, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm not entirely sure why I resisted that. I mean, I know what I was thinking and feeling, but I don't know why I resisted that so strongly when a lot of other people didn't. Like there's just something in me that's like, I don't want to be told, I want to do what I think. I want to figure things out. I don't just want to coast through life and do what I'm told. And I think there's got to be some genetic component to that. Like I just have some built-in, strong resistance to authority. And like my brothers and sisters, they're all doing normal things, kind of doing what's expected of them. So I don't know, it's hard to say why one person will do something and another person will do another thing. I do think that we've been bred over a long period of time to be obedient. I think that's a big part of our society. Hold on, I want to go check on my bread here. Bread, bread, not that kind of bread, the other kind of bread. Let me just flip this around and you guys can take a look too. All right, I hear a bit of sizzling. Maybe I'll get that in the middle of the pot. I think I want the pot a little bit hotter than that. Stuff another piece of wood in there. Oh, I got bored of it. There we go. Hopefully not too hot. I just have flames down here in the bottom though. There's no wood up in here. What I really want to blaze it up, like if I'm making popcorn or something, I'll drop a stick down in here and then it'll burn all the way up and then it gets really hot. So this should be fine for the bread. Let me just make sure those are in there. So yeah, I think probably, do I need to go get a light? All right, I'll go get a light, hold on. I think probably the world wars may have had a lot to do with people losing individuality. This is largely me talking out of my butt right now because I haven't really thought about this that much. I'm unprepared for the question. However, there were two world wars and there were a lot of people who wanted to fight for their freedom, who died in those wars. So a lot of those types of people got wiped out. And then, I mean, after two generations of going through world wars and just families being destroyed, I think a lot of our culture has become focused on just being safe. Like people are afraid, you know? Like when you grow up without parents, it's like growing up without safety. And I had this experience, like the home I grew up in, it was like living in a battlefield. Like always stressful, always, there was always anger and frustration. And this is what happens when homes are broken, families are broken. You don't have a pair of parents who are working together to try to make a good home and we don't have that. You end up with these homes that are like a battlefield. Like it's like you're constantly under the stress of attack and being screamed at and all this stuff. And it makes people just want to be safe. Like you just, you don't wanna do anything risky.  And I think a lot of that has to do with the way families have been destroyed. Now, to go back to your question, why did I choose to be a weirdo even with all that stuff, trying to force me into normality? I don't know, it's just the way it is. It's just like people are different. I totally think we need more weirdos though. But are you a weirdo? Are you doing weird things? Like things you wanna do for yourself and not just doing what you're told? Hi, bro. Looking good, Jamie, big fan. Thanks, man. For the bread, I'd recommend a campfire oven like Coleman sells. It's just a metal box with a grate in the middle. You can make one. I'd get you one if you want. My bread cooks pretty good. What I wanna do, let me just think for a second. Okay, just a metal box basically. Yeah, okay. Well, what I wanna do is make a brick oven, like a pizza oven. So yeah, when I do an oven, I'm just gonna wait till I have time and the motivation to do that. You know, one day I'm just gonna be like, damn it, I just wanna do this and then I'll do it. When it gets high enough in my priority list and high enough in my, I really want this list. But right now, I mean everything, I can cook everything and it's fine. Should I go check on my bread? Let me check on my bread. Just cause I beefed up the fire for a second there. Oh, man, that is looking good. Okay. Hey, get back here. I just flipped the bread and the bottom was looking golden brown and beautiful. So that's nice.  It's like, Joe's is usually a bun, but whatever. Mr. Landford says, yes, 2023. No wonder you are in such good shape. Yeah, well, yeah, when I was younger, I kind of got obsessed with exercise and that stuff, like, that sticks with you. Like for your whole life. Like that has effects that last. Like when you get into exercise, when you're young. And I got into exercise when I was really young. I remember when I was five, I would do, I still can't believe that this was a thing, but I would do a hundred pushups, like in one shot every night, and then a hundred sit-ups.  That's not a big deal, but a hundred push-ups. I can't do a hundred push-ups in a row without stopping now. Although I do much better push-ups now than I did then. My push-ups now are like knuckles go down till my chest hits and all the way back up. I think my five year old push-ups were pretty sloppy. And I also just weighed a lot less. So it was probably like, if I could do a few push-ups, it probably wasn't that much harder to do a lot because I just didn't weigh much. But anyway, yeah, I would do like a hundred push-ups and a hundred sit-ups every night. And I mean, part of it was just a way to deal with my own frustration and anger, you know, when I was a kid, you know, growing up in a broken home or whatever. And, you know, I had a lot of frustration and anger and I had to do something with it. And when I was really young, I got some fights and stuff. And then, well, one day, this was one of my favorite things. This is one of my favorite memories of something my mom did. One day after I got in a fight, oh my gosh, there's some mosquitoes on the screen. I got in a fight with some kid.   But I didn't realize that I was hurting this other kid because when you're a little kid and you're in a fight, at least for me, like I was very egocentric. I could just, I was just thinking about myself, you know. I was like, ah, he's still hitting me. That means I'm getting beat up, but I was hitting this kid a lot more.  But like, I'm not gonna knock someone out when I'm like 30 pound, well, I weighed more than that, like 30, 40 pound little scrawny kid, right? But anyway, apparently I beat this kid up, kind of bad. And after my mom sat me down in a chair and said, look, you have to understand, you don't realize how strong you are. You have to be careful. And it wasn't even that I was super strong.  I was very wiry, but just the fact that I wasn't aware of how strong I was, regardless of how strong I was, I wasn't aware of it. And I wasn't aware of how hard I was hitting this other kid. So my mom said that to me and she had just her voice and the way she looked at me. I was like, well, I better take this seriously. This is, she's being really serious. So instead of getting in fights with other kids, I just started doing a lot of exercise. So every night I would do all these push-ups and sit-ups. And then whenever we played hide and seek, I would hide in like the place where you had to run really far. And on the street where I grew up, we would play hide and seek and there was a fire hydrant, I think it was, that was home. And then there was like nothing over that. Like that end of the street, there was like no good hiding spots. So everyone always went that direction. So when the person started counting, I would just start running in, no, I would start running past everyone and then go around the block. It must have been like a kilometer and I would run the whole way around and then come back the way that no one would be hiding. And by the time I got back, the person who was it was like a way over here looking for people. And I would always do things like that where it was like, I loved running, like any excuse to like run. I love running, I still love running. And that was one of the hardest things about moving to an island was like, there's nowhere to run. So now I have this little running trail and it's amazing. But yeah, I've always been really into exercise and pushing myself. And one of the things I did for a lot of my life was I would wear heavy weights while running and climbing things and stuff like that. And I actually got up to 100 pounds and I could wear 100 pounds, which was two weight vests and like 10 pounds in each hand and 10 pounds on each foot. And I would run nine miles to a track, do a running workout there without my weights on. And then I would have run nine miles home. I did it every Wednesday for like a year. And I don't know, I just really like that challenge of doing that kind of stuff. And then it also has a lot of really good health effects.  The best way to inspire an adventure builder is to tell them they can't do something. Yeah, kind of. Yeah, actually, you know what? You know what I really love? I really love when one of my kids says, go pop a go. And that came from when my first daughter was really little and she would watch me run. She would say go pop a go. And now every once in a while she still says it. She's like 13. And last week she said, go pop a go. And I was like, yeah, I'm just gonna do it. That was great. 10 minutes since Britain. That was a while ago. Should I check the bread again? All right, I'm gonna check the bread again. Let me see how it's going here. You can eat a little bit more bread. All right, bread's looking good. Still has some cooking to do. For anyone who missed it, at the beginning of this I was cooking and I've got sloppy joes made except for the bread. The bread's still cooking. Me sort of, oh, this is about the question about doing, you know, what... He asked, Jamie, what is it about you that makes you do things, like weird things when most people won't, you know, most people just kind of do what they're expected.  And he says, me sort of, but not fully yet, I would say, but I intend to, dude, do it. You know, life is short.  Like think about how old you are now. Like that whole thing up to how old you are now, just, it just went by. Like it just happened so fast, right? Like I'm 48 and it's like, it all just, here I am.  So don't waste your days. You know, don't... I'm not saying rush into things that don't make sense. But like if you wanna do something, work toward it. Don't wait for another day. And, you know, whenever I say this kind of thing, someone always says, well, I can't just drop everything I'm doing and move to the woods. No, that's not how it works. Like you have to work for it first. Like I didn't just get to move to the woods. Like I had to save a bunch of money and, you know, make sure I was in good shape and do some planning and all this stuff before I could do that. But I worked on it and worked on it and worked on it and didn't waste time and then I could do it, you know?  I mean, the life of a human is not that long. Like we're all gonna die. And when you're about to die, this is something I remind myself a lot of.     And then come back and realize, I'm here now. Now I can do it. I haven't missed it yet. You know, now I still have life left. I can do whatever I wanna do, whatever you wanna do.  Don't let them slip away. Don't let them fade. You know, here's the thing. Here's the thing about chasing a dream. If a lot of people are afraid of chasing a dream and not catching it, right? But that's fine. If you put in your best effort and you tried to do something and you didn't make it, you're gonna be fine with that. You're gonna get to your death bed and say, I try. I gave it a try. I gave it a real shot, you know? Like what else could I do? But if you don't try at all, you're just gonna be like, well, I didn't really do anything. Because the thing is, if you chase a dream, even if you don't catch that dream, you're chasing, all kinds of other stuff is gonna happen because you're inspired and working hard and you'll end up doing things you would not otherwise do and your life will get interesting. So if you have some kind of dream you wanna chase, just totally start chasing it, whatever you gotta do.  But if there are weird, unusual things, like things that you would not normally do, those are gonna lead to stories you're gonna be able to tell your grandchildren and it's gonna make your life more interesting. So don't wait. Let's see, where am I? I get overwhelmed with the list of things to do and freeze and do nothing. Ever get that way, I totally know what you mean. Usually for me, that happens when I don't have a list and there's just a lot of things that I'm working on and living off grid, there's always a lot of things to do and I'll have like certain projects that I'm working on in sunny weather and then rainy weather things and then like cloudy weather things and then indoor things and I'll end up having so many different projects. Like I'll think, okay, what should I do today? And I can't remember any of the stuff. I'm just like, what have I been doing? I don't know.  But then I start writing it down and I'm like, oh, okay, it's not that much stuff. I'm like, I got this and this and this and this and this and like these eight things that I'm working on. And it'll be like, all right, let me just prioritize and what's the priority right now? Like what's the best thing I can work on given the current weather conditions and whatever resources are available. And then once I think about that, I don't get stuck. So I don't know how your freezes go, but if you've got that list, just look at your list of things to do and figure out which is the highest priority. Maybe even number them. A lot of times I'll do that. I'll number this stuff. And as I'm numbering them, I'll be like, wait, wait, no, that's not the right number. This one goes there. But after a minute or so, I've got them lined up in some kind of priority list where I've got like one or two things that are the high priority. And I'm like, all right, just pick one of those and start going. And just don't give yourself enough time to start thinking about why you shouldn't. Just to start, you know? And some of my most productive days have been when there's a project I need to work on, but I'm not even sure what I'm gonna do.  And you know, I'll be like, well, what can I do? Well, you know, fix this little thing here. And oh, I gotta paint that. So just do that little thing real quick.  And it's just, you know, just sometimes just kind of gotta work into it. And then you get sucked in and it's like, wow, now I'm going. That's how I get out of those frozen spots. Hey, buddy, what's cooking? I am making sloppy Joe's today. And right now the bread is cooking. And I'm gonna go check on it again. Hold on. Sorry, I just signed a light right in your face. Oh, it's looking not too bad. It's pretty good. I might have to relight the fire. It's getting a little bit low. That happens when I don't pay attention to it. Yeah, all right. What's cooking? Thanks for the reminder, by the way. Hey, Jamie, personal question. Oh, how and why did you start filming things in your life? Okay. Actually, before I even started doing videos, this was back in the dinosaur days of the internet when videos weren't even an online thing yet. This was before YouTube started. I had a website where I was just showing things that I built and just sharing things I was working on.  I wanna do that again. And I showed some pictures from some track meets and stuff like that. And then when I first moved off grid in Vermont, I was doing everything in pictures, just putting stuff on the website. And the reason I was sharing it was because when I was a kid, I always wished there was something I could watch about building. I loved the cartoon, like Thundercats and GeForce. But the problem is all those shows, they were exciting and fun, but it was all just about fighting and destroying things. And I was always interested in building things. And there were no building stuff shows or maybe there were, but they weren't very good. So I was like, I wanna share stuff I'm building because maybe some other kid who's younger will see what I'm doing and be inspired to build their own stuff. Because one of the big barriers in my early life between doing kind of what was expected to me and doing the things I really wanted to do was that I had no examples of what I really wanted to do. Like I wanted to be an inventor and make stuff and adventure and do the things that I wanted to do, not just what I was told. And it was such a foreign concept that it was hard to start doing that. And at the beginning of my life, like when I was like five up to high school or something, I was always building these little inventions in my room by myself and no one ever saw them. Except in high school, one of my physics teacher, Mr. D, I don't remember what his full name was, but Mr. D, he got in some conversation with me about what I do, because I was really interested in physics and he was a physics teacher. And he's like, where are you learning all this stuff where you understand a lot of the stuff before I've taught you? Where are you getting this physics understanding?  And so he started interrogating me about the things I built. And I brought in a couple of my little robotty things and he was really interested and got me to go to some science and technology fair and show them there. And I won 400 bucks and some, I don't know, I won some $400 prize, which, you know, when I was in high school, I was a lot of money, which is pretty sweet. And, you know, he kind of got me to show them some. And that was the first time I really shared any of my building stuff because my high school teacher bugged me into doing it, but it was kind of cool. And, you know, I was always doing this stuff by myself, not sharing it with anyone, because anytime I told people what I was trying to do when I was younger, they'd say, you can't do that.  So I learned very quickly, don't tell anyone, just keep it to myself, build my weird things and just do my own thing. So when I got a little older and, you know, I was building these things and, you know, good things were coming of it, I was like, I should share this with people so that a kid who's like me, who thought he was just a weirdo and getting crapped on all the time for building these weird things, you know, maybe some other kid will see what I'm doing and be like, hey, that guy's not doing too bad and he's doing his own thing. You know, maybe I can start following some of my own ideas. And I think it's worked.  There's a whole bunch of things I did that you kind of encouraged me to do. So thank you, you know. I love, that's my favorite feedback to get. Just like people who are like, you know, Jamie, you made it easier for me to be weird, for me to follow my own ideas. You know, that's my favorite feedback to get from people. And I get that sometimes. It's really awesome. Let's see. I may be mistaken, but I think lignum vitae, strongest wood, is a mangrove tree. Really? The stuff you've been milling and carving into handles looks super dense and hard. I wonder if you have any lignum vitae. I don't think that's a mangrove tree, though. Lignum vitae is this really, really super dense hardware they used to use for like, boat, what's it called? Like the sleeve that your propeller shaft would go through because it wouldn't wear out because this wood was so dense and hard. But it's hard to find now. If it was mangroves, I mean, those things grow everywhere. It wouldn't be hard to find at all. But I don't actually know that much about it. So I don't know, maybe. Hey, Al, around you. Oh, do I move? Okay. Such a cool wood used for machine parts, self lubricating to a degree, nice tone and aroma. I've made chisel mallets out of it and messed around with turning it on a lathe. Wow. What's the follow up verdict to linen as a material? Oh, linen. Okay, so a while ago, I got some linen and I'd heard that linen was like much stronger than cotton and linen is, oh, crap, what's it? It's someone, someone put the comment here. What kind of plant it's from? I can't remember now. Anyway, why can't I remember that? Anyway, linen is, it's a different fiber than cotton. And although if you buy like linen sheets, it'll be cotton. But if you buy actual linen sheets, it will be a different fiber from a different plant. But linen is supposed to be a lot stronger and cooler. And I made a linen shirt. I have it right over here. Hold on, let me grab it. Oh, it ran in my face. Let me just shake it out, make sure there's no scorpions in it. I always shake out my clothes and boots. Anyway, I made this shirt out of linen and I like it a lot. I really like the linen. It's like, like I've, I've not been gentle with this shirt at all. I've been actually very rough with it. I'm, you know, gone digging into mine, you know, running through the jungle and stuff. It's real dark colors. You can't see it that well. But like, you know, the cloth is, it looks pretty much exactly the same as when I, when I started using it. It's got this little pattern. Yeah, the, the cloth is like kind of rough. Like it's got a texture to it. So that was, that was there when I started. But it's also cool. Like it's definitely significantly cooler wearing this than, than a cotton shirt. Yeah, I'm, I really love the linen. I like it a lot. I might have to make some more linen shirts. And one of the linens I got is like, is like an old school tablecloth pattern.  So it's totally like a kitchen, kitchen tablecloth pattern, like the old kinds. So I might have to make a shirt out of that because I think it'd be kind of funny and cool. Let me put this back. And then maybe I could use that dark, that dark color to put some accents on and stuff. I know, I don't have time for all this stuff. But yeah, I really like the linen. It's, it's definitely holding up extremely well. Like that shirt still looks brand new. And it's definitely not brand new. I've been really rough on it. Let's see, definitely no, right. It's dark out. It is dark out. Yes, it's very dark out now. Is there any way, you know, actually, it's kind of funny. I don't think about this anymore because I'm used to it. But when you live in a city, you don't know what real darkness is. Like, like it is dark. Like out in the wilderness it is, there's no street lights or anything. Although right now I'd say it's not even that dark. I can still see a bit of sky through the window. But like if you've never experienced like real darkness, it's kind of a cool thing. Like to just be out in the woods in the middle of a moonless night, it is dark. Like you don't know how dark, dark can get until you go like this and you can't see your hand.  It's kind of cool. But anyway, yeah, it's dark out now. It's, the sun has gone down. Is there any way to use a biodigester gas as a light source? I think, I think you could, yeah. And is that even an interesting idea? Maybe not worth the trouble. I think you could totally do it, yeah. I don't know, maybe it's worth doing. The thing with light though is like, this is what I'm using right now, I can't see it. This is what I'm using right now. It's just like a tool light and it's so easy. I just charged the light, the battery and the thing lasts days. So electric light is so easy to do now that, yeah, it kind of makes gas light obsolete.  Maybe, maybe gas light will come back. Mr. Landfill says, thumbs up everyone. He's always given everyone thumbs up about why filming self, such a beautiful motive. Thanks for sharing. I love your videos. Well, thanks man.  That wouldn't make any sense. I would feel like, I don't know, I'd feel like a schmuck. I'd feel like a schmuck even more than I do anyway. I also do, I also do like acting a lot. Like, yeah, I like acting. It's a really fun thing. And I think if circumstances had been different, I think acting is definitely one of the avenues I might have pursued.  And you know, when I did my movie, I got to do a bit of acting. But like, you know, I could definitely see myself going like serious actor direction. But, you know, I'm doing this instead. Garbage picking is my favorite. Oh, maybe I should just do some serious acting, start seriously acting on here. Anyway, garbage picking is my favorite inspiration. I'll find something I have no interest in, yet it's in such good shape. I'll take it sooner or later. I'll experiment with what I find and learn why it's cool. That's sweet. Okay, Manson says bearings. What, what about bearings? Oh, linen is flax, right. So linen, you know, that shirt I was just wearing is made out of flax. Thank you. I don't know what your question is about bearings. I need some more, more information. But speaking of bearings, I started making a, what's it called, conveyor belt. And, you know, I'm videoing it and I just started. I just got like a little bit of it put together yesterday, just enough to get to the point where I'm like, yeah, I think I want to make this. But anyway, I'm making a video of it. So I want to make a conveyor belt. So I can, so I can just move things like, you know, a few meters, like three meters, like 10 feet. Cause I have spent a lot of time unloading things from boats or loading things into boats and just having like a conveyor belt that's like from me, it's a little bit past where you are. It would save a lot of time and effort. And sometimes I haven't gotten any of these deliveries in a while, but sometimes I'll get, you know, sand delivered or rocks and sand for concrete and stuff like that. And I always, I always help unload the boat. And it's always such a, such a big job unloading the boat. But if those guys showed up and I was just like, give me a minute and I pull up this conveyor belt, put it, put one end right into their boat. And the other end is like right up here, right where the pile is going to go. And I just have to say, just put it right here and it just does it. Oh my God. They would be like, this is magic. It's a witchcraft. This is amazing. Can we have one? Yeah, that would be, I want to, I want to see their faces.  And all you got to do is just throw it on this thing and it's, oh yeah. So anyway, I've done a lot of work loading and unloading that kind of stuff from boats. So I think it's, I'm at the point where I'm like, dude, I just need to make a conveyor belt. It's just gonna, and it can run off my shark slicer, which has plenty of power.  I mean, it's an electric boat. So it drives around. So the conveyor belt won't use as much energy as the motor on the boat. So I can just run it endlessly. But I'll have to see how well it works and stuff before I get too excited. Okay, the flax plant, technically linen is a vegetable. Linen fabric is made from the cellulose fibers that grow inside the stalks of the flax plant. Well, thank you. The secret to life is, oh wait, box talking at a total list. I think you're saying box ticking to-do list. But I like total. If you don't like the list, change it or do walk about.  But it's just pretty nice. It's pretty nice when you have a list of stuff and you get to like cross stuff off and like a little while later, you get your list out and like three quarters of stuff is crossed off. And you're like, whoa, man, check out all the stuff I've done. This is awesome. That is pretty sweet. Let's see. Okay, lingam vitae.   I think it grows around or near mangroves, but hard to find for sure. Would be cool if you found a dead tree somewhere. So yeah, I need to look up what kind of trees those are because a lot of the area around here, like in land that I have, you know, hasn't been logged or anything. So like there's just whatever's there. So yeah, I would say if that wood is gonna be anywhere, there's a good chance there's some on my property somewhere. So I probably cut it down, oh, I destroyed it. Yeah, I'm gonna have to look up what it looks like and see if I can find something about garbage picking. I always enjoy your salvage videos. Would you like to have a separate building that serves as a giant tool library? Oh, I would love, I would love to have a separate building just as a giant workshop with like a huge section for salvaged things, you know, garbage, people sometimes call it, but like so much of the stuff I build, well, anytime I build something and I need to make something, the first thing I do is just look in the scrap pile and surprising amount of times I will find something in the scrap pile that I can modify a little that I can use for something that would otherwise be kind of complicated to make or that I have to use something expensive to make. And it's just like, it's just junk that I found on the street or bought a scrap metal really cheap or something. Yeah, I would love to have, yeah. PVC roller bearing conveyor belt inbound. Well, the first, yeah, the first roller, I've made the first roller. It's got the motor which is geared down and it's got the first roller and it has a roller skateboard or roller skate bearing on the other side. But it may be swapped out for a plastic bearing but I just put the roller skate in one in there because I mean, it'll last a while and I have like a hundred of them because someone actually sent me those too. Someone sent me those hundred roller skate skateboard bearing, just the standard ones are like this big. Anyway, I just stuck one of those in there because this should last a long time. But if it gets to the point where it's rusting out I'll probably make a plastic bearing for that. But yeah, let's see how it goes. The other rollers might have PVC bearings. I don't know, we'll see how it goes. There's a mosquito right on the edge of the thing and I'm like, oh, I got him, look at that. That was funny, I just, he was on the side of the tablet and I just grabbed him. Would you have been a way, oh, you would have been a way cooler professor on Gilligan's Island. Okay, that professor, that's a wily guy. He totally could have gotten them off that island. I think he liked chilling on that island because he was like, this place is amazing. Let's hang out here for like ever. Why would we want to go back? So I'm going to pretend that I don't know how to fix a boat or make a boat. I can make a radio out of all these coconuts but I can't make a boat so we're stuck here, fools.  I want to hang out with Mary Ann. Ooh, yeah, not bearings. Oh, wooden bushings or whatever those boat things are called, yeah, bushings. So the lingum vitae is this hardwood that they use for bushings for propeller shafts because the wood was so dense and it resisted wear. Would the conveyor belt be useful for your logging endeavors? Maybe, maybe not. No, this isn't a conveyor belt that I could put like a ton and a half of some object on that's going to, besides it's not, I mean, if it moved at like 10 feet, it would take more energy to get it up on the conveyor belt than it would to just drag it that far, you know? Yeah, I wasn't thinking about it for logging. I have been thinking about the logging though. I don't know, I'll get into that later. Soar, what is this? Sorry Thor, this update on the mother, what? I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know, you guys got to be more, if you're trolling me, make it clear. If you're not trolling me, you got to be more clear in what you're saying. I don't know what you're saying. All right, lingum, what a nice non-croating option for your builds. Yeah, if I could find some of that wood, that would be great. I can make some cool stuff with that. Hey, let's get the, oh, the logistics involved here. Okay, let's get the banana building taken apart and shipped to you. I'll donate to the cause. Oh my God, you know what that would take? Oh, like someone would have to go out to the forest of Vermont, dismantle that entire thing. Somehow get it down the mountain. Oh, just, yeah. It'll be easier to, yeah. I have been thinking about doing a metal building here by the stainless steel. Since, you know, it's a saltwater environment, things get saltwater on them. But if I was building a metal building, I was, yeah, stainless steel. And I was doing some financial calculations of the cost of this. And it might actually be reasonably doable, but I have to do a little more planning on that. About logging, I like your idea of moving your mill around to wherever you are working. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea, but it's not that easy to move. So we'll see. Plus, you know, it's a lumber mill with a whole bunch of solar panels on it. And that's an item that some people would like to steal. And if I just have this solar powered lumber mill out in the jungle and anyone finds out about it and they know it's there all night for a extended period of time, you know, someone might just show up, take the solar panels and leave.  Why did I make that so easy? You know, so it's not so easy to just move your lumber mill around. Wasn't sure if he was trolling or not. If so, he is bad at it. Yeah, Mr. Lample, that guy was terrible at trolling because I have no idea if he was trying to be insulting or not. Yeah, I don't know. I love the quanta style metal buildings, not crazy money would be cool to combine with shipping containers. I like that design. I would love to have an open arch to work under that's connected to another. Yeah.  You're not getting rained on. You can just, oh, especially in an environment like this, you know, in a tropical environment where it's basically always summer, just having a roofed workspace is so nice. It's really nice. Let's see. Your water tank all over again. Which water tank? I mean, if I build a building with my water tank or a building like the water tank, hold on. The arch would be so cool, tropics, desert, anywhere. Yeah. Yeah, but if you're in a cold place, you would want it enclosed so you could heat it. The water tank, yes. Watched a video today, 240 foot convex boxes and a banana building on top. That was pretty cool. I'm not a troll, thanks. It was just a question. I don't know what the question was. That was confusing what you wrote. You have to be more clear. Anyway, it looks like I'm at the end of comments here, so I'm just gonna give you guys a last second. Does anyone else have any questions or comments you wanted to make before I go and stuff my face with these sloppy, sloppy Joes? You're like them extra sloppy. That was from Billy Madison, was it? I don't know. One of those movies, one of the Adam Sandler movies. Okay, let's see. I think we're basically done and thanks for the visit. Arc, Arc 212. I hope you have a great evening or morning or whatever you've got.  Enjoy your sloppy Joes. I will, man. Ooh, I put hot sauce in them because my kids are not here right now. Ooh, very exciting. Okay, be safe, everyone. Mr. Lancel says, Arc, I'm out of here. Catch you later, guys.


Pakistan is facing unprecedented flooding and a severe humanitarian crisis. One third of the country is underwater and 33 million people have been impacted. This is the latest. First and foremost is Pakistan's geography and topography. The country is home to the most glaciers anywhere in the world outside of the two poles. Additionally, Pakistan is home to fertile agricultural lands, arid deserts, and a number of cities along its coastline that are also dealing with rising sea levels, including Karachi, a huge megacity in the region. Pakistan only contributes to less than 1% of global emissions that lead to climate change. However, for the past two decades, the country has consistently been ranked as one of the top ten countries vulnerable to climate change. Compounding its geography is the fact that there is a lack of political will, poor planning, and a lot of illegal construction that has led to the disaster we're seeing today. Many of the buildings and communities that I've washed away have been built on long rivers and waterways that were already impacted by the 2010 floods. No one country can fully prepare for the scale of the disaster that Pakistan is facing. However, a contributing factor has been insufficient planning and poor governance. There has been a disconnect between the data, science, and the planning efforts at all levels of the government, whether it's national, provincial, or local. Furthermore, the actual stockpiles of supplies for relief efforts do not meet the needs that the country is facing right now. Pakistan's ongoing political and economic instability have also hampered relief efforts. Pakistan needs an influx of cash to stabilize its economy, as well as international assistance to provide relief to its citizens. This is not the last extreme weather event that Pakistan is going to face. In the future, these weather events will become more frequent and more severe. The country needs to make large-scale institutional changes to better plan for and prepare for the future disasters that awaits them. One thing that Pakistan can do is better use the data and connect it to their policy and planning process. Pakistan can also invest in the next generation of climate scientists, urban planners, and water experts. This is where the international community comes in. Pakistan, yes, needs assistance in the immediate aftermath of this disaster. However, the international community can play a role by providing technical assistance and support to Pakistan as they make these changes across their government and support future endeavors to prevent the scale of the disaster that the country is facing today.


We'll have to decide the theoretical principles before we design a writing course, before we plan a writing course. We'll have to make clear to the textbook writers which theoretical strand we want to stick to. By making it clear to the textbook writers, eventually that will lead the teachers to know which aspect of the theory they want to stick to. So deciding on theoretical principles requires a number of decisions. So what the research suggests that ideology plays an important role in terms of shaping our presence in the classroom. Using my own experiences of language teaching before doing MAT Soul from the UK, I must say that I was a teacher-centered teacher who was much focused on, I had much focus on lecture and I didn't treat students. I just treated them, used to treat them like homogenous group without having diverse needs. So whether we accept or don't accept, there is some ideology which is working behind our pedagogy, which is working behind our actual presence in the classroom. So whether we are conscious or not conscious, I have talked to a number of teachers from my own personal point of view and this is what the research also supports. My contention that some ESL teachers or EFL teachers or English language teachers, they say they don't take, they don't care about the theory. They are more about much focused on the classroom, but they have to do is the classroom, the practice and the use of different methods, no matter if they don't accept, but there is what the research suggests, there is some theory which works behind. For example, looking at the textbooks prescribed by Punjab textbook board or other boards in the Pakistani context, the theory behind those textbooks is the use of interactionism and socioculturalism because these textbooks require teachers teach the language by the use of communicative and task based language teaching or even eclectic methodology. So what I would like to encourage through this discussion is as language teachers, you will have to understand your positionality, your ideological position and your perceptions. By perceptions, I mean your beliefs, your cognitions as a teacher, as a language teacher. I have seen and this is what again much the sole and applied linguistics research suggests that some teachers have dangerous beliefs and perceptions about teaching. They consider themselves perfect and they don't allow fair work or group work, which is fair enough, but on the other hand, we'll have to stick to the theoretical aspect given by socioculturalism, by Gowski's ideas scaffolding how we can make our students understand the language and write effectively. And this is also important to know like what English and what types of writing we teach, we want to teach, whether we would like to teach through grammar translation, which refers to behaviorism, whether we want them to write, see writing as a process, which refers to interactionism and socioculturalism, what content our students are exposed to. Again, these our beliefs will shape our choices, decisions, like some teachers don't go beyond the confines of textbooks because their beliefs are only limited to the usefulness of the textbooks, but some expose their students to authentic content like raw materials, like websites, like newspapers, talk shows, dramas and movies. So what we expect our students to do with writing, whether we want them to write, put in into the bottle and throw them into the deep water, not sending us back the ripples, or we want them to publish or we want them to showcase, which is interesting, which is encouraging, but roles are instruction prepared them for whether we want them to acquire both accuracy and fluency. So these are important decisions related to the ideology held by language teachers. And through this discussion, I would like you to encourage to explore your ideology as language teachers, to see your perceptions, to see your cognitions and beliefs. So there are, of course, a number of theories, chiefly speaking, behaviorism, cognitivism, interactionism, socioculturalism and then communities of practice and academic literacy approach. So these actually the knowledge of these theories, which we will discuss in the coming module, shape our understanding of the language and the way our understanding is shaped in this way, our practice will be reshaped in the classroom. So what I want to say is we as language teachers have to understand the role of theory and its relationship with practice with our presence in the classroom and that will allow us to see whether we want our focus on grammar or meaning or fluency. So I would like you to encourage to see the art of teaching as a sort of eclectic approach where to adopt those principles which work for your situational context. So while you are doing, while you are teaching, writing in the classroom, think of the activities while you are doing, why you are not doing that activity, why you have included that activity on that topic, why not the other topic. So these are the questions which are very much related to the ideological position which we will have to explore to become effective language teachers.


Well the major cost and backgrounding is incurred in buying the feed that it takes to put these calves through a gain program and to discuss some of our feed situation from the year I have Dr. Carl Hoppe. He's the area livestock specialist.  So what can we be expecting to pay probably for our feed grain prices, particularly corn, but how that also relates to maybe far earlier other feed grains? Sure corn is a fluctuating price throughout the whole year but this time of the year it's pretty reasonably priced compared to previous years. This $3.15 corn that's out there is really favorable for feeding cattle. If you go on the on the procuring sites throughout the state, in other words the places that use a lot of corn but not for feeding cattle but for feeding the distilling factories that produce ethanol, find out that the price is pretty constant. I see castings this week as a $3.31 when I looked as well as Underwood and Spiritwood. They're both at $3.31 for a price. Richardson is $3.15 so consequently transportation costs affect that a little bit and consequently if you look those on a ton basis you'll see that the price per ton is $1.18 up to $1.12 or down to $1.12. Our feed price costs are pretty low this year. Feed barley is another feed that's out there that's actually really low priced. At $2.20 a bushel up at Leeds, North Dakota that converts to about $92 a ton. Now the only way to compare these two feeds together is to look at TDN values and when you look at TDN values between those you look at the cost per pound of dry matter of TDN. Corn is around $1.54 and barley's at $1.33 so if you're into feeding some barley you might have some cheaper feed this year. Of course there's discounts for Vomitoxin, there's discounts for molds, light test weight, there can be some real deals and other feed stuffs out there this year if you're in the right location. It appears wherever you're at in the state there might be some things that might be price competitive and very much a local demand but they can be great feeds for feeding cattle. It sounds like our corn prices are considerably lower than they've maybe been a few years back and anticipate that will be a primary ingredient including in feeding rations but the other thing my rations have for background and calves is a mixture of forages and some concentrates and hay primarily our forage source and hay's a more local market. It looks like our bail counts pretty good across the state. What's that translating into in regards to what would cost to buy hay or what we should price our hay at when we're doing our own ration form relations? You know a quick thumb rule I always use is when you know what the corn price is on a ton basis take that in half and that kind of guides where your hay prices are going to be in the state. So I said earlier that there were $1.12, $1.25 so half of that's going to be around $75 a ton so that's sure just a average type hay. So we don't really have a market in North Dakota that's at auction our closest auction is in Minnesota and if you look the Minnesota hay auction you'll see that for last month because they don't have a September auction yet that the relative feed value prices that are high let me say this hay is priced on a relative feed value basis relative feed value would remain that a hundred percent full mature bloom 100% alfalfa hay is around 100 feed value if it's young bud small stem lot of leaves then the relative feed value is quite high and if you get up to around 175 relative feed value Darry's even backgrounders could pay a lot for this because there's a lot of feed value into it both in energy content and protein and that relative feed value price is around $1.22 for last month on an as is basis per ton it's $185 a ton that's some pretty expensive hay even more expensive than corn so it usually doesn't price into our background in rations not well let's look at the other ones alfalfa hay at relative feed value of 126 to 150 is 92 cents or 126 bucks a ton well okay if it's less than a hundred percent re relative feed value it's around 75 cents per pound I am consequently the as is dollars per ton is around 57 so you know if you look at grass hay price the same deal that's trading around 60 it it's all relative to the corn price again now I take kind of a question here when it comes to availability hay in North Dakota depending upon where you're at you may not have enough hay and hay really turns into a transportation headache there's a lot of cost in hauling hay around you might think you can you can do it you can haul hay we did it quite a few years ago but the cost really adds up in our local area around Carrington we didn't have much rain in April we didn't have any snow in March our hay crop for the first cuttings we're a half we're a half a crop if not less but we offset that through a lot of straw that was purchased that's been put up we've offset that with CRP haze it's been offset with ditch haze it's been offset with corn stover right now so everything's priced according so to answer your question hay straight and somewhere between 25-60 dollars a bale depending upon the weight of the bale and the feed quality of the bale but there should be enough roughage out there to provide that's feed to maintain the room and functioning now look for better feeds well it sounds like we kind of know where we got hay it might not be in all the right hands might be some trading but it's not going to be at the drought prices the southern boys had to pay and it's going to be a pretty economical source of feed as well the other thing that most of our rations include in more recent years is a byproduct such as the corn distillers great extra source of protein phosphorus any challenges on the supply or the pricing of those into rations this year well first let me say then there's a slide you'll see that that shows that we have a lot of processing plants in North Dakota for co-products it can be distillers grains beet pulp canola mill barley malt sprout pellets wheat mids we produce a phenomenal amount of byproducts or co-products in North Dakota now I didn't talk about this earlier but corn is relatively low on protein some of our grass days we have especially the straws and corn stover is low on protein the beauty here is co-products are high in protein they've milled out the starch or fermented out the starch what's left over is high protein feed it's usually pretty cost competitive I went and looked at the prices that are going for co-products in North Dakota recently and we've got four or five ethanol distillers in North Dakota if you look what they have for distillers grains they're all priced at around a hundred and twenty dollars a ton for dry product now if you want 50% moisture product out of these out of these facilities it's around 55 dollars a ton now we've got a plant in castleton that is produces dry and wet distillers grains of course it's wet so it's a more moisture they price it lower at 30 dollars a ton Hankinson is a huge plant as well and they sell distillers grains both wet and excuse me dry and modified their price to 120 and then 70 well they're closer to a feeding region in South Dakota Minnesota so the price of it goes up a little bit if you go to spirit wood and underwood blue flint they're at 115 or 120 for the dry and distillers is at 55 so what I'm getting at here even if you go out to blue red trail energy in Richardson the distillers price is still around 120 so wherever you find distillers grains in North Dakota right now the prices are very much the same if you want it dry it's about the same price except you don't have to pay for the water obviously it's cheaper but you're you're hauling water now that's high in protein high in energy content you got a hole it though well what if you got a wheat mid plant right next door a little less than energy content high in protein not as quite as high what's the price well it's a little bit cheaper 115 you go to the state mill an elevator it might be around 110 for these spot prices that I have and if you want a spot price list contact your county extension agent they might have a dated price list because spot prices always change but there'd be phone numbers that they can call and find out what the current price is which you can negotiate barley malt sprouts are available out of Spiritwood North Dakota and they're priced around the same too so we've got all types of feed out there beatpulps another one we just availability is actually really good when you talk to them they've got it sold maybe for a month or availability is right now if you're looking for after the first of year we have access to a lot of co-products in North Dakota right now sounds like we had a lot of choices there location of what we're close to and transportation and access will you know determine what maybe works best for us but I do know that in the last year and some this year we've had some disease issues in our wheat crops we've had scab which is related to some bomb a toxin levels which is created marketing problems and some of that grain is probably destined as a feed because it won't work in the milling industry what are you got concerns about using wheat in in backgrounding rations and wheat that might have some scab or vomit toxin levels in it well we did some research at the Carrington Research Extension Center quite a few years ago Dr. Verne Anderson fed the highest level of barley you could find at that time that was contaminated with the highest level of vomit toxin in barley and by the time you feed half of the rations barley the other half is grain you diluted somewhat and even at that high level of dilution excuse me even at that high level after it's diluted we didn't see any problems in feeding calves backgrounding finishing we didn't see anything and in cows or replacement heifers there was no deleterious effects so the room and an animal has an opportunity to utilize some of those based on the research that we've seen now when you see one mold there might be others so you never quite know what might happen there so a good idea is to take a sample if you're worried and send it to the NDSU diagnostic lab and have what's called their mycotoxin screen and for a hundred dollars you can find out if it's high level of toxins because there's aphelotoxins and T2 toxins and T3 there's other aukrotoxins that are actually killed the liver in an animal so you'd hate to feed these stuff and end up with dead animals because of it or poor doing animals we can always handle a little we can't handle a lot so for a hundred bucks that might be cheaper than having a dead calf that real good bargain you had may not be such of a bargain but remember it's the dilution is our solution so if you got some really really questionable stuff have it tested and blended into your ration it's better than burning it well I think we're probably got a final kind of question I just wondered if you know we use most of our background in rations have hay maybe some silage some grains byproducts and a lot of guys feed for you know 60 70 80 days trying to get two and a half or somewhere that average day to gain other caps can you give us one example of a ration or a couple that might use those feeds and what proportion we need to feed them to accomplish that in our growing cap I got four rations here for you to look at oh thank for to consider it's 600 pound steers of course as they get bigger they're gonna eat more so you got to adjust the poundage but 600 pound steers 2.6 pounds average daily gain we're looking around 15 pounds dry matter intake that's the rations are based off they might eat more so if they eat more they're gonna gain more but first let's start off with a ration that would be a corn grain as our grain seven pounds of corn grain to this calf it's got to be mixed with nine pounds of hay and a pound of a 38 per 32% protein supplement that'll meet the energy needs the protein needs the calcium and phosphorus are balanced and it costs about it according to math here costs around a dollar 28 a day or about 50 cents per pound to gain gee based on today's calf prices that sounds kind of intriguing so we do have some I don't know this could be kind of good here now let's look at some of these other feeds we got corn gray here's a ration that's basically corn grain hay and silage okay corn grain at 3 pounds hay at 6 pounds that's an alfalfa grass hay corn size at 10 pounds and then we don't have enough protein in that ration so we got to put in some wheat meds so 3 pounds 6 pounds 10 pounds and 4 pounds of dried of wheat meds and that cost is 97 cents what's actually cheaper cost to gain at 36 cents okay we got another ration say you don't have corn you want to use barley okay barley got some corn size you chopped it instead and then you got a little distiller's grains because that's gonna need just a little bit of energy and protein so you use 4 pounds of barley 20 pounds of corn salage and excuse me I didn't mean barley I meant alfalfa hay I'm sorry 4 pounds of alfalfa hay 20 pounds of corn salage and four and a half pounds of distiller's grains 88 cents is a feed cost for the day at 34 cents pound to gain so well one more ration we got some cheap barley out there we're gonna mix a little bit of corn a little bit of hay and distiller's grains we didn't put up any silage so let's use three pounds of corn excuse me two pounds of corn six pounds of barley seven pounds of hay and one pound of distiller's it didn't take much distiller's a little extra protein 92 cents of the 35 cent cost to gain so we'll do some budgets here after maybe Tim did some budgets and if you did we can find out just this is pretty cheap feeding this year it looks like with the performance you're getting out of those calves with those feeds and those values in the marketplace right now generating these cost of gains feed cost of gains I should say yeah in the 30 cents I think we look at the prices of the calves going in and the potential for what those calves to be worth coming out and I think Tim's budgets that he talked about earlier have shown some margin in this business make a lot of sense so thank you Carl for kind of giving us the rundown on what the feed is and how we put these feeds together to make our calves perform thank you