Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. Well, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen of the National Newspaper Association, good afternoon and welcome to the White House. It's an honor to be able to speak to so many of the men and women whose labors keep our nation well informed. And it's addressing so many publishers and editors. I can't help but think of my favorite journalist. It's a newspaper man called Mark Twain. We were good friends. Of course, seriously, we cherished Twain for his brilliant wit. It was reported that he was the one who said that clothes do make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. And on morals, Twain said simply this, always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. And on politics, Twain made a remark that I often find coming to mind. It were not best that we should all think alike. It is difference of opinion that makes horse races. Well, Washington today has always be set by differences of opinion. Hundred horse races of issues and policies coming on all around. With your permission, I'd like to focus on just one, a great debate that will determine the shape of our foreign policy for quite some decades to come, a debate that concerns a single country, Nicaragua. Nearly seven years ago, the Sandinista revolutionaries in Nicaragua brought months of fighting in the countryside to an end when they marched triumphantly down the avenues of Managua, the nation's capital, and took control of the government. Thousands of Nicaraguans danced in the streets. The new Sandinista leaders claimed to embrace the highest ideals of individual liberty, democracy, and economic opportunity. Friendly nations provided the new government with economic aid. The United States alone contributed some $118 million. Across Nicaragua, hopes ran high. And soon those hopes were crushed. Just months after taking power, the communists began to oust their critics, even many who had supported the revolution and fought beside them. They used their total control of the military to build a totalitarian state. And today, news media in Nicaragua are subject to official censorship. Radio Katolica, the voice of the Catholic church has been silenced. La Prensa, the last independent newspaper, is subject to constant and sometimes violent threats. And of course, censorship. They've driven the Jewish community out of the country and persecuted the Mosquito Indians calling thousands of these gentle people, or killing thousands, I should say, of these gentle people. Soviet, East German, and especially Cuban soldiers swarm in the thousands across the country. And in Nicaragua, we see one of the monstrous crimes of our century. Simply put, the murder of liberty in a nation that had the chance to become free. Now the communists have made clear their intentions to spread communism across their borders. They are the principal suppliers of the guerrillas in El Salvador. They provided the weapons to those who carried out the recent killing of Columbia's Supreme Court justices. And they have constantly harassed their smaller, unprotected neighbors. They've built their original, lightly armed force of 5,000 into a heavily equipped army in militia of more than 100,000. They possess scores of long-range howitzers and rocket launchers, hundreds of armored vehicles, and some 30 Soviet-made helicopters as deadly as flying tanks. This ground force represents a mighty that is far more powerful than that of any neighboring country or even of several of them put together. And above all, it is the national interest of the United States that is now threatened. Indeed, Nicaragua today represents another step in the Soviet grand strategy of expansion, a direct challenge to the United States just 700 miles from our territory. In purely military terms, Nicaragua could be used as a staging base for strikes against our Caribbean sea lanes, sea lanes that bear almost half our foreign trade and more than half our imports of crude oil. But the graver threat arises from the possibility that as the communists continue to spread violence and unrest among their neighbors, refugees, millions on foot, and yes, terrorists too, will stream toward our borders. Right now, one out of six, one sixth of the population of Nicaragua are refugees. How many times have we seen this tragedy re-enacted? Germans fleeing from east to west before the erection of the Berlin Wall, boat people escaping communist terror in Vietnam, Ethiopians fleeing sick and starving from a famine that has been used by the communist government of Ethiopia against whole segments of the population. The flight from communism in Central America has already begun, as I said. Some 200,000 that have fled Nicaragua and many flooding into Costa Rica and Honduras. And once again, they're keeping score down in our own southern cities like Miami of the numbers that are coming in and how they're increasing virtually daily. If the Sandinistas are allowed to export totalitarianism, the flood will grow. And our own southern states could become a wash and a tidal wave of the homeless. The freedom fighters inside Nicaragua represent our shield of safety. They can avert this disaster and replace it, at last, with a true democracy. Today, these freedom fighters, number 20,000. Four times the number who fought Samoza. To those who claim that the freedom fighters are being led by former members of Samoza's forces, we can only say, listen to the actual role. Adolfo Calero, who was imprisoned by Samoza. Arturo Cruz, an anti-Samoza activist and a former member of the Sandinista Hunter. Alfonso Robelo, also a former member of the Sandinista Hunter. Eden Pastora, the famed Commander Zero, a hero in the anti-Samoza revolution. Recently, there's been an intensive effort to discredit the democratic opposition in Nicaragua. Some of us have been around long enough to know that such disinformation has a long history. I remember the reports of Walter Durante from Stalin's Russia who denied the existence of the Gulags and forced famine, even though he had witnessed firsthand Stalin's genocide. I remember Lincoln Steffen's famous statement when he returned from that land of Slaughter and said, I have been over into the future and it works. And I think we all remember Herbert Matthews' reports on Castro before he came to power, calling him a Democrat in the hope of Cuba.  I always have been. Well, those reports helped shape the climate in Washington that allowed us to cut off aid to Batista and facilitate Castro's march into Havana. Likewise, I can't stop right here. I have to tell you the most recent uncollector of stories that people in some of these totalitarian countries tell among themselves, which indicates their cynicism. And this one, if you haven't heard, it has to do with Castro speaking to a large entourage out there.  And about the third time Castro finally interrupted himself and said, the next one who says peanuts, popcorn, and candy is going to get a one-way ticket to Miami. And 40,000 people shouted, peanuts, popcorn, and candy. But, you know, likewise we were told Ho Chi Minh and Paul Pot were just nationalists before the boat people and before Cambodia was nearly devoured by program starvation. History moves on. The smokescreen of lies and disinformation vanishes. And the brutal reality of communism has always laid bare. By then, it's too late. Today, we see an orchestrated effort to slander the freedom fighters. But whom shall we believe?  I have just as of today found further information of this orchestrated effort. I was given a magazine. I didn't even know there was such a thing. It is a Nicaragua magazine. Sells for $3.75 an issue. And they're advertising it here in this country. It's $18 and something for a subscription. It is a magazine of outright propaganda published and being sold here in the United States and looking through and seeing some of the plugs in that magazine for subscriptions, suggesting to their American subscribers that they might be interested in buying subscriptions for their congressmen and senators. And this is a planned program of propaganda that is against everything that the freedom fighters are trying to do, but is trying to sell us that Nicaragua now is a wonderful democracy, taking care of its people and being beset by these terrible radicals that the Contras. Well, last month, I asked the Congress to provide aid to the freedom fighters. Yes, there is congressional opposition, but I can only call to mind what happened a year ago when the House voted no. And just a few days later, the little dictator showed his true allegiance by flying to Moscow. Public opinion forced the Congress to reconsider its decision, and this time it voted yes. I hope they're aware that the same little dictator right now is in Cuba, visiting Castro. The episode reminded me of my favorite journalist on an ocean voyage sitting at the captain's table in the dining salon. And Mark Twain asked if a gentleman would pass him the sugar and maybe wanting to impress Twain, Twain being a writer. As he passed the sugar, the gentleman said, isn't it interesting, Mr. Twain, that the only time in the English language that the letter S has a sh sound is in sugar and Schumack. And Twain said, are you sure? Well, the time has come when we can be sure that the communists bode ill for Nicaragua and our hemisphere, sure that the freedom fighters can lead their country to a better way. Congressional defeat of this aid proposal could deliver Nicaragua permanently into the communist bloc, creating a second Cuba on the mainland of North America. That would invite strategic disaster and say to the world that in an hour of need, the United States deserted an ally. Think of those brave men hiding in the hills living off the land, braving death, and picture the tens of thousands of children for whom this crisis will decide whether they grow up in a nation seeking prosperity through liberty or in a poor and backward communist state that censors the press and harasses the church. The freedom fighters need so little, in the name of the very ideals upon which our own nation is founded, we must meet those needs.  Just as we stand for freedom in the rugged land of Haiti, just as we believe in human rights for the Green Islands of the Philippines, let us take a stand for democracy in the mountains and plains of Nicaragua. And forgive me for taking up so much of your time. Yes. Your city relationship with Pearl Lagoon, Nicaragua, at the urging of some religious and educational groups on the grounds that people to people, hands across the sea can solve world peace. Have you come in on that type of evidence? I haven't had much time to think about it because I just read about that and about your town and some others that is going on this as a part of the campaign scattered across the country in that magazine that I just had handed to me today. And when you mentioned something about educated people and some of a religious bent that are furthering this cause, the first article, propaganda article in that magazine handed me today was authored by a professor on one of our large campuses, university campuses. So I think it's a part of that, again, the disinformation campaign. And I think that well-meaning, sincere people are taken in. I know something about being taken in. I was once on the board of directors of a communist front organization in Hollywood. Does it give you no cause that the United States accuses to go into the world court and defend itself against Nicaraguanist charge against our country? No, because we've had some feelings about the world court and some of its decisions. So they could make the charge and we know it isn't true and we just are not going to be bothered. Thank you very much, Mr. President. All right. Well, this patch told me I'm out of time. Just one more hand was up and then I will have to leave. Right there, final question. I know there are many pressing problems in the world today such as the deficit and so forth, but the St. Patrick's Day approaching, I wonder if you can review again how an Irishman by the name of Reagan got the nickname of Dutch. I can. Yes, my father was Irish. My mother was English and Scotch.  And having an older brother, it spread. And I found out that by the time I was able to toddle out and join the neighborhood kids, I was known as Dutch. And then, I guess, I perpetuated it when my aunt had my cousin first and named him Donald. And my mother had always wanted to name hers Donald. So she did the next best thing and called me Ronald. And I didn't know that didn't quite sound right to me. So when I became a sports announcer, I used the name Dutch Reagan. And then to finish the story, I got to Hollywood. And there, I sat in the publicity office under contract with Studio.   And they were exploring and trying, sounding out names for me. And I began to squirm a little bit. Because as a sports announcer, I had quite a sizable following in the country. And I didn't want to throw away a well-known name. And I said to them, you know, I called this to their attention. And they looked at me and they said, Dutch Reagan. And then I said, well, Ronald Reagan. And they tried it out, Ronald Reagan. Hey, that's all right. So I got to use my own name. Well, thank you all very much.


Israel apologists are psychopaths, notes from the edge of the narrative matrix. I refuse to conflate the Jewish religion with the criminal activity of a government and its military, and I think it's dangerous that people insist that I should. Israel apologists are such psychopaths. In the last few days, I've seen two separate articles attacking the idea that there are innocent people in Gaza. One from the Times of Israel titled, Innocent People in Gaza Don't Be Naive, and another from Town Hall titled, There Are No Innocent Palestinians. Just as disturbing as seeing the endless stream of dead babies and children's bodies blown apart by military explosives on my feed is having to read so many of my fellow humans defending these horrors in the most sociopathic ways imaginable. One of the most brain-dead responses I get from Israel apologists all the time is, just tell Hamas to surrender and this whole war ends. Like, that's a thing. Like, Hamas are hanging on my every word and they'll be like, hang on you guys, one more white Westerner just said we should surrender. Let's wrap it up, fellas. Like, even if you accept the pants-on-head moronic notion that these horrors are 100% the fault of Hamas and 0% the false of Israel and everything it's done since October 7th and prior to October 7th, and even if you ignore international law which says Palestinians have a right to defend themselves against hostile occupiers, while Israel has no right to launch an attack to defend itself against people it is occupying, this argument still makes no sense. Hamas, unlike Israel, has no political responsiveness to the demands of the West. They have no reason to listen to anything we say. Westerners putting political pressure on our own governments to stop facilitating this nightmare absolutely does have an effect and we're seeing more and more signs that both Israel and its Western allies are getting very nervous about the mounting international pressure from the public. Pretending the same is true of Hamas, who has no motive whatsoever to heed Western governments and their electorates, is just evading reality to advance an agenda. And Israel apologists know this. They're just throwing up every distraction and red herring they can think of to try and drag opposition to Israel's mass atrocities, of course. Tell Hamas to surrender just means stop criticizing Israel's actions. Look over there, not over here.  Be silent. Go away. The problem is not the words and phrases people use when protesting a genocidal massacre of civilians. The problem is the genocidal massacre of civilians.  US Empire managers always act like telling Israel to end this mass atrocity would be an intercession on Israel's sovereignty, as though that would be the US intervening in foreign affairs. In reality, the US doesn't need to intervene in Israeli affairs to end the bloodshed. All it has to do is stop intervening by backing the slaughter. Israelis are completely open about the fact that this onslaught would be impossible without US weapons and other support. The US could at any time simply stop intervening by backing Israeli crimes against humanity, and Israel would be forced to stop. They reverse reality by misrepresenting non-interventionism as interventionism and the end of an intervention as an intervention. In the same way they reverse the role of victim and victimizer, aggressor and defender, genocide perpetrators and genocide targets, etc. This lets them wash their hands of the atrocity by pretending they're just respecting Israel's sovereignty when in reality they're just as responsible for the atrocity as Israel. It's like holding someone down and punching them in the face and telling onlookers, I'm sorry I can't intervene in the sovereign affairs of my fist. The call isn't for the US to start intervening between Israel and Gaza. The call is for it to stop.


Do me a favour real quick.  If you're feeling particularly helpful, go ahead and share that in the comments, I'd love to know who you thought of. Did you think of Sans, the cheeky skeleton and secret boss from Undertale? Did you think of Cass, the accordion playing Parrot from Breath of the Wild and, hopefully, Tears of the Kingdom? Or maybe you thought of Monika. Just Monika. Or did you think of someone smaller, a bit player who has still made an impact on gaming culture? Someone who likes shorts or who is, apparently, an error? Non-player characters, which is to say a game character that the player doesn't control for the bulk of the game, are the lifeblood of many a title. Not all games have or need NPCs, but even games with bare bones non-player characters use them for a significant amount of world-building and exposition. Many of these characters get overlooked, but they are vital to the gaming experience. And when a game really nails its NPCs, they stay with you long after the game is over. A good NPC feels like a true friend or true enemy. And it's easy to suspend your disbelief and see them not as a collection of art assets, but as a living, breathing person, with emotions, wants, needs and desires. Recently, I have been obsessing over this question. What actually makes a great NPC?  It's a very basic premise you wander around a town and you talk to the people that you meet. With such a simple premise, I'm aware that the NPCs need to be interesting and enjoyable enough to hold the player's interest. So, how do I do that? Well, I asked the experts, all of you. I asked who your favourite NPCs are and why you love them. Your answers were, of course, quite eclectic. To paraphrase Tolstoy, all happy NPC relationships are happy in their own way. That said, there were certain patterns and trends that emerged in your answers, from which I've come up with a list of things that can help make an NPC memorable, engaging and, indeed, lovable. But first, the true answer to the question, what makes a great NPC? The player does. None of this is possible without the suspension of disbelief. Creativity is a collaborative process. Whoever you thought of when I first said NPC, that says as much about you as it does about the developers behind that game. You were willing to use your imagination to see a fictional character as alive, even if only briefly while playing the game. One of the human brain's great skills is seeing humanity in other people, animals and objects. This serves an important evolutionary advantage.  It also helps us to grow together as a community. The ability to see humanity in others, people around us, animals, even our infrastructure, helps encourage compassion, cooperation and trust. Humans are designed to love others, even if that other is a sword with human eyes for some reason. Our instinctive anthropomorphism can only reach so far without prompting. People donate a lot more money, for example, to charities that look after animals that look more like humans than, say, insect charities. Even though we all really need bees not to go extinct. Sometimes our innate desire to see a familiar human spark in the world around us needs a little push. From your comments, it's clear that the easiest push to make an NPC engaging and interesting is humour. This makes sense. Leaving aside the world of video games, scientific studies have shown that humour is the number one most important factor in human attractiveness. If two people share a sense of humour, they are far more likely to fall in love. So we have characters like Sans from Undertale, who endears himself to the player instantly by telling some of the worst jokes imaginable. Sans puns are the perfect introduction to this character. They hook you in quickly and establish that this guy is a bundle of fun, the kind of character that doesn't take things too seriously and is just a light-hearted goof. And then the rest of the game happens. Sans's humour is important not just for establishing his role in this part of the story, but also for setting the tone of the Snowdin chapter of the game. Sans arrives at a time when the game has been getting a little more serious, and his arrival punctures some of the dramatic tension and emotional weight that has been building up. Any good NPC will communicate as much about the world as they do about themselves. That might mean explicitly telling you what each button on your controller does, or establishing some kind of lore or backstory to the place you're exploring. An interaction with an NPC, whether a major player in the story, or simply a random townsperson with a single line of dialogue, should teach you something meaningful. If a game features too many conversations that are just empty-patter, before long players will learn that there's no point in actually engaging with the NPCs along the way. A good NPC conversation should feel like an essential part of understanding the game, should provide some new vital piece of knowledge. Some games will try to get around this by having NPCs yell out exposition unprompted as the player walks past, but while this can be an effective way of delivering information, if the player doesn't actually want to talk to the NPC, we're unlikely to remember the interaction for very long. For an NPC to be memorable, they need to be the kind of character that the player enjoys talking to. We should want to seek them out at the start of each new phase of the game to see what new dialogue they have to offer. Take the guard from Fire Emblem 3 Houses as an example. His unbridled optimism and friendly nature make him a pleasure to interact with, even if just for a moment as we're busy scurrying around engaging with the game's more noteworthy characters. This was another trend in your responses to my initial question. What makes you want to talk to an NPC rather than skip them entirely? It helps if they're likeable and, this word came up repeatedly, charming. Now, of course, charm comes in many forms. This doesn't mean that a character should be sycophantic or overly sweet to the player. One of my personal favorite NPCs is the dastardly lineback from the Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass, who's a bit more of a cat, a kind of cowardly Han Solo, only in it for the money and with a history of ruining the lives of people around him. All of this is what makes him so much fun, even as he's strangling my avatar or making life more difficult for me. Plus, he's got an absolute banger of a theme tune. Now, if being inherently charming and enjoyable to talk to was an easy skill, we'd all be doing it all the time in real life. As someone who is a bit of a charisma vacuum myself, I can attest to how difficult it is to be witty and fun and generally just nice to talk to. Crafting interesting NPCs takes work. Depending on the game and its genre, getting dialogue interactions just right takes a significant number of revisions. Portal 2 is one of the most heavily playtested games in the history of the medium. The team at Valve came up with an interesting idea called F-Stop, built a game around it, playtested it extensively, discovered that people were disappointed that the game didn't actually have portals, then scrapped the entire F-Stop game and started from scratch. Every level of the finished Portal 2 was fine-tuned to perfection to ensure that every single puzzle was perfect. The perfect difficulty, the perfect number of moving parts and signposting, they even polished the motion of the game to a level where they could make sure it gave the players the least possible amount of motion sickness. And they playtested NPC dialogue. Not only did playtesting inform the puzzles of the game, but the character arcs that the NPCs go through. I normally don't like to do spoilers in these videos, but it's Portal 2, it's okay to spoil Portal 2 at this point, right? Said writer Jay Pinkerton, When we playtested we found a very stark difference between this imperious, all-powerful GLaDOS talking to you and this powerless GLaDOS talking to you on your gun.  People were asking, why am I carting this person along? By a matter of necessity, GLaDOS needed to have a character shift. She's going to be your sidekick, she can't be needling you for a half hour. So the narrative arc for GLaDOS, and by extension the whole narrative message of the game, came about because of extensive playtesting. Now, it's not particularly inspiring to hear the story of a very well-funded game project that had extensive playtests thrown at it until it was polished to perfection. But while most games just won't have that level of resources, it's worth bearing in mind that characters can benefit from player feedback just as much as any other aspect of a game. After all, the point of an NPC is ultimately to simulate in some form an interaction between two living things. Depending on the game, as with Portal, that relationship between the player and the character they meet may change and develop over time. Another of the common themes in your comments on your favorite NPCs was the fun of seeing characters go through their own story arc which isn't necessarily connected to that of the player. These can be big plot points for a game, a rival in a Pokemon game learning a lesson, for example, or developing a closer relationship with Sohiro in Persona 5 and learning more about his family and backstory. Or these can be little things. Background characters who have different dialogue at different stages in the game giving you a reason to check back on them regularly to see how their lives are progressing. In a video game, you as the player are often the center of all the action. The world often revolves around you. Literally, if you're playing Katamari Demasi. NPCs with their own character arcs help to give the sense that they're off on their own separate adventures. It helps to create the illusion that the game's setting is larger than the one story you were experiencing yourself. This is ultimately the point of NPCs in general to make a world feel lived in a little less barren. With this also we get the sense that a character is relatable. We can see a little bit of ourselves in their struggles or at least empathize with the challenges they face. Empathy is gold dust for characters in any work of fiction, especially in video games. Take a character like Groose from The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword. Good old Groose? Someone who at first feels like little more than a one-dimensional archetype. He's Gaston, right? From Beauty and the Beast? There's not much more going on there. But as the story progresses and the player spends more time with Groose we learn about his wants and needs and we see him struggle with challenges. Before long that empathy kicks in and we start to see this character in a new light. What would otherwise feel like nothing more than a caricature is given greater depth all because the player is forced to spend some time with Groose to see a little more of what's going on inside his heart. The nice thing about this process is that as mentioned we as players are eager to fill in the gaps ourselves to do some of the emotional and creative legwork in finding humanity and characters that of necessity are limited in how much they can display believable intelligence and adaptability. It helps that gaming is inherently a medium that encourages this kind of emotional investment. Anyone playing a game is projecting themselves into a story willfully putting themselves into the shoes of a character that exists outside of themselves. Now this could easily be a video in its own right but when we're doing all of this to identify with a player character it's not that much more effort to develop empathy for other characters within the game as well. So, what makes a great NPC? You do, as the player. You make a collection of pixels into an imaginary friend. Great NPCs come from an open, honest, trusting creative collaboration between game designers and game players. It helps when a character is inherently charming, fun or makes the player feel good about themselves. It helps when the NPC goes through their own character development and are shown to learn and grow just like the player. Ultimately though, all of this can only go so far. It's only when the player then engages with a character and chooses to overlook a game's limitations to see the character as alive that an NPC truly becomes great. So, the moral of the story? If you're wondering why you're obsessed with Cass from Breath of the Wild you've got nobody to blame but yourself.


What's up, guys? I'm Brian Sakawa. You're watching He Spoke Style and today we're talking about five essential fall jackets. First up is the three-quarter length trench coat. This for me is a much more versatile choice than a full-length trench coat. Very easy to dress up and also wear in a more casual situation. Here I'm styling it with just a very classic fall business outfit. Before we get to the outfit details, let's actually talk a little bit about this trench coat. This is by Burberry Brit and Robin actually found this for me at a second-hand store in New York City for $300. I think the list for this is around $1,000, so this is a really good second-hand find. Now on to the outfit. Gray suit with the windowpane pattern is by Z Zenya and I paired it with a light blue micro-stripe shirt by Michael Andrews Bespoke. Tie is by Seaward and Stern, part of the collaboration we did with them when we first launched the HSS shop and side note some exciting things happening in the shop coming up very soon. Accessories, leather briefcase is by Frank Clegg, Oliver Peoples Bank sunglasses. On my wrist my Rolex HSS 116234 and anchored by these double monk strap shoes by Paul Evans. Next up we have the classic black bomber jacket. I could probably do an entire video on many different ways to style this piece. Actually, if you'd like to see that, let me know in the comments or take the poll that I'll put up there in the corner. This jacket is by Theory. I recently got this as an upgrade to a Topman bomber that I've had for about six years. It was a long overdue, very good upgrade and this piece is phenomenal. Now, it would have been easy to style it in more of a rock and roll kind of way, but I wanted to show how it could be worn in let's call it a more grown-up casual kind of way. So, very simple, classic white OCBD. This particular shirt is by Brooks Brothers Black Fleece. Great fit off the rack, but unfortunately Black Fleece no longer exists. The jeans are by Jay Crue, the 484 fit. Now, I might start trying the 770s because since I started deadlifting about five or six months ago, my thighs have started to get a little bit bigger. On my wrist is a really underrated watch and that is the Rolex Explorer II 16570, on loan to me from my good friends at Crown and Caliber.  Next, I'm taking you to school with a great tweed sport coat. This is actually part of a suit, the very first suit that I had made by Michael Andrews who spoke back in like 2014. This is a Donagall tweed by Ariston. It's quite a heavy weight, which makes this perfect as a fall transitional outerwear piece. And you can see that I went full-on professor with the suede elbow patches. This look is what I would consider to be almost textbook business casual. This is a Goldilocks look. It's not too dressed up. It's not too dressed down. It's just right. So underneath the sport coat is one of my favorite denim shirts. This is a button down by Brunello Cuccinelli. And for me, a great example of and reminder that investing in quality is always a great choice. The brown pants I'm wearing are actually vintage 1980s YSL. They were so 80s that I had to have them tailored, but they've turned out good and I've gotten a lot of use out of them. My glasses, which a lot of you ask about all the time are by Cubits. Briefcase is by Bennett Winch. And my wrist is my Vacheron Constantin Traditional Boutique Edition. And then finished off with these buckled Kilty loafers, which I love by GH Bass. Up next, we have a suede jacket. I like this as a very sort of luxe and refined option to add to a casual outerwear collection. Suede with its texture, look and the way it feels. It's such a great way to elevate your outerwear game. Also, as you get older, it's kind of a great way to differentiate and show that your style has matured as much as you have. This coat I'm wearing is by Billy Reed. I picked it up on clearance a number of years ago in the Billy Reed shop in Greenwich Village. This look might be familiar if you're a fan of the website. I think I posted this maybe like four years ago. Brown gingham shirt. And then I layered in a waistcoat to give it a little more depth. Jeans are by Madewell. Up top of felt hat that I discovered deep in my closet, the brand is worth and worth. Vacheron Constantin Traditional, again on the wrist. And then finished off with these brown Chelsea boots by Jack Irwin. Finally, we have the shirt jacket or as it is sometimes called the shacket. This definitely skews more toward the casual side of things, but like I did with the bomber, I wanted to kind of challenge the notion that this was only a casual piece of outerwear. So I did that with another classic OCBD with a lightweight gray cardigan layered on top. This is by Uniqlo. Side note, I think Uniqlo sweaters are some of the best that you can get for the money. And a lot of people know that, so they sell out quickly. So what I'm saying is that if you like it and you're looking to add some sweaters to your closet, head over to the website now and find some things that you like before they're sold out, because that tends to happen much faster than all of us would like. Back to the outfit. Jeans, again, are by J.Crew 484 Fit on my wrist, the IWC Ongenar, and then finished off with these great oxblood leather boots by Bostonian. So let's round them up again. On my picks for the five essential jackets you need for fall, the three quarter length trench, the classic black leather bomber, the tweed sport coat, the suede jacket, and finally the shacket. As always, complete outfit details are down below in the description. I'll also put links to a variety of different options for each specific type of jacket at various price points. Leave a comment. Let me know which outfit was your favorite, which jacket you like best. Thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe. And until next time, thanks for watching and stay tailored.


Millet attempted to gain attention by sending a false letter that relied on racial, homophobic and political language. When that didn't work, Millet paid $3,500 to stage this attack and drag Chicago's reputation through the mud in the process. And why? The stunt was orchestrated by Millet because he was dissatisfied with his salary. Though he concocted a story about being attacked. Now our city has problems. We know that. We have problems that have affected people from all walks of life. And we know that. But to put the national spotlight on Chicago for something that is both egregious and untrue is simply shameful. This announcement today recognizes that Empire actor Jesse Smollett took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career. I'm left hanging my head and asking why? Why would anyone, especially an African American man, use the symbolism of a noose to make false accusations? I could someone look at the hatred and suffering associated with that symbol and see an opportunity to manipulate that symbol to further his own public profile. How can an individual who's been embraced by the city of Chicago turn around and slap everyone in this city in the face by making these false claims? Though I'm offended by what's happened and I'm also angry. I love the city of Chicago and the Chicago Police Department. Wards and all. But this publicity stunt was a scar that Chicago didn't earn and certainly didn't deserve.


Quiz Automatic Grading If you want to assess learners formatively or summatively with questions for which there are specified answers, Moodle's very powerful quiz enables you to do this. We can only look at a few of the features of the quiz in this screencast but it's worth exploring more yourself and in the Moodle documentation. Quiz allows you to use different types of questions, not just multiple choice, and it allows you to add as here, media, images, video, sound files as part of your questions. If we go to our course and see how to add a quiz, the first thing to note is that from course navigation, more, we can access the question bank. When a quiz is created in Moodle, you create the questions separately and store them separately so they can be reused by you in a later quiz or by your colleague in the same course in a different quiz. So if you wish, you could start by adding your quiz questions to this question bank here and then make a quiz another day. We can see some of the features of the question bank in another course on another site here. We can move columns, remove or resize them, and from the edit dropdowns you can edit the questions, preview them, view their history and more. You can edit question names and when working together with colleagues you can define whether a question is ready for use or still in draft and see the versions of the questions. You can also comment on questions to help colleagues improve them. Other columns depend on what your admin has enabled and provide useful information to help you manage your quiz questions. We'll make our quiz straight away, so to do that we enable edit mode top right and we click between existing activities or add an activity or resource. This takes us to Moodle's activity chooser. Quiz is an activity because the learners are interacting with it. Click once to go straight to the setup screen or click the i for more information and then press the add button bottom right. The first thing that we do is create the front page if you like of the quiz. The name and description which quiz learners will see and if you want the description to appear on the course page just tick the box display description on course page. There are many different settings in a quiz and it's worth exploring all of them. If there's anything you're not sure of the question mark help icon gives you extra information. You can choose how you want learners to navigate through the quiz, if you want them to have hints, how much feedback, if any, you give them and more. If we want to track that students have accessed the quiz do we want them to manually click to confirm they've seen it or do we want it automatically mark complete when they've simply viewed it, made some attempts, got a grade or a passing grade. To alert course participants that a quiz activity has been added or updated click send content change notification. But we are not going to do that yet since we haven't added any questions to our quiz. We click save and display and we have a blank quiz and what we need to do is to start adding some questions which we can do by clicking add question and then the link add. If we already have questions we could add a random question to our quiz or a particular question from the question bank which we might have added to earlier or a colleague might have added earlier. But we are starting anew from nothing so let's click to add a new question. We are then presented with a list of question types to choose from and just like with the activity chooser if we click the button next to the question type we presented on the right with some information as to what that question type does and note that although most of these questions are questions where you provide the answer it is possible by choosing essay to have learners typing an essay which we would then manually have to grade. Note also there is a description question this isn't a question type as such it's just a text editor into which we could add an explanation some instructions images video or sound. For the purposes of this quiz I'm just going to add a multiple choice question. We are then sent to the setup screen for this particular question. We have to give it a name although the name doesn't appear in the quiz but it's important because it's how it will be recognised in the question bank in the future particularly if we have a lot of questions ourselves and perhaps shared with colleagues. In the question text that's where we type the actual question and then when we scroll down what we see will depend on the question type but we'll always be able to add general feedback for any question and then in the answers because it's multiple choice we have the first possible answer with the grade non. We add non if the question is wrong or a hundred percent if it's right however there are as you can see options in between. We can give specific feedback for each individual answer and if we want to do more than just write simple text we can use the icons in the text editor. So again we write our choices choose the grade and we continue. When we click save changes we have our first quiz question which we can preview by clicking the magnifying glass icon. We then go on and continue adding questions to our quiz. If we now look at questions in a different quiz we see that we can easily add and name sections. We can move questions up or down simply by dragging and dropping. We can add or remove page breaks by clicking the icon to the side and we can renumber or rename questions according to our needs.


Yeah, thanks David. Welcome back to our coverage here of the the latest letter Kenny credit union members draw where of course we do have two Renault captures to give away supplied by Highland Motors the mountaintop and letter Kenny. If you're watching our stream live on our on our Facebook and social channels you can see Ted Walsh working very very hard. He's the man that's supervising this drawn. He's been heavily assisted by a number of members of the Donegal minor ladies all Ireland winning team as well. So they're working very very hard getting all the tickets into the drum and then they'll do a couple of trial runs just to make sure that everything's okay and then we will of course have the big draw coming up for you live here in Highland. Round about 3.30 but not alone are we going to give away two cars today as well. There's also numerous cash prizes up for grabs. There's one 1,000 euro which would be a lovely boost so what this time of year particularly if there's young ones heading back to school now coming up over the next couple of weeks. There's a number of 500 euro cash prizes and 200 euro cash prizes as well and at the full list of course will be available on the letter Kenny credit union website that's letterkenniecu.ie and of course you can go to the website for full details of all their services which is available here. I mentioned the areas that are here from the All-Ireland minor team. They're all representatives from clubs within the letter Kenny credit union region so we have letter Kenny Geels, St. Unions, Thurman, what's the other clubs Gordon? Glenn Swilly yeah that's what it is Glenn Swilly so there you go that there they're members of the clubs in the area here for letter Kenny in the surrounding area and it's great to have them here and they're a fantastic time winning the All-Ireland and they're still on celebration mode so they're still on a high. So what is it quarter past three David join us around about 15 minutes time and we'll have the big draw for you. Of course a lot of listeners out there will be in the age of their seats or the age of whatever they're doing at this time of the afternoon with a lot of anticipation and excitement about who's gonna win these rental captured cars.  Anyway back to you David.  All that is to come live from letter Kenny Credit Union and you'll be able to watch that on our Highland Radio Facebook page as well. 15 minutes time that draw is gonna be happening right here on Highland.


Welcome to Effector from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is the audio edition of EFF's email newsletter geared towards keeping you on the bleeding edge of your digital rights. This is Effector Volume 35, Issue 7, titled EFF at RightsCon 2023. This issue was published on Thursday, June 1st, 2023, and I'm your host, membership advocate Christian Romero. Let's start with our top feature. EFF at RightsCon 2023. After three years of virtual gatherings, RightsCon is back. The 12th edition of the World's Leading Summit on Human Rights in the Digital Age will be a hybrid convening taking place online through the RightsCon platform in San Jose, Costa Rica between June 5th and June 8th. We're excited that many EFFers are heading to Costa Rica and will be actively participating in this year's event, both online and in person. Several members will be leading sessions and contributing as speakers as well as available for networking. Next up, civil liberties groups demand California police stop sharing driver's location data with police in anti-abortion states. A months-long EFF investigation involving hundreds of public records requests uncovered that many California police departments share records containing detailed driving profiles of local residents without of state agencies. EFF, the ACLU of Northern California and the ACLU of Southern California, demanded 71 California police agencies in 22 counties immediately stop sharing automated license plate reader data with law enforcement agencies in other states. And now let's roll through some EFF updates. First up, SFPD obtained live access to business camera network in anticipation of Tyree Nichols' protest. An EFF public records request revealed documentation that the San Francisco Police Department received live access to hundreds of surveillance cameras in the Union Square Business Improvement District's camera network in anticipation of potential protests following the police killing of Tyree Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee. Next up, eight years holding ISPs to account in Latin America, a comparative outlook of victories and challenges for user privacy. Latin American and Spanish telecommunications companies have made important advances in their privacy policies and practices, but persistent gaps and worrying trends pose potential risks for internet and mobile phone users, according to a new consolidated report published by EFF based on eight years of research by our partners. Next, newly public FISC opinion is the best evidence for why Congress must end Section 702, a newly unsealed surveillance court order that details massive violations of Americans' privacy by the FBI underscores why Congress must end or radically change the unconstitutional spying program enabled by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Next up, the internet dodges censorship by the Supreme Court. With its decisions in Gonzales v. Google and Twitter v. Tamna, the Supreme Court refused to weaken Section 230, one of the key laws supporting free expression online, recognized that digital platforms are not usually liable for their users' illegal acts, ensuring that everyone can continue to use those services to speak and organize. Next up, what the Supreme Court's decision in Warhol means for fair use. The Supreme Court has issued its long-awaited decision in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, a fair use case that raised fundamental questions about rights and obligations of commercial artists. The court's opinion affirmed both important fair use precedents and the role of fair use as a crucial element of the copyright system. EFF filed an amicus brief in the case. And for our last update, podcast episode, People with Disabilities are the Original Hackers. Henry Claypool is a national policy expert and consultant, specializing in both disability policy and technology policy, particularly where they intersect. He joins EFF Cindy Cohen and Jason Kelly to talk about motivating tech developers to involve disabled people in creating a world where people who function differently have a smooth transition into any forum and can engage with a wide variety of audiences. A seamless inclusion in the full human experience. Now we have a few announcements. First up, New Stay Golden Hooded Sweatshirt. Snag our new, heavier weight hoodie with raglan sleeves and gunmetal zipper from our shop or when you donate at the titanium level or above. Next up, Spring Members Speak Easy in Oakland. EFF members are invited to join EFF staff in person for a drink on June 8th in Oakland. This event is a free casual gathering to give you a chance to mingle with local EFF supporters and meet the activists, lawyers, and technologists behind the world's leading digital civil liberties organization. It is also our chance to thank you, the EFF members who make this work possible. Next up, EFF's 15th Annual Cyberlaw Trivia Night. On Thursday, June 29th, the Bay Area's best legal minds gather in support of online freedom as we celebrate our 15th Annual Cyberlaw Trivia Night. This event brings lawyers from Bay Area firms and tech companies together in the ultimate battle of mastery over privacy, free speech, and intellectual property law who will bask in the glory of ultimate victory. Next up, EFF at Black Hat USA. EFF is once again excited to be back in Las Vegas for Black Hat USA from August 5th to August 10th. If you are interested in submitting a talk to Black Hat, you can contact info at EFF.org about any legal concerns regarding your talk or any sensitive information security research you are conducting. And now let's go through some mini-links. First up from DI News, Tornado Cash Developer's Trial pushed to next year as worried tech contributors seek clarity. As the trial against Tornado Cash developer Alexei Pertsev inches closer, EFF Cindy Cohen makes the case that writing code equates to free speech and raises concerns about prosecutors' failure to provide clarity to the millions of people who are worried that they might be at risk because of their contribution to other open source projects. Next up from STAT News, ChatGPT in Medicine. STAT answers readers' burning questions about AI. While AI-powered tools like ChatGPT are swiftly gaining steam in medicine, patients rarely have any say or any insight into how powerful technologies are being used in their own care. EFF's Rory Mir urges a collaborative and global research process. Next up from IEEE Spectrum, could these bills endanger encrypted messaging? The UK's online safety bill is just one of several advancing around the world. The UK's online safety bill could push providers to create backdoors for monitoring encrypted messages, which creates a strong possibility that services will be intimidated from using any type of encryption altogether. EFF's Joel Mullen says. Next up from Yahoo Finance. Why Montana's TikTok ban faces massive challenges. Montana became the first state in the US to ban TikTok. EFF's David Green warns that this law, as a restriction on the way Montanans speak and receive speech, will need to be justified by the state as an appropriately narrow and effective way of protecting Montanans' personal data. And our last mini-link comes from TechCrunch. Popular Android TV boxes sold on Amazon are laced with malware. All-winner and RockChip Android TV boxes, which boast high ratings on Amazon with thousands of praiseful reviews, are sold preloaded with malware, capable of hijacking the devices for any purpose, including coordinated cyber attacks. It's an impressive and unsettling operation, EFF's Bill Buddington said. And that's it. Thanks for listening. If you like what you're hearing, be sure to sign up for the email version of Effector, which includes links to in-depth coverage of these stories and more. See past issues and subscribe at EFF.org slash Effector. Before we end this issue of the newsletter, I just want to let you know that EFF is a member supported nonprofit organization and you can help us protect digital privacy, security, and free expression for everyone. Donate to EFF today and even grab a bit of gear by heading over to EFF.org slash Effect. That's EFF.org slash EFF ECT. You can become a member for as little as $25 or even sign up as a monthly or annual donor. Thanks for your support and I hope you'll join us for the next issue of Effector.


Greg Doucette is probably my favorite person that I watch in fitness on YouTube.  Apparently a lot of his viewers were bothering him to talk about the carnivore diet. He starts off with saying, I'm not a registered dietitian, but I'm also not a registered moron.   And Greg does understand that the carnivore diet is supposed to be any animal-based food, whether it's meat, fish or dairy. A comparison is made to the keto diet, saying you only eat protein and fat, not getting carbohydrates. This leads to him claiming that the carnivore diet is a new way to make money. People get bored of keto, end up going carnivore, that's the new play. And I think Greg is absolutely right. A lot of people have invaded the carnivore space to make money, which is much more evident recently, but it's safe to say that wasn't the case before 2017. Greg falls into conventional wisdom, what everyone's led to believe, modern dietary culture. Saying that cutting out food groups isn't healthy, to eat your fruits and veggies. That it's not healthy, but there are very few people in general, let alone on YouTube, that know what healthy is. The basis of health. Greg starts talking about micronutrients following a balanced diet, but we know he truly doesn't understand the importance of micronutrients. It's taken for granted that micronutrients come from fruits and vegetables, and Greg, as well as just about every other person, hasn't done their research here. The next point Greg brings up is that the carnivore diet works because it helps people lose weight, that any elimination diet helps people lose weight, but this isn't really true, as the carnivore diet is not as much of a weight loss diet as the ketogenic diet, and many people actually have an issue due to the estrogenic effects of conventionally raised meat, gaining weight in the short term as a result of going on the carnivore diet. And this is the inherent problem of said carnivore diet. The importance of vitamins, minerals, elements, and fatty acids that are only contained in quality animal foods is certainly not part of the general message. Opting for a much simpler, just eat meat. If popular carnivores actually wanted to make people healthy, they couldn't make as much money selling people cheap shitty beef products as people would start to question the quality of their food if they understood the importance of nutrients. But Greg Dusset is hilarious. He starts talking about the Superman diet being strawberries, soup, and steak, the Batman diet being beets and berries eaten before bed and breakfast, saying that the carnivore diet is just stupid and that we should eat healthy and exercise. We know what's shit, we know what's not shit, but I disagree with this. We as the general population doesn't really have a clue, including Greg.  What Greg doesn't understand is the nutrient density of animal foods and that a lot of modern foods we consume have unnatural levels of palatability. Greg insists we have disordered eating because we are conditioned to eat in certain social conditions at certain times of the day and he's absolutely right, but nutrient deficiencies and palatabilities address this disordered eating. People aren't satiating their appetite because they do not have the nutrients their body is craving, particularly from animal foods.  Putting the fork down apparently isn't working for most people, but Greg insists that people know what's good for them and know what's bad for them. If that was the case, they wouldn't be asking him about the carnivore diet. That person is likely having health problems or difficulty adhering to this conventional wisdom, what everyone accepts as correct. And this type of closed-mindedness is why America is so unhealthy. It's essentially an appeal to authority, especially him starting the video with I'm not a dietitian. If he understood what constitutes being a registered dietitian, he would never say something like that because giving respect to a dietitian, to the food pyramid, to that educational system that has respect is nothing short of comical. Circling back to money, Greg says that the reason the carnivore diet became so popular is because people want to make money. Everyone wants to look good and the carnivore diet is the new thing catching on. As much as I would like to say that not everyone trying to make money has bad intentions, every major person I've observed in this carnivore movement has been trying to make money. I was making YouTube videos for years before making a penny and now people are popping up out of the woodworks that are all sponsored by Butcherbox before their first video, before their first social media post. It's hard for me to speak positively about the carnivore diet in the context that Greg is referring to because he's right. He might be missing some very important points on nutrient density and that true health requires quality animal foods but technically the carnivore diet is just eating meat and the discrepancy between a grain fed steak diet and a high quality nutrient dense diet has not been made yet despite me trying to spread this message for well over two years because there's so much resistant against it for the reason of special interest groups. Greg makes a reference to losing water weight on low carbohydrate diets and this is true to some degree but modern carbohydrates are so inflammatory that it is a combination of that water weight and inflammation causing the drastic weight shifts when yo-yo dieting. He isn't aware of the weight gaining problems some carnivores had with highly estrogenic grain fed meats. I think if Greg knew about that he would have tarred this diet a new one. As much as I like Greg he is a bit of a downer really appealing to authority as we said earlier discrediting any diet he doesn't follow for simple fairly uncredited reasons whether it's keto or intermittent fasting referring to them as quick fixes but the carnivore diet is unique in a sense that it's a diet that is close to what makes humans healthy. The natural human diet. Paleo could have accomplished this but I think the message of the paleo diet was also compromised by special interest funding trying to sell crappy products. How many moms had paleo baking blogs using 40 ingredients in each recipe. To my understanding Greg follows a standard American diet with some protein added in since he is an IFBB pro bodybuilder we know the amount of performance enhancing drugs being used can certainly skew his perception of diet. He hasn't been in the position of these people himself because of his drug use but I would be curious to see what diets he is writing for people you know it's not to be said that he doesn't understand diet but from the close-mindedness we're seeing the lack of objective thinking it's possible. Greg's ultimate solution is not to have food around and like many other things I agree with what he's saying most people need to remove negative foods from their household in order to not be tempted to eat them it's just unfortunate that so few people know about the bioavailability differences of micronutrients between animal and plant foods they think all nutrients vitamins minerals elements and fatty acids can be obtained by eating your fruits and veggies and taking a multivitamin or fish oil pill telling people to exercise and eat healthy isn't working when every single person in the gym not on drugs looks like a walking corpse and those people that do look like a walking corpse are just using a different type of drug the message I am getting from this whole thing is that hunger signals are distorted because of modern foods in the standard American diet we are in caloric excess spiking our blood sugar all day making ourselves sick but starving our bodies of micronutrients limiting calories as Greg advocates might solve some superficial issues you're having such as excess body fat but it will never make you healthy even a low quality carnivore diet will likely replenish certain vitamins and minerals that most people are deficient in as we said this diet is not a fad because it's as close as we have ever seen to the diet that is ideal for human health that is what people are missing thank you guys for joining me if you could please like the video subscribe hit that bell icon share the video if you can if you guys would like to support me further check out Frankie's free range meat high quality nutrient-dense animal foods at an affordable price go to frankies free range meat calm you can also check out Frankie's naturals minimal ingredients minimally processed hygiene and cosmetic products thank you for joining me today guys and enjoy the rest of your day