Receiving negative feedback at work can be a devastating blow for some or an amazing opportunity for others. The difference between these outcomes is in your mind. Whenever we are learning feedback as a gift, a way of speeding up our improvement or extending our skill level beyond what we could have learned on our own. In the sporting world nearly every serious athlete has a coach to provide them regular feedback so they can keep improving. In the business world many senior managers have coaches to provide them with feedback to improve. It will be lovely to only get positive feedback yet we usually learn more from what we don't do so well. To help you turn even the most negative comments at work into a learning opportunity for you I'm sharing these six positive ways to manage negative feedback at work. Being able to positively receive negative feedback is a sign of professionalism, maturity and self confidence. Taking positive action from negative feedback shows determination, the will to work and improve and demonstrates that you're a safe bet to invest in for further skills development. All of these attributes and responses will progress your career significantly. My name is Jess Coles and if you're new here in Hans Dot Training shares people management expertise, resources and courses to speed up your journey to becoming a great manager. I've included links to additional videos and resources in the description below as well as a video timestamp so do take a look at these. And if you're willing it would be great if you included in the comments below the most poorly phrased piece of negative feedback that you've received. Sharing will help you and others put their own negative feedback into perspective. The first positive way to manage negative feedback at work is don't assume the worst. When you've worked hard and done your best and then get negative feedback it is really easy to take it hard, get angry or just dismiss the feedback altogether. Give yourself time to process your emotions and calm yourself down. And this might be just nodding and trying to take in what is being said so that you can reflect on it later. Keep how you express your emotions under control. The manager who is giving you negative feedback may be really good at communicating this without upsetting you or they might be terrible at it and leave you feeling awful. When dealing with negative feedback at work try hard not to take it to heart. In your mind turn any negative comments that attacks your self-worth into statements aimed at your actions decisions or choices. For example you are told you did this really badly but mentally you turn this into the actions I took went really badly.  Your actions decisions or choices are also much easier for you to change than your personality. I personally always think about feedback I receive. Consider if it is valid or reasonable by trying to put myself in the other person's shoes. Think about the situation objectively before properly accepting the feedback or rejecting it. Follow a similar process when dealing with negative feedback from a colleague. Don't assume the worst when receiving negative feedback or negative comments at work. The second positive way to manage negative feedback at work is to ask clarifying questions. When a manager or colleague takes the time to provide feedback positive or negative it makes sense to learn as much as possible from the feedback. Ask clarifying questions. You're trying to understand what has led to the feedback and make sure the negative feedback is specific and useful to you and no one wants to go through the trauma of receiving negative feedback that you can't do anything with. So ask as many questions as you can. You know some example questions could be would you mind expanding on that comment as I don't really fully understand it? Do you have a specific example in mind that you could share so I can get a better understanding? When you say XXX what exactly do you mean by this? I want to learn as much as possible can you let me know about why you think that? Gain the best understanding you can. Asking questions also gives you time to calm your emotions down so you can consider what is being said. Asking clarifying questions is a great way to deal with negative comments at work made by colleagues looking to put you down. Ask good questions with confidence and you can stop these types of negative comments very quickly. The third positive way to manage negative feedback at work is to be appreciative of the feedback. At the very least acknowledge the feedback even if you don't agree with it. If for example say either thank you or something like I appreciate you taking the time to let me know what you think. Don't get defensive with negative feedback. Don't try and justify why you took the actions decisions or choices that led to the negative feedback. All this does is confirm that you haven't listened to the feedback haven't taken it in or haven't accepted it. How to accept feedback from your boss professionally includes listening carefully and demonstrating you've taken what has been said. Getting feedback helps you improve what you do. Be appreciative that the person has taken the time to provide you feedback in the first place. If you show your appreciation you are much more likely to continue getting feedback which will help you improve what you do a lot faster. The fourth positive way to manage negative feedback at work is to think what can I learn from this. Feedback is an opportunity to learn and improve. Improving what you do will help you in the medium or long term whatever your job. My worst boss ever gave me a load of feedback that demonstrated that he had no idea what I was doing or how well I was doing it. The feedback was still invaluable. I learned that it was a bad idea to have a boss no matter how poor not being aware of what I was doing. Their ignorance did not help me and I changed how I proactively communicated with all my bosses after that. The point of the story is that there is an opportunity to learn from all feedback you receive even if what you learn is a long way from what the person giving the feedback intended. Always seek out what you can learn and improve on following any feedback positive or negative. The fifth positive way to manage negative feedback at work is to take action and stay positive. There is nothing better than giving feedback to a person and seeing them take positive action based on that feedback. Taking positive action is the best way to respond to negative feedback from your manager. Taking positive action demonstrates your maturity, your resilience and your professionalism. Taking action makes you a more reliable and valuable team member. You are showing that you are going to improve. In my view it remains important to evaluate and consider all feedback before deciding to take action or not to take action. When you decide you need to take action then of course choosing what action you're going to take is also important. It is your career your life so don't just take action because someone else thinks it's a good idea. Make sure that you're clear about why you're going to take action and make sure that it benefits you. Do your best to stay positive even if you have a terrible manager constantly giving you negative feedback. There are people that are never happy. Try hard not to allow yourself to be dragged down because of negative feedback or comments and I appreciate that it is easy to say and much harder to do. Stay positive and take action when you think it is in your best interests. The sixth positive way to manage negative feedback at work is to ask for feedback often. Getting really useful feedback at work in my experience remains fairly rare. As you become more senior in your career and you influence the success of more people getting useful negative feedback about what you're not doing well becomes harder and harder. Ask for feedback as often as possible. If someone is brave enough to provide you good specific useful feedback then listen thank them and then think about the feedback later. Never get defensive aim to get back at them or take any other negative action. Taking any of these steps will stop the feedback from that person and anybody else in your team. Although no feedback might seem easier getting no feedback is absolutely not in your best interests. All feedback is essential to learning quicker or learning full stop. Try to ask and get as much feedback as possible. Doing so will help you improve what you do faster which will help you your career team and company in so many ways. Ask for feedback often. So in summary getting feedback as a gift for all those that want to learn and improve at work. Learning how to deal with negative feedback from your boss or colleagues is important. Use the positive ways that we have covered to turn any negative feedback into a good learning opportunity for you and a way at getting better at what you do. Using these steps will also help you build up your resilience over time which again helps you remain positive and improve how you use negative feedback without taking it personally or getting down because you have received negative feedback. The six positive ways to deal with negative feedback at work that we have gone through are firstly don't assume the worst, second ask clarifying questions, third be appreciative of the feedback, fourth think what can I learn from this, fifth take positive action and then sixth ask some feedback regularly. If you have any questions on the six positive ways to manage negative feedback at work please leave them in the comments section below and I will get back to you. Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.


I think we are live now. Great. So hello, hello, everyone. My name is Sam, and I'm here to talk about the learnings from the AtomSim project, a bit of background about me. Like I said, I'm Sam, and I'm from Nigeria. I joined the Wikimedia movement in 2011. And it was a co-founder of the Wikimedia Nigeria user group, and the project lead of the AtomSim project right now. And I'm also working with the Wikimedia Foundation in movement strategy and governance. So I will be sharing my screen now. So this will be a panel for the first half of this panel. I'll be talking about the AtomSim project, what it is about, and what we have achieved over the years, and what organizing this event. Those who will be joining me in my panels are Winnie Cabinte, Antoni M. Tabangu, Alaphia Bami, Oladji Kupo, and Kamelea Bovan. A bit of a backdrop of why we have an AtomSim project or something called the AtomSim project. It's important to note and be aware that in the African continent, there's a content gap and there's a participation gap. This, we can say, the grassroots of this problem is awareness. People don't know about the existence of Wikipedia or the Wikimedia movement. And even those who know do not know that they can actually edit contents. They don't know that they can contribute contents. They don't know that they can contribute the code that a platform uses. They don't know that they can contribute the sum of knowledge that the Wikimedia movement and Wikipedia is. So due to this lack of RNS, when you look at this graph showing the Wikipedia edits on Wikipedia, you can see that there's a content, especially when it concerns the African continent. You see here that a lot of people from a lot of edits come from the Western world, which is North America, Europe, and then followed by Latin America, Asia, and then Africa is basically just at the bottom of it, which is a good reflection of the awareness problem that I was talking about. So when people do not know that Wikipedia exists, of course, they don't edit Wikipedia. They don't contribute contents. So this is now at least the next problem, which is now the content gap. When we have this lack of participation, which is the participation gap, then we do have a situation whereby the number of people or the number of biographies or the number of content from the continent is very, very underrepresented. We can see from this graph where people born in Africa, biographies from Africa are so very, very just a tiny fraction of what you get from just three countries in Europe. Meanwhile, the entire continent of Africa has like 54 countries, where he has a very sad representation of the continent on Wikipedia. Over the years, this problem is getting attention, both from volunteers from the continent and volunteers from outside the continent who are trying to fix this gap. And as you can see from this transitional map, which shows how the content gap has been improving over the years from 2014 to 2017. So one of such projects that I've been trying to fix this gap is the Afrosim project. The Afrosim project in summary is a multi-country and multi-president Wiki project. So which ones on the content gap on Wikipedia was to make sure that we have good representation of African countries and people from Africa on Wikipedia. And this includes also the Caribbean and even the diaspora. We realized that a good way to achieve this, a good way to make this happen is to focus on a subject area which is a popular subject. So pop culture comes to mind is a good way, is one of the best way to make people know about Wikipedia because people are generally interested in films. The film industry on the continent is one of the largest, and people generally love entertainment on the continent. So it's a good point to bring people into the Wikipedia movement and then they can transition into other subjects even we all continue contributing to our films and entertainment. Some of the projects that the Afrosim project has undertaken is the Month of African Cinema Global Editor Fund, which is one of our biggest and most popular projects because it brings in one of the, it brings in the best or the largest amount of impact. The Month of African Cinema is basically an annual contest which invites with the millions from all across the world to write articles and to write content, to upload content about African film, about African art, just that to get people to have fun for two months every year and just represent or try to fix content gap in the process. We've also organized awareness campaigns where we partner with people from other parts of the, other communities within the continent or we partnered with the Wikipedia Foundation to promote the open movements, to promote the Wikimedia movements just to get people to know their existence and to know about the fact that they exist. We've also done a project called the Outline Knowledge whereby we tried to, this was in collaboration with Qwiks whereby we created content offline so people can access them offline, people who don't have access to internet. This is very useful in the continent where the internet penetration is still quite low although rapidly increasing. We've also done photo events whereby community members film festivals, kind of film events, film awards and then they take pictures of key subjects or key people that can be used to illustrate Wikimedia articles or to illustrate Wikimedia content. This is an example of an event about Africa which happened in Tanzania. It's an editor ton which gathered Wikimedia to write articles about African films and subjects that, next is to share some of the results from the contest, the Month of African Cinema Contest. We can see that there's been some sort of exponential growth over the years. In 2018, the first contest that we organized was brought in about 500 articles and then the next one that happened in 2019 brought out 1,000 articles and then in 2020, which is the last one brought in over 3,000 articles and consistent growth due to people or volunteers being interested in this drive, in this mission to reach this content gap and also Wikimedians that are just interested in editing Wikipedia and solving real issues in the process. Here are the language impacts that we've had. We have 24 languages that were contributed to in total. Some of these have been repetitive over the years. In 2018, we had eight languages that were contributed to and in 2019, we had also eight languages and in 2020, the last version, we had 19 that were contributed to. So we've been able to impact all these languages while carrying out this content, while organizing this contest. So the content gap that we've been able to bridge is not just on English Wikipedia or in English language, but also in other languages across the world, including African languages as well. And also with in-person events, which is also an aspect of the contest is also a good representation of impacts that we've been able to make. So over the three years, we've been able to organize in-person events across the continent and beyond. So from 2018 to 2020, we've been able to achieve 19 events. So yeah, thanks to the participation of Wikimedians from across the continent, because this is just not the work of one person, it's not just the work of Project E or anyone, it's the work of every Wikimedian who volunteered and helped to organize these activities and helped to make sure that we get people to participate and also those who volunteered to actually write these articles. So over the three years, we've input 5,000 articles across Wikipedia and also over 25 languages that have been contributed to and over 20% event have been organized. Also, events have happened in over 10 countries, which is mostly African countries or also some parts of the West. And it's important to also know that these are just tracking created articles. Over the years, there are also people who participated just by improving existing articles, which this, when we're tracking on into thousands, but here we are focusing just on articles that were created from scratch through the Afro-Stan initiator. Before I end and transition into asking the organizers questions, I would try to enjoy everyone watching this and everyone listening to join us. You can also participate in this project. To continue to impact Wikipedia, also reach the knowledge gap that exists within the multimedia movement is to get people like you to also volunteer to participate in the Afro-Stan project. So you can join us. How? Well, some of the ways that you can join have been outlined indirectly before now, but just to reiterate again, the ways through which you can join is through first editor tons and workshops. So here if you feel like you are a community leader or community organizer and you want to organize a small editing fund or a workshop within your community, you can reach out to me with support through ways that you can make it happen. And if you need assistance when it comes to things like skill acquisition or things like that, we can offer that. And also we can connect you to the appropriate department within the Wikipedia Foundation who can help with any sources or any guidance that you may need. Also, education project is a good way to also participate. You can start a community in your school if you are a teacher or even a student and try to gather people to participate in the Afro-Stan project and in turn get them into the Wikipedia movement. Also, to participate, this is film, this is art. It's a good way to partner with government institutions or even non-profit institutions who might be able to give their content to or release their content or the CC license that can be used to illustrate or Wikipedia projects. And finally, you can also join the writing and photo contest that we organize every year. This contest is open to everyone who wants to be local. So just reach out and indicate that you would like to organize a photo contest or a writing contest in your local community or in your country. And then we can plan it and make it happen. These are good ways to join and make sure that we continue to create content that really sheet the African content gap on Wikipedia and on the Wikipedia movement. Yeah, so thank you. Now that I've presented a summary about the things that we've achieved, I would like to bring in my panelists who are joining from different parts of the continent and will be sharing their thoughts and their experiences on how they've been able to organize the Wikipedia projects in there. Hi everybody, I'm Kamelya Boban from Wikipedia User Group. Hi everyone, I am Alafiyah Bami, I'm from Nigeria, nice to meet you and nice to see you. Okay, hope you can hear me. Great, so like I said, okay, there seem to be a lot of questions that are coming in but before we get into the question, I will be asking the panelists their participation. I'm not sure I understand. About their participation in the Afrosim projects in their communities and some learnings that has happened. So first to speak, I'll be calling on Winnie Kaminte who is an organized from Tanzania. Before she, sorry, my mind was on Anthony, but yeah, she's from Kenya, sorry about that. She's from Kenya, she's been able to organize Afrosim events in our community last year and she would be telling us some of the things that influenced how successful the project was in Kenya, because also this project is actually one of the first projects that sort of started out the Kenyan community because before now, the Kenyan community was very present within Nigeria and the Afrosim project, the ones of African cinema was a good way for Winnie to sort of bring in Kenyans to contribute to Nigeria. So she'll be telling us what she did that made it successful and who she is before telling us a strategy. Winnie. Hi Sam, thank you and hi everybody. Thank you for joining Wikimedia 2021. My name is Winnie Kaminte from Nairobi, Kenya. I'm a journalist by profession and Wikimedia editor and community organizer. So as far as the Afrosim project goes, I had the opportunity to organize an editor phone in Kenya last year and we managed to bring together about 20 editors, most of them, actually 80% of them were actually natives they were and we also had about 50% of them newcomers in the movement. So I was keen on striking that balance because we recognize as far as cinema goes, especially I understand it's an issue within the community, the African content at large, but also particularly when you look at the coverage of that industry in our country, the women there are hardly presented. Actually, most of the top film producers in our country are women, but if you look at their names, they are nowhere to be seen. So I was keen on bringing more female editors because female editors are more likely to write about fellow women and as we saw that was the case and one of the successful pages we created, we managed to create seven new pages, articles and out of this, one of the most prominent ones for me which I would consider successful is for a lady called Merica Vera. Her stage name is Mama Kayai and she's actually the mother of the film and TV industry in Kenya. So to create her biography and to see that years down the line, I saw her on screen when I was only, I think, less than 10 years old and now in my early, okay I won't say my age now, but to see that I'm actually the person who created her digital footprints that are going to be read by generations to come, that was quite huge. And one of the things that also gave our project success, I would say, was also tapping into existing youth networks in our country in a way that we could get contributors who are keen on the free knowledge and who are also eager to learn. And that has helped us when it comes to like retention, which I understand has been a major challenge in the movement. Once an editor passes, then it becomes hard to retain the same volunteers. So yeah, those are some of the successes we've had and presently the articles we created during the campaign period that was in October last year. To date they have 399K views. So you can see that's quite significant. So I'll leave it at there some before I take up the time for all the other panelists. Thank you, Winnie. Those are really good things to hear because I'm particularly very excited about when you say that makes you feel good that you are the one that created a footprint for an icon or someone very popular, which is actually something that sort of drive me as well in the Wikimedia movement even before this because it gives me great joy when I read news articles or when I read publications in general, and then I see that something was quoted from Wikipedia and it's actually something that I have put there. So it's something that is always very exciting and makes you feel really fulfilled that people are actually reading what you're putting out there. You're actually making a change because like you said, thousands and thousands of people are reading these articles. So it's a really, really great way to, it's a really great motivation. I will be moving on to Alafiyah Bani now who is from Nigeria and Alafiyah Bani organized the event last year as well and through their community, they were able to create like 200 articles. So I want you to tell us Alafiyah Bani, how did you make that happen and what are some of the challenges that you encountered and how did you, how did you make it happen first and what are the major challenges that you encountered while organizing that event? Alafiyah. Hi, everyone. I am Alafiyah Bani, I'm from Nigeria and previously led Wikimedia communities at the University of Elarion, the Elarion Media Hub. During the Afro-Sin Contest, I think what helped us in making it a success, we had over 800 articles as against, we created over 800 articles as against 200 some mentioned. So what made us succeed, except the line of communication within the leaders of the contest and the participants, we had this active water group where we were constantly communicating, where we were constantly answering questions from the participants from the newbies and there was this rapport that was effective. So that level of engagement, that level of communication within us made us succeed. Also, we had challenges and the challenges was the training sessions. We had to train people virtually and that was difficult because of the terrible internet connectivity in Nigeria. So the training sessions, we had difficulty in not meeting people, not being able to engage people at their free time, trying to meet up with people personally, some individuals having character issues and thereabouts and some people trying to game the system where they contribute. So I feel what the major challenge was just the poor internet connectivity we had in that period in Nigeria. Thank you. Thank you, Alaphia. I actually thought, I didn't say 200, I said like two to 300, but great, that massive. Thank you very much for your work. That was good numbers. I would also be moving on to Chamelea now, but I want to comment on what Alaphia Bami said around the internet connectivity and things like that. I feel like during the pandemic, it was very hard to organize events because a lot of people were dealing with a lot of things. A lot of people were facing issues around the consequences and the impact of the pandemic. And as you said, there's no chance for people that was locked down everywhere. It's virtual. So I want to ask Chamelea how that impacted or that influenced the organization on Italian Wikipedia because Chamelea Boban is from Italy and she's been able to organize contests in Italian Wikipedia in our community. So last year was very challenging one and I want to ask her what happened of that with the pandemic and also what do you think we should do? Are there ways that you feel like the contest can innovate to cater for situations like this? Or also in general, even without a pandemic, are there ways that you feel like the contest should innovate or move forward and try to make things better, especially for organizers and people that are trying to get in and make something happen within their communities? Chamelea. Yes, I hope you can hear me because I have headphones not properly working. So with the Donne user group is supporting Autoconus since 2018 was our first edition of this contest. We organized this contest the year after in 2019 and in 2020. Our best result was in 2019 where we wrote or improved for the Autoconus in Italian Wikipedia. So the challenges, the challenges are a lot. I can say that first of all we need to involve the community. We need to find a better way to involve the community at Wikipedia. And I can note, I noticed that we didn't involve, we didn't have new editors for example, which is something that was missed. So we need to improve this, engaging people to participate. Another idea could be those to involve, to have a partnership. I don't know, I am thinking good association from people, from the African countries here in Italy to train them and to help them participate. We also have the challenge of the duration. And maybe for the Italian with community it's too much in general. The biggest contest is that are doing for two months are big challenges because people need to be focused on this contest for so much time. And another thing I noticed is that the Italian applicants are disappointed to receiving the money as prizes. So sometimes someone is not very happy to see this kind of gratification. So maybe giving some gadget instead of money could be a better idea because they are thinking that we are destroying the Wikipedia spirit of being a volunteer. So we need to see this. So this is what I saw, what I understand, what I noticed about this contest. And this year maybe if not two months but one for sure we will organize. So we are supporting this project. We are focused on content gaps and especially women and LGBT class communities. Those are really good points. There was need to involve more African communities which I feel like it will be a good way to sort of key into the spirit of the contest since it focuses on African movie industry. So it is probably a good way to draw in African Wikipedia that are leaving this evening. But regardless, it doesn't matter who is contributing the contest as long as we are able to get African content available in as many languages as possible. That is also appreciated. It doesn't matter. Also that you mentioned about, there has been a lot of discussions about that with the logistics attached to giving out gifts and sending out gadgets and things like that. It can get very, very awkward. It can get very stressful and impossible. Even though we are giving gift cards currently, it is still very, very stressful because not everyone can even receive that. It is the easiest way to reward people. It is one of those big issues that we are having Now I will be moving into Anthony asking where do you think the direction of the contest should go from here? When it comes to support for the communities from the core team to the local communities, what kind of support do you think would be better needed or just in your opinion, what direction do you feel the contest should head towards going forward? It might be in terms of support. It might be in terms of the organization in general. Things like that. Try to say that in five minutes so that we can answer the Q&A section. Yeah, the Q&A section that we have. Thank you Anthony. Right. Thank you so much Sam. Can you confirm if you can hear me? Nice. Thank you. Okay. So my name is Anthony Mtawangu and I'm a co-founder of Fujimedia Community User Group Tanzania and I have been in Fujimedia since 2016. Okay, so I did organize a processing project back in 2019 and some of the achievements come from that people love this project because most of the people they love watching films, watching movies and maybe listening to music and all sorts of things that are related to our processing project. So when they find that there is a project that they can actually contribute to it or add it to what they know, they feel like, okay, this is a good thing. So that's the one. Then the second thing is the support we get from WMOF, things like internet and different mechanized and prizes they do encourage and inspire people to participate. So back to your question, like, okay, where should we be heading right now? You know, in Africa, we do lack reliable sources to use for writing Fujimedia articles. The same goes to AfroCity projects. We do have a lot of people that are prominent and notable in many ways but if you find for the reliable sources to use them to write the articles, it's not there. So all you can find are like blogs or some sources that are not used before writing Fujimedia articles. So what I'm thinking is that we should be focusing on expanding our collaboration and the partnership with the film or cinema authorities or institutions in our local communities or countries so that we can work together to produce or to have access to the reliable sources for writing more articles or contents about AfroCity projects. Then I'm looking towards recruiting more editors, volunteers and partnering with other communities so that we can have like a collaboration and solving some potential problems or some challenges that affect us as Africans. So that's what I'm thinking and also I think like if we do partner with the local institutions or NGOs or any organizations that they support this it will be better because we can have more resources for funding or helping our volunteers to be contributing to internet because we do care on what on how we are represented on internet. Then the last thing is that people should also increase their volunteering heart as we've shown on the statistics that there is a big gap between the contents that are coming from Africa compared to the other statistics that people around the world are contributing about themselves. So we can't bridge this gap by depending on others to do for us so we have to work hard to volunteer for advocating on how our African continent and its stories are actually narrated on internet. So that's what I'm thinking. Back to you Sam. Thank you very much Anthony. Those are good points. I like your points about getting more collaboration because yes like you said referencing and sourcing is one of the most difficult aspect of writing African content on Wikipedia because the Wikipedia policies are sort of centered around what the Western idea of notability is which doesn't necessarily fit into the African context. So we do have a situation whereby people are obviously notable where you can actually find a way to justify their notability based on Wikipedia policy. So yeah, that's a big problem and it's because more importantly I feel like partnerships with media companies would probably be more prominent because media companies are the big media companies are the ones that are considered notable and perhaps having some sort of collaboration in such media organizations to focus more on covering that type of content focus more on covering subjects about Africa because some can be very neocolonia if I can say that in a way that even though they are not trying to fix the gap about the continent they are reporting about things that don't matter or things that are being covered by they are already being covered by everyone else if you understand. So yeah, so it's probably a good thing to collaborate to sort of guide the shift in how things are done along the way. Another important talent that I want to probably mention probably the local organizers won't know but one of the biggest issues as someone in the courting that I would say is judging articles because in comparison to mostly other contests whereby you just count you count the articles and then you give the price to the highest creator we are trying to ensure a qualitative contest whereby we are measuring not just the creation but also and also the quality in terms of referencing and things like that. So for us to have a kind of good way to judge these articles we need to remember from different languages which for last year was 19 languages so it was a very difficult thing to do but well it happened and it also led to some very good learnings that we had to put in check going forward to make sure that before we are actually making the cognitions available to different languages we are able to have a way to actually make sure that there are resources to assess these articles and to make sure that we don't get into a quagmire while trying to like judge these articles so we have 5 minutes left so before we go I would be going through some of the questions that we have received and hopefully we are able to finish it before stream yard cuts everything away because I've been seeing that happening in the previous sessions so we have our first question here and he or she or they are saying that can we see the slides separately the file well yes we will because after this conference I will be submitting the slides that I have presented and they would be uploaded in common so I believe if you come back to the program page maybe after the conference is over it will be linked somewhere and then you can download it and check it out and do whatever you want with it the next question is cinema actors film in Africa is this reality I'm not sure I really understand this question but I believe what this person is trying to ask is about the statistics on the size of content from Africa about Africa in comparison to Europe and how we can reduce that gap well how you can reduce it it's not straightforward it's probably something one person would do probably not something we can achieve in five years or less so but with coercive thoughts coming in and trying to get involved we are able to fix this gap as soon as possible and close it as soon as possible as we can see in the latter graph which shows how some of those coverage about geotag articles on digital data have been improved over the years so this is something that is happening because people are dedicating themselves to bridging bridging those gaps so you can get involved you can invite people to projects and it can also be other projects as well that are focused on bridging content about the African continent so pretty easy get involved invite people to get involved and also welcome people to get involved when you see new people that are trying to join the communion with me or trying to be part of a project or start up something be supportive and let them do it all of this contributes into having improving the representation in the long term how many countries did you implement activities also do you have any idea of this improvement brought from all of this in the graph in the graph I shared that we've been able to reach out to over 10 countries so far within the African continent so we've also had events in the UK and the US but outside of and also we had support from other events but they have like a team that helped organize events in Hebrew but outside of the US and the UK we've not really had other events in other parts of the world all of the 10 events that we've had happened within the continent so do I have an idea of this improvement brought from certain African from certain African country from African region or not I believe this is asking if the country's submissions that we have from Africa yes it is that I can say for sure most of it because we do have people from other parts of the world that are contributing from my estimation around 70% are within Africa are people contributing from different countries in Africa so that's a good one and also we also want to extend beyond Africa as well because we want content to be available in other languages beyond just African languages because we want systemic bias content gaps to be fixed across board so we are almost out of time I'm trying not to get caught off so I'm going to end here thank you so much to the panel members in this call you guys have been awesome I totally appreciate you being here we had a very fruitful conversation thank you guys bye guys bye


Tony, U.S. troops are on their way home from Iraq as we speak, but the U.S. will maintain some presence in Iraq. What does the next phase of U.S.-Iraqi relations look like? Well, it's a good question, because when Prime Minister Malikate came here to talk to President Obama, it was after several years of negotiation. We have committee meetings, and we've made some progress, but we still have not defined the relationship that will exist under the Strategic Framework Agreement. What we do know is this. There'll be an Office of Security Cooperation with several hundred U.S. forces. There'll be U.S. military contractors, because Iraq is ordering up to $11 billion worth of U.S. arms, M1 tanks, F-16s, and other systems. There'll be a police development program to replace the military program. This will be run by a very limited number of State Department officials, and again by contractors. There'll be four areas that the U.S. will occupy diplomatically in Iraq. The embassy and three consulates, the key ones will be down in Basra and then up in the Kurdish zone in Erbil with a real effort to stop tensions between the Kurds and Arabs from exploding into conflict. There'll be a total of some 10 areas where the U.S. has military presence, but all of them will be Iraqi bases, not sovereign U.S. bases, and the protection of the U.S. advisors there will be up to the Iraqis, not the U.S. What no one has defined is whether any kind of other troop presence will come back. What arrangements the United States would make to come to Iraq's help if it came under pressure from Iran? Because while Iraq was the dominant military power in the Gulf, in 2003 when we invaded we destroyed virtually all our conventional forces, Iraq has no capability today to deal with Iran. There are other key aspects of this, intelligence support. Iraq has good human intelligence, but it doesn't have any of the technical assets, things like these unmanned aerial vehicles that we have, to provide intelligence on its internal security or what's happening on its borders. On that, there's an aid problem. How will we provide aid in the future for the civil side? We have an important presence in many Iraqi ministries as an advisor through areas in the economy, in broadening the economy and liberalizing it where we have small advisory teams but we haven't defined the plan or the lasting relationship yet. This sort of brings me to my next question. Is Iraq better off today than it was before the U.S. intervention? No one can defend Saddam Hussein, but I think we need to recognize some grim realities. There's no accurate count on how many Iraqis died, but it has to be over 100,000. Several 100,000 Iraqis were wounded. Americans were displaced, forced to give up their homes, sometimes their businesses. We're talking about a country which is still deeply divided between Sunni and Shiite in Arab and Kurd. The overall levels of significant violence have gone down, but lower level areas of violence, kidnappings, terrorism and the rest, arguably according to some measures by our National Counterterrorism Center, Iraq is a more violent place than Afghanistan. So we do not have peace. We have an elected regime, but that regime still doesn't have a stable government. It doesn't have a minister of defense or a minister of interior, for example, because of Sunni Shiite tensions. The relationship between the prime minister, the security forces, the other parties with the legislature, the Council of the Republic remains undefined. So we do not have a functioning democracy. What we have is an elected government which may become a functioning democracy. And when you look at the economy, we used up over $100 billion worth of Iraqi money as well as $68 billion in USAID money. It's very hard to know exactly what we accomplished with that. We certainly did not develop the economy. And when you look at where Iraq is today, its per capita income, is 161st in the world. Now to put that in perspective, that's about the level of Gaza. But if you look at the rest of the Gulf, Qatar has the highest per capita income in the world. And when you look even at the lowest other country, which is Iran, it's something like 84th, or it's doing twice as well as Iraq. So it's pretty hard to say that the result of our invasion helped the Iraqis, even if it did get rid of Saddam Hussein. There's many lessons that you've pointed out and written about that we should take from the Iraq War. That is really the biggest takeaway that you could say right now as we disengage our troops. I think that there are really three interrelated lessons. First, don't try to transform a country you're trying to help. Help it fix itself its own way rather than trying to impose our values too soon from the outside. Second, the minute you see an insurgency, a problem begin to arise. Don't deny its importance. React quickly to stop it from growing and becoming a crisis, a mistake we made in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And finally, 10 years on in Afghanistan, nearly 8 years on in Iraq, we have failed to integrate our civil and military efforts. We have a very weak structure in aid. Some very good people in the field, but a group in the State Department that after 10 years in Afghanistan, 8 years in Iraq, has never produced an assessment of what our aid accomplished with measures of effectiveness that shows where the money went. And that's critical because if we're going to do these things, there has to be a civil military partnership that's more than vacuous rhetoric. Tony Korsman, much to talk about going forward on this issue. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.


Hello friends! How are we all doing? It is time for a spring TBR! Me realising it's spring. I love doing a spring TBR because I really feel like, okay, I'm starting to come into myself in spring. For me personally, Jen and Fribri are always the hardest months of the year for me. I'm just like muddling through and then spring rejuvenates me, summer brings me alive and then that energy like tides me right to the end of the year and the New Year starts and Jen and Fribri are hard. So I always love doing a spring TBR to kind of chat about some of the books I'm planning and I just get really excited. I get more creatively alive in spring. I just, I'm very excited for all the videos we've got coming. I've got really big plans actually for my channel for the rest of the year that I'm hoping to achieve, that I'm feeling very positive about, that stuff happening behind the scenes. I'm speaking to my patrons a little bit about but yeah, there's a lot of changes that I want to make that I'm feeling very creatively excited for. So I thought we would just have a little check-in and we're going to chat about some of the books I'm reading in spring. So the way that I structure my seasonal TBRs is we do half books that I have definitive plans to read that unless something drastic happens, which it may, life happens, I should be reading in spring. So we have half those books and half books I have no plans to read but are the books that I want to read most right now. And if I were to do a video where like I have a bit more freedom over what I'm reading are the books that I would choose. So that's what we're going to be getting up to today. Shall we just dive into it? Usually I alternate between the books I have plans to read and books I don't. I'm feeling like today let's chat about the five that I have definitive plans to read and then we'll do the five that I don't have any plans to read. I just really want to read. Let's structure it like that. So let's get into it with the books I'm definitely going to be reading in the next couple of months. First we have Pride and Premeditation by Terza Price. This has been on my TBR for so long, for so long. It has been languishing on here and I'm finally going to be getting around to it. When did this come out? 2021 I want to say? 2020? Okay, so this is basically a Pride and Prejudice retelling as I'm sure you can imagine. But it's a murder mystery. A Jane Austen murder mystery. Actually this is not the only one or a Jane Austen murder mystery that's on this TBR. Finally I'm very much into Jane Austen murder mysteries. Pretty legendary if you ask me. I love it.  This one is a YA one where Lizzie and Darcy are I think like young lawyers, both at these different prestigious firms. And a scandalous murder shocks London High Society and they both want to solve what's happening basically. And yeah, Terza Price has done this whole series of Jane Austen murder mystery retellings. And I am so excited to try one. I've wanted to try this for so, so long. Also I love the cover and I love Lizzie and Darcy. I love them. I don't need to talk to you more about my love of Pride and Prejudice.  I actually am feeling like I'm feeling like it's time for a re-watch of the BBC adaptation. Sometimes I'm just walking around at the moment and I start going That theme song slapped. Oh my god. If you've never watched the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, like I don't want to tell you. I don't know how to communicate with you. Like I feel like there's always going to be a lacking element of communication between you and I. If you have never watched the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, like how are we supposed to go on? So yeah, I'm excited to read a YA retelling. I'm really excited to get into this. I'm hoping that maybe I want to continue on in a series. So I'm going to be starting this series this month. Then you've got one that I think you're going to be very excited for. And it is. Heartstop of all you five, my honest honest friend. I'm so excited. I don't believe I've had like the self control to wait to read this into this in a video. Like I honestly, I can't, I can't believe it. Because usually I've read these like on the day that they came out, but I have waited and I'm finally getting into the new Heartstopper. I have not watched season two of Heartstopper. I should put that out there. I don't know if the show is for me. And I feel very protective because now I feel like everyone loves Heartstopper. Once upon a time it was my little thing. Now it's everyone's. Anyway, that's not important, but I still love the graphic novels. And this one is our penultimate. I'm so sad. I think in this one Nick is going to visit universities. Obviously Charlie is a school year younger. So he's having to stay. And it's kind of them figuring out how their relationship is going to continue, what's going to go on. If you've read the Nick and Charlie novella, you kind of know how some of that pans out. But I'm so excited. I'm so excited. It's going to be five star. We all know this. This actually may be the next book. I don't think it's going to be quite the next book I read. This is in my next vlog. Not the one you're going to be seeing the next book that I'm filming. So I am going to be reading this soon. And I've got a lot of books through that video. So I'm like, oh, why do I do I put this in the start of it? Do I like save it? But I'm probably reading it in the start of the video. I am so excited to get into the next heart stopper. So yeah, listen, Alice O'sman just does something to me. I think all the graphic novels I read Alice O'sman does facial expressions the best. The facial expressions in this book make me feel so many emotions. They make me feel so much. I just think it's absolutely wonderful. So listen, we love Nick and Charlie. We all know I don't need to give you a synopsis to this. We all know what a heart stopper is. So yeah, very excited to read this soon. Also it smells nice. Next book I don't think I bought with me here to Wales, but I am going to be reading and it is Days at the Morasaki Bookshop. I don't know what the author is. I'm so sorry. I don't have any front of me, but here it is here. Um, do I know what this book is about? No, I think we need to look it up. Just know I'm excited to read it. Isn't it like a magical bookshop? A broken hearted young woman finds emotional refuge in a world of her uncle's second hand bookshop in this magical, thoroughly heartwarming tale. Oh yeah, that's true. So it's like this woman who I think her boyfriend reveals she's marrying someone else.  And she decides to live rent free above her uncle's little shop. And she encounters new worlds and the stacks of books lining the Morasaki Bookshop. I'm very excited. So I think this is going to be a very emotional, very touching little book. I'm very excited because it's short. I am very excited. I'm going to be doing a lot of short books soon, which also makes me excited. And yeah, I've had a lot of really good things. A lot of people have really, really enjoyed this. I love the cover. I love the vibe. I think it's going to be a bit cozy and a bit magical. I love books that are like kind of magical rulers of me where they're set in our world, but they've just got a touch of magic to them. A touch of whimsy. So yeah, we're going to be reading days at the Morasaki Bookshop this month. Hang on. I need to get my list back up. I started moving before I finished speaking. That's embarrassing. Another book I'm going to be reading, Spring Time, is bookstress and bonus by Travis Badger. I'm finally going to be reading it. I promise, I promise, I promise, I promise. This is another one that I can't believe I have waited. I feel scared about this one though. This is a prequel to Legends and Lattes, which I've said too many times. It's my second favorite book of last year. I loved it so dearly. One of my favorite reading experiences of a book. Like I just remember, no book has made me feel like that as a person. Like books put you through emotions, right? I feel like Legends and Lattes changed my identity whilst I was reading it. Oh, let's be realistic. I just felt like I was being hugged physically. Like I felt so cozy and comforted. I just loved reading like the mundanity of them making coffee and then making cakes. I just like, I could not. They could, I could read a 600 page book of them just off the board making cakes. I swear. I have never loved anything. Oh my God. It, what an amazing experience. So this is a prequel where Viv, I think goes to stay in this bookshop. I love my little addition. I'm, listen, I'm nervous. I felt very, very, I've spoken about this before. I have been feeling very nervous. This is a bookshop with my own dust because there is so much pressure around it, right? I love Legends and Lattes so, so much. I'm like, how, where do we go from here? Like, how is this going to match up to it, right? I feel that with any sequel that I really, really love the first book. There's a lot of pressure around the second one, but I already know Travis Bowdry is going to be an author by author for me. I'm going to buy everything that he writes. I'm so excited to see what he comes out with after this. Like what is the plan Travis? I need to know the details. So, so excited to read this at some point in the next couple of months. And then the final book that I definitely have plans to read in the next couple of months is Into the Riverlands by Ney Vo. I am so excited to finally be continuing on this series. It has been years since I've read a book in the singing hill cycle. And this is the third one. We follow Klech Chi as they travel around and they gather stories from different people. And this series is really an homage to the art of storytelling. It's a dedication to the art of storytelling. It's talking about how much we love storytelling. And I love it so much. There's something about Ney Vo's writing that's absolutely enchanted. I'm so excited to pick up this one. What is this one about? On the road to Bethany Ducks, they fall in with a pair of young women far from home and an older couple who are more than they seem. As Chi runs headlong into an ancient feud, they find themselves far more entangled in the history of the Riverlands than they ever expected to be. I'm so excited. I just think Ney Vo can do no wrong. This series is incredible. I'm so excited to make some progress in it. I may also be reading the next. Hey, fancy another one? Let's just throw in another one for good measure. I may be reading both of these very, very, very, very, very, very, very soon. And I'm excited to actually... Let me talk about both of them now. I'm excited to read them back to back. I mean, I've never done that with this series and I think I'm going to read them like one after the other. I just think it's incredible, it's incredible, it's incredible, it's incredible. What do I always say? It's incredible, it's incredible, it's incredible. Ney Vo can do no wrong. I love the series. I love the covers. They're short. I'm so excited. Okay, now we're getting into books. I don't have set plans to read, but I want to try and to fit into vlogs where I don't have a set TBI. I have a few of those vlogs coming up, so let's chat about it. The first is... Oh my God, guys. I shouldn't even be showing you this because I haul it in this weekend's vlog. And sometimes I don't like to talk about books before I haul them because it's like continuity. I don't know. But I can't contain myself. I can't contain myself. And also, I really wanted to put the other book that I hauled this weekend in this list. But I just was like, I can't do both of them. I'm just so excited for them because I just got them. However, this book, let's set the scene. This book was not on my 2024 Most Anticipated Releases list. It was not on my reading spreadsheet. It somehow slipped my mind. However, as soon as this book was announced, like before the cover, before the synopsis, like when the book sold to a publisher and there was announcement about it, I have followed the author since then because I have been so excited for this book. I have been so excited for it. And I saw it in Waterstones. I was like, oh, I didn't know what time this was out. No, I didn't know what time this was coming out. We have got Miss Austin Investigates by Jessica Bull. So this is a debut. But you just won't take a moment. It is a humane mystery with Jane Austen as the detective. I think I've ever heard of something so perfect in my entire life. Like it is everything. I'm just in my Jane Austen era as we all know. I loved Emma last year. I'm going to be reading Bruno Bridges soon at some point. I just love Jane Austen. I've been watching Jane Austen documentaries. I have been obsessed. I've been obsessed. Jane Austen and Agatha Christie are my favorite historical girlies. You know, historical author girlies. I'm just obsessed with them. I read stuff about them. I watch documentaries about them. You can't stop me. Anyways, in this one, Jane Austen is just starting out in society. The body of a milliner discovered during a ball is an upsetting tragedy. Jane, however, is much more than personal. Firstly, she's acquainted with the victim. Secondly, her beloved brother, Georgie, is accused of the murder. To clear her brother's name, she must find the real killer. I am so, I don't even, I don't even know. I need to read this. I need to read it ASAP. I need to read it soon. I love the cover. It's another Thursday Madicub kind of, you know, shebang style, isn't it? But I don't care. I don't care. I am so excited for this. I think this could be five stars. I think I'm going to be obsessed with it. I cannot wait. I need to read this soon. Next, everyone, we have Bride by Ali Hayeswood. I very kind of got gifted this recently and I'm just so excited. Also, we could put Love Theoretically. I need to read Love Theoretically soon. Everyone's telling me to read it. Everyone's telling me it's going to be five stars. But I'm so excited for Bride. I'm so excited. This is Ali Hayeswood's Paranormal Romance debut. And I have heard that there's some like, listen, listen, listen, listen. I always say I used to read Paranormal Romance as a child. I mean, I read my own. I was a young teenager. I read a lot of Paranormal Romance. However, I think with the level of Paranormal Romance I was reading, it was actually quite tame. I am not acquainted, shall we say, with the tropes of adult Paranormal Romance and some of the weird elements of it. And I've heard little whisperings from people that there are some elements of this that are interesting. I'm a little bit concerned. But I just think Ali Hayeswood can do no wrong. Listen, I've never given her lesson really a five star. I think I gave Love on the Brain a 4.5. But I'm rounding it up. It's a five. Everything has been a five from her. I love her. She is my favorite romance author. I don't care if that's unpopular. I adore her. So I'm very excited, hopefully, to read Bride soon. It's really these, these books. I'm just so excited. I love reading. I love reading. I've had, I've just done a very intense vlog that you're going to be seeing this weekend. And I was feeling all bent out.  Like, I'm not thinking about reading. I'm having a really relaxing evening. And now I'm like, I was not going to read today or maybe even tomorrow. I was going to take a couple of days off to like, but I'm already getting excited. I'm already getting so excited about reading. So I may have to start that vlog sooner than anticipated. But anyways, I'm very excited to read Bride. Then in terms of nonfiction, I've been doing a pretty good job of getting through nonfiction. I wrote one in this weekend's log. I put me up to three nonfiction so far this year, which, listen, my goal was 12. We're getting there. But one that I really, really want to read that I haven't gotten around to yet is In Defense of Witches, Why Women Are Still on Trial by Mona Shalott. I am very excited and very intrigued by this one. It kind of goes into the history of witchcraft and how witches exist today and how women, the kind of history of women being persecuted. I have heard mixed things about people who have read this. Some people say it doesn't quite go into enough depth, but it's still a topic that I very much want to read. Also, I just love the cover. Oh my God, we're matching. Everyone take a screenshot. This topic that I'm very much interested in and I, listen, all nonfiction I read is pretty much about women. It's my interest, my interest. Women. Yeah, I just think the tropes that women have been putting to throughout history and how witches kind of go into that, I just think is fascinating. So I definitely want to pick this up in the next couple of months. Next, we have a book that was one of the books that I almost read as my first book of the year. So I've had a little taste of it. I have read the first chapter. It is Monstrilo. I have heard such good things about Monstrilo and I know I need to get to it.  I've heard this is strange. I've heard it's weird, but I loved the writing of the first chapter. This was like up there. I mean, I loved all those first chapters. I made the wrong choice though because I read Emily Guard and I didn't love that. There's something about the writing of the first chapter this was so enchanting and just like captivating and really pulled you in. So I am very, very excited to get to this. I don't read a ton of horror and the horror that I do read, as we know, is more camp horror and I feel like this is a little step up for me. I feel like in the world of horror, it's a little, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. We'll see, but from my perception of it, it's like a little bit out of my comfort zone, a little bit, but I am very excited to read it. And then final list is a book I've been toying. It's almost made into a few different videos. So I've been toying with reading it and I haven't read it yet. And as of now, I don't have set plans to read it but I have a couple of videos that I could go in and that is Shark Heart by Emily Hebek. So we're following a young couple and a few weeks after their wedding, Louis receives a rare diagnosis. He will retain most of his consciousness, memories, and intellect, but his physical body will gradually turn into a great white shark. I have told you guys I've been wanting to cry recently and everyone's like, Oh my God, I'm really feeling the green today. I'm just picking green books. Look at us. Everyone take another screenshot. Also, the way that this book is structured is very exciting to me. There's often chapters where there's just like, I'm trying to find a good example, where it's just like one paragraph or there's also some elements that are written in like a script format. So it's kind of written in a unique way and I'm just very excited to see what I think of it. I know some people have read it and found it a little bit disappointing but I feel like I could love it. I'm very much interested to pick this one up. So that is my spring TBR, half books that I am definitely gonna be reading and half books that I'd really love to read and really love to fit into blogs. Let me know what you thought of any of these books or let me know which ones you most want me to read, whether it be because you've loved them or because you want me to read them so whether you know you should get them, I have a good feeling about a lot of these. And like I said, spring, I just become a lot more positive, a lot more excited, a lot more, I have more energy, you know? So I get very excited for spring and summer. So let me know some of your spring reading plans as well and I'll see you very soon in another video. Bye.


In the past you have called for the jailing of CEOs and climate change skeptics. We've got a clip from 2014 of you. Let's run that clip and then could you explain what was your thinking and whether or not it's changed since then? Sure. I think they should be enjoying three hots and a cot at the hay with all the other war criminals who are there. What about politicians, people who deny who? I think they're selling out the public trust and you know I think those guys who are doing the Koch brothers bidding and who are against all the evidence of the rational mind are saying that global warming doesn't exist, that they are contemptible human beings and that you know I wish that there were you could punish them under. I don't think there's a law that you can punish those politicians under but I do I think the Koch brothers should be prosecuted for reckless and dangerous. Absolutely that's a criminal offense and they ought to be serving time for it. All right well thank you very much. Appreciate it. Okay do you still feel that way? Obviously we're down one Koch brothers. Yeah you gotta you have to look at the the earlier part of that clip which you didn't show. Okay. It shows that I was being asked a question about their criminal conduct. The Koch energy at that time was I think it was the third or fourth largest air polluter in the world. It was maintaining pet coke piles in Detroit and Chicago that were poisoning poor neighborhoods. It was it was the it had been criminally convicted of violating environmental which means it did it knowingly in order to make money and what I say earlier on the clip I say if I'm you know a black kid he'll spend about dollars from a grocery store he'd go to jail but why shouldn't the Koch brothers be going to jail if they're stealing hundreds of millions of dollars which was do you do you think people who finish up because I do I I have said that um that companies that certain certain or certain entities corporate entities that habitually violate the law or whose purpose is to injure the public public wheel the public interest those corporations should be subject to the corporate death penalty and what that means is there's a there's a you know the corporations are licensed by the states but most of the states require that that the corporation in order to get a charter and it operate in the public interest and if it departs from the public interest in other words if it's completely consumed by private interest that is actually damaging the public interest in the states the secretary of state and the attorney general have the capacity in various states the Yank that charter in every state you know somebody has the ability to Yank that charter for example in new york state in the 1990s the republican attorney general uh uh liquidated the tobacco institute the tobacco institute was an institute that was created by the tobacco by philip moors and the other tobacco companies those companies knew for 60 years that their product was killing one out of every four of their customers who used the product as directed but they were lying to the public about it and they were creating hey look let me finish this because this is important for people to know you know because i've been accused of this before they were the tobacco institute was created to deceive the public about the dangers of tobacco and it was it was given the corporate death penalty in new york and its assets were then distributed oh the co-brothers at that time were funding a series of think tanks that were designed to hide pollution to minimize pollution to do things that were um that were dangerous to the public and that were fraudulent do you think that's still the case the first amendment does not protect the first amendment does not protect fraudulent speech if you're if you say something that is fraudulent you're not protected so and i do believe that people who do that should be punished now at the time i made that the exon corporation had secret documents which we had obtained that showed that exon scientists have been informing the company that their scientists knew more brad both of them they knew more about the fate of the carbon molecule and any other scientists in the world and those scientists that concluded that global warming was real that it was going to destroy the arctic melt the arctic and they wrote memos to the uh to the senior staff at exon saying we if we keep doing what we're doing we are going to melt the arctic and that will be a bad thing for humanity it will be a good thing for our company because there's a lot of oil under the arctic and we can get at it that was the information that i was dealing with at that time and you know which was almost a perfect analogy for what the tobacco institute so i mean but do you think that you know do you think that uh you know organizations that receive funding from you know the coke brother at this point should be uh should be given the corporate death penalty no okay so and is it is it any last chilling of speech you know you were we're talking about hate right back then i didn't believe that i believe that well you just said that you were that that it's the same thing as the tobacco institute so yeah given if they if they were given if they if they're if the organization if the purpose of that organization was to deceive the public and and yeah they should uh they do we want to i mean i i guess just you know on this question of free speech uh you know do we want people in positions of power to be deciding what is acceptable speech that this is misinformation or malinformation or disinformation it just seems like that way madness lies because the government will always come up with a pretext for saying your speech is not just wrong it's criminal and you need to be shut down well we have i don't know but i do believe that prosecutors and judges make decision about what's fraud all the time and you know we and we want to preserve that and then nobody ever says that that is a uh you know that that's an inhibition of free speech what i see when i look at that clip and think of the debate especially in the 2010s around climate change is i see a lot of parallels with the covid debate in the 2020s because both climate change and covid are real and they carry risks to humans but the reality of those risks and trade offs can be more nuanced than just saying you know just trust the science or the science is settled and a lot of those who wanted to have a debate over the policy agenda embedded in the climate change discourse or the covid discourse or suppress the platforms called deniers even called to be criminalized or asked that i wish there were laws to criminalize this kind of speech do you regret partaking in that kind of discourse after kind of going through this during the covid era yeah and i think you make a good point and having seen what happened in the covid era if i had known that back then i i probably would not have made that speech and also i i'd see or you know made that statement um but i also seen you know in recent years how the you know the how the crazies of covid was manipulated and exploited by powerful interests to clamp down totalitarian controls and to um and to you know impose uh technologies on people that uh that were making them profits for which they own the ips and i'm seeing a lot of that now with uh in the carbon era i'm seeing you know the this emphasis on geoengineering which i think is very damaging to the environment i'm seeing what's happening to the whales off the east coast of north america um and you know something that i've fought very long for 30 years of putting those wind turbines out there we have a lot of wind on land in this country and we shouldn't be turning the oceans into industrialized zones and destroying the whales oh there's a lot of things that i know now that i you know that i think the issue is more complex today than it seemingly was at that point that was an excerpt from the reason interview with robert f kennedy jr who's running for president if you want to see another excerpt go here if you want to see the full thing and you should go here come back next thursday at one p.m eastern time when zack wise miller and i will be talking to somebody that you absolutely want to hear from


Hello, my name is Catherine Barnard. I'm Professor of European Union Law here at the University of Cambridge and Senior Fellow in the UK in a Changing Europe programme. I'm going to talk a bit today about workers' rights. Lots of aspects of your working life are actually regulated by EU employment law. Think about equality, equality on the grounds of sex. Yes, the UK already had those rules but also on the grounds of sexual orientation, age, religion, belief. All of these come from EU law. But EU law isn't just about equality, it's also about giving people rights if they are so-called atypical workers. So if they're workers on fixed-term contracts or they're part-time workers or they're agency workers, EU law regulates that too. It regulates health and safety matters extensively and perhaps most controversially under that heading comes the working time directive. Again, you'll be familiar with that. That's the directive that gives four weeks paid annual leave and sets a maximum working week of 48 hours. And then there's also rules on things like information and consultation of workers and protection if your company goes bust what happens to the pay that you are left owing or if there's going to be lots of redundancies in your workplace. Again, you've got to be consulted about that. All of that comes from EU law. So what are the good things about EU law? Well, from a worker's point of view, you've got that protection. It's also what's known as a floor of rights protection. And what that means is that a UK government can improve upon the floor, so give you more rights than the directive provides, but it cannot take you below that floor. And so it gives a good standard of protection. One of the arguments against largely from the employer's side is that, of course, all of this comes with costs attached. And a lot of employers say that EU rules are immensely bureaucratic. They add burdens to their business. And also that EU law sits uncomfortably with UK traditions of regulating relations between workers and employers. What happens if we voted to leave on the 23rd of June? What will happen to those rules? Well, nothing will change overnight. Much depends on what might be put in place going forward. If we do a Norway, as it's called, which is joining the European Economic Area, then EU employment rules will carry on applying. The Norwegians have to respect EU employment law, and so will we. But without any say about the future shape of what those employment law rules will look like. If, however, we do not join the European Economic Area, then what you'll get will be some other trade agreement, and the trade agreement will not extend to the protection of workers' rights. So what that will mean is that there will be a repeal of the European Communities Act. That's the act which took us into the EU and which requires us to respect EU law and workers' rights in particular. And the UK government will then have flexibility to either repeal the rights that we've got, or it's thought more likely perhaps amend those rights that the UK government doesn't like the look of. So going forward, what's the consequence? What we know is that workers do benefit from these rights, but it is important to remember that what you have at EU level is a patchwork of rights. It's not a comprehensive protection that you find at domestic law. It's not a replication of the rights that you get under UK law. If all of those rights were repealed, clearly it would be a good thing for some employers, a bad thing for workers, but there are still key areas of protection, for example unfair dismissal, redundancy. All of these are left to the Member States, never been covered by EU law. One final point worth bearing in mind, employers say regulatory burden is one of the biggest concerns they have. If you look at the UK's position in context, you look at what the OECD says, that the UK is still second or third least regulated modern economies, and that's worth bearing in mind when you're hearing the discussion about the burdens on business.


How you doing man? I'm good, good to see you. So look we've got a posh bug hotel here and the reason that we make these, if you've got a relatively new garden without mature trees and lots of dead material, if you make one of these you can still coat it for all of those animals that need that as a resource. Let's get stuck in. Right. So do you have a passion for wildlife at all? I have a little bit of a passion and when I've got my camera for Christmas I actually went out in my garden and started filming the ants, the bugs, the foxes. I didn't really embrace it enough but being here this morning and coming out and seeing how easy it is to make a bug hotel and little bits that I can add to sort of preserve wildlife in my area, I don't see why I can't do it. And the ISPB Woodland Trust and Wildlife Trust have come together with ten top tips which people can do literally in the comfort of their own space. No, we and I would be wetlands. Can you tell me a little bit more about this place? Yeah, I mean it's been here for a long time as a reservoir but it's been more recently used as a wildlife resource and a place where all of these people that are living around here can come and experience nature. You've got to say it's all thanks to the London Wildlife Trust and the Lottery Funding that it's gone. And over the last 25 years 40 billion pounds has been raised by the Lottery for good causes. And I'm really pleased to say that more than 850 million pounds has gone to helping biodiversity, richness of life in the UK. 900 million pounds to parks improving there. So green spaces have really prospered because of that Lottery grant system. I never knew you could actually buy a ticket and money to go to a local park. I know. Thank you for spending time with us. No, not at all. I've really enjoyed it. And now you know how to make a bug hotel. See, your one came out. That's not a 4.5. See, look at that monster that come out. Thank you.


Let the games begin. What's up guys, so I got some exciting news to share with you today. So the exciting news is that on my birthday, which was on the 3rd of January, we have reached 10,000 subscribers, which is the best gift ever. I want to thank every single one of you that has supported this channel. I'm super grateful for that and you guys make it really rewarding for me to create these tutorials. So to make this giveaway more interesting, I will be hosting my first shot on smartphone challenge where you will have the chance to show off your work and create a one to three minute video shot entirely on your smartphone. Now I want you to come up with a concept or a way of filming that is interesting and exciting to watch. It could be a travel video, it could be a short film or a video about a day in your life, a product video, you name it. The focus of the video should be the art, story and idea. Remember that the video should be entirely shot on your own and also make sure to only use copyright-free or royalty-free music in your video. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out the How to Find the Right Music for your video up here. Once you have filmed and edited your own video, upload it on YouTube and email me the link at infoatbenekrazer.com. I will review your videos and pick the top three which will be featured on my channel. The submission deadline will be on the 20th of January, so you will have two weeks to work on your video. I will also mention the conditions in the video description below. I will be choosing one winner out of the top three. So the winner, I repeat, the winner will receive a smartphone video rig by Ulanzi. You get two LED pocket lights and a microphone. This is really great if you're filming at home with your smartphone or even outside, and that's not everything. The winner will also win a brand new Moza Mini MX, which is a smartphone gimbal for getting smooth, stable shots. Pretty awesome. Now, I'm still not finished. Now, additionally to that, you will get a free one-year subscription on Artlist in which you can download unlimited, high-quality music for your projects. And last but not least, you will get a free one-year subscription on Production Create in which you can download top quality assets such as visual effects, motion graphics, and more for your videos. I want to thank Ulanzi, Moza, Artlist, and Production Create for sponsoring this giveaway and making this video possible. Now, I personally like to use their products as they add a lot of value to my video production. If you want to check them out, I will leave a link to each of the products in the video description below. Now, I know deep in my heart that there are a lot of talented creators out there and the chances to win this giveaway is high. Now, I can't wait to see your submission coming in and what you have learned from my tutorials.  No cheating. Really put in the hard work. I wish you all good luck and see you in the next video. My birthday and to my 10,000 subscribers.


What makes for excellence in hard care? It starts with one of the most amazing teams of heart surgeons and cardiologists that I've seen assembled under one roof and the region's leading technology in a new 40 million dollar facility. This is the nationally recognized Heart and Vascular Institute of Eastern Kentucky at Pikeville Medical Center. A recent report on the damage done to homes by the flooding in July of last year states that nearly 9,000 homes were damaged or destroyed and the estimated cost for a pair or a build those homes is between 450 and 950 million. So we used I should say that our our dead data set and the report that we generated was using FEMA's data it's called open FEMA. So our analysis comes from the pool of individuals who actually applied for FEMA aid. So it's very possible that our estimates are low because we're not capturing people whose homes were damaged that didn't apply for that aid. We are we are asking a we and several others across the state are asking the state to step in and take some action here you know appropriate funds both for for this disaster but also for future disasters and to set up just a mechanism within the state to be responsive to housing need after disaster for recovery. While many flood survivors throughout eastern Kentucky struggle with their housing situation the cost of building materials continues to increase. One of the problems is that so many people have lost everything and they're starting with a deficit they're not even starting equal or where they were at they've lost it all. FEMA didn't make them whole less than five percent of the families that were flooded had flood insurance. So what do you do? It is so important that we get private and public investment for housing. This flood is going to cause more people to leave because they don't have options. This investment is critical for people staying here in the Commonwealth and here in Letcher County. Many people don't want to leave but they're left without a choice. Many of those whose houses were damaged by the flood were low income families who will find it challenging or impossible to rebuild. The gap between those in need and the money needed to help them will continue to grow if something isn't done. For mountaintop news I'm Kelsey Dean.