Pat Parker, Avacha, Tui, and a lot of the sisters that I see here are like my mentors and women that I looked up to as I was growing up, baby dyke in San Francisco, coming here in the military, being a Vietnam war baby, having a process, all my brothers and sisters going to And not understanding and not having that connection with the community when I first got here I thought 7th Street was downtown Oakland That's because we only made it to 7th Street for our lunch breaks at night We used to process in a 12-hour period about a thousand men going to Vietnam every day So I've chosen two poems to read from Pat's And the first one I wrote a little intro to you can help me on All I want you to do is say ice cream you scream we all scream for ice cream Let's try it ice cream you scream we all scream for ice cream Houston 3rd Ward born Texas torn California reborn our sister Pat Parker Rose Defiant a seeker of truth a Poet who reflected our turbulent times Ice cream you scream we all scream for ice cream Pat Parker screamed Against injustice as she forged her way. She screamed against the pangs and arrows of Misfortune ice cream you scream we all scream for ice cream torn out of a lone-start state of mind Pat screamed against the repression against women. She screamed for us to come together Ice cream you scream we all scream for ice cream in my memory Pat stands tall proud a woman Who held her own a woman who taught me? very important lesson To defy the odds to actually mambo in the jive face of adversity I Speak you scream we all scream for ice cream You know they say you can't lose with the blues and so I'm gonna share with you the Pat Parker blue ice cream blues Boom he Feeling good Feeling sad because they caught me and they swung me Into the blue Scream scream Vanilla and chocolate Child, what do you need? Brown or white? Oh that good good taste makes it All right, boo-doo-boo-doo boom it was a bright sunny morning When I jumped out of my sack Boo-doo-boo-doo boom gonna sell some ice cream and then I'm rolling right back He feeling sad cause they caught I swung the blues down on only 15 cents Little child with a dime Well, I guess you can have it for that Because leaving a child out of this ought to be a crime boo-doo-boo-doo boom ice cream scream Good taste makes it all Went down to my job one day and the boss man called me aside to say Gonna have to cut you loose my friend because you ain't bringing in enough Dividend ice cream that good and I'd be so defiant like the inspiration that Pat gave us all and I'm gonna share with you my piece what my Mentor calls my masterpiece my maestro piece it goes something like this To pata to pata to pata to pata to pata to pata to pata to diggity to grow MMM the word weave rumbera Aki don't de Kiera I weave phonemes producing word flows and sounds like my hands Coming down Beating conga rhythm patterns around a message Like a rapper unwraps the reel I Spit about what I know and feel but I'm not just about a rhyme or talking in time Lo mio es un inspiracion de corazon Like a spark to light your heart Imploring open minds to think about it. Yo check it out cause truth be told we are all one Bonded by the same force of life energies and I am speaking to The truth in history and education defying any manipulation for dissemination of misinformation To be used in the separation of peoples of nations from the first skill to a rada tone tone like African voices Coming from the drum life From a heartbeat that lives on in the rhythms and rhymes of every song Ju Ju Mozambique bomba plena and congo indigenous jazz hip hop to rumba wawanko all given life By the trunks of trees and skins of goats spanning the distance from Africa's cradle to America's coast Skin on skin like tradition responds to the corp because rhythms rhythms live in us all and I and I Messenger I be like red beans and rice and yo, that's con gris con gris. That's me I am the red beans Platano Maduro to stone avocado Bustello flavor that wakes up your taste buds with salsa I am the sonera donde quiera true to my cultura con su linda emozura Puerto Rico. Yo nunca dejaré de amarte But in my struggles and strife I am minor to no one in this life for I am a survivor Abla locura que no tiene cura y si la tiene muy poco dura cantando tocando mi tambor Declamando mi poesía mi forma es sencilla pero conciente voy por la vía de la vida con sabiduría ablándole a la gente now could you Understand the journey of my blood from Portuguese ships to la isla del encanto Con los ojos de mi abuela la sonrisa de mi padre el corazón de mi madre a proud body who chants in Europe Who implores in Spanish have a maria purísima who chants to the Buddhist And sings to the black gospel of please Be patient with me God is not through with me yet East coast west coast musical upbringing Activism protesting experiences mingle with the roads taken I Drum from the barrios of San Francisco Oaktown to New York City to the streets of Miami where I swayed with the palms and Floated in the open arms of yema ya en la playa A key y donde quiera soy semia de la tierra I am MM the word we've room better Ah-ha ahi y coge lo que va a susto ah-ha ahi Y coge lo que va a susto y saca malanga tira camino tú lo pelas yo lo cocino rumba macumba que yo mente tengo Contando mi plena que yo me amanezcu a ha A y coge lo que va a susto ah-ha ahi Y coge lo que va a susto y saca malanga tira camino tú lo pelas yo lo cocino rumba macumba que yo mente tengo cantando Esta plena que yo me amanezcu a ha ahi Y coge lo que va a susto ah-ha ahi I love the spirit of Pat in this room. I love and feel your love for this beautiful black woman, you know, whom we were so proud to have known and and had in our life but I'm so very proud that we can keep her legacy alive. Thank you so much.


It's the it's the availability right so. Exactly. We've been shopping we've been shopping cars and have had to look at rentals for our local hurts has tripled their prices triple your daily rentals yeah. Oh yeah. And they blamed it on they blamed it on, I don't know what but it turns out that hurts sold off an enormous part of their fleet in early 2020. The anticipation of pandemic and can't restock. So, and the supply chain is screwed up because of chip shortages so you can't actually buy a lot of vehicles, etc, etc. Plus, these starting to rocket up because the dealers are slapping on $510,000 profit to the sticker. Yeah, plus. Their business model is like they can't have too much inventory around and if they don't have inventory and none of the other car ventures places have inventory and they're all renting for three times price that they used to. They're making the same amount of money so works out okay for them. So the last OGM check and call of 2021, it's 30 December 30 of 2021. We are already well on our way into the death spiral of, oh my God the world is falling apart, but we're going to pull up we're going to pull out we're going to fly straight narrow and point up with a topic sort of like the one that got a some resonance was, what do we want. I got a refinement from Paul Crafell who may make the call. And Paul said what are the qualities we would like to increase within the world, and why. And then I also got a note about sell to Genesis and sort of going in that direction. So we could sort of pick among those and also we are open for recommendation suggestions ideas riffs on those topics. I love the qualities one I like. And, you know, not just because I like Paul Crafell but I like that topic a lot.  What really all came to was a sense of unity and a sense of being together is the quality that we want to bring this and so we decided to do some weekly meditations, you know in the town square, because just emphasize what it is to be together what all the things bring us together in common. And I think that that's really what I want to bring in 2022 is really the emphasis on all the things that we do have an uncommon and how even being to come together. I think that's, that's my number one quality this year. Thank you. And also salute to Genesis is very much like what is well being mean and what are the things that would bring us into a state of well being so I think those things all tied together and they're a good, good conversational topic. I like, I like the amendment grace takes us from what we'd like to increase in the world to also what would we like to increase in ourselves. The qualities of how we want to be. Thank you. And also what should we do about it. Yeah. What might we do about it trying to avoid the word should. Might's a good word. Might is mighty. I had a former colleague when I was a Palo Alto who would would typically in meetings, say to this room of you know sort of resigned bureaucrats for what might be possible here. I just had a great solutionary power, you know, so in the sense of dissolving blocks as well as opening solutions. At idea, they are they use the phrase how might we so often that HMW at the beginning of any statement was taken to mean how might we do whatever. It's really, really handy HMW blah, blah, blah. And then and then you're often running with a potential, you know, possibility. It's good because the mind relaxes when it's not how could we or how should we or how will we. Yeah. Yeah, she might have stolen it might have grown up. These things all have mixed, mixed reading. I mean, Ken Homer posted a long post on Facebook, yesterday saying he's basically getting off Facebook, and he's kind of he had, it was it was like a two page sort of write up with lots of really good reasons and all that. And in the middle of it he said, as Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying, and then I'm forgetting the saying right now, but actually the saying is not attributed to a blink and it's attributed entirely to someone else. And then, of course, I googled it and that attribution has no proof whatsoever. So, so the fact check from Reuters on that was like, oops, nope, not even him. And it's like, well, okay. But, but Ken was also looking for what to do, right and his, his, I think a piece of his logic was by participating in Facebook, while it hasn't changed while it hasn't apologized while it hasn't done anything to improve itself really that we can tell. And before anybody's legislated any remedies that may or may not work.  And maybe that's a, that's an aid to well being, don't know. And Stacey you've been, you've been having success connecting with people and people who aren't all, you know, of the same mind and all that through Facebook so I'm wondering what your reaction was to to Ken's move and, and how you feel about that whole issue. Well, so, first of all, it's I wanted to say it's very draining to do what I'm doing. I'm feeling that now. I mean, it's hard. But I live in the might, you know, what might you do space, which is also hard. I felt sad when I read it, because so getting to Grace's point with the unity connection without a doubt is what I'd like to see more of in my life and in the world. That would be probably the most important word.  So, Stacey, can we're just talking about your post on Facebook yesterday, and can just arrived. And Stacey you just said connection without a doubt is the thing I'd want, and I actually started writing down connection without a doubt. Because on then reflecting on the sentence I think you just meant the word connection, right. Right connection is what I want. And I'm like connection without a doubt is a really, really interesting phrase I like it. Paul, welcome to the call and at the top of the call I put your question into the chat as well, which I'll re type into the into the chat but you had emailed me this, which is which is nice we're kind of starting in this in this moment. So thank you for the refinement of, of what do we want. Over email last night. And, and Ken, since we opened the Pandora's box of Facebook's effect and all that. And we're deliberately aiming up not down here in this call but what's the thinking. How you feeling. What am I thinking feeling well it felt really good to write that thing out I've been cooking that for a long time. For those who haven't seen it I posted a long post on Facebook about why I'm, I'm taking a break possibly possibly leaving I don't know. I am really looking forward to not being on Facebook in many ways. I have a huge stack of books that are sitting here I have other things that I know I should be doing and Facebook's very seductive and takes my time away from that. So I'm looking forward to that. And I'm also just, I disturbed by what goes on in Facebook and seeing how insidious it is that, you know, for me leaving Facebook is like tearing off a piece of my heart because I have so many connections there it feeds me in so many ways.  I am part of this vast machinery that is doing horrible, horrible things in the world and despite the fact that there's all kinds of acknowledgement about how bad that is thanks to Francis and you know the blowing the vast majority of people saying well yes but I this is how I stay in contact with my friends and you know I have to do this for work and I have to do it for this and that and it's like, if we were in Nazi Germany in 1933, would we be saying well yes the Nazis are horrible but they're in charge and we have to go, you know, I'm, I can't stand right anymore. So, I said in my post that two things were bringing back one would be some soul searching and a mea culpa on Facebook's because we have been doing terrible things we're going to change that. And if that doesn't happen then the government stepping in and saying okay we're going to break up this monopoly and we're going to regulate you, because I just can't in good conscious stand there anymore, and I'm very torn because I really do have a lot of people that I care about on Facebook and it is a great fun thing to do but on balance, I feel really good for having made the declaration and I'm really looking forward to catching up on some and maybe getting back to drawing on the right side of the brain haven't drawn in a long time so I want to take that up and, you know, so, so I feel good I feel really grateful for this year, I know a lot of people are saying they can't wait to see the back of 2021 but for me this last year has been phenomenal. Thanks to Matt so yeah, I got to work for six months doing these inclusion presentations and I talked to almost 1000 people and and that had a really profound impact on me of hearing different stories of, you know, very lovely African American men in Atlanta. And this is the world's largest financial services firm he's like everybody got hoodies with the logo on it, and I cannot wear a hoodie because I am a big black man and a hoodie is a threat, even walking down the halls of this establishment where I feel relatively safe so stuff like that just I have these voices echoing my head of things that people said that that really drove home the point of how poorly we treat each other and to see a company like this one take on the issue of inclusivity head on and and and do it in a way where it's like we're not trying to shame you we're not trying to blame you we're simply trying to make you more sensitive to the context in which we so often unconsciously make remarks and do things that make people feel they're not safe they're not welcome they're not valued. And it was very, very profoundly moving for me and gratifying to see people grapple with this and take it on. So, I'm leaving 2021 with a sense of, there's a lot of people working really hard to make the world a better place. And I don't see that reflected in the media but I see it reflected in my life so that's what I hold on to that's what keeps me sane. So that's that's what I'm thinking and feeling right now. Yeah, I want to make a comment about the Facebook thing which I'm not. I'm not on Facebook I stopped it in June, and I didn't miss it so apparently I wasn't using it very much I'm not a good example but it reminds me a little bit of when I gave up a car. I stopped using a car for the wastefulness and all the other things.  And I was like, what's the quality time that you spend with your kids in the car driving the places and I just said, if that's your quality time with your children and there's a different problem going on. And I feel a little bit that way about Facebook like in some ways, it was making me feel connected, but I wasn't really connected. I just, I feel like when connection is really important, there are other ways to get it that are more fulfilling and more, I don't know what I want more of this year. So, love that and some things, some things are hard and one of the reasons Facebook is so attractive is that it's simple it's easy it's shiny and it connects us all. I remember seeing the links that Pete put in the chat about how might we. It's great. I, you know, I remember long ago thinking why does my, why did I'm not that connected to any of my schools so I don't really participate very much in alumni associations, but I had this idea like, God, why doesn't one of these schools help connect all its alumni electronically really simple just like create a platform and invite all the alumni in.  Something, something interesting has happened in there. Gil, please. Thanks, Jerry, can I am so grateful for you as well as for what you wrote.  I keep on thinking about getting off Facebook and I check out some of the so called alternative platforms and sorry to say nothing's as good. As, as vile as they are and so many well, tell, tell me Pete when it's your turn as vile as Facebook isn't so many ways the UX is relatively yeah is relatively simple and effective in a way that I haven't found anywhere else so be that as it may. I, I observed that when I think about going off Facebook I go through some of the same thoughts can that you did of how I stay in touch with people and where will I get the, you know, the perspective and connections and input and so forth. And I don't usually remember but I do this morning that I actually had a life before Facebook existed where I felt connected, you know, and had had relationships with lots of people and they were rich and they were generative and they fed me. Without this and so I know there's this manufactured dependency that I've come to take for granted. And it's like, you know, it's like what Grace was saying about the car I certainly couldn't live without it and I can have a rich life without it. It's a little harder to think about right now in pandemic time, because you know as I've talked about before we're, Jane and I take a pretty strict isolation regime on this and I'm lonely. I miss people and I very much missed the tactile physical contact in the same place with pheromones and skin and so forth. And so this, you know, these little simulacra fill in for that for me. On the other hand, you know, what is it it's 815 I've been, I've been at work for two hours today I have not touched Facebook. I'm actually happier and more productive. Very likely why you got something done this morning about that. Yeah. That's it. Thanks. Thanks, Gil. Mr Jones. You're muted so there you go. One is I've got an old iPad and I got my Twitter and Facebook there and my new iPad, I do work on this email and everything other than social media so I have to get, but I have several things that aren't on my social media I've had. And that hack is good to limit my time. I'm just, you know, there's a way quick notes does bookmarks only works on the new iPad and other things like that. On connection, I'm doing a new project I think it's pretty interesting I've been doing this economic justice stuff and I'm building a currency with a guy who's built an eco village kind of thing here called Highland Lake code he's got 200 houses people are in and he's vacation Reynolds and he does some conference space and seminar space and other kinds of things. And he's wanting to translate he owns everything and makes every decision. And he wants to transfer ownership to the next generation of both family and employees all the family kind of live there too. And so I'm helping him design the currency that he's going to see it with one lot of a vacation rental so 60,000 for what the first year. But we're going to link the currency we're doing with our repair fund in this community that was moved for the built more to be built the shallow community. So we're going to give the design together and see how we can link those two currency clothes in this, you know, secluded not gated but secluded eco villagey kind of place. And you know a lot of consciousness stuff and all that kind of thing goes on there that you know New Agey consciousness, you know, wonderful stuff, whatever. And then, you know, a marginalized neighborhood that people don't think about. And, you know, they're like a lot of groups they think in the in the eco village Highland Lake to think about climate change and never think about, you know, the folks they don't see in these communities that got displaced. And so anyway, I think the designing the currency together will help me figure out a lot of things. You know, what messages work is one thing for both sides and how they build trust and stuff so we're going to anyway we're going to. And he's going to be, you know, he's agreed to see the some of the first of the repair fund with with some part of the currency and when we're also going to do a guy repair is we're figuring out where that goes. But we're doing kind of a social repair and a guy repair as parts of the currency. It's pretty interesting. We're going to be probably working with somebody who's worked with art block on the current front and a bar. It's pretty cool. And I'm just great. Yeah, I've been doing a lot of that kind of work around reputation currency and currency that is non monetary and specifically eco villages so please reach out. Oh, great. If you can. If you could email that'd be great. I will connect the two of you over email right now. That'd be great. Thank you. I don't know anything about it but he's got money and wants to do it and he asked me to help him design it. Yeah, I also did some work with art so I am familiar with that. Great. Thank you grace. Email sent. And if you were to anonymize the stories you heard through the meetings you conducted. Is there a small book or a long essay in there about some of those insights. Yes. Okay good. It would not be a small but it would just be it would name me along I say it just might be a few pages of, you know some quotes and context and quotes. I'm going into a couple of sort of incidents or episodes or vignettes that are that thread together in some interesting ways or whatever else I don't know. Yeah, I'll share the thing that touched me the most out of all of the interviews of 89 cohorts that I took through was we asked people at the end to make some kind of commitment as a result of being present on the call and I said, you know, go for something really modest do something you can find it's very easy you can do every day that won't exhaust you that because you're in the investment business, just like an investment if you make a regular deposit you can have a big return at the end. And a lovely woman who was probably with the company over 25 years. I'd say late 50s or so African Americans said, I am not going to make a commitment. But based on this call and the people on this call has been set on this call. I'm going to recommit to believe in this company is serious about inclusion because I've been here a long time I've seen a lot of things come and go and not make any difference. This feels really different and I'm going to recommit to believing that the company is serious. And I got these bumps I was like wow that just made me feel like I did something. You know I was part of something very useful here today I changed someone's mind to reorient them back to their work of saying, you know there's there's a way in which I'm going to give the company the benefit of the doubt, as opposed to being cynical from having seen these things, you know, arise and fail. And that that think was the one thing on the calls that just stuck with me the most of made me feel like I did something good, you know. Love that can thank you. Go ahead, John. Thank you. So, just hearing the last couple of comments, especially grace and Kevin reminded me, I'm anxious to hear what Pete's Facebook alternatives are because he's, I have an idea that good question. They're thoughtful, but I was struck by the fact that, hey, this group is building the, the Lego blocks of the Facebook alternative.  So you know you're both identifying where there is a great connection and where there's something missing. And that process of putting those things together. That's a Facebook alternative. So there's there's things that are needed, besides the connection, you know, the, in the simplistic sense of the Facebook says one other simple thing that's needed that I guess is still problematic. Pete can update us on this, and this might be regulation that regulation that says, okay, this little piece of software that goes in and grabs everything about you from Facebook and injects you into it's one of these chosen processors. Facebook can't block that that's, that's fine, go ahead and do that. And I think that would, that would go a long way because then folks like Ken, you know, any of us, I am only getting it using it for family pictures that people insist on only putting on Facebook. And so I have to have to be there to see the pictures, but I don't, I don't pursue the connections I don't want the connections to be on Facebook, because I don't want them to stay. I know we're going to something better than Facebook. And I'm just impatient to get it there. But, you know, if we keep going here if we keep putting the pieces together and if we get that little Facebook inject ejector injection seat. And to our friends, we can say, you know, I'm leaving Oh by the way, here's the Facebook ejection seat. I'm sending you two or three, take your pick. You know come on over to to something else, and we'll have a better future. Pete I believe the floor maybe yours just for a swing, just a swing. That'll teach me to speak up. First, I would say I'm not too interested in talking about Facebook because Facebook is really boring. Just leave. It's not that hard. I'm on Facebook right now I don't I log in every month or so and the only reason I haven't left is because our HOA is is unofficially on it. So that's where I get the news about my local local community. My down fingers were, I think in response to go saying, it's, it's the best thing there's there's nothing better. And, and it's kind of like Grace's car thing, you know, a car is really great.  You know, it Facebook seems easy, and it seems inclusive and generative, and all of that's like an artifice.  So I am for me. Facebook is being distant from it and logging in once in a while it's really interesting to kind of observe myself getting sucked into the endorphin trap, you know, like, after 10 minutes I'm clicking and scrolling and clicking and scrolling and go okay, that's the Facebook thing that's the Facebook suck I don't like that very much. And then I log off and clear my cookies. For me, where I like to hang out is Twitter. Twitter has got that same kind of endlessly mindlessly scrolling thing that that Facebook does, but it doesn't have the suck.  I need some, I need some, I need some entropy in my life and I go read Twitter for a while I found lots of good stuff. Twitter I think is, it's, it's not as easy to set up a feed. You have to, you have to kind of. It's hard, but you have to kind of purposely follow the people that you find interesting search for things that you find interesting and follow the people there. And then you have to another thing that you have to do that I watched my wife struggling with a little I don't is to unfollow people when they post stuff that you don't want to see. So you just kind of winnow your, your net until it's until it sings for you, Twitter sings for me. There's a bunch of stuff happening in discord. Discord is a wonderful amazing place. There's a bunch of interesting stuff happening in matrix. I am continually, I'm a little bit of an edge case for this one, but I'm continually blown away by the fed wiki community warden and the crew there are doing amazing things. And matrix is a little bit hard to get into still it's getting a lot better, but, but then the rewards are so high that, you know, and it and it feels good it feels like eating nutritious food, rather than Facebook feels like eating junk food. So find, you know, find places where interesting people are hanging out and go there. And the lesson for me the thing that Facebook is still better at than anything for me is that there's all my people there, you know, all my weird relatives. People I've never, you know, all the, all the people from a couple different schools. I've been to and all that kind of stuff. And it's like, it's an interesting thing that I don't really use it very much. And I don't think it's worth. I don't think it's worth the soul suck to, to have that access to everything. The other thing Facebook is really good at is scale, you know, it has billions of people on it, and you have to ask yourself, is this a good thing for the world. Do we want a monoculture thing where like billions, literally billions of people are logged into this thing, having their algorithms, you know, program people's brains. It's not good. I think the centralization and scale is just, we have found out that that kind of scale is really toxic, and does bad things to humanity. It maybe does good things to yourself, but it does bad things to your humanity. I've been doing it a little bit. Cory doctor is going to interesting thread on Twitter and I'll put a link in the chat today and I've been trying to figure out how not to post it because because I have another guilty pleasure. I have a bunch of Alexis in my house, and we talked to Alexa and she talks to us. She's got a thing where he's, he's like, dude, don't even play with the Alexa things because they're soul sucking surveillance machines. And I don't feel that way. The surveillance that that Alexa and Amazon are doing is different than the surveillance that Facebook is doing, I think. It doesn't feel toxic to me. Google is doing an amazing amount of surveillance too. So I've been avoiding trying to, I've been trying to figure out how I can post just a little bit of this thread. But anyway, I'll post the thread. There's something interesting in it and it's a little bit hard to unwind. It's a little bit. You have to kind of read it. It's not a perfectly written Cory thing. It's, it's still very smart and thoughtful. But you have to read it a little bit to understand what he's saying. But basically what he says is, there are a bunch of things in our lives. And for him, Alexa is one of them. Facebook is another he doesn't mention Facebook. He mentions, he does mention privacy and connection to Alexa. And then things like environment and stuff like that. There are things that seem easy.  Every cigarette doesn't add up to cancer for you. It's only after decades that it adds up to cancer. Same thing with the environment or privacy or things like that. There's things that that seem easy and small and not harmful in the moment, but add up over time to big fails. He calls them. So Facebook is another one of those things where it's, it's an easy candy bite.  So, Ken. Maybe someone here knows better than than I seem to have it in my head from reading something that basically people in India, Facebook is their Internet. It's really in cities. It's ins, it's insinuated itself into Indian society like most people with Internet access and yet only use Facebook. And I think that might be the case for some countries in Africa too. So there's a very, if that is true, that's a billion people that basically control by Facebook, you know, their, their media access, their Internet access control by Facebook. So it just it's one of those things that makes me very wary of Facebook. What I had heard, and this happened during the Facebook fail basically when they're when the Facebook went down for a while, was that India was extremely dependent on WhatsApp for communications and that that that because Facebook went down so did what's happened so the Insta and the WhatsApp wipeout had had just like really crippled communications across India because so many people were dependent on it. It's likely that there's a lot of penetration also for, for Facebook but I don't know. Well, who owns, who owns WhatsApp. That's right. That's why the old one, that's all the time. It's your cans option of the regulatory solution comes into Facebook got, you know, got carved up would it be less file. There's a whole conversation to be had about what's a good remedy to this and should Facebook be regulated and or broken up or this or that. Let's let's try to avoid that here because it's lengthy and interesting but not. I think, I think it'll take us down one of those rabbit holes that we don't necessarily want. And it would be actually I think an interesting topic for a future call. If you can find Corey's tweet, I think, and posted that would be great Corey does. I don't fully understand how Corey's brain functions, much as I am in awe of how Pete's brain functions. And like Corey posts these these insanely deep things often in all different kinds of media, and then just randomly on Twitter he'll post 15 images that are basically vintage photo albums or sci fi book covers from whenever. There's a couple of weird images that are sort of like, why did he post that in the middle of nothing it's like it's like I don't know how he traffics and so much information and still maintain sanity of some sort. It's kind of cool. Paul Caffell I wanted to invite you now that you finished breakfast. I wanted to invite you back into the conversation, just to maybe riff on the question you had posed which is what are the what are the qualities you would like to increase within the world and why. If you're not in the kitchen, cleaning up the bowl of whatever it was you were just eating. Oh shoot. There's Paul. Good morning.  We hear you clearly though. That's great. And sometimes the audio doesn't come in very good. And also, I've just never been on Facebook so that whole topic I have no idea exactly what the beast is like, but in terms of quality that I'd like I was thinking I would like. I would like humanity to realize that there is a positive place for us within the world. Take that. You broke up after positive place for us in the world Paul. Shoot. See this just proves that the inner tubes are conspiring to. That's AT&T. Set it up. Paul we have lost you now. Stop talking. No, come back. You are back with us. Was there a break and what I was saying. Yes, right after your first lovely statement. Also the place for us in the world. Yes. Okay, I will try again here. I would like us to, I think there's something in our culture that kind of thinks that humanity is sort of. We don't. We don't recognize what a wonderful opportunity we've been given, not as people but as life, and that there's a wonderful opportunity for service and for helping shape the world. Living things have the power to shape the world for us to say we can shape the world is not God like it's earthworm like and salmon like, and there is just this wonderful millions of years invitation to us. And we just haven't. We kind of, I think part of the problem we're looking at is we tend to see the world in terms of zero some games of winners and losers and instead of collaborative. And so that's my dream for the quality I want more of. I love that Paul and I love what you just said. And the thing that attracted me you're thinking really early when Art Brock sent me video the video that you've made was that with a hand trial and some principles. You were walking around healing hillsides and you know reclaiming a piece of land near where you live and making and so does making things better. I've got a website at up keto. keto.com because my my sport is I keto and upwards viral inspired by you and uplift inspired by David been and others sort of in different ways. The idea of what does a practice look like where everything is improved through when we when we come in contact with it to just have a mindfulness or an approach to do something like that. I love that it's earthworm like that's a that's a really nice rescaling of. I think that the situation a lot of humans are in on earth which is they feel like the problems are too big they're facing hyper problems. Governments aren't fixing or working very often they're often too corrupt. And so what what on earth is my action going to do. And I like this analogy very much to, you know, when the whale dies a whale fall is a huge nutrient event for the ocean right and that it didn't do anything actually to cause that except run out of life. Yeah. I'm a big, big, big fan of the second law of thermodynamics I viewed as really sort of a fundamental starting place for my thinking. And I kind of one of the big things I draw from the second law is that I think our culture has it wrong that things have to run down they don't. The second law as long as we have solar input, things can run up, but it requires work, and it's not that it's not the easy direction. People say go with the flow I kind of go no swim up against the flow, and that it's that there's this existential nobility about doing the work and I think our, our whole sense of work and our culture tends to be associated with pay. And kind of seen as something that you're smart enough to be able to get out of it great. But I think there's a really spiritually deep foundation to humbly accepting my job is to work. Work to do, and help each other in our work and try to use feedback to direct our work in the even more productive ways. That's like one of the things I wonder is why did we separate work play and learning from each other we separate those in our ages of life and in our days. And, and in a healthy community it seems like work play and learning are all like one.  And then we've kind of, we've taken scissors to the whole thing, and we've sliced and analyzed and dissected and made everything efficient.  And that is their job. And I've done, I've done labor I've done some a bit of labor in my life where I came home and I was like wow I did the same goddamn thing for an entire day and that was like mind numbing and in some cases painful because you repeat the same, repeat the same gesture for a day and it's very different from doing the gesture once or twice, really, really different, even if it's just peeling bananas. And we have so many people doing so many tasks just just for the wage, just so they can put food on their families to to quote the wonderful W. Kevin, if you wanted to jump in. The solar in the input of solar and the second law of thermodynamics, one thing of both currencies that we're doing is both are like Serato, which is I think the ideal currency in Kenya and pressure economics, where there's regular inflows of capital into the alternative currency system so that's just, it relates to second law of thermodynamics. Thanks Kevin. Just pasting Serato credit in the, in the chat. The reason the planet Earth works is the difference between local and global entropy. Here, think, you know, if we're a closed system to matter which we are there's going to be entropy but there's if there's energy coming in from outside the system where it's outside our system then in fact we are subsidized Earth is subsidized by the sun. It's a sustainable closed system that needs influx, whether it's solar energy or Kevin's case capital from the outside. What's highland clearances. Well, so that's when they cleared the, you know, the barbarians and the scots, because they were, they discovered with the spinning Jenny that they could commodify woe and so they cleared folks off and so they commodified land and they made people extraneous and then they had to, you know, then working for the manufacturing of the wall rather than, you know, cottage industries and stuff so highland clearances is one of the first massive commodification of land and private properties and then also commodified people. So like the enclosure acts with different. It was. Yeah, exactly.  And then, and then you claim the ownership of a clan's territory because they weren't in your registry system as owning. And also, then they people used to live on the land like raindrops and you would, you know, you'd be born in this hut and then you would grow up and marry and you'd like make a hut nearby and so forth and it was pretty organic on the land. And you like had food on the land you could feed yourself from things that you planted nearby. And then at the enclosure movements happened, because things like sheep like hey, this land is much better used if we graze sheep on it so we moved everybody off to road streets and villages and we, we organized and sort of corralled people to live in other places and push them off the land that they used to subsist on, and then often we often we got rid of the plots where they could actually grow some local food so now they needed money to actually eat. Right, and that that that that made everybody a laborer instead of just a citizen who was able to self subsist without necessarily a lot of money. So up on the west coast of Scotland, you should try to visit Auckland green it's a preserved cooperative village there were more than 1000 cooperative villages before the cash economy and, you know, they would do things like share the bull, and they would also share the arable land in years in exchange but then when some people started making money the cooperative villages all fell apart, and this was preserved by somebody became a bullbearing but wanted to preserve what he had grown up in. It's a really good good good afternoon to go to Auckland green. So, one of the things that we're living in right now is a whole series of enclosure movements. And I think one of the things we're trying to figure out is how to free ourselves of the enclosures and open source software is one way to open source and it's many derivatives whether it's free software or CC zero or whatever we want to call it but it's a whole series of information freely open data all those kinds of things is one way to avoid the enclosure capture and reselling of our lives and information and habits and preferences. It isn't just about sort of data it's sort of habits and preferences and all of that. What might what what else might we do and then how much. How much does that have to do with our well being. Simone you're, you're looking for solid solid to Genesis which is a topic we should bring in and focus on more. But how much does other people messing with our data affect our well being and maybe that's too narrow question for you but I'd love to see if we can start there. I'm sorry I'm not on video, we're having our house totally redone so I'm in a car right now. And I think that essentially what we're all about is trying to make sense of the world. And if we have too much attention through whether it's media or any other kind of instrument that tries to kind of manufacture our thoughts. That is certainly going to be good for our well being. The danger is is that sometimes in an effort to make sense of the world. There's people who just captures people, you know people's attention and meaning, and that causes a lot more danger. In terms of media, I think we're certainly escalating the amount and the level of inputs into our brain, and our brain I don't think is normally capable of handling that much information. I think it's certainly not helping well being, and especially when you're talking about people whose brain is being formed, like adolescents trying to figure themselves out, and things of that kind trying to get a sense of themselves. So, I actually have been listening talking about social media. I've been actually spending some time on clubhouse, and there's actually some very very interesting discussion. There's one group that's actually dealing with web three, which is more about the social media. And what intrigues me is what that's going to look like in terms of well being, where you can create an avatar of yourself. And what they're talking about is that particular avatar can be essentially in every one of the social media platforms that you interact with. Other people who work for Intel, people work for Google, we're not very happy with a lot of the things that people before talked about. So they're thinking about how through avatars and web three, we can get past Facebook. I think it's intriguing conversations, but that in itself causes a lot of different problems. So Jerry, when you talked about how people identified with, you know, self production, and things of that kind. Part of it was belonging to something physical, whether it's your religious group, family, what we're facing now is people are really losing a lot of the connection identity connection. And that's extremely dangerous on a personal level and political level. And one of the things that Facebook does is it makes sort of super conductive the motion of people between different groupings or groups, because it's all just through the interface you can go find a group and join a group or whatever which means being sucked into some kind of conspiracy group is easy, but it also means finding your way to your tribe ought to be easier. And I think some of that is happening I think some people are finding their way into associations that are highly productive that are really interesting that are there and they're using Facebook to organize extinction rebellion meetings or what have you, you know, different kinds of meetings. But I think a big piece of well being is belonging and feeling like you're part of a group that you have at your heart and that has you in their heart, and they have that have one another's mutual interest at heart, whatever that may mean because our identities are different, they're not all the same. Right. So anyway, and I wanted grace I was going to pass the mic to you also because I wanted to ask you to maybe explain to merge currencies and talk a little bit about that, and then whatever else you wanted to jump in with as well. Okay, so yeah, so one of the things that will did very early with grassroots economics was that he did a whole bunch of simulations about the concentration that can't capital. It's very obvious and you can find their very old YouTube videos with will run up from grassroots economics but you can see that he's actually running these simulations. And it's quite shocking that just by eliminating any interest bearing, not even giving like, which is negative interest, but just eliminating interest bearing the concentration, the capital doesn't end up concentrating with the people who earn the most. Because as soon as you're like a little bit of a better business person and you put it into an account, and then that savings account accrues money then you can invest more in your business and the concentration of capital accelerates tremendously, just because you're sharing money, and we're seeing you know we're at the tail end of that but just by eliminating that in his first experiments already he was able to create a much more thriving economy. And now, and it's not just about thriving economy because you really shouldn't be saving your money in Seraphil because it's a, like, it's not, you know, it's not real or whatever it's not a banked currency, necessarily. They want to discourage people from saving it. And they want to encourage more and more velocity of the money in the markets. So, he's implemented in a number of communities this thing where it's a small amount but there's a little tax if you're over a certain amount of balance at the end of the month.   And it's really about encouraging this, this local economy and not creating a concentration of capital. And it's, if you see the simulations it's really shocking how quickly it makes a difference. But the non-concentrating capitalist thing is really, really interesting. And if you scroll back to the days of grains and all that, I mean, there's loss with grain. Grain is, grain is interesting because you can tax it, you can store it, but then critters get into it, some of it goes moldy, silo catches fire, whatever, there's sort of wastage, there's there's general loss of grain so you kind of need to keep it in motion or it spoils. And the idea that a currency might be sort of like that is pretty interesting. And yet we've invented the opposite, where when you bank currency and take it out of commission, it earns interest and then that you know it's making more money and makes more money. And I really thought that that was against like the Bible. Call me crazy. And if you go look over the fence at Islamic finance, they go through a lot of gyrations to make sure they can still fund somebody buying a house but they're not charging interest they're anticipating in the appreciation or the value of the thing that's built. I mean Islamic finance has really, really interesting ways of looking at this very, very, very notion of interest. I think there's a ton there and it's really interesting that Seraph who comes out of that organization. So, so Kevin Grace and whoever else is interested and I would love to see if we can sort of figure out more about that and how it fits what we're thinking about here, but then what would you do to be helpful. And is there a way to adopt a community currency here because we're, we have plenty of side conversations here. Not everybody's sort of involved but but in different calls that we have during the week we're talking about, should we have a Dow here and is there a cryptocurrency that would be useful to you know OGM and it's and it's allied communities. There's something else should be played with NFTs and launch NFTs, I don't know. But, but those things seem more fanciful and I want to say dangerous I don't know, than these kinds of things which are which are attempts to bring money into circulation and I love Arthur Brock said years ago, the word currency is like current see it helps you see how value is flowing through a system. So it's useful in that way. So, yeah, you, I could go down that rabbit hole all day and I start my six week workshop with Arthur's, with Arthur's lecture about value, right and about Bessie the cow. Bessie the cow. Yeah, Bessie the cow. Yeah. And, and, and if I had, I've had my guest a couple of times as well but the thing is that this, we have to stop being so deluded that money is a store of value. Not like, if you just think of the things you value, you can't buy them like air I really I'm such a big fan and money devalues air relationships money devalues relationship. And so this is really not a good way of looking at value and I've been developing an economy with the eco villages and much more looks at values and reputation on on different, at different aspects of reputation. And the way in which that we interact with one another always has a reputational change right like oh do I talk too much right now or you know like right there's, and I'm I saying something intelligent or not and every moment that I continue to speak. There's an interaction in which 12 participants are developing a reputation about me. And it's interesting so you can start at zero and be like I'm just going to invite you over for a cup of coffee and start to develop a reputation from zero. And it can't be transferable. But if you're nice I'll let you stay for dinner too. And so you got something of value. You know, like that that whole thread is, is, you know, like I said I've got a six week workshop on it and I've been doing a couple years of research on it and would really be very interested in that conversation of what can we do with these in these communities, because what's what has happened is that we have a monoculture of communication methodology about value, but it's almost about everything. The monoculture has created a certain way, a certain limitation in the way that we can relate to one another. And the way governments relate to one another and all that stuff and so creating a new form of communication is fundamental to creating a better world and I'd really like to see a lot more. What I'd like to see is really a lot more recognition of the value that we have to each other that really is has nothing to do with bits and bytes on a, you know, computer. Yeah, which wasn't what I wanted to talk about but you just took me down my favorite rabbit hole. I was talking about that you were talking about the sense of belonging, which again this is a really important value. And you can see that the way that we deal with belonging or deal with contribution are very different. And, you know, being a member of a group, for example and I remember I was a member of a synagogue. Well I don't know if I was a member because every year the rabbi would ask for a donation and it kind of knew who to ask for what. I felt like you were really a member because like you're like I guess this is the right amount. You know, and, and, and at some point all of them, all the participants demanded a membership. They demanded it because we want to know we belong. Wow. Yeah, because they're like look, we can have it tiered like you know for single parents and for whatever. But you have to give us a price list because otherwise we don't know we belong for religion. You needed a price list from the synagogue. That's fascinating to me. Well it was interesting because you also some of it was political but it really, I've been to synagogue so I've gone to where you walked in and you felt like you belong, like the second you walked in in this place there was some stuff going on like, I don't want to go into it but you know there was a sense of like I want to know I'm a member. And, you know, you could say a number of hours, or whatever but you, I want to know what the criteria for being a member and I think in Facebook there is this, you're talking about like people want a sense of belonging like there isn't a criteria for belonging to a group. And one of the really scary things that I've heard. I heard with all these leaks was there was like, I can't remember what the number was but it was something like 70% of the, the like these, these evangelistic Christian groups were completely created by bots and populated by bots. And you could say well is that good or bad in some ways you'd be like well if there's total misfits they should be able to find a bot based group where they feel a sense of belonging and love. And that's a good thing right as long as there isn't something under, you know, insidious about that. Right, and I, you know I had a friend talk about well what if we had that for pedophiles like something that's completely simulated and at least they're over there. Right, and it's like, maybe that's good. Right. And there is like, right. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks grace. Gil mid mid bite sorry about that. Okay I wanted to respond to something Jerry you said about, you know, eight minutes ago and I've gotten off on what Grace was saying so let me just quickly try to touch on belonging and the Bible. Grace I've been to synagogues where I've gone for years and no one ever comes up and talks to me. And I've been to synagogues where I walk in the door and someone comes and greets me offers me a seat invites me to do an alia participate in the ritual of that morning, invites me home for lunch, total strangers so very different cultures and different places. The belonging thing is really important. And to us as humans and I've been thinking a lot ecologically about the challenge now is how do we, you know, I've been. Some of you don't know but I've been advising companies for decades on how to be more better stewards of the planet, etc. And I'm realizing that the game is not about how do we take better care of nature is how do we live as though we belong to the living world. It's not about the belonging with the belonging as a part of. And it produces a very different conversations when you think about it that way. I'm belonging and bought longing as Jerry calls it, though as a double-edged sword belonging is what draws people to Q&A. It's what feeds the trumpet community is this you know, at a certain level it's not so much ideological or thinking stuff through it's like it's feeling like belonging to something that matters. It's a very powerful way and can't be thought without addressing that or refeeding that in some kind of way so enough on that on money grace. I love what you've said and I would Jerry I would really value if we could do a call sometime in the future that's just looking at money and value in exchange this whole you know this whole ball of wax the grace was just during the earlier on. Let's see that. Easy thing to do before you proceed is to make that the topic of this check and call in two weeks given our rhythm of check ins and topics. A different thing to do is to set up a separate call, which I'm happy to do and the year the new year is starting and it would be a good topic to break into the new year so happy to do either or both. Let's start with the first races up for it in two weeks and then see where goes from there if we want to do more. Sounds great. Yeah. Jerry you on your reflection about the Bible and interest the Bible is very clear. You know it doesn't like interest. It doesn't like accumulation. The whole money lender things seems like a big deal in the Bible. It doesn't it doesn't like Kings. And the enterprise kind of went off the rails because it's it's very clear. Just a Bible. I mean the whole debt thing is, you know, as a reflection of Mesopotamia, Mesopotamian practice that had gone on for a couple of eons before that according to Michael Hudson of regular clearance of debts so there cannot be the accumulation and the growth of the creditor class. Jubilees. Jubilees. We are now in Judaism in the Schmidt year where land holdings are reverted. Land holdings are every 50 years that's reverted every, every, every seven slavery is a limited term practice. They weren't able to eliminate it but they will put lids on it. And this whole thing broke down and it broke down under the Roman occupation when the Jews were colonized people. And a lot of accommodation happened into the practice of traditions to reflect the needs of empire sounds familiar. Right. And it's like hanging out again and again here. So and actually the word for interest in Torah is Neshek which means bite. It's like something that takes a bite out of your side. And it's, it's a very frowned upon the Islamic banking has managed to more successfully maintaining that tradition than the Jewish tradition has all of the Islamic find ways to work around it. But it's a grace. I'd love to see that simulation. So I haven't seen anybody really unpack what that would look like and what it's dynamics would be and how it works. So thank you for that. That's it. Right. Can I chime in on that. Please, Simon, go ahead. Yeah, part of the issue of belonging is very central to a lot of what we're talking about that might be another interesting conversation. What we're working on in terms of salute to Genesis is trying to work back to first principles. I'm a big fan of alone mosque and a few of the other physicists, engineers who always go back to first principles and first principles for us as human beings is one. We develop a prediction machine, which is the brain. And then one important part of it is having to belong, because that in a very major way, you know, magnifies our chances for survival and passing on our genes. So part of what I'm trying to do, and maybe that might be an interesting topic is what our first principles for us as individuals and communities, getting back to some of the things that deal and grace we're talking about. What I'm doing as part of my project is working on a salute to genetic approach to trying to deal with various stages of life. So for example, this year I'm focusing on prenatal. How can we understand what happens to individuals tragically, and also the communities they grow into, in terms of creating the best outcome, or the best environment for an outcome. The other piece is drug and alcohol, because people say that the other side of addiction is actually loneliness. I'm really seeing a lot of loneliness happening. So, two of the projects I'm working on is applying salute to genetic concepts to individuals and the communities in which they live in, and thinking about how to make them as health promoting as possible. A lot of our problems are solvable through social hacks, not budgets, not lots of money injected, although money is needed in lots of different quarters, however, so many of the things that are broken are fixable through connection belonging community, interdependence, mutual aid, responsibility, all those kinds of things and those are, and those are the elements that make up the fabric of society and there's a reason we call it the fabric of society. One thing about it is that by getting involved, that's one of the healthiest things people can do. So when you're talking about being connected to a religious institution there's different level of being connected. And if we're talking about Judaism already, there's different level of giving staka, giving contribution, and the highest level is contributing of yourself with no one knowing that or not trying to claim any credit for that. And that's part of it. I mean, we're so dependent now on non-for-profit organizations, grants, you know, like government where we forget what we as individuals can do in communities. So definitely I agree with what you said. Thanks, Simone. Kevin and Doug. Thank you. Yeah, I put a link to an essay I wrote for a Mississippi literary group. There was, back in the 1700s, the dirt farming Baptist and Methodist preachers approached the Anglican plantation or some said they want to preach to the slaves and they went off and thought about it and they had two conditions. One is that Exodus had to be spiritual, the whole Swing Low Sweet Charity, and then you couldn't mention Jubilee. Jubilee. And then six different colonies had laws against that Exodus had to be spiritual. And then Robert Moses, who was the architect of the Freedom Summer in Mississippi, had to do a rewrite of Exodus to let older black folks know that Exodus included them so you could climb the steps of the courthouse to free yourself by voting. And it's a pretty interesting kind of thing that they, and Walter Bruggeman, who's a, what we call an old test with scholar, asked him one time, you know, why did it take the Jews, you know, for the years in the wilderness, they could not imagine freedom. And the same thing was true with African Americans that the lack of imagination had been institutionalized by their plantation actually by the by the folks who preached to them. Doug, please. And you're muted. Thanks. I'm struck by the idea of going to first principles and the first principle I want to go to a psychological, which is that the brain mind grows through relationships. And my brain mind is paying attention to every neuron in my body as I pay attention to you. Every hormone, the whole thing. Now what I noticed is, most of you are pretty good at keeping eye contact with the screen. I have a hard time with that because if I look at you, and I don't see you responding to me. It breaks the cycle and it becomes actually painful. I think that we have a need, a developmental need to be in a relationship with each other in concrete ways, and anything that narrows that channel, like what we're doing right now is good in some ways but really bad in other ways. I find it actually painful. And so I try and figure out what that's about. And it's, that's that key experience that if I'm looking at you and I'm not seeing your face, responding to me looking at you, me. It feels like a massive disconnect. I have two tiny, two tiny hacks for that dog that I'm doing right now. And I don't know that they patched the whole that you just described but one of them is hand signals which don't interrupt and give like this is enthusiasm and you can do this you can dance around you can do whatever you can do this. But isn't eye contact, I get it, but but helps. And then the other one which is defeated in zoom gallery view when anybody raises their hand because they can no longer move the little cubes around. But the moment somebody starts speaking, I move their little rectangle up nearest the lens on my bezel so that as I'm watching them I'm not. So right now I'm looking at John Kelly who's in the lower left and you can tell right now I'm looking at Grace who's directly under my camera and you can tell, because the distance, you know, we're really good at perceiving where somebody else is looking. And that still doesn't fix the problem, but but it's a it's an effort to sort of try to not distance to distance myself less from who, from whoever speaking or whatever is going on. Anyway, some small hacks but they don't always work. Pete you wanted to say something. Now you're talking, talking locally. Julian, you're muted. There's a local hack for that to you press the unmute button thing. So the. Yeah, one nice thing about the zoom interface and I'm being sarcastic is that the hot key for muting doesn't work if you have the chat window displayed. That's interesting. I wanted this was actually for Doug, although what you were just talking about is included as the devices such that you couldn't have the something positioned they will reflect lights that when you look at the center of the screen. It's still picking up your camera but at least this way it looks like you're talking, you're looking at the person who's talking. And I'm wondering if the thing that zoom is enforced is that people are looking at the screen whereas the cameras above the screen so everybody's looking down. And I'm wondering how much this contributes to what you were just saying Doug. There's also a third party camera you can buy that hangs from the top of your screen down into the middle of your screen it's actually a little a little a little camera. I bought that it's called center cam. Does it doesn't work. It works okay I don't have it on right now. So right now I'm looking at camera which looks like I'm not looking at you and center cam I would be looking right here. I've found it to be extremely valuable for just this problem. I also point and it may be a little bit goofy that when people are saying things that I like to respond to I'm, I, you know, I move my head. I know we do the thing with the hands I do the thing with my head I just trying to try to provide some sort of visual feedback Doug I feel very much what you're talking about like, like you said there's there's good and bad to this and I can be with all of you. But it's not like being with all right here I am I'm now looking at the screen and not the camera again. It takes it's I mean it takes a lot of personal discipline to to try to part of the dojo thing Jerry of like training one's body to be appropriate in this medium, which is not like regular world. And anyway, anytime we train ourselves to adapt like that we lose other things. I mean, you know you have to incorporate behaviors you have to groove something you have to make it kind of autonomic automatic in different ways and then in so doing, then later when the situation is changed and we actually get to mingle with humans and, and, and, and like sniff each other's pheromones. We will have other habits that are that are like grooved in and one of the things I worried about really early in the pandemic is, will we all will for the rest of our lives because we have had these two now almost you know going into three years of pandemic. It's not quite too yet but will we be hesitant to shake hands hug all those kinds of things in the future, because we had a couple years where it was just off.  Are you going, is that going to affect you in later life, because there was this period where everybody warm asks and you couldn't do much about it. Oh, for the record I don't go to meetings to sniff pheromones. You just, you order those in from Amazon. I've got a cat. Oh, that's good. That totally totally takes care of that. I used to babysit and didn't realize I was allergic to cats and like I'd go home and read and sniffly had no idea why. Long ago. So where does that put us. Well, I like this. I like this question about what do we want to see increase in the world in 2022. I'd like to hear more people talk about that. If people are open to that. And I'd like to, I mean, I'd like to marry that I think to what Paul was saying a little earlier which is, and I think several people have said different versions of this which is why can't we see each other as co inhabitants of this pale blue dot. As members of life together, whatever it is but but why, why is any sense of global unity connectedness belonging so hard to get to. And then, maybe touching back on the religion question, why are so many religions divisive instead of inclusive in this way. I mean religions are like you're in my religion not yours. I mean I'm in mind you're in yours we don't like each other because we belong to these different group that that can't be right. I mean seriously, what went wrong with our like God models that that not being a member of the right club means that the other people because of where they were born how they were born doesn't work. My great hope for 2022 is that we have a much more straightforward approach, a pragmatic approach to climate change and what's happening with that and with things like soil and ocean, and then we take it head on. So much of what we're doing is okay but it's a distraction from that task. I agree. Is anybody more motivated to leave Facebook to go find people and help them feel like a sense of belonging. I'm going to do the January off of Facebook. Good idea. That sounds that sounds excellent. One thing that I did before I stopped using Facebook and it was really hard I mean I stopped WhatsApp and I stopped Instagram I stopped all of that is for a couple of weeks, I just looked at who was liking my stuff. Who was I informing really about my whereabouts and what I was doing, and how many of those people are people I really care about. And so I noticed that most of them were kind of casual friends most people who are liking it. I was like, it's actually okay with me that they don't know I'm in Brussels today. You know, like whatever it is and, and, and so that was the first thing and then I noticed that the people I cared about my family the people who they also were among the people who paid attention to my post. Those are the people I wanted to inform. And then, you know, so I was like, well I can do that on our family chat, but then it was really obvious that on your small family group chat which is all our cousins and whatever me they're 15 or 20 of us on there. Like you don't post a picture of yourself having a great dinner or you know showing off your vacation like that's obnoxious in this situation.  And I was like, well that's so interesting isn't it, because immediately I had no socially acceptable way of kind of telling my family hey here I am in Brussels right. And I was like, wow, how did it become so acceptable to just boast about all the good things in your life all the time to everybody. Like how did that because it immediately wasn't okay anymore. If you want to talk about your last vacation you call up you're like hey how are you doing you know and ever, and then it's okay it's not boasting but they kind of have to hear your tone of voice to know that you're not boasting about it but just having a friendly conversation so yeah that was a really interesting discovery for me. And the last holiday season not this Christmas not this holiday season but last Christmas last year we got our Christmas card from a family that their acquaintances they're not very close to us, but the card was completely tone deaf to hey we're actually in the middle of a pandemic. The card was basically sort of boastful and showing off kind of stuff that had happened in their lives and made zero mention that anything was going on in the world. And I think April wrote her friend and said, hey dude that's a little off it was just, it just like rubbed us in both immediately entirely the wrong way. Doug. A version of needing to be happy is smiling for the photograph, which I consider a real pathology. Actually, if you look at pictures up until in the early 1900s of groups people are not smiling. That's actually because you took long exposures to actually capture. That's one explanation but I don't think it's the whole one. Okay, because when cameras got faster. It took a while for the got a smile for the camera to catch on. Okay. And what's striking to me is that if you look at a face that's not smiling, you can read it better than you can read a face that smiling smiling actually breaks the connection between the face and the underlying emotional state. And so I think but the need to got to show your smiling smile for the camera all that stuff that we live with all the time is really pretty toxic actually. So RBF is a good thing.  Much better, much better. And is everybody familiar with the difference between emotional work and emotional labor. No, please. So, and I'm trying to pull this out of my out of my memory. I can post it from my brain but emotional labor is jobs that require you to smile.  Emotional emotional work is paying attention to what has to be done in the meeting for emotions and a lot of a lot of emotional work lands on women, because women understand those dynamics better because men are often just oblivious to them. Because roles and stereotypes and all that kind of stuff but emotional work is noticing that so and so sitting in the corner looking kind of sad and quiet and hasn't hasn't done anything and stepping over and saying you okay. Emotional emotional work, and it's not a part of the job description right emotional labor is is labor that requires you to be happy and maybe other other forms of emotions.  That's kind of emotional work and I hate that the word work is attached to that makes sense, but but it's emotional care might be a much better phrasing for it. Well, emotional work in a work setting is still sort of interesting as work. So the care for the emotions is really the important umbrella, but the fact that it's emotional work means that the group will benefit enormously from having those things actually taken care of that that's it that's an important part of a high functioning group is that work. So Pete did I get the difference correctly. Cool. Yeah, Pete has actually had an implant. He's not turning his head because there's a like a light fiber jack in the middle of the back of his skull and he has directly wired into the network now. He is that he is the alpha prototype of the neural lace project. He needs to log table. Yeah. And therefore there is no gap now between an utterance and very soon in a couple of OGM calls I'm expecting that Pete will pre post to the chat what the person was about to say. I think that's coming. Pre cog. Isn't that on the feature list Pete. Yep. Yeah. Welcome to call nice to see you. We talked about you most we talked about you most of the call. We did. I just thought I'd pop in and say hello at the end of this 2021 and I know it's only the last few minutes of your call but I don't know been thinking about you guys and open all our well. Thank you. The question. Yeah, you mean the initial the original question. Sure. So let me actually go back and find it here. So we kind of started the conversation with what are the qualities we would like to increase in the world and why, which Paul Crafell put in in the conversation. And Scott if that triggers anything for you please feel free to riff. And then we went lots of different lots of different interesting places from there. I'm actually modeling the behavior and I didn't realize it. Answering slowly. There's a practice of taking a breath before stepping into conversation. I'm forgetting where that comes from but it's good. Yeah, I'm noticing that we've were losing our ability to finish sentences or finish thoughts because you know we always have that interest in jumping in I'm terrible at that I want to jump in because I get excited about that. I noticed that it's better when I let someone fully finish their thought, especially when I disagree with them. Because I usually am slightly wrong, at least in what I thought they were going to say next or how they were going to finish that thought. But also, as we discussed many times before talking is thinking. And I'm letting them think and I've often found that they contradict themselves and realize it and get to a better place, just by allowing them to finish their thought. And if I jump in with the first thing that they say that might not even be their actual thought. They just haven't sorted it out yet, but I if I can give them that space and be okay with hearing things that I might not want to hear and maybe they didn't even want to say yet. But giving them that ability to say those things that's that's something I've noticed my life is better the people around me are better when that happens and so that is a quality I would like to see more of. Totally was not about interrupt you saying that that's for sure. And I'm, I love what you said Scott thank you for that reminds me of two stories, which some of you might have heard one of them, they both come out of Quaker ism, which I was a fan of, and still I'm a fan of Quaker. I was introduced to Quaker ism when I lived in Connecticut and a friend of mine saw that I was glum after a breakup. And he said, Hey, the family and I've been going to what Wilson monthly meeting would you like to join us like what. And the moment the like the greeter at the door is a rotating voluntary position the moment the greeter john Lee shook my hand. I felt entirely welcome and included and he handed me a little, a little pamphlet that says, Here's what silent meaning is about. And I sat down in, in, you know, in the meeting house and read it and I was like, Wow, and I stuck. So two things one is that Quakers have a nice saying which is you should only break the silence to improve on it. And one of the things that makes friends meeting actually work is that you don't reply to somebody else's message during silent worship. You actually sort of wait and listen and there's a there's a tremendous interesting role that silence plays in Quaker meeting which is beautiful. And it's hard to have a bunch of excited people with a lot to say in a room and maintain that kind of rhythm because it would take months and months to have the conversation we just had in the last hour and a half, but I but I love that. And then the second thing is, at one point in my life in Connecticut I attended an evening session where somebody was teaching Quaker process with an attention for business or something like that. And he asked us a question, and all of us were like, and he said, Why don't we just hold that question for three minutes and just like go into silence.  Like, like, how, how have I gone through life where this, you know, Oh, Arnold Horschach is my instinctive response. And I go, I go right into action like, I'm pretty quick I can I can answer that. And the three minutes made all of our answers more considered. It was fabulous. And I was just sad, I mean I was happy to have discovered that but sad that I'd made it that old without without having had that happened for me. So, so you've you one thing you said, I never realized why it worked. So you said something about having the conversation. My thought that came to mind I can't remember exactly what you said was that when I'm able to do this I can have the conversation once. And by that I mean we can actually whatever the thing is we can, we can get it and if I don't do that if I answer if I jump in if I want to do that. What I'm doing is having the conversation over and over, because we didn't really get to the point where we had. We had the conversation where both people were able to actually, or one person even was able to express the full thought and we would get to the real thing. So that's interesting to me I'm going to have to think about that is that what I know what it was you said you want to jump in and we want to. We don't want to have that space and time because it's going to take forever. I was like well, it might take longer right now. But in the long haul maybe it takes less time, because now we actually hurt each other so that's what it brought to mind. Another phenomena of Quaker meeting is that if you go quiet.  Gilda, do you want to jump in. Well, I guess I did. I didn't awesome. I love how that works. Yeah. Just to what what Doug said before this Doug has been. You may have noticed using the word body mind to remind us that this is not a brain process we're talking about it's a whole body process but mind is also something that lives here among us all and that's very demonstrated. We're the thoughts are not mine the thoughts. They arise together for not for now do once. I remember challenge somebody who was talking about I think this and that he said well you're not thinking person, you know, bristle how dare you say they said I thinking it's something that's happening to you. I found that a very rich thought and observing what we do here and what happens quite committed on the rest it's something that arises in us from Lord was right. Anyway, thanks Gil. There's a couple words we use we throw around like collective intelligence collaborative sense making thinking together hive mind. There's a whole bunch of sort of phrases that fall around here I don't know everybody probably probably has their preferences there. Paul, please jump in. You are still muted. There we go. No, you've lowered your hand. Oh, was raising your hand accidental. As soon as you're talking to me. Yes. I just wanted to share something in terms of Scott. I remember a story my brother told me he became a deacon on his church. And he noticed after several years that he and the younger deacons are always right in there talking and they're trying to make a discussion and he noticed that the older deacons just require it. And then after all the younger deacons had talked a lot the older deacons would say something and that would just resolve everything. And so my brother started going I think I'll talk less and listen more. And I think that's the process of moving from a younger deacon to an older deacon. Along those lines I understand that in some First Nations communities when they hold a council they always allow the young people go first, you know, and they progress up the generations and then the elders speak last. And that way everybody gets to talk and there's actually ties to a very well known cognitive bias of if you're in a meeting and you let the senior people talk first that junior people will never speak against them they'll never introduce no ideas. So this idea of let's start with the kids and let work all the way up and then the elders have the last word. I think it's got a lot of wisdom to it. We've we've run through our 90 minutes. If anybody has any words you might want to offer to close this call that would be great. If not, I will take us out. I'll offer some more. You alluded to the one of your alluded to this idea that when we pause and listen, we have the conversation once instead of many times. Scott, and the nature of communication is that after you've said it it disappears. If you've been listened to. And I feel that these conversations are like that like people have listened to me and I have listened to them, and something gets created and something disappears. Okay, that was perfect. Thank you for that. And this is our last call for 2021. I am extremely grateful for you in pandemic times there's sort of nothing like habit a zoom habit, where you see people and get to know each other and try to do something together. So I just want to offer my thanks, and, and I think it's my thanks. So, see you on the inner tubes and next week. Thanks everybody. Happy new year everybody stay safe, be healthy. Many thanks everyone.


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Also, INEC in Lagos state on Saturday conducted a mock accreditation exercise in 12 polling units across the six lucky government areas to test the functionality of the bimodal voter accreditation system ahead of the polls. The exercise, which began at about 8.30 am and ended at 2.30 pm, recorded a massive turnout of voters across the selected lucky government areas. The state-of-the-art intellectual commissioner, Mr. Ushabua Bajie, who monitored the conduct of the exercise in Zulu-Lirri Keja and Shomoluluki government areas, gave satisfactory marks on the functionality of the beavers. According to him, intended voters got accredited within one or two minutes through the system. The essence of this is to show our people that beavers will work, like I've said in other areas. If politicians allow us to do our work, we'll work effectively, and politicians should not compromise our staff. If they compromise our staff, bypass the beavers, it means we'll have overvoting. Any polling unit we have overvoting is cancellation. So far, we have not seen any problem because part of the problem you could say is that maybe the beavers is not working well, but all the areas, because they have been properly configured before they were bought here, fully charged, that we worked in about five o'clock in the evening. So if that is the case, and we also have backup in case of any problem, we also have hundred beavers, even the one that we have is a faulty, but it's not possible to be faulty. So they are all new. And the legal state, we have 13,025 polling units. We already have all the beavers, they are being configured now for the election. So far, we can put ourselves about 75, 78 percent ready because we have to train our staff. And you know this is a new device, but the iDoc staff is going to take about four days to train them because unlike the other equipment of a smart car reader, this is a new device by Moda in nature, and we are going to train them properly to understand this, not just training, but not theoretical training, practical training.