What's going on guys? We're back with another episode of the after hours podcast We have Alex coming back on Yeah, perfect, man He's gonna hopefully be a nice recurring guest and we'll have him on a bunch to talk about everything going on so So I guess Alex, what have you been noticing kind of going on in the market right now? Yes, so I mean last time we spoke we mentioned that you know, we think inflation is kind of peaking because You know energy prices have gone down Real estate prices have gone down commodity prices have come down Even even Elon Musk came out recently and said that he thinks inflation is peaked and to be honest that guy He's in the game enough because of all the raw materials he has to buy for Tesla, right? So they have to buy these Tesla materials six months eight months a year in advance, right? So these guys know what the prices of these commodities are these prices these guys know what it It looks like kind of looking forward. So he said they're coming down already, right? Yeah, he said he said He said they're coming down He said that he thinks inflation is peaked and look he's not an economist But he's also the smartest and richest guy in the world. So that has to do with something. Yeah And just yesterday, so we're recording this on August 11 So just yesterday the CPI numbers CPI is the consumer price index which basically measures inflation the numbers came out And for the first time and it feels like a year the inflation number came down, you know people I think the expected number was eight point seven percent and Ended up being eight point five percent and when that number came in lower than expected It means that inflation might have peaked and the market just rallied straight up every single stock with a bid Doesn't matter if it's AMC doesn't matter if it's GME if it had a bid that bid went straight up So that's kind of where we're at now And you know in terms of how long this is all gonna take to fix, you know the market rally because Traders are betting that okay now the Federal Reserve isn't doesn't have to be as aggressive with raising rates The Federal Reserve might even drop interest rates Yeah, and you know some of these companies are slowly gonna start to rebound. So that's kind of where we're at now It's kind of nuts It's nuts because we had this long period of like a Aggressive pullback with I guess a lot of fear and like anxiety and then in like one day It kind of felt like sentiment definitely changed a huge amount. I guess the problem is like right now It's like I think everyone's still scared I know I'm I'd be scared if I'm like kind of portfolio building because it's like how do you How do you buy into this and like not feel like we're gonna have a harsh pullback at some point soon And I feel like it has to happen Yeah, I mean look at if you look at Apple bro Apple's like 8% away from all-time highs.  Yeah happening in large cap market Yeah, I know I think so too I think for me though like looking at this five like like to me like the most like you four top is like Okay, now we're back at like 420 on the spy. We have weed stocks that have started to take off We have meme stocks that are starting to take off. We have don't die, bro I think I should just invest in them. Yeah, we have there was a stat out there that said Facebook is down 50% on the year Tesla is down 30% on the year Game stop is up 15% up on the year. So yeah, that's in the meme stocks.  Oh, no, I know But I think like that is like a pretty like euphoric top to me So and this is just my opinion I think that we're definitely we're in for some type of pullback And I think that like like I learned this from battle a long time ago like because I do long a lot and the the first kind of bounce always like Not like the first bounce pattern, but like if you're looking at like kind of like Okay, something has tanked that first kind of like bounce that everyone starts to long Is usually fake, you know, like I would say the the the bounces before everyone was just expecting them to drop Everyone was just expecting them to drop and they did drop But now we have everyone like longs who are just like like Like I've noticed on twitter like the sentiment has definitely changed like we've gone from bear market sentiment on twitter to Okay, now we're long again and now everything's great and the problems have not been fixed or you know The problems are all fixed. We're all good and we're ready to go to 500 To me when I see that sentiment I'm like, okay, we're we're due for like some type of sharp pullback. I think like to catch people off guard because So many like I think we're definitely going to squeeze some shorts out We might have a day or two or three of this type of kind of like rally But I think longer term we're in for like some type of pullback and then once we get into the fall Uh, like I think we're gonna kind of pivot down into elections once we kind of get into the fall Then we can start to build like a solid base and get back up. That's just me though Like obviously like, you know, we don't always have a crystal ball but I think we're due for some type of pullback because you know And that's just me like I when I see a bunch of people going long It always kind of worries me because like in covid everyone was fighting it, you know Every single person was fighting it like the sentiment was like, but it has to go down But it has to go down but it has to go down, you know Because everyone felt that after we had that drop that that whole collapse was coming that that whole thing was coming But now I feel like people are like, oh, but it has to go up But it has to go up but it has to go up So I think we need to kind of change that sentiment to people starting to fight Like my biggest long gains are going to be when people are fighting all the time 100% when people are like Oh, but this is the top but this is the top but this is the top but this is the top, right? And it just keeps going going going because everyone feels the same way And I think that we need to kind of move a little bit lower In order to really get that that that rally in but I mean you got to go lower You got if look if you're thinking about the long-term perspective of how any market goes higher or how things rebound Is stocks need to go down Trap shorts and then continue to make their move higher, right? So right now it's almost essentially like, you know, they're trapping the lawns, right? So exactly as market participants, bro, I'm an optimist, right? I want the market to go up I want there to be a bull market because the more of a bull market that there is in large caps The more of a bull market there is in small caps that we trade the the more Crazy the large cap bull market is the shittier stocks run in small cap world. So I'm one I'm an optimist.  Oh, yeah, me too That's what I want. So to make that happen We need to go lower. We need to trap shorts. We need to convince them that hey, you know, the world is crashing again And then as we saw, you know last quarter all these big companies, they had amazing earnings So it doesn't matter what we think about recession. It doesn't matter what we think about depression So long as companies like apple and microsoft and google make money the market's going to go up I think the s&p 500 is like eight percent apple So so long as apple continues to make money that's going to dictate the entire market. That's not going anywhere That's not going anywhere. No, no, bro.  I guess I guess my biggest thing is like I agree because the market needs to come down to kind of cycle out the trapped longs and all that But what's gonna happen? Like we need like a I feel like nothing's gonna change in the next like six months It's gonna cause an event that will create this kind of panic Which is like not necessarily a good thing because I feel like the longer we rally the longer that we're gonna end up in The biggest road there has to be just like in small caps. There has to be a catalyst. So for example, god forbid Uh, china goes to war with taiwan. Yeah, exactly taiwan That's gonna be a catalyst. Yeah, but if nothing happens until 2023 The federal reserve is probably gonna lower interest rates They're gonna make debt cheap again And people are gonna start the cycle of borrowing money that they don't have to buy stocks to buy houses buy crypto to buy Whatever the hell they want and the game is gonna start all over again Right, so there has to be a catalyst for things to go down and that could be another war That could be company earnings going down that could be anything But in from what i've seen right now the only catalyst for things to get better Is that the fed potentially is gonna lower interest rates in 2023?  Yeah, exactly. You know if you do the opposite of what they say That's how you make money Yeah, no 100 and so So alex I have a question for you So because I get this question a lot from guys in mc2 But you know, how do you go about in like times like this especially when it's like turbulent or things are going up going down How do you add yourself to like your long-term portfolios and stuff like that? Like how do you even judge that and and you know kind of add more pieces or take some off or whatever so So I actually want to do like a full episode on like longer term, you know capital investing but The number one thing is to be able to buy these things you need to have cash on hand That's the number one thing is what I've noticed is a lot of people they don't have cash, bro But for example, like let's say let's say you got $5,000 in the bank But you're spending $5,000 a month on credit card bills on rent on whatever the hell it is When the opportunity does come that apple is at 130 You can't fucking put any money, you know it because you wasted all your money So the big thing to do is to accumulate cash, right? I think having about a 10% cash position is a good amount So let's say you got a like your entire net worth is 100 grand You should at all times have at least 10 cash in the bank. Maybe even more Just to be able to have in case of an emergency Just to be able to have an invested in case like you have an opportunity And now that number change if you got a million dollars It's probably safe to have 100k in the bank just waiting so that when shit does go down or i'm gonna deploy 50k here I'm gonna deploy 20k here, whatever that may be so the number one thing is you gotta make sure you got cash on hand So it was actually really funny because One of our moderators the bear I was trading the meme stocks this week and he's like, oh, like are you gonna buy like a new fancy watch after these meme stocks?  So you better believe I'll be buying app That's just the way it is right and obviously it's not investment advice.  So I'm not going to be investing in those stocks I'm gonna be investing the stocks that you know have long-term potential and always like right now right now I can't justify buying apple again. I can't justify buying tesla 900 I am selfishly waiting for another market pullback for them to trap the shorts to be able to get better prices because now Shit is extended again, right?  It's around here at least I'm starting to see a lot of houses sit there for Along there's cell houses on the market, which you know, you go back six months You put a house on the market for a million and be gone the next day for two million It was insane And even even me bro, because I I was moving I moved out of my old place and I got this new place here And I was looking at places and dude, no exaggeration If you don't give them exactly their asking price plus more There's no joke 25 other people that will take it for above asking price So that's kind of where I was at and I kind of ended up buying at the top or I'm renting right now I ended up renting at the top because I had to I was going to be homeless But for me, I don't think that shit is going to go down as bad as 2008 I don't think there's going to be mass foreclosures.  You got to have the income. You got to have everything So I don't think that's going to happen like crazy Maybe a 20 dip and that's going to be plenty enough for me right because like Last time Harry is buy it now When the interest rates come down next year refinancing for lower and that's it Yeah, no, I 100% agree with that. Yeah, I find the Qualifications are a lot crazier. I think the only thing though like and I think I talked about this before is that I was listening to a podcast here in Canada and he he said like Before kind of the pandemic before the real estate bubble Picked up You know 20% of his transactions were these kind of reverse mortgages So people were basically taking out loans against the equity of their houses and Which you know, that's that's fine. He said during covet now like 50 to 80 percent of his transactions Are now those reverse mortgages in Canada. I don't know what that is in the u.s. Or like how you go about that but a lot of people have been taking You know loans against their houses. So if that kind of falls and let's say we lose You know 20 percent in value. I do wonder what happens to those people Where is it just like what what kind of like happens to your loan? Like do you need to like Like put money back in or are you still underwater? Yeah, water.  I was like, where are people getting this money? Where are people getting this money? You know like especially in Canada too because like Canada isn't like the u.s. in terms of like economy wise, right like There are like a couple good jobs here and that's really it Like if you're not a doctor or you're not a lawyer or let's say a stock trader because like, you know, I'm a stock trader If you're not one of those things, you know, it's pretty difficult to to bring in like a lot of money So a lot of people are buying new boats new trailers new new cars Like I was seeing here and I was kind of wondering But it does make sense that a lot of people were kind of going to the bank and saying Hey, I want to take a loan out against the the value of my house and they just expect that when they sell their house They're just gonna get all that money. They might be taking that loan against their house to buy more bitcoin Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you never know like bitcoin to the moon, baby. But uh, yeah, that's another one I think bitcoin, uh, that's down. That's too for a pullback too. That baby cannot bounce Yeah, the thing is bitcoin is built on hype, bro So they need to get people hyped up about it and if everyone is broke and everyone has no money Like I was actually talking to this about my I was talking to this with my dad the other day and I was explaining to him I was like, look if People if gas prices are up Rent prices are up Food prices are up every type of expenses up.  So yeah, it's not it's not easy and it always goes back to the same fact is stockpile cash right now Stockpile cash to be able to deploy At an opportunity that you see fit Yeah, I had a really good conversation with a guy. Um, he works in crypto I forget what company is it's he's a client of mine and we were just chatting about it and he was saying how Kind of like that like the hype of crypto is almost like gone And I feel like we're at this period now where we might start to see the companies that will actually have like value And like maybe there are some that there obviously have to be some cryptocurrency companies that are gonna do something in the future But I think now it's like that's speculated that excitement isn't there anymore the world's changed I mean it's changed a lot since covet right people don't have the time to even like care and like a lot of people feel like They're not smart enough or they miss the boat and you know So I think I think it's gonna have a much harder time balancing than people think And and who knows man, who knows where we end up in like six months. Yeah. Yeah, the thing is about stocks They have institutional money behind it. So you got like the saudi trillionaires. You got the Multi multi billionaires in dubai that have all this cash all these oil tycoons. Yeah They're not allowed to be investing in bitcoin because there's no regulation So all that capital gets deployed into the us market. So the us markets, although are still down You know, it's the strongest markets in the world. It's the most investable market in the world So that's where the most of the capital is going to be deployed, you know Yeah So how do you guys feel right now about like small caps? What's going on with uh, how are you guys trading? How's you know market sentiment? You think I mean as we're talking bvy is still bouncing again I mean things are strong right now, right? So how are you guys doing? Yeah, harry you go for it. Okay. So for me this week It's been a little bit slower for me due to kind of like lack of pumps Like I found that this week has been like yesterday We saw like everything fade and the only thing that really kind of popped was AERC that one I ended up getting in I found but To me it was just too suspicious the way it kind of dropped So I took some at like 570 and then they ended up issuing a frigging pr Which was Needs opportunity man. I was just luck So, um, I thought maybe we could build back to like red to green in that situation But anyway, the issue this pr. So you like sell over like previous size. That's it. But I mean other than that I found I found for me at least like Compared to the week when I was kind of away it's definitely a little bit slower this week for me and it's not necessarily because of Like that the market isn't strong because like things are strong We've seen bounces on like bbby. We've seen bounces on the mean stock stuff like that But for me, I've noticed that with the day one runners like they're getting like And this just to me they're getting like a little bit weaker It's getting a little bit kind of easier for shorts other than that pr Which was like that. I mean that was like the odds of that dropping like who knows but um I found that it's been getting like a little bit weaker like like we haven't seen like Uh, things have been able to run like we saw like with tblt or things been able to run like we saw with like The other stocks that were just strong and had a bid like every single day You know, you could rely on those stocks to have a bid Now it's kind of like The day one runners are just testing high. It's not really breaking out of that kind of range and going back down lower um, other than a couple that have been like super super tight range, but Um, I've seen it getting like it's not necessarily weaker, but it's not necessarily stronger either So to me, I'd rate it kind of like medium where like we're not we don't really have crazy runners But we are getting some action and we are getting a lot of stocks kind of coming up So for me, I'd rate it like kind of like neutral.   Yeah pumps have been really weak And that's something I've noticed is like, obviously, you know, a lot of us know guys who push stocks or try to whatever I just feel like they can't get momentum and my biggest thing right now is just like you said, it's range So it's really hard to it's really hard to I think size into anything Responsibly while there just isn't the range, right bbb Why the meme stocks have been a bit of a blessing this past week because they all obviously came back up from like Six bucks or 12 bucks and ran now. We have a bunch of meat on the bone, which is nice But I think it's a short, you know, as long as you're Just kind of building into a position right now and you're like adding to winners rather than kind of like scaling into these Like grinders that keep kind of happening. I think the market I think the market for shorts has been okay I think it's been a pretty solid like last two weeks Um, which means, you know, we I think we're still do for that like kind of like f you runner And I feel like we've been saying it for a long time now But at some point we I think we're going to get that thing that just completely lights us up because I mean large caps Obviously, everything's running. Everything's doing good. And I think at some point we will get that Yeah, it's all based on speculation money I talk about this in the videos is like the stocks that we trade these small cap stocks are all based on hype They need like a catalyst. They need people to speculate on them, right? And when the entire market is down in the drain when the entire market's crashing There's not much people to speculate on these stocks So now that the market has slowly rebounded a little bit, obviously, it's not rebound a lot But it's rebounded enough to get people to say, all right, I'm feeling confident in these markets again I'm feeling confident to for lack of a better word Gamble on these small cap stocks and then we're getting these crazy moves in terms of a giant runner I mean, we had HKD the problem with HKD is I don't really know anyone that got stuck short I don't really have retail participation And as we get closer to the end of the year as you guys know November is zombie month, right? November is zombie month So that's going to probably be when we get some crazy move, but you know, it's bound to happen. It's bound to happen you know, it's these are When people are the most caught off guard When people least expect it is when this is going to happen. So in terms of like overall trading man I mean, dude, I can't complain. It's not what it used to be last year But like the MIC process works man, people don't people don't understand that Just being able to walk away at 10 30 might be that missing piece that you've been kind of lacking Or maybe following the side plays the sympathy plays. Maybe that's what you've been training the hot stock short every single day So our process has been proven to work and the reason why our process has been proven to work Is because I stick to it every single day my job as An educator my job as a mentor is to show you what is possible if you follow our strategy So it is in my best interest to follow the strategy because the strategy is proven to work and by me proving that it works Other people can make money. So it's still a great year for me.  This is the best possible time to make money because everything is at a discount So I'm trying just whatever I make from trading Put it to the side and put it into other types of deals all around, you know That's the best way to do it because I think people get too Reliant on their trading income and like as we've seen especially on twitter as of like lately It's gotten a lot pretty quiet because a lot of people who made a lot of money in 2021 or 2020 2021 They either bought a bunch of expensive shit houses cars, which is great. You do do whatever you want But when like you said before when the market slows down and you're you're not getting that same income It's very stressful like how can you a lot of people got lucky bro?  Yeah easily Yeah, I mean like even if you look on twitter like There's not as many people on fin twit right now as there were in 2020 Everyone used to be an expert bro. You guys remember everyone was an expert. Oh my god. Look at me.   I just lost 80% of my I don't want to say who it is on twitter But there's a guy that you know shows his execution every day shows his win percentage every day And his account is down 80% You know what I'm saying, but his execution is 100% go figure. You know what I'm saying like Like these guys should and these guys are trying to teach people how to make money These guys got lucky for the last two years and you know what? I feel bad for the people that follow these guys and think that they're actually legit Because the saddest part is these guys they could they probably have enough money to last a storm But they're students the people that are trying to learn from them are going broke. They're going broke, man So I'm very proud of what we have at m i c. I'm very proud that our members are staying consistent I'm very proud that you know We're all still making money and you know that brings us to the next fact which is the meet-up the meet-up is next week And this is an unbelievable opportunity to meet me to meet bow If you're struggling in trading if you're not really doing well in trading if you're kind of lonely in trading You know we started m i c because bow and I were very lonely.  All right. What is the point? Why are we even doing this?  Uh, just seeing each other but You know, i'm really excited for the meet-up and i'm really excited that even in these turbulent market times Even in these times of uncertainty, you know, we're still staying clear to the m i c Mission. Yeah, there's always been to help and mentor traders. Yeah 100. I love it. Definitely agree It's probably a great place to kind of wrap up or anything else. You guys want to I mean if this comes out before the meet-up, which I think it should go to myinvestingclub.com slash meet-up It's 100 free. We're losing money renting a venue. We're losing money renting the food We're losing money everything. So like this is probably going to be our last free meet-up guys So this is your opportunity. This is your opportunity to meet us to hang out with us to drink with us to party with us Uh and talk about trading, which is our favorite subject Awesome. All right. Well, I think we'll wrap it up there. Thanks alex. Thanks Thanks everyone and uh, we'll definitely see you and everyone from the next one later


Let's talk about what your biggest problem is you in particular find the biggest challenge to you and what it is to losing weight Let's work on that and then let's work on the next thing. You don't have to do it all at once


They want you to self-loathe. They want you to feel as though you're not good enough. The narcissist will constantly criticise you. They will focus on your faults and make you feel as though everything you do is wrong. They will make you feel as though you're not good enough for anything. When you are engaged in a project or activity, they will make you feel as though you shouldn't waste your time and energy. They will make you question your own qualities and abilities. They will make you believe that you are defective, which will then cause you to lack motivation. You will no longer desire or be willing to engage in those activities. You will lose enthusiasm because you have been led to believe that you are incapable of producing a worthwhile result. This can affect your self-esteem and make you feel worthless and insignificant. Our progress is linked to our happiness and our happiness is linked to our productivity. So this can create the downward spiral where you become less productive and more depressed. It causes you to lose hope or courage. It discourages you from taking action because now you feel like you're not good enough. You feel like you're unworthy or undeserving of good things in life. And this is exactly what the narcissist wants.  It is very beneficial for them. They hope that by you feeling like you're not good enough. You won't try to leave. You won't consider that you deserve more or better. Instead you will remain around the narcissist and try to prove yourself to them. You will try to seek their validation because they have made you believe that you're not good enough. This is what we call the Trauma Bond. You feel stuck and powerless in the relationship. You feel as though you can't do anything right but you try to make the best of it. You keep trying to please this unpleasable person in the hopes that you will be rewarded. And when you do what they want they will often reward you. It may only be crumbs but it seems like a lot more than what it actually is because you're so used to being abused and being told that you're not good enough. So when you finally receive the crumbs you feel like you've done something right. It makes you want to try harder. It puts you on this endless hamster wheel of trying to chase their validation. But in the back of your mind you still believe that you're not enough as though you have to continue to meet this person's demands in the hopes that one day they will validate you and this is exactly what they want.  They want you to keep trying. Keep trying to please them. It also distracts you from looking at yourself and realising that you're not getting your needs met. You were trained to neglect yourself and gradually your health begins to deteriorate. You no longer see yourself in the same way. You no longer do the things that you used to enjoy doing as time goes by. You may no longer recognise yourself. You don't even know who you are anymore because the narcissist has managed to turn you into their own personal workhorse. You've been doing everything you can to please them. You've been doing everything you can to support them emotionally while being told that you don't do anything or what you do isn't good enough which only makes you devote more and more of your time and energy to fulfilling their demands to the point where you have no time left for yourself.  Your every waking moment revolves around pleasing this person or providing for them so that everything you're doing isn't enough. It just makes you feel stuck. It just makes you feel like your only option in this situation is to work as hard as you can just to receive what little crumbs they are willing to give to you. You don't ever question their authority.  You just carry on with the programme they have laid out for you in the hopes that one day you will get it right as long as you are around the narcissist you will always lack self-love. You will always feel as though you're not enough because anyone who even questions that they may be worth more than what the narcissist has led them to believe is not going to stick around.  These are motions which are projected onto you by the narcissist. They disown these parts which belong to them because they hate themselves. They see you as a negative extension of them which is why they have to assign these traits onto you.  They are the ones who feel as though they are not enough. They disguise this with an exaggerated sense of their own abilities and importance but beneath that is a person who is very insecure and feels worthless and insignificant which is why they have to influence and control you. They have to maintain authority over you because they are doing this to regulate their false sense of selves and that is why they are so dependent on you. That is why they cannot leave you alone even though they proclaim that you are bad or not good enough for them. You are enough. You are worth so much more than what the narcissist has led you to believe. Just remember who you were before you met the narcissist. Just remember how capable you were back then. How easy everything was. That's the person you really are. Not this collection of the narcissist's unwanted parts that has nothing to do with you. So recognise this and understand that you are worthy of love. You can love yourself and you can be proud of your progress and accomplishments. Don't seek validation from the narcissist. Validate yourself. Don't expect love from a person who is full of hate. Thank you for watching. I hope this video reads in it with you. Please like, comment, share and subscribe. Click the bell icon to receive notifications for my future videos. If you like to donate, my paypal link is in the video description. Coach the inquiries, you can email me at narxfathercoachin.com Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon.


So typically the shaman engages in practices that are putting significant changes in their attention. As we mentioned, there's often significant disruptive strategies, sleep deprivation, sex deprivation, social isolation, the use of psychedelics, extended chanting, all of these dancing, all of these things are designed to bring about radical changes in the way in which the brain is operating. Now, part of what a shaman is doing is, I would argue, also getting into the flow state. So the flow state has become something that has discussed both academically and in the popular culture. It was made famous in work by Chick-Sent-Mahai. His book, Flow, The Flow Experience, brought it to the forefront in 1990. So what is the flow experience? So the flow experience is, experience people get into, they often describe it as like being in the zone. So you are involved in a task that is very demanding. In fact, it has a particular structure to it. So these are your skills and these is how demanding the situation is. And the flow state is one in which the demands of the situation just slightly go beyond your skill abilities. And so you get what's called here, Chick-Sent-Mahai often represents this by the flow channel. When my skills can just through, we'll talk about this through like sort of insight and restructuring, when I can just enough exact and extend my skills to meet the demand. So I have to put everything I've got into it. Again into the flow channel. If my skills exceed the demands, I fall into boredom. If my demands exceed the skills, I fall into anxiety. Now of course the thing about you is you are very good at learning in situation. So you need a kind of context in which your skills, as your skills improve, your environment also improves. So one of the things we've created in our culture is we've created flow induction machines. Because what those machines have are a situation where your skills are constantly improving and the demands of the environment are constantly improving. And these flow induction machines have other properties that are very important in them. There's a very tight feedback between what you do and how the environment responds. You're getting very clear information and failure matters. It's like at least symbolically because you can die.  Video games are one of the most reliable ways of inducing the flow state in people. In fact part of the reasons why video games are addictive and they now being considered to be a bonafide addiction by the World Health Organization is precisely because they engender the flow state. Addictions, and we'll talk about this later when we talk about addictions. Addictions run off machinery that is evolutionarily adaptive. That's why it's compelling. So the flow state. What are other things that people do to get into the flow state? They play jazz. They do martial arts. I'm a martial artist, right? One, that's particularly interesting because there's no other explanation for why people do it other than they get into the flow state is rock climbing. Because rock climbing otherwise would be like it's like some sort of torture from Greek mythology, right? You presented it like, here's a rock face.  It's going to be really physically demanding. It's going to hurt you. You might fall to you and harm yourself. And once you get to the top, you come back down. It would seem like a torturous thing to do. Well we know why people rock climb. They rock climb because they get into the flow state. And the flow state is deeply, deeply positive for people. It's not the same thing as physical pleasure, right? In fact, the flow state is much more connected to meaning in life. In fact, the more often you get into the flow state, the more likely you will rate your life as meaningful. The more you will experience well-being. Now what's interesting also about the flow state, and remember we're doing this because I'm talking about that shamanism is probably a practice for practicing getting into the flow state. So remember that, right? The thing about the flow state, it's a universal. People across cultures, socio-economic groups, genders, language, environments, age groups, report being able to get into the flow state, and they describe it in detail almost exactly the same way. That's a universal. And universals are important in cognitive science. You pay attention to the universals because they give you profound insight into the machinery. What's it like to be in the flow state? Well when you're in the flow state, right? You feel like you're deeply at one with things. So for example, I'm a martial artist and when I'm sparring, it's like my sense of connectedness to my opponent is really enhanced. And I'm really at one. And that comes with it this kind of spontaneity. So when a strike is coming, my hand is just there. I don't sort of raise your hand now, John. It flows out of me, hence the word, right? The block is there. The hockey player, the goalie just puts out his hand, the glove hand and the puck is there. There's this tremendous sense of atonement. And then closely allied to it is this, right? At one level you know, like the shaman dancing or chanting, that there's tremendous metabolic energy at work, effort. You're making at one level all this effort, but at another level it feels effortless. That's the spontaneity. Again, it just seems to flow from you. Your sense of time is passing differently. Your sense of self is being dramatically altered. So when people are in the flow state, right, their self, a kind of self-consciousness disappears. That self-conscious, you know, we carry around that self-consciousness that's always doing this sort of thing. It's constantly sort of doing our autobiography, how's my day going, how am I doing, who am I, what am I doing, blah, blah. And it's also checking. How do I image management? How do I look? What are people thinking of me? How am I doing? All of that nattering. And oh, am I failing? How am I doing? I knew, and of course, that can get out of hand. Like when you're in depression, you ruminate on all that stuff and it overwhelms you. But we all carry that burden around. It's taxing. And the thing in the flow state, it's gone. Because there's no space for all of that. Because you're so engrossed in the task. The other thing about the flow state is it's super salient. It's like the kind of brightness and vividness you get in a video game. The world seems more intense. And people really like this experience. And not only do they like it, it seems to be where they do their best work. So the flow experience is an optimal experience in two ways. Many people regard it as the best experiences they can have. But it's also where they're doing their very best at what they want to excel in. That's why it's so motivating to get into the flow state. Why is the flow state so good? So this year, 2018, I published some work with Adrian Herobaneth and Leo Ferraro in which we tried to argue for what the cognitive mechanisms are in the flow state. See, Chick-Sent-Mahai tells you the environmental conditions what you need in order to get into the flow state. You need skills and demand to be matched. You need there to be very tight coupling between you and the environment like in the video game. You need very clear information. It can't be ambiguous or vague. And failure has to matter. It has to be costly to you in some fashion. He specified all of that. He also specified the kind of training that helps enhance you to get you into the flow state. And think about this. Think about what I said last time. And we're going to explore this more. Training and mindfulness. The more people have training and mindfulness increases their capacity to get into the flow state. Now, can we come up with a unified explanation for all of this? I think we can. Both for the phenomenology, why we're experiencing what we're experiencing when we're in the flow state? And why is it improving your cognition? And therefore, why would the shaman be enhancing their cognition by getting into something like the flow state through their ritual practices? Okay, so think about the rock climber. Okay? The rock climber is climbing. Remember, we talked about how you frame and find patterns last time. Remember the nine-dot problem, right? And that these patterns aren't just patterns in your mind. They're patterns in knowing how to make sense of things. So you're rock climbing. And if that breaks down, you impasse. You're stuck. And I don't mean just cognitively. You're physically stuck. Now, if you want to be a good rock climber, what you have to do is you have to break that framing. You have to train yourself to break the frame. Restructure. Change what you're finding relevant and salient. And then, change yourself to fit that. And then you refit yourself to the rock phase. You refit yourself to the rock phase. Then you have to do it again. And then you have to do it again. And then you have to do it again. Or the jazz musician. The jazz musician is playing. They pick up on a pattern. They play with it. But they can't stay with it too long. What do they have to do? They have to shift. They have to restructure. They have to shift into a new pattern and then play with that. They have to pick up on it, they have to reframe it, again and again and again and again and again. Do you see what's going on with the rock climber, the jazz musician, the martial artist, is this idea of a cascade of insights. You're having an insight that's leading to another insight that's leading to another insight that's priming. So you know when you have an insight, you have like aha and you get that sort of burst of energy and it's like a flash, that's why we put a light bulb over somebody's head when we want to show them having an insight. There's like that flash. Now imagine if I took that aha and I extended it, aha, that's the flow state. It's an insight cascade. So the more you flow, the more you're training your ability for insight. And direct interacting with your environment.   But there's something more. It's not just an insight cascade that's going on and flow. That in and of itself would be great. There's something else going. This has to do with your capacity for implicit learning. Now notice what's happening here. Notice that although even I'm doing the history, I'm always also doing the cog sigh. Because while I'll be emphasizing the history, the historical account, I'm starting to build what I need to give you the structural functional account. Okay, so implicit learning. This goes back to work done in the 60s by Arthur Reber and a whole bunch of other people. So what Reber was doing is he was really trying to understand how people learn language. What he was doing was he was generating an arbitrary set of rules, completely arbitrary, just make them up on the spot set of rules for how you can link strings of letters and or numbers together. Like the rule might be you can't have more than three vowels in a row, or you have to have two consonants. And then you generate letter strings. Eight, nine, long. These are so long that you can't sort of easily hold them in your working memory. And then this is what you do. You take, you generate, you can generate an indefinite number, you generate a huge number of these strings and you just show them to people. Here's one, here's one, here's one, here's one, here's one, here's one. Okay, that's the first part of the experiment. Then you do the second part of the experiment. Now you generate a whole bunch of strings, but two kinds. One set of strings is generated by that artificial set of rules. And so follows the same rules as the first string, first set. And then the second set is generated by a completely different set of rules, okay? And what you do is you mix up the first and the second together. And this is the task you give people. Can you tell me the strings that belong with the strings you saw before? There you go. Now, Rieber originally thought what would happen is people would, because it seems like so random. What he found was people score well, well above chance consistently on this. People can tell you, oh no, those strings, yeah, those belong with the old ones. No, that one doesn't. That one does, that one doesn't. Now here's what's interesting. You now ask people why, how do you know that? And they'll give you one of two answers. They'll say I don't know. I don't know. I just feel it, which is, ooh. Or they say, they give you some explanation. They'll give you some rule, a procedure they're using, and here's what we know. They're deceiving themselves or lying to you because that rule that they're using wouldn't actually predict their success. So you are picking up, you have this tremendous capacity outside your conscious awareness, right? To pick up on very complex patterns in your environment. And you say okay, why? What does this have to do with shamanism? Well hang on, because we talked about the shaman picking up on patterns last time. Let's go back to this. Let me talk about an experiment that's really interesting. So there was some work done on this idea that people have psychic abilities and there's the feeling of being stared at. People can tell when they're being stared at. And people reliably report that they think, oh I knew somebody was staring at me. I could just feel it in the back of my neck and stuff like that. And so they ran an experiment in which they did the following. They'd have somebody in a room blindfolded, earplugged, they can't sense anything, nobody's allowed to wear perfumes or anything. That person can't see or hear or feel and they're just standing in the room. Unbeknownst to that person, people would come in and stare at them. And then they had to report if the person at the center of the room had to report if they were being stared at or not. And people were reporting this well above chance. They were saying, I think I'm being stared at and there was somebody there. And of course, first of all, oh, right. But then it turned out that if you made a slight change to that experiment, it wouldn't replicate. So what was going on? You bring people into the room and they say, I think I'm being stared at and the researchers would tell them if they were correct or not. They would say, you're right or you're wrong. So what? You say so what? Well, here's the thing. The researchers thought they were introducing people, the viewers, into the room randomly. But it turns out they weren't introducing them randomly because you know what's very hard for you to do? Random stuff. They were actually introducing people as viewers in a complex pattern. And the person that was blindfolded and earplugged was implicitly learning the pattern because they were getting feedback. If you take the feedback away, if you don't tell them, whenever they say I'm being stared at or not, if you don't tell them they're the right or wrong, their performance drops to chance. See, a lot of what looks like psychic abilities are your ability to pick up implicitly on complex patterns in the environment without being aware of it. So Hogarth in his book on educating intuition made a really, really cool claim. Makes a very good argument, in fact, I think, for this. He says that what we call intuition is a real thing, but there isn't anything sort of magical about it, like the psychics, say, or something like that. Your intuition is the result of your implicit learning. You pick up on all kinds of complex patterns not knowing how you have done that, but you get an ability to detect patterns and you don't know how. That's why your intuition feels the way it does. You just sort of know. Like, you know things. You're doing it all the time. To use a famous example from Dreyfus. You know how far to stand from somebody. And what angle to, like, where you should stand, how close you should stand, what angle you should stand, how, as a conversation or the context changes, you're allowed to move closer or farther away what angles you're allowed to be at. But if I were to ask you to tell me how you do that, you wouldn't know. You would just say, I know how to do it. And yet, when people don't know how to do it, it creeps you out. It creeps you out. Okay, so intuition. Now, Hogarth points out, and this is something very common, right? Hogarth points out that, you know, we have two different terms and we don't realize we're talking about the same thing. We have intuition when we think it's going well, that implicit learning, but we also have bias and prejudice for when we think that implicit learning goes bad. The bigot has got intuitions about races that are wrong. Now, why is, how is it that implicit learning goes wrong? Well, here's the thing. You have some complex pattern in the environment, right? And your implicit learning picks up on it. The problem is there's two kinds of patterns in your environment. There's correlations, there's correlation patterns and causal patterns. What do I mean by that? Correlations is any two things are related to each other. So, let me give you an example of a couple of correlations that you shouldn't confuse with causation. There is a correlation between how large your wedding is and how long your marriage will last. If you have a bigger wedding, your marriage will last longer.  Here's another one. So, I'm old enough, right? And I was brought up in a religious household that I was, you know, when prayer was taken out of the schools. And of course, people were very upset about that. Taking, look at crime as going up as we've taken prayer out of the schools and things like that. By the way, crime hasn't been going up. Read some of Stephen Pinker's work. But let's say it was. That's only a correlation. Because here's another correlation. We know that greenhouse gases have been going up steadily. And that's part of the environmental crisis we're gonna talk about. You know what has been also consistently going down for the exact same time period? Caribbean piracy. Having pirates in the Caribbean and wooden ships with cannons and stuff. As that went down, greenhouse gases went up. Now, I hope none of you think that we could solve global warming by being in back piracy. Okay? So there are many things that are, there are many patterns in the world that are illusory because they're only correlational. They're not causal. See the big yet has picked up on correlational patterns, not causal patterns. So what you wanna do is you wanna train your implicit learning to pick up on the causal patterns that are real rather than the correlational patterns that are illusory. Now here's what you can't do. You can't tell people to look for patterns explicitly. Go back to Weber's experiment. If you put people into that experiment where they're looking at the letter strings and you tell them explicitly what they're supposed to do, try and figure out the rules. Consciously, deliberately try to figure out the rules. Their performance doesn't get better. It gets worse. Okay? And Hogarth notes this in his book on educating intuition. We can't replace implicit learning with explicit learning because it is precisely by being implicit that it works so well. What can we do explicitly then? What we can do is set up the right context, the right environmental factors so that my implicit learning machine will tend more likely to get onto causal patterns rather than correlational patterns. So I'll get good intuition rather than bad intuition. How do you do that? Well, Hogarth says the way you would do this is the way you do science. You wanna control the context, right? Because what science is, and you know there's a lot of science, look, science is a way of distinguishing causal patterns from correlational patterns. You set up an environmental situation so that you can distinguish the causal patterns from the correlational patterns. Well, what do you do? Well, in an experiment, first of all, I make sure that everything is very clearly measured. I get very clear information, very clear information. I make sure, I'm looking to see that, right, that the change in one variable is closely followed by a change in another variable.  Right, so I look for clear information, I look for clear feedback, and in science, failure matters. You test a hypothesis and disconfirmation has to be possible, failure matters. Now notice this. What Hogarth says is, well, what I wanna do is I wanna put you into an implicit learning situation where you get clear feedback, like you do in science, where there is a tight coupling between what you do and how the environment responds, and where error really matters, like in science. And he says, what we should do is we should try and do implicit learning in those kinds of contexts. Well, here's what myself and my colleagues argued. Those three criteria that will turn your intuition into good implicit learning are exactly the conditions for flow. Clear information, tightly coupled feedback, and error matters. The rock climber is looking for needs clear information, tightly coupled feedback, and error really matters. That context really means that there's a much greater chance that their implicit learning machinery is gonna pick up on causal patterns rather than correlational ones. So, notice what we've got going on here. The shaman is getting into the flow state, is developing all these techniques for getting into this deeply immersive, comprehensive flow state. And they're getting an insight cascade, and they're also getting enhanced implicit learning, picking up on very complex, real complex patterns. Now, this is intuitive. They don't know how they're doing it. Now, here's what's interesting, too. These two are reinforcing each other, because the insight gets your cognition to explore for new patterns, and then the implicit learning picks up those new patterns. And then those new patterns enhance your ability to restructure, and then, right? You keep exploring for new patterns, acquiring the new patterns for implicit learning, and you keep ratcheting your skills up. Getting into the flow state is deeply, deeply enhancing of your cognition. Somebody who's an expert at getting into the flow state is going to be an individual you want to have around. Now, that individual is going to have some really serious challenges facing them. They don't know how they're getting a lot of the information they're getting. They don't know why they're so insightful. And they're experiencing this radical at one minute with the world, this loss of sense of self, when they're enacting the animal, right? You have to understand these insights aren't verbal insights. Like in the nine-dot problem, it's not words, it's not beliefs. Getting an insight in how the deer moves. It's getting an insight, an intuitive insight in how to talk to this person, to trigger the placebo effect, to help them to heal right now. So, getting into the flow state, notice what's going on here. Notice you're getting something that's almost like a mystical experience. It's a powerful altered state of consciousness. It's enhancing your cognitive processing. And the shaman is making meaning. They're singing, they're dancing, they're telling stories, they're altering people's sense of what matters, they're altering people's sense of identity, they're healing and transforming people.


Ooh, ooh One so two three or five that's nasty. That is that is nasty.


Control of Congress hanging in the balance. President Biden taking on the Trump wing.  Republicans counting on support from the former president. You're going to send JD Vance to the U.S. Senate. Consequential state races. Election night 2022, Tuesday, November 8th at 8 p.m. Eastern.


All right so let's up. So the review again. M-FAC, expedient mobile fuel additive capability. So today and yesterday actually I've been teaching the Marines for between here some guys from 171 some from 172 about the M-FAC and how to operate it. Take a pump and put the pump on it. Our vehicles and aircraft have been made for certain requirements. If those fuels don't meet that spec requirement the longevity and degradation of the equipment is going to be completely different from what we are already tracking. So in a short term the wear that the fuel is going to cause we can't track for a fuel that we don't have specs for. Now the Marine Corps has to figure out a way to get fuel from another country and ship it all the way there. With this we no longer need to do that we just simply need to take the M-FAC and go and additize that fuel to meet our requirements. 13 yes it passed. One of the biggest advantages of the system is in this specific part of the world in the Pacific we have a lot of allies a lot of partners that might not necessarily have the capabilities to convert jet A or jet A1 to jpa or might not have access to jpa their ability to make it so we offer a different capability to our native partners in being able to help provide them service. This is not going to be something that myself or a staff in CO is going to be necessarily pulling the trigger on for lack of better terms. This is something that a young NCO a corporal going into a sergeant is going to be leading a team very small team of Marines a fire team maybe fire team plus no more going out into their austere environment completely alone with this equipment doing this aditization of the fuel and there can be ones leading the fight and making sure that that product is clean clear bright and going to the next


For the rising trot many people brace against the stirrup which pushes the hip back in the saddle And then they have to lead with the chest to try and get out of the saddle But they're now on the forehand they load the horse's weight onto the forehand and every stride They come back into the saddle and crash into the back of it, which is going to really Could bother the horses back after repeated rising trot strides When you brace the lower leg forward the same thing happens the femur pushes back and up into the hip and so you have to try and get over the femur But that pressure back from the stirrup is blocking that hip from swinging forward up So I have to lead with the chest You'll notice the head comes forward and then we get yelled at to sit up straight and we try to hinge back So that now we are more upright But we still have the same problem because we're on the forehand and we put the weight on the horses forehand The solution to rising trot is a swing motion Many people hear the words up down up down to rise the trot, but if I strictly do up down I'm just going up and down in a vertical plane And so I push myself up from my stirrups and I fall back into the saddle When we ride it as a swing motion, we are never unstable on the horse We are always in control of the motion and we can regulate the horses trot through our rising trot motion Swing motion is when we think of leading with the bottom of the zipper and Coming back my weight transfers to the thighs Instead of just the stirrup. I support myself and come back down. So I swing up down up down Down so let's talk about the rising trot for a moment in the rising trot The knees still go forward down over your foot and The reason for that is again to let your hip open So that your seat keeps coming through and doesn't block the horse If I push my feet forward in the rising trot, you can see how he instantly gets hollow Because I put more pressure on the stirrup bar if I go on my toe and knee pinch Now that also makes him get stuck So I have to think about the swing motion of the rising and it's a simple thing But it can be really important to a lot of horses that I just think about up up up Versus down down down down and you can see again Al's not very happy with me I'm gonna think about making my rising slower lower and there I am in walk One of the things that most of my riders have struggled with is a symmetry and they think that they'll never be able to ride in a Symmetrical way and be even on both sides But I'm here to show you that that's only held in your brain And there's lots of stuff you can do off the horse to improve your symmetry so that when you ride you're much more balanced So now that you've done the mirror exercise Here's a way to apply it and the reason I like going from the mirror to the stool Is that when we drive so many of this drive with one foot and on the gas pedal? And then we sit rather crooked and collapse in our ribs and throw our weight over to one side And since we spend so much time behind the wheel when we get on the horse We don't realize that we're still in this position So by using the mirror I've now seen that my two legs are doing the same thing at the same time And I'm going to take that into this simple little exercise on the stool Now you can do this when you're at work or sitting at a business meeting Anywhere you have a chair that you can easily rock forward And what you'll notice that I did was I simply brought the chair forward onto the front legs And as I do that my hip is opening and my knees are going forward down over my toe and this is my third rule So to recap my rules if it hurts tell me And that's because very often when people do something they actually try too hard And so they put themselves in a bit of stress and so very often just a simple fix is just you know Like if I know that it's uncomfortable, we just tweak it a little My second rule is horses get to vote because there's such good biofeedback about what we're doing And my third and only other rule is when you're riding your knees need to go forward down equally and evenly Whether that's riding walk trot canner lateral work on a western horse the jumping horse Because as my knees go forward down my hip opens and it lets my pelvis get closer to my heels So I'm always staying over my feet when I'm riding toes If I do what most people do against the stirrup embrace my foot I've now pushed my foot forward and you can see that because the stirrup leather is no longer hanging vertical If I drop my iron you'll notice that this is where it's hanging straight down And so when my foot is in the stirrup that is also where it should be it's hanging straight down The minute I put pressure on the stirrup I've now swung the leather forward like a pendulum and the biggest problem with that is now my knee has straightened And it can no longer sink down So that's going to affect my ankle my knee and my hip and more importantly, it's going to affect my horse's movement If I brace the foot forward now I block the knee and you can see that it's blocked my horse from moving forward and in this case He actually takes that as a stop because he can't lift his back and push through my seat I've pushed against him and blocked the hindquarters instead allowing him to move through my seat and go forward Now you can go back to that unmounted exercise and practice it with intent in other words You can understand why this is such an important idea And so practicing it off the horse is just something that keeps it in mind so that when you get in the saddle You automatically start to seek that direction with your knees


Like every building, every advertisement, every product, and even people's lifestyles all seem to blend together into a single homogenous blob? You're not alone. I think it's going to be very boring, and everything will be the same. I mean people will be the same, I think so be the same. In the early 1990s, two Russian artists uniquely collaborated with a market research firm to discover American art preferences. Through surveys involving 1,001 US citizens over 11 days, they gathered data on favored colors, angles, textures, and themes. This process, replicated in countries including Russia, China, France, and Kenya, resulted in the People's Choice series. Despite their intent for diverse cultural collaboration, the artworks predominantly featured similar landscapes with animals and a blue palette echoed across various countries' preferences. In nearly every country, all people really wanted was a landscape with a few figures around. Animals in the foreground, mainly blue. After seeking input from more than 11,000 people across 11 different countries, all of the paintings ended up looking strikingly similar. Some people might say that looking for freedom, we found slavery, but I am not sure I agree with this statement. Coming up with something entirely new is harder than ever these days, thanks to the internet's treasure trove of inspiration. Just take our Kenyan cafe owner, who stumbled upon a Pinterest image that sparked a Scandinavian design obsession. Before they knew it, they were ordering new furniture and transforming their cafe into a Swedish oasis. Who needs to reinvent the wheel when you can borrow ideas and make them your own? You watch a movie and you feel you've watched it before. You see a painting and you can swiftly attach it to some meme. You listen to a song and it sounds like a remix of a remix. You read a book and it feels like a rehash of a rehash. You scroll through social media and everything looks like a copy of a copy. It's not just you. Our entire culture is stuck in a loop of repetition and imitation. We're so obsessed with the past that we can't seem to move forward. We're so afraid of missing out that we're willing to sacrifice originality for the sake of familiarity. And for some, what's left feels like a waiting game, sitting quietly, browsing and waiting for others to blow their minds. Societies of people, dead inside, seeking spirituality in the next temple they come across, close enough to their city break Airbnb. While Airbnb aims to offer a glimpse into the genuine lives of locals, many listings across various global destinations have begun to feel virtually indistinguishable, with only the surrounding cityscape differing between properties in cities as diverse as New York, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Vienna and Madrid. An experience touting authentic experiences and distinct personalities now seems plagued by a lack of variety as homes adopt homogenized design tropes regardless of setting. From one place to the next, the same styles and elements are repeatedly encountered, losing uniqueness in favor of homogeneity. An atmosphere promising distinctive personalities and authentically varied experiences now appeared formulaic as standardized designs overshadowed local color, locations worldwide blended together rather than distinguishing themselves, undermining the original aim of cultural immersion and insight into divergent communities. The look seamlessly integrates the straightforward practicality of bare materials, whitewashed walls, unfinished wood, visible brickwork, with the crisp sleekness of mid-century design icons including espresso machines, papa chairs and shelves devoid of doors or drawers, all softly illuminated with string lights. This aesthetic draws equally from the honest pragmatism of industrial buildings, along with the elegant minimalism prevalent in mid-century modern furnishings and decor. When the contextual anchors of community ties and shared history are loosened, profound impacts emerge in the form of alienation and a lack of belonging. No connection, nothing to ground ourselves in, everything can be anything, lacking a clear sense of aims and principles. We are living in the age of average. Mass production and standardization have led to a culture of sameness, where everything from our clothes to our cities looks the same. The pursuit of efficiency and profit has led to a world where individuality and creativity are stifled in favor of conformity and predictability. Across many creative industries like film, fashion, architecture and advertising, originality and innovation have increasingly taken a backseat to repetition and mimicry of stale conventions and overused cliches. Individuality has vanished. Whether examining art, design, media, everything appears identical. This culture of sameness extends beyond aesthetics and into our education and social systems. The education system is geared towards producing obedient workers, rather than critical thinkers. The result is a society that values conformity over innovation and creativity, leading to a culture of mediocrity. But it's not just the average that's becoming ubiquitous. The rise of premium mediocrity is a phenomenon where luxury goods and experiences are increasingly accessible to the middle class. The result is a world where even the wealthy are chasing the same generic experiences and products as everyone else. The pursuit of the good life has become so commodified that it's losing its meaning. This culture of sameness is perhaps most visible in our built environment. As described in a piece by Grist, office parks and other commercial developments are often built using the same generic design templates, leading to a landscape that's indistinguishable from one city to the next. The desire for efficiency and cost-cutting has led to a world where every building looks the same, regardless of location or purpose. So what does all of this mean for us? Well, it means that we're living in a world where individuality and creativity are becoming increasingly rare commodities. It means that the pursuit of efficiency and profit is often prioritized over the pursuit of meaning and purpose. But perhaps most importantly, it means that we need to actively resist this culture of sameness if we want to create a world that's truly worth living in. In today's increasingly globalized and interconnected society, there is a growing and worrying trend of promoting mediocrity. This trend inevitably leads to mediocratic schools and then societies run by and for mediocre people. An important issue caused by mediocracy is that these mediocre leaders do not truly have perspective and understanding of the system. This is because they generally lack the ability to see things in perspective, being installed only in the here and now, unable to really think projectively and imaginatively. They only have knowledge of the system, being perfectly integrated into it, but do not have understanding of the system, unable and unwilling to change and improve it. They have ideas about the system, believing they also have this holistic perspective on things and most of the time they even have the conviction that they have this perspective without truly having it. Here the explanation is given to us, at the psychological level, by the famous Dunning-Kruger effect, which tells us that the more mediocre and ignorant you are, the more you think you know. It is clear, quality begets quality, mediocrity begets mediocrity. An enthusiastic teacher induces enthusiasm and nourishes the curiosity and desire for knowledge of his students. A bored and boring one kills their curiosity, distancing them from school and knowledge. In short, mediocrity is contagious. A mediocratic world is a mechanical world, a world that only allows minimal and peripheral initiative, invention or creation. It is the world, excuse the oxymoron, of mediocre elites. We will only be able to escape it or at least minimize it. More and more leadership positions are occupied by mediocre individuals, semi-incompetence with a single desire to access the system. For this, they mechanically execute what is required of them, without ever asking questions or inconvenient opinions, and clearly without criticizing so as not to upset superiors. Thus, if superiors want simple executors, they are perfect for the system. The problem is when they become leaders, their inability to analyze is chronic. They do nothing but reproduce in the system, hiring other mediocrities who will not shake their arrogance and pride. For this not to happen, we need a quality reflective and critical education. Never forget that critical thinking is the antidote for such imposters. We need more critical and strategic thinking. We need to be more reflective and combative. Or we can stay like this, blocked in forms without substance, obedient. We gently encourage mediocrities. If you are living in a democracy, your desires have expanded, but most of us are living a premium mediocre life. Venkatesh Rao, a writer, consultant and technology analyst, coined the term premium mediocre to describe products, services and experiences that appear to be of high quality or luxury, but are actually just slightly better than average. Premium mediocre is the finest bottle of wine at Olive Garden. Premium mediocre is cupcakes and froyo. Premium mediocre is truffle oil on anything. Premium mediocre is cruise ships, artisan pizza, game of thrones and the Bellagio. Premium mediocre is food that instagrams better than it tastes. Premium mediocre is Starbucks italian names for drink sizes and its original pumpkin spice lattes featuring a staggering absence of pumpkin in the preparation. Actually all the coffee at Starbucks is premium mediocre, I like it anyway. Mediocre with just an irrelevant touch of premium, not enough to ruin the delicious essential mediocrity. What should we do? We must curb the influence of large financial entities that forge ubiquitous yet character depleted environments primarily aimed at commercialization, commodifying the uniqueness of locales. If left unchecked, homogenization will continue to spread like wildfire, reducing all places to indistinguishable replicas, resembling nothing of real substance or original appeal. To protect vivified community spaces from being flattened into fungible assets stripped bare, intervention is needed to maintain diversity and a sense of indigenous belonging now increasingly under siege by all consuming forces of sameness. But here's the thing, creativity is not a finite resource. It's not a zero sum game. Just because something has been done before doesn't mean it can't be done again. In a new and different way.


to the session. So, if you remember in the last class, we are discussing about the different types of policy instrument like command and control based policy instrument and market based policy instrument and also we discuss about the different kind of emission trading and we saw mostly about details about the two market based instrument what will be existing in India one is PAD that is Power Form Achievement Trade and second one is RAC and also beyond that also we have seen what are the challenges and opportunity when we go for the market based instrument mostly in the developing economy. Now, in this session we will see what are the different environmental law that is existing in India mostly I have picked up only those there are many more laws, but I have picked few to give you understanding that what are the different acts what are the different laws that is existing in India with respect to environment and also how the disclosure regulation started and what are the changes or what are the improvement or what are the revision that has happened to the disclosure regulation. So, to start with let us start that what is environmental law in India what are the different environmental law in India. So, we all know that MOEF is the apex body typically the responsible authority in the country for regulating and ensuring environmental protection. It lays down the legal and regulatory framework for the same and they have also put up the environmental legislation. MOEF and also pollution control both together they form the regulatory and the administrative core of the sector. So, in the central you will find the central pollution control board that is overall for the country and different state we have the state pollution control board with respect to the activities related to the state. So, in 2014 there was a change that happened with respect to this functioning of MOEF. So, although MOEF was looking into the climate change activity it is the reduction in the climate change activity different interventions and responses, but in 2014 that there was a priority by MOEF for the tackling for tackling the climate change. And that point of time the ministry was renamed as Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. In the short form it is known as MOEF's CC. Now, the first act what we will discuss is that National Green Tribunal Act 2010. This is typically or popularly known as the NGT Act and it is being enacted with the objective to provide the establishment of National Green Tribunal that is NGT and why this NGT was established for effective and expeditious disposal of cases relating to environmental protection and conservation of forest. Also it takes care of the other natural resources including enforcement of any legal rights relating to environment, giving relief, compensation of damage to person, property for matters connected to their with and incidentally there too. And the basis of this National Green Tribunal Act or NGT it is based on the doctrine of sustainable development, it the pre-cautionary principle and polluter page principle explicitly embedded in case of NGT Act. Then we have the AIR Act. So, if you ask possibly the two act what everybody knows about the environment is one is AIR Act and second one is the Water Act. So, this AIR Act is this is related to air prevention and prevention and control of Pollution Act pollution. It is 1981 it is known as AIR Act. This is to provide prevention, control and abatement of air pollution and for the establishment of boards at the central and state level with a view to carry out whatever the objective that is to provide prevention, control and abatement of the air pollution. Then we have Water Act that is in 1974 and this is being enacted to provide the prevention and control of the water pollution and to maintain and restore wholesomeness of water in the country. It provides establishment of board for the prevention and control of water pollution with a view to carrying out the efficient purpose and also it prohibits the discharge of pollutants into the water body beyond a given standard lays down the penalty for the non-compliance. So, if you remember at some point of time when we are discussing a case with respect to the discharge to the water. So, under this Water Act the reference to that over here is that typically under Water Act the central pollution control board they give that whatever the dischargeable limit for the water pollutant when they when the wastewater get into the nearest water bodies or to the open water body like what should be the limit for BOD, what is the limit for COD and what is the limit for TSL. Then we have EPA that is Environmental Environment Protection Act in 1986 started. It provides the protection and improvement for the environment and it is established the for the preparing a framework for studying planning implementing long-term requirement of the environmental safety. It lays down the system of speedy adequate response to a situation threatening of the environment. And this is a umbrella legislation designated to provide the framework of coordination of all central and state authority establish under Water Act and Air Act. Then we have hazardous waste management rule and it is in 2008 and so the first one is the hazardous waste rule which start brought out in 2008 and it provides a guide for manufacture, storage, import of the hazardous chemical and for management of the hazardous waste. Then for biomedical waste the rule was in 1998 about the it which talks about the proper disposal, desegregation and transport of the infectious waste and municipal solid waste rules that is in 2000 it aims at municipal to dispose the municipal solid waste in the scientific manner. Similarly waste rule in 2011 and the primary objective is to reduce the hazardous substance in electrical and electric electronics equipment and by specifying threshold for the use of the hazardous material and to channelize the e-waste generated in the country for environmentally sound recycling. And there is one correction over here I think the e is missing over here it should be e-waste management holding rule in 2011. The rules applied to every producer, consumer or bulk consumer, collection center, dismantler and recycler of the e-waste and it involves the manufacture, sale, purchase, processing of the electrical and electronic equipment or the component as per the rule. Then there is a waste management rule for battery that is 2001 due to proper and effective management of handling of lead acid battery waste requires all manufacturer, assembler and reconditioner and all other stakeholder about sale, purchase and use of battery component that what should be the what should be the guideline or what are the guideline for the battery rule they have to follow this. And the most recent rule with respect to this hazardous waste is the plastic waste management rule in 2016 which increased the minimum thickness of plastic carry bag from 40 to 50 micron and stipulate the minimum thickness of 50 micron for plastic sheet and also facilitated the collection and recycling of the plastic waste. So, if you look at the entire waste management regulation they plays a very important role in the circular economy because if you look at the transition now happening from the linear economic to the circular economy and one of the important component where we need proper regulation, where we need proper intervention and also better practice, improve practices because that is a important component to lead to the circular economic practices. Then let us see what is happening in the disclosure regulation in India. So, in 2012 SEBI they mandated the top 100 listed entities by the market capitalization to file the business responsibility report as per the disclosure requirement. So, they prepare this is based on the national voluntary guideline on social, environmental and economic responsibility of business popularly known as NVGs. And after 2012, so it was in 2012 there is the top 100 listed they were supposed to file the business responsibility report. It was changed in 2019 MCA revised the NVG and formulated the national guideline on responsible business conduct which is known as NGR BC. And in December 2019 SEBI extended the business responsibility report requirement from top 100 to top 1000 listed entity by market capitalization for the financial year 2019-20. Then the most recent changes what has happened with respect to disclosure is that it introduced the new requirement of business sustainability reporting by the listed entity and the it is not only business responsibility report now it is called as business responsibility and sustainability report that is BRSR will replace the existing business responsibility report. And the focus is ESC perspective and it is intended to enable businesses to engage more meaningfully with their stakeholder. It will encourage business to go beyond the regulatory finance financial compliance and report on their social and environmental impact. So, this is applicable to top 1000 listed company by market capitalization for reporting. And this is this will be voluntary on voluntary basis preparing or producing this report in 2021-22 but it would be mandatory from the financial year 2022 and 23. So, in this session we discussed in the previous session we discussed about the market based like little bit summary on the market value instrument. And in this session we discussed about the environmental laws in India, the different laws what are applicable and also few of them what we have discussed in detail and also we discussed about the disclosure regulation. Thank you.


What's up, YouTube? This is another video write-up for the challenge Fortune Cookie from CodeFest CTF 2018.  It's just giving us a website. We want to figure out how we can get the secret behind there and we can go overhead and proceed to it. They should like the website all it all it says to us is you're not authorized for this information. Whatever. View the source. Nothing interesting in there.  Low hanging fruit here. Robots.txt doesn't give us anything. That's not real. We can pass it to Nito, but it won't give us anything. Nothing particularly useful. So what I ended up doing was opening up the dev tools in the web browser here, and I just checked the network tab. I went ahead and refreshed the page so I could actually get that request here. And I'll try and blow this up so you can see a little bit more. But as we actually examined that request we get, it looks like we are actually getting a cookie set with the value or the variable name who are you or at least the name of the cookie is who are you. The value being me and it expires immediately at the time that we actually end up setting it max age zero. So I don't actually see it when I look at my cookies here. So I'm actually using cookie editor or edit this cookie. It's a Google Chrome extension, but knowing that we have that cookie supposedly being set. Let's go ahead and set a value or Create a cookie who are you and let's just call it like please sub. I don't know if it'll be anything other than admin that will work for us, but whatever. Let's change it to admin and see if it'll actually be okay. If I go ahead and refresh this page, it does give us the flag just like that.  Simple, simple challenge. Just kind of exploring and poking around. Let's go ahead and create a get flag script for this as well. Don't know why I had an extra Y there. Let's get the URL so I can user bin Python. Get our Shebang line going. I'm going to use the request module, which if you don't have installed you can sudo pip install. If you don't have pip, you can sudo apt to get install pip. And then let's just go ahead and create a get request here with that URL. Let's say cookies can equal a dictionary for values who are you and then set it to the string admin. So we can just solve that R print R dot text. And just like that, we should be able to get the flag. Super easy, super simple. Mark that as executable. Make this challenge complete. And we are done just like that. So thank you guys for watching. Super quick, super simple. Not that difficult of a challenge, just doing your own recon and enumeration for the web challenge. Special shout out to the best people in the world that love me on Patreon. Thank you guys so much. I cannot say thank you enough for your support. One dollar or more on Patreon a month will give you a special shout out just like this. I mean every video five thousand more on Patreon will give you early access to everything that released on YouTube before it goes live because I normally record in bulk and the YouTube gradually upload in the room and be released etc etc. So if you want the content right when it's hot five dollars a month is the best way to do that and really helps me put food on the table. If you did like this video please do like comment and subscribe but join our discord server link in the description. It's a cool community of CTF players, programmers and hackers. You can want to hang out with me and other awesome people. Best place to do that will be tackling ICTF and Nox CTF and other upcoming games as a team. So if you want to hang out with friends that's the cool place. Great. See you guys in the next video. Love you. It's not not in the weird way.


Hi, everyone. Happy Sunday. I'm Joe for jaspeyscasebreaks.com, coming at you with 2023 Top Series 2 Baseball Jumbo Edition, a single-pack break, number five. We're going to do the break itself, just like a normal break. Then at the end, we'll re-randomize everybody's names, and the top six will get flawless random team spots. Now, if you're watching live, we've got to do one more of these fillers, sell six spots straight up, and then we're in breaks full on that. I feel like we should be able to do that tonight. So get after it, jaspeyscasebreaks.com. Big thanks to this group for making it happen. Appreciate it. There are the teams right there, and let's roll it, randomize it, six and a six. 12 times for names and teams, different dice roll for the giveaway part, as always. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, and 12th and final time. We got Carl Chris down to Tammy, and then six and a six, 12 times for the teams. One, two, three, four. And 12th and final time, we've got White Talks down to Dodger, Dodger's on Sunday Night Baseball. Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to watch along with me, they're facing the Astros. Dodger's after a rough couple of weeks kind of getting back on track. Here's the first half of the list right here, and there's the second half of the list right over there. No trade windows in these filler breaks. Let's just print and rip. Actually, you know what? My printer is not working. We're going to pause the video, I'm going to print it out in the other office, and then I'll be back. I guess trade window open? Be right back. Hi, welcome back everybody. Mistake, grab the wrong list of names. Let's clear that out. I'm doing the series two jumbo pack. These are the names. No thanks to those other guys. I grabbed the wrong list. Big thanks to these guys right here. This is the one with, yeah, chat. Oh, there's your spot, Steve H. There's your spot, Oliver, there's your spot. All right, so here's what we're going to do. The team list still remains the same.  So we'll put that right back there. So let's do this correct list 12 times. It is my Monday. Need more coffee. 9, 10, 11, and 12. All right, there we go. And we got Steve H down to Tammy. This is the correct one. There's Oliver right there. Chad, there's you. Steve, there's you. Correct. There we go. No one was that generous this time. It's not Adam Christmas. All right, there's the correct list. Here's how it shakes out for you. There are no trade windows. Well, there is a trade window because I have to print this out again. All right, be back again. All right, welcome back, everybody. What will be the longest filler video ever? Big thanks to this correct group right here for getting in. I think that that list that you saw earlier was for the the hanger box break that's coming up a little bit later. Is this the right pack? Am I doing the right thing here? Series two? Yeah, I believe this is correct. I don't know, who knows. I can't trust anything that I'm doing right now. Good luck, everybody. Anything special here? Vet comments aren't going to ship, but you get some of the top tier rookies. That would be nice. No, no. Nothing too crazy here, ladies and gentlemen. All right. Now, let's see who's going to win. What are we giving away here? Flawless spots. So let's gather everyone's names from Eric down to Steve. New dice, new list. Top six after six will be in the Flawless baseball break. Two out of four, six times. Good luck. One, two, three, four, five, and six. So from, sorry, Nathan, seven through 30. Sad times. Saddest of all, Nathan, just on the outside looking in, but hopefully maybe you'll still be in the top six. Top six, happy times for you. You're in that Flawless break. Oliver is happy. So is Alan. Nathan, you're in, Nathan. Alan again. Scott, last spot mojo and Steve H. Congrats to the top six. We'll see you for the next filler and we'll see you for the full spots. We'll see you for that break. Hopefully, later tonight, jaskiescasebreaks.com. Bye-bye.