Cool. Hey everybody. It's nice to be in Austin. This is my first time having a great time. So I'm Andrew, Andrew Lewis. Pay attention here. My name is Andrew. If you notice carefully, I'm not wearing a badge. And something happened here. There's an identity thief somewhere in here. I think my name is pretty common and someone was like, oh, Andrew. Nobody will notice that one gone. So look around you. If there's someone wearing an Andrew badge, and they're not an Andrew, let me know. Because I really want one of these badges. So I'm going to be talking about a personal project I've been working on for the last little while. But before I get into it, I'm going to talk about history. So we don't hear too much about history at tech conferences usually. I love history and I find all kinds of excuses to tell to people. So we're going to start in the 1930s. And it's about the person, Vannevar Bush. So he was a cool scientist, engineer. He worked at MIT in the 30s. And he built some of the first analog computers. These were giant mechanical computers that mostly did calculus. This was a hard problem. Took a lot of work and he automated it with mechanical systems. This is an example of one of them. So the operator on the right is actually tracing the curve and then the integrals calculated mechanically. So they're really cool devices. So he got pressed into management as a lot of what happens to engineers. And then in the 1940s, something big happened that reshaped a lot of what science and universities were. And that was World War II. So everybody got mobilized. Everybody had to play a part in the war. And with the war came this explosion of information. So there were these new bureaucracies, new offices, new information was just like flowing out of these new functions. And new paper was coming out, new reports, new science. And these are just some of the pictures that really visualize how much information was being created. And Vannevar Bush's job during the war was to distill this all down, all the research that was being done, and give recommendations to the president and really understand what was happening in research and make recommendations. So he's just flooded with information and new things to digest. And he said, we're being buried under our own product. So science had created all these ways of creating information and outputting it. But we really didn't have tools to make sense of it or to stay on top of information overload. So when the war wrapped up, he put his engineer hat back on and he thought about a way to solve this. And he wrote an essay in 1945 called As We May Think. And he described a dream device that he wanted that would solve all these problems. So he called it a memex, Aaron, a memex. And it was a device that would solve all these problems. And this is what it would look like. It was a desk-sized device. So it would store books, records, communications, photos, and then you could navigate it through with a mechanical way and you find everything you wanted in this device. It had these cool add-on devices like the stylus for taking notes. It had this voice recorder where you could leave voice memos into your memex. It even had this cool clip-on camera for adding photos into your memex. But the coolest thing and the reason we're talking about the memex still is he had this idea that instead of just filing things by categories or alphabetical indexes, it would be really cool if we could navigate our personal information as a graph and really like go by association by what we were doing or where that information came through and kind of in an associative way. So if these are nodes in our memex, we can imagine as the user navigates them, the trails that the user takes through the data gets recorded and then we can use these trails to navigate later on. So it was really forward-looking. The problem with the memex is that it was never built, unfortunately. It was a conceptual device and Vanir Bhush was busy and he never actually got to building it. So this made me really sad. I heard about this idea and it made me really sad. So just a little bit about me, a bit of personal background. I'm an information pack rat. So if there's a piece of information, I try to save it. Like that's just a rule I have in life. So this is my grade five journal where I started like writing what my days were like. These are my report cards from kindergarten which I started saving. I have all my movie stubs over the years that I have like a record of every movie I've been to. Before Google Maps came out, I tried to track my walks through Toronto just to get an idea like where I've been in the city. I even saved all my chat logs from high school horrifically because like these are really not worth saving but I just wanted to obsessively save them. So you can see there's really like high level discourse here.  So I think there's a few solutions. Like the most obvious one perhaps is to talk to a therapist. This is not what I did. What I did is I used Ruby to solve the problem. So I went about building a memex. The biggest problem so far has been gathering the data. So I'm trying to make it all encompassing and capture everything I read or see my browser history. I have all my digital consumptions like the photos I look at or the videos I watch or music and podcasts. All my location history from my phone and my messaging and social interactions from Slack email. And then there's a lot of like soft data like journaling or notes that I take or annotations. And I wrote importers or scrapers for all these services and I put them all into one place. And I'm going to do a little bit of a demo now. This is the part that can go disastrously wrong for me so everybody can just do a little quick prayer and hopefully it won't. Yeah, okay, cool. So what we're looking at is just like the main interface. What we have is a query for everything I've looked at on YouTube. And I can search it by Ruby. So this is now every video on YouTube that I've looked at that is about Ruby. And I can, you know, change the style the way it's displayed. I can also do a different query, something like this provider GitHub verb liked. So this is a narrow query for every repository on GitHub that I've liked. And everything stored as a graph like inspired by the original memex. So I can turn on this graph view and just to show you kind of how everything's organized. So in the middle here is me because it's kind of from my personal perspective. This is a repository and these are the tags and you can get a sense of how I can navigate through this personal history with the graph. So for instance, I could do involve about electrons. So what I'm doing here is doing a query for everything tagged electron that I've liked on on GitHub. And the query gets updated. So it's pretty powerful. I can navigate my personal history this way. Also, as I mentioned, I have my traveling history from my phone. Did anybody fly in last night to Austin? What time? There was a lot of thunder yesterday. And if I turn on my history of traveling, kind of set, see what happened. We flew from Toronto to Houston. And in Houston for a layover, our pilot was going west to Austin. And then he saw the thunderstorms and he was like, nope, not today, Satan. And he turned around and went back to Houston. And that's why I'm really tired today because we had to wait out the thunderstorms. But we got here after all. So it's pretty cool. I have a pretty full record of everywhere I've been over the last half decade. So let's say a couple of years ago, I went to Strange Loop with a friend. Max is up there. And it was a cool, fun road trip along the way. We did a lot of listening to podcasts and music. And let's say I'm trying to remember later on like, what was that cool song that we listened to? So I can do a query occurred with Max. And I'm going to do verb traveled, first of all. So this is all the times I've traveled in a car with my friend Max. So this shows the road trip that we did. And let's say I want to search for something that we did along the way. So I can do verb listened and it occurred during our travel. So this is now a log of all the songs we listened to along the way. And if I want to be more specific, let's say I'm trying to find a podcast that we listened to, I can do something like this. So represents an episode. So this is how I tag a podcast. So these are all the podcasts we listened to. And it's a pretty fun way. Like sometimes I might remember anything about the podcast other than the fact that we were driving through a particular part of the states when it happened. So I just have a lot of options for finding my personal history. When we got to Strange Loop, I'm listening to talks and I'm like taking notes or looking up things. And I can do something like this where I look up on my browser history and it occurred within the Peabody Opera. Peabody. I can't spell on stage opera. So this is all the browser history that took place within the conference center. And again, I can scope it down to, like let's say I'm looking for repositories. So these are all the repositories I looked at during a talk. And this is kind of like a good log of like what people are talking about, what notes I took, or like what I was reading, or listening to. So this is kind of useful. You know, we're at Keep Ruby Weird, so I want to now start going to kind of less useful stuff. So I mean, I'll do one kind of useful one. So this will be a search for everything involving Ruby. So like this is like browser history, it's messaging. I can scope it down to messaging. So this is now a log of everything, every message I've sent that involves Ruby. So I can graph it out. This is a graph of it. But I can also do these kind of cool correlations. So what we have on the screen is, this is a correlation of how many times I've messaged Ruby versus my mood in the day. So you can see, I mean, it's kind of fuzzy, but you can see that as I send more messages about Ruby, my mood kind of goes up. It's a bit big. I can also do it with stress. This is now a query of stress and messages with Ruby. Or maybe productivity if I want to have a look. So as we can see, the more messages I send about Ruby in the day, the more productive I am. And you know, it's kind of useful maybe to learn about myself this way. I can also do something like this. I track my drinking. So I can check my coffee versus my productivity when I drink coffee. It kind of gives a big sense of the more coffee I drink, the more productive I am. I can also graph it in different ways. So let's turn on. This is like every coffee I've had. But I can also graph it by hour of the day with predictable results. So I have, this is 9am. So you can see I have my 9am coffee. I can change it to beer. So you can see my evening beers. And you know, beer before liquor, never been sicker, I think it's how it goes. You can see as the night goes on, sometimes I switch to liquor. I also track my eating. So this is now all the burritos I've had. You can see when I have them. So now let's kind of maybe try to make it a little bit more useful. But let's say I was reading a book and I'm trying to find a quote from that book that I was reading while I was eating a burrito. And I really don't remember any, I don't even remember the book it was. I don't remember what it was about. But I just remember I was eating a burrito while I was doing it. So I can turn on the map view and okay, I remember I might have been in Toronto. So I'm just gonna search for burritos eating near Toronto. So these are all the burritos I've had and I can turn on my burrito heat map here. And as I scroll through my burrito heat map, I'm just trying to get a sense of like where I eat these burritos and maybe one of them will come and pop into my head about like that time I was eating and reading. So one pops up over here. Let's have a look. So I can zoom in, have a look at it and see what else I was doing at the time. So here I was, it was a 20 degree Celsius day. I was in the park and I was reading a book. So that's great. That's what I was looking for. And then I can go in and see like what else I was doing. I had the photos here. I have the quotes that I saved from the book which is what I was looking for, my burrito, you know, other things I did. So it's a bit contrived. This doesn't happen, you know, it doesn't happen too often. But when it does, when I do have something I'm trying to find that's a bit esoteric. I have a lot of different ways of finding it. So yeah, that's the personal project. A quick demo of it. And it worked. So I'm happy about that. So now I'm going to go over some of the technical specs. It's a bit heavy now. Just kidding. I'm not going to do that. If you want to hear about the technical details you can go to RubyConf next week where I'll be doing maybe a slightly less weird version of this talk. Or you can talk to me after I love talking about this stuff. But right now I want to talk about something else. Does anybody recognize this? What kind of proof is this? Just someone yell it out. It's a Delta Epsilon proof.  Like I was really depressed about it. I thought I shouldn't be in computer science. I was pretty close to dropping out. I really wanted to switch to history and just like never touch computers again. So these are just some records I dug up from the past that kind of like captures my feelings around the same time. This is like me just asking a friend can I double major in history and philosophy of science. Like this is where my brain was at. But around this time I started hearing about Ruby on Rails. So this is a chat log from 2005 where I'm talking to my friend Andre about it. And like yeah I got to check out this cool Ruby on Rails. And this was like this was a big deal for me.  You know it's so cool. There's like so many things that were happening around this time. You know really cool ideas. Really like really good community. And I think Ruby on really kind of like brought me back into tech and really gave me the joy and part of it was just the weird projects that were in the Ruby community and like the culture and like the people who were not in it just for the technical aspects. So I just want to share that about my personal history. So you know keep Ruby weird to me as very personal and it like kind of kept me in this industry and I've had a good time. So I think to bring it back to the original Memex history. The Memex was weird too. Like there was a lot that was weird about it. You might have guessed this when you saw the Cyclops camera. This is like a weird project. But there was a lot of other reasons it was weird. First of all it's form factor was strange. So computers in the 1930s look like this. This was a computer and if you're squinting trying to look at the little desk size device that's not the computer. The computer is the room of people collectively. It's called a computer. If you don't believe me here's a label. So it's the computing section. So computers were big. They were either people or they were room size devices. This is a hard drive from the 1950s. Computers are really big. Even you know later on we have mainframes that were for room size. The Memex on the other hand was this desk size like one user personal device. Like it was small. It would fit at your desk and it was really for one person and this was strange. This is like someone made a mock-up or a real cabinet. You know roughly giving the shape and size of what a real Memex would look like. It was weird for other reasons too. It was weird for the problem it solved. This was Bletchley Park and it was solving Nazi codes like computers were you know for really hard important problems. This was being used to make ballistic calculations for the war. This is the census, the UNIVAC being used for the census. So computers were used for these really hard important problems. The Memex on the other hand was just for you know helping people understand their history and their personal knowledge. The Memex was weird for other reasons. For the technologies it used or didn't. So if you think the Memex was you know kind of a forward-looking device from the 40s it actually wasn't. It was actually quite backwards looking. It was all based on microfilm which is already a technology that was on the way out. It wasn't really the cool thing anymore. The cool thing were these things, the vacuum tubes. But for Vannevar Bush he really wanted to just work with what he knew, which was old technologies from the 30s. But really he just wanted, he was more interested in the concept than the idea rather than specific technologies. And this was vacuum tubes being used. Like this was already kind of like how computers were moving and he you know he just wanted to solve his particular problem without worrying about the latest and greatest. And then even later on he kind of went into weird territory, thought about like using crystals for persistence layers and using mind control. And again it was less about the specific technologies. It was more about like the idea of like what a Memex should be able to do for individual users. It was weird for how it was published as well. So this cool amazing piece of computer science history, you'd think it was published in a big journal that was read in the community. It was actually published in the Atlantic Monthly which is a general audience magazine. It was published, this is in the table of contents, and you can see it was published next to the poetry, a report on chips, and you know a novel called The Egg and I. I don't know what it's about but it looks pretty good. But one of the most important essays in computer science history was published alongside these you know other things. And then later on the next version actually came out in the Life magazine and here it is in the table of contents. And the essay again, this is where all the illustrations came from. But if you look at like what surrounded the essay, you know we have a laxative ad here. So you know one of the biggest ideas was like just you wouldn't have noticed it if you weren't paying attention. And I think like that's an interesting thing about it. But I think like for you know there's these four reasons I mentioned but there's another big reason that I think it was weird. It was just one of many like weird side projects for Vannevar Bush like he was a busy person and he had a lot of responsibilities. He was in charge of what became later the NSL, the National Science Foundation. He was actually one of the civilian oversights for the Manhattan Project. You know he was a co-founder of Raytheon and like I don't want to talk about warmongering or whether that's good or not but he was a busy person. And even later in life he had a lot of things that he tinkered on and the memex was just this idea he kept on coming back to. He worked on it a little bit, published a little bit more about it. And he never you know he never completed it or really like put it out into the world but it still had an amazing impact on history. So I think side projects are important. They're big privilege like not all of us have you know the time or the freedom to work on them. But I think if you do make them weird, make them experimental. That's my takeaway. So I just want to show one more thing I've been working on. It's a little it's a little next version of it. So what if we combine the memex with Alexa? So I'm going to do a little demo of that. I call it the memexa. So let's go back to this turn off the map. So let's do a query. So memexa when was the last time I was in Texas? Cool. That works. So you know I can ask these kind of useful questions. I can also ask like less useful questions. When did I last see tender love? Seven months ago. Cool. Where did I last see tender love? Okay. Let's have a look. Yeah. That was that was at RailsConf. This was pretty good. Find photos of tender love and business. Okay. Find photos of tender love and poutine. Yeah. I got that. You know and for each one of these we can kind of go in and look at the context like this. In this case this was the conference in Montreal because he said and he gets, you know, I can use this voice interface to get back to it. It was actually a very cool day if you remember. So let's go back. Find photos of tender love and I. Cool. Yeah. This was at RubyConf a couple years ago. How far away from tender love am I right now? You know obviously that last one was fake. But I mean the rest were real and they were coming from real data that was in here.  This is kind of like what we have to do. So apology number one. Sorry tender love for being so creepy. I talked to him earlier and I warned him this was coming and he was okay with it as long as he had a right to delete the data that was in the memex. So that's cool. Apology number two. So I was working on this on the plane yesterday. This is me working on the plane. So I just want to apologize to the person next to me who had to listen to me talking about tender love for my laptop. The whole play. And I wish you would understand that it was for, you know, for a good pause. But seriously, where's this all going? So this has been kind of like a long running personal project. I've been working on it for a long time. I think there's a lot of like potential business cases in it. I'm not really worried about this. I'm really, I'm really interested in the experiment of it. Like how far can I get with putting my life in a database? What habits changed? What, what about my life is different? Like how do I understand myself differently? There's a phrase that was kind of rolling around with Vannevar Bush said he talked as people would work on, as they would use the memex, the memex would actually mold them and vice versa. So there's almost like this symbiotic relationship. And I think my project is like an experiment and just seeing how far I can get. Or to put it another way, playful mind is the core of Ruby.  And this is kind of like why I'm doing it. So thanks a lot for listening. If you want more information, send me a message or sign up for my newsletter. I do hope to open source most of this sometime next year. So shoot me a message and I'd love to talk about this. Thanks. Wow. Wow. I guess I'm, I'm an American so I don't get GDPR. But unfortunately, do you, do you want to do questions? Yeah, sure. Yeah. I think we have, we have about five minutes for questions. Anyone, anyone? Okay. I will, I will start here because you're closer. So I guess my questions are pretty obvious one. How do you enter all of this data? Like, do you type it into your phone as you're going places or do you have some kind of automatic tracking? Right. Yeah. So the majority of stuff on the screen was actually automated. Like the stuff that wasn't automated was like the beer and like the food. Like that wasn't. And like also sometimes I tag people manually. So like I have a little app on my phone that I, you know, it's like a really simple command line kind of app. And I enter data that way. But the majority of the rest of the stuff was like coming from like Twitter likes or browser history or like I've automated almost all of it. Like the travel logs are all from my phone. So yeah, like the majority of stuff, like I could, I could have a pretty useful version of this that wasn't, wasn't using any of the manually entered stuff at all. So yeah, like the burritos are fun for demos, but like, you know, that's not the most important part of this project. So yeah. That's that's it. I'm not actually going to be at RubyConf. So that's I'm asking this now. But what's, what do you use for speech recognition? Speech recognition. It's the web, it's the web speech API. It's available in Firefox and Chrome. It does a pretty good job. Like, yeah, I, you know, this actually took maybe like, I don't know, two hours of work. Like it wasn't, that wasn't a hard at all. Yeah. You're closer. So you win. Yeah. How important is the, the graph for modeling those relationships? And, and are you using a graph database? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. I mean the graph is central. Like that's like the most important part of this, like the idea that, you know, I'm trying to model things that I've experienced. So like, it's like, there's no schema for that. Like it is a graph of like, associations in my head. So I'm using this really fancy on you, graph database called Postgres. And it works really well. Like I was actually using fancier stuff before.  And like Postgres is like, rock solid. And basically, everything's running off a node, node and relationship table. And the query planner is really good at like, figuring out like, which order to run things in, like, actually like, Postgres has been amazing for this. It does full text search, which has been really useful. So, yeah. Nothing too fancy. And it works. Can I give you money to use this right now?  So I think I needed to design a system that I can deploy updates and roll out stuff and like, control it, but not host your data. So when I figure that stuff out, let's talk. I'm thinking of doing Kickstarter next year. So if you're interested, yeah, get my mailing list. It's fine. It's not cracked. It's not cracked. Questions? I think, I think I have, I have a question. How did you get all my data? Are you my MMX? I mean, it could be, it could be like a service that I offer you your data. Oh, thank you. All right. Any, any other questions? Okay. So what sort of insights have you gotten from the data?  You know, a lot of the correlations that I showed, like, they're kind of stupid and like I thought I would find more insight that way. And I'm, I think like as I work on this project, I'm not looking for that kind of stuff. I'm, I think the thing that has been really useful for me is just like the ability to just search a term and see like all my history with it. Like, if I see someone's name, I can just put it in here and see like that time they were mentioned in a newsletter 10 years ago or something like that. And like, this amazing context is like just available like within like, you know, one second or two seconds of time. And I think that habit has really like changed the way I live. Like, I know that I can always find stuff and that's like a really powerful kind of way to live. So, yeah. I think that's enough. Thank you, Andrew. Everyone give him a round of applause please.


What's going on guys? Today I am back with another Destiny 2 video and today I bring you the grand opening of around 30 powerful, luminous engrams which do drop quite a few exotics too. But before we get any further guys, do you want to win some juicy loot of your own? I've got emblem cores, I've got sparrow cores, I've got gift cards, I've got much, much more. To win some, simply drop a like on this video, leave a comment down below and join my discord server linked within that video. Disco-reption people! Okay so obviously the footage you're about to see is pre-recorded just from the point of me hitting a 305 because anything before that was just a building game on my behalf. But yes guys, hope you do enjoy the video. Thanks as always for the epic support and I hopefully will see you on my next video. Okay so please hold on, let me be a 305! Please be. Please be a 300 chest beast. Yes! 305 last hope too, can't complain about that. But you know what this means people? This means I can be a 305, everything else is a 305 and all I need to do is apply a mud. Simple as that. And there we go guys, 305 finally. Okay, survivor, give me them exotics please. Oh really? I've literally just got this. I've literally just got it. Oh but it's a 305, I will take that for damn sure. Luckily though, I tried using it in PvP where everyone seems to be having fun with it. Doesn't work for me. It's not like blowing warm air onto people, it just does not work. And the helmet's a 302 which is quite good. They took a fence. Okay, yeah, not too bad. I don't think armor's for the hunter in the game, well that looks incredible. I think they could have been way better, I definitely think they're holding back on items for damn sure. Come on K6, give me that loot, give me them exotics please. Okay then, it won't. Death adder and last specific groups as well as 500 glimmer. So, what was it? SMGM, guess it's an energy weapon. I've not think I've had this before, the Death adder. 295 as well. Oh it looks quite decent. The vice weapons always do look pretty good though to be honest, they seriously do. So yes, what would that look like?  Actually you know what, these look pretty good, half decent. And what else did we get? The last specific groups that are 295. Nah, not like them. I do not like them. And shaders don't really make them look better either. Come on Mr. Savalla, give me that good loot, Mr. Savalla. Look at what I've done today, yes I did the nightfall, give me them exotics please. Oh yes, Celestial Nighthawk, an exotic I actually need as well as the origin story which is, as you can see over the gut, but it's by far the best AR in this game for PVP. That is Rampage, Appended Mag, Flared Magwell. The weapon is so good, it seriously is. Okay, so the Celestial Night 305, nice. And we know this is just a monstrous exotic for bosses, it seriously is. Looking great too, looking great too. Mr. Shaxx, you better have decent loot for me. Yes I am, bro. Better Devils and the Sword Flight 4.1. I might as well cash this in while I'm here. Sword Flight 4.1, Leg Armours, okay. So the Better Devils, this is obviously the hand cannon everyone works with in PVP, obviously will not work for me though. He looks alright though.  Ooh, ooh. Okay, so what else did we get? They're higher than my current ones to be honest. So we will get rid of them. Yes we will indeed. I'm sure we got some guys did we? Yes we do. We got their legs, 219, 299. So yeah, nice. Obviously get rid of them ones. Don't need two of the same one. Come on Mr. Shaxx, give me that goo. I burn this old, finally, an exotic I actually need. Finally. And the martyrs make as well. 294, hmm. Finally got it, 305, loving it, loving it, loving it, loving it, loving it. Ooh, and I've already got the ornament too. Which looks pretty good, not gonna lie, looks half decent. I've been told though this thing is absolute garbage. But you know, best try out myself before I make my own opinion on it. But yeah, looking quite nice, seriously is. And I also got as well, the furniture. Did I get them? I can't even remember. I can't even remember. But yeah. Okay, so what has Hawthorne got for me? Never quit, do you? Took out golf. Illuminous engrossed, natural grass market now. Holes do, what is this? Is that holes or hoos, whatever? Ooh, oh, rocket launch is pretty decent though. Do you need a 300 rocket, not gonna lie about that. It just looks like an abomination. Reminds me of something like a fish. Let's have a look at what this looks like on it. Ooh, now we're talking. Okay, so what survival are gonna reward me for doing a nightfall? What is he gonna give me? Ooh, the sun shot, I am happy with that for sure. A mark of shelter. Oh yeah, 305 as well. Loving it. Loving that for sure. Should have originally picked this out of the three you get to choose doing a campaign to be honest. And I got the mark of shelter as well. I'm here. Come on, Hawthorne. Reward me that juicy loot. Yay. Going great. Dead pan delivery. Mass ep- 3? Oh, 305. Can't argue with that. Cannot argue with that at all. Haven't used it before though. But a shotty is a shotty. Great in PVE for Dame. I'm sure. And what do we have here? Not the best, to be honest. Okay. Okay. What am I gonna get? Death adder and Jensimnichus. Does that say? I don't even know. But it's a... I think this is the IO chess piece. Is it not? I could be mistaken. Looks... Pretty bad in my opinion, to be honest. I don't look too bad in white. I don't look too bad like that either. But yeah. What else did we get? The death adder. I have had this before. I think it's in my vault. I don't think it's a 300 though. But yeah. It's a great looking weapon for sure. Oh, looking great. Okay, Hawthorne. I want some decent loot now.  You just never quit, do you? I seriously am. Luminous engram. Half of what I hear in the streets is...  Imperial engram. This whole clan thing in the first place. Conspirator. Nice. I've got so many things. Was that a coup d'oeuvre engram as well? Woo-hoo!  So, where to start? Okay, so I got this. Yeah. I can't even pronounce that. Valakedin. Valakedin. Valakalala. Valakalala. Valakalala. Looks great though. We also got the Conspirator. Which is the Raid Scare. Dropping at a level 10. I'm sure they said they were going to fix that. But yeah. Looks quite... It looks like a sniper. Jesus. Seriously does. And we also got the dead enq. 1 in the world complex. So yeah. Okay, so now we have my nightfall. Luminous engram. Reward. I've thrown this on my exotics. I still need the sweet business. I still need the vigilance wing. And a few others. So what am I going to get? Really? A took offence and a wicked sister. Oh my life. 299 as well. A took offence. 299 also. How do these look again? When it wants to load. Because the game is so slow. It's unbelievable. There we go. Yeah. Not great at all. Not great at all. That was a rubbish engram. Okay Mr. Cade 6. Give me that. Good loot. Prula prula please.  The morning comes. And that rubbish chess piece. Yet again. And this time it's lowered. And while I got it last time. Really? I mean like it's just come to a point now where. Look how bad that looks. So bad. What else did we get? The morning comes. Which is a void sniper. Dropping out of 297. A mullen. A sniper rifle. Come on Hawthorn. Please be generous. I'm going to kick your bird off that porch. I will drop kick it off. Yes. The Stump EE-5s. I have wanted them for so long. They're just. What they do are great.  Hydraulic boosters. Increases movement speed and slide distance. Improves double jump. I mean you can't go wrong there. I mean you can't go wrong there. And we also got this fusion.  Unless it's the main ingredient. I ain't really fussed about fusion. There's not going to lie to you guys. Come on shacks. Please be nice. Wow. Retro futurist and Phoenix stripe type zeroes. Let's have a look at this shot here then. Let's have a look at this. 300 not bad. Not bad. I always use it to infuse. If it is Garbie Geo. Which I got a feeling it might be. I think this is random. I'm just showing my fire team. Who are these randoms joining my fire team? How are they doing this? We have this chess piece. Phoenix stripe. Orphonic stripe.  The colour area.  Noise the heck out of me. K6 speed generous to my Titan. Give me exotics which I need please. Sweet business, vigilance wing. Any of them. I keep getting this chess type of armor. That's 300 though. 300 though. Looks nothing to my dead orbit gear. Looks absolutely nothing to it. I mean, really? What else did we get? We've got the last hope that we've had a hundred times before. Which is an absolute animal within PvP as you guys will probably know. Great, great weapon. Okay, so now we have another luminous engram from Lord Shaxx. The loot I get from this dude is always poor. And I'm guessing it'll probably be poor I get. And yes it is. Swordfly 4.1 and the Gentleman Vagabond. Let's first take a look at these. I know these are the ones that I got in a massive blade on their arm. There we go. Shame I can't slap somebody one of them. That would be pretty cool. That would be pretty cool. And next up we have the Gentleman Vagabond. And what is this thing? Dragonfly on it eh? I don't think I've actually seen that before. Looking good though. Looking good. Might have to try this out for sure. Okay Savala. Give me that decent note for engram loot please. I could imagine one without you though. Especially after that loot drop. Jesus. The Doomfang pauldrons have already got the wiki system. I've had a million times. Please, please order three or five though. Infusion material to say the least. As epic as they do look. Because they do look pretty cool. But honestly I don't think they're that great. Honestly I do not. Wicked sister. Which is a grenade launcher I have had. Quite a few times now. And it will be infused. So Hawthorn. What do you have? You should have at least two engrams for me here. At least two. Okay so I've got the Raiden Flux. Which is a chest of Odo Gut. And a single clap. Which I've had already. Imperial Engram. It's Stared Back. Which is the hooray sword. Play of the game. And two shaders. And I also got. Dead End Cure 3.1. It took a fence. And Vanguard Magnus Shader times two. So it took a fence. A 300 helmet. Which I've had before. Not a 300 though. So this is pretty cool. What did you get here? Dead End Cures. I think mine are actually a 300 on my other hunter. Not certain I'm at those though. So I will keep them for the time being. And I've got the Raiden Flux already. So this second set will be obviously infusion material. As epic as they are. And do luck. And what else did I get? And a single clap. Which I've had before as well. I think this is in my vault. A 300 though. Yeah it looks great. This is that sniper I actually really love the look of. And I also got as well. I didn't know I got the sword didn't I? Yeah it's gone to me postmaster though. But we've all seen that before. We've all seen that before. What actually happened then? I just glitched from Hawthorn to here. That's craziness. But anyway. Okay, so what are you going to get me? What are you going to get me? Come on now. A fragment. Okay. First in last out and lost. Pacific strides. Refreshing Glimmer. Let's have a look at this. First in last out. I haven't seen that before. Pull some monitor. So Mag tactical mag rifle. But all corkscrew rifle. Oh not bad. Oh! Looking BEAUTIFUL for sure. Last Pacific strides. Dropping at 300. And they look like pajamas. With one knee pad. I don't get that. I don't get that. Why put one knee pad on? It just bogs my OCD for sure. They don't look that great either. Okay Savala. I want an exotic. A jammy-pastic gas. I want an exotic. I haven't had. There we go. GBS volley. Warped cliff. And I took a fence. Let's take a look at them first. 300 nice. It's just all that. Some badges. That's all everything looks to be. But this. This is the one. For sure. I've waited so long for you. Come on Shacks. Please be nice. Okay. Lucky pants which I already have. And the steel side-builders I'd say. Oh yeah they're 3 or 5. I'm a 4 out of 220. So yeah that's not too bad.  And we also got this right here. Which I'm going on a lot. Because I don't currently have it. I don't believe. So yeah Assassin's Blade. Nice. So what's all I'm gonna have for me today? A lot of rubbish as normal probably. And yes I guessed it. Be thy champion and a single clap. Oh it's high I don't know what I've already got. But I'm ever gonna wear it. Probably not. Because it looks like used toilet tissue. And what did we get here? We got the single-clap sniper railway railway rifle. I've been sold a brand. Oh it looks quite good actually. Not gonna lie I love the designer that thing. It looks pretty sweet. Oh there we go. Oh very nice. Very nice indeed. Okay so now we have my flash point and a reward from Cade 6 and I'm gonna get an amazing exotic I need out of this okay no I'm not no I'm not but I did get the woodland cloak and I also got the blue shift which looks a lot like the gala horn when you put the right shadow on it it seriously does avoid a gullet but as we can see here this one is a 300 a 300 so yeah where is that show they let me showcase it to you guys if you haven't seen it the gala horn people how much does that look like the gala horn unbelievable and the world world clock I said the woodland world wood cloak which I haven't actually had before I know this is definitely a cloak so yes I'm definitely keeping that even though it looks tatty but yes 100% keeping that


Today's the day. I married the beautiful Allison Janes, soon to be Allison Prescott I'm loading the car and getting ready for the venue still got a shower and do all that stuff, but Today my dream comes true. I married my other half Looking forward to it. Hopefully you guys can watch on the invite to YouTube channel We're on our way to the venue to get things set up 5th of November What time is it? 10? 19? No, it's 9. 19. 9. 19. Okay. That's funny. It says 10. 19 because that's my that's my birthday I always see my if you add up the numbers. It's 11 I'm married today. She hasn't backed out yet, so So far so good I don't mind. No, I am the luckiest guy on the planet to be married. It's beautiful and goddess, my twin plan So I'm looking forward to it We can get this recorded So today's the day. We're getting married at 5 p.m. 1 p.m Eastern and 10 a.m. Pacific, so What the hall? This is what we're looking at here And it's it. She hasn't ran away from me yet. No, he hasn't run away from me It's 1 25. Don't don't pay attention to what that clock says. It's 1 25 P.m. I have to be back here at 4 and she'll be walking down the aisle.  We both well, but This is forever, baby. I Love you And all of you here at home and those of you watching live on camera It's really great Fantastic I'm Sue Sullivan and I'll be guiding Greg and Anders wedding ceremony today So we're all standing and we're ready to welcome you In celebrating your marriage and to witness and share your work Today your family and dear friends are put aside Everyday things to travel here to be with you to honor and celebrate your marriage to share in your happiness that having found each other and To take inspiration from your love story Greg would have loved his family to be here with us his daughter Brittany His mom and dad Jerry and Dean Prescott and his sister Tyler But they look forward to Celebrating again on the beach in Florida as soon as possible Greg and I are so happy that many of their friends and Indie family are watching today and sending them I need thanks her family mom Pat daughters Megan Granddaughters Olivia either Brother Jenny and his partner with you for being here today it means so much to Greg and Alison that you are all here. They ask that we also hold in our hearts Greg's sister, Lola, and Ali's dad, Mir. Of course, Greg and Ali would have both of them to be here today but they are both with us now in spirit. Greg and Alison, your amazing journey from your first connection with each other has brought about huge excitement and hope from everyone who knows you and those who follow your journey on Tuesday night date night. Your out of this world love story has entranced us all and it truly does transcend time and dimension, spirit energy that together you generate through the love of the creator inspires us and gives hope to all those who seek a twin flame love partnership. Greg and Ali, you have found the other half of yourselves in each other. Both of you so happy finding being together easy despite all the obstacles never having felt this strength of love and connection with another. You have written some unique and personal words heartfelt and with humour which we will witness as you say them to each other and these words will ground your lifetime commitment and strengthen your bond with each other. We will then exchange rings which symbolise your love and commitment to each other. So, as Greg and Ali stand at the precipice, we now take a few moments of reflection to hold the intimacy and good intention of this profound journey and the threshold of marriage soon to be crossed. May you enter into the mystery which is the awareness of one another's abilities. No more physical or spiritual, more and near when you are side by side and warm and connected when you are in separate rooms and even in different futures. May your union be embraced by the creator, the source of all that is. May your words for each other be touched with reference. May you welcome each other's every gift. May love bring you home to each other. We are already coming in. Sorry. Sorry. Look at each other please and remember this moment in time. Before this moment you have been many things to one another, friend, companion, lover and teacher for you have learned much from each other. And now Greg and Ali, you shall say your vows that take you across a threshold of love. Your words to each other are the threats that will tie the knot of your marriage. Your marriage will then stand as an outward form of the deep union between you and me. You're okay. And you're okay, I'm sorry.  My goddess, my other half, my twin friends. I also get to be part of your amazing family who all welcomed me with open arms. I love you all. The dream is real. Despite an ocean between us, we found each other. You look so beautiful. And it's not just your outer beauty that you're inner beauty. It's no wonder why people are around the world. She's world famous, you know. I couldn't be any more proud of the person you are. Do I have to say that? Do I promise to support your hopes and dreams and wishes in every way? Do I promise to listen to you whenever you need someone to talk to, or children to cry upon? Do I promise to take care of you in sickness and in health? I do. So I promise not to stalk you the way you stalked me when you first found me. I do. I do. Do I promise to... And... I do, too. I do. You and I are probably the only ones that do that.  I do. Do I promise to be your best friend forever? Do I promise to let my inner child play nicely with your inner child? I do. Do I promise to stand by your side through thick and thin holding you in the highest esteem and reverence? I do. Do I promise to love you unconditionally forever and eternally? I do. So much. I'm not doing mine now. When you've got mine on the next crappy bit of paper, I can take two months to do it. We're a great team. So here are your words. I think I can't see it in the back. Oh, dear. I'm sorry I don't like it. Thank you, everyone. When I travelled through dimensions to stalk you all those years ago, our souls have been magnetically pulling each other's together ever since. We have now renewed, reunited as one in this lifetime, just as we have in previous lifetimes in the past. Thank you for remembering your dreams. I wouldn't be here otherwise. You felt me calling you through these dimensions.  Well, you are my twin friend. I swear to love and my best friend. Our combined energies shine brighter and brighter every moment. The way together. To be loved by such a wonderful kind, caring, handsome, intelligent, romantic. I could go on and on and on. It just makes me love this lady in the mirror. I truly love the way that you love me. Can we stop? I'm yours. I'm conditioning and blending my life together in eternal bliss and happiness.  I want to cherish and respect you for now and always in this lifetime and any other that follows that.  All right, we're nearly there. So, Greg, do you take Alison? So, why? Greg, do you take Alison to be your wife? Do you promise to love, comfort, honour and protect us and forsaking all others? Be faithful only to her so long as you both shall live. And Alison, do you take Greg to be your husband? Do you promise to love, comfort, honour and protect him and forsaking all others? Be faithful only to him so long as you both shall live. So, Greg, you give this ring to Ali as a symbol of your enduring love and the permanence of the commitments you have made today.  So, Alison, do you give this ring to Greg as a symbol of your enduring love and the permanence of the commitments you made today? All that you are, you give to Greg and all that you have, you share with him. So, Greg and Alison now husband and wife. We rejoice that your marriage and your commitment to each other. We are so happy for you. So, let's begin the wedding celebration. All of our YouTube friends from Mr. and Mrs. Alison and Greg for us to talk. Yeah, we just got to do it officially. This is officially enough, isn't it? This will stay on my hand forever. So, thank you for joining us. I'm just going to take a photograph of you two. Okay, because it's a perfect setting. All right, so we're just saying hi to everybody on YouTube first. Everybody's photobots, awesome. We didn't like the candles up there. Actually, I can lift this up right now. You can go like this. Good. Oh wait, that's YouTube. Which is delayed. So, we are. I can't really see all of right now. But I see there's a lot of... We will read them later. I see a lot of people here, super chats. Thank you so much. It's so generous of you guys. I love you guys. You know, more than anything, we're just so happy that you were here to join us live. To try to get this thing up. There it is. We're going to drink now because that was nerve-wracking. There we go. Yeah. Wow. Look at her. Look at him. She looks amazing. I think he wants to get her. I need Jack. Hi, Facebook. Ayla made tea for me. We have this little tiny tent and we're going to have tea. So, I'm really lucky and I'm special to have tea with the beautiful Ayla. So, this is our second view of the room. But we wanted to get it on camera because I wanted to say thank you to everybody who jits in for this wonderful surprise. It is a massive surprise. We didn't know this is posh. This is wonderful. Absolutely wonderful, isn't it? Yes, Muffy. We've arrived. Yeah. Broomfield Golf Club. And we were staying in the hotel there. Wow. So, we wanted to just say come into the room and you've got this lovely kitchenette area. All this lovely kitchenette. So, it's a care tool for my Horlicks, which I bought with me. She's lovely. And then we thought there's nothing for Greg. There's no drink. He's got no water. We hadn't got prepared or anything. And then we opened the fridge. And you guys have thought of that as well. There's orange juice. There's water for Greg. There's a lovely bottle of Prosecco from Antonia. So, thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you. And chocolate as well. Chocolate. Okay. And then you go into the room. I'm going to show you this room. Check this out. A beautiful bed that says wedding day on it. Huge bed for I can sprawl out and hug all the covers. Isn't it wonderful? Yeah. So, have you done a review with show the bathroom? Okay. And here's our living room area. And we have a special gift here. We haven't opened it yet, but we will do a video on that. No, we haven't. And I'll bring you guys. Thank you. The balloons. Hang on. And here's our bathroom with a toilet I haven't flushed. Ha ha. Okay. Beautiful. Huge bathtub. Shower. Sink. I haven't seen it yet. Okay. The balloons for us and my beautiful bride. And we've got this for two nights. We're so happy. We are. It's like a dream come true. It's amazing. Everything. So. Thank you. Do you want to open that? Should we do that now? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Oh, wow. Yeah. This looks amazing. Yeah. He's a. I can see, I can see the picture frame already. Then I can tell there's, it's a homemade gift. That's my favorite. I love homemade. Anything homemade. 40 hours. 40 hours is took for you. Nicola and Jayce. Thank you. Oh, exciting. Thank you. I'm sorry I haven't got my thing on, but yeah. Oh my goodness. Look at that. Wow. 5th of November. 21. Wow. You guys have to see this. Here it is. Wow. Look at that twin flames. That is amazing. Twin flames. Yes. Wow. I'm so touched. Oh my goodness. I'm so speechless. So much, so much time. So much time and love went into that. We are so appreciative of it. We'll have to find a special place to put it. Oh, sure. I can't believe it. That's, I can feel the amount of love and work that went into that. It's like you're maybe crying. We're so loved. We are. We have a card that goes with it. Wow. Thank you. We're going to have to, we need to find a good place to put that. In here as well. Yeah. We need to keep it up. Yeah. So let's take out the card. Bright and crew. More perfect. Perfect. Perfect. I love it. Yes. Oh. Have a fabulous day, Mr. and Mrs. Prescott. Wish you both a wonderful wedding day. All our love, Jake and Nicola. Oh wow. Oh wow.  This is what you read back before, but I'm going to read it again. Yes. For others, so Greg and Alison.  Obviously I've known Alison a very long time. She was always getting me into trouble, really. It was her favorite pastime. Her hobbies included keeping worms. It's kind of true. And slow worms it was. I didn't have dollies. Slow worms. And kicking me under the table. I did. He kicked me. I kicked him. He started it. She started it. That's it.     He did. Love him. But we love each other a bit. Raising her two daughters single-handedly. A sterling job she has done. With guidance, help and assistance from our wonderful mum. Her health is a constant daily battle she fights behind the scenes. She deserves a change of luck instead of taking her much needed morphine. Whilst sat on a beach in Siesta Key, Greg borrowed his friend Todd's phone. Went up, popped an image of Alison. Well that was Greg's mind blown. As Greg believes, they were together in Atlantis in the previous life. So to cut a long story short, they plan to become man and wife. So as the guiding angels have brought these lovebirds together, their shining souls are united now and forever and ever. As they sit here before you, joined together as a twin flame. So come on Cupid, position that arrow and please take your aim. Touching all over again. That was, yeah. So once again, that took time and thought. It did. Yeah, it was beautiful. Thank you. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you to everybody who paid that. Thank you to Jake and Nicola for organising this and my mum. Everybody's chipped in. I know Jim's chipped in and Ruth is chipped in. I'm not sure anybody else, so whoever did chip in and we didn't know. This is such a surprise. Yes. You want to say anything? I think you covered it all, but we are so very grateful for everybody that has been part of this and the evening was just amazing. And I am the luckiest guy on the planet. Yeah. And I feel the same woman. Clearly. Clearly. So, yeah, thank you and we greatly appreciate it. And the balloons. I love the balloons there. Yes. And all the congratulations to the wedding banners everywhere. I'll show you. See all the wedding banners. And it's still being done out. And there's on the bed as well. There's kind of a wedding banner on the bed and it's lovely. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. And we'll leave it off at that. So, we love you guys. Thanks. Bye.


Welcome back to the Laura Martin Show. I'm Sam Murray, joined now with Stevenson Field Hockey head coach, Laura Martin, and coach. Two tough ones last week, quality opponents, traveled to York, and then host number one ranked Messiah. What do you take away from those type of games? Well, I think we learned a lot of what we can do defensively to help keep the ball out of the net. We've attempted coming into the new lineup. I've talked about that before, so new systems. So we're still adjusting and making accommodations to that, to try and create some more attack. We've adjusted our attack penalty corners. That seems to be very effective. So the losses have hurt, but to quality teams. And you just have to move on from there and hope that at some point in stage, all of these lessons that we're learning will come to assist us with future games. Well, you have another quality opponent coming here tonight in Lynchburg. They're not ranked, but they're a team that has been floating in and out of the pole. What do you take away from playing quality opponents last week against another one tonight? I mean, it's great preparation. Obviously, York was out of conference. They're nationally ranked, and Messiah's in conference, number one in the nation, haven't lost in a bazillion games. So playing up against those two top teams and losing, but learning from the York game made improvements, played better against the Messiah game. And now going into Lynchburg, I think that there's an opportunity to really handle them and to get more on the attack end of things. Because when we are on the attack, we're very dangerous. So we need to learn how to transition a little bit quicker from the defense to the attack against a quality opponent. And I do believe we'll do that. And then on Saturday, you traveled to Weiner for a conference, important conference matchup. Right, big one. What do you expect from that game, or talk about the match up there? So Weiner is ranked second, or sort of tied with Messiah right now. They haven't played head to head yet, but they've had a couple of losses versus Messiah with the nut egg on the loss section. So they're second in the conference, and that's a game we would love to secure. We had an unfortunate loss to Albright in overtime, defeated Arcadia, so the Weiner game is huge. We would love to secure the number two spot if possible, and a win against Weiner would help us to get to that position. Well, we wish you the best of luck in both games this week, and we'll see you back here next week. Thanks. For Coach Laura Martin, I'm Sam Murray, and you've been watching the Laura Martin Show.


Nice play from West Ham, Stundgras into the penalty area. We're going to get at his left foot, pulls it back to the edge of the box. Noble's shot, deflected! A shot deflected, completely wrong-footing Aaron Ramsdale. It's gone in, I think, of Lewis Cook. Really, it's part of the left of a front three, but it's turning into wide on the left of a five as the cross from Fredericks on the right side. Alan with the shot! Sebastian and Alan have come from a long way back here. Back out to this near-right touchline where Noble takes on Harry Wilson and gets away from him. Harry Wilson needs to be careful and Noble goes down. The referee's looking, it's a penalty! It goes from worst to worst still here as a Premier League keeper. Has he got the answer? Here comes Noble. It is 3-0 to West Ham United, and we've not played 35 minutes. That's the ball hit the front man, broke down. David Boyce is going to start one or two rotations here of his players, but in the meantime, Anderson's away from Francis. Anderson's in here for a fourth for West Ham. He scored eight goals in 19 games and then won in 35 since then. Make that two in 36. The game put to bed. 2020, press reset. Start again.


We're so glad to be together again today. A brief note that this session is being recorded. So we'll invite you to put the name that you would like to have. And to keep that in mind, if there are particular distractions going on behind you or around you, you may want to, um, to turn off your screen. Um, as Jason mentioned, we have two exciting guest speakers today.  I'll introduce them in just a moment. I want to just say briefly that. We will hear them speak. And then after their interventions, we'll go into breakout rooms and be able to discuss for a few moments. And then we'll come back and have a little chat. Okay. So, um, without any further preliminaries, I want to introduce you to our speakers today. Melissa floral Bixler is pastor of Riley Mennonite church, Raleigh Mennonite church. Excuse me. She serves as a chair of large North Carolina and on the steering committee for women in leadership for Mennonite church USA. And she writes for sojourners magazine. Perhaps you read a piece in anticipation of the session. She also writes for Christian century, the bias, Anabaptist world and G's magazine. Her book night by fire by night, finding God in the pages of the Old Testament was published last year. And her new book about how to have enemies will be available in July of 2021. And our second speaker is Isaac BJS. Isaac serves as the pastor of Chapel Hill Mennonite fellowship and is the president elect of the North Carolina council of churches. He's a columnist for the Christian century magazine and Anabaptist world magazine. The associated church press presented him with their first place award of excellence for theological writing in 2018. And an award of merit in church. And the award of merit in 2018 and an award of merit in 2019. So you can see that these people are, of course, eminently qualified to do many, many things. The reason that I've, we invited them here today was because of their contributions to help us think about what it means to bear Christian witness amid some of the challenges and the opportunities that exist today. I have really appreciated their contributions that I've read in these various magazines that I've named and the way that I've seen them providing leadership over the years, and particularly in these times. So I thank both of you for making time to be here. And I'm now turning it over to you. I look forward to learning from you and having a rich conversation together. So Melissa, would you start us off? Thanks, Janna for that nice introduction. And it's good to see all of you today, especially one of my church people, Debbie, Debbie Blutzo. So hello to Debbie, who's an AMBS student this year. Lucky, lucky you guys and lucky me. Yeah. And shared a piece with Janna that I had written actually in either March or April of 2019, a different world than the world that we live in now. And I think it's actually, it's helpful every once in a while to look back and see how your work stands up. And this would certainly be an interesting question to think about how much our world has changed from the time I wrote this piece. And that really focused on this question that has been turning around for me. I think in a new way since 2016 and the election of Donald Trump, but what is our, what's the relationship between systemic violence and individuals who uphold that violence? And that really coalesced for me around this one individual, Robert Alfieri, and that's how this essay starts is Robert Alfieri is my enemy. I thought I'd just position, offer just a minute to sort of position myself around, position us around sort of this question about what writing does for me. And just say that I come to writing as a way to work out just the questions that I have at the moment. And writing is an invitation for others to participate in those questions. I am not very original or special. So I assume that if I'm thinking about some of these things, you might be thinking about them too. And this is sort of a space for us to continue this conversation. So I don't really, I don't think about writing as something that necessarily has to sort of stand the test of time. I really do hope that someone takes these ideas and has something better to say in a few years. It would be pretty unnerving to live in a world where that didn't take place. So, so this sort of reflecting back, looping back again and seeing what's still there for us. As the new questions come into us as the new challenges are before us, the sort of opportunity to be here with you and do that today. Yeah, so I wanted to offer this particular piece because I was having these questions about the relationship of violence and individuals who uphold this violence. And all of this was sort of happening around this incident in our community versus a man named Samuel Oliver Bruno, who had been living in sanctuary in Durham. I live in Raleigh a few miles away from Durham, North Carolina. And he had basically been tricked into going to this biometrics appointment and leaving sanctuary to do that. And as soon as he left sanctuary, ice agents don't typically go to places that are sensitive locations, hospitals, schools, churches, so someone had been living in sanctuary for a while. And he was immediately arrested and brought out to this ice van in Morrisville, North Carolina. And this van was almost immediately surrounded by, by people who'd come to support him. Isaac was one of those people. And then all those people were arrested. But what was really fascinating about this moment was the, the reaction from especially the Morrisville police department, which was, they would say things like, we're so sorry, but we have to do this. I don't really believe in this or I'm actually on the side. I'm just doing my job or our hands are tied to sort of these, the sort of echo that was coming. And shortly after this, we had an election that sort of brought in some new sheriffs who all pulled out of the 287 G program that, that was a program that voluntary program from cooperation between ice agents and between local law enforcement. And under that program, Robert Alfieri, who also was the one who was charged with arresting some well and sort of instigating the scheme to pull him out of sanctuary. I announced that there would be a new normal in our area of unscheduled raids, ice raids in this region where we're both Isaac and I live. And so fact, you know, so you go to work in at a factory and all of a sudden I, this van of ice agents pulls up or you are stopped at a stop light and the sirens go off behind you. And this is just living in a state of constant fear. So all of this is sort of co, so this, I'm trying to think about the sort of rising urgency of, of being able to name our enemies and sort of recognizing that the challenge of that for me is then my experience in Anabaptism, but in the church in general, is that it feels like there's a, this leap that happens to the command, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. But I really needed to stay in this space first. And I, I needed to, to get a little bit deeper into that question of enmity to name it to really, because it in making that skip to love your enemies is sort of like, there's, there's a lot of questions there. What does it mean to love, but what also, but also who are your enemies and how do we name who our enemies are. And I realized that I was actually in good company in, in this because the Bible makes a tremendous amount of space for talking about enemies and huge swaths of both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament are concerned with this topography of enmity. And so this, these are stories and letters and narratives that create this map that, that spends so much time helping us to understand the landscape for when we get to Jesus Beatitudes offering this response of, of the beatified community in response to enmities. And so I wanted to take the, in this, in this piece that I wrote for sojourners and to really take some time to, to think about just a general outline. So things like talk a little bit about that article about how the gospel of Luke actually starts out naming the enemies of Jesus day, you know, it's, it, it names Herod and it, it names Caesar, it names all of the, there's no sort of shying away from, from the structural power analysis that's happening in this area. And you need that information in order to understand how and why Jesus progresses on this journey. And then all of that is informed by the Psalms and these Psalms of implication of calling out to God for justice and, and oftentimes for vengeance. That I think that sometimes we see those as sort of separate movements that happening in, in, in the Hebrew scriptures versus the New Testament, instead of this sort of, that this is like a, like almost like a wave that, that, that that is building over time and crashes in Jesus onto the shores of, of creation of, of human life. And so I ended up writing a whole book about this, but the germ of it is here in this article for sojourners. And for me, what, what I, what I think this sort of beginning exploration into the sort of much longer exploration of this book was digging into enmity as a difference that maintains superiority through power. And I wanted to shift away from the sense that, that enemies are imbued with hatred that, that somehow we have to sense this sort of heat from our enemies in order for us to be able to, to recognize them. And enmity certainly can look like rage and destruction, but I think we also need to be aware that enemy, enemies can wear the guise of paternalizing kindness or institutional bureaucracy or passive acceptance of the world in which we live. And when we are looking for sort of an emotional reaction, we are forgetting that so much of our history is actually the sources of enmity in the, in the programmatic every day actions that happen in people willing to seed themselves over to the, to be the instruments of power for systemic violence. So again, our hands are tied. We're very sorry we have to do this. Don't worry. I don't actually believe in this. And to position ourselves rightly before those questions. Is the, is the place we have to go first before we can even begin to think about asking, what does it mean to love our enemies? Yeah, so it's a little bit for me. And I'll turn it over to Isaac. Actually, before Isaac speaks, I want people just to take a moment, because I'm sure that was, that was a lot. That was, that was great. Thank you so much, Melissa. So maybe just take a moment and jot down a couple of your questions and thoughts that then we'll take into the conversation. All right, thanks Isaac over to you. Thank you. Good to be with all of you here. Good to see your faces, your names. Thank you for the invitation. Yeah, in a lot of ways, I guess what I'm going to say is just kind of like a, maybe like a perhaps boring footnote to some of what was already shared forgive me for my particularity here. But yeah, I was going to talk a little bit about how some of this, I guess, makes sense in my own Mennonites in a Baptist tradition. These conversations about how to think about ourselves in the world and perhaps in relationship to enemies that we might make along the way. So yeah, so maybe a little boring history lesson you all can let me know. But I thought I'd start with the way that the, in terms of like Mennonite, the Mennonite tradition, our debts to the Schleitheim Confession. Schleitheim Confession was a document that a bunch of people got together and a Baptist got together in 16th century and decided like this is who they were going to be in the world. And one of the things that comes very, comes through very clearly in that document that became a unifying document for anti-Baptists and then later Mennonites was the sense of being a persecuted minority in Europe, in the context of Europe, in Switzerland, Germany, and then other communities throughout Central Europe there. And as a persecuted minority, they were called to separate themselves from the violence of this world. So people who were inflicting violence upon them, you could say, that they wouldn't respond in kind, that they would live out the life of Jesus and not return violence for violence. So their posture was one of separation. I mean, throughout the document, it's a call to, there's just a few lines.  And these anti-Baptists were the ones called out from this world by God. Continues to liken the world to Babylon and Egypt, those Old Testament figures, and the church, the anti-Baptist church, as the little flock of, the humble little flock of Christ. That's how they talked about themselves. So yeah, so just in terms of that's how they thought about those, and since they didn't resort to violence, their only form of punishment of people in their community who would be violent or harm one another or whatever it might be, was exclusion, excommunication, what's known as the ban. So since you can't really hurt someone, you can't put someone in prison or jail or anything like that, the worst you could do to somebody was to kick them out of the community, which is still something we, the government decided to prioritize the men and knights practice today, and official capacities, like ordnation, recent news about John Rempel's ordination being terminated would be an example of this kind of this kind of punishment. The Slythethime Confession became significant in the life of US men and knights in the mid 20th century, Manonites here in the United States. Harold Dender was a kind of a, what would you call him? He was the gatekeeper of Mennonite identity for a long time. Dean of president of Goshen College, I think, something like that, but much more larger role in all Mennonite institutions. Anyhow, so he kind of revived this sense of 16th century anti-baptism, these voices as being helpful for our lives today or their lives today in mid 20th century Europe or mid 20th century United States. And these voices against like basically serving in the military. I mean, that was the issue that he identified as most significant for his people. He used his voices to say, you know, we can't be conscripted in these wars and World War One or two. Therefore, we need to be conscientious objectors to those forms of violence. So yeah, so this was a useful document for him in making violence conversations about violence, strictly about participation in war and Mennonites didn't do that. It was an important movement, important, you know, thing not to go off and kill in wars. But there's a lot that was occluded when that became like the central focus of what counts as violence. So we have to look to other places, not as, you know, kind of minoritarian figures within the Mennonite and the Baptist tradition to help reveal kind of like everyday violence is that are part of our lives that the men in Mennonite institutional power really talk about. So, for example, I mean, I, someone who I think is very significant in thinking about our complicity in global violence was Doris Jansen Long anchor. She was kind of awakened through Mennonite Central Committee's work of humanitarian outreach throughout the world, and realize that we participate in violent economies. That are supported by political sovereignties that have their power because of militaries. And we need to take that seriously that you know even though I'm not acting in a form of violence that I can decide like an everyday form of way of hurting somebody that participation in economy and food ways hurts people. So this continues to be significant for us, especially right now in this pandemic as you know people are harvesting our fruits and vegetables. And then getting infected out in the fields. I grew up in California so watching all the images of people migrants harvesting strawberries as they're like being choked by by the fires was very vivid vivid to me. Long anchor Doris kind of made that an important thing for us to care about as Mennonites in terms of institutional energy. Along the same lines MCC was important in paying attention to way that you know violence is not just about war it's also about violence against women. So MCC in the in the 80s started what was called the Committee of Women's Concerns. And it was related to their peace and social concerns committee. I'm kind of out of my league and talking about this I'm sure I assume Janet probably has much more to say about all these interconnections but but just to say that MCC kind of made sure that it's not just about anti-violence intimate partner violence, violence against women counted as part of what it meant to be part of what meant to be a Mennonite in terms of our peace witness. Same sort of thing in terms of race relations in the 70s. People of the mind of what's called the Minority Ministries Council emerged people like Vincent Harding and others confronted Mennonites on their, their what's to say their the comfort with which Mennonites have been able to live in this country and benefit from the power of whiteness is actually what the language he used he talked about the power of whiteness among Mennonites in the 1980s 1960s. Anyhow, I think all of that is just a way of talking about how, for me, coming to the question of what it means to think about our peace witness and to be Mennonites, part of this tradition is to realize that violence has a whole lot more to do than just wars and some of what Mozart and shared one aspect of that in terms of the enforcement of borders. I mean just to say to another way to make that hit home but just to realize that, you know anyone, all of us, those of us on this call who are citizens of the United States. Our rights and privileges depend on the violence of ice on the violence of border enforcement. There is no such thing as US citizens without 500 children being separated from their families. Can't find their parents. That was the news that broke yesterday, what ice has done. So just the thing about this. The conversation about enemies and our identity here in the United States has everything to do with the benefits and privileges of citizenship. Considering all of that this world that we live in. I like to talk, I'm beginning to talk about what it means to be Mennonite is not to not use the old language of non resistance or non violence or those permutations of those words. I think it's important to think about this tradition instead to think about our posture in the world as anti violence. Picking up on this tradition that I laid out here with MCC the women's concerns folks making sure we talk about intimate partner violence. Long anchor making sure we talked about economies and food ways of violence. Mennonites in German town in the 17th century, signing on to their, you know, this anti slavery documents. The ways of confronting the way that our lives are embedded these forms of violence and that the only way to be a Christian in them is to be anti violence to take an active posture of protesting violence that is part of our lives that infuses our lives. That sustains the comforts of our lives. And to make sure that when we talk about violence that we're talking about.  We're talking about things in this in our churches and also in the streets, things at home and also in prisons, that our posture of anti violence involves us in a commitment of peace to peace and all of those different places. We call it a vigilance of vigilance to the abuse of power anywhere, you know this vigilance against the powers of principalities was a language that I remember hearing thinking a lot about. But also, you know, it's a way that that powers and principalities. Yes, I'm all about like in rid of those that's bad but also just to realize that that kind of language, kind of abstracts us from the oppressed violences that we'd rather not pay attention to because they're too much a part of our, our lives so, you know, just the abuse that happens at the hands of the powerful among us in our, in our churches in our world, in our homes in the streets. So yes, I'll stop there. I'm going to say but that's what I got for us. Take it again another moment jot down your thoughts. Thank you so much Isaac, that was really rich. I suspect that we all have a this has been very exciting and provocative. And so I'm looking forward to going into breakout rooms now. And I know that you all have questions and comments because you have been sending them in the chat function already so fantastic. Jason I think that we have two questions that Isaac and Melissa posed ahead of time that draw a through thread from each of their interventions so we'll post those in the chat. And then we'll be going into breakout rooms where you can discuss those questions for seven minutes Jason. Is that what we're doing. Seven minutes. Okay. Please introduce yourself. Please respond to one of the questions, and then continue around the circle. And then if you have a chance, come back to the other continue discussion but want to make sure that everyone has a chance to, to voice a response into these questions or to the presentations. And then we'll come back into our full group session when so Jason's going to send the invitation now I believe. And when that comes, please accept the invitation so that you can enjoy, you can join your breakout room. All right, so you should be getting your invitation here. We'll need to leave. So this could be a time to do so if, if you're not going to join the breakout but I'll call you back here in about seven minutes is that is the story of God's redemptive love through the people of Israel into and then incorporating Gentiles in the church. And so what does it mean to put yourself into the new order. And that that is not a possession that the that the church has is a gift that we receive oftentimes from unusual and unexpected places. And so, and so the ability to recognize that there are, and there are ways that we are invited into the new order into the new sort of social rearrangement and economic upheaval that's happening, even in places that are not in, in church spaces I think is, and is is is the gift that's waiting for us to be received. And I hope we receive it. I just want to highlight one thing before we go on to the other questions that are now coming in quickly. And that is that I think a really helpful, more explicit, in some ways, decentering of the church. A really important contribution of an abaptist thinking has been to recognize the church as a political agent. That's essential. I think it's also helpful to recognize that in, in these situations that in this movement of what you're calling with cone movement towards the new order. And to recognize where the spirit is moving, like say in social movements and what are the ways that we lend our power to that work of the spirit that is going on outside of ourselves. And that decentering work, I think that's pretty hard work. And I think that's a, that's a challenge to us right now. Melissa, a question for you on enemies and it came in two parts. So I'm going to start with it and if the person who raised this question wants to identify themselves are welcome to, but this person wrote, we in our group discuss that other anti-abaptist backgrounds. So an abaptist some people in this, in this conversation have come from an abaptist backgrounds. And this person says, this is very much in contrast to my strongly military family. So, what do you do or what would I do, as I realize that, or I'll just read that here, what do you do as you realize you're Trump supporting Christian nationalist family and friends are in many ways enemies. And then the second part of the question is, in my case, my parents provide childcare and other forms of support for us. And we have an ongoing relationship. They know where we stand in contrast to them but we don't discuss it regularly, because it would rock the boat of us caring for our children together. So, about these kinds of situations. This is me by the way, Laura Rhodes. Hi. Thanks, Laura for posing that question. Yeah, that's a really, that's a good and important question and one, you know that I am there, it does feel like there is this. You know, we have both an interesting dynamic in the New Testament between Jesus, basically telling us we will become enemies of our kin, right to follow Jesus that. It's interesting that he immediately moves into into how he will also call people to lay down their possessions and and give up their and give up their money and everybody shocked right the site and this is to the disciple this is can't believe this. And, and so I think we have this this real strand which strain within the New Testament of the sense of the play like we become enemies to the people who are unexpected like the people who we think that are we have the most natural people of our same religious group, our family members, and then a new family is created out of out of the people around us. And so I think oftentimes the question for me is, are we doing the work to create the kind of communities and families and support networks, so that people can actually be joined to people who are doing the work of Christ liberation, or are we saying like oh actually we need you to become enemies to your families but we don't really have mutual aid support networks and we're not providing you childcare like I, for me it's those are sort of questions on that that we have to be asking at the same time. The reason from Jesus is because there is a better life out there, among, among the, among the family of God, and the kingdom as in a Maria sassidious calls it, and, and, but, but I think that the challenge for the churches are we willing to actually step up into the role of, of being family to one another in the ways that, that oftentimes I, I don't always see that. That's really helpful thank you. Yeah, thanks for asking that Laura. Question for Isaac. This has come from, I'm going to read the question as it's posed here. You can also know that it's coming from different directions and I would also hear a fair amount in my piece of these classes. So this reads, Isaac identified the many kinds of violence in which we are complicit. Is there a hierarchy of violence, suggesting where we might focus our resources, time, money, etc. and assuming one cannot tackle everything.  Thank you. I wasn't able to myself that for a second. Yeah, no that's really, we are finite creatures. And the world is very big. Yeah, no, that's a really good question one. I don't know if this is helpful at all. I mean, part of me feels like what one answer is just the answer that Jesus offers with the parable of the of the Samaritan who stops and helps the person, you know all other people who ignore this person on the side of the road, because they have more important things to do. And then the Samaritan who decides to interrupt his life and intend to healing the person. So it feels like part of it is, you know, whatever confronts us today is in this next hour is the one is probably the violence we should be paying attention to. I think another image that has been helpful for me at least is from Fred Moten Fred Moten is a black studies professor used to be a Duke now I think is in the UC system in California. But he, he talks about how what it means to live our lives uses the analogy. The analogy of the fort. So settler colonialism operates by establishing forts. Oh actually there's like this great map going around, at least I saw on Facebook the other day people sharing it about how many like places in the United States names of town cities are called like Fort whatever, as kind of a remnant of this imagination of what it means for European settlers in this context. Anyhow, so the image of the fort is what Fred Moten offers us and he says the colonial imperial violent powers of this world impose themselves in our lives like a fort. And the thing about a fort is that forts are always surrounded by people. Forts are always under threat of collapsing. It's actually a very precarious life to live to establish your power as a fort, because you're always worried that the people were going to rise up and breach the walls. And he offers that as an image for thinking about our lives in that the powers of this world present themselves as all encompassing as impermeable to to our efforts to overthrow them. But it's the case that if people organize themselves and confront the violence is everyday violence is in their lives. We will discover that they're all interrelated. We will handle the violence that we see in our own life that confronts us, we will and we, you know, confront that we will discover that somehow it's connected to another form of violence, all because of this power that is this tiny fort in our lives with a lot of guns, but still just a fort. Thank you that's a really helpful image. I wonder if to that we might also think about the tradition of understanding an abaptist communities as part of a broader movement. So that we don't have to ask ourselves how what am I going to do about all of these kinds of violence, but to understand ourselves in relation to and to really cultivate communities that are in the community to cultivate communities and networks of churches and networks of networks that are really working on on these different fronts together and to be a part of the knitting of those of those different efforts and of those organizing efforts. I know that's something that has been important for me to think about. We are at 130. We could continue having a really rich conversation. But I am so grateful to both of you. Thank you Melissa. Thank you Isaac for coming and joining this conversation. We'll look forward to continuing it in the weeks and months ahead in different ways. Let's stay in touch. So thank you. Let's let's everyone give a round of applause to Melissa and Isaac for being today. Thank you so much. Thank you for the invitation and thank you for everybody for your conversation here. Just a word about our next session, our next group session together or our next presenter on November 4. So the day after elections, we invite you to join witness colloquium for a conversation about the elections, the US American landscape and how an abatism features in the bigger picture of political realities with the father daughter duo doctors Leroy and Melinda Barry. For many years as many of you already know Leroy Barry taught history and political science at Goshen College, and he's also a bilingual general practice lawyer. Melinda is of course an associate professor of theology and ethics at AMBS, and she will facilitate the conversation. So, we are looking forward to that, and we hope you join us for that next time. And with that, we will officially conclude our time together. Thanks again everyone for for joining us and being here. Thank you. Take care. Take care.