I'm actually really genuinely surprised this came out in 1999. Ooh! That's a hot mug, guys! Hey guys, this is my review for Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. This was actually a suggestion from one of my Patreon supporters, and I'm actually really happy that I got to rewatch this, because I was both very happily surprised with it, as well as kind of reminiscing in the feelings I had about this film. This is Tim Burton's take on the Sleepy Hollow headlose horseman mythology, and I'll be honest, it's actually probably one of the darker films that he's done, and I know that's kind of a stereotype thing to say with all of Tim Burton's movies, but he actually really did try to make a horror movie. Yeah, there is kind of that Tim Burton silliness, especially with how some people get their heads chopped off, but there is some very graphic imagery and there's a ton of blood in this film, and while maybe it's not as scary as I remember it being, it still is a confidently well-made film, if not just suffering from a bit of rushed exposition via dreams. Johnny Depp plays Ichabod Crane, who is a scientist investigator in this film. He's trying to bring forward ideas like science and proper investigation to the rule of law, but he's kind of being made fun of it, so he is sent to the town of Sleepy Hollow to investigate the headless horseman beheadings. There he goes from being a very hard skeptic to a full-on believer after seeing the murders happen in front of him. He also becomes entrenched in the politics and schemings that are happening in the town, all the while trying to uncover the conspiracy that links to the headless horseman and why people are being killed. The film won an Oscar for its art and direction design, and honestly, I completely understand why. I love the town, I love the aesthetic of the film.    I could be wrong, but I do feel that since this movie came out in 1999, which I'm still surprised about, I thought this came out at least after the millennium, but all of the effects that are in this film are pretty darn top notch, especially in a scene where all of this material like veins, muscles, and skin regrow on a skull. It's a visual effect, but it's so well done. I wouldn't be surprised if they embedded sort of practical elements into it to make it look that way. Johnny Depp is really good in this movie. I love his kind of quirky-isms. Definitely a lot of the eye movement would be carried over into characters like Jack Sparrow, Christine Richie is a little bit light-headed, a little bit floppy kind of a stereotype of Tim Burton's characters at least at that time. Also the whole fainting thing. I really forgot how many female characters, they're just people in general because Johnny Depp does it too. How often the fainting at a situation plot device was used, especially back in the 90s. And there's also Christopher Walken in this movie. He doesn't exactly say much. I believe his lines are limited to as well as... I think he has maybe like 15 hours throughout the whole movie and that's it. But then also going on to the action bits. I actually think that the choreography, while not expert level, it's still pretty great. I love the fight between Johnny Depp, Casper Van Dean. Casper Van Dean's in this movie against the headless horseman on the bridge. It's one of my favorite fight scenes in the entire movie. And when Casper just gets ripped apart, it's like, damn, that was gruesome. Also speaking of people in this movie, it's an absolute delight when you see who the five big heads of the town are. We've got Dumbledale.  We've got Alfred from the Tim Burton Batman movies, as well as the Drew Schumacher ones. We've got the Emperor from Amadeus. We have Mr. Dursley as well, another Harry Potter alumni. And we also have Duncan from The Last of the Mohicans. He's just here. I was kind of surprised he was in here. You guys like the same wing, I swear. And while this movie is a fun delight to rewatch, especially for those who have seen the film before, it still has its issues. The dreams that Ichabod is having while being very visually engaging. The dreams are a little bit hearsay and very rushed and kind of trying to build in more development as well as sort of relate to the whole witchcraft idea. And then there's the ending of the film. When the culprit is revealed, there is just this absolute train of exposition that comes out of their mouth. Mystery and movies always have a giant wave of exposition, but admittedly when it comes at the end, you're like, whoa, whoa, hang on, wait, what? But that's only just minor complaints. I still very much enjoy Sleepy Hollow. I think it's a very visually engaging film. I think the film definitely still holds up too in terms of its age. I think that the visual effects are really good. The entire look of the film is well done. Since this was still shot on film, I think it really holds up still well. If you've never seen Sleepy Hollow before, I would very much recommend it. I never got to that television show that Fox did. I thought it was a little bit silly, but I really, really recommend this. And I'm not the biggest Tim Burton fan.  So in the end, I'm going to give Sleepy Hollow a 6 out of 7. I really do like this movie. I think it's a fun time. It definitely has great gothic visual elements. And sure, while the story does a bit rush itself in some areas, you're still going to be so entrenched in the mystery, the visuals, the fights, and the kind of cool little quirky horror bits that you're going to really enjoy this movie. For those of you who have watched this movie and like it, you know what I'm talking about. For those who haven't, you're definitely in for a treat. With that said, I hope you guys enjoyed the review. If you did, leave a like and if you're interested in more, subscribe. And if you guys would like more of a say in what I review, consider checking out my Patreon page in the description below. And if you guys would like to support a good cause, my buddy Emilio over on the Channel Citizens is once again doing his October charity stream. This time it is for the First Nations Development Institute. The charity stream will be starting on October 23rd at 1 p.m. Pacific time. So if you guys want to check that out and see what you can do to help and you also can get some prizes from it, check out the link in the description below. Until then guys, that's all from me. I'll see you guys next time.


Nice Morgan. Shot Morgan. Daddy got something on your lip. Video? What is wrong with you? I didn't do nothing. I didn't do nothing. I didn't do nothing. I just said there's something on your lip. Hey. Alright guys, welcome back. First official hunt of the 21-20-22 season out here in Idaho. And we are pumped. I mean like I've always wanted to come out here and Duck Hunt haven't made it out here this is the first year. First time and got to go with some of my best friends. So got Jake, Nathaniel and Morgan. So they're both shooting and then I'm shooting. It's the first Duck Hunt out of the boat line too. So we're really pumped about that. He's actually on a big deer hunt. He should get a really nice buck in Wyoming. He went with Johnny and Olivia and Jack. So they're out there doing that. I think it's going to be fun. We do have other couple groups right by us. We were out here for quite a while by ourselves. We didn't honestly get here that early. I'll probably start showing up at the last minute like the last 45 like you know how they do. No big deal if we work together and nobody busts them out too high I think we'll do pretty good. That looks incredible already dude. Can you use mojo's here? Yeah, here you can. Run Spike! Hey Titus says just whatever sacrifices I have to make. He says go under water and just hold the camera above water and just get that shot. Titus you can't throw them much further. I'm just throwing them really literally to get a couple eyes on. That's why I'm not really having anybody else throw decoys because honestly I'm just putting a couple along this so they can see them. And a couple of things on this grass. That's about it. Super excited first time of the year shooting my new 12 gauge. I haven't shot ducks with it yet. I shot dove. I did pretty good. Not the best hopefully we shoot good and get limits. Being blast. I'm really excited. He's dead. He's floating right to Rocky. Mallard of the season came right over about 20 yards, 15 yards. But I couldn't say nothing because he was right there when I seen it and it was too late to tell Jake. What do you think so far? I think it feels like a California refuge. I'll tell you what the biggest problem was is the fact that it was like 150 birds at one time and then as soon as it hit shoot time about 10 guns going off and then that was it. They're kind of trickling right now but I don't know. We'll see. I sent my discouraging honestly because I wasn't expecting that many guns to be blazing around us as long as the stretch of river is but this is where the birds were so we're not the only smart ones that know how to find birds. Right here Titus. He's right here. Three Drake's. So Nathan have doubled up. Sweet. Shot good. Two save way. Morgan crushed him. Okay guys tell me where to go. Straight. Come on. Good boy. Good boy. Rocky knows best. Leave. Good boy. That's a Drake. That's actually a good job. Get him. Get him. Stone him. Sit. Sit. He's got him dude. Sit. Good boy. Good boy. I went and thought you got to hide a hoe for a wood duck. Good boy. Good boy. Well whoever shot this person. It's like a bird. I got right here dude. It's a stud Drake. Is that your first one? Cool buddy. That's kind of worth it right there boys. Good boy. Good boy. Come here bud. What do you think of Idaho Mr. That's cool. There's birds here. I will say she's the greatest. I think the boys are shooting right. Yeah they're doing alright. That's tough man. I will say I'm going to admit it is a different beast. That's all he cares about. Just get me this right here. All my glory. Do I look like Buddha? What else do you need? What do you guys think? A good time round.  A little better than sending them. Sit. Sit. Do I look like I weigh like 300 pounds?  Do you want a cracker? Ten. Eight yards. What did I tell you guys? Well we're eating salami. Let's eat some salami boys. We're running the camera all day. Ladies and gentlemen bow down to the cameraman himself. I don't know if we should give you too much glory until we see what you guys say. You may want to look at the footage. It's probably on pause. Not recording. You were in pause when you thought you were recording. Recording. It's been a good day. How come you didn't pick the camera up when those come right in our face like eight yards? The cameraman was on a break. I need our union breaks. It's been a good morning compared to what we thought was going to... It did not go the way we planned. I will say that. What duck hunt has though? Literally a million doesn't. Right? We thought it was going to be... It was an emotional roller coaster. They were landing five feet from us in the grass. This morning the boys probably could have shot all three shells. Which if we didn't know what we know now we would have unleashed, right? And everything we have killed though, we're not sky busting. We've been killing them pretty close. That last bird was not even ten yards. I thought he had it. Did he not find it? Oh, here he is. Another drape. He was actually in that thick stuff. He was. He was starting to get some brown on his chest. Good shot, guys. Did I get him? Yeah, I'm pretty sure you did. That's four. Good boy, Rocky. It's alright. Yeah, it was. Good boy. Good boy, Rocky. Did that feather just fall? Give me a shoot. Ready for it? Drake, you stand up early. Yeah. I didn't see you, Sam, because my back was sitting. I didn't even move. I don't know if that was it though, Morgan. I really don't think that was, I think they're already breaking. I think they've seen us in here. Cool. That's the only thing we got. We got no mojo. We don't. We have no mojo or decoys. Well, that's not why they're coming into the decoys. It's this right here. Not that. Not that. That sounds fun. JJ layers hybrid with the 350. We set some decoys up. I mean, we'd be happy if we got four. Yours always runs down your chin every time we do this. Good boy. So, this is a mid-celebratory do. We did good this morning. Now we're waiting for the evening hunt. Can't get any better than this right here. It's in the shade waiting for the ducks to fly. Get a big one. There should be three ducks down. Nathaniel. Nathaniel. We got three, right? Nice shot, Morgan. Nice shot. You could tell that's one to Drake. Good shot, Morgan. Nice shot, Morgan. I aimed right at him on the first one. Shot, Morgan. Stubborn shot. Titus, he almost pulled up on that other one. It was like, what do you do? They were right there. You see him? Drake has some green on his head. Sweet. You can keep your stain with me. There we go. Nice shot.  Of course, I didn't get the camera on. There it is, boys. Limits for the day. We all shot six apiece? Man, I don't know what to say. That was an awesome hunt. Almost all mallards. So 16 mallards, a wood duck and agreeing to top her off like a little cherry on top. Can't go with that one. It's just got to cost. I think this old boy's a little poop. Shot good there, Nathaniel. You were really lighting it up. But you really smoked him right there. Look at that. None of this could have been done without the boat. The first hunt out of the boat was a complete success. There was some things to learn about it. Just hunt on a river, let alone and using a boat. But it really made it happen and it was honestly so much fun. So good old Gator tail. Got it done. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Give it a thumbs up. Hit the subscribe. We'll see you in the next one.


Hey guys thanks for joining me on the show today. Today I'm in conversation with a guy called Greg McKeown based in California, though he's an Englishman and he is a two times New York Times best-selling author with his first book Essentialism that was huge and his latest book which we talked about Effortless. We talked for over an hour so we're going to split this show into two parts. So the first part today, second part, a couple of weeks time. Thanks again for being here. Enjoy this conversation. You're gonna love it. He's a great guy. Hey listen I really appreciate your time Greg and thanks for being on the show with me. I loved the book Effortless. I wanted to ask you, I'm always curious about what makes writers write about what they do. Why did you choose this subject and that title? I was interested to ask you first of all. You know every question can be answered in different ways can't it and there's sort of 10 different reasons but one honest reason is that when people read Essentialism I actually spoke about this theme in it but I felt like it sort of got to some degree missed because the framing of Essentialism is so clear between focusing on what's essential versus what's non-essential but that was the overarching narrative. But there's a secondary narrative in it and I think it's just as important as the first because it's not enough just to know what is essential even to choose it. If you then go at what matters most in the wrong way you will burn out and still not get the results that matter most and as I was you know I had that already in my mind then you suddenly hit into this era we're in where I think there's just two kinds of people there are people who are burned out and then there are people who know they are burned out and in that environment this subject that you know this frame this mindset has the power of relevancy right now and and in a sense it's bad news that it does I mean maybe it's good news for the book but it's sort of bad news for me and so I've just been delighted to see it seem to have relevancy you know it came in New York Times bestseller and then just over the weekend it was selected by The Times you know The London Times as one of the seven books in its genre for the year you know so great well done and and and beyond that it's just this sense I have when I'm working now with groups of like a maybe a doubling or even a tripling of demand versus the pre-pandemic period for the kind of work I do and like I said in a sense that's bad news but it shows that it's maybe it's not a great book but it's a great problem that it addresses and it has that that that relevancy right now. So how are you delivering that are you going into corporates and stuff small businesses large organizations and so on where is the demand for it? Yeah the demand is through you know conferences or internal events most of it's virtual but which is you know for me that's a really great thing. At the beginning when virtual was first sort of the thing I thought I don't know we're going to lose a lot and we do lose something but you gain something too I mean there's something to be said for the intimacy of just having a conversation you know we now speak to each other from our homes there's something about that that's beneficial and so but and practically I mean you know just a couple of days ago did you know we're able to do three keynotes on the same day you could it's impossible to do that prior to this but you're still reaching out into organizations of you know a lot of the tech companies Apple and Google and Twitter and these kinds of companies are still in that that range but but also really across you know across I would say all industries all major industries what's been interesting too is is now areas outside of the US particularly all through Central and South America there's something very interesting happening there with essentialism and effortless in Brazil for example I mean I would have mentioned that but that's because it's on my mind you know essentialism and effortless depending on the day will be outselling Harry Potter you know I mean like that's you know like that's ridiculous in the kind of genre that I'm in but I but something is meeting the zeitgeist there and and put it put aside you know my books as I'm working with these organizations they'll often share with me the you know like the the pulse survey results they're getting across their organizations and wellness is so much lower and it surprises them everyone thinks I will get a bit of a ding over the last year and a half but it's much lower and often than they're expecting and in South America especially so so you might have maybe 25 percent of the people will say it's possible to have a job at this company and still have have good well-being and that's a problem right that's a serious problem and that's the people that are employed in often well-run organizations and so and so yeah I think we're at a bit of a tipping point I think people thought they'd be done with the pandemic by now and so the fact that it seems like it's going to go on and on and on it's like yeah we've got to find a new way of working. What is the touch point for people Greg is it is it that they are battling complexity is the complexity of an artificial sort of man-made nature because you know there's good and bad complexity like fat there's good and bad versions of it as you know I know in the book you're dealing a lot with unnecessary complexity that a lot of organizations as you know seem to produce all the time unnecessary strutters of management multiple meetings that aren't necessary I mean when I'm in America I have a home in America in Phoenix Arizona and I love Phoenix I was just there yeah I had a place in Scottsdale but I used to get overwhelmed with the multiple choice in the Starbucks or the supermarket or the store the overwhelm and the complexity gave me in making what I thought would be a simple choice so this tendency to over complicate things your effortless soul speaks to that is that what people are people connecting those dots and realizing that's what Greg's talking about well I'd say what I think you know let me answer that this way that when I'm in person with events I'll ask people to snap for various questions I'll say okay here are some things and I use that is a teaching device of course to get everyone to feel not alone that they're like well everyone's struggling with this thing but the thing that I get not just a response to but but they'll you know like laugh to two is just the idea that everything is harder than it needs to be okay just that's idea that everything's harder than it needs to be people can feel that and and it's a to me what it what is going on there is that it's an evidence of success even though it doesn't feel like it if you are successful over a long enough period of time if you have some relative stability over a long period of time and I know people don't feel that in a VUCA world where everything's so volatile and so on but actually you know even though even though the pandemic makes us feel things are crazy and even though we do have a volatility that we have to manage if you take a longer point of view of history you know if you say sort of over the last several thousand years we're living in absolutely incredibly good times and and even the the complexity as you say well well said that there's positive and negative complexity even the positive complexity is an evidence of success it's an evidence of interdependent collaboration you know international collaboration it's an absolute to me it's an absolute miracle you know when I when you work in a major city and you look at that the bus arrives exactly as when it's supposed to and and the and there's an uber drive that you can get that sort of voluntarily signing up for this and they're there when they say they're going to be just all of it works it's absolutely extraordinary so that that's as context it says well well now our job is is to how do we how do we remove the scar tissue from yesterday's success if we have massive failure failure simplifies it'll simplify everything and eventually if you don't voluntarily simplify then failure will simplify for you a great book on that called the the collapse of complex societies that really gets into the the historical premise for that and and so and so what what i'm of course i'm arguing for and what seems to be resonant for people is that you have to simplify before you have to you simplify you simplify because because it just makes life so much easier for you for your team for your customers uh i mean somebody just somebody just email me i don't know somehow reached out to me of the last the last maybe 48 hours and they said they said they went to the you know to the to the airport and they said they had to show their id six times between the time they arrived to the time they got on the plane six times he said i don't look any different do they really need six different points in the process is that really what is absolutely you know essential that that's just adding and adding and adding and there's no one in charge of making it effortless and the as soon as you discover that this it's a tremendous opportunity improving yourself but also your business um your competitive uh positioning with other people you're just easier to work with it's easier to get the job done uh and and loads of chance there but um you know the large you know within this age of mega institutions and the larger organization gets the more removed it gets from me and you from the the customer as it were and then you know these shows like undercover boss where the boss goes back in the trenches and suddenly becomes aware how crap it is to work for him or her because of the stupid policies signed off you know in some city miles away that trickles down and makes people's lives in misery and the morality is low and the multiple layers of as we just talked about stupid complex things like the multiple IDs it's that that I loved about the book and I thought this is scalable to a large degree don't you think I mean obviously it needs a lot of willingness to be vulnerable and open about the fact that we are detached from customers and we don't really care and these organizations as you know the bigger they get they're staffing more for systems and policies than they are for customers so it feels like it's getting more and more away from us I was on the phone the other day you know to Sky TV or your cable company yeah a freaking nightmare yes and so all the branding about you know we're here to serve and nothing's too much trouble all these branding on websites you get then when you show up to the hotel or the airline or whatever it's a nightmare so you kind of want to thrust that book in their hands and say read this because just the first chapter could revolutionize your business but there seems to be and have you had pushed back to this is what I'm thinking what would be the possible pushback to this yeah I mean so much to so much to riff on what you just said I mean what you said freaking nightmare how true that is how many things I mean that's why that line everything's harder than it needs to be is so resonant and it resonates with me sort of like an echo you know today I mean we just we just um we just starting Anna and I we were establishing the business in a new state yesterday and uh and as my wife and in literally literally we had to go through 100 steps I'm not exaggerating I'm talking actually 100 steps that there's no excuse for that it's an outrageous waste of time and and this sort of this is like the upside and downside of digitization because digitization allows in well it allows for automation right which is a tremendous possible advantage but it's like a light side and a dark side to it because the dark side is if you automate complexity there's a necessary complexity that every single person forever afterwards now has to go through 100 steps instead of five steps or one step you know I mean if I think about this process I went through yesterday I think they could have summarized it down to a single page got the key information they had I wasn't actually starting a corporation I have all the incorporation details already established it's just doing business in that state all they need is a picture of that original statement of articles and that's it that's all they'd have everything they need it would be perfectly sensible for them and instead you've got all this noise so so I don't think that I don't get a lot of pushback like this doesn't make sense to us what it is is that what it is I think is that is that no one's creating unintentional complexity on purpose so complexity grows by accident so what you need instead you need you know you need your effortless ambassador you need your effortless you know Mr what I'm looking for evangelist who is is looking out for this right and and if you can get there to the point that you have an effortless you create a culture of looking for this you you know you become like a bit like let's say a company like Southwest maybe uh I mean Southwest Airlines is that there's that moment in their history quite early on in their history they're trying to be the low-cost carrier to the you know to the to the country they're all their competitors are creating this a new ticketing machine that's going to cost them millions of dollars to set up and then of course many more millions to maintain over years and then they're having this discussion that team meeting the executive meeting and somebody says do we care what continental thinks is a ticket and they're all like intuitive we don't care about that just because other people are doing it's not good enough reason for us to do it and the art solution they came up with is they just used their existing system and printed on it this is your ticket just to the over instead of your receipt you also got that it it doubled up as your receipt and your ticket that's what I'm trying to say and uh and they saved millions of dollars and all that time and all that energy that's just one small insight into a certain way of thinking that says just because everyone else is doing it or just because we did it in the past none of that's good enough reason for now let's just keep removing all the stuff and the and the best the best business leaders I think uh you know that the real breakthrough people are doing this they're they're very good at at removing complexity they're constantly doing in the you know this is Jeff Bezos at Ammons this is Steve Jobs at Apple they have had disproportionate results because they keep making it easier and easier for the end user and their obsession around that uh is I think exemplary actually I used to have rant regularly when I flew before we could all fly as as much as we could about pretty shareways because pretty shareways branding was we here to fly and to serve and I can tell you they do one of those and it's not the second in England we kind of all felt you know they fly but they're very snobbish very stuck up it feels like a club you're entering into kind of thing especially if you fly economy you're lucky to be there right exactly and you kind of realized and then when I flew with Virgin occasionally the difference the contrast between the two that the trickle down values of Branson have it been fun and playful and growth oriented and investing individuals I remember you know being in a Virgin business lounge in Perth Australia and I asked the lady at the check-in in the business lounge what was the password for the day for the lounge and the password was joyful but in in British Airways lounge is this Budapest or Las Vegas or Romania and I thought those things meant it don't they well I thought clearly in Virgin they made sure that the cultural engineering traveled as far as the choice of a password in a lounge and so in that lounge on that morning everybody was using this word joyful there wouldn't normally be in your vocabulary that day especially in a business lounge and people were saying to each other what's the password and so you heard this word joyful been thrown around is it one L or two L's and all this and people typing the word joyful and I thought what a brilliant masterstroke it was because it was such an odd word to have in that hectic stressful environment of the lounge whereas Las Vegas Budapest it so was typical the password told me everything about the interface between who's in charge and trickling down to us as the users between Virgin and BA and the difference as you know between values and culture values being beliefs and culture being behavior and making the culture the same thing as what you believe is the trick most people don't seem to be able to pull off it's rare that what they say they're branding is what they deliver right yeah there's so many places to go with that too but while we're still if we have this throughput of like airlines and travel and what what is and what it isn't and and I was in I was in Storm Ida a couple of months ago so it's coming into New Jersey airport and and I arrived everything seemed fine but by the time we got on the plane you know the storms were in we sit on the plane for an hour we come back in the within an hour of that there's like rain coming in through the ceilings and everything so I go to the lounge right it's the united lounge don't mind calling them out and I'm in there and there is this there is you cannot leave the airport you cannot fly out of the airport you can't drive out the airport you can't walk out the airport but you are stuck there and for an undefinable amount of time and starting it I don't remember 845 maybe it was 945 I can't remember but whatever the time that that lounge ends they just started screaming at their customers to leave and they got higher and higher and higher till they're literally actually yelling at people through the microphone you have to leave right now and I just was like like I'm I actually didn't feel bothered I didn't feel angry about any of it I didn't feel emotional about it but I did to find out why why they thought this was a good choice you know and so I did talk to someone about it that was there you know the closest thing to a manager on site and I'm just like it's just a missed opportunity like it's such a no-brainer right to keep this open it's such a no-brainer to just go look there's loads going on everyone's trying to find a quiet corner somewhere there's no beds for anybody at least here there's a comfortable seat for a few extra people it's so obvious yes to keep it going yes and and and and he's just you know he wasn't super rude about it but he wasn't open to it he just was like well look that's the contract that's what we have to do and that's the policy and it's like that's not it's not good you know it doesn't doesn't look good for United that's the answer well it's a policy that we have to mess over our you know our customers what I find amazing Greg is how do these corporates find these rule-quoting system adhering Nazis that when you deal with them they just court policy even though they know what they're telling you is ridiculous like I was on BA I was in economy sat near the front between me and business class was the curtain you know I I need a pillow there's no pillows so I say to the cabin crew lady can I have a pillow I'm sorry sir we don't have any there's a pile of pillows in front of me I said well there's a pile there there for business class people it's that and she looked at me as if to say I know that that is a stupid answer but that's what I'm supposed to tell you so when she'd gone I went and grabbed the pillow and she saw me do it and she didn't care she just didn't want to be the one to appear to permit me to do it it's that these organizations find these people that are that are willing to conform to what they know even as a decent human being a kind human outside of the job they still stick to these rules it's like it's like the bog on Star Trek the micros entity yeah there's you know there's a lot here right because okay so let's let's deepen this conversation you know to it to quite quite an intense place right okay I want to go one level down and then and then even a level darker still so so I interviewed well ten maybe maybe more years ago um Phil Zimbardo who was the uh you know the the architect behind the Stanford Prison Experiment which was you know pretty clearly even on the face of it an unethical experiment however interesting it was I'm sure of course you know this is this is the the prison experiment that he took select students some would be prison guards some would be prisoners and this is supposed to be two weeks it didn't last two weeks it had to be cancelled before the end of two weeks because even within that time the prison guards became so uh so uh you know seditious or you know wicked I don't know what the right word is I'm looking for but uh and and the and the the the prisoners themselves became so um they capitulated so completely to these demands that eventually it pulled away now there's a few levels to go with this right we always want to believe that in a situation like that we would be the good person right but statistically we won't be and and so that's sort of the dark part of this I mean he he told me in fact I just was chatting with him you know just he's not he's not very well now but um but just like within the last week or two and and he told me that his is the only person involved in anything to do with this that that had a concern about it and raised that concern from the beginning was his girlfriend at the time she was the only one who had enough sort of ethical you know uh sensitivity to to raise it rather than to capitulate that included all the people that were involved in it in organizing it and approving it and all the rest of it right okay let me go one level deeper even even more sinister the same kind of process right I have ancestors that that were affected by both Nazi Germany but also also the pogroms in Russia right and so I have Jewish ancestry and we want to believe I want to believe right that I would be schindler right or someone like him that I would be one of these freedom fighters that would be on the trains getting people out as but the statistically this is very very very very unlikely the number of people who are willing to be that counter-cultural is exceedingly small and so it it's beyond our conversation to try and like get to the bottom of it but to try and answer that question of how can I live myself in such a way that I would not capitulate to whatever the the forces are that are at play today is uh is that's a non-trivial it's not just a thought experiment that's a non-trivial pursuit uh to try and understand that and and I think that you have to sort of you know I know that we're not talking when we talk about policy inside of VA or united or whatever we're not talking about this anything like the kind of stakes of life and death the morality these other examples are but I think they're still the same kind of human dynamics at play because it's about power differential and maintaining your position in some hierarchy and your willingness to support a position that makes no sense to you and it violates something inside of you right now and to not allow that to govern you to not capitulate doesn't mean you have to become a big rebellion rebellious person either but that you say that there are things I will not do I'm going to let the humanity of the person in front of me matter more than the policy and and uh yeah I don't see much in way of modern educational systems and then the just to suggest that I know I know I'm riffing a long time here now but let me just one more element there's John John Goodman I've just been reading his book he wrote a book called the undercover story I'm trying to find it now the undercover story of American education he spent 10 years studying the causes how the modern educational system was created it came out with pressure and and now this guy he the author of that book was three times New York City teacher of the year twice New York State teacher of the year so he's not coming at this from you know like just an outside observer like he's he's as good as they get when it comes to teaching but his basic discovery he after he won all these awards he wrote an article I think Washington Post or Wall Street Journal must be Washington Post I suppose saying I quit I think and then he went on and did all this research and when I started reading it I almost started to shake with anger because he's named so brilliantly the problems and the assumptions underneath this modern education system and that feeds into the modern you know the modern you know we live in a corporate environment corporatism is taken over the rise of corporatism the fall almost everything else in that environment you are not being rewarded for being yourself you're not being rewarded for being uniquely you for pursuing your own conscience it's not that's not the prioritization you're sitting in rows you've got to support what's being told you've got to do and and and he he captures this so well and this I think you have to start very young to be able to do something different he uses the example you use the contrast between virgin and ba and he uses a story when Richard Branson's mother drops him off hours from home when he's seven years old and says okay you got it your job is to get home hours and hours from over it took him I think the rest of like I think it took him seven hours to make it home that's seven years old something like that by the time he got home hey of course that's a you know maybe that's a very foolish thing that she did but the goal was to give him experience not words not talk but experience out in the real world to go do something by the time he gets home he knows how to do stuff an independent voice and an independent way of thinking and he's he's he's often referenced his mother as being absolute key for why he even could be an entrepreneur or why he was able to revolutionize industries in the way that he went on to do so I see all this as being connected into how you raise people and teach them and work with them and then what they're going to do at that point of where where where policy violates conscience and which thing they're going to be dominated by you can't train people for 25 years to follow policy and then expect them to follow conscience right you've got to actually have conscience be primary the priority all the way through if you want to develop you know I think a society that works better well there's an interesting you know I think it was a 2018 survey amongst millennials asked why did they quit their jobs 70% of them said we didn't quit the job we quit the boss yeah we love what we do but we don't love who we do it for and this this cry of we we want to work somewhere and for someone uh that sees us to whom we matter we to whom we matter more than helping them make more money we matter as human beings our potential is important to them our flourishing in that organization I was speaking to my mentorship group that I do online a couple of times a month with people all of the world and speaking yesterday about this massive global shift that's taking place whatever people call it my term for it is moving from this old command and obey style leadership to servant leadership and I think you know the out of spring of 2011 and the crash of 2008 and brexit and trump and all of this stuff around the world is not least indicative of this grassroots revolution against leaders that are not listening despite them promising that they will in the pre-election meetings and then after elected and it cost David Cameron his job as you know because he was convinced that we would all vote to stay because he's in the echo chamber of the London bubble where they're all saying it's a given and when the country got a voice outside of London because our country is very London centric as you know when we got a voice outside of London especially up north we all said hell we Brussels went out of here because we never voted to go in and so now we're given a given a voice it surprised him and cost him his job but it wasn't a surprise to millions of us in the country this out of touch elite leadership in all walks of life and I think the wild card of trump to a degree don't you think was we're sick and tired of these career politicians what have we got to lose I don't know what they think now but what have we got to lose by this wild card of this business guy who doesn't claim to be a politician and with at least with trump I felt as a communicator and a teacher in communication around the world we have a masterclass in communication the thing with trump was um what he said is what he meant there was no double speak there was no shading of it he just said that right and there's something about that plain speak that people kind of appreciated and it made connection with him to use your word effortless compared to connection with politicians that never answered the question and he left confused with the outcome this surge in the world to me that shifting um it's shifting the tectonic plates in terms of leadership on these massive global shifts and as you know the 17th century enlightenment finished up in the 18th century french revolution eventually the people as you know have had enough and something's going to have to give and I think we're seeing that with you know Greta Thunberg and all these grass grassroots level um uprisings and revolutions of the george floyd episode and the awareness that brought to what the black people have been aware of for generations and the outcry that we are not being listened to and systemically we have been abused I think as you say it is a tipping point uh arrow that we are in and that's why I think your book was so amazing and I understand completely why it has the appeal it does well I hope you enjoyed that conversation I told you to be good thanks for being here I really appreciate your time and attention that you give me in bin on the podcast with me hey I'd love you to leave a comment or leave a review it helps the ratings of the show if you guys do that if you don't subscribe maybe hit subscribe now I become part of the podcast tribe here with me thank you have a fantastic day appreciate love you guys and I will speak to you all soon


Life's kinda boring, but I'll feel Christmas day. Oh my God, please never let me do that again. Hello everyone, welcome to Vlogmas 2023. Oh my God, I can't believe we're already here again for another year of Vlogmas. I think this is like my 10th year of Vlogmas, I wanna say. I've done it a little bit differently over the years. If you're new here or haven't been here for Vlogmas before, I've basically vlogged like every single year since I think 2016. Up until I believe 2020 was the first year I decided to, instead of every day until Christmas, which was just like a lot for me, running two channels at once, I decided to do like a little 12 days of Vlogmas thing. So I'm gonna be posting a new vlog every other day until Christmas. I'm really excited about it and it's gonna be chaotic and fun and I'm gonna try to make it as fun and festive as possible. So here we are, number one, I can't believe it. I'm literally so excited. So today we are going to just get into like the festive mood. We're gonna get a Christmas tree. We're going to decorate our apartment. Drew has to work today.  So it's gonna be really fun. I'm kind of like running low on time here so I need to get going. I just got dressed and got ready.  I have been really into renting clothes lately because it's like a way for me to try on new stuff and wear new stuff and like not end up with a pile of clothes in my closet. You know what I mean? So not sponsored by the way, but I really actually enjoy being able to rent stuff. So if they want to work with me, you know, let me know. But here is today's outfit of the day. So we have this cute little sweater. This is a cardigan from Lisa Says Gah and I just think it's so cute. I love brown and red together. It's like one of my favorite color combos. It also kind of feels holidayish, at least to me. So it has these little like rose details on the collar. I think it's so cute. I was kind of like going back and forth about how I was gonna style this. I was like, maybe I'll wear some jeans, maybe I'll wear some dark wash jeans. Maybe I'll wear black jeans, et cetera. But then I had the idea to wear it with these cowboy boots that I just thrifted on Thread Up, which like is such a score for me. I don't even know the brand honestly, but they're so comfortable. They are like very broken in and like a little tattered, but I don't really mind that. And then I'm just wearing my favorite white flowy maxi skirt. I wish I could wear this new one that I thrifted at the Rose Bowl, but I'm pretty sure it's in the wash or it's like in a pile of clothes that I need to put away. So we're not gonna do that. But yeah, this just like forces me to get dressed. If you've been watching my vlogs, I've been like trying to get dressed a lot more lately. I've just been trying to like, you know, put some care into myself. So anyways, we have our advent calendars. We're gonna do those in a little bit.  I also have this thrifted red bag that I'm gonna wear today. So we just have, I don't know, it's like my version of festive. We're gonna kick off these fricking Christmassy vibes. So let's head in the car. First stop I think is gonna be Target. Then maybe Trader Joe's possibly might wait on that one, I'm not sure. And then we're gonna come home and assess what kind of like decor situation we're working with and decorate. So let's do it. All right, we're at Target. I made a list of things that I wanna get because I just wanna make sure that I'm not like overdoing it. I feel like in years past, I have been really guilty of like buying a bunch of decor, not using it that much or using it one time, then donating all of it, then buying all new stuff. Like we're really trying to reuse a lot of stuff this year, besides getting like a new Christmas tree and like a couple little trinkets, candles, things that like run out, you know?  I feel like Trader Joe's and Target has like my favorite candles. I'm gonna add some twine because I wanna make like a DIY orange garland. I've seen that all over TikTok and it looks so cute and so fun. So I wanna see if they have any of that. I need a brow pencil. So we're gonna look into that. And then I think that's pretty much it. So obviously we're gonna like go in there and see what fun stuff there is. So nothing too, too crazy, but we're just gonna go in there and see what they have. I could totally black out and walk out with stuff, but I'm just gonna try to like be more, you know, more mindful about it. So let's see what we end up finding. It doesn't seem like there's like one specific area for holiday stuff. It kind of seems like it's everywhere. So I'm not really sure, but I did find this cute little garland. This is my Christmas. We have like little random end caps and stuff, but I'm gonna try to make my way to the actual holiday section and see if they have anything left. But usually I would say by like Black Friday. In my experience in the past at Target, most of the stuff has been gone as we saw when we tried to shop for false stuff. So we'll see. I also just got this thing of postal wrapping paper because Drew and I wanna do just like brown wrapping paper this year and then like decorate it with yarn. So this one seems like a lot cheaper and there's like a lot of it, honestly. There's like so much of it. So this would be really cute. And then we might do like Polaroids. We'll do a whole gift wrapping vlog, but yeah, this is gonna be cute. I'm excited. Also that person, I think just saw me vlogging and then like went into the other aisle. This is the brow pencil I use by the way. I've been using this since. I wanna say like 2016. I'm not sure, but I use the color taupe. One thing down on the list. I will always and forever. Oops. I will always and forever be a strawberry chopstick early. They do have really cute stuff on this end cap here, like these little gift boxes that have princesses on them, sprinkles, cookie cutters, these cute towels. These are adorable. I want them. So much cute stuff. These little cookie stamps. I've never seen this before. It's like a little stamp. I think you put it on a cookie. It's really, really cute. I don't think we currently need any of this stuff, but I don't know that it's here in case we do. Okay, this is more stuff already than I thought there was gonna be. Now this is what I was looking for. There are so many cute little names. Glitter tree, tinsel and thyme, cashmere cuddles, like that's adorable. So let's smell these. Let's smell glitter tree. Ooh. I like that. I think it's just like a Christmas tree smell. Cashmere cuddles. I wanna say now that I'm looking at it, they might have just like repurposed the same sense, but just given a different name. Mm. That smells so good. This one is called Keto here. It's called mistletoe margarita, tinsel and thyme. Okay, when I was back in Arizona for Thanksgiving, we went to Target on Black Friday. We didn't buy anything, but I did see this red teddy bear jacket and it caught my eye and I've been thinking about it ever since. So I'm gonna get it. It's really cute. They also have a lot of really cute women's Christmas sweaters. It's like all different fun colors and stuff. They have like pink ones. This is freaking adorable. I really want this. Ooh. Okay, so yeah, maybe I blacked out a little bit. Yikes. It happens. This seated over here, he has a front row seat to the show. He's excited. He was like, can I sit and watch? I won't say anything. I was like, you can say something. I was like, why? It's fine. Target haul. Oops.  I really, like I bought these for decor and that's it. So I feel okay about that. But yeah, I got two plaid pillows because I just can't, I have a problem with pillows. I don't know, whatever. We do have pillow storage in our living room now so I feel like it's acceptable. So those will go on the couch and we already have two from like previous years that we're gonna use. So that'll be cute. Got some bows because I think we're almost out of these. He's like, I got some sort of like yarn-ish twine but it's like a four screen twine. So I wasn't sure if you had any twine for like garlands but if not, we'll have some extra. I did get us matching pajamas, well not matching but like I got us both Christmas pajamas. What do you think about these? So cute. I got a tablecloth, yeah, for over here. Like we had some friends over, did a nice little, we have like a white one for when we have, usually we cover the island with it. When we have like friends over, friends giving, whatever. But now we have like a holiday one. So that'll be good. We'll keep that forever. I did get another candle. The one I decided to get was one that we've already had before, holiday spruce. But I think this one's almost out and it's just like, it's the most like Christmas tree smell ever. That's a good one. So good. I got some chapsticks and my brow pencil, which I showed. Let's see what else. Oh, these need to go in the fridge. I got some sugar cookies and like elf cookies because I saw this thing on TikTok that I want to try. Got some fresh cranberries for all sorts of things throughout the season. Cocktails, mocktails. I definitely want to do a video. Oh, she's breaking open. I definitely want to do a video where we test out like different TikTok, viral sort of like baking things and like cocktails, mocktails, et cetera. Cause they all just look really good and festive and cute. And then, oh yeah, got a gingerbread house all of the bag or the box just broke. So we'll build this at some point during Columbus. That'll be fun. I showed this. Remember, this was the one I was- You got the boopy jacket? I got the boopy jacket. I was thinking about this in Arizona and it's been like a week now and I'm still thinking about it. So I got it. It's going to be comfy. Here's the pajamas I got for myself. You're on your footer. Well, they didn't have that for men. So I did get a sweater. I have no explanation for this. It's just really cute. Like it's very millennial and I love it. I love being a millennial. And that, unfortunately, is my target haul. It actually isn't that bad. It looks like more stuff because these things take up a lot of bags but I'm happy with everything. We're going to hang out for a little bit and I decided to come home because I had some cold stuff that I needed to put in the fridge and I didn't want to run to Trader Joe's and like have all that stuff get warm. So we might save Trader Joe's for another day, potentially. The main priority is getting that freaking Christmas tree and I can't wait. I'm so excited. Sorry if you can hear the laundry going in the back room. We got our Christmas sweaters and all that new pajamas and all that kind of stuff that is getting washed in the wash right now. This doesn't say which one is which but I actually have only ordered this place like maybe one other time since Vlogmas last year when I tried it for the first time but it's really good and it just sounded amazing. So I'm craving it.  Oh, perfect. This is mine. Avocado which I'm not even that much of a tuna person. I mean, I don't dislike it but this is what it looks like. They have this like really delicious kind of crispy bread. It's like, I think it's Danish I'm pretty sure and then it has avocado, pesto, the tuna mixture and tomato. I don't even like tomato but I love this. Okay, listen to this crunch. It's really good. Spicy water of the day. Waterloo watermelon. Honestly, that's like all I drink anymore. Really? You got a Dr. Pepper? It's really delicious. BP baby. We're gonna move that cause Drew said he doesn't like the way his hair looks. We had placed an Instacart order for soda. So I'd gotten my caffeine free diet coat and then he had ordered Dr. Pepper and they didn't have it. I was livid. They didn't have mine but they had his. Drew got a chicken club with Serrano ham on. It's very salty. Very, very salty. Probably the ham. It's almost like a prosciutto. Yeah. Mm, mm, mm. I had tuna lost yesterday for one so I didn't want to talk to him. Yeah. That was why Drew decided to get something else. He was like, I had tuna yesterday so I'm not trying to do that too much. You don't have mercury poisoning? You wouldn't think that tuna and pesto would go very well together but it really does. It's delicious. Anyway, we're gonna eat this and then get our Christmas treat. Can I try yours? Yeah, I'm gonna eat that but cause that's a lot of ham. A lot of ham. You don't really like. Look at that. I know. This is not good. Mm. You can taste the pesto way more. Let's go. We're done. Christmas is over. Something tells me this is gonna be an extremely fast selection process but we're gonna see. They recycle trees here too. She's cute. We like her. There's so many. They're so cute. I am a fan of like small trees. Like I like this one a lot. This one's good. I like her a lot. She already has a stand on her which is great. I like her. We have all these guys as well. She is very cute but I don't think tall enough. We like the kind of fatter, wider ones. Like some people like the taller skinny ones but I like the like shorter kind of fatter ones. It's all personal preference, you know? Right after much deliberation, we found her. She's over here. It's cash only so we're getting cash at the ATM. She's coming home. There she is up there. Gotta get her home safe. Let's do it. Okay, we're home. We're bringing the tree inside. Moving some plants out of the way. But here is the space.  I have to, I'm sorry. Here is where she is gonna go because Drew loves a Christmas tree in the window. It's like his favorite thing ever. So that's where we're gonna put it. Let's bring her in. I'm sorry.  Yum. Now we just gotta find the perfect angle I guess. Yeah. We gotta find her correct axis. Give her some. Cutie. Why do you always say that when I turn the camera off? Then you were recording something. No, I was not. Drew just goes, everyone look at our tree.  He just opened the window and yelled. Oh God. Okay, Drew's gained some water for the tree. I'm going to in the meantime, clear off all of the fall stuff. So we have like our leafs, our garland, all the pumpkins, the gourds, things like that, cinnamon, broom, et cetera. We'll get all of that off the walls and like off of our furniture and stuff first. And then we'll see where to go from there. Put on your skirt. Time to put on your dress, Miss Lady. Oh, Gucci. Gucci, my Gucci. Oh, look at her. She's a beauty. Scrunch her up. I like when they're like scrunchy. Scrunch her up. All right, next we're going to see what our situation is, our Christmas light situation. Here are our new pillows. Do we have a timer? No, I think we just... We did it. I have a bottle. I don't know. We'll have to check. We got some baubles. Do we use yours? Yeah, possibly. Is it the new or old candle? No. Yes. Smells so good. Yes. Okay, here's the lights. We are a colored lights household, by the way. Real tree colored lights. If you're a nineties kid, you get it. Got some tinsel. We did the old school tinsel a few years ago and then everyone kept yelling at us being like, your cat, like your cat's gonna eat it. And like he never, yeah, he didn't care. But we switched to that one just for safety reasons. And now I kind of wish we had the old tinsel back. Slay. Trader Joe's changed the colors. They did. We wanted to get another one this year. Yeah, we'll have to go back and look. But okay, cute. Oh, we have Drew's gnome collection. He has about 40 of them. So that's great. No. Oh, this is cute. This has like, I think you put a candle in it. Cute. It's like shopping. Forget we had all this stuff. Okay, we're gonna set the mood obviously. Do you want to do fireplace or do you want to like put on a movie? Whatever the gnome is one. What are the gnomes telling you? Oh, there they are. Oh, look what we can put up. What? Oh, cute. Our ornament from the Cotswolds. So cute. Drew is on one and I keep missing it on camera anyway. Well, that's your own fault. There it is. This is probably like our third or fourth Christmas with this one. Is it dead? God, damn it. Okay, well. You gotta change the batteries. BRB. After changing the batteries, we discovered that these lights are in fact broken. So we will just improvise. Oh God. This thing is so messy. I thought this was gonna be easy.  I'm having a meltdown. Gorgeous. Our DIY. Okay, that's fine. Okay. This is why we had that flocked tree for one year and then never again. Oh my God. This is such a mess. So we're gonna try this method we saw on TikTok. Sorry about the terrible lighting in here. This is the world's darkest department. It's two o'clock in the afternoon right now. You would think there would be sunlight, but there are not. Anyway, we saw this thing on TikTok where instead of wrapping your lights around your tree horizontally, you kind of like zigzag them vertically and like it looks better, covers more of an area. We don't know if we have enough strands of lights, but we're just gonna try it. So we'll see what happens. God, you can't even tell. Oh, kind of like that you can. It does look pretty good. That's good. You don't have to see it later at night. Just trust us. Oh yeah, that's cute. Oh, she's talking. I think it's cute. We're gonna go for it. We found our old tinsel. We thought we had gotten rid of it, but we still have it. So I don't know if we're supposed to do tinsel first, but I don't really care. I'm gonna take like much smaller. And I know that vintage like old school tinsel is coming back. It's very trendy right now. I will say though, we started doing this like two or three years ago. We just wanted that nostalgic vintage Christmas look. All right, here's how she's looking. It looks really good in person. On camera, I don't know if you can tell as much. So now Drew had to go back to work for a little bit. Now I'm gonna do some of the ornaments. So we have some of like the ones from our childhood and stuff. Like I think I show this one every year. This haircut was so very 90s. These bangs that started back at like the crown of my head. And like the half up side pony sleigh. I obviously made this. So that's cute. We have some vintage Drew throwbacks, which are adorable.  We have a spaceship. Oh, this is Marvin the Martian of course. So freaking cute. I'm dead. What else we got in here? We have, I think this is the, what cardigan is this? Or is it just like a Christmas sweater cardigan? But we have one of the Taylor Swift cardigan ornaments. We also have the all too well scarf. I did purchase those. I think on Black Friday last year. We have an ornament from my very first Christmas, which is so cute. 1988 was my first Christmas. Cause fun fact, I was born two days after Christmas in 1987. So I was already almost a year old. But look how cute. So fresh. We have a ton of like our personalized ornaments. So we have 2018 me and Drew. That's very cute. His mom gets us one every year. We have 2020 right here. Drew's dad used to drive like a red pickup truck. So that's very sentimental and sweet. We have 2022, so this is last year. Our sixth Christmas together last year. So I guess this will be our seventh. Although it's technically our eighth because we celebrated Christmas together before we were dating in 2016. So like I'm counting it. Here's our 2021 ornament. So cute. Oh, there it is. Precious. Another 2018. I think one of these might have been from like my mom and then one was from Drew's mom. We got my preschool 1991 ornament. I went to children's village preschool. Shout out. There's my pigtails. Kind of cute if you ask me. We have our, I can't remember the name of the shop. We got these at this like stand at a Christmas market in Phoenix. And it has like some celebrities on it. So we have David Bowie. We have the Obamas and we have Prince. So we have those ones. And then they also have, oh, this one's called a citizen home decor. We also have this Arizona one with a cactus on it. It's really cute. Gotta remember the hometown. Drew's mom got us this one. Our first Christmas in our new home, 2019. This was when we lived in our apartment in LA. That was cute. Our first apartment here. Couple thrifted ones.  How cute. We got a little skateboarding teddy bear. How cute is he? Love that. We have quite a few more, but that's kind of the gist of it. And then if we have room, we'll hang up some of our bobbles like in between some of the little balls. My favorite segment of vlog this time has. And that's advent calendar time. So for this year, we decided, I think I showed it in a recent vlog, but we decided to do like one, well, I think we usually do this, like one separately and then one together. So the one that we're sharing and we're gonna try out every day, I guess we'll do two in every vlog, right? I don't know how many we're gonna do, but we got the Bon Mamon jam slash spreads. Advent calendar. Cute. Look how nice that is. Okay, and then for me, I got the sea's candy one. And for him, he got the Segoi Mart 30 days of Japan calendar. That thing was expensive, but it looks really, really cool. So which one do you wanna do first? You wanna do yours? No, let's do another jam. Okay. Number one, should we do one and two since it's like every other day? Okay, we'll do two. They're gonna be so cute. First one. I don't know. White nectarine peach lemon verbena spread. I like peach. She was smelling it. So we just realized we would ideally wanna do this on toast and then we're like, oh, we don't have toast. We're out of bread. So we'll just do it on like cheese and a cracker and then all of our cheese was bad. So we're just gonna have it on a cracker. I do smell peach. It's a little stinky though, I don't know why. I'm opening two. I don't know how cute that is. Yeah, I'm opening number two. Strawberry. Linden blossom spread. Ooh, okay. Linden is a tree, I think.  It does kinda smell. It is a little stinky. Oh, I did a whole cracker. Whatever, smells like B.O. Cheers. Ah. Doesn't taste stinky. I really like the lemon. Mm-hmm, that's good. Really good. Definitely eat that on toast. In the fridge you go, we were thinking maybe we would like invite a bunch of people over after we have all 20 something of these and have like a cheese party. Work some into a cocktail or something. I ate my cracker bag. Oh. Now we're doing the other one. Strawberry Linden blossom spread. Cheers. It kinda tastes like strawberry jam. I don't taste anything but it's like strawberry. It does seem a little sweeter, maybe. Delicious, both really, really good. Tasty. Now, we got our other one. The one is. It's good. Chocolate. It doesn't say. Looks like a, some kind of marshmallow thing. The whole thing broke. Oh, I think these are toffee. Like chocolate covered toffee. You want one? Sure. So cute. Let's try it. Yes. This is like childhood. Mm-hmm. Like a heat bar. Mm-hmm. Oh, I'm gonna have to bite it. Marshmallow. Caramel. Caramel. These, delicious. Big fan. That beeping. Oh, number one. It's an egg. It's like a kinder egg. It looks like it. It is for kids. What does it get? Perfect. Oh. It is. Cool. Mm-hmm. This is a lot. It's like a bear. Yeah, it's illegal. What is inside? Hello? A gummy lizard? What is this? An alien? It's a monster guy. It's like a Godzilla. Oh, cute. I'm, you're gonna have to forgive the beeping. Hopefully you don't hear us that loud. Neat. Cute. Cool. Nice. Number two. Really, you can do as many as you want. Oh, too little. You have 30 days without me. Can I just pay something I can eat? It is not. It's like a charm. I'll have to look it up to see where it is. I think you have to bite like your... Oh, great wishes. I think. I'll have to look it up. Cute. You really put it in the bag? Yeah. Okay, nice. Open one more. Oh my goodness. How do you have 30 days? I'm like the kid at the birthday party. And I always open it here. And I'm like... Oh. Eat a dory from JJK. Nice. I can go on your shelf. Oh. Okay. If I do, I'll give it a case. Yeah, that'd be cute. I'll do four. Why, it's not that odd. Why not? There's people. Oh, there's little chocolates. Oh, nice. I think these were in the box. Oh, yeah. This one says milk. Cute. Oh, I think this is... Pinocchio, I think? It's like soybean powder. Good. I like that one. I don't know if it's good. Nice. T-I-R-O-L. I think this might be like the dark one. I think we tried all of these last year. Almond? Ooh, we didn't have that. Oh, this one's good. Looks American. Strawberry jelly is good. Ooh. Strawberry jelly chocolate. Oh, and this one too. It's like a biscuit. Ooh. Yum. All right, that's enough footage for today. That's gonna do it for us. Thank you for hanging out for Vlogmas number one. We have 11 more to go, and it's gonna be really fun. So if you have anything that you wanna see in future vlogs, requests, if you have any questions you want me to answer, leave it all in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching. I can't believe we're doing this for another year. I'm so, so excited, and we will see you very soon. Bye. Merry Christmas.


What's up everyone, Takedown here. Welcome back to another video. Today we're going to be talking about the PlayStation 5 Blue Light of Death. I recently purchased the PlayStation 5 and have had a lot of comments since with people asking for help with their PlayStation 5 with various problems. So just like I did with the PlayStation 4 and previous consoles, I'm going to be trying to tackle those problems with some of the easy fixes that you can do yourself even if you're not tech savvy. So today we're going to be starting with the PlayStation 5 Blue Light of Death. So now I have to tell if your PlayStation 5 is in the Blue Light of Death. Instead of turning on and connecting to the TV like normal as you can see behind me here, it will have on the console a solid blue lights. And it won't transition to the white light as you normally would see whenever it's turning on. And it won't have the orange light as it would if it was going into rest mode. It will have a solid blue lights and the screen will stay usually black or sometimes there will be a message on it. Now if you are having the Blue Light of Death, do not worry. There's a few things that you can try even if you're not tech savvy. The first thing to check is the power cable.  You're going to disconnect the power cable and you're going to check the cable and the ports on the console for any damage. If you don't see any damage, you're going to go and plug it back in. But this time you're going to make sure the connection is very secure and that the wire and the cable is not very loose. If it is, there could be a problem with the ports that you visibly cannot see. So you're going to want to make sure that the connection is secure. If it is, go ahead and try to turn on the PlayStation 5 and see if that did fix the Blue Light of Death for you. If it didn't, I do recommend replacing that PlayStation 5 power cable and try to use another one to see if that did fix your problem. Now if that didn't work for you, let's go on to the next step and that is to check the HDMI cable. Now you're going to turn off your PlayStation 5 and you're going to disconnect the HDMI cable from both the TV and the console. You're going to check the port on the console, the cable at both ends and the port that it was plugged into on the TV and you're going to check for any damage. Now if your TV has multiple HDMI ports, I recommend to plug that same cable into a different HDMI port to see if that does work for you. In the past, with the PlayStation 4 Blue Light of Death, that is how I got mine to work because I didn't realize that one of my HDMI ports just stopped working and that's why I was in the Blue Light of Death on the PlayStation 4. So what I did was simply unplug it from that port and plug it into a different port and the console started to work again. So I do recommend if your TV does have different HDMI ports to try plugging it into one of the other ones to see if it does work for you. Now if that didn't work for you, I do recommend replacing the HDMI cable for myself, for my setup. I am using the one that came with my PlayStation 5 but I also have a ton of spares including one that is an industrial one, which eventually, if this HDMI cable goes out, that will be the one that I use because that is the most expensive one that I have, which I know will ensure no problems in the future. So I do recommend if you did try different ports on your TV, simply try replacing your HDMI cable but remember whenever you're replacing the HDMI cable, try not to pick the cheapest option. Try to pick something in the middle so you know it will and hopefully will last and work for you. Now if that didn't work, let's move on to the next step and that is all going to be done into Safe Mode. So to enter Safe Mode on the PlayStation 5, very similar to the PlayStation 4, you're going to turn off the PlayStation 5. You're going to press and hold the power button for 7 seconds until you hear the second beep. Once you hear the second beep, it's going to launch into Safe Mode and it's going to prompt you to connect the controller to the console with the cable that came with your controller. So you're going to go ahead and do that and then you can check out the different options into Safe Mode. Now once you have entered Safe Mode, the first thing to try while in Safe Mode is the first option and that is to reset the PlayStation 5. Now that is not going to factory reset it, what that's going to do is simply restart the console. It's going to turn off and turn back on and hopefully that does fix the blue light of death for you. Now if resetting it didn't work, go back into Safe Mode. Now this time you're going to select Change Video Outputs. Then on the next screen you're going to select Change Resolution and you're going to go through the steps and hopefully that does work for you. Back with the PlayStation 4 that did work for a lot of people. Now if changing the resolution did not work for you after it is complete, then what you're going to want to do is power cycle your PlayStation 5 which honestly is not as scary as it sounds. To do this you're going to turn off the PlayStation 5. You're going to unplug all of the cables. You're going to wait about two to five minutes with it unplugged. Now with it still unplugged you're going to press and hold the power button for seven seconds and then you're going to wait another one to two minutes. After you've done all of that you're going to then plug the cables back in and try to turn on the PlayStation 5. What you're essentially doing whenever you're power cycling it is basically draining out all of the power that was remaining in the console and emptying it. So whenever you plug it back in it should hopefully work for you.  You can either do this by going into the settings or you can go into Safe Mode and factory reset your PlayStation 5. But remember this will erase everything so with PlayStation 5 you're going to have to sign back in to your accounts once it is fixed and you're going to have to download everything and sign back in and hopefully all your save files are still there. I have my auto saving to the cloud and that's honestly the best feature for PlayStation. To do this the simplest way is to go into Safe Mode and this time you're going to select option 6 and that is going to completely wipe out your PlayStation 5 and factory reset it for you. Now unfortunately if none of that worked for you and your console is still under warranty I recommend contacting Sony or the retail store that you did purchase it from. I know the PlayStation 5 comes with their own warranty but to get that you're going to have to send it back to Sony. They're going to basically repair it and send it back to you but I know GameStop also offered a one year and a two year warranty on the PlayStation 5 as well so if you did opt in and purchase one of those under warranty it's just a matter of going back and exchanging it for a new console so that's honestly the best method that I would do. Unfortunately if nothing that I talked about in this video did not work for you there's not much more that you can try if it's not under warranty then you might have to take it to somebody to get it repaired and explain to them everything and hopefully they can get the console fixed for you but obviously that is going to cost you a little bit of money. Now I hope this has helped you guys fix your blue light of death. Now I know I did say at the beginning of this video this will not work for everybody but hopefully this did work for you at least one of the steps that I did mention. I'll see you guys in the next video and there's going to be more PlayStation 5 videos to come in the future. See you guys in the next one.


Hello, and welcome to the NCLA Government Resources Sections Help I'm an Accidental Government Information Librarian webinar series. Today's webinar is called Navigating the Labyrinth of UN Documentation, an overview for people new to the world of UN documents. The presenters are Susan Gord, who is the Legal Librarian and Training Coordinator at the Doug Hummerschgold Library, and Ramona Kors currently serves as the Coordinator of the Outreach and Professional Development Unit of the Doug Hummerschgold Library of the United Nations. Thank you very much. Hi, everybody. This is Ramona Kors. I am currently serving as the Outreach Coordinator at the Doug Hummerschgold Library together with my and together with my colleague Amandu da Silva. One of my main responsibilities is to provide support to UN Depository Libraries, and that's what I'm going to talk about briefly now. So, if you can go to the next slide, please. The UN Depository Library program was born in 1947 with the aim to make UN information accessible to researchers and citizens around the world and to facilitate research about the UN and global issues. The American Library Association strongly advocated for such a program and was instrumental in getting it launched. 29 of the most prestigious libraries in Canada and the United States became UN Depository Libraries in 1947. The program is coordinated by the Doug Hummerschgold Library at UN Headquarters in New York. National libraries, parliamentary libraries, as well as large university and research libraries comprise the vast majority of the members in the network. And Depository Libraries commit to assign qualified staff to carry out three major functions to maintain their depository collections in good order, to provide access to UN documents and publications to researchers and citizens free of charge, and to offer research support. Next slide. Currently, we have 351 UN Depository Libraries around the world in 135 countries and the state of Palestine. This means that about one-third of the 193 UN Member States do not have a Depository Library right now. This chart shows the regional distribution of UN Depository Libraries around the world, the highest number of Depository Libraries is found in Asia, closely followed by the Americas and Europe next. Fewer Depository Libraries are located in Africa and the Middle East. Next slide. This chart shows the distribution of a total of 50 Depository Libraries in Canada and the United States by type of library. 45 of them are part of university libraries, four are located in larger public libraries and one belongs to a parliamentary library, the Library of Congress in the US. About five years ago, the existence of the program came under threat, which prompted the UN Library to reflect on and determine the value of having a network of Depository Library. At the time, several key values were identified. First of all, the local expertise of Depository Librarians who understand a highly complex body of documentation and who can direct and advise researchers, policymakers, civil society groups, and the public on where to find UN information and data and how to use numerous print and online resources, research tools and databases. Secondly, the fact that UN-generated knowledge is multiplied when it reaches specialist researchers, recognizing that a large number of Depositories are located at major research universities and institutes. And thirdly, the assurance that many collections of UN materials in locations around the world help to preserve the UN's intellectual heritage. With regards to collections held by UN Depository Libraries, we need to look at what materials were disseminated to them over the past 73 years. Until the early 1970s, all UN documents and publications were disseminated to Depository Libraries free of charge and participating libraries could choose between a full deposit and a partial deposit. A full deposit included all materials in general distribution. A partial deposit included UN publications and the official records which comprise the most important documents such as resolutions, meeting records, and major reports. As the UN grew more complex and the network of Depository Libraries expanded, the scope of the deposit was adjusted in the 1970s to exclude several categories of publications, mainly those of the funds and programs such as UNICEF and the UN Development Program and those of the UN University and its research institutes. In 1974, an annual contribution was instituted to defray a portion of the cost to print and ship UN materials around the world. In 2005, when access to the official document system was opened up, many Depository Libraries opted to no longer receive UN documents in print. In 2013, UN headquarters in New York stopped disseminating UN publications in print to Depository Libraries. Consequently, the amount of materials received by them has shrunk considerably and some may no longer receive anything at all. Nevertheless, Depository Libraries hold significant collections of UN material and some of them may even hold collections that rival those at the two flagship UN libraries in New York and Geneva. And I would like to make two additional points here. Some Depository Libraries purchase UN publications in print or subscribe to the UNI Library, an online platform for UN publications in electronic format that was launched in February 2016. And another point I would like to make is that the policies governing the program do not require Depository Libraries to keep UN materials forever. Therefore, some Depository Libraries may have withdrawn materials from their UN collections in particular in light of the increasing number of documents that can be retrieved online from the ODS and the UN Digital Library. The UN Publications Board designates Depository Libraries and establishes the policy that governs the program. In light with the policy, the Doug Hummershirt Library in New York provides support to participating libraries. We handle requests to join the program and withdraw from it. We conduct periodic surveys and compile statistics. We maintain a database of library profiles and contacts. We also maintain a searchable online directory. We provide guidance and collection management in particular regarding withdrawals from Depository Collections. We liaise with colleagues outside the UN Library regarding claims, invoices and requests from libraries to have the scope of their deposits adjusted. We conduct briefings and onsite visits. We also provide current information via our website. We send email broadcasts and post announcements on listservs such as Intel Dock about updates to the program, about major changes to research tools and systems, about new research tools, about useful resources and promotional materials for major international observances such as International Women's Day and UN Day and about events such as our conference and Open Science last year. We also engage the community of Depository Libraries on our Facebook page and our Activities Map and we participate in the meetings of the Government Information and Official Publications section of IFLA and the International Documents Task Force of ALA Goddard. Again, I would like to make some additional points here. So those of you who are working or who are in charge of Depository Collections and are considering to do some reading, you can contact us. We have developed some guidelines with useful tips and we can send those to you to help you with your reading projects for in UN Depository Collections. And also the program remains in an uncertain situation at this time. That's why we're currently not recommending that new Depository Libraries be designated by the UN Publications Board. The UN Documentary Library maintains a website for the UN Depository Library program. It basically consists of two pages and provides some basic information, including the rather outdated policy documents governing the program, but we don't have anything updated yet, links to sets of frequently asked questions in our Ask Doug service, a link to a searchable online directory of Depository Libraries around the world, and a link to the Activities Map on Findery. The online directory can be searched by several criteria, for instance, the Depository Library Code, the name of the library, city and country. This is a screenshot of the directory listing for Canada that is displayed after selecting Canada in the drop-down menu for countries and clicking on the Apply button. The listing includes the name of the institution and the library, the address, basic contact information, the date the library was designated as a UN Depository and the scope of the deposit. Depository Libraries organize a variety of activities such as anniversary celebrations, events on UN Day, and for other international observances and training workshops for students and depository librarians. And we are using a tool called Findery to post brief notes, photos and videos of a variety of activities at UN Depositories. And you can either open the tool in the grid view or the map view. In the grid view, you will see a bunch of cards that you can click on to read more about the activity. And in the map view that is shown in the screenshot, you can open the location markers to see an activity. For instance, in this case, a visit by one of our colleagues to a Depository Library in Argentina, where she interviewed the librarian and you can watch the video of the interview when you open this note. This slide shows examples of the many and various activities that many Depository Libraries organize. And we really invite all UN Depository Libraries to reach out to us and let us know what you're doing. You can send us an email with like a little description of the event or activity and a photo. Also, there's a feedback form that you can fill out. And so let us know because we would love to put you and your activities on the map. So these are the URLs for the website of the UN UN Depository Library program, the online directory, our Facebook page, and our email address. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or suggestions you may have, especially those of you who are working at Depository Libraries. We're always really happy to hear from you and to know that we're working together in bringing UN documentation and UN information to the people. For those of you who would like to learn more about the UN Depository Library program, you can read the two excellent articles by Jim Church and documents to the people, as well as the paper presented by my colleague Sherry Aldis and me at the Ifla World Library and Information Congress in 2016. And thank you all very much for your interest in this presentation. Please feel free to contact the library anytime. We are all working from home at this point, but you can reach us. You can follow us on Twitter. And now I'm turning it over to Linda for more questions from the audience. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ramona. Yeah, we have a couple of questions. One person was asking about...Principin has a Depository Library. It is currently closed, as is most of us. Yes, and they're one of those who probably have more than we do. Yeah, I'm sure. They have...I mean, Princeton is amazing and some other libraries like Stanford, they really have huge, very comprehensive collections of UN material. Awesome. All right. Oh, so there was a mention of training opportunities for the UN Depository Librarians. Are there other opportunities and developments for that or for people who are interested in UN? Yeah, well, we have...you know, basically, this is a little bit...also, my...you know, I'm a little bit apprehensive about all these online trainings. We are supposed to do some online training webinars. The issue is that it's...I'm working on Depository Library issues part-time with my...I have one colleague who assists, so it's not always possible to develop these things. They take some time to develop. But, you know, this is...for me, this is the first webinar I've ever participated in as a presenter. So, I think it's easy enough to do. So, I think we'll do more of these kinds of webinars, like similar to the one that we did today. And I was also thinking of just having an FAQ sessions for Depository Librarians, you know, via Zoom or Teams. The UN uses...we're using Microsoft Teams. And I've...we've just learned that we can invite external participants to Teams meetings. So, I'll probably arrange for some just FAQ sessions where, you know, free fall questions that Depository Librarians may have. Can I jump in here? Just to let you know, we are looking at, obviously, for obvious reasons, sort of remote training opportunities. It is kind of difficult for us in terms of staffing and that sort of thing. But obviously, we now find ourselves in a situation where the in-person training that we normally do, we're not able to do. So, we're looking at options and we're sort of...we're on the path to developing something. Okay, great. Somebody asked about if there are audio video recordings of the speeches available. That would be, I guess, for Susan. There are. So, what is available is through the Audio Visual Library website or through Web TV. The thing about them is they're not going to necessarily have, like, the transcripts and they might be the full meetings. So, you have to figure out where within a meeting you're looking for those speeches. But, yeah, if you are looking for multimedia content, it's not us that has it. There is, in fact, a UN Multimedia Library that will have audio visual recordings and photos as well. Well, they have now all the meetings are recorded and they are live on Web TV and then the recordings can be viewed later. But as Susan said, sometimes these meetings run very long, like three hours. Normally, it's like a meeting last three hours. And then if you're looking for a particular statement which may be very short, it's not always super easy to find. But on Web TV, WebTV.UN.org, that's where all the, that's basically the UN's webcasting service and all the official meetings, the public meetings are on live and also recorded for later viewing. Okay, great. So, somebody was asking where libraries or institutions should send questions. Something similar to the AskGPO that we might use in the federal level in the US. Apparently, this person has a depository library and doesn't know what they're even receiving because it's the person who had the profile, I guess, retired. So, should they contact you, Ramona? Yes, that would be the best. I mean, the questions that are received through our AskDoc service, they are rooted to the correct people. So, if there's a question about depository libraries, it's rooted to the email, our email address that we have for the program. Again, this is D-H-U-N. So, it's D-H-L-D-L at UN.org. D-H-L-D-L at UN.org is the email address for the UN depository library program. All right. And there was somebody asking what the book was that Ban Ki-moon was looking at. There's a picture of them all. Yeah, they are looking at, I believe, it's all documents that are getting digitized. I don't remember specifically what it was, but it was after a very large digitization project. All right. Well, thank you, everybody, for coming. Thank you so much, Susan Ramona, for persevering in this. I know our technical difficulties in the first one. Somebody was asking about the League of Nations documents. I know Princeton has those. Yeah. So, we have some in print in our collection here in New York, but it's really Geneva that is the holder of the League of Nations material. There's an archives there. There's a special collections there. A number of them have been digitized, and they're available on a database I didn't talk about, which is search.un.org. So, you can find some League of Nations documents there. You can always contact us. And if we're not able to do it, then Geneva in, sorry, the UN library in Geneva is really the expert on those League of Nations questions. And also having, I think they were able to obtain funding for a large-scale digitization of their League of Nations collection. So, we can look forward to that. I don't know where exactly they are with that process, but they are actually digitizing the League of Nations collection in Geneva. And Anne was saying she would love to, if anybody wanted to do something on the UN human rights system, yes, that would be awesome. Thank you very much. Yeah, lots of great stuff in the slides. Lots of great links. All right. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Susan and Ramona again for doing this. Good luck, everybody. Stay safe. And we will see you, hopefully many of you, on April 20th, for our next webinar. And feel free to get in touch with our presenters if you have questions. Yeah. By all means, please do contact us through ASTEC. We are happy to help.