Hi welcome everybody. I am Joanna Lee. I'm Joanna Lee. I'm the vice president of strategic initiatives and legal at CNCF and the Linux Foundation and we're gonna talk about the DEF CON code of conduct litigation and what code of conduct enforcers and community leaders can learn from it as well as some best practices for managing legal risk when when you are enforcing code of conduct codes of conduct and responding to incidents and just a little bit more about my background before joining the Linux Foundation and CNCF staff I was a practice law for about a decade and a half and also did strategic consulting and they've always been in the tech industry I love love love open source open standards open hardware all of open collaboration and I just love living at the intersection of economics and business technology and law and policy so we'll talk about the pending lawsuit against the organizers of DEF CON which is an annual hacker conference and the security space and what we can all learn from it and we'll go through some best practices and tips for managing legal risk and by by show of hands how many people in this room are community leaders or moderators or organizers excellent excellent and how many of you and have a role in enforcing codes of conduct fantastic well thank you all for the work you do in this space it's so so valuable and important the work of keeping our communities healthy thriving and safe so the vast majority of the code of conduct incidents where the the severity of the behavior is low you know for example if it's just you know rudeness or you know arguments about why a poor request wasn't merged the legal risks are very very low when the legal risk increases is going to depend on the type of violation and its severity as well as what remedy you're considering so in the event that somebody was physically assaulted or there's sexual harassment or if you're considering permanently banning somebody from a community or issuing some of a public or semi public statement that could have an impact on their either their personal reputation or their their professional life or their business that's when the legal risk is much greater so lawsuits can be brought by a variety of parties for a variety of reasons so lawsuits can be threatened or brought by the accused person and you those are typically when typically the defense is well I didn't actually violate the code of conduct or the penalty was too harsh and the types of legal claims tend to be in the libel slander defamation arena or intentional interference with a contractual or economic relationship and I'll explain later what that means and also a couple of things one is this is a very US centric presentation based primarily on the US legal system I am a US licensed lawyer I'm not licensed to practice another jurisdictions I do have some experience with international law but but this is going to be based primarily on use law also I'm going to try as hard as I can to make this understandable to non-lawyers but just like you know engineers when you're speaking with business folks even the same company sometimes you have to do a little translation and there's an acronym they don't get please please please interrupt me if I'm speaking legalese and there is a term you don't understand so lawsuits can also be brought by the party claiming to have been harmed by the incident and this is usually going to happen if if they're harmed and they're blaming the conference you know conference or community organizers or project leaders for for having if they would allege that you know there's a responsibility to protect the community or community members from harm that the community leaders or organizers knew of this risk and did nothing about it so if there is for example if there is repeated incidents by the same same accused person and nothing is done about it that could increase the the and then harm really results that could create in a situation where a harmed party would be motivated to and could have grounds to bring a lawsuit thirdly if employees of hosting foundation or if it's a company that is sponsoring an open source project employees are the ones who have been harmed that could also create a situation of workplace workplace employment claims and for example hostile work environment so we have a case study in process in progress so the organizers of death con which is a security hacker conference annual hacker conference have been sued by an accused person so just a little bit of background about it so this is an annual conference and late last year an ex-employee of a company called social engineer LLC that's Chris Hadnagy is a plaintiff in this case he's the owner and president of social engineer LLC so one of his ex-employees didn't directly go to the def con organizers but went indirectly through third party and essentially we don't know and we don't know whether it was part of an official complaint or an unofficial complaint there's actually a lot we don't yet know about this lawsuit and later on I'll explain a little bit why that is but the event organizers found out through a third party that there were allegations of abuse harassing and controlling behavior by this ex-employee and then the conference organizers claim that they connected with at least half a dozen other community members who had similar complaints about this individual and for that reason they decided to ban him from the event we still don't actually know what the type of misconduct is beyond the that big statement about harassment and controlling behavior so additionally so def con conducted its investigation and then notified Chris Hadnagy that he was going to be banned from all future def con events so permanently banned from this community and they also as many communities do they publish a transparency report on their website that summarizes at a high level what what code of conduct incidents have been reported and how they're resolved and so there's a public statement on their website in the form of a transparency report and this is a screenshot of I'm going to go ahead and read this because this transparency report is both the motivation and really the subject matter of the lawsuit okay so it says we received a multiple code of conduct violation reports about a def con village leader Chris Hadnagy of the southeast village after conversations with the reporting parties and Chris we are confident the severity of the transgressions merits a ban from def con we have also taken the rare action to disband the def con group dg dcg 414 code of conduct violations by the group's primary point of contact and subsequently mishandling the event left us without confidence in the group's leadership so there are there are a lot of things going on here and there's the incident itself and then there you know there are still a lot we don't know but there there's questions about the code of conduct enforcement process in the body so in August of this year Chris Hadnagy the accused person and his company social engineer filed a lawsuit against both def con communications which is the organization that plans these conferences and its president Jeff Moss and this is filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania so the the essential facts that the complaint alleges is that the code of conduct itself for def con is vague and ambiguous so the accused wasn't really given notice of what type of behavior it did and didn't prohibit also it alleges that Chris has never been still to this day has not been informed about what behavior he engaged in that allegedly violated the code of conduct despite the fact that he's made multiple requests he claims that def con communications has not provided any support or evidence or any explanation whatsoever justifying the ban and also that it was given to him completely without warning he didn't know that there was an investigation ongoing etc and this does suggest you know though the complaint doesn't explicitly alleged this it does very much suggest that he was not interviewed as a witness that he wasn't given an opportunity to provide his side of the story or present his own evidence so there are there's at least it appears that one can make it an argument that this investigation didn't follow all best practices for due process and that it wasn't a thorough a completely thorough balance investigation so how is Chris harmed so he claims that due to these vague and ambiguous statements that nonetheless were very concerning because they do say the the violations were so egregious that it warrants a permanent ban he's claiming that there was a firestorm of social media commentary on this and that the community has speculated that it must be something really really really terrible like sexual assault or other abhorrent behavior especially because this is a community that supports supports eccentricity and weirdness so if there's something he did that was so terrible it warrants a ban it must be you know people are going to assume the worse so he's claiming that his personal reputation has been harmed and damaged he's also claiming damage to his business dealings through social engineer the complaint alleges that several that at least one of his clients terminated the relationship with social engineer and that there are other potential clients that have refused to work with social engineer because of this publicly known about ban from the DEF CON community and he's also claiming that this resulted in emotional distress mental anguish embarrassment and humiliation so the he's brought several claims or causes of action and these are these are a lot of these are legal these words that just start their different types of claims that a plaintiff can bring in in this factual situation what and I'll and I will explain what what each of these means in a bit more detail in the future slides defamation is one of them intentional and tortuous interference with contractual relations is another invasion of privacy and false light is another an intentional infliction of emotional distress so those are the different claims that are being brought so what what does defamation mean so I'm going to go through so Eastern District of pencil so Pennsylvania every state has slightly different laws on what each of these types of claims mean so the exact wording of what constitutes defamation in Pennsylvania might be a little bit different than you know what constitutes defamation in California so here I'm going to be talking because I want to make this more universally applicable if you actually read the complaint in Pennsylvania law it's a little bit different what I'm going to present but I'm going to present the more general definition of defamation so first there has to be a false statement that purports to be a fact in order for defamation for a claim of defamation succeed there also has to be either a publication of that or communication to a third person so it doesn't necessarily have to be something that's you know publicly available on a website it could be you know saying something untrue about a company to their their customer that would be an example of a communication that could qualify for this element there also needs to be some type of fault amounting at least to negligence so it could be something you know intentional so intentional lying intentional misstatement would qualify but it could be less than that it could be just acting kind of without without any real regard to is this true or false you know it could be based on a rumor that you heard you didn't actually make any effort to verify whether it was true or not and you know if you communicate either to the public a third person something that turns out to be false you're acting negligently that would that would support a claim for defamation and then there also needs to be some type of damage to the person which could or harm to the harm to the reputation would be would qualify for this because invasion of privacy and false light is so similar I'm going to I'm going to talk about this next and then and then talk about the defenses to both of them collectively so invasion of privacy and false light is very similar but whereas defamation is really about about reputational damage invasion of privacy and false light the focus can be a little bit more on the embarrassment and humiliation and in loss of privacy rather than rather than the more objective standard around around reputational harm so false light is a claim that involves publicity so some type of public or semi-public statement that places a person in a false light and in a manner that would be highly offensive to reasonable person and that's made with knowledge or reckless disregard as to the falsity so very similar to defamation so defcon communications their defense to these claims is first of all you know it's true that you know he did in fact violate the code of conduct and also the the defense says that well the ban announcement isn't really it's not really susceptible to defamatory meaning it's clear that this is presenting a subjective view it doesn't say you know Chris did a B and C and that's the truth but it just says we conducted an investigation and we found that the behavior was so egregious that you know wanted to ban him so that that's their that's their argument and defense also they point out that the announcement itself does not say anything about abhorrent conduct or sexual misconduct and they're essentially not responsible for you know what people may or may not be gossiping about I'm going I'm showing a screenshot of the of the announcement again I mean just to just to have context again for appreciating that that defense so it does say we received multiple multiple code of conduct violation reports you know that that is arguably true right and Chris Hadnagy of the southeast about Chris Hadnagy of the southeast village and after conversations with the reporting parties and Chris we are confident the severity of the transgressions merits a ban from Defconn so it is phrased as an opinion statement and while this is you know I'm not going to there's still so much we don't know about the case so I'm just not in a position to really provide an assessment of whether I think you know which party is right or wrong or whether they love who's likely to succeed in this case but I will just say that this is probably I think that this is probably well worded from a defamation perspective if you read these statements hard to argue that they're objectively false but false light claim is a little bit there doesn't have to be such overt explicit falsity to succeed in a false light claim it could be just you know you're suggesting something that is untrue so for example if there is a news article you know talking about there's a news article talking about you know how an organization has engaged in you know some some terrible behavior and there's a picture of an employee of that organization in that news article and that employee actually had nothing to do with the behavior that just the fact that that picture is there suggests that they were involved and so that person could probably bring a false light claim even though the picture itself doesn't isn't actually it's not conveying in a false statement but there is a presentation of a and suggestion that that that implies involvement so another claim has to do with the economic damage that Chris and social engineering his company claimed to have suffered and so this is intentional or atrocious interference with contractual relations again a big legalese phrase that you know essentially means this so that there is a contractual relationship that exists between Chris or his company social engineer and other party in this case his customers and at least one existing customer who terminated that the relationship also the defendant so organizers of conference would need to have known about this contractual relationship and at this point it's not it's not known whether or not they they knew or not and that the defendant intentionally and improperly interfered with that contractual relationship and that the plaintiff suffered some damage as a result you know in this case the damage is that he lost at least one one customer relationship and in death con communications at response to the complaint their primary defense was that they you know maybe some damage had resulted from their actions but this third element has not been satisfied there was no intention there was no intention to harm Chris or his company by interfering with his customer relationships and there was nothing improper about their actions in publishing a transparency report so that's that's essentially the core of their defense on this claim and the final claim is intentional infliction of emotional distress and in order to succeed with this type of claim these these elements need to be satisfied so there needs to be the defendant needs to have engage in conduct that is extreme and outrageous and again this is we're talking about deaf con communications here so the conference organizers would have had to engage in conduct that is extreme and outrageous they would have had to act intentionally or at least recklessly this would have had to cause emotional distress that is severe and then under Pennsylvania law also physical injury or harm there's some case law that says physical injury or harm is required so deaf cons defenses that you know first of all Chris had a genius company have not been physically harmed in any way but moreover that there is nothing extreme or outrageous in publishing a transparency report and the the bar for what constitutes extreme and outrageous behavior is you know it is fairly high I mean it really has to be atrocious behavior and so deaf con is arguing well clearly publishing a transparency report is not is not extremely outrageous and furthermore that they were trying to protect the community safety and the community interest that there was there was a community there's a larger good public public interest and good that that justified this behavior also undermining the the claim that it could have been extreme and outrageous so the case is in progress deaf con communications has filed a motion to dismiss and what that means is that essentially what that means is they are they're they're trying to persuade the judge that this claim is completely meritless just by reading the complaint it's meritless we don't even have to go to trial we don't even have to go to discovery that so they're seeking dismissal before we proceed to the further stages of the investigation so if the motion is not denied though and it will it will advance so it's possible that some of these claims will be dismissed but if there is at least one claim that the judge thinks there should at least be discovery of factual evidence on the case will proceed and then we'll proceed to a phase of litigation called discovery this is where each party and their attorney gets to issue subpoenas depose witnesses and ask for doc documentary evidence and I want to this is really really important and I think one of the perhaps the most compelling reason why we should do our best to avoid litigation with regard to code of conduct enforcement in discovery highly personal and sensitive information of reporters and victims and witnesses who participated in the investigation could come to light and become publicly available and in order to make help keep communities safe we need to create safe spaces for reporting and litigation is unfortunately only under unusual circumstances can very unusual circumstances can parties get the record sealed so that so that the the information is not is not made publicly available also witnesses reporters victims they could all be compelled to testify and that you know for somebody who has who has suffered harm or at least feels that they have suffered harm you ask me to testify in an illegal setting and you know confront the person that you know they see as an abuser can also be it can be traumatizing and very very emotionally upsetting so the the complaint does in the discovery plan does set out some of the intended discovery that Chris had Nagy and his company plan to conduct if the the case continues to proceed and then includes information and documentation pertaining to the code of conduct violation identities of any fact witnesses they would depose all of the witnesses which basically means you know not not in a court but in a in a in a private setting well not not exactly a private setting but as part of a an official proceeding with attorneys present they would be interviewing the witnesses on record to find out more information Chris is also going to seek information about the transparency report who the author was you know and want to interview them and find out what potential motivations they may have had and depose the conference organizers as well so issues that are likely to be scrutinized include whether the and debated are whether the investigation's fair or their own partial the credibility and possible motivations of witnesses and reporters and whether all available evidence have been considered the fact that I mean if it's true what said in the complaint that Chris was never did not have any notice that there was an investigation pending and still doesn't know what the alleged misconduct is you know that that does highly suggest that not all information had been considered because they never spoke to the they never spoke to the accused person so you know that that's not necessarily going to result in success on these legal claims are being brought but it does you know it does raise questions about the the fairness and thoroughness of the code of conduct process we're still a lot we don't know about this because there's very little information in the pleadings that have been filed so far to date and that is that is very much intentional so some of the lessons that we can learn from this I'm actually going to start with the one at the bottom first so there is a tension between wanting between presenting a very strong defense in litigation and protecting privacy of of the victims reporters etc right the read part of the reason why DCC the DEF CON organizers have they could actually they could actually disclose you know even at the pleading stage they could disclose more facts you know this is the behavior he engaged in you know these are all the witnesses we spoke to these are the dates and times that you know he engaged in atrocious behavior so on so forth they could have included in some ways they could have bolstered their defense early on by including more factual background but they didn't and although you know I I'm not involved in this and I can't I can't speak for the organizers or their lawyers I believe it's because they are trying very hard to protect privacy of the victims and reporters and their anonymity to protect them from both embarrassment and potential retaliation so I believe I mean that's why they're really focusing on defects in the arguments that Chris has raised rather than presenting facts in their defense at this stage and they're hoping that it's going to be dismissed so we don't have to proceed to discovery and incur the stress and expense and potential embarrassment to those who participated in the investigation so some of the other lessons learned about this any type of public statement that is potentially embarrassing is often both the motivation for and the and the grounds for filing a lawsuit by the accused if you are going to issue a public statement either stick to the verifiable facts or make sure you're presenting it as you know as an opinion statement as I do think that the organizers of DEF CON did do that well at least with regard to positioning themselves well to defend a defamation suit the false false slight claim is a little bit a little bit trickier as I as explained earlier and if there are any failures and due process you know it's not going to look good when that when that scrutinized in in a court of law so you know I know code of conduct enforcement is thank you it's stressful it's time consuming you know but when we do cut corners it can it can expose expose you to more risk and yeah we have five minutes left so I'm going to I'm going to really push through these last slides but I am available afterwards and you're you're welcome to slack you know DM here in slack or email me if you if you have any follow-up questions so litigation is very expensive that's one good reason to avoid it but it's also time-consuming and stressful and emotionally taxing for everybody involved the code of conduct enforcers the conference organizers or community organizers and leaders the witnesses the the victims etc and it's very difficult to protect the privacy of the people involved if if your project does have a hosting foundation behind it and it seems that there is a meaningful legal risk or you know you you need an assessment of whether there's a legal risk you know I encourage you to get the lawyers involved at least to evaluate is this you know is this something that's going to need legal support in council throughout the process also having documentation that shows that your that your investigation was fair and thorough is also is also very helpful these are some of the factors that increase legal risk you know we talked about you know there's public statements that increase the risk of well that could cause reputational damage or embarrassment also if the actions taken could impact a person's career you know being banned permanently from a community that somebody you know their business or professional life depends on is going to you know could be motivation and grounds for a lawsuit obviously if you know laws were violated and then if the person who engaged in the misconduct or alleged misconduct is a community leader or an employer or contract of hosting foundation that creates another set of risks and then if there is physical harm suffered that also increases legal risk note that when there is meaningful legal risk it can be helpful to have the lawyer perform the lawyer perform the investigation and the reason why is because of attorney client privilege so when a lawyer performs an investigation there's something called attorney client privilege that attaches to both their conversations with the code of conduct committee and foundation staff if there if there are there is a foundation and also the notes from their investigation so notes with interviews etc. So there is and when that privilege attaches that means in litigation and discovery that's the court can't compel disclosure of those documents so that is a that is one reason why you know again only if the only if there is meaningful legal risk it can it can be helpful to have a lawyer do the investigation note that any message you send to anybody including victims reporters the accused if you go to litigation those will become public or they will be public they will be scrutinized or they will at least they will be scrutinized by the court so also be thoughtful about what what you are discussing in spoken conversations you know for example a private code of conduct committee meeting versus an email and writing because anything in email and writing you know even if it's just you know you're joking around you're being sarcastic and you're like oh yeah you know they keep certain you know such a such a jerk or whatever you know you're you're just making it's you're thinking it it may not be you may not think it's it's a serious conversation but if that gets exposed in litigation you know whatever you said could be used against you insurance this is a very this is a question I get asked about very very often so Linux Foundation and CNCF does have insurance and it does cover volunteers but every insurance policy has lots of exclusions and limitations also if a community member is acting in their individual capacity rather than under the authority within their role as a volunteer that's not going to be covered by insurance and insurance cannot pay for I mean although it can help with the monetary cost of litigation it can't protect you from all the other costs meaning the the time the stress how emotionally draining it is and then it also can't you protect the the privacy of victims and reporters so we are out of time I'm sorry we don't have more time for Q&A but thank you so much for being with me today and thank you for your good work in the community and I will be around in case you have questions


A few miles up the Potomac River from Washington is Mount Vernon, home of George Washington, the first President of the United States. President Ayub and his daughter are the guests of President and Mrs. Kennedy at a state dinner there. It is the first time a state dinner is held at this historic shrine. The 16-mile trip provides lovely views of the natural duties along the banks of the Potomac.


I'm beaten here at home, but without to win in three, Derek Adams looking for his Bradford side to get back on track. The starting eleven is the same, Captain Nar Canavan, Neangro, and Abba Issa, all still out on the side. Barrow conceded late against Colchester last time out. It's a defeat that sees them sixth-thirteenth in the table. Mark Cooper making two changes for this one at the Valley, bringing in Festus Arthur and Josh Kay. Barrow looking to do some damage here against the side. Up and in around the mix in league two. Nice ball in towards Zanzala who meets it, but it just can't keep that one down. Huge kick from O'Donnell, and instantly Bradford are on the attack, and it's a good-looking chance. Sweats only just wide. Really nice build-up. First-time effort. Could so easily have been the opening goal. Again, another huge kick forward by O'Donnell. This one dealt with by the Barrow defence. And a chance to break out towards the left-hand side. Zanzala picked out it again, and this one, well, he gets there. But he can only glance wide. Pressure on for the Bradford defence. Here is Kay. Kay with a chance, and he's crept in. It's a super goal, and the away side leads. As it drops here, he's really only got one thing in mind. One touch to take it out from under his feet, and then dispatch beyond Richard O'Donnell. Bradford nil, Barrow one. Bradford looking to respond. Frog out. Dancers his way towards the area. Cross was good, and it might still create an opportunity here if Bradford can carve out the opening which they did. Charles Vernham having done so well to get the ball out from under his feet could only put the shot wide. Good football again by Bradford using these wide areas ever so well. They're running into trouble. Might still be an opening. Shot from range. Only just wide from Ellie at one. Bradford are managing to find spaces. Are managing to cut through. They get to the ball, and there's the cut back. And Cook just couldn't adjust his body. And then Andy Cook against his old side wins the corner. Another nearly moment for Bradford City here. Cook not really anticipating the cross, and then there were too many bodies in the way for Andy Cook. Game is brought down to a walking pace. Bradford up to the edge of the area. Waiting for the delivery in the middle. Plenty there. Alex Gilead is foiled, and it's another Bradford corner. Some Gareth Evans here doesn't necessarily hit the intended target, and Gilead from a wide area wins the corner. Bradford corner into the box. Vernham not anticipating the ball at the far post as the flick on comes through, and he just can't turn it goalwards. Bradford seeing plenty of the ball since conceding the goal. Can they find an opening? Can they cut through? Barrow defending desperately and very nearly a calamitous own goal. I don't think there would have been much that the keeper could have done here. Zanzala looks like he's backing in. Could well be being tugged from behind. Referee happy for play to continue. All carried away by Threlkard who runs into trouble. Chance switches. Well, very nearly seen looping over the top of Richard O'Donnell. Vernham looking for the given go, but he doesn't get the ball back. Bradford looking for the free kick. Barrow on the charge. And a chance for a delivery potentially. Bull comes in and O'Donnell makes a save. Well, Josh Gordon in space here had targets in the middle, decided to go on his own. Wins the corner on the charge. Racing into Barrow's penalty area. Vernham tight angle. Would have done well to be the keeper from there. Skips past the defenders had Andy Cook demanding the ball in the middle. Cook threads it through. There's a delivery hung up to the far post. Vernham there, and he pounces off to hesitation from the keeper to level things up here. Pentacy, Stevens here just hangs the ball up into a really good area. Poor Farman, indecisive. And Charles Vernham. Well, he made the decision. He turns the ball in and the scores one-one. Space opens up in the Bradford midfield here. Patience to come forward. And at full stretch, Richard O'Donnell watches that one go past his left hand post. Well, one by Bradford in midfield and just watched them here racing towards goal. Cook is brought down on the edge of the area. Well, they know the danger that he presents 67 goals for Barrow in his time. Free kicks at goalwards and into the side netting. Half of the stadium thought that was in. Callum Cook curling the ball too far away. He's thrown in danger here for Bradford, which they've managed to deal with. And they'll carry away to safety. Long pull forwards on the charge. Bradford looking to add a second goal in the game. Is this a moment? It's super defending in the end. Vernham looking for his second of the game. And it looked as though he was about to add it. Sliding challenge in the work from the keeper. Poor Farman doing just enough to turn the ball away for a corner. Bradford into the area. Sharp for a penalty. And the referee says it's a dive. Oscar Threlkalds managed to get himself into a really good spot and maybe just made too much of the challenge as it came in. Big moment in the game. Bradford maintain their unbeaten record here. They fight back after the early goal from Barrow. It finishes Bradford one. Barrow one with the early goal that came from Josh Kay. They've done well to fight back. But the late penalty shout from Oscar Threlkalds. A key moment in the game. A point of peace.


I call it the ice game. I learned this from a random group of people in Germany. And the ice game is very simple.  And it goes, guy, girl, guy, girl, guy, girl, guy, girl. And you don't tell them what you're doing. You just say, we're playing the ice game. Guys grab ice, guys put ice in their mouth. They turn to the girl, they pass the ice without using their hands. So it's like spin the bottle.  It's not them making out, you're just passing ice, right? It's no longer them being responsible for sex. You're leading, you're just passing ice. And if a girl doesn't like you, she'll still play. She'll just get the ice really fast. She'll grab the ice and spit it in your mouth if she has to. But if she likes you, she'll pass the ice and it'll linger. And if you're not sure if you can kiss a girl and you're with a group of people, it's a real fun way to test the waters. If you're ever in that no man's land situation, by no man's land, I mean you don't know if you can escalate or not, don't stay there. Do something, put her to a decision. Escalate, do something small, and she'll give you feedback. So in this situation, we played the ice game. She was real into it, we started making out, had a good night. Another great thing to do if you're kind of in that weird situation where you're in no man's land, body shots. You guys know what body shots are?   If she doesn't like you, she won't play. You say, hey, let's take some body shots. She'll be like, no, I don't want to. She doesn't like you.  It's easy stuff, you can skip a lot of pain of figuring out when to kiss a girl if you do something intermediately. And then another great game that I like to play for Deep Report is when I first learned it, it was called the Questions game.  It's like truth or dare without the dare. I ask a question, you ask a question. You go back and forth. I have three rules that I made up. One, you have to be honest. Two, you have to answer the question that you asked. Three, you have to ask a question that makes the other person potentially embarrassed or nervous. So what happens very quickly is you get into very deep rapport. You start talking about sex that comes up very quickly.    This isn't attractive. I learned this the hard way. There's a way to talk about sex and there's a way not to. That's a whole another speech. But playing this game will you ask her, you know, have you ever been in jail? What's the craziest thing you've done? You'll get to know somebody very quickly. And if you're not naturally good at getting into deeper poor, you know, a tool like this can be really helpful. Physical escalation, when to make the move? Probably two years ago, I was out at a bar in Venice. And it was called The Brig. I walk in the door. There's a dance floor, right past the dance floor, there's a bar.  Like, I'm not doing it right. She's like, she's looking at me and she's smiling and just giving me that like amazing feminine sexual look. So I walk up to her, hey, I'm Robbie. Shake her hand. She's immediately into me. She's like, nuzzling up against me. It's great.    My buddy goes, no man, just talk to her, just wish her a good evening. Interrupt her on the dance floor, wish her a good evening, tell her it was nice to meet her.  So I said, fine. I was still a little bit scared he was going to. So I basically stopped them. She was like, humping this guy who's eight feet tall. And I stopped them and I say, hey, it was really nice meeting you earlier, I'm gonna run. She immediately turns her back to this guy who was just her friend and he wasn't hostile or anything. He just kind of walked away and full investment again. I'm back in. So I'm thinking, well, thank God my friend told me not to be a pussy, this is great. So then the interaction gets interesting. We're up against the bar and she takes her hand and cups my balls. She just goes, wham!  So it never happened to me before. I'm like, ugh.  Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what is going on here? This is strange. So I'm like a deer in the headlights at this point.  But then I remembered and I was like, okay, stay calm, stay grounded, stay cool. And obviously this girl is into you. She's showing massive investment and she wants to play. Just let her seduce me. This is a big thing that I did wrong for a long time was that I felt like I was the one who had to seduce her. Women will seduce you. They're better at conversation than you. They will lead the conversation. They're probably better at physical escalation than you. They can lead physical escalation. So your only job is to get them to like you and you do that by approaching them in an authentic, direct way. You create attraction and a lot of the time you can just put it on autopilot after that. So this crazy, you know, physical banter went on for about 20 more minutes where she started actually trying to kick me in the balls. Then I got pissed. At a certain point I got pissed and I wasn't gonna stay just cool and collected anymore.  And she kind of in a weird way melted.  She was just having fun. And that's when she realized, okay, this guy is serious. He's actually has balls. He's willing to set a boundary. And then she got real feminine. She kind of nuzzled up against me. We started making out. And then she got crazy again and tried to pull me in the bathroom.  But what I learned from this interaction was something very interesting and that was that you don't have to try every time. You don't have to do everything.  Some women want to be seduced. Other women want to seduce you. Every woman is different. Escalating on a woman is not a step-by-step process. Every girl's different. And you have to think. You have to think, who is this girl? What does she want? What does she like? It was obvious that this girl wanted sex that night. If I started trying to have a deeper, poor conversation with her after she tried to grab my nuts, oh, so what are your hopes and dreams and passions? Weird, right? Think about this stuff. You don't have to go deeper, poor every time. You gotta read the woman. If she's into dancing and partying and having a crazy time, then that's what you have to do. If you're at a lounge and it's dark and it's quiet, that's when you have the deeper, poor conversation. Not when she's out on the street. And for the longest time, like I said, I thought about it as a step-by-step process. It's not. You have to be able to switch gears. You have to be able to read her. And this is really the mastery, I think, when it comes to seduction and meeting women, is being able to read what's different about her. How does she want to be seduced? Is she going to seduce me? How am I going to deal with her friends? She's driving. She's got four girls that she's taking home. Am I going to try to make out with her here and pull her in the bathroom? No, she's sober. She's responsible for her friends. I'm going to get her number and take her on a date. Think ahead. Think about what you're doing. Don't just haphazardly go into a bar and start shotgun approaching every chick in there.


Major sponsors for Abledon On Air include Green Mountain Support Services of Vermont, Washington County Mental Health, Al-A'Israel. Food sponsors for Abledon On Air include Geffen Foods Israel, Osam Foods Israel. Major media sponsors for Abledon On Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, www.thisisthebronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, U.S. Press Court, Domestic and International. Anchor FL and Spotify. Welcome to this edition of Abledon On Air, the one and only program that focuses on any disconcerting and unachievments of the differently abled. I am your host, Lawrence Seiler, Arlene's here today. Before we introduce our guest, we would like to say that this program today will be airing in January. We would like to thank our sponsors, Washington County Mental Health and Green Mountain Support Services and many others. Okay, Michelle, I'm gonna introduce you now. With COVID-19 and the onset of the way America's views of prejudice as of late, the national, and with the national focus on the subject, civil rights and the Me Too movement and Black Lives Matter have grown stronger in fighting for equality and justice for our country. Some of our strengthened forces have been with the tragic resurgence of white supremacy and neo-Nazi in the past four years and the upswing of prejudice and racial injustice for police brutality and anti-Semitism on the rise. These didn't happen overnight. These prejudices and racial injustices have been the undercurrent of our country. Vermont author and historian, Michelle Sherburn, sits down with Abledon On Air to discuss this as part of a series discussing the roots of prejudice found in our country's history and zooming in on Vermont's history. Welcome, Michelle Sherburn to the show. Okay, so let's begin. We understand that you've written several books on the abolition of slavery, the abolishing of slavery and the Underground Railroad and written a book on St. Auburn's Raid and co-edited the Peacham Civil War book. How does your historic research on the subject lend itself to today's racism profiling prejudice? You know, different types of prejudices. Misconception, how so? In the recent years, what has since changed in terms of prejudice, racial injustice in our country specifically in the last four years of the current administration? Do you think we went and I'll add a little question here. Do you think we went backwards because about a year and a half ago, for example, in Pennsylvania, there was some anti-Semitism with a synagogue shooting and there's been burnings of churches and all kinds of different things. So do you think we went backwards more or we're continuing to, well, I know we're healing from things like this, but do you think we will continue to go backwards? In terms of prejudice in the Civil War, I want to get a little bit to your books here. You wrote a book specifically on the abolition in the Underground Railroad in Vermont. I'm going to show a part of the cover here. Now, how in terms of prejudice and people with disabilities in the Underground Railroad, how does this tie in to how bad was the President during the Civil War leading up to today? Sort of like, I apologize for that.  Can you explain, can you, for those that don't know our viewers, can you explain the short end, maybe there's a short end of the Jim Crow laws? Can you explain a little bit about that please? I'm sorry, I apologize, go ahead. I didn't mean to put you on a spot there, I'm sorry. Well, getting to the Jewish people for example, back in the 40s during, they had in Poland and different parts of Germany, they had a horrible situation called Kristonach. Now what Kristonach was, it's called the Night of Broken Glass. Basically, if Jews had businesses, if Jewish people had businesses, butcher shop, shoes, shining shoes, clean laundry, restaurant, things like that, whatever you had, they broke your windows and it took everything away from you. And there were some few people like Oskar Schindler who saved about 1300, 1400 Jews. But some of it was jealousy, but then it was just if you didn't conform to what Adolf Hitler wanted, you were killed.  If you were one arm, one leg, if you spoke differently or whatever, had a speech impediment, you were killed. And then at some point ministers and even rabbis told, they had a meeting with Adolf Hitler during this thing that, look, you have to stop killing children, you have to stop doing this, this is not God's will. And but he didn't listen. So, yes, yes, now question, as far as the underground road, I'm gonna show you a rather book here. The other book is entitled Slavery in the Underground Railroad in New Hampshire. That's right. So, how was the tie-in between Vermont and New Hampshire during the Underground Railroad times? Wait, wait, so Canada owned, or not owned, but Canada, well, yes, did they own Great Britain? No, I'm confused. I think for the Civil War, that if they were safe up here, they could chase down Robert Boston. So, can you also explain, because you did a book called The St. Albans Raid. Can you explain a little bit about that book and the correlation? Well, association to create a book of contributions, pushed her and said, hey, I think this would be a great book because it's a great story. Show this, show her into St. Albans and Austin's checking things out, but, and they were not mixed with the townspeople. And then they picked a day and they decided to take over the town. No, they had constables and police, but police, talking about police, some of this prejudice extends to police brutality. Yeah, it's called Dark Sage, was the name of the episode. Yeah, they, yeah, now I'm speaking about, quick, quick, quick question. Well, all right, speaking about media, talking about movies and TV programs, movies such as Glory with Matthew Broderick, Selma and others, what?  I think I skipped the question here. Let me go back. Yeah, yeah, how has prejudice through media been viewed today when it comes to prejudice? Like movies such as Selma and other TV series dealing with prejudice? Especially Harriet Tubman movie. Harriet, that was a pretty good movie actually. So in history, dehumanizing slaves or people with disabilities, getting people with disabilities here or eliminating an ethnic group, culture and or religion, what are the reasons that has been done? Especially example, I'm bringing this up, during, and it was in the Bible, during, I've seen the 10 Commandments many times. During Moses' time, he saw the Jews being dehumanized with the pyramids, building the pyramids and like they're getting tired, that they're not being fed, they're not drinking water, they're being whipped. So yeah, I think all, I think all religions have had some form of prejudice. Yes, no? Now, during this, are we allowed to mention the other, we can't mention your other book that you're writing, right? Can you? Briefly. Briefly? Yeah, institution, brand and trastry about it. Fun. A lot of things tied in with the history that I have done with slavery is interwoven. So yeah, that's fine. And we kind of answered one of the questions that you put down here, can you tie that to history of people with disabilities and you're talking about it now? Yeah, exactly. Can you tell us some examples of prejudice or intolerance in the 1800s in Vermont? The first African American female poets in our country and the white neighbors, they were persecuted. Yes, please. We got nine minutes left, but go ahead. Something state, racism, that. Arlene, did you want to ask another question before we kind of end? Because we, take your time. And we hold prejudice. I mean, prejudice might not necessarily go away, but I think if people work together, you know, because, you know, power and numbers, I think if people work together, we can, you know, maybe eradicate it slowly. For people too. And just that everybody deserves the pursuit of happiness and a good life. Jewish, if you're, you know. And with that said, we would like to thank, so let's show your books one last time. We would like to thank Michelle Arnazki-Sherburn, the author of, I think, am I saying that right? Arnazki? You got it. You got it right. You're a good man. Michelle Arnazki-Sherburn, the author of Appalachian and the Underground Railroad in Vermont. Show that one more time. And it's done by the History Press and you can find that on amazon.com. And, you know, we're not allowed to give prices, but I'm sure people can buy your book. Yeah, yeah, probably some other bookstores have your book. That's one. And then the other book here that I have is Slavery in the Underground Railroad in New Hampshire, also done by History Press by Michelle Arnazki-Sherburn.  What's the other book named by Michelle Arnazki-Sherburn also done by History Press? You can get it at www.amazon.com and other bookstores. Well, we would like to thank Michelle Arnazki-Sherburn for joining us today on Ableton on Air. Again, we would like to also thank our sponsors, Washington County Mental Health, Green Mountain Support Services, and many, many others. This will air in January. And thank you again, Michelle, for joining us on this edition of Ableton on Air. I'm Lauren Seiler. I'm Lauren Seiler. See you next time. Sponsors for Ableton on Air include, Green Mountain Support Services of Vermont, Washington County Mental Health, Al-Israel. Food sponsors for Ableton on Air include, Geffen Foods Israel, Osam Foods Israel, major media sponsors for Ableton on Air include, Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, www.thisisthebronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, U.S. Press Court, Domestic and International. Anchor FL and Spotify.


visual artist and I teach Islamic geometric patterns and arabesque art. Today's lesson is going to be geometric patterns and we are going to use an isometric grid to draw geometric patterns. You can download an isometric grid from my website at aminoharishi.com under workshops, under resources, you'll find this template that you can download and use to do this lesson. So here is an isometric grid and an isometric grid is basically a grid of equilateral triangles. Equilateral triangles are triangles that have three equal sides. So we're going to start off with drawing a pattern that looks something like this with stars and hexagons. So using this isometric grid here, in the corner here I'm just going to start by showing the different shapes that you can get from here. So you have the very basic shape which is an equilateral triangle. You can also draw a six-pointed star. So that's one triangle here and in total this is 12 triangles. You have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and this gives you a nice six-pointed star. Another shape that you can draw is a hexagon. In the hexagon you have these six equilateral triangles. One thing you'll notice about these shapes is they all have multiples of three. So a triangle has three sides. This star has six points which is a multiple of three and it has 12 sides which is also a multiple of three. This hexagon has six sides which is also a multiple of three and that's because we're using a grid of triangles and triangles have three sides. So let's start with our pattern. We're going to start in the center of the page and we're going to start with the six-pointed star. I'm going to start over here and that's where I'm going to start my star and I'm just going to mark this down here and I recommend that you use a ruler so that you get nice straight lines. We're going to start by drawing our six-pointed star.  So I'm going to the tip of the star I'm going to skip one space and that point is going to be where my hexagon starts. At that point we have a star with six hexagons and now I'm going to draw six more stars. These stars are going to start at these points. Mark out where the bottom of the star goes. The bottom of the star goes one triangle two three and four so you can put a mark there. You can do that for all six stars. This one will go this way so it's one triangle two three four. Take your time. Make sure your lines are nice and clean. We have six stars one in the middle and six hexagons. So we have these spaced out with about one triangle width in between each shape. Now what I'm going to do is we're going to take this and we're going to turn this into this pattern here. So this pattern if you look at it you have the star in the center. You have six stars on the outside and then you have these hexagons. There's some additional hexagons here that we'll draw in and if you look at this pattern what's really interesting is that there's a weave around it. So this acts sort of as a border around each shape and then you can weave that border. So it goes under over under over under over under over. So it creates sort of a basket effect like you're weaving a basket and I'm going to show you how to do that. This may seem a little bit daunting at first but it's actually quite simple. So over here I've added six additional hexagons over here in between the stars and now we're going to work on our weave. So let's start at the tip of this star here and let's say that this first line is going to go over. Now we're going to start at this point. So we look at what was happening before. This part came from under. So over here it's going to go over. So we're going to connect the lines this way and one way to check if you've been doing it right is that when you get back to the first point it still follows that same rule. So it's still going over under. This one's over so it's working well over here. If you find a spot that you're going over and then over again that means somewhere along the lines you made a bit of a mistake and you might have to backtrack and find where that mistake is and fix it. So now that I've finished weaving my pattern we can color it in in a nice way to create some sort of shading. So we have our stars and this is the border that you weave. So where the lines go over and under you can create a shadow. So this line is going over so you can create a shadow underneath it and the way that I'm going to do that is I'm just going to color it in lightly sort of using this across hatching method and I'm going to create a shadow. So it creates that visual effect that this line is underneath this line and we're going to do that for every part that went under. All of this cross hashing done. You can also even just go in with a bit of another color. We're just a little bit. It adds another little dimension. I'm just going to do it closer to the center so it sort of becomes lighter as it comes out and there we have it. We have a beautiful geometric pattern with these stars and hexagons and we created a weave out of the border. It looks like a basket and just like this pattern there are many other patterns that you can create using the same isometric grid such as this pattern. Over here we have the same three shapes. We have a star, hexagon and triangle. This pattern here we have a star, hexagon and we have this other interesting shape here sort of this L shape that goes around the star. I hope you enjoyed this and I hope you get a chance to try this out. You can head over to my website to find the template that you can print out. You can print out multiple copies and make multiple different patterns. My name is Amina and I hope you enjoyed this and I hope you get the chance to draw this. Thank you.


Hello, everybody, welcome back to another AI video. In this one, I'm going to show you how to use a free AI tool. At least it's currently free. It may change in the future to vectorize any image or artwork just like this.  I've got this bulldog. You can clearly see that it's vectorized as you can see here, but when I go to my finder and I click on it, you're going to see here that it's a PNG. So it is just an image and I've turned this image into a vector. So how do you vectorize it? I'm going to show you in less than 60 seconds. Start your timer. This is crazy. First step, go to this website vectorizer.ai. A link will be in the description below. Next, grab any image. In this case, I'm going to grab this bulldog. No, let's go ahead and grab, uh, yeah, let's grab this bulldog. This is a nice simple example. Drag and drop it here. When you do that, you're going to see a few things happen, the upload, and then it processes it, processes it, pardon me, and then fetch whatever that means. I guess maybe that's because it's a dog. Now, original image on the left and this is a vector image on the right. Now, this is unbelievable. It has done pretty much a perfect copy of it.  I'm going to go ahead and click on download. And when I do that, look here, you'll see here that it says. Dot, dot, dot SVG, scalable vector graphic. It is now vectorized. I'm going to grab it, open it. I'm going to go into Adobe Illustrator and I'm going to go ahead and close this one up and I'm going to drag and drop it in. And I'll show you just to prove it that it's correct and it's vectorized. Drag and drop it in here.  Each one of these is a path or you can just switch over here to your direct selection tool, select everything. And there they are. There's your vector. That's all there is to it. It's a free tool. Links in the description below. Thanks for watching.


And specifically, the groups, those were in the favor of Munarki and who preferred the traditional authority of Munarki. And the groups, those were in the favor that Munarki has, that is, the power of the king should be so much that it should be all-in-all. And in comparison, the other group, they thought that the authority should be divided between the king and the supporters. So, this clash of interest, about this, the Hobbes learn from their time and circumstances in their philosophy. Because at that time, the development regarding the institution of parliament, that was also debatable. Hobbes represents a compromise between these two factions. On the one hand, he rejects the theory of divine right of king. It is very interesting that Hobbes said that the absolute authority of the king should not be there. There should be a check on the king. Because Hobbes lived through a time when England and the English history and the most productive years of his philosophy that was again considered when he was experiencing a turmoil in his state. So, under this situation, when Hobbes presented his perspectives, then they became controversial. Why did Hobbes' philosophy become controversial? Because Hobbes thought that the human being, the human mind, is basically self-centered or interest-based. Because wherever the human being is, he will not accept any other force that is against him in his path. So, where Thomas Hobbes discussed that the absolute power of the monarch is not there, he also thought that if we have to control over the human beings, if we have to keep a check that the situation is normal, if we are in control, then what can be the way for that? That the distribution of power is such a mechanism in which not everyone has a share, rather that the formula of the distribution of power is created by keeping the human nature in mind. So, the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, the contribution of Thomas Hobbes regarding discussing human nature, regarding the distribution of power, regarding the role of the monarch, there are many questions about this which have many objections to the response of Thomas Hobbes.