brought to you by DIS keeping companies connected with cloud-based solutions come on city do you have any fresh injury concerns and ahead of tomorrow off the back of the ball in game and no fresh ones no and again we come through the game okay so there's no there's no worries we mentioned on Thursday that Gareth Evans was close to making the bench but he wasn't again on Saturday is he any is he any nearer making the squad yeah now a gazes is available for selection fully and it was kind of a last-minute decision and on the last game but yes or gazes gazes ready to go yeah and what about Jordan Stevens he's been looking likely coming off the bench is he close to a start at all what she thought process behind that yeah obviously Jordan's a good player who's who's made an impact especially in the last game and spoke a little bit previously about him needing to you know show show more in games and he's aware of that and I think he sort of give a good account for himself in the last game where you know I can remember you know a couple deliveries that he put him were really effective and and John's got to keep working hard for for these moments and that consistency and he's still finding out the way that we play and again he's got he's got loads of potential I was gonna mention you've got a bit of a selection headache between Andy cook and Danny row haven't you the both they both keep doing really well in games I guess it's a good thing to have selection headaches all over the pitch isn't it yeah of course and you know spoke about Jordan there and you know he's had to work hard for his opportunities within the game time so you know we've asked a little bit more of him but you know it's quite hard for him to to perform not getting there's as many minutes as he may like and he's got to keep on keep on pushing and and players like cookie and row here again not doing the self-centred harm the the scoring goals are making an impact you know cookie well Andy cookie he sort of was a battering ram for for most of the game and obviously brought brought a rowy on who come on and won the game for us and so again it's a it's a nice thing to have when you've got two people and two attacking players who are who can score goals and you know they've both got different shrimp so yeah is it is a headache trying to pick the right one how do you coach the mental side of that to keep them happy and say look you know we're gonna we're gonna use so-and-so this game because we think the strengths play better against the opposition how do you go about the field players just generally conversations with with them both and before before the team would go out and just be reasons for why they've maybe missed out on that game but how it's been happening in the minute and in the last few games with Andy was obviously couldn't play against his parent club and things like that but they've kind of been in one in one out scenario which has kept them really fresh and they're still playing a game a week and we're still getting the best out of them but again you know that that communication side of it and making sure that they know you know when they're playing and maybe why they've missed out is so important because I think they're both still developing and learning from each other's games as well and you know when potentially Rowey sees Andy pressing and making it really hard and you know we've seen a difference in in Danny Rowey in the way that he tries to win the ball back and works for the team so it's a it's a really good competition and I guess it helps with the positive results doesn't it that they just want to be a part of something positive and they can see the teammates under the scoring goals or saying the goalkeeping case keeping clean sheets rather than having someone sat on the bench and things not going quite right and thinking oh I do a better job. Yeah and the beauty of it maybe is they're both getting opportunities to play and you know it would potentially take one off for another after 60-65 minutes even when the other player is starting so there's enough enough minutes for them to make an impact in the games that have been and we're just looking forward to them you know possibly playing together as well one day if we maybe change formation but again you know that they're really developing and starting to know what we want from them from them in and out of position.  You can't really enjoy the draws and the run and the winner anything like that you've just got to crack on maybe that feeling lasts for 10 minutes after full time but then you're back to work you're focusing on the next game and you know we were working you know Saturday night and Sunday to prepare for Newport and then today we've obviously got to put the work into the plays and you know and help and support them into into the next game so again yeah it's just really fast at the minute and it was an unbelievable feeling but when we got the got the equaliser but you know it's quickly you've got to move on quick. On the clip side of that quick turnaround going into you know we talk all about Saturday Tuesday Saturday Tuesday when you're in such a good run that that almost is a positive isn't it? Yeah it's nice when you're on a run because the games just come one after the other and there's kind of now sort of a routine of how we operate and the players know the structure of what it looks like when you've got Saturday and Tuesday games and and they sort of become that routine maybe become quite normal for them at the minute it just limits the time that you can you know possibly you know have them on the field for longer periods but again we've got to try and be be cute with how we deliver things and make sure we get our messages across. I was going to just touch on that how do you deal with the recovery in such a small space of time what would you do differently in terms of you know if it's Saturday to Saturday is it cramming a load of things in and preparation in that such small space of time? Well you've obviously got a lot more sessions where you can put more through the players in terms of the loads and obviously the contact time that you do have them at the minute it's kind of a shortened short window where you can actually put a lot through the players and it's more walkthroughs and tactical stuff to make sure that when they go into the game they know what their role is but like you say it's a quick turnaround and we're not getting as much time on the grass but in a normal week it's a lot more relaxed because you get more more time with the players and you get to to work for longer periods of time. And it's an away game tomorrow we spoke on Thursday didn't we about the good form at home how do you approach away games is it any different or does it just literally come down as simple as who the opposition is? It's just common for teams when they're playing away to when you go into a ground you've potentially not played in the past and things like that you know these are sometimes things that go in the home teams favour we just treat it as a normal game you know we'll travel down to the hotel and you know we'll go through go through our preparations again and make sure that when we go out there we're ready to go and you know irrelevant if we're at home or away. And playing at the Cardiff City Stadium tomorrow instead of at Newport a little bit different maybe some of the places you've experienced in in League 2 has that come into your mind at all or or is it something that you just kind of treat and it's just another game? Just another game the pitch is obviously going to be in really good condition and that's you know but it suits us probably with the impossession stuff allowing us to you know to keep the ball better and you know the surface to allow us to not have to you know check all the time when you're in possession and what I mean by that is when the pitch is a bad it's it's hard to get your scans in things like that because the ball is bouncing all over the place so what you find is a nice pitch allows players to to drift into different positions and and do the little bit do the work a little bit more to get on the ball and and scan and check like I say so and I'm hoping it'll help us in terms of the impossession work and allow us to play our game and control the game because I don't think we did that against Bolton well enough so that's something that may be working our favour yeah. And at the lads do they echo that or can you sense a bit of excitement around the squad as well about playing playing in cards tomorrow? No I've not heard anything from from the players at all I think they just treat it as a as another game to go and go and hopefully winning and putting a good performance for everybody. And speaking of Newport the four points ahead of you in the table a little bit inconsistent recently what have you made of them? Obviously a very good side you know they've got a way of playing they've got you know they can play out from their bath they can mix it up they've got two good strikers they've got players who are on the bench who can come in and make an impact you know we've watched them and we've been impressed and so I think yeah maybe that they've dipped in form but I think we can't we can't go away from from where where they were before they sort of found the self in this dipper form but you know they're a really good side and you were expecting a tough game again. And your side of the play got some good results against sides who were near the top I'm thinking of like Cheltenham and Tramir. Are the players more up for these kind of games or does it add something when you know you play the team above you in the league what what does that do mentally going into a game? It's hard to say you know it's how you can't really put your finger on anything that's changed from a player's point of view because you're not in their mind at that time and I don't see a difference in terms of the the warm-ups and the preparations that you know the players are less focused than they would be against maybe somebody who was at the bottom of the table and I think so I think I've mentioned it before with professional athletes and footballers the mindset is so crucial and you know they've got to treat every game the same. Thanks for your time and patience with the internet connection there Connor and good luck for tomorrow. Thanks very much cheers for that. Cheers. Hello. Obviously as we said it's at the Cardiff City Stadium which technically I suppose being both teams are away from home can you use that to your advantage too? Yeah kind of I think I mentioned it early when you've got that familiarity with with your venue and you play there all the time you can start to understand the ins and outs of it you know if it's a narrow pitch or a wide pitch or maybe a long or short or the wind in certain halves you know and maybe there's sunlight in some parts as well I think these if you know your pitch and you know how you can use those even better so for them to go into a new stadium is like us you know like say it's going to be a way game for both teams just we're traveling a lot further. On the travelling we make a lot of the distance apart from particularly travelled recently and staying in hotels the players aren't in their own beds and the current climate as well what physical differences does it does this put on the players in terms of all the travelling? Yeah it's a good question and it's something that happens in football clubs where you have to you have to know about it you have to monitor it and if players travel over a certain distance and you've got to understand that the guys will be getting back really later on after the game in the morning and we've got to take that into consideration in the future in the future training sessions so it does have an impact but as a club and as staff we've got to try and manage that as best as possible. So far it doesn't seem to have any effect in terms of results? Not so far no again we've got a way of working a way of you know travelling and how it works and people know the ins and outs and it's important to get that routine and so far it's done as well and so we're not going to change it. Have you reached a routine there? That's something particularly tired professionals that often say that that's the thing they miss. It's key for a team as a players to have that routine. Yeah I think for the wrong mind it's like anything when it becomes more natural to you and you're doing it all the time it's you'll do it sort of automatically and you don't have to think too much about where I've got to be in times and stuff like that it's quite a simple procedure where they know where to be at certain times and they know what it's going to be so there's no surprises if you like. Okay thanks very much, good luck tomorrow. Thanks a lot. Colin you were talking about you know perhaps getting more control in the game I mean you saw that a bit on Saturday what was that do you think that was a little bit of fatigue creeping in you know the past is going astray and perhaps sort of good opportunities you know not making the most of opportunities particularly when you know there's a chance to attack and counter will happen. Yeah you can put it down to that physical mental and when players start getting tired they start making poor decisions and and you see that and potentially looking back at the game we were we had some really good moments where we could have been overloaded on their back line with free v2s for v3s but we didn't quite have that that concentration and that and that final pass to make it happen and or even we didn't even have that extra pass to make it a simpler one the next one so you know we saw that and I think everybody on the day saw that we looked deadly on the counter but I just think that it just didn't happen on the day with with the quality and and you know we've got to ask questions of why that happened and and rightly so you've asked about fatigue and mental fatigue and I think that that definitely played a part because that because what you've seen over the past few weeks is those players providing those passes at the right time at the right speed so I think you know it's a good point. Is that you know is that as we've talked about before the game stacking up as they are you know it's inevitable people are going to get you know a little bit jaded at times don't they? Yeah a hundred percent and you know other clubs will be in the same same boat but I think as well again we've got a really good squad and if we need to change things up I feel we I feel we can but again the players have been outstanding the ones that have started and the ones that have come off the bench so and we've just got to keep that momentum going in that form and keep everybody grounded and hard working. As you say about the players coming off the bench I mean if you are going to utilise the squad and perhaps freshen things up and this game or the next game or whenever you need them players coming on and making an impact because they're staking a claim there. Yeah you know it's like anything when players find themselves on the bench you know what do you say to them when you go on you've got to perform and you've got to go on your shirt you've got to go make a difference you know you've got to be brilliant around the changing room you've got to be good in training you know these things add up and when they go out there they've got to try and be the best player when they come off the bench and I think what the players have done they've found themselves in you know when we've been leading in the games and by the way they've put in a terrific team performance in by them individuals doing a job on certain players and maybe having that time to speak to them on the sidelines for them to know you know how we're going to change the game and how they're going to impact it. And now presumably as I say with more substitutes this season it's become a real part of the game and you know when to put the you know a couple on it until I'm when to do it in terms of you know personnel and rather than perhaps just bringing someone on for 10 minutes just to give someone else a breather it's a real sort of tactical move now isn't it? Yeah well you know you've got a lot of options you can bring on different positions you've got obviously a few windows that you can use you can't just keep bringing on one at a time you've got to strategically plan who's coming on at what minute and but you've also got to be be clear sorry be clear in in what you see and if you see players out there who are maybe looking fatigue like you've mentioned or mentally fatigued you've got to be you know mindful to maybe make changes which come away from how you've planned so so yeah. I mean when you go into the game you tend to sort of have an idea of looking ideally to bring so-and-so and so-and-so on after 58 minutes 61 minutes someone else after 72 have you sort of got it you know sort of jotting down you know if everything goes to plan is what we'll do? Yeah we've mentioned it in in the past around capping minutes and things like that and and this is this is no different but again as you know if it's nil nil if it's you're losing one nil these things can you know can potentially change but as long as you you're prepared as well as you've got it as well as you can and you know the risk involved in playing certain plays over certain minutes then you know it makes it easy for us to try and to try and change it but again we won't put anybody safety you know in in jeopardy where they've been told they can only do 45 they're doing a full game but you've got to be adaptable to the to the game circumstances in the situation where you might have to make different changes for different reasons and you get injuries and things like that so but yeah you do you do try and plan ahead is it something as a coach you're pleased to see more substitutes now or would you ideally like it as it was before with perhaps the maximum of three? I quite I quite like it because I think you can you can change the game a little bit more gives you a little bit more options in terms of you can make doubles you've got plays on the bench in in different positions and but again using the five you can do a lot more things with it than the three because you're limiting yourself into formations you can change to and and personnel you can bring in so I think and it's been a good addition but we'll see what happens with it and then she's like you said earlier about obviously Danny Rowan Andy Cook and about potentially playing them together I want to see I think they're all about ten minutes together on Saturday I mean obviously you've got the capacity with Danny to play him in that ten role as well haven't you? I think I think Danny could you know against certain teams play that play that role and but again I think we are mindful and we are clearing in what teams we can play against then what Danny could play as a ten because you don't want to take you don't want him tracking back taking away all his strengths and keeping him away from the box in high areas you know so he's got to be the right game at the right time for for Danny if he's going to play in that position I think. And the last one obviously about about the pitch and you were saying about you know great surface it's going to be the play on and the players looking for would be looking forward to that. Has it sort of changed your preparation in terms of you know when you were thinking oh we've got new pull away coming up you know we know what's going to be a real battle down there because there's going to be a slog on that pitch has it sort of changed your thinking a little bit towards a game? Yeah because you can't play the football that you'd like to on new ports pitch because it's it's there's too much risk you're relying on you know plays to pass and receive at high quality and when you you have a maybe a pitch in that condition at this moment in time things can quickly go wrong and mistakes start to happen so playing on a better pitch allows you to to be a little bit safer when you are passing and receiving and playing and things like that so I think it definitely does come into into consideration yeah. Brought to you by DIS keeping companies connected with cloud-based solutions. Come on City!


I don't know when you're going to read this, but I can tell you when it started. I was out for a walk alone in the woods when the entity came for me. It was beyond a blur. It was for lack of a better term, absence of meaning. Where it hid, there were no trees. Where it crept closer, there was no grass. Through the arc, it leapt at me. There was no breeze of motion. There was no air at all. As it struck, I felt the distinct sensation of claws puncturing me somewhere unseen, somewhere I'd never felt before. My hands and arms and legs seemed fine and I wasn't bleeding, but I knew I'd been injured somehow. As I fearfully ran back home, I could tell that I was… less. I was vaguely tired and it was hard to focus at times. The solution at that early stage was easy. A big cup of coffee helped me feel normal again. For a while, that subtle drain on my spirit became lost in the ebb and flow of caffeine in my system. You could say my life began that week, actually, because that was when I met Mar. She and I got along great, though, to be honest, I'm pretty sure I fell in love with her over the phone before we even met. It was almost as if the strong emotions of that first week made the entity fight back. It was still with me, latched on to some invisible part of my being. The first few incidents were minor, and I hardly worried about them. The color of a neighbor's car changed from dark blue to black one morning, and I stared at it before shaking my head and shrugging off the difference. Two days later at work, a co-worker's name changed from Fred to Dan. I carefully asked around, but everyone said his name had always been Dan. I figured I'd just been mistaken. Then as ridiculous as this sounds, I was peeing in my bathroom at home when I suddenly found myself on a random street. I was still in my pajamas, pants down, and urinating, but now in full view of a dozen people at a bus stop. Horrified, I pulled up my clothes and ran before someone called the cops. I did manage to get home, but the experience forced me to admit that I was still in danger. The entity was doing something to me, and I didn't understand how to fight back. Mar showed up that evening, but she had her own key. Hey, I asked her with confusion. How'd you get a key? She just laughed. You're cute. Are you sure you're okay with this? She opened a door and entered a room full of boxes. I know living together is a big step, especially when we've only been dating three months. Living together. I'd literally just met her the week before. Thing was, my mother had always called me a smart cookie for a reason. I knew when to shut my app. Instead of causing a scene, I told her everything was fine, and then I went straight to my room and began investigating. My things were just as I had left them with no sign of a three month gap in habitation, but I did find something out of the ordinary. The date. I shivered angrily as I processed the truth.   What kind of creature could consume pieces of one's soul like that? I'd missed the most exciting part of a new relationship, and I would never understand any shared stories or in jokes from that period. Something absurdly precious had been taken from me, and I was furious. That fury helped suppress the entity. I never imbibed alcohol. I drank coffee religiously. I checked the date every time I woke up. For three years I managed to live each day while observing nothing more than minor alterations. A social fact here and there, someone's job, how many kids they had, that sort of thing. The layout of nearby streets. The time my favorite television show aired, that kind of thing. Because those changes reminded me that the creature still had its claws sunk into my spirit. Not once in three years did I ever let myself zone out. One day I grew careless. I let myself get really into the season finale of my favorite show. It was gripping. A fantastic story. Right at the height of the action, a young boy came up to my lounger and shook my hand. Surprised I asked, who are you, how'd you get in here? He laughed and smiled brightly. Silly daddy. My heart sank in my chest. I knew immediately what had happened. After a few massed questions, I discovered that he was two years old. And that he was my son. The agony and heartache filling my chest was nearly unbearable. Not only had I missed the birth of my son.  Mar and I had obviously gotten married and started a family in the time I'd lost. And I had no idea what joys or pains those years contained. It was snowing outside, holding my sudden sun in my lap. I sat and watched the flakes fall outside. What kind of life was this going to be if slips and concentration could cost me years? I had to get help. The church had no idea what to do. The priest didn't believe me and told me I had a health issue rather than some sort of possession. The doctors didn't have any clue. Nothing showed up on all their scans and tests. But they happily took my money and returned for nothing. By the time I ran out of options, I decided to tell Mar. There was no way to know what this all looked like from her side. What was I like when I wasn't there? Did I still take our son to school? Did I still do my job? Clearly, I did because she seemed to be none the wiser. But I still had a horrible feeling that something must have been missing in her life when I wasn't actually home inside my own head. But the night I set up a nice dinner in preparation, she arrived not by unlocking the door, but by knocking on it. I answered and found that she was in a nice dress. She was happily surprised by the settings on the table. A fancy dinner for a second date? I knew you were sweet on me. Thank the Lord I knew when to keep my mouth shut. If I'd gone on about being married and having a son, she might have run for the hills. Instead, I took her coat and sat down for our second date. Through carefully crafted questions, I managed to deduce the truth. This really was our second day. She saw relief and happiness in me, but interpreted that as dating jitters. I was just excited to realize that the entity wasn't necessarily eating whole portions of my life. The symptoms as I was beginning to understand them were more like the consequences of a shattered soul. The creature had wounded me, broken me into pieces. Perhaps I was to live my life out of order, but at least I would actually get to live it. And so it went for a few years from my perspective. While minor changes in politics or geography would happen daily, major shifts in my mental location only happened every couple months. When I found myself in a new place and time in my life, I just shut up and listened, making sure to get the lay of the land before doing anything to avoid making mistakes. On the farthest flung leap yet, I met my six-year-old grandson, and I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said, writer. I told him that was a fine idea. Then I was back in month two of my relationship with Mar, and I had the best night with her on the riverfront. When I say the best, I mean the best. Knowing how special she would become to me, I asked her to move in. I got to live through what I'd missed the first go-around, and I came to understand that I was never mentally absent. I would always be there, eventually. When we were moving her boxes in, she stopped for a moment and said she marveled at my great love, as if I'd known her for a lifetime and never once doubted she was the one. That was the first time I truly laughed freely and wholeheartedly since the entity had wounded me. She was right about my love for her, but for exactly the reason she'd considered a silly romantic analogy. I had known her my whole life, and I'd come to terms with my situation and found peace with it. It wasn't so bad to have sneak peeks at all the best parts ahead. But of course I wouldn't be writing this if it hadn't gotten worse. The entity was still with me. It had not wounded me and departed like I'd wanted to believe. The closest I can describe my growing understanding was that the creature was burrowing deeper into my psyche, fracturing it into smaller pieces. Instead of months between major shifts, I began having only weeks. Once I noticed that trend, I feared my ultimate fate would be to jump between times in my life heartbeat by heartbeat, forever confused, forever lost. Only an instant in each time meant I would never be able to speak with anyone else, never be able to hold a conversation, never express or receive love. As the true depth of that fear came upon me, I sat in an older version of me and watched the snow falling outside. That was the one constant in my life. The weather didn't care who I was or what pains I had to face. Nature was always there. The falling snow was always like a little hook that kept me in a place. The pure emotional piece it brought me was like a panacea on my mental wounds and I'd never yet shifted while watching the pattern of falling white and thinking of the times I'd gone sledding or built the snow for it as a child. A teenager touched my arm. Grandpa? Huh? He'd startled me out of my thoughts so I was less careful than usual. Who are you? He half-grinned as if not sure whether I was joking. Handing me a stack of papers, he said, it's my first attempt at a novel. Would you read it and tell me what you think? Ah, of course. Pursuing that dream of being a writer, I see. He burned bright red, trying to, anyway.  I'll read this right now. The words were blurry and annoyed I looked for glasses I probably had for reading. Being old was terrible and I wanted to lead back into a younger year but not before I read his book. I found my glasses in a sweater pocket and began leafing through. Mar puddered in and out of the living room, still beautiful, but I had to focus. I didn't know how much time I would have there. It seemed that we had relatives over. Was it Christmas? A pair of adults and a couple kids I didn't recognize tromped through the hallway and I saw my son. Now adult, walk by with his wife on the way out the door. As a group, the extended family began sledding outside. Finally, I finished reading the story and I called out for my grandson. He rushed down the stairs and into the living room. How was it? Well, it's terrible, I told him truthfully. But it's terrible for all the right reasons.  But the structure of the story itself is very solid. I paused. I didn't expect it to turn out to be a horror story. He nodded. It's a reflection of the times. Expectations for the future are dismal, not hopeful like they used to be. You're far too young to be aware like that, I told him. An idea occurred to me. If you're into horror, do you know anything about strange creatures? Sure. I read everything I can. I love it. Warily, I scanned the entrances to the living room. Everyone was busy outside. For the first time, I opened up to someone in my life about what I was experiencing. In hushed tones, I told him about my fragmented consciousness. For a teenager, he took a well. You're serious? Yes. He donned the determined look of a grown man accepting a quest. I'll look into it. See what I can find out. You should start writing down everything you experience, build some data. Maybe we can map your psychic wound. Wow. Sounds like a plan. I was surprised. That made sense, and I hadn't expected him to have a serious response. But how will I get all the notes in one place? Let's come up with somewhere for you to leave them, he said, frowning with thought. Then I'll get them and we can trace the path you're taking through your own life. See if there's a pattern. For the first time since the situation had gotten worse, I felt hope again. How about under the stairs? Nobody ever goes under there. Sure. He turned and left the living room. I peered after him. I heard him banging around near the stairs. Finally he returned with a box, laid it on the carpet, and opened it to reveal a bursting stack of papers. He exclaimed, holy crap!  Taken aback, I blinked rapidly, forgiving his cussing because of the shock. Did I write those? He looked up at me in wonder, yeah, or you will. You still have to write them and put them under the stairs after this. He gazed back down at the papers, then covered the box. So you probably shouldn't see what they say. That could get weird. That much I understood. He gulped. There are like fifty boxes under there, all filled up like this. Deciphering these will take a long time. His tone dropped to deadly seriousness.  Because I don't think anyone else can. Tears flowed down my cheeks then, and I couldn't help but sob once or twice. I hadn't realized how lonely I'd become in my shifting prison of awareness, until I finally had someone who understood. Thank you. Thank you so much. And then I was young again, and at work on a random Tuesday. Once the sadness and relief faded, anger and determination replaced them. After I finished my work, I grabbed some paper and began writing. While the week shifted around me, while those weeks became days and then hours, I wrote every single spare moment about when and where I thought I was. I put them under the stairs out of order. My first box was actually the thirteenth, and my last box was the first. Once I had over fifty boxes written from my perspective, and once my shifting became a matter of minutes, I knew it was up to my grandson to take it from there. I put my head down and stopped looking. I couldn't stand the river of changing awareness any longer. Names and places and dates and jobs and colors and people were all wrong and different. I'd never been older. I sat watching the snow fall. A man of at least thirty that I vaguely recognized entered the room. It's mon. I think I finally figured it out. I was so frail that moving was painful. Are you him? Are you my grandson? Yes. He took me to a room filled with strange equipment and sat me in a rubber chair facing a large mirror twice the height of a man. The pattern finally revealed itself. How long have you worked on this? I asked him. I gasped. Tell me you didn't miss your life like I'm missing mine. His expression was both stone cold and furiously resolute. It'll be worth it. He brought two thin metal rods close to my arm and then knotted at the mirror. Look, this shock is carefully calibrated. The electric zap from his device was startling but not painful. In the mirror, I saw a rapid arcing light silhouette appear above my head and shoulder. The electricity moved through the creature like a wave, briefly revealing the terrible nature of what was happening to me.  And its slug-like body ran over my shoulder and into my very soul. It was a parasite and it was feeding on my mind. My now-adult grandson held my hand as I took in the horror. After a moment, he asked, removing it is going to hurt very badly. Are you up for this? Fearful, I asked. Is Mar here? His face softened. No, not for a few years now. I could tell from his reaction what had happened, but I didn't want it to be true. How? We have this conversation a lot, he responded. Are you sure you want to know? It never makes you feel better. Tears brimmed in my eyes. Then I don't care if it hurts or if I die. I don't want to stay in a time when she's not alive. He made a sympathetic noise of understanding and then returned to his machines to hook several wires, diodes, and other bits of technology to my limbs and forehead. While he did so, he talked. I've worked for two decades to figure this out, and I've had a ton of help from other researchers of the occult. This parasite doesn't technically exist in our plane. It's one of the lesser spawns, and it feeds on the plexus of mind, soul, and quantum consciousness and reality. When details like names and colors of objects changed, you weren't going crazy. The web of your existence was merely losing strands as the creature ate its way through you. I didn't fully understand. I looked up in confusion as he placed a circlet of electronics like a crown on my head in exact line with where the parasite's mouth had ringed me. He paused his work and grew pale. I forgot that you wouldn't know. You're lucky, believe me. After a deep breath, he began moving again and placed his fingers near a few stitches. Ready? This is carefully tuned to make your nervous system extremely unappetizing to the parasite, but it's basically electroshock therapy. I could still see more smile. I had just been with her moments ago. Do it. The click of the switch echoed in my ears, and I almost laughed at how mild the electricity was. It didn't feel like anything, at least at first. Then I saw the mirror shaking and my body within that image convulsing. Oh no. It did hurt. Nothing had ever been more painful. It was just so excruciating that my mind hadn't been able to immediately process it. As my vision shook and fire burned in every nerve in my body, I could see the reflected trembling light silhouette of the parasite on my head as it writhed in agony equal to mine. It had claws, six clawed lizard-like limbs under its leech-like body, and it cut into me in an attempt to stay latched on. The electricity made my memories flare.  The edges of that memory began lighting up, and I realized that my life was one continuous stretch of experience. It was only the awareness of it that had been fragmented by the feasting evil on my back. I'd never managed to be there for the birth of my son. I'd jumped around it a dozen times, but never actually lived it. For the first time, I got to hold Marseille's hand and be there for her. No. No. That moment had shifted seamlessly into holding her hand as she lay in a hospital bed for a very different reason. Not this. God, why? It was so merciless to make me remember this. I broke down in tears as nurses rushed into the room. I didn't want to know. I didn't want to experience it. I'd seen all the good parts, but I hadn't wanted the worst part. The inevitable end that all would one day face. It wasn't worth it. It was tainted. All that joy was given back ten thousand fold as pain.  My scream faded into a surprise shout as the machines and electricity and chair faded away.  I was out in the woods on a bright summer day. Oh God, I turned to see the creature approaching me. It was the same absence of meaning, the same blank on reality. It crept forward just like before, but this time it hissed and turned away. I stood astounded at being young again and freed from the parasite. My grandson had actually done it. He'd made me an unappetizing meal, so the predator of mind and soul had moved on in search of a different snack. I returned home in a days, and while I was sitting there processing all that had happened, the phone rang. I looked at it in awe and sadness. I knew who it was. It was Marjorie, calling for the first time for some trivial reason she'd admit thirty years later was made up just to talk to me. But all I could see was her lying in that hospital bed dying. It was going to end in unspeakable pain and loneliness. I would become an old man, left to sit by myself in an empty house. His soul may have gone long before him. At the end of it all, the only thing I would have, sitting and watching the falling snow. But now, thanks to my grandson, I would also have my memories. It would be a wild ride, no matter how it ended. On a sudden impulse, I picked up the phone. With a smile I asked, Hey, who's this? Even though I already


Hi, my name is Angela Zoss. I'm the assessment and data visualization analyst in the assessment and user experience department at Duke University Libraries. And I'm Tim McGuery. I am the Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies and Technology. Thank you for your interest in our presentation on building expertise and defining values through the data privacy and retention task force we formed at the Duke University Libraries. We carefully considered the value of investing in this work. We believe the return on this investment should be broad and far-reaching. First, we wanted to educate ourselves as ambassadors of data privacy and retention. To effectively develop ambassadors, we recognize the team should be diverse in experience as well as the parts of the library representative. We envisioned the work itself to be an incubator, particularly preparing ourselves to train other staff on privacy issues. We believe this is a measure of sustainability to ensure a commitment to privacy and appropriate data retention as an organization. We understood the spectrum of data privacy and retention is broad, yet we recognized from the start that we needed to balance our obligations to protect our users while also using data to improve our services to our users. Finally, we wanted the report of this work to be actionable. We aimed the report to set up a model for actionable value statements that would define discrete work that could continue our progress. We aimed to create and charge subteams to create policies to implement data retention and privacy actions based on priorities previously defined and priorities determined through continued progress. Three of the precursors to our work were activities directly related to data privacy. I was invited to participate in developing the seamless access entity categories and attribute bundles. I do create a data privacy officer position and one of the first engagement projects was with the libraries given our reputation for patron privacy. We were engaged in a difficult negotiation with a library vendor who was seeking, while we were seeking additional privacy protections and actions to ensure that the vendor was compliant with GDPR. This experience emphasized the tenuous nature of ensuring data privacy in the face of user data being a valuable commodity. In 2018, the Duke University Libraries participated in the national forum on web privacy and web analytics. This IMLS-funded grant brought together librarians, technologists, and privacy researchers to produce a practical roadmap for enhancing analytics practice and supportive privacy. The UL's participation in the web privacy forum, as well as the recent developments with GDPR and the CCPA provided momentum for a deeper look at our own systems. In the fall of 2019, the Assessment and User Experience Department, inspired by some of the recommendations in the web privacy forums on a white paper and action handbook, conducted a data privacy and retention audit of the UL policies and procedures. The goal was to conduct a judgment-free assessment of our current practices across various systems that collect and retain personal data for patrons and donors. We collected and identified 70 systems that might be candidates for such an audit. And we selected 24 for interviews because they were confirmed to collect and retain personal data. The resulting report, which is linked in our slides, summarizes the similarities and differences across the systems and ultimately concludes there are enough issues to warrant the creation of a new team to address these issues. One of my main goals in sponsoring this work was to empower a wide range of people within the library from multiple divisions to collaborate on how we retain data, what should remain private and why, and what good can be accomplished through appropriate use of data collected. We saw individuals whose professional experience would be valuable to our work, representation from the divisions which interface with users and user data, legal expertise, experience with accessibility services, special collections, digital curation, licensing the acquisitions, open source and priorities of open design, and using data. And most importantly to me, I wanted to empower others to leave the libraries in this work and to enable and amplify their collaboration for others to follow. Our first output as a task force was to create a value statement, but we quickly realized we were all coming from different places in our understanding of privacy issues. Task force members felt unsure of where to start and we all wanted to make sure we could speak from a place of authority. To get everyone on the same page and help everyone feel comfortable with their own understanding of privacy issues, we decided to develop a series of primers on various privacy related topics. Members of the task force volunteered to identify introductory texts for different topics related to privacy in libraries. Each meeting we reviewed materials on a particular topic and discussed the connections to library values and the implications for our work. The topics we reviewed were the benefits of data analysis, web analytics, the EU's general data protection regulation or GDPR, seamless access, authentication, anti-surveillance and privacy and archives slash special collections. After building and reviewing the topical primers, we turned our attention to creating our value statement. Of course, the library community already has a variety of value statements ranging from the very broad to the very specific. One example of a broad value statement is the ALA code of ethics. Value statements like this are important for organizing the community, but having a broad value statement means that it is hard to translate it into specific services or policies and the values themselves often conflict. For example, we want to provide useful services and to evaluate those services we often collect data, however to protect users we need to support their right to privacy and confidentiality, which is easiest to do when we do not collect data. We also have value statements that are more specific to patron privacy, like the NISO privacy principles and the IFLA statement on privacy. More specific value statements can go into more detail about our values around patron privacy, but there is still room for interpretation. Institutional differences and priorities can play a role in how to translate these values into services and policies. Our task force needed to combine what we learned about patron privacy with both the values of the library community and the priorities of our institution and departments. The task force realized that DUL already has a guiding document, the 2016 to 2021 strategic plan. More than that, we noticed that the guiding principles and priorities within the strategic plan cover many of the same topics as our privacy primers. DUL's guiding principles are value statements that cut across library departments and projects. They are high-level goals that we can keep in mind as we organize our work and make decisions about where to devote our resources energy. Each area has broad but useful implications for our work to educate patrons about privacy concerns and protect patron privacy in our own systems and services. We design and deliver user-centered services. We believe that data collected and analyzed in a responsible manner helps an organization make better decisions about how to service users. Even with the best of intentions, however, our desire to collect and analyze patron data to improve services comes into conflict with our patron's right to privacy, and we must acknowledge that tension and be thoughtful about how our data practices have an impact on our users. In addition to keeping privacy needs in mind when making decisions about data collection, analysis, and retention, we must also keep our users in mind with communicating better practices. We know that simply making information available does not make it findable, understandable, or actionable. As a library, we are especially sensitive to the importance of promoting literacy in areas related to information, especially in the midst of a pandemic that has pushed even more activity into our digital environments. Staff development leads to innovation. Staff development in areas related to data privacy is crucial because of the rapidly changing privacy and security landscape. Our individual and collective understandings of best practices need to be regularly tested and updated. Staff members need time and resources to take advantage of learning opportunities, and the institution needs to incorporate any lessons learned to guide future decisions and improve practices. Furthermore, regular staff training guards against staff practices that either unminimally or intentionally compromise data security. Diversity strengthens us. The diverse community we provide services for inherently creates a rich source of data with unique challenges to ensuring its equitable and meaningful use. Our users are multifaceted, bringing distinctly valuable perspectives and experiences to their interactions with the library. As stewards of this data, we must be mindful of how data are utilized and whose voices are included in the decision-making processes. Without careful attention and engagement of our full user community, we run the risk of introducing and perpetuating bias in our data, data policy, and our decision-making efforts. We cultivate and connect communities with thriving global research activities and an international campus at Duke and Chen University. Duke University is a large part of a large complex network of scholarly activity. This network includes our increasingly global local community. Participation in such a network complicates attempts to comply with privacy regulation and stay up to date with best practices for data collection, protection, and analysis. Ultimately, however, we seek globalization as a strength and information work and strive to take into account the important legal and cultural ramifications of our work. We break down barriers to scholarship. The library's commitments to open access, open source, and open standards encourage widespread sharing of academic work, tools, and infrastructure in hopes of allowing everyone to benefit from the products of research, which are often publicly funded. These commitments have the potential to undercut for-profit companies that offer free services in exchange for predatory surveillance practices, compromising the safety and privacy of our users. We recognize, however, that as an institution reliant on stretched budgets and staff, we are often faced with our own tough choices about using low-cost or free software that trades our users' data for convenient features and long-term stability. We use our strategic plan to frame strategic priorities and goals for our work on this task force. Each of these statements were crafted through collaboration and consideration of the context of each goal. Our libraries create platforms for scholarly engagement. As platform creators, we have the opportunity to actualize our values in software and services. We develop platforms that can serve as alternatives to those trying to monetize user data, and that can embody our commitment to open sharing of research sources and products. When we implement, modify, or design platforms, we make choices about what we require from our users, what we offer our users, and how well we communicate what is happening in our platforms. The choices that we make can encourage a high level engagement from a wide variety of people, or they can restrict activities in ways that are frustrating and hurtful to our users. For some systems, our interests as service designers and data collectors will come into direct conflict with our users' right to privacy. Our libraries teach and support emerging literacies. Information exchange about individuals and groups occurs automatically in the background of our library systems, often going unnoticed and without interrogation by the subjects of that information. This exchange occurs both to provide convenient and easy-to-use services, and as a good exchange in the economy of behavioral data. Our users can only make informed decisions about their privacy when they understand this exchange of information that occurs when they use our systems. Our libraries advance discovery. While fulfilling a role in providing access to new technologies and emerging opportunities to enable more sophisticated discovery and access of information, we acknowledge that with that role comes a charge to understand how these technologies and partnerships make use of users' information. As with other areas related to privacy, our role as an access provider will come into conflict with our users' right to privacy when we consider using tools or services that offer useful features for us or our users in exchange for problematic data practices. Our libraries partner in research. Libraries are especially well-suited to partner in research-related data privacy issues. The library field has a long history with privacy protections, as evidenced by state laws protecting the privacy of library records across the country. Libraries are often intimately involved in the development of industry standards, privacy policy language, and privacy-protecting software solutions. Library research partners include a broad range of individuals, groups, and institutions from local patron communities to consortial and global library peers. Libraries have a vested interest in research on ways to better protect patient privacy, either through software improvements, regulatory change, or user education. Our libraries transform the information ecosystem. The work we do at the Duke University Libraries can benefit from and be a great benefit to other library partners around the world. Far from being a neutral party, libraries can engage directly with social and political forces to promote privacy protections. By working in concert with a broader library community, we can leverage our collective power to affect real and lasting change on privacy issues. For each section of the strategic plan applying a privacy lens resulted in a set of value statements specific enough to guide real decisions in our organization. Our final values document has been nicknamed the P and P document for principles and priorities. For each of our values outlined in this document, we used a specific set of terms related to our institutional priorities and sphere of influence. For actions that are within DUL's sphere of influence, we have statements at two levels of priority, obligation, and responsibility. For areas outside of our direct influence, we use the word commitment. One example from the P and P is guiding principle number five. We break down barriers to scholarship. In this section, we identified three major values related to patron privacy, one at each level of the hierarchy. We have an obligation to use open source privacy protecting tools whenever possible. We have a responsibility to contribute effort back to open source projects we rely on, and we commit to advocacy and support around open tools and scholarship in academic communities that resist such openness, including efforts to challenge incentive structures that require the use of proprietary software or publication in closed journals. The final report has been posted publicly on Dukespace and shared in a companion blog post. We hope that this report will serve as a useful model to others in the library community. Final goal of the task force was to recommend specific projects that should be undertaken at DUL to make sure that our actions align with our values. Two of the first projects we'll be undertaking are a privacy by design project, which will develop a new workflow to assess privacy concerns for new technology projects, and a project to update our public documentation, pushing beyond the traditional privacy policy statement to a more findable, understandable, and actionable set of public explanations of how we use and collect data. The goal with both the report and the next step projects is to make sure that our values around privacy are well embedded throughout the libraries, and that we work toward consistency and sustainability for our privacy work. We hope that the data privacy and retention task force serves as a model of how to build expertise across a diverse group, outline priorities for future work according to our sphere of influence and institutional goals, and share work broadly, both within and outside our organization. Thank you very much for your time. Please feel free to reach out to me or to Tim directly with any questions.


Hey, Aloha, and welcome to Stan Engeman here and thank Tech Hawaii Stan Osterman. And we're doing something special today. I wanted to talk about energy awareness in context of today's COVID and everything else. And I started thinking about it and I actually felt that the best way to do it was just to rerun a show that I did two years ago, almost two years to the day with a professor from the mainland named Nate Hagen. He was introduced to me by Richard Ha on the big island. And the concept that we talked about a lot was called energy blindness. And I think it's really, really important to re-emphasize his position. So two things is listen to him talk about energy blindness and also talk about how much energy is in a barrel of oil and that's what we're trying to replace. And I think you'll find it really fascinating. So let's get back with the show. Today's guest comes to us long distance from the normally only two week long summers of Minnesota. He's a professor that I got introduced to by way of Richard Ha on the big island. He's a businessman and farmer there. And the folks that we're interviewing or the gentlemen we're interviewing today is Professor Nate Hagens. And he's a professor and Nate, I'm gonna introduce you and bring in now. I never even asked what your specialty was. What do you teach over there in Minnesota primarily? Aloha Stan. I teach a class called Reality 101, a survey of the human predicament. And it's a generalist class.  Terrific. I was wondering why your videos were so fascinating because I couldn't tell whether you were a sociology professor or a part of history, part economics, part, so thanks for clarifying that. You did some great videos. I've talked to them on at least three or four of my shows already, but now I finally got you here in almost in the flesh, at least via the internet. And tell us a little bit about how you got started in what you're doing right now and how you end up in Minnesota with your forum and everything. Well, I studied finance at the University of Chicago. I worked on Wall Street 20 years ago and I started to read books about oil, oil depletion, ecology, the fact that a lot of our prices don't include the negative impacts of what we consume. And I got so fascinated in it, I gave my clients their money back and I went and got my PhD in natural resources. And since then I've been learning not only about energy, but about the whole situation of humans, our impact on the planet, what we have, what we need, what's possible in the future. And I really do think it comes a lot to the human brain, which we're kind of unaware of. We spend a lot of time and resources pursuing energy intensive activities when we don't really need to use that much energy. And then the other thing is that our culture, our species, is energy blind. We don't appreciate and understand how central energy is to our lifestyles and our future. That's really fascinating. I'm actually about a year and a half ago, I did one show dedicated to what I called critical analysis, because I feel like that's almost a lost art today. I don't even know, other than probably your courses, how many people are actually taught how to really think, cradle-to-grave analysis of anything we're doing, because it just seems like it doesn't exist in our society. We do everything based on price point or what's cheapest now or what's fastest or who's got the flashiest marketing skills and things like that. And critical analysis, whether it's who are electing for elected officials or what we're buying at the grocery store is just out the window. Yes, and I would argue that a lot of our political problems in our country and in the world right now are a long-term result of education and not learning about ecology and energy and kind of the fundamental principles of what makes the world go round. Instead, we've trained reductionists to be experts on a certain aspect that leads to a technology, a profitable thing where we don't see the forest for the trees and I think and hope that's changing.  You're still living in the same darn house. Did you kind of take that notion and expand it into your bigger picture? Yeah, that's actually at the core of the issue of sustainability on the planet right now because our brains as biological products of evolution care about relative fitness or relative comparisons. We want to be at least as respected and successful as our neighbors, so we care about relative wealth more than we care about absolute wealth. Most Americans today from an energy perspective are richer than Cleopatra or kings and queens from 500 years ago in the terms of what we consume, but half of us are more miserable because we're comparing ourselves to millionaires or people that have a lot of money in the bank, and so we feel like we don't have enough, even though on an absolute basis, we do. And so I think with Madison Avenue and marketing, we get told, you're not good enough, you suck, but if you buy this product, you'll be better. And so our cultural scorecard is pecuniary consumption and cars and houses and jewelry and things like that. When our ancestral environment, it was who is the better storyteller or the provider for our tribe or intelligence or kindness and things like that. So we're really competing for things that are unsustainable and in many cases unnecessary. The average American consumes around 20 times the resources as the average person in say the Philippines, but we're equally as happy. And why is that? Because there's a lot of poor people in Philippines, but they're surrounded by other poor people. And so they don't feel this dislocation whereas in America, we have a very small percentage of Uber rich and then a few other moderately rich people and 60 to 70% of society has virtually nothing. And so we're miserable. And I don't think that has to be that way forever, but right now it's a real disconnect in global culture. And recently there's been some talk about of setting fixed prices on credit cards and things to help people get back in control of their financial lives. And there's people on both sides talking about that, but basically it sounds like that credit card debt is more related to your basic principle that we're trying to keep up with the guy next to us or get that much ahead. Do you see that's pretty good?  There's no way we're gonna fill that all in in 30 minutes, but credit cards, our nations are running on credit cards right now. The world economic, the main nations in the world have 350% debt to GDP. And since I've been alive, we've grown our debt more every year than we've grown the size of our economies. And that is patently unsustainable. The reason we do that is because we're a biological species that prefers, that really focuses on the present versus the future. So allowing spending money on credit cards as an individual or as a country allows us to consume resources today that normally we wouldn't be able to, we would have to wait for the future. And this is adding to our sustainability crisis.  Could you kind of give us an idea of, you know, what you was running through your head as you came up with this notion? I know we've already kind of talked about some of the aspects, but give us a big picture of energy blindness. Well, people know energy is important. They look at their kilowatt hour bill at the end of the month, or when they go to the gas station, they look at how much money they pay for gasoline to fill up their tank. But energy is ubiquitous in what it provides for us. One barrel of oil has 5.7 million BTUs of energy. And if you translate that into work, it's 1,700 kilowatt hours of work. You or I stand doing yard work or physical labor would do 0.6 kilowatt hours in one day. So one barrel of oil replaces four and a half years of my labor and we pay $60 for it. So in fact, we're blind to that. Our culture just looks at the dollar cost of energy and we forget that mother nature sequestered and condensed and refined this fossil carbon over hundreds of millions of years. We're pulling it out 10 million times faster than it can be replaced. And we're not paying for the creation of it, nor are we paying for the pollution from it. We're only paying for the extraction costs. So in effect, if you add up all the coal oil and natural gas that the global economy uses per year, it's 500 billion workers that we have helping the 5 billion or so human workers. And so we're energy blind. We just pay the dollar cost for that. And since it's so cheap, it ripples through our economy and we're consuming 100 times more energy than our bodies need in the way of calories in our daily American lives as an average US citizen. You mentioned that folks look at their electric bill and get a feel for their costs, but I'm willing to bet that most people only look at the dollars and cents on their electric bill and they don't look at the kilowatt hours because I look at the kilowatt hours. I know exactly the range of kilowatt hours my house does on an average day. It's between 20 and 22 kilowatt hours. And you're telling me a barrel of oil is 1700 and something kilowatt hours? Yes. Oh, my house. You're energy blind. So if energy goes up 500% in price, you can bet people would take a look at their kilowatt hour usage and they would turn things off. But since you and I have been alive in this very unique period of human history, energy has almost been too cheap to meter. And so we don't think about it much. We leave the lights on when we leave the room, we leave the air conditioner on. So we haven't appreciated pretty much the magic that it has allowed us. And now it's getting more costly. It's depleting. There's plenty of fossil energy left, but it's more costly. And that cost will ripple through our system and potentially not allow for continued economic growth. And it's costly in environmental terms. You live in Hawaii, so you're aware of the ocean acidification, the reduced ocean oxygen, some of the climate change forecast for the future. So there's a problem with our current energy trajectory. Yeah, and I don't think people realize the magnitude. I gave a briefing to some folks about two weeks ago and I said, we're burning fossil fuel like it was monopoly money because we really don't value the oil. And there's other products we make from oil just like there's other products we make from lithium in our batteries. We make grease and lubricants and other things. Our batteries only currently take up about 30 or 40% of the lithium that we harvest. And the rest is used for other products, but oil is used in plastics and polymers and all kinds of things that are durable goods, things that we are gonna keep for a long time and keep using rather than burning it in our engines and turning carbon dioxide loose in the environment. It's amazing. Like I say, I've had these feelings for a long time about energy and how to deal with it, but your videos really brought it into clear focus.  Can you talk a little bit about that image? Yeah, so I'm 250 pounds in reasonably good shape. I can do the work of maybe one seventh of a horse. My horse can do the work of one horse. My car can do the work of 250 horses. Those airliners that are coming into Oahu every day, they do the work of 100,000 horses. And they do that for very, very cheap amounts. So we are our physical labor of all human ancestors with the exception of the last four or five, we're done with muscles of animals and humans. And now it's these fossil carbon helpers that are doing most of our tasks. All right, we're gonna take a quick break here and I'm gonna come back to that thought, especially based around the airliners. And we're gonna switch back maybe a little bit from energy back into economics just for a short bit. So we're gonna take a quick break here and we'll be back with a professor in about 60 seconds. So just a quick recap of some of the really important things he talked about that if you didn't catch it, you should go back on YouTube or Vimeo and look at it. He talked about the depth to GDP ratio. Or if you're not an economist, you probably don't really give a rip about that. But what it means is when your country is not producing as much as it's spending, that's how we get into this national debt crisis. Our country is at an all-time high in owing money. And what that means is we're kicking that credit card debt for our country down the road for our kids. And that there are kids and grandkids are gonna have to pay for that. That's not fair. Other thing is one barrel of oil equals 1700 kilowatt hours or 5.7 million DTUs. And that may not die with what you're thinking, you know, what you normally think about, but he says that energy equivalent is the same as if he worked four and a half years. That one barrel of oil can do four and a half years of human work and it costs $60. That's the problem we're having. People don't understand that even at $100 a barrel, oil is really, really good at giving us work for the energy, the money we're spending. And we don't appreciate it. So we don't understand how big the task is gonna be to switch completely off of oil and onto clean energy. So let's get back to the professor and we'll talk some more about economics and about the reality of energy. Hey, welcome back to Stand the Energy Man on my lunch hour with Professor Nate Higgins from Minnesota, Minnesota. That's up north near Canada for those of you that haven't been studying your maps lately. It gets cold there in the wintertime. They have about two weeks of summer, so he's getting ready to enjoy both weeks here pretty quick. And we really appreciate having you on the show there, Nate, your videos are awesome. And you talked a little bit about airlines and how much an airplane uses in terms of horsepower and energy. In Hawaii, our economy used to be based on sugarcane pineapple, so agriculture, and then the military and then tourism. Well, agriculture's all but dead in Hawaii and we import virtually all of our fuel or all of our food. The military and tourism are the two other big legs to our economy. And the military, of course, is a factor of whatever the government wants to afford. They could pull military out of here, at least a good chunk of it pretty easily with the stroke of a pen. And tourism is just a fuel price or a crisis away from killing us. You know, I mean, on 9-11, where we didn't even have any impact to the energy, a lot of the tourists from other countries didn't wanna come to Hawaii because they didn't want to feel like during a grieving period to come and visit Hawaii and our economy just took a mean beating. So when we put Hawaii's economy in that kind of perspective, so heavily reliant on tourism and those jet airliners and those cruise ships coming in here and doing what they do. And you kinda give us, with an economic background, the kind of impact that just a shift in oil prices back to $100 a barrel or $130 a barrel or $150 a barrel, give us an impression of how you think that would impact Hawaii's economy. Well, you are at the end of supply chains. And so Hawaii is both more susceptible to global systemic risks. That's the bad news. The good news is you're psychologically aware of that so that you can more so than Texas or California do things ahead of time to prepare for these risks. You also have the spirit of Aloha where people are just a little bit less materialistic and less consumptive and frenetic as people on the mainland. And so I think you actually can pursue cultural change there easier than places on the mainland. But I have to say, $100, $150 oil, I'm not so sure we're gonna get there again because of the global credit limitations, but there's any number of scenarios right now that will cause a 2008 repeat. But 2008, we bootstrapped ourselves and used quantitative easing and other financial methods to keep growing for a while. The next time that happens might not be so easy to continue growth. So not only are you susceptible to higher energy costs, but you're susceptible to a global economy. And if there's a global recession or depression, a lot of those airliners are gonna stop coming into Hawaii. So how do you practice resilience and think ahead of how you might change things in Hawaii ahead of time? And at least, as an individual, you can understand how these risks relate, but politicians don't know what to do with this. So they're not gonna really do anything until there's a crisis and we see the whites of the eyes of whatever's facing us. So we have to use intelligent foresight and imagine scenarios where maybe those planes stop coming into Oahu, or maybe there's a 50% drop. What does the food and energy situation look like? And I have no idea what's gonna happen in the next five years. But the next 10 or 20 years, it's pretty clear that oil is gonna get significantly more expensive and there are large risks to global growth continuing. So we might have what I refer to as a great simplification, which is maybe a 30% smaller economy in the next 20 years. And that has massive implications for Hawaii, but also massive opportunities for doing things differently, living with less imported things, living with less overall energy throughput, taking advantage of your endogenous resources, geothermal, the great solar potential there, eliminating your total dependence on supply chains, especially oil, and maybe being an example for other places in the world to really do things differently, more sustainably. You have a low population density, which means that there are lower barriers to political change. So I think you just need to get people working and talking about these things. I agree with everything you said there. And you get to Hawaii very often? I may be coming to do a workshop on this exact issue in September or October, they're trying to set it up. That'd be great. I'd like to be part of that if you get over here, but you're exactly right. We have, I would say as a conservative estimate, maybe eight times the amount of energy that we need in renewable sources over here between geothermal and particular geothermal. Hydroelectric, believe it or not, we have a lot of in-stream hydroelectric from our old sugar flumes, where people are putting, you know, megawatt or partial megawatt scale generators in those old flumes and generating electricity. We've got wind, we've got solar. Some of our neighbor islands, we have the land mass that can support maybe solar. Here on the, what we have as a problem is here on the, on Oahu, where most of our population is centered, like a good, I want to say 70% of the population is here on Oahu, if not more. But a lot of our renewable energy resources are on the neighbor islands. We've thought about putting undersea cables. We've thought about all kinds of ways to bring energy to this island where the more renewable sources are in the neighbor islands. One of the things that I'm trying to get some attention on is a modern geothermal system on the big island that's scaled big enough to make hydrogen and or liquid hydrogen and use it as a energy storage device for fuel cells on this island that would be in microgrids rather than in a single grid. And therein lies the problem because getting a public utility to change their model of how their grid looks to what I'm imagining with microgrids and dispatchable power and things like that, it's not even on their, it's not on their radar. It's just not there. I think what you have to do is come up with scenarios and don't say this is the scenario, but this is one scenario and under different things in the future, maybe this is what makes the most sense for Hawaii. And if you think about renewable energies, what is the single biggest use of energy on Hawaii right now? Transportation. It's actually jet fuel, the single biggest category. Exactly. And that renewable energy that you're talking about aren't gonna help with that. So you have to think 10, 20, 30 years in the future or even longer, in 2050 are all those jetliners gonna be coming in from around the world to support the Hawaiian economy that is today. And at some point between now and then, I think the answer to that is no, or at least significantly smaller. So what is the economy gonna be based around? And you could have a lot of happiness and wellbeing. My opinion is that when people start to understand the energy, money, growth situation, there's gonna be a lot of people that leave Hawaii for the mainland. And there's actually also gonna be a lot of people from the mainland that wanna come to Hawaii. They're gonna move to Hawaii because of its remoteness, because of the spirit of the loa, because of the beautiful, amazing place you have there. But you need to start crafting what that looks like now instead of waking up one morning to some international crisis. And now what are we gonna do because a few of the doors are closed that we could have done in 2019 or 2020 or 2023? You've already hit the nail on the head. We're already experiencing that micro Exodus and micro influx happening already. And here's the one thing, because I agree with you, I'm an aviator, a retired aviator. And I can tell you that people don't understand that here in Hawaii, those jet airliners that come in here have to buy their fuel here because they can't afford to be carrying twice the fuel that they need to get a round trip out of. So they're gonna have to buy aviation fuel here. And the aviation world is not gonna change engines and fuels in the next five years. That's like 15, 20 years down the road at the best. And so we're gonna have to at some point be able to make some kind of aviation fuel either from gasification or from biodegesters. And that means our agriculture, if we could sustain ourselves with our own agriculture and use the waste products from the agriculture to make biodiesels and aviation fuel, you're right. The transportation, we include aviation and transportation fuel and that would make a huge, huge impact. So all of these things are possible right now. With renewable energy, we can overbuild solar and wind and turn the excess via electrolysis into methanol or methane or all these heavy fuels. The problem is, is it's way more costly than currently buying it via gasoline. So a lot of the renewable plans in the future are totally technologically viable, but they're gonna cost multiples of what we currently have. And that means slower economic growth and less consumption on average for the average person. But if we prepare for that and accept it and change our mindsets, it can actually be a real opportunity. So I think we have to pair the technology that you're talking about with the change in the mindset of how we consume energy. Well, Doc, I tell you what, you really kind of wrapped it up into a nice tight package that I think we need to start really exposing our leadership and our communities to looking for solutions ahead of time. And I'm looking forward to your trip out here in September. And so, believe it or not, we've hit our 30 minutes on the show. It goes by really fast. I'm looking forward to seeing you when you come out and I hope we can have you on the show again in the future. Does that sound like a plan? Okay, I'd be happy to. Nice to see you, Stan Mahalo. Hey, Aloha Nate and thanks for joining us. And until next week, this is Stan the Energyman signing off. So that was a really, I think one of the more important, I didn't get all the views on YouTube and stuff that I would really like it to get, but the concepts that he was talking about were so critical. This is all tied together, economic, marketing, world debt and lifestyle. It's all connected and we'd really need to sit down and have that full story, that full discussion on it. So maybe we can do another story. I'd love to get Dr. Hagens here sometime and talk to him here in Hawaii. Then until next week, Stan the Energyman signing off. Aloha.